04-27-03 @ 9:49 am EDT

Ah, yet ANOTHER lovely hours-long outage on the part of NMO.net. This is, what, the third Sunday morning in a row? I'm starting to think I should just keep the damn thing connected all night next Saturday because Sunday morning I'll just have more problems anyway. This time they were polite enough to let me dial IN, but then they would not authenticate my password. Oh, nice of them to let Ameritech make a dime off of my troubles while they were at it! (I cannot doubt NMO much when they DO blame their trouble on the phone company...because the phone company is about as bad as they are. We're always getting some other lady's calls, and for all we know she's getting ours. It's been like this for over a year but they don't want to fix it.)

For SOME of the outages--not all, because half of the time they don't even report them--they say on their main page, "We're sorry for the inconvenience." We're sorry...we're sorry...we're sorry...aaawwwwkk, pieces of eight! Heaven forbid they should--*gasp!*--give their paying users an additional day or so on their account, with how often they're crashing now. They make our CABLE PROVIDER look good.

And you know that THAT'S bad.

I'm a little bummed because the editor of the Erotica newsletter disbanded it and deleted herself from the site very abruptly...not that I was a huge fan, but I wonder why it couldn't have just been transferred to somebody else? Surely somebody else could have taken it? :/ This is what I don't understand about respected users just deleting everything in their port without moving the well-loved items first. This is a person in a very serious situation, and even though I don't know her I'm worried for her health; but I can't see why she couldn't have transferred it...I was asked long ago to fill out the interview survey for the newsletter, but the request had been sent along to a bunch of other writers here at the same time and I just know they sent it to me only because my name had popped up in the forum and because they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for submissions. They even said so, that they had run out of people to interview, so hey you guys, wanna contribute anything? -_- I didn't submit it because I don't consider myself an erotica writer. I was kind of hoping maybe somebody would just see one of my items and include it in the newsletter without my prompting, meaning that it really IS good on its own merits, without me having to nag and plug it...but that never happened. *sigh* Like I said, I guess I'm the bottom of the barrel. :(

Anyway, here is my earlier entry which I luckily copied and pasted before logging offline...I first tried to post this about five hours ago. Thanks a ton, NMO.net!

Yike! I received my fourth awardicon back on April 21st but as the awardicon notification system was apparently not working right, I didn't even know! On seeing a post about it in one of the forums I checked my trophy case just for the heck of it and...there it was...a yellow ribbon on my drawing of Bastet.

ID: 267735 (Rated: G)
Title: Lady Bastet
Description: The Egyptian cat goddess Bastet.
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

Thank you! :)

In other news, I'm browsing books and came across one about Wicca which has...oddly enough...some journal prompts, one for every week of the year. I haven't a clue what some of them have to do with Wicca, but oh well. I'll copy them here as a resource; maybe I'll write on them in the future. You're free to use them also, of course.

These fifty-two journal ponderances, if written about one a week for a year in the journal, will either make you insane, or turn you into an essayist, not that there is a big difference. The main point of these topics is to give you something to write about when you are stuck, to help you train your mind to challenge reality in your writing.

#1: What color eyes does the God/Goddess have? Why? Why can't you answer this question if you can't?

#2: Find a new meaning for the word "Oxymoron."

#3: What sound does starlight make?

#4: If you could defy gravity at will, what would you do?

#5: Define "Blue."

#6: Describe, using as few words as possible, what Wiccan is.

#7: Write a freeform poem about your foot.

#8: Read your last journal entry, contradict it

#9: Is it just that the Gods have run out of extras in you [sic] life? Or is that man everywhere you go?

#10: What would the ideal civilization be?

#11: If the government had to hold a bakesale to buy a bomber, and had the best brownies in the world, would you buy one?

#12: What if dogs really are that stupid? What if cats are smarter than us?

#13: What if the world really isn't round?

#14: What animal would you like to be?

#15: If we could understand the dolphin, what would it tell us?

#16: How does/would Christ feel about Christianity?

#17: If you walk around a corner, and bumped into your favorite Wiccan author, especially a dead one...what would you say?

#18: Tell the biggest lie in the world.

#19: Visualize World Piece (Yes, that's spelled right).

#20: It can't be that bad...can it?

#21: Write a short story about yourself, don't use the words I, You, me, they, myself or your name.

#21 [apparently the author didn't notice she has two 21's here; maybe it's a bonus question? :) ]: What is the sound of one hand clapping, played backwards through a midi-capable synthesizer with echo and distort?

#22: Why does Awful mean awful?

#23: Who invented Bacon?

#24: If all the really horrible criminals have middle names, maybe we shouldn't give middle names to our children.

#25: Acciw is Wicca spelled backwards.

#26: What is the meaning of tree?

#27: What if all electricity stopped working?

#28: Poof! you no longer are human...what are you?

#29: Is there life on other planets?

#30: Why is "light?"

#31: If you found out you were wrong, what would you say to the Christian God?

#32: What do you call a Merry-go-round full of screaming kids?

#33: Contemplate immortality.

#34: If I won a billion dollars, I would...

#35: Write a poem about clouds.

#36: Answer the question. "why?"

#37: Answer the question "why?" This time, don't use the word "because."

#38: You have all the authors of all the books on Wicca and Metaphysics of the past Two Hundred years gathered around a table. What are they doing, and who wins the food fight?

#39: What is the point of pointing?

#40: Maybe you're dreaming.

#41: Maybe someone else is dreaming.

#42: The world is going to end in 3.5 seconds.

#43: What does love feel like (don't use words that are emotions, or body parts.)

#44: Write a poem about a man walking through a wasteland, from a buzzard's point of view.

#45: What would the Environmentalists say if we discovered that a new endangered species, the dragon, was terrorizing cities?

#46: What if Hitler won World War Two?

#47: What if you were teleported into Salem, 1692, on Gallows Hill?

#48: Would the King've noticed his daughter's [sic] disappearances if they'd worn out tennis shoes instead of dancing shoes?

#49: An act of Gods, War and law makes you Queen/King of England...

#50: It was a dark and stormy night.

#51: Begin a short story with "I will never forget the time I..." Finish it with "cheesecake."

#52: Describe chocolate. [I guess she was hungry as she finished these questions!]

--from All One Wicca: A Study In The Universal Eclectic Tradition Of Wicca (Revised & Expanded) by Kaatryn MacMorgan. http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=059520273X

Tar...