Okaayyy…. So, ten days, two weeks later, she’s finally getting back on track toward pursuing the new set of goals. Canning the job, I think, is gonna make a huge difference. Yesterday I made some progress on the current To-Do list; realized some of those couldn’t be done before other stages are done, and so tasks will have to be re-prioritized. Not a problem.
Today I plan to start moving sites off my friend Jesse’s server over to WordPress.com. This makes me nervous because I just HATE that techie stuff and always, invariably, inevitably screw it up. But I’ll start with Adjunctorium, which is really just a sandbox project at base — the world won’t end if that transfer fails.
Then I’ll move The Copyeditor’s Desk over — nobody ever reads it anyway…it must have a page rank in the negative numbers.
And finally Funny about Money will have to go over. And therein lies my concern: Funny is VAST. This will be its 2,490th post, and it has 12,083 comments, with an inexhaustible trove of images and God only knows what kind of behind-the-scenes infrastructure to support all that.
I’ve never tried to make a transfer like this by myself — I’ve always hired someone who knows what s/he’s doing. And if anyone knows such a person, I’d appreciate it if you’d pass the name along ASAP!!
At any rate, once this transfer gets under way, Funny may disappear temporarily while the domain name gets repointed to WordPress. I’m told the subscriptions will go over, but I do not know that to be the case and have little faith that it will be so.
So, if your RSS or e-mail subscription to Funny quits working but you can still see the site, re-subscribe.
Yesterday, I bought a hundred ISBNs. These are not actually necessary for e-book publishing, unless you want to appear as the publisher of record. And believe me: I do not want Amazon to engross that function — which is what happens when you let Amazon assign one of its “free” inventory numbers in place of an ISBN. The Copyeditor’s Desk is NOT going to cede its title as publisher (under the Plain & Simple Press and the Camptown Races Press imprints), period.
So, if the naughty books go up on both Amazon and B&N (we’re told B&N’s standards of naughtiness are much looser and stuff actually sells better there than at Amazon), then I have enough ISBNs for fifty books.
That will not be enough to let us know whether the p0rno scheme is going to work: for that to happen, we’ll need at least 100 publications. HowEVER… By the time I’ve used up 50, another $1,000 payment will come in from our client journal, and that’s enough to buy 200 more ISBNs.
Yesterday I set aside four hours to work on the present mischievous bookoid. Actually ended up spending about five on it. Am now about half or two-thirds of the way through it.
What a hoot! How do I come up with this stuff?? Here we are, still at a G rating (but not for long… 😉 ):
Coworkers and friends Stephanie and Bonnie meet at a Starbuck’s to spend part of a day off the job just hanging out. Stephanie, in the course of shoveling her ex-husband’s possessions out of what is now exclusively her home, has come across an antique Ouija board, handed down to her from her great-aunt Mabel. Delighted by the interesting old artifact, she brings it along to show to Stephanie. After some tergiversations (one of which is very funny, IMHO), they decide to try it out. They make contact with an entity who identifies him/herself as Lou Lee and claims to be 4500 years old:
The two paused to sip their lattes.
“Isn’t this a kick?” said Stephanie.
“It’s pretty silly,” Bonnie replied. “But yeah, it is kind of fun.”
Before long they set their fingers back on the planchette. After a bit, it began to glide across the board again. Back to the alphabet:
M…E…E…T
M…E
“Meet you?” Steph asked.
M…E…E…T
“Where?”
I… W…A…N…T
K…N…O…W
Y…O…U
“What on earth is that?” Stephanie wondered aloud. “Are you doing that?”
“No,” said Bonnie. “I thought you were.”
“Well…don’t.”
“I’m not.”
W…E…
A…L…L… T…H…E
P…L…E…A…S…U…R…E…S
P…R…O…V…E
“It’s the ghost of Christopher Marlowe.”
“I think he lived sooner than 4500 years ago.”
L…I…G…H…T
A… C…A…N…D…L…E… I…N
Y…O…U…R
B…E…D…R…O…O…M
“Uhm, that sounds kind of forward,” Bonnie remarked. Stephanie said nothing. The planchette curled across the board.
O…P…E…N… T…H…E
W…I…N…D…O…W… P…U…T
R…E…D… R…O…S…E
O…N… T…H…E
S…I…L…L
“Steph. Stephanie…” A light slick of perspiration had spread across Stephanie’s cheeks. She was so focused on the board she seemed not to hear her friend’s voice.
“Steph!” Bonnie lifted her hand from the planchette. It continued to move under Stephanie’s fingers.
I… W…I…L…L. C…O…M…E
T…O… Y…O…U
I… W…A…N…T
T…O… K…N…O…W
Y…O…U
“Stephanie. Please stop it.”
Y…O…U… W…I…L…L
L…O…V…E… M…E
Bonnie grabbed the moving planchette and yanked it out from under Stephanie’s fingers. “This is creeping me out,” she said. “It’s time to stop.”
Her face flushed, Steph looked up at Bonnie.
“Steph, are you all right?
She ran her hand through her damp hair to brush it back off her face. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“That was batshit crazy. Let’s put this thing away.” Bonnie stood up, placed the Ouija board back in its box, put the planchette in after it, upside down, and covered it firmly with the lid.
Neither woman felt like finishing her coffee, which was half consumed and going cold anyway. They sat at the table and decompressed for a few minutes, and then agreed it was time to go on their various separate errands.
“But Stephanie,” Bonnie said as a parting shot, “please: put that game back in the attic, will you?”
“Well… I thought it would look cool on the coffee table.”
“Seriously. Put it away. Don’t mess with it again. I’m asking you.”
Stephanie studied Bonnie for a moment and realized she really was alarmed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll put it away.”
“Promise me you won’t try to mess with it when you’re alone in the house, OK?”
“Stephanie! It’s just a board game. You’re starting to sound like that wacky old bag lady.”
“She wasn’t a bag lady. And I don’t know what was going on with all that, but if you weren’t doing it and I wasn’t doing it, I don’t think it was anything good. And I don’t think you should have anything more to do with it. Especially not when you’re all by yourself.”
Steph sighed imperceptibly. “OK,” she agreed. “I promise. I won’t take it out of the box again.”
Yeah. Right, Stephanie…sure.
What follows, of course, will not be suitable for nice girls and boys. But if you like to live dangerously, I’ll let you know the title, whenever it is a title. 😆
By the way, if you think you can write this stuff and would like to do so on a contract basis, I’m hiring.