Twitter

     Well, that's happening. Who'd a thought the world's richest man, who grew up during Apartheid supported by his daddies emerald mine, could be a bully when it comes to taking over a company. Come to think of it the two guys who actually created Tesla could probably give you chapter and verse unless the takeover involved a non disclosure agreement.  

    Elon rolled in there like it was still the 80s and the staff had no desire but to hang onto their jobs like it was the only kind of life they knew. That was when the company BLACKBERRY began to earn its bad name and its addictive use gave it the label crackberry. Employees were on all the time with that thing and managers expected immediate attention at all times day or night. I could go on about the social damage that created but I won't.  

    I'd be willing to bet a lot of the people that just got fired or quit are kids of the crackberry addicts who's jobs eventually got outsourced to India or China. They know what happens when you mistakenly think a company will repay overwhelming loyalty and dedication in kind. 

    On a practical side a lot of the tech companies over staffed during the pandemic and a thinning of the flock was going to happen anyway. This is a business and businesses have practical considerations. Firing the person in charge of the door passes seems to be a bit rash. Wonder if that person ever answered when they asked them to come back and at least unlock the doors?  

    I'm still on Twitter and so are a lot of other people. What I'm doing as well is dipping my toe in a lot of other ponds. I've been posting things on Tumblr for a long time but I never really took it seriously. Now I guess I will. I finally started posting to Reddit and I have taken on Hive. Don't really understand either of them but I didn't really GET twitter for years either. 

    I'll be there promoting my work. If you like series books check out this series. 

    If I was a decent artist it would have ended up as a graphic novel. It's a series with a female super hero. 

NO CAPES! 

Check it out on my amazon page 

amazon.com/author/tabithabaumander

or link below

Also please check out and subscribe to my you tube. Getting over the 30 subscriber mark would be a great way to end the year. 

ditto link below 

EVOLVING

    The things we do evolve. Frankly if they don't evolve you are in trouble. It means you aren't learning and growing. That's a bad thing. It tends to result in a kind of mental atrophy that thinks voting conservative is okay and thinking that since you had a hard time growing up, young people today should because it gave you character. There are better ways to develop character; like learning and growing as a person.  

    Back to me. I have changed what I do with my you tube channel. My channel took off a couple of years ago when fate put me within using distance of a basic editing program. I would go out and take videos of Toronto; it's nooks and crannies and interesting bits. I would then put it together with some sort of poetry. 

    After a couple of years of that I came to realize that I really didn't have much more to show or comment on. Then I managed to save up enough to buy a cell phone. Yes I know you can get them for zero down but my income is a bit random. I can't depend on having phone money month to month I would always have to buy the unit outright.

    By the way I say "took off" but that really just means it suddenly had stuff on it. I had maybe six subscribers and most of what I posted was never viewed. Then a big thing happened. I gave up my home phone which I was paying to much for any way and while I was at it gave up my cable TV. In the process of learning how to use the phone I discovered it had an audio recorder. 

    This put me in a fork in the road position. I took the path that didn't have me doing the same old thing. I am now reading my flash fiction and filming visuals that match the stories. I hate my voice but lacking anyone else's voice its me or nothing. The visuals are an approximation primarily because I am my own crew and camera man. I don't have anyone to play actor. I tried to do that too but there's a limit to what you can do with a selfie stick. 

    I know if I keep going I will have to take the next step and talk someone else to be in front of the camera (cell phone). In the mean time I have gone from almost no subscribers to twenty six. I'm evolving.   

    For now the stories I use are from here; 

WELL I GOT IT.

 After two years of lucking out I finally lost the toss and came down with covid. I'm double boosted so its amounted to not much more than a bad sinus cold but its ANNOYING. I have spent a little over two weeks coughing, spitting and blowing and the thing still wont leave my system. I work from home so I only lost two days near the beginning when I had a bit of a fever and genuinely felt crap.

Part of what really bugs me about this beyond being sick is, I was slowly transitioning into doing new things with my You Tube channel. Against my better judgement and with no other options I have started recording my feather light voice reading my ultra short stories. I back this up with visuals that don't really illustrate whats happening but do suggest the action.   

Once I run out of this material (that will take a while) I will have to make the leap to actual actors. That will demand better tech than what I own however so onward with what I have. 

Years ago there was a mad rush of Armageddon end of the world movies. They ran from the sublime (Omen) to the ridiculous (a crap disaster with Swartzinegger reciting catch phrases.)  I'm a fan of the govenator but when he phones it in you know there's a bill he had to pay sitting somewhere.

All this stuff was being taken from the Bible. I looked into the Bible and found the Nephilim. Sometimes called The Watchers. I first wrote a low budget script that's gotten some interest but sadly no action then I wrote the above book. I've also used them in a different book and script. (that script is mega budget and probably will never see the light of day) 

  Check out both on my amazon web site. There are several pages so you might have to click on the numbers at the bottom to find the covers. I turned 63 in August and I've been writing for a lot of that time. There's a lot of books there.

So unless Russia decides to end the world check em out.   

LABOR DAY 2022

 I'm told its different in the USA but for anyone that has a school system that generally starts the day after Labor Day, this day marks the last day of summer holidays. In Toronto it marks the last day of the Canadian National Exhibition. Also called The CNE or THE EX.  

The Ex is a hundred plus year old fair that used to be THE place to promote products and win ribbons for your sheep or produce. It got a bit watered down through the years and some things got shunted to other events but it still has a hold on the Toronto mind-set. 

Above is a commercial from 1982. It has a jingle that has stuck in the brains of Torontonians for years. We still go. We go and complain its not worth it. We go and complain its to expensive. We go anyway. We go because that's what you do at the end of summer. We go because we've always gone. 

I think this year a lot of us went for another reason though they might not have realized it. We went because for two  years it wasn't there. There was nothing to mark the line between summer and school. Whats worse the poor old dame was losing money for a couple of years before Covid hit and there was a question as to whether it would be back. 

                                "We've always gone."

That's the thing you see. Think for a minute. How many things in your life can you apply the word "always" too? Not many I bet. The modern world kills the word "always" dead. 

People need at least some things to always be there. Change is nice but let me keep at least something. People need an ALWAYS and Toronto needs the Ex.  

Dear Diary

 It occurs to me that this is the closest I have ever in my life come to having a diary. Oh sure I had them given to me when I was a kid. They were usually pink with a fairy on the cover and a little key.  

Then when I got older people started telling me, "You should JOURNAL you really should, it makes you feel SO much better!"

I've never understood how examining how shit life can be at times and writing it down makes you feel better. That's why I write fiction. I control the reality there and can put my hero(s) into problems then get them out. For me fiction is action. Yes moping around sometimes happens but action helps fix things. 

There's even a scientific real world parallel. Dopamine is the feel good hormone. You get it when you have a chance to talk about yourself or even write about yourself (Okay maybe journaling can do something but not for me. I follow my late mothers rule, never write anything down you wouldn't want to be printed in the front page of the newspaper.) 

Conveniently, another way of getting dopamine is physical activity. You don't need much either. Last spring I bought myself a teen/adult sized kick scooter. (no motor) Its a bit small but I have no real way of knowing if the ones you see on line are any bigger so I'm running with this one. 

Its great. My knees are much better, so is my balance and I feel a buzz after every work out. Fifteen minutes at the beginning of the day can get my brain going. 

Here's a book to get your brain going. 

Well going slowly it is summer. Its a fun examination of what can happen if you write to much down and leave it for the next generation to deal with. Two 5 star reviews. 

Find it on my amazon page listed below. 

RETURN

    We're well and truly into August now and I have a few thoughts. The first one is easy. The world hasn't come to an end. Not yet at least. YA! 

    The second one is a little less obvious. The one thing about August I always remember, beside the fact that its the month with my birthday, is the fact it stops being so burn the pavement hot. This month is not following that general trend. I just spent a night almost sleeping with the fan off and not sleeping at all with the fan on. 

    It's not the first time I've had to work with maybe two hours actual sleep. Insomnia in general is an old acquaintance of mine. Most of the time it happens when I've had to much caffeine from various sources generally cola, in the winter tea. Sometimes its not being able to turn my brain off and stop thinking about stuff I can do nothing about. Its never fun no matter what the reason. 

    I prefer if I'm awake to lay quietly and run the action of a book through my head so I know what I'm doing the next time I sit down to write. Right now I'm finishing off a ghost story. The first draft will be a little less than 40 thousand words. This sounds like a lot but commercial sized novels are usually twice that size or more. Its the nature of the way I write. The first draft is almost always a lot shorter than the last. 

    I just finished publishing a book. My first dystopian novel.

     Mankind has resorted to an unnatural level of control to weed out anti social activity. The result of this control is not only tragedy but a weakening of the walls between worlds and the monsters of man's early past are starting to return. 

Find it on my amazon page, the link is below.

Also check out my You Tube page. 

mid summer

    We're a little less than two weeks away from the mid point of summer 2022. In some parts of the world its hot as the devils back door and in other parts people are trying very hard to blow each other up. 

    The Republican party in the USA is trying to set up an oligarchy and is busy convincing the very poor who grew up with to much lead in their drinking water that its a good idea.  In Canada conservatives look to the south with longing and proceed to try and smear anyone that tries to take care of the environment or the people in general.  

    Understand this is just a list I have no ability to draw any conclusions and even less ability to come up with any solutions. I think government is there to serve all the people not just the rich that give them money so they can run election campaigns. I think past historic wrongs need to be addressed not erased. I think the same for current wrongs if it comes to that. 

    Its no wonder that fantasy and horror is so big these days. What's better to distract yourself from the fact that you may never be able to afford to live without a room mate or even more than one than a nice horror novel. The guy dedicating himself to paving farmland and green space is nothing compared to a good monster under the stairs.

    Below is my recent effort in that arena. I don't do hard horror so if you are looking for a lot of blood and guts its not for you.  What we have here are three novellas under one title. Honestly I think I did this just because I loved the title. The basic theme is what's worse, the monster that is easily recognizable as a monster, or the human that is in reality a monster? Kind of like a conservative politician really. Are they really worried about the bottom line or do they just not care about the fact that way to many people are one pay check away from living in a dumpster?  

In here you will find my novellas. 

Live Stream

The House in the Wood

Hey Come Here

If you want you can get them on their own. Check out my amazon page link below. Actually the stories started out as screen plays but lockdown gave me the time to adapt them.

Check this out at

 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B6T1J4S9/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1