But It's a Dry Heat

Monday, Hulk Style

Monday? Again? Seriously?

We just had one last week. Here I am, minding my own business: not getting up at the ass crack of dawn to shuffle off to a job that makes watching paint dry seem like a high intensity spectator sport, and…SMASH!…it’s Monday.

Spent part of the morning seriously considering calling one of those “Make Money at Home” adverts in the back of magazines. Of course they’re a scam, but they probably won’t be any more expensive a fantasy than a daily lottery ticket. Speaking of which, every week, my husband checks his tickets. Every week, he comes up empty. Well, not empty. There was the amazing payoff of 2012 (last week), when he won…two bucks.

Every time hubby and I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel, some financial crisis comes along and further binds us into unholy servitude to a suck-ass job. Last month, the septic leach system failed. I’ll spare the details and simply say, we’re now working to pay off the “luxury” of flush toilets. Yay, us!

My beloved thinks the road to riches is paved in cults. I.e., start a cult and part the gullible from their money in exchange for enlightenment. So long as there is an audience for Jersey Shore and whatever the hell the Kardashians do, there will be no shortage of brain-addled sheep to fleece.

Maybe, L. Ron Hubbard-style, I could based my teachings on my books. Side bonus: sell more books! I’ll wrap my theology around the premise that Breas Montrose, my favorite obnoxious vampire, is an avatar for the Elder God Botox, his teachings on immortality available here and here.

Happy Monday, if that’s possible.

But It’s a Dry Heat

Plants for the Desert Southwest

Moth or Phlox Penstemon

This Sunday, June 10, is the Corrales (New Mexico) Garden Tour, which runs from 9 am to 4 pm. Come on out to the historic village for a great opportunity to see what can be grown in our dry desert landscape.

With that in mind, I thought I’d show you a few of the star performers in my little slice of hot, dry hell. Here in the Albuquerque metro area we get less than eight inches of rain a year (much less, lately), the summer temperatures rise into the 90s, with the occasional span of 100s; the winter lows can dip into the single digits (recently going as low as -10), with very little snow. Operative word is “dry.” The added complication in my yard is the soil, which is better described as beach sand.

In my garden, most of the plants below do so well that they are downright invasive, reseeding themselves everywhere. Probably not good plants for fussy gardeners who want crisply maintained beds and well-behaved plants, but great in a more rustic, relaxed setting.

Phlox or sand penstemon (Penstemon ambiguus) is a workhorse in sand. In fact, I’m not Read the rest of this entry »

Some Home Time Religion

My hero, at work.

Do it yourself (DIY) projects are for people who don’t want weekends. The kind of twisted mofos who might also enjoy a nice evening of waterboarding.

Uh, okay. Hyperbole. But the dining room project is the last big DIY project that’s happening in the history of ever after at Casa de Kirby. Because..gah…never again. The interior work was completed (mostly) a few months ago; but it wasn’t officially done until this weekend.

Once upon a time, on a desert planet far, far away, the dining room was a garage. A small garage; so teeny, you couldn’t park a clown car in it without grease and a shoehorn. For a time, it functioned as an artist’s studio, where Read the rest of this entry »

The Avengers

Oh, how you go on. They were ugly buildings. I would have rebuilt a better, more beautiful New York. Have you seen Asgard? Like Asgard, but better!

And once again, I’m glad I live in New Mexico, because we have a complete dearth of crap worth blowing up. Granted, there was the minor dust up in a too-Anglo-to-be-New Mexico town in the movie Thor, but that was just a few buildings. Hell, that alien robot didn’t even bother to mutilate the local livestock. (Even the aliens in Cowboys & Aliens knew that the genre requires the immolation of a few hapless bovines.)

Mostly, though, aliens land in New Mexico, but faced with the absence of tall crash-y buildings, quickly move on, probably afraid we’ll set up another cheesy alien museum, a la Roswell. Because that’s just embarrassing.

If the alien version of urban renewal is too violent for you, then New York city should be low on your list of places to settle. As exemplified by The Avengers, where yet another group of folks who aren’t from around these parts, revel in Read the rest of this entry »

My Little Pony Goes Crazy

The sign says it all.

Horses are big dangerous and destructive animals. Why girls go horse crazy is beyond me. (Ahem. There’s a joke in there about men…moving on….)

This is the Wonder Horse’s second liability sign. The first, made of plastic, was destroyed in a few weeks, reduced to a collection of white shards in the sand. The best he can manage with this metal version is to bend it. Metal, you see, makes the most delightful racket when struck with hooves. Especially, at two in the morning. Oy.

Friday morning: I’m fumbling with the faucet in the shower. Outside, a horse neighs, the sound coming through the skylight in the bathroom. The Wonder Horse has heard activity in Chez Kirby. “The two legs are up. Time to feed the horse.” He neighs again.

“You’re not the boss of me,” I mutter and get in the shower.

Forty minutes later, I’m out the door and headed for the paddock. A thick pall of dusty tan hangs in the air, sand kicked up by hooves. The Wonder Horse has worked himself up into a right lather. He sproinging around the paddock in that big bouncy deer-like trot that’s beauty in motion but is absolutely impossible to ride.

I go back in the house to get the camera and he shrieks equine obscenities at me. Back outside, I stop and take a picture of my loony horse. Recognizing the black thing and its significance–“she’s going to fiddle with the fucking thing and not feed me!”–he comes unglued.

He gallops back and forth, skidding to a stop at the gate, spraying sand in all directions. When that doesn’t work, he lets out a couple more angry neighs and throws a tantrum. He’s a whirling dervish,  leaping in the air, bucking and spinning. The long black tail lashes with a snap, he kicks a hind leg, and tosses his head. All this punctuated by rumbling horsy mutters and snorts.

Finally, I relent and head for the barn. Hooves clop angrily under the little porch; the metal feeders rattle as he shoves them with his nose. “Empty! Fix! Now!” I take my time, and he lets out a long, ratting snort. He’s like that really rude customer in a restaurant who expects the food to arrive the instant it’s ordered. Well, except that once the food arrives, he’s happy. He’d never, ever send it back.

I still, however, wouldn’t expect a tip.

Click images for larger version.

But It’s a Dry Heat

Fun with Fire

"Over the Moon" by Patricia Kirby

And I didn’t set myself on fire once.

Not even my shoelaces.

Not-so-spontaneous combustion being an occupational hazard of being an artist who works in metal. Welder, plasma torch, grinders, all spiting sparks and fiery bits of metal. Combine that with my spectacular propensity for stupidity, and you’ve got a recipe for flaming artist. And not in a homosexual way, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We at Casa de Kirby being supporters of marriage equality and all that.

Fire Demon Chiminea by Justin Kirby

This weekend is the first Art in the Park. Corrales, NM at the lovely La Entrada Park. It runs from 10 am to 4 pm. Entrance is free and there will be activities for the kids, food, music and loads of great artists. Please stop by if you are in the Albuquerque area. I’ll have a few copies of The Music of Chaos on hand as well.

See ya there!

Pitch Black

I’ve never much liked Superman.

Although Smallville did a decent job of injecting the man of steel with a touch of humanity, the character as a whole is overburdened by his squeaky clean, unambiguous morality.

I like my heroes to struggle with their call to action. I want them to come kicking and screaming into the light. Don’t give me Mr. Saintly who saves the day because it’s the right thing to do. Give me a guy who saves Earth because it’s got the best pizza in the universe and, oh, yeah, his friends, all two of them, happen to call the little blue rock home.

Which is why Pitch Black is one of my favorite movies. Not only is the hero as dark as the movie’s title, but the supporting cast also has a furious case of flexible ethics.

Riddick (Vin Diesel), the film’s hero, is about as “anti” as an anti-hero can get. He’s spent so many years incarcerated in the Read the rest of this entry »

Wheel of Dreams

Okay. So this is a cheat; in the interest of getting the blog fired up after a few weeks of hiatus. I’m still writing. And writing. And writing. And somehow, the effort of doing the “maintain an online presence” thing lost its shine.

Anyway, a few days ago, my muse runs off, refuses to take my calls, and generally acts like an asshole. He does that–the bastard. (Yes, muse is a he. “That’s Mr. Muse, to you, ” he snipes.) In order to entice him back, I pulled a few of my keepers from the bookshelf. One, Emma Bull’s, War for the Oaks, which never fails to inspire. Next to it, I found Wheel of Dreams by Salinda Tyson, which is the topic of today’s post.

The cheating part is because most of this is a review I posted at Goodreads several months ago. But Wheel of Dreams is one of the best romantic fantasy novels I’ve ever read. Sadly, it’s the only book the author ever wrote and I think it slid into obscurity about five minutes after it was published. Maybe it was the uglier than the back end of a garbage truck cover that doomed it, but Wheel of Dreams definitely make a case for don’t judge a book by its cover.

I read Wheel of Dreams several years ago. I remember being Read the rest of this entry »

Why I Read Fan Fiction

My To Be Read (TBR) pile of books is starting to reach swaying heights that violate all manner of OSHA rules. I’ve got list of books on hold at the library; more in a stack by my desk; and I regularly download “great deals” onto my Kindle.

But lately, I’ve given chunks of reading time over to fan fiction. For those who are don’t know, here’s the definition of fan fiction.

Back in my halcyon* days of fulltime, grownup employment, I read a lot of fan fiction. What else what I gonna do? Work? (*As in days of wine and honey and health insurance.) Once I started writing my own original fiction, I drifted away from fan fics, in part because of the bias among certain sectors of the writing community. Every so often, in between the regular author vs. reviewer scuffles and other Internet scandals, the fan fiction controversy pokes its head out of water like Nessie, and there’s a general freakout from folks on both sides of the issue. The issue isn’t anything I want to deal with here, but the angst is derived from the fact that Read the rest of this entry »

The Three Musketeers (2011)

The makers of The Three Musketeer (2011) may have done well to take a cue from the film’s title. I.e., remembered that the story was more than The Adventures of D’Artagnan and His Three Sidekicks.

The movie’s poster accurately sums up the movie. D’Artagnan front and center, with the shrunken versions of the heroes three, trying to fight the battle while D’Artagnan vogues. Milady DeWinter (Mila Jovovich) is overacting* in background, with Buckingham and Richilieu demonstrating their one facial expression. (*Jovovich somehow manages to overact while employing only three facial expressions: a leer, a sneer, and an eyebrow twitch. It’s rather amazing.)

The basic premise of the movie is this: Arthos (Luke Evans), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Mathew MacFayden) are down-on-their luck Musketeers. D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) is the arrogant country boy who Read the rest of this entry »