LBTS Moves On

If you've been hip to what I've tried to accomplish here
If you are an open-minded sort who is capable of engaging in polite exchange even when disagreeing with someone
If you want to be a part of something truly unique
Then click the banner below and join the Strange crew.
Because from now on, all things relating to the book and my mission will be found there.
If you were part of things here, thank you. I hope you will continue to be a part of it at my very own bizarre little home.

Visit New Strange World

Got a Body Like This?

If you use Facebook, you've seen this photo in the sidebar with the headline "Got a body like this?"

Well, as a matter of fact, I DO!!!!!
But I have more sense than to try and cram it into a pair of fucking low rise jeans two sizes too small and to wear a too-short t-shirt.
And I'm not going to buy your goddamn product either.
If people are shallow enough to judge me based on what I look like, fuck if I need 'em in my life.

Whatever size I am, I'm still going to be the same curmudgeony bitch on the inside. So if you didn't love me fat, you ain't gonna love me thin. Those who judge based on body type can kiss my fat ass.

The Sea Witches Blog

Fellow pagans and open-minded folk, please visit and support Wendy, the Sea Witch of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Wendy does a lot of good things for homeless animals. She has also endured a lot of prejudice, not only as someone with alternative beliefs but as someone who lives with Aspberger's Syndrome. Whether your support takes the form of a positive comment or purchasing some of her artwork to support the feeding and care of homeless animals, it will be greatly appreciated.

Miracles out of Nowhere for the Loneliest Ones?

Do you believe in omens? I used to very strongly. Then I became a lot more skeptical. But this seemed to be a bit of a sledge hammer upside the head. If you all prefer to believe that I'm reading into it what I want to see and that there isn't even an inkling of anything divine to it, then fine, you are absolutely right. I do not have it in me to argue with people.
I was watching a rerun of that sappy old 1980's show, Beauty and the Beast. And lo and behold, it was the Vincent's "It's A Wonderful Life" episode, where a despairing Vincent is shown what his life would be like if Father had not saved him and thus he would not have had an influence on his fellow outcasts. I decided that it was just coincidence that this had come on and furthermore, I was quite strongly feeling that I have had no positive influence on anybody and I will never make any difference.
The next program was an episode of the 1980's Twilight Zone. (Are you wondering yet why I was sitting in the Way-Back Machine with only my own gloomy-ass self for company?) What difference would this make? Well, of all the episodes, it happened to be "A Saucer of Loneliness," which was a story written by the late, great Theodore Sturgeon (1915-1985) about a lonely , plain-looking waitress who is contacted by a UFO, which gives her a message that is something personal to her. She is harassed by the public, yet refuses to reveal what was said. To alleviate some of her stress, she writes messages that she places in bottles and throws them into the ocean. When a handsome man asks her for a date and it turns out that all he wanted was to charm her into telling him what the message from the saucer was, she becomes despondent and runs to the ocean to drown herself. She is pulled from the ocean by a balding, ordinary-looking, but sincere man who tells her that he found one of her messages in the bottle, which begins with "To the Loneliest One" and continues thus:
There is in certain living souls
A quality of loneliness unspeakable,
So great it must be shared
As company is shared by lesser beings.
Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this
That in immensity
There is one lonelier than you.
("A Saucer of Loneliness")
He tells her that it really made a difference to him. She senses his sincerity and shares with him the gift from the saucer, and they leave together.

The message at the end of the episode is this:
"Message found in a bottle, sender unknown. Still alive or long dead. The last of his species or a traveler marooned on alien shores. Perhaps in the end, all that matters is this: that even to loneliness, there is an end. And for those who are lonely enough, long enough, a message cast adrift on the darkest beaches...of the Twilight Zone."

And like a fucking idiot I started crying, and I was mad as hell at the Universe, because I don't like my face to be wet unless I'm washing it or I'm walking in the rain. I don't like dogs licking my face (I like dogs well enough, I just don't like for them to lick my face) because then my face is wet with dog slobber. To me, tears are the dog slobber of the universe. Yuck! And I don't like to cry. And I was also mad at myself for seeing signs in all of this when in many ways I have given up on the idea of magic and miracles. But the thought was nonetheless there: What if I am the one who might have a special message for someone who really needs it. Is this not why the book was published? To give hope to those who might be considering giving up. To let the loneliest ones, the rejects, the castoffs, know that they are not alone, that they have kindred spirits. To let them know that kindness and respect are not due only to those who are considered beautiful and in some way brilliant.

Fuck me...

If this is what the Universe wants from me, it isn't the sort of mission that I can refuse. But sometimes I wonder

Does it always have to be so fucking difficult?

(Thanks to Eric Weeks for providing the Saucer of Loneliness quote on this page.)

Yes, I like the band Kansas, and I'm too old and too much of an asshole to apologize to anybody that has a problem with that.

Lily's Had It Up To Here

Lily is done. Finished. Kaput. Calling it quits.

This project is a fucking failure. I sold about 30 books. I get $2.50 in royalties from each book. Half the royalties go to the World Federation for Mental Health. A good fucking cause, in business since 1948. But all is hopeless. I will not continue.
If there is one cause that people on this planet do not care about, it is mental health. It is easier and more "fun" to laugh at the "crazy people" than to develop understanding for what they are going through.
Most mentally ill people are not in fact violent, as is a common belief. Most of us tend to turn our anger inward on ourselves. Most of us would not knowingly harm another person. And if we do so with angry words (as I have sometimes done) we deeply regret it and tend to harm ourselves further in retaliation.
Perhaps it was completely fucking stupid and naive of me to openly air my belief that I have engaged in a posthumous collaboration with the spirit who helped me write the book. He in fact advised me to keep this a secret. But I didn't feel right about taking credit for his portion of the work. I have always believed in giving credit where credit is due, and believe me, he has not gotten enough credit for his positive qualities. In life, he was in constant pain, spiritually, mentally, and according to him, physically. In death, he was dehumanized and exploited. And sadly, this will continue to happen, because I don't have it in me to continue the fight. I failed to make the difference I wanted to make. A $20 contribution overall to the WFMH is not enough to make a damn bit of difference. I have managed to do nothing.
I will continue to create the next book because I want to. But I am not making it available to the public. I've had enough.
I'm sorry I failed you, my friend. And I do think of you as my friend. Maybe that's just stupid. But I do.
I'm also tired of dealing with people who think that I can somehow get them in good with my co-author. I can't. Let me explain something. He wouldn't be dealing with me either if I weren't able to offer him a skill so he could atone for certain of his actions in life, most specifically, the action he took at the end of his life. I am the polar opposite of charming and likeable. I am a grouchy old bat that is snarky and sarcastic as hell, whether I'm in a good mood or a bad one. I do not get close to people. I do not trust people. For the most part, I do not even like people. So I can hardly see where he would be hanging around with me because of my delightful personality. The majority of the time he is not in fact in close proximity to me. The conversations tend to be more like a psychic phone call. Goes a little bit something like this:
"Can you hear me now, you snarky, ill-tempered old curmudgeony bitch?"
"Yeah, I can hear you, you snot-nosed, ill-mannered, curmudgeony bastard. Let's do this thing."
Well, not exactly like that. But we do tend to take pot shots at each other. It's just how assholes like us show love, I guess.
At any rate, what I must tell you is that earthbound spirits appreciate good will and will show their gratitude in various small ways. But they are NOT going to become attached to anyone to whom they were not attached in life. They are usually trying to atone to the people with whom they had attachments while they were living. It takes an expenditure of energy for them to communicate with the living. Someone like me is a natural conduit, so it takes some of the stress off of them. Being in contact with someone they knew in life, particularly in a setting they were familiar with, also requires less effort. To communicate with a person they didn't know is quite difficult and they will generally only do it if they really deem it necessary. Otherwise, expect a light touch on the shoulders or such. That's gonna be as good as it gets.
This is the last time that I will impart a message from him in the foreseeable future. He would like to remind everyone that "I may look like an angel, but I'm the devil in disguise."
He enjoys word play, so let me explain this. He does not mean that he thinks he's particularly good looking. In fact he thinks the opposite and describes himself as "looking like a scarecrow--why the fuck is anybody looking for romance with a scarecrow? They are fucking crazier than I ever was!" And he does not mean that he is sacrificing puppies and kittens or drinking people's blood or literally in hell worshiping Satan, or that he has become a demon. What he literally means is that he was mentally ill and while he's done a fair bit of healing, he is still mentally ill. He is not capable of making strong connections with people that he didn't already have a strong connection with. He is very conflicted and is not willing or able to drag someone else into "the sewer which was my mind." He also reminds people to "look below the surface" and not to base your beliefs and actions solely on what you can see. True beauty does not lie in physical perfection and if you look only at the surface, you will miss the truth that lies beneath. That in great part was the message of our book.
To those that purchased copies of the book, thank you again for your support. There were, unfortunately, not enough of you to justify thousands of dollars in expenditure to publish a second one. Please donate to the World Federation For Mental Health. And please, where you see that damn suicide picture, call the person displaying it on their callous actions, should you be feeling strong enough. It probably won't do a damn bit of good. But I guess at least you'll know you did something.
Farewell.
And likely, no great loss.
Lily

To Book Sign or Not to Book Sign

I believe it was Jodi Picoult who once said that while book signings benefit certain authors, there are other authors who it actually hurts. I believe I would fall into the second category. I'm extremely shy by nature (which is the reason I used to get seriously smashed at any kind of social event) and my voice has a tendency to shake when I get too nervous. Also, I'm not much to look at, so I don't like having my picture taken.

Sometime this summer I'm signed up to do a "blog tour." Even that makes me kind of nervous. I've been so tired for such a long time and under so much stress that I don't know if I can muster what it takes to sound excited about my project. I hope I can pull it from somewhere. There's nothing like having people say "well, she doesn't sound very intense about what she's doing, why should we be?"

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u need 2 lrn 2 spl

There is no such word as "u" in the English language. The word is you. Y-O-U. "U" is a letter. Get it? Got it? Good!

Just had to get this off my chest. Especially when I see people using "u" for "you" on a so called "serious" website, I just want to go postal!

Using "u" instead of "you" makes an otherwise smart person look super duper uber stuuuuupid!!!!!!!!

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Lost

"Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it’s lovely to be silly at the right moment."



-- Horace

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Paying for Entre Card

I use Entre Card (entrecard.com) and I do think it gets results. However, I simply do not have time to be doing drops on a regular basis. I think it is helpful to go through and examine the various blogs once a month, however, to find possible advertising sources, as I am always looking for cheap, effective advertising.

I decided to pay for my Entre Card advertising. At 60 cents for 1000 impressions or 4 cents per click, it is pretty affordable. And unlike Google, I can pay as I go rather than having my debit card nuked for a minimum of $5 a day. While a lot of Internet marketers use Entre Card, it seems that a lot of creatives use it as well. I get no compensation for sharing this information. It is simply my impression of the service.

I also intend to add a question to my main site asking people to tell me where they found me.

Sometimes its hard for us right brain types to wrap our heads around the left brain stuff necessary for promotion. It's been a hell of a journey for me. Which is why I like to share what I find, to make it easier for others.

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Looking beneath the surface

If people were plastering the image of Kurt Cobain's suicide all over the internet, those who are his fans would be up in arms. No-one who was an admirer of Kurt's would ever do something so disrespectful.
Yet people who claim to be admirers of Mayhem and Dead (Per Ohlin) see nothing wrong with exploiting the troubled end to his troubled life.
Perhaps its because I could give a shit less about image that I just do not fucking get this idiot behavior. I don't care a fart in a category five hurricane for the stage image of anyone I listen to (although I must say that Alice Cooper really has a pretty cool act.) I care about the music itself and I tend to come to care about the person beneath the image.
However, there is something beyond being seduced by the "evul blak metul" in the moronic actions of those who display this photograph.
The people who find something "cool" in this miserable image are lacking in basic common sense, a modicum of intelligence, empathy, or all three. They don't seem to be able to discern the difference between this photo of an actual event and events created by special effects. They do not think before they act and are quick to justify their ugly behavior. These are tendencies of sociopaths. Do I think that everybody who is guilty of this behavior is a sociopath? Probably not, but I do think that all of them need to grow the fuck up and check their actions before they do something that will have harmful consequences. The subject of this photograph has four siblings who love him, as well as simply being worthy of more respect than is accorded him by continually exploiting him in such an ugly way.
While I grudgingly admit that the person who took the photograph (Euronymous) was intelligent, he lacked both common sense and empathy. He was a sociopath. This is not to say that he would ever have become a serial murderer. Most sociopaths in fact never kill anybody. But he didn't care about how the consequences of his actions would affect other people. His complete lack of empathy for others has a tendency to make me lack empathy for his eventual fate, although murder is never a good thing. Put simply, he wasn't a very nice guy although I think at the heart of it all he was actually rather desperate to be liked. He had a serious inferiority complex and allowed this to color his actions in rather ugly ways. He stated that he wanted people to hate and fear him and this is not the emotion that he inspires. My initial reaction to him was revulsion. However as time has gone on he generally tends to inspire pity. This is far from the reaction that he would have wanted but it is the one that he deserves.
The person behind the Dead stage image has been described by those who knew him as a nice guy with a lot of problems. I have come to believe that his obsession with death and decay was caused by an unusual psychiatric disorder called Cotard Syndrome. This disorder causes the sufferer to believe that they are in fact dead and rotting. It is usually caused by a head injury. I also feel that he suffered from dissociative identity disorder, in part due to events that I can't prove (posthumous conversations with him) and in part due to objective viewing of accounts of his behavior, videos, and his own writing. His predilection for self-injury shows him to have possessed a high degree of self-loathing. He was also highly intelligent and very talented and offstage appeared to be soft-spoken, polite, and more than a bit unsure of himself. At any rate he deserved better than he got, and I have no problem with saying that all y'all who continue to commit psychic rape on him every time you display that sad image of the culmination of a troubled life deserve to have the world's biggest corn cob implanted where the sun don't shine.

Here 'tis, ready for implantation. And those deserving do not merit butter to ease its passage.

Two Snakes, One Apple

It was noplace that I could ever remember being in my life. It was so beautiful and clean. No smog on the horizon, in fact, nary a sound of a motor anywhere. The buzzing of bees, the chirping of birds, this was all I could hear. I walked over to the lake and waded in up to my knees, then walked back out and sat down on the wonderful soft grass. Could I have died and gone to Heaven? This was all too beautiful to be real.

I looked at the trees surrounding the lake. There seemed to be every kind of tree imaginable. Palm trees, pine trees, willow trees, apple trees. Truly, this must be Eden, or some very close approximation.
I walked over to one of the apple trees and grabbed an apple. It was perfectly ripe, not a blemish anywhere. As I was about to take a bite, I heard a low, hissing voice beside me.
'Don't eat that. You remember what happened last time.'
I looked slightly down and to my right. A serpent was coiled around the tree. A talking serpent, admonishing me not to eat the apple.
Then something cold and slimy tapped me on the left arm. Another snake proceeded to speak to me.
'Don't listen to that wuss. These are good apples. The best in the Universe. Every one filled with knowledge. You know you want to eat it. Trust me.'
'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,' the first snake warned. 'A lot can be downright deadly.'
I looked at the snakes and back at the apple. Did I listen to the snake on the right or the snake on the left? Whatever I chose could effect every being in the Universe. What to do?

Read the rest of the story here.

Undead Ed

This is something that I'm doing just for fun. It's a fanfic dedicated to one of my favorite underrated characters, Evil Ed Thompson from Fright Night. It is only lightly edited. It is a "blovel" and the idea is to write quickly, 1000 words or less per chapter, for 40 days. We'll see what happens with the adventures of Undead Ed!

Has suicide effected your life?

Join my cause on Facebook and join the discussion as well as supporting my drive for the World Federation for Mental Health.

It has impacted most of our lives in some way.
In junior high, I had a friend whose older brother committed suicide when she was eight years old. I couldn't believe the callous way so many people treated her when they found this out, telling her that her brother had gone to hell for killing himself. I was a devout Catholic at the time and I refused to buy into this condemnation of a person who was troubled enough to take his own life and the mental abuse of his surviving sister. I told her that I did not think that God was cruel enough to send a person who had been sad enough to kill himself to hell.
At the end of high school, one of my classmates hanged himself after his girlfriend broke up with him.
When my brother was a senior in high school one of his close friends killed himself with a gunshot to the head.
In the summer of 2004 my second cousin, who suffered from lifelong medication resistant depression, killed herself by overdose.
Although it is a person whom I never met in life that finally pushed me into doing something about my belief that there needs to be a new understanding and compassion in the mental health community and the world at large if we are to prevent future suicides, all of the aforementioned people are also part of my motivation and they live in my heart forever.
As well, I live with a mood disorder and consider suicide myself at least once a month. I do not know if I will end my life by suicide or not. But I do know that whatever the case, I want to do what I can before the time comes.

To Thine Own Self be True

(originally posted on Vampire Freaks. Unchanged because I'm too frazzled to bother.)
I have been gone from here a long time. School, work, family stuff, trying to work on the second book and promote the first one. A touch too much, as Bon Scott once said. I've had to figure out my priorities when it comes to social networking and promoting the book. (http://www.lilystrange.com)
For some people, sites like LinkedIn work, but I'm not a business person at heart, though I have been somewhat forced into being one on the side in order to promote my book. But promoting a fictional work to business people is preposterous. Sure, some of them may eventually grab a copy to take into the can and read a chapter or two while doing their daily do, but their focus is what the next thing in business is. My focus is what the next thing I'm going to create is.
I've driven myself crazy attempting to focus on promoting via social networking when my advertising budget is nil. I've finally narrowed the social networking sites I'm going to focus on way down.
Blogger, (http://lostbeneaththesurface.blogspot.com)
Facebook, (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1653291128&ref=profile)
Myspace,(http://www.myspace.com/bloomingpsycho)
my own social network (http://newstrangeworld.ning.com)
my mini-zine (http://www.openzine.com/newstrangeworld)
and Vampire Freaks. (http://www.vampirefreaks.com/lilystrange)
I'm also a DJ on blip.fm (http://blip.fm/lilystrange) and I promote my book there by blipping songs based on words from my sentences in chronological order.
I've wasted enough time trying to promote the book as if its a business venture. It is a CREATIVE VENTURE first and foremost.

To thine own self be true, lest you get lost in a world not really your own and forget how the hell to get back.

May 09 Update

This blog was originally created specifically for showcasing chapters from the book but a bipolar mind is like a train that can't stay on the track, so it has derailed. And I am not going to try to re-impose this stringent format. I will still post chapters occasionally, when it suits me. But I will also post other shite that just happens to interest me or that I feel is good knowledge to spread, or when I've just got to figuratively bitch-slap some asshat with a rotten fish.
I have a lot of blogs and I'm trying to downsize. But what I don't really have at this point is a central location. Some place that people can go when they are wondering "and just WHAT does Lily Strange think about this?" Because that is really, really important to know.
I'm not going to kill all my other blogs. Some of them are very specialized and I like that. But the more general ones may be kind of swallowed up by this blog. There may be duplicate posts between this blog and another of my blogs sometimes. You just never know.
If the only problem with bipolar was that my thoughts were all over the place, it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe kind of annoying but not so bad. Its the emotional shit that comes with it that I'm not so keen on. If I could be in a good productive hypomanic state (where the paranoia and irritability are tempered by Lithium) forever, I would be the most productive person on the planet and so much fun to be around. Unfortunately the coin always flips to the suicidally depressed side and that is no fun at all for anybody.
I really do need to work on another issue of my mini-zine. I was doing it weekly for a while but it got to be too much. Bi-weekly may be a better goal to shoot for.
Other than that I'm very diligently working to get the first draft of the second book done by August.
This has been a bunch of shit about nothing. Thanks for reading!

Living with Aspberger's syndrome

Read my friend Wendy's article about what she endures as a homeless person with Aspberger's syndrome. Ignorance is alive and well in the 21st century, and the only cure for it is people who have the guts to tell it like it is. Wendy has no shortage of courage. Plus she is an Angel Squid. This is quite an achievement. I can't even figure out how to be a Squid Zygote!

This was my reply to Wendy:
Its hard living with any sort of mental or neurological illness. People will always judge us to be "abnormal" rather than taking the time to know who we really are. That's why I hope before I take the long walk home, so to speak, I can in some way open people's minds a little.

Wendy is certainly doing her part to open people's minds, just by walking this earth. She is one of those people that I can't help but think was sent here for a purpose. And she's not a snarky-ass curmudgeon like yours truly.
Wendy, you rule. I hope you stay strong and keep teaching the citizens of this ignorant world what we need to know to become as we truly should be.

They Shur Grows Em Stupid...

On the warpath today as the asshats make their way out of the woodwork. Here is what one idiot had to say about her reason for being one of the shitheads that post the suicide picture (aka psychic rape.) I will call her Moronica Fogdome.
"i have plenty of compassion. the first time i saw this i cried wondering how someone could be so depressed to kill themselves. But whats done is done. so i put this up for the people who enjoy blood and gore."
Well, Moronica, not everyone lives in a shallow, self-absorbed world and some people do become depressed enough to commit suicide. And I'm sure that his siblings really appreciate people like you who post this picture of their brother for "those who enjoy blood and gore." Do you think they enjoy witnessing this same awful scene again and again, a gift presented to the world by a grimy little sociopathic asshat who appears to have a dismaying number of kindred spirits? I'm sure that they are ever so grateful for the compassion of people like you. How would you like it if someone had a photo of your brother (or cousin or father or boyfriend) having ended his troubled life in a similar fashion? How would you like it if "compassionate" people like you were plastering pictures of him all over the internet?
Sometimes depression starts as a situational thing, sometimes its a biochemical thing, and sometimes both. And by catering to your fellow twats who "enjoy blood and gore" you perpetuate the cycle of apathy, turning a person who happened to suffer from mental illness into an object rather than a human being. I'm sure he's soooo touched that you cried over that photo, I hope that he posthumously pisses in your wine cooler.
This isn't fucking artwork from a Cannibal Corpse album cover. This is not a scene from a movie or a video game. This shit really happened. That object in the photo you lame fucks are mentally or actually jacking off over was a real person. You do not have compassion, you silly, self-serving cunt. And you certainly have no god damn common sense. I would be surprised to find out that you have an IQ bigger than your shoe size.
Same goes for all the other Moronicas out there. I don't have time to deal with each of you on a one to one basis, but when someone brings stupidity like this to my attention, I just have to speak my peace.

Do you have the guts not to be one of those who does the same shit just because everyone else is doing it? Use your fucking mind for a change!

Troll Protection

I am generally friendly to people who read my blogs and who contact me via email. But sometimes there are people on the Internet (as in real life) who are jackasses, and I won't waste my time with this sort. Nor will I give them access to certain more personal writings. Thus, if there is a blog of mine that you used to read but you now find is in private mode, don't take it personally. You can email me using the address in my profile and I will probably give you permission to access the blog. Unless you are the troll that necessitated me making it private in the first place, in which case, go fuck yourself. I realize that having put myself in the public eye that I have to put up with a certain amount of crap that I wouldn't otherwise bother myself with, but I will not tolerate abuse. Nobody else should either. Known trolls will be ignored, whether or not their comments are offensive initially. Let's just say that in my long life on this rock, I have learned not to let vampires into my house.

Support the Survivors of Chernobyl

I encourage you to buy Elena Filatova's book, Pluto's Realm. Not only will you be able to experience her amazing pictures, you will be helping her make her vision of supporting the people who still live in the abandoned villages around Chernobyl come true.
Elena is a true heroine, in my eyes. I wish I were as brave as she is.