writing – Honey it's Thursday

Letter from the Editor – February 2018

Dear Honey Readers,

After some googling and soul-searching, I decided to disable commenting on this blog. This decision has to do with a few thoughts I’ve had. One is I would rather focus on my craft of writing and learning small-time website design, than devote my limited time to sorting and approving comments. The next is most of the comments I received tended to be advertisements/bots/possibly shady snippets of software code, and not people wanting to have a real conversation or build some type of community. I was starting to worry a little too much about the shady category. I still am. Perhaps as I get better at this, I will start to add comments back in and talk about how to prevent code-insertion or identity issues in blogs.

However, there have been some impressive commentators who have graced this site with a quick line. Notably, a Donald Trump, who I’m pretty sure wasn’t that one, and a website for something to do with boobsigns, whatever that is (please, for your computers safety, don’t google it, I won’t be liable for whatever horror or virus results). I’m sorry to say I removed the temptation of cluttering up the comments with perplexing snippets of dubious sincerity. Though there were some comments where people didn’t seem to have a suggestion, and were just commenting to comment without saying very much. Some of these also made me wonder if those people had read my article, because the comment often seemed to not correspond to any of my content. I did sort of enjoy deleting those comments, along with what I’ll call ad-comments or mal-comments (based on adware and malware). However, I immensely appreciated all of the positive feedback and questions I received. Some of you seemed inspiringly interested in blogging. To those people, I am sorry to have cut the conversation short. I value criticism and have been especially learning to embrace it this year. I hope that the time I invest into helps to create articles and creative writing that makes up for my decision.

My problem of time limitations is partially to do with changes I’m making to do this better in the future. I’m currently taking a CSS, HTML, and XHTML class. It has been in addition to learning Javascript at home and at work, the latter of which I’ve also been spending more time at. I think I might be crazy, as it’s shapin up to be a pretty tight schedule, but somehow I know I can do it. I’ve definitely been enjoying happiness in a sort of flow state of all I’m working on.

Since you last heard from me, it’s been a pretty weird year. In May 2017, I had some health problems that took till November to resolve, and could have been cancer. Luckily, I do not have cancer, and all is back to normal in terms of body things. Yay! (Fuck cancer). Those months weren’t all bad, although other people close to me have also been sick with illnesses of their own. I went on some epic adventures and absorbed a bunch of art scenes. I’ve been getting back to performing on stage for bellydance and other styles. I’ve been doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu since January 2017. It has been amazing! It’s a lot more mental than I thought, as well as having a great community and being a great work out. It has made me more energetic and helped my dance considerably. In August 2017, I performed at a community festival, and another performance is in the works for February. In October, I left the North American continent for the first time to see Germany, Prague, and Italy. That was also my first real vacation since I started work at my current company. It was amazing! I’ve also been crafting somewhat regularly, but have mostly favored small projects. By August 2018, I hope to get to bigger, more involved projects like a French Court dress complete with panniers. Also, I’ve been pretty into film, catching up on a lot of American Film Institute favored movies, and cult pieces of the 1980s and 90s. I’ve seen a few friends quite a bit, and have enjoyed getting closer to them.

I hope to keep writing, and inspire you. If you would like to be a part of Honey It’s Thursday, feel free to comment your interest! I’ll be leaving the comments on here so you can contact me.

Thank you for reading,

Honey

Rough Draft of A Horror Story: Whiskers

Horror Meme by pintrest — Horror Meme by Pintrest

The following is a rough draft and the beginnings of a horror story. I’m trying to write some creepy stories for the month of October. Starting early seems to be a good way to get into the habit of it. Perhaps you’ll join me in some themed creative writing?

This turned out a little stream-of-conscious/ meditative in process. Usually I like more of an outline for where the story is going. I’ve been getting really inspired by the ideas of horror stories in which the main characters do everything right but everything tuns out horrible. We’ll see how far that prompt gets me.

Whiskers

by Sarah Hughes

She reached down and pulled the zipper on her legging tight, cinching it around her ankle. Hopefully that would keep these beastlies out. Like ticks while hiking. Only this parasite had much longer biting range and a little bit of a shock if vibrating of Frank’s body was to be an indication of anything.

Selma ran as quietly as one can. The activity was much more breathy and awkward than it was now that her ear was turned to focusing on what the monster would hear. But still, hiding in one place didn’t seem like it would work either. She didn’t know what was inside the little rusty storage rooms. Hiding inside the meat lockers outside of them just seemed like ironically asking for it. Plus, small spaces usually have the problem of suffocation.

None of that for now. She considered going back inside the restaurant. Frank always kept a shotgun behind the counter in hopes that a Hell’s Angel-looking customer would make trouble. So far the only trouble had come from a petite Tweaker who really liked the pepper shakers and napkin rings. Vigilance and chatty nearby cops had been a better approach.

Selma entered slowly, checking every which way, like the agents on Criminal Minds. Nothing. The white vinyl wrapped stools on top of the chrome tables made a clean enough forest. She walked carefully, scanning the length of the counter, which was her only real visual blockage in here.

***

It was now that Selma got a fully-lighted look of the alien’s motherfish. It should have kept the lights off. The thick tubes hung like whiskers on a hideous cat fish, warped and brown. But they had a cyberpunk edge. But this catfish was not a pretty goth. There was the feeling of slim covering every surface of the boss fish. Not quite liquid, it seemed to move with the viscosity of lugie. There was no more polite word to describe it.

The female of the species, was Angler-like in that it had grafted a male onto her body. He hung limp and dried out, like a concerning growth. It also had the tubules hanging from too many surfaces, and a few glimmered in ways that meant they could be lures. That notion seemed to make little sense here. But it had a misshapen, pudgy humanoid structure too it. There was that mix between symmetry and human-likeness that made the viewer a little on edge. But it was with absolute certainty, all monster.

Letter from the editor

Dear Honey Readers,

You may have noticed we took May off to travel and work on other projects! We’re back and we hope your as excited as us for what we have coming up in the next few months. Here at Honey It’s Thursday, the month of June and July, we will be focusing on Technology and it’ll be wiring!

Creative work will be taking on a futuristic theme and using technology as a partner to literature, as in “Once Upon A Steve” by writer Sarah Hughes.

Please see our special upcoming series “Inventions I Would Make If I Knew How” in which our writers will be pitching ideas for technological improvements amateurs such as themselves would like. Some are simple added features – others are full blown wacky inventions. One thing is certain – if you see them on the shelf or in the app store – it won’t be because of our building them. Though hopefully we will inspire them along the way to existence, as some would be really nice to have.

We look forward to finding pieces of tech and/ or gadgetry to review. What makes your life easier? Have you been eyeing a cool gadget or app? Let us know your ideas in the comments!

plant growing — Plant Nanny is a delightful animated app that reminds you to drink water along with a digital plant. Photo by Sarah Hughes. All rights reserved.

Also, our ears are a listening harder than the NSA (National Security Agency) for tech news related to privacy and development. Well, our listening harder is debatable, but we would love to discuss it and share opinions with you.

In light of the election, there may be some political pieces. Right now we’re leaning towards playing with view point and seeing if we can give a non-partisan opinion on political climate. We figure you can get your news and obnoxious online fights somewhere else.

pattern pieces — What will this be for LOJ? Photo by Sarah Hughes. All rights reserved.

After we run out of things to say for the technology theme, we will be moving on to talking about sewing, costuming and events like Labyrinth of Jareth (Aug. 5-6, 2016) and Wasteland Weekend (Sept. 22-25, 2016). During our break we did a ton of work on bellydancing clothes, fairy dresses and interior design pieces. Now, we can’t wait to show them off!

skirt pattern for sewing — Crafting a pattern piece for a specialty design. Photo by Sarah Hughes. All rights reserved.

If you would like to be a part of any of the above ideas, feel free to comment your interest! Know any tech you want written about? Have an interesting political or tech-news related idea? Want more of something we have planned? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Honey