never mind. I got stuck.
I think what I’m trying to say is that when things are completely unresolvable in life because something is just a damn shame full of angry Nobody’s Fault that’s just really hard. It takes superhero strength to get through stuff like that and you can only hope for the best and that tantrums can settle. I had mine throughout the year in several areas of my life, heightened by being sick and getting betrayed and fired a few times and having professional disappointments and being embarrassed and dealing with the fact that I whine a lot on my blog and that I’m not as funny as I think I look. But here is a video of a chicken toy. You can clear your head while I go clean up the apple soda I just kicked over.
(got chickens?)

[NOTE: if you watch any of the other vids, the "pigs blood" poem one is Not Suitable For Work!!! because there is a swear in the poem. also all of my twitvids are REALLY dumbexcept my practice performance of Stranded which is actually not too bad.]

(why yes, I have fallen down the stairs this week. I have stopped giving Clumsy Updates)

Rest Assured, this blog is about to get more Entertaining and Less:

EEh. Eeh. Eeh. WWRRRRRAaaawwhhhhh. YAAAAAh. WAAAAH . RRREEeeereee. ewwwww. Flarg.
Ack.

No. Really. I’m totally finishing my projects too. It’s all happening according to Plan.
I am #hashtaggingallupinthat …

6. HAH!!! You just think I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOO predictable don’t you?!?!?!

YOU DON’T KNOW ME!!!!!

#defiance #buffalostance

7. I keep missing a golden window of oppurtunity to get my gift of music done but I am just so in need of practice time and thinking and processing. I have had overload. I am in one of those times in life where…… hmmm. Do I have a dramatic metaphor for this???

it’s like having a medical procedure. Or going to a high school dance after a breakup. Or not being prepared for a math test. Or being in a fight.
You are scared, and it’s low grade at first. Not terror, because I’ve never feared for life for a mounting period of time so I don’t know. Like I haven’t been in a war, or anything. But this is a stomach feeling. You’re alive and you are afraid of what is going to happen next because it is going to SUCK and you are going to hurt like hell. These are the times when people wish they were dead because everyone has a wuss threshhold.

I’ve almost died before, or thought it was the case and feared my death. That actually upps your wuss threshold. But mine is not high enough for the dread not to get tripped when I KNOW that serious physical or emotional pain is coming my way. I hate to throw up, and I hate to cry and I hate to hurt. So I make myself forget things so that I can get through and pretend stuff’s not happening to me. I imagine a worst case scenario. Invariably I am usually presented with something I didn’t plan for. It’s the one part of the Algebra chapter I forgot to read, it’s the kick to my weak side. My exboyfriend walks into the dance and the girl looks like a teacup piglet or a ribboned box of chocolate chip cookies make by a squad of adorable upper woodwind players in happy-face aprons singing Sweet Christmas carols. And they are singing to orphansMy orphans….with ACCENTS !!!!!! My red stilettos are not in fashion and everyone is in sundresses and precious espadrilles. My hair is neon.

31 Flavors of T A C K Y !!!!!

…huh?

Oh! Yeah! I’m awake!!! Totally! Yeah! I’m SO awake!

Dude! I fell asleep in my own blog over thinking it. This is why I’m not getting things done. I feel kind of sick all the time and I don’t have leftover energy because I’m using the last tiny bits to erase blindingly unkind assaults to my identity that of course actually never happened because of course nobody would ever do that !!!!! ack.

By the way, make a note. For later. This is how it looks when you shoot estrogen into it.

Ten years ago I said I would have a shining moment with someone who made me sit in the shower shaking and crying with the Shakira Mascara of Alanis Level Sorrow because I poured my whole career into him and earlier had had given him a non refundable scented sachet of permanent residual love to keep even if something went horribly wrong because THAT, my froglings, is Desssssssstiny…..
…and this was the last ditch effort.
Last week, my moment came where it flipped around and it all returned to me. I thought I would blog the hell out of that moment.

Someone at the time told me if I was really over the moment I wouldn’t care – I’d be obsessed with something else.

Correcto.

I don’t have time for back story. I am Having a Crisis, y’all.
I would almost prefer you NOT read my blogs of years past though. Because in them you will see how little I have changed in some ways. There is, indeed, nothing new u der the sun, and we are doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over again. Every day of our lives. So the best I can do is to slow down and just quit REACTING. because that’s what keeps fueling the sugarRushy behavior.

And I know how these things flow. It’s called karma. And she does come around to the Keepers of it. In Eerie, Messy fashion.

And she is, indeed, a bitch. But not to worry, So are Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis. It’s not really nice to call women that, I hear. But I don’t really react to that either, sadly. Because sadly, sadly, sadly, sadly, sadly…I’ve heard worse.

8. To wrap, I’ve been trying to get a things a little more under control. I’ve got lots of tagging to do. When I realized this blog had a MUCH smaller audience than I thought and that my stats were karked I worked really hard to start making things better because only you can make things change and whining doesnt help a situation or inspire anybody to respect you or your work.

I’ve been working hard musically too. I think I’ve come a really long way. My band Billy and the Psychotics has won two Song Fights now and I don’t talk about it much because things are going really nicely and its when I DONT hem and haw about something that… well… Honestly …

No. I don’t wanna jinx it. Not this time
Some of Billy and the Psychotics at the Song Fight! Jukebox (with other Psychotic locations)
Here are the fights we won…
1. In Time of Crisis
{note: this is a little racy!!}
(I wanted to put the cool songfight player in here, but wordpress is being deflicted!!!)
2. A Conversation
(Song Fight!)

In closing, I’ve been listening to the Dixie Chicks again. And I kinda like it.

very often, I am shaken and afraid.

today I got scared again. So afraid I thought, maybe I won’t survive! Maybe I’m not memorable… maybe when I’m done, I’ll fade into obscurity … nothing I’ve done will matter …

It seems I am often cut down, and unable to explain. It happened for a while in a relationship I once had. I couldn’t explain its difficulties. But in public, I came off looking small and petty and strange and neurotic – and my friend was the “stable, strong, leonine, under-control person.”

It took years to learn and unlearn the lessons of it all…

I hang on, somehow. In May, I learned how to cling tenaciously and my death grip on my sanity only had to get tighter and tighter. The year did NOT improve. But musically…….

the last half of 2011 has kicked more rocking hard core ass than could be even explained… I know this too is even a phase. But that this is a phase I go through honestly. With full respect for my intelligence. My equality.

I have flown so far away from the don’t-touch-the-mixer-babe world I used to know. And yet I feel a femininity and a safety that allows me to mourn an adult-childhood; to do all that past-current-future grieving.

These tiny seahorses I saw in the aquarium in the beach town of Galveston. I grew up thinking that I would share destiny with a man who sang ‘Galveston’ to me, and I don’t know why I thought that. We called it BOI, born on the island. It sounds terribly romantic. But the time for the fuzzy things that are just All Snow … that’s done. I continue to breathe and bleed.

I hear it all the time, and I crave more and more surrounding myself with people who say “how ARE you ..?”

and they’ll mean it. and keep meaning it.

I don’t know much but I know that the music I’ve made is me telling My Story. It is real and it is true and I can feel my blood and my heart and my fluid pulsing through it. It’s my house and seat of power.

My pianos were that. Are that. Should be that. Mine. I am me.

I carve things into my skin to remember. Tattoos. Birds, mostly. So I won’t forget. If I hurt too much, I start erasing my memories. I can feel myself erasing the last two years of my life, committing fully to the future.

There is no truth for me in the past. Nothing that rang of the real.

I’m generalizing a bit. But I know that my past-truth shared with present liars makes for a hollow stomach feeling. I have left important pieces of myself behind in my life with people who do not hold me dearly enough, I think. Leaving rooms with me still there, turning out the lights. And walking back into them, expecting the most ludicrous scenarios to then transpire with no regard for my reality.

The reality of *that* is narcissism. Plain. Simple.

I can see protection for the convenience of others, sometimes, in the fiction that I hid behind, that I allowed myself to write.

But I am becoming real-er now. Grittier.

Less polite, maybe. Perhaps less easy to tie down. To shut up.

I may make more noise, this time around.

1. NOTE TO SELF: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I don’t know who the dog is in this scenario, but looking back I’m remembering I’ve been called bitch, and stupid, and worse
2. NOTE TO SELF: always remember that you are Unique. Just like everybody else.
3. It’s going to take something a LOT more

EPIC

to convince me to even respond to the existence of a person who regularly makes me feel like a bloodspot on a dirty road.
4. I am furious
5. I’m so furious right now I’m blogging about it. I’m months of pent of rage furious added to years of pent up rage furious.

I don’t want to go into it…

6. I’m so sad. I can’t even process it.
7. I’ll be around for things I need to be around for, but I have obviously not been doing well and it’s time for me to sort through some stuff before I end up someplace crazy.

Now it’s affecting my work.

there was a day
something was said
that was sticky,
it was claimed..

I was pink,
on display -
spices and icing in
sweet disarray

Of course I have philosophies
..I do not believe
in the sugary ways
of the cannibal parade
I explained that my skeleton would ache…
my jaws would snap around
each fractured protest of smiling
if the honey were siphoned away
and sold to the slaves
for money that I could not pay
to wash all the raindrops
away

DON’T READ THIS BLOG ENTRY.

YOU’LL BE DETAINED INDEFINATELY. WITHOUT TRIAL. THIS IS SERIOUS, PEEPS. NO KIDDING.

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BLACK OUT MY SITES. I do not even have wordpress installed on my computer and do not know the ins-and-outs of plug-ins-ley blogging yet. I only get up here and bust ‘tude. In fact, skip ahead, you are already too entertained by this, and should be learning, not loafing.

THE GUV‘MENT* (by which I mean The Government .. you know the one, people … the one we talk about in International Hushed Whispers… could seriously mess things up for Modern Society if perhaps we don’t get cracking, it seems.

I’ve been making myself crazed reading about this as I have been making mistakes and going to all my Readily Available Plethora of Social Networks to Complain about my Audio Engineering Fails in the Vain Attempts to finish my Gift of Music entry for Song Fight!

But since I was a young Complainer, I have known that things were Somewhat More than Awry … Oh yes, Somewhattishly More than Awry, My Fine Feathered, Fun-loving Fellows and Fello-ettes

Since the early 90s. Gentlemen callers and other fun folks of acquaintance have said to me many a fine day “oh how CUTE! A Conspiracy Theorist!” Well, no more! We are ALL cute! And we are ALL connected, because soon, perhaps we will all be connected by a series of adjoining cells. Oh, you say that you are not an American? Well, we have proven time and time again-sly that we have the ability to come and get all nucular all up in YOUR nachos too. Occupy THAT, suckahs!!!!
#mirth #butnotreally #arewestillallowedtoHashtagIt?

(this is actually not Laughing Magma)…

Okay, I’M GONNA MAKE MUSIC NOW. THAT’S WHAT I KNOW HOW TO DO. But in pre-conclusion, I KNOW HOW TO LINK.
…SO LOOK AT SOME OF THIS STUFF

*THE WIKIPEDIA THING
*AGHGHGHG. NO CHEEZBURGERS TODAY!

Lifehacker’s position.

Jules was amused this morning by laughing squid’s twitter-y observations.

…Twitter and Facebook; search engine-y stuff

You think I’d be finishing my homework today, with the info-wars*… speaking of THAT :S
just because you’re paranoid ….

that’s all for now. I’m off the interwebz.

just remember that I l@^x you guys…………………..

I always want to blog about this stuff, I never do. I never publish stuff I want to blog about, but I’m starting to do it and interesting things are starting to happen to me because I am Choosing to be brave. I wonder how much more interesting my life will get if I just decide to be brave, and speak from what I know. I already feel more dissatisfied about how things have been. If you refuse to sit there in silence, you think about the things you have been allowing to happen to and around and inside and surrounding you. If they are unacceptable in the least you think … perhaps it’s time for a stop to be put to that, and for me to rewind back to the time when you had to know the password at the door to get into the VIP room that was me. :

I have a lot more to say about this, so I’m not going to say another word about it. I’m going to sleep and then I’m going to get up and work. Last time I talked about my crap to other people they got bored and I agreed with them about all THAT.

this morning I woke up afraid
like I have every morning.
I wondered if I was old
and reached up to feel my face
as i had for every day since the day
you’d touched it in the circular
fingertip sweep that convinced me
i might still have decades to go.

but this morning I hit a resistance..
a refusal to rhyme, a need to hit
pavement – a yearning to
define out-of-times
(a need to go back to My bass lines …)

the low beats that once made me
slip and to sway …
like to wait without breathing fresh
with my skin, or wrapped with a ribbon
beside of a lake;
stretched out of a porch swing,
or alone like a dagger inside of a letter

-they have once more intoned me!
the tips of my fingers hit smile
and today stop resenting invasions
of lace
(sad patters one misses
at distance but craters
one never mistakes upon closer
inspection)
…the evidence left in your trace.

making changes is scary.
tomorrow is a big day, because I have a LOT to do over the next few months. The rest of the year is pretty much going to just fall down into place, and I don’t have a lot of time to be making the same sorts of errors in judgment that I’ve been making in the past. It’s time for me to tighten up.

I’m ready for it now too. I’m not afraid. I’m not looking into this abyss with terror or feeling alone or needing someone to hold my hand or having the whole bottom-lip-tremble thing wanting to talk about thank god I’ve got the good friends to love and support me drama and all that.

The time for all that crap is over. I don’t have time to waste with all this relationshipppy crap anymore. All this please, won’t you be my friend ooo look you’ve come back oh wow what does this mean is this destiny what might THAT mean what do the stars say blahblahblah this and THAT yaddayaddayadda isn’t that just so SPECIAL wow listen to that uncanny song on the radio isn’t that so INTERESTING I was just THINKING of you and how ODD that that song would come on RIGHT THEN who would have thought so I just had to tell you oh my god what does it mean… but oh wait I thought you said hold on oh I said that then blahblahblahWOW oh GEEZZZZZZZ….

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I’ve indulged in enough people drama. Yay. Fun happy cake time is over den. It’s time to eat our broccoli and make Adult Decisions. You have written enough songs about the silly humans who behave in their funny ways. Yay. It is time to play our scales and our modes with the Metronome now. It’s time to floss, and brush our teeth and quit giggling and simpering like a teenager looking at bright shiny objects just because you are a Poet and a Songwriter. This will simply Not Do.

1. One nice long post. A little private FUneral all my very own, so to speak. That’s done. Move on. Everyone is fine and things are guh-roooooovy. People have lives. Coolio.
2. Getting something done that literally took 40 minutes to wrap up. Yeah. 40 minutes to finish but I’ve been dragging it around just between my eyes like a splitting headache letting waves of fresh Nasty hit me over and over again keeping me in the sucking undertow of the Barftic Ocean. Wow! What’s that over there!? I think I see a ‘Get a Life’ raft …
3. Letting Confusion and undefined uncertainties pile around me – and allowing myself to be defined as something less than what I should be defined as. Which is a person who is not to be Trifled With.
4. In conclusion, whatever.

Yeah. Just whatever.

I’m too busy for all this silliness. I don’t really have time to be cute anymore and I don’t really care what you think of me. I need to finish the rest of my homework and then I need to blog about content and then I should probably record and practice. Because aren’t you sort of sick of hearing me whine? I know I am.

If the any of the wrong people comment on THAT rhetorical question – anywhere, inCLUDING on this blog, they WILL get slapped. Hypothetically, of course.

Why yes, it is that special musical time in a woman’s life when she extends the special conducting baton built right into her hand and directs you to the back of the concert hall because you’ve clapped in-between her movements.

So the heckles what?

ps. yes, I’m still cleaning out my lair for special porpoises.

If you remember or were a fan or reader of mine in 2009-2010; it effectively pulled me out of my slump and got me to expand my fan base through audience participation and voting. To be honest and frank, I was looking forward to its return which had been whispered about.

This was mostly for selfish reasons. There always seemed to be something about the NAME Song Fu – and it was the only contest I participated in in a mainstream way which encouraged vote solicitation (at Song Fight! we prefer that the vote not be “friend flooded.” I’m glad I have that and it actually helps me express myself more freely in songwriting (like with the “f” and “s” word if I want to or something), but I wished there had been a voting component in Spintunes because I didn’t have gigs to advertise to my fans for a while- even now, for personal reasons. Anyway… ).

People have asked from time to time about Song Fu; and I thought it was kind of groovy that within my fanbase, enough support was drummed up to place me first in round three of Fu VI, although I didn’t have the votes to go up head to head as one of the top two.

Honestly, a lot of support was drummed up for a LOT of us. This surprised many of us. A lot of us have gotten a LOT of cred just for being in Fu. This was due to a combination of factors, but mostly, it really boiled down to that magical thing that happens when you mix a bunch of artists together and they share each other’s fanbases because they are similar. It’s kind of like what we Wanted to have happen at SongFight! – why it’s nice that the fights are generally small.

It was explained to me once quite succinctly in a Fu listening party BY Mr. Plume… that there was a reason the that website continued on in such a cumbersome design (it encouraged people to scroll down through all the entries. I don’t know that it did, but it’s a nice thought and I took it at face value).

I do have a few people from random corners of the world listening to me and I don’t know who they are. I am listed as similar to the Song Fu people when I am Denise Hudson and to Song Fight people when I am DJ Ranger Den. I guess a chunk of my followers are due to my little brother’s fine hustle (he’s in a niftysauce band) and still more are due to the random Scot I acquired during Round 2 of Fu 6. That was interesting. These things happen during the Magic that is Fu.

Well, it’s returned all right; some would say, but its not a contest anymore.
I am kind of thinking of it as Song Fu 2, or NewSong Fu, even. Song Fu – the year They Removed Contact. It’s not the same in the least. I doubt my droll and smart assed nicknames would be unanimously appreciated; but these are MY feelings on the subject. They’re a little sharp, but kinda jokey. Kinda.

In all seriousness, I would call it an open forum clinic-environment for aspiring songwriters interested in online production. A kind of long term Master Class with a contest-like set-up. A thing which does have benefit, certainly. I could use some work on my own production in collaborations. But I think I can do that with what I have already, and I am already taking steps to get there. I am not adverse to other approaches.

Of course, I have had enough trouble learning to take critique from my peers. Why would I start again as a songwriting amoeba, so to speak? As beneficial as *any* learning environment is, due to the nature of being kind of a hermitty shut-in who finds traditional performance scenarios difficult (I am, of course, working earnestly on this and will blog to this Effect… #heywhereareyougoing ….); I feel like I am constantly having to professionally “start over.” To voluntarily do so sounds kinda like a real drag when I have other opportunities to do something I’ve gotten recognizably good at. Maybe that’s just hubris. I’ve had to learn that lesson the hard way before, that I don’t know what I’m doing yet just because I have a piece of paper and can play. But I’m not humble enough to *not* say I’m too proud for New-Fu; although perhaps I *will* fancy one of these personality-born challenges and write a little something and post it up on my own place. Maybe discuss it on the Fu Facebook page or something. So I’m not bitter and won’t be trashy because its great that things weren’t just left in the garbage.

Because what is the point of being snarky? I do hold back much of the time. There is a vestige of dark cloud-who me(?) in the air and I really do feel like saying something a little bit Pro-Old-Skool (or perhaps middle-Skool?) Fu. Because it WAS, indeed, a glorious thing. Otherwise, we would not have continued spending way, way too much time together – this little group of us that kind of glommed onto one another. I think there’s about 15-30 of us that meander in and out. Give or take ten or twenty and any given point in time. I dunno. We’ve never taken up a directory or compiled a dictionary of the weird little language we’ve developed concerning our memes and traditions and culture and expectations and happenings and lives and … STUFF… We just remember that that IS what she SAID and continue back-and-forthing wherever we endup late at night or early in the morning or on whatever radio show or cast or contest pops up; welcoming new folks that “fit.” And there have been some that have found our little weird place we’ve made.

We who have already participated in Song Fu-Spintunes Thing-y-ma-Jig are a diverse lot. Most are not career musicians. Some are just spreading wings in the entertainment industry. Some are reconnecting or re-jumpstarting careers in the milleu. All need practice and all benefitted from the way people before us have done the very lo-fi Internet success thing – which is accomplished through a combination of hard work and some lucky breaks.

There were other contests, before the Spintunes came along and during. I myself became a Song Fighter – and I’m there more than I am with this little family-like group of mine. I needed something even more than Song Fu and Nur Ein fit the bill for that because the challenge turn around time is shorter than Fu’s was. And at Song Fight! there is always a title up.

I’ve been happy to see that there are other addicts like me in both of these places. They generally participate in everything they can get their hands on, in both places. You’ll find them in Fight things, in Spin things, in Frankensong Challenges, in White Elephant Club stuff, and in other stuff that floats around. I did an OMG Songclub once. Other folks are doing and have done FAWM. Others are even novel writers and do NanNoWriMo every year. There is song-a-day man, who made a career out of, well, his own personal challenge… and of course JoCo who did the song a week thing before Fu ever was. This whole thing is sort of a culture.

I have been writing about this in personal detail for a couple years now during all of this. Just from my point of view, and I will continue to do so until I feel like “it” is ready for “something-or-other.” Right now it looks like a cross between a weird fictionalized romance novel about my song-characters, science fiction-fantasy, fan-fiction, a diary, and something like Edric’s, Dave’s, or the Offhand Band’s song biographies.

Anyway, I digress…

There is a Facebook group (I linked above) that was started around the time of “original Fu’s” demise. On it, it was mentioned that it would sure be nice if some of the contest winners that were declared (however so) Masters participated as guests during rounds with Molly Lewis and the DoubleClicks.

I myself feel that this is most likely not going to happen. The small time of camaraderie between the founder and the veterans who continued the contest ended fairly swiftly. Attempts to engage back and forth on all sorts of topics yielded little fruit. But I think that there perhaps are hurt feelings, as if the later masters needed more recognition somehow.

The forum does sound like a place for people learning the ropes to develop an album to prompts over the course of a year.
And just maybe, everybody got honored enough by the fact that a group of us was inspired to bind together in an exciting collective of cantankerous and protective people who feel that we really made something to be proud of in Fu, and beyond.
Because we did.

Perhaps some of us sound snarky to those not well versed in all this. Perhaps this is true. Maybe it seems petty, as if there is silly complaining about something which isn’t really that big a deal. But to think that the nebulous and undefined group of us didn’t get some snark as though we were unruly children would be incorrect. We made something “Phoenix-y,” when we needed continuance and did not feel like waiting for some kind of song contest absolution… We rose up and tried to be constructive (sometimes with attitude I suppose, but mostly..constructive).
And feet were somewhat petulantly stamped. Without being petty and getting into all the minor occurances and private conversations; feelings got hurt. These things happen. But in my estimation, all of song fu was a great thing; cresting up into its pinnacle in V and VI in caliber of songwriter development,, fan base hustle, and community growth.

Maybe that is what happens when baby grows up and gets a tattoo and starts dating the boys from the wrong side of Tinseltown.
Song Fu 6 started out with really great songs and then crested up to brilliant by the last rounds. In my opinion, perhaps having a “master” would have detracted from our vibe…

Personally, I’d like to think we *were* honored by collaborations with others. I’d rather have my friends than the validation the lot of us are never going to receive. And which we frankly, when we get down to brass tacks, do not need.

We are all connected.

The people we might think of as heavy hitters didn’t need it either when they were “nobodies.” They instead thought of themselves as some-bodies and acted accordingly. This is why people who are more famous than us have the luxury of ignoring us today while we hope to get their attention somehow. They expect to be treated well and recognized for their hard work and talent. They respect themselves.

Everything that you do needs to be done for the right reasons. If you are a fan of something or someone, it must be because you love the sport, and the way the sport is played.

Original Fu was fun while it lasted. Made me wish I’d found it at the start of it all

We are all somebody. People should be paying attention to YOU.

And That
means all of you.
Best of luck… to all the contestants. Of everything.