STOP!

Don't touch that comment button! Instead, hie yourself to... www.sunlightsucks.com. Please update your feed readers.

Thank you. This shop is now closed!

Weiners!

It's been a tough day. I had a number of decisions to make. I'm not going to go into all of them right now, but suffice to say that this blog will be a-changing! Soon. Changes for the better. The downside is that you'll all have to update your blogrolls because a new address is part of the package.

Part of the changes coming to my "Batty" blog are due in part to the fact that I have weiners, er winners for you! Yes, the tagline search has come to an end. An unexpected end. Here's the deal: I loved everything that was offered up. I couldn't make up my mind. David from BellaDaddyBlog sent me "Fangs For the Memories", but that's the name of a Kathy Love book. (A really good book too!) I liked the Absurdist's "Sunlight Is Overrated". I liked it a lot. But it reminded me of Britt's tagline. I'll come back to this tagline in a minute.

So, I was still pondering the taglines while Jester helped me out with the new Wordpress theme. I mentioned to him how I changed the verbiage on the Comment Luv to say that it's trying to sink its fangs into your last post, please wait while it finds a vein. Jester laughs and replies, "I vant to suck your blog!" BINGO. My kid and I both went, "THAT'S IT!" In one fell swoop, without even meaning to, Jester won.

Now, going back to the Absurdist's tagline, I kept mulling it over in my head because I really did like it a lot. However, to move the idea away from Britt's tagline, I kept thinking of it as "Sunlight Sucks". Last night, while letting WP kick my ass and make me cry, I got the idea of just moving the whole kit and kaboodle. I mean, wouldn't it make it a little harder for the hunter from my office to find me? Not that I'm hiding. I'd just like to make it harder for them on principle. So the Absurdist also wins. I registered sunlightsucks.com tonight.

And there we have it. Two weiners, er winners! Congratulations to Jester and the Absurdist. I am going to try to make a t-shirt with the bat logo on it now. If that doesn't work out, they can still have the Bar t-shirt. A t-shirt with fangs. Yummo. Thanks to everyone who participated. I appreciate the effort you all put into my need for a tagline.

One last thing, thanks to everyone for visiting Socially Dead. My kid has now pasted her underwear clad ass on her new blog for Half Naked Thursday. She even offered a crotch shot for next week. OY. How did I know she would fit in this well? Happy Friday to all! MUAH!

Nothing

I have nothing for you today. You see, my daughter's new blog has left me envious. I like the way it looks. I like the way it works. It's not ME, but I like it. I've been wracking my brains for weeks on how to take my bats to Wordpress. Not that I've defeated the WP demons. I haven't. I've just garnered a little help from Fab and Jester. And I'm anal and tenacious.

If I had money, I would just hire someone to make me a new city skyline with bats and a full moon. Instead, I tried to find a Wordpress theme I could tweak. It's not 100% me/mine like a custom design would be, but I figure if I can get the bulk done, maybe I could afford to pay someone to make the small stuff work for me.

So I found a couple of possible themes. I found one in blue and white with yellow that does go okay with my header. I was leaning toward this one because so many bloggers hate the white text on the black background. Tweaking my graphic to make it work with this theme was a mother though. So I moved on to the black background theme. This one was much easier to work with. Looks like I'm stuck with the black background, white text though. (Sorry folks!) I guess the only thing I can say is that it's a damned vampire theme! Sunlight ain't their thing.

It all looks good. I've been testing it on my other domain rottnroll.com. I couldn't get the subdomain thing to work at all on rottnroll. Not sure what I did wrong and too tired to figure it out for a site that's not staying there. It's a 3 column theme. In the widgets, I can't figure out how to tweak the sidebars. Only one sidebar shows up on the widget page and in the drop down menu. *sigh* One more thing I don't know how to do.

I guess if I can make the theme work, and get all the pages set, I can turn off the forwarding on my subdomain and try to take this live on winterheart.com. Which got me thinking. Maybe I should just make this blog the domain name with a page that goes to the actual site stuff (Winter's Coffeehouse). It doesn't exactly sit well with me though. I've had Winter's Coffeehouse a very long time. A dozen years. Look at it. It's pretty. Nice and clean. Great template. I never finished converting over the poetry pages though. I'm a bum like that. I get tired and move on. I should really just do a page a week and eventually the whole thing will be done.

So, here's what's in my head: Finish tweaking the WP theme. Figure out the sidebar from hell. Decide whether to go with winterheart.com or winterblog.winterheart.com or whether to buy sunlightsucks.com. (I hate telling people to change their link for me in their blog rolls.) Or should I skip eating for a few weeks and just hire someone to do this for me, because I'm freaking exhausted and have no answers and forgot about my TT? Tell me what you think I should do, because I'm all out of answers.

It sucks to be an IT person. Everyone expects you to be able to do this shit. This is not my application server. This is CODE. CSS. PHP. I'm logical for the most part, so I can figure out some of it, but my personal cheering section is gone. He always tells me, "You can do it. You like logic puzzles." I keep expecting him to show up at my shoulder, but when I turn around, there's no one there and the room is silent. I guess this is why I have nothing for you today. WP kicked my ass. I'm such a wuss.

Whine over. Have a great Thursday. Hopefully, I'll have a TT or a Half Nekkid Thursday or something next week.

PS: Here is a screenshot. As you can see, I've done okay so far. My problem is the far right sidebar which does not show up in the drop down menu for widgets in WP. And the meta for that sidebar has no login. I'm clueless how to make that sidebar show up in widgets so I can add or remove things from it. I hate whining and crying like a girl. And stupid WP has brought me to that pass. I guess I'm gonna have to email or IM Jester for some professional assistance...

Socially Dead

There is a reason I call my daughter the PITA. She can be a serious pest. (She can be the B word too, but I'm not going there today.) Once she decided that she wanted a blog, she pestered me. She kept saying she wanted to call it Sissies Go Home. She said it was a blog for the socially dead. I thought that was a pretty interesting phrase. I Whois'd it. Available. Then I came up with the tagline, Life is Tough, when you have no Life. The PITA got very excited. I told her the cost of a domain and hosting. That's when she said, "ME LIKEY. I WANT."

Spoiled brat.

So with the kind help of Jester, who set up Wordpress, email, and fixed my header dilemma, the PITA now has a blog. A blog that is far more stylish and cool than mine. A blog that will probably garner far more attention than her attention whore mother. Meh. I can live with that.

So please stop by Socially Dead and say hi to Motley. She already knows the likes of Jester, Fab, Dave's bad monkey, Karl's phallus, Matt's Sunday Disservice, Shiny (the girl), and MaryO. Next thing you know,she'll be doing a duet with Fab at the Big Honking Duet Show!

Before I sign off today I want to share some humpday hotness. I miss hotness. I need more hotness in my life. Today, I'm sharing Will Chalker with you. You straight men need to head to the bottom of this post. I'll share something else with you there. And now, here's Will, he of the luscious wheat colored hair and long lean... um muscles. I have a host of Will pics because my friend Jen used him to represent one of her characters at the Bar. At first, I wasn't all that taken with Will, but you know, those muscles grow on you. And once I saw him smiling in a pic (a Paco Rabanne Black ad) I was a goner.

For the men I have someone whom all the woman seem to think is hot. A little topless Eliza Dushku anyone? She certainly is hot. Personally, I liked Liz from last week better but Eliza's pretty damn hot too. Eliza too was chosen by Jen to represent one of her characters. Jen has an eye for what's hot. And, no. She doesn't have a blog. For those of you who write though, you will find her at JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood message board, where she's a moderator. I'm always envious when she says she's talked to the author on the phone. I can't be too envious though. She's gotten me every one of the BDB books signed!

I hope you enjoyed the Humpday Hotness, and if you get the chance, stop by Socially Dead. Have a great Wednesday!

Ugh

That about sums up how I feel this morning. I might be getting a bug. Or it could just be that my sleep cycle is all discombobulated. Not sure. I do want to shoot Dummy. He bugged the hell out of me last night. I don't care how beautiful he is, I'm pissed at him. So irked, in fact, that I was dreaming I was in an odd house where the next door neighbors kept breaking in, trying to steal him. When they couldn't get him, they enlisted all their friends, of whom there were many, to toss beer and soda cans into our yard. In the dream, I was really angry. To the point of calling the cops angry. I had my kid snapping pics of them for evidence. The dream made no sense. I was pissed at Dummy. Why would I be pissed at someone for trying to steal him? I would have given him away at any point last night!

Other than bitching about Dummy, I'm too tired to give you much of anything today. However, I do want to mention the fact that my daughter is in a frenzy of excitement. Concert? New boyfriend? Chili cheese fries? None of the above. She's saving to go to Warped Tour in Portland. (Don't ask. I'm still pissed at the kids for this idea.) She and Invincible Morrison, the boyfriend, are apparently back together after a very brief breakup due to his clingyness which is now gone. She does love chili cheese fries, but I haven't bought her any in awhile. No, she's excited because I got her a domain name yesterday.

She wants a blog. She's been working on different name and theme ideas for a short while. Finally, she comes up with something like Sissies Stay Home. Something about being socially dead. I, in all my brilliance, go to ShareArea.com, the registrar where my domains are. (ShareArea.com is owned by Mike Wallace, who is the creator of the horse racing sim where I'm message board moderator. I think after 5 years in the game, and now being made a mod, I can call Mike a friend.) I look up sociallydead.com and it's available. I IM my kid. She says Ooooooh! I tell her, Blog Name: Socially Dead. Tagline: Life is Tough, when you have no Life. She says, I WANT. ME LIKEY. So at lunch I register the domain and make this:



That's a banner sized version of the blog header. Now I just have to get the hosting sorted out, enter the nameservers, and wait for propagation time. My kid is so excited her boobs are jiggling. No, wait. Those jiggle anyway. Heh. Once the blog is up and launched, we'll have a little Grand Opening and I'll ask everyone to stop by and wish her well with her blogginess.

Okay, that's all I have for today, other than... UGH. I don't feel so good. Hope you all feel better than me. Have a great Tuesday.

Media Marcus Monday

This is a media day as well as a Marcus Monday! First off, the awesome Hilly from Snackie Radio had me as her guest on her show yesterday afternoon. Below is the podcast for the show, if you missed it. We talked about all kinds of stuff from writing about vampires, where I'm from, whether I've seen dead people at my work, and how I almost got karled or fabbed. We also talked about Karl's junk, because um, everyone is talking about Karl's junk. Thanks for having me on Hilly!

(If you're looking for the podcast, email me. I'll send you a link.)

The next little bit of media I have to share with you is that I am guest posting at The Absurdist today. Chelle asked me to write about designer purses for her Girly Girl Series. Until I had to put all the purses on my bed and photograph them, I hadn't realized what a purse ho I really was. So in honor of all the purse sluts out there, and because I didn't do a tune last week, here is a purse song.

I have two pics of my favorite man this week. This is Marcus in a commercial for a laundry soap called REI. I think it's Swedish, but who cares really? All we really care about is that Marcus is NEKKID. This man is soooo beautiful. You're all really tired of me saying that, aren't you? I know it's true though. I have good taste. Since I almost got karled I haven't been putting my blog on my desktop, so now I can put Marcus out here in all his beautiful nude glory. I wish he would drop that box of soap though.

On the subject of commercials, Fab says he can totally find the Air France man. Cross your fingers and toes. I can hardly wait to find out the answer to this mystery. Fab will earn himself a fanged t-shirt if he finds this guy. You too can earn a fanged t-shirt by leaving a tagline for this blog in the comments of my post entitled Why Vampires?-A Contest. I am extending the deadline a few more days, because while I've received some really good ones, nothing has really, really leaped out at me as "the one". There are several I could totally live with, but I was hoping for one that just completely says ME.

Our Marcuses for this week go to: Mary, Shiny and Fab with 5 each, Matt, Marty, and the Absurdist with 4, Susan with 3, Jason X, Hilly, Avitable, Lady Rose, Xakara, and Karl with 2, and lots of folks with 1. It's three weeks to the next tally and all your tagline suggestions count. You've got the chance to win two contests here, unless you can beat Fab to the Air France guy, in which case you could win three!

OH! I forgot! I mentioned on Hilly's show that I used to have a hot boyfriend named Austin whom I went to a few swinger's parties with. We never participated, but we did go and check them out. So I promised everyone a pic so you could see that he was a very attractive man. Heh.



Thanks for coming by everyone. Don't get fabbed or karled this week. MUAH!

Why Vampires? - A Contest

My last contest was a flop. No one can find the man from the Air France commercial. I'm a lot disappointed. He was soooo hot. Anyway, I've got a couple things up my sleeve. The first is about this blog and what I spend all my time on when I'm not blogging or working at the cemetery. Writing. I write about vampires. I write about other creatures too at the Bar, but the vamps are, well, my thing. Now, I'm going to reveal to you why it is that I must write vampires. (You'll need this for the contest.)

David from BellaDaddyBlog may remember this. He was with me that day. It was Halloween, my 17th birthday. I think David was 14 or 15. My mom sent me to my sister Jeannette's to pick up my present. David and I hopped into the Starsky and Hutch car and drove to my sister's. She gave me a pair of gold Gypsy earrings that belonged to her, but which I had admired for years. She also gave me her copy of Interview With the Vampire. She looked at me oddly and said that when she first read the book, she knew it was meant for me.

Now, my sister Jeannette is an unusual woman. From the time I was about 4 or so, she lived with the Gypsies. The REAL Gypsies. Jeannette does palmistry, Tarot, and astrology charts. She's very good at it. She's also a Buddhist. Oddly, she never gave up some of her Catholic icons though. I think she's a very religious person, but her beliefs are slices from many different religions.

Anyway, never having had much belief in the occult or religion, I didn't think much of her giving me that weird look. I just took the book and said thank you. My entire life Jeannette had had a habit of turning up out of the blue and giving me odd books to read, and different music to listen to. (All my sibs are much older than me. Jeannette's about 15 years older.) She gave me her prized copy of Abbey Road because I loved it so much, but only if I would take the White Album too. She took me to Catholic church and taught me to light candles. She taught me to meditate. She exposed me to things I would never have been exposed to at a young age had she not been my sister.

Interview With the Vampire had a profound affect on me. It was the only Anne Rice book I read for many years. I didn't want a sequel. I didn't want Louis spoiled for me. Louis sat in my head for a long time. He was seductive, more so than Lestat.

One day I spied a series of books by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro about the St. Germain vampires. I picked up the first book and by the end, I was officially obsessed with vampires. I had a HUGE collection of vampire books within a year or two. I tried writing the vamps, but they never came to me.

Years passed. I lost the huge collection of books and a handwritten copy of my novel Note By Note when I lost my storage unit in the high desert. I eventually read the other Anne Rice books. Shit happened to me. I lost the vampires. I felt them calling to me sometimes though. Then I found a cool little used romance bookstore. The woman there introduced me to paranormal romances and handed me... Katie MacAlister.

The vampires came back to me full force. The were inside me, clamoring to come out. But I hadn't found their vehicle yet. I went to Katie's website and found... The Bar. I read and read and read. For two solid weeks I read the Bar. By the time I caught up to where the writers were, I was ready to intro a character. Not a vampire, but a black dragon. The black dragon was related to two vampires. Eventually, I introduced them - Blake and Dominic Solent, thousand year old vampire brothers, who had once been Knights Templar.

And so, I found where I belonged. The rest is history. Of a sort. The Bar led to Andrei Andrei, who led me to blogging. The blogosphere community and it's people are awesome. I can't imagine my life without all of you now. The Bar, the bloggers, and the vampires.

Now, that you're all yawning at my longwindedness, here's the contest:
I need a real tagline. Something that is me, but something amusing too. Everyone has a cool tagline. I want one. So, hit me with a tagline. You have until midnight Pacific time on Sunday to leave your tagline in the comments. If you prefer a more private means of entering the contest, email your entries to winter at winterheart dot com. One caveat: you cannot say, "Bite Me" (cause all my little icons already say that), but you can use it as part of the tagline. C'mon. You know you wanna win a t-shirt with fangs.

Now, before I go... Tune in to Snackie Radio this Sunday because Hilly's guest is MOI! Yes, the two gals from SoCal will titillate you and make you horny, baby!

SUNDAY APRIL 20TH AT 3PM PACIFIC/6PM EASTERN

CLICK HERE TO GET A REMINDER FOR THE SHOW!

See you all Sunday at Blog Talk Radio! MUAH!

Freakshow

I'm a little burned out this Friday. Way too much shit coming down in different areas of my life. I seriously need to use up some of those vacation hours that I keep stockpiling. So, in the freakshow that is my life, I first give you a story about my kid and a penis. Oh, wait. Heh. Here's the real intro:

I'm guest blogging at Bluepaintred! (I'm not w00ting out of deference to Karl, who says w00t is not a word. Of course, it's not, Karl. It's a sound. Like MEH.)

Next, I have for you the Slogan thing that Dave did. Mine, in keeping with the theme of my life, was... freaky.

Your Slogan Should Be

Winter; What You'd Eat if You Lived on Mars

The Slogan Generator

Next up is something I cannot even articulate. It pisses me off and raises my blood pressure. I'm sure you will find this amusing. I look at it and want to strangle my teenager.


Another thing in the freakshow of my life is that my damned back still hurts. In fact, I'm starting to feel like my left hip is out of whack. Then I remember falling out of the shower onto that hip about 4 years ago. I have a keloid on the hip now from that fall. But it really feels out of whack. Oh, and the doctor I loved so much... came back to work after having a baby and dismissed me. ME! I have no doctor now. My asthma and I feel like crying. I mean, her name was American. She spoke English without an accent. She had a surfboard on the wall of her office. I feel abandoned.

I'm depressed. I want to spend money I don't have. And everyone's blog made me smile tonight. Except Jason X's. I actually laughed at his. Okay, maybe I chuckled at Diesel's soda badger. But nothing has made me really really laugh since Fab posted the mummy with the caption I Can Has Moisturizer? And even freakier than that, this is my favorite LOL:



Last night, I gave Jester 3/4's of my hotties. What was I thinking? Now, we'll be posting the same guys! Okay, I saved some good ones for myself. After all, I love them more than he does. I think. Shit. I think I got the pics off some gay guy's site. So maybe Jester does love hotties more than me. All gay men seem to have the best hotties on their sites. But do they have... Ian Somerhalder? I think not! HA!


And speaking of hotties, Hilly's car just might get supplanted in my heart. Turnbaby's car is THUD. Oh, how I love the smell of octane in the morning... Injected engines full throttle on a long stretch of open highway. Just not the one where James Dean died. I've seen the weird ass monument to him out there in the middle of nothing. It's a piece of silver metal wrapped around a tree. It's insulting if you think about how he died.

Freaky might be my life at the moment, but if you haven't seen Matt's Pope hat, check it out. He was way hotter than Benny and I spent more time on his site this morning than I did watching Benny's mass. And if the Pope hat is too reverent for you, best go look at Hellohahanarf's first Half Nekkid Thursday. I have never seen a woman so happy to hold her feet in the air when the camera was rolling. I know it's not her most recent blog post, but shit. All of her posts are worth reading and this one is worth ogling. Heh.

I think there was something else I was gonna talk about in this freakshow that is my life, but I can't remember what it is. So you will just have to live with this fucked up post. How bad can it be anyway? It doesn't have a fake naked Hermione or Harry Potter's real foreskin. No one but Avitable could post that anyway. I don't eat or drink when I visit his site. I'd go broke replacing monitors if I did. Wait. I already am broke.

Now, that I've pimped and ass kissed my way through a freakshow of a Friday post, here's a song for you since I didn't have one this past Tuesday. I wonder if you will get the irony of it... Oh, and BTW, if I didn't pimp you out today, remind me that I owe you a toe licking or something if we ever meet.



Okay, I'm outta here. I'm going to bed with Anderson Cooper. Hopefully, I'll get to sleep before Lou Dobbs comes on. He's not nearly as good a bed partner as Anderson. Happy Freakshow Friday peoples!

Thursday Thirteen the Twelfth

This hasn't been the best of weeks for me. Those of you who came by last week will notice that my last TT is missing from this blog. I removed it. On purpose. Just because someone might misconstrue it. If you really wanna know where it is now, email me. I'll let you in.

So I don't have a TT prepared. I'm winging it with some help from the Bar.

Thirteen Mysterious Characters from the Bar Story 1. Macaire - Macaire is a Fallen Angel. The FAs are very powerful. Marius the Archangel "creates" the angels from children who died. The FAs are supposed to be good, but Macaire is extraordinary. He's stalking Nyx McClaren and already threatened her and her mate Valerian Kronos. He hasn't done anything against them yet, but he keeps hinting that he will. 2. Damaris Fontaine, the Blood Mistress - Damaris is the keeper of the vampire annals (the history of all vampires) and the vampire bloodlines and lineage. She's the daughter of the vampire deity, which makes her a demi-goddess I suppose. So far she's shown herself to be good, but who knows what could happen? She's just mysterious and powerful enough that you just aren't sure whether she's good or evil. 3. Mr. Fabulous - The only thing we know about him is that the Blood Mistress is afraid of him. That means, he must be more powerful than her. No indication yet whether he is good or evil, but he may be a vampire and may have some sort of ties to the demon realm. He may also have ties to the vampire deity. 4. Darrien Ellsworth - Darrien is a vampire. Someone in the story is his father. So far his father hasn't been revealed. Dad doesn't know he has a son. Darrien's gonna tell him in a not so nice way. We don't know yet if Darrien is good or evil, but he and his brother Sebastian are hanging out stalking Darrien's dad. 5. Kendall Reed - The vampire musician shares a past with rock star Rune. Not a carnal past, but a past that has to do with their childhood, music, and secrets. She has Rune by the balls over a song he stole from her. It's not known yet whether she will twist them or forgive him. 6. Bram Steele - Bram is a former junkie. He lost almost everything to drugs, which seems odd for a vampire, but it's true in Bram's case. Now, he's rebuilt his life and his music career. He's just made up with old friend Dominic Solent. It seems pretty obvious that Bram is a good guy, but who knows what's in his past waiting to come out. 7. Garren Fairfax - Garren is a mage who inherited a strange magical house. In the house is a huge golden cage that encircles Garren's current captive. The cage moves when the captive moves. So basically, the captive has free run of the house. There's magic in the house that allows it to not be seen except by certain persons. Garren first looked like a bad guy who was holding someone hostage. Now that he's taken in Khatira the djinn's bottle (her brother put the golden cuffs on her making her a genie), he seems more of a good guy. 8. Seth Chrysaor - Seth is a legendary creature. The chrysaor is the son of a god and a Gorgon. He has strange powers, and a mouth full of sharp pointed teeth when he's in battle mode. He has already shown that he's a good guy when he helped kill the demon who was possessing Rune and helped kill the Black Widow, Rachel Sullivan. 9. Christian De Ambrose - Christian, yet another vampire, is the former lover of rock star Carlisle Ross. He broke up with her, and left to pursue a career as a writer. Now he's in Paris, stalking Carlisle, and digging up dirt on her fiance's family. He has not yet shown whether he's a good guy or a baddie. 10. Devlin Von Karman - Devlin is some kind of ancient shape shifter. He appears to be a good guy so far, because he's helped out Aneira Rudolph the white werewolf, for whom he has a little crush. However, there is something else lurking beneath the surface. His friendship with vampire Veronica Pierce, for one. 11. Eden Wellesley - Eden is human and is the bloodmate of a vampire. So far, Eden has resisted his attempts to bond with her. For some odd reason, she does not want to live forever. An ex-CIA agent, Eden has already shown herself to be one of the good guys, but why are there strange "relatives" from her past, who have connections to mages, showing up on her doorstep? 12. Elysia Grenville - The head of the Fallen Angels is strict and upright. She shows no emotion to either the people who work for her or her younger sisters. She's a good guy, but she's not very likable yet. Maybe there are secrets in her past... Certainly, she's bound to show more of her hand when her youngest sister asks to be released from the FAs to go to the Afterlife. 13. Drey Wulf - Drey is a werewolf. He's shown both good and bad sides to the readers by attacking Aneira, by having sex with her mom Jensen, who is in love with his brother, by teasing a wildling and a host of other things. Drey is a bad boy whom everyone loves because he just tells it like it is. He's rough around the edges and manipulative, but he's really just young and hotheaded rather than evil.

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The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Hope you enjoyed another peek at the Bar characters. Have a great Thursday!