Boobies and Speeches

Whenever I post anything about politics I usually get about two dozen or so hate/angry e-mails within the first 24-hours. In addition, I also get at least twenty or so condescending, "Let me explain to you why you're wrong, little girl" e-mails, too. It's enough to keep me from making blog posts on this topic most of the time. Besides, this isn't a political blog, it's an erotica blog. But occasionally there are exceptions.

Tonight was one of them.

At around 8:30pm I was at work, hating my life for not being able to get out of work on this, the night of our president's first address to a joint-session of Congress. I knew that the first thing I would do when I got home was watch it, but still, not watching it live would suck. So an idea struck me: why not ask the shift-manager if we could turn down the annoying music for once and turn the TV's (that usually only show sports games or ESPN on mute) to one of the major networks?

For a variety of reasons, I have some pull with him. But he was skeptical. I finally convinced him by pointing out that our clientele are mostly blue-collar men who are depressed as hell about the state of the economy. I promised him that Obama would cheer them up. He decided (almost at the last minute) to do it.

The result was the most surreal sight I've ever seen. The smoke-filled dark club I work at became a totally different place at 9pm (EST) when the DJ announced we'd be watching "our president's State of the Union speech" (it wasn't an official SOTU, but whatever). For the next hour or so there was no music, no dancing. Everyone in the bar, probably about three dozen people including the girls, gave their undivided attention to our 44th president and his address.

It was something else. Not only the speech, which was amazing, but the customers' reaction to it. Also, the dancers' (including me) reaction to it. There were tears, there were bursts of applause, and immediately following the speech's end the room erupted in a chant of "OBAMA! OBAMA!". 

I live in a place that has been devastated by this recession. President Obama's optimistic, bold, and empathic speech resonated well, here. Hell, I spent the speech on the lap of a man who told me at its start that he had voted for McCain. At the end he was shaking his head and saying, "Goddamn, this guy can do it. He can do it." He sounded in awe. Imagine a dark room full of half-naked women and blue-collar men watching the speech like it was the Superbowl of Superbowls and you'll get sort of close to understanding how weird the sight was... sigh!

Anyway, as soon as the speech was over the music began again and our DJ for the night (btw? He's the only DJ there who I *hate* with a passion!!!) called me to the stage and everything became normal at work again. But for that one hour or so my little club was this like... argh, I don't have the words! It's like, it became this place where suddenly tits and ass weren't the end all, be all, you know? People cared more about President Obama's words than my tits! That's a good thing.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I still made out pretty well, money-wise. After the speech was over, people were happy. Happy people tip more. After the speech was over, people felt more confident. Confident people spend more. :)

I do have a lingering concern that the shift manager might get into trouble for putting that speech on the monitors, though... I know for a *fact* that his boss would not have approved. Hopefully no alcohol revenues were lost during that. Eh. Business has been so bad lately that I doubt he'd notice, though, unless he looked at the hourly receipts... shrugs.

Even if some of us get in trouble for that, though, I think it was a wonderful experience, and well worth any "punishment" (short of being fired) down the road.

How cool is it that we have a president who can garner more attention that naked tits?! Pretty darn cool, if you ask me. :P

-shannon-

Moving and Stories and Sick Boyfriends

First of all, thanks to everyone who sent me "Rache sucks, you should have won!" e-mails after I lost in my writer's showdown against her the other day. While I vehemently disagree with the whole "Rache sucks" thing, getting angry e-mails from fans who think I was cheated made me smile. I especially loved the conspiracy theory e-mails. I dusted off my tin-foil hat after reading one in particular... (you know who you are... and yes, They are watching us)!

Incidentally, you can see me and Rache's entries for "Bush Fires" over at SOL.net in the Showdown Universe. I turned off voting for my story because I posted the original, no-edit/never proofread version that I submitted. I'll turn on voting for my "author's preferred edition" if and when I post it...

Thanks, also, to those of you who took the time to post your comments and/or send me e-mails regarding my disaster of a Valentine's Day date. Just to clarify a couple of things, he's older than me and owns his own condo. The reason I drove him to his parents' house was because he was *really*, *really* sick. I was the one who suggested he not be alone, actually. As it turns out he ended up staying with his parents until just today when he finally stopped puking his brains out. He told me on the phone today that he wants a redo in regards to our date, so that should be fun!

He also worried that I might have caught his bug. I laughed and said, "No, I'm fine! See, there's this thing called flu-shots...". :P

Oh! One other interesting piece of news. My landlord asked me the other day if I'd be interested in moving into a smaller apartment. It's about $100 a month cheaper than what I'm currently paying and it's in the same house, so I said, "Fuck yeah!". I don't need a lot of space. I start the moving process tomorrow, though, and there is one big hiccup: that apartment doesn't have cable wired to it yet. The cable company said they'll have a guy out here soon to do the installation but until then I'll be without the Internet. Oh noes!!!

Well, I'll let you all get back to doing what you do. Later!

-shannon-

My Valentine's Day Massacre

I had a date tonight. A real and honest date with a good man I really like. I took off Valentine's Day for him. What did I get?

Halfway through our dinner he had to excuse himself to go vomit. 

He was sick. I had to drive him, in his car, back to his parents' house. Forty minutes out of my way. The guy lives a twenty minute walk from where I live but I had to drive him all the way to his parents'.  His dad ended up driving me back home. That was uncomfortable, to say the least.

...

I don't blame him. He warned me he was "under the weather". Still, that really, really sucked. 

Also, I lost my competition with Rache. Not only lost, actually: I was crushed. Not one of the judges voted for my story. I learned about that earlier in the day.

Apparently I'm a horrible writer who induces vomit from her courtiers. 

-shannon-

~feeling sorry for herself~

Ultimate Showdown!

Hey everybody!

So I've been spending a lot of time hanging out on the StoriesOnline.net Google Group. It's a pretty active discussion group full of a healthy mix of both erotica readers and authors. I suggest you check it out if complaining about SOL.net scores, listening to authors comment on their best and worst stories, and other erotica-related discussions are your thing...!

But anyway, I especially suggest that you check it out Thursday night! The legendary author (one of my favorites), Rachael Ross, is dusting off* her Rache pen-name one last time to challenge yours truly to an author's showdown!

If everything goes according to plan the competition will go down like this. Thursday night at 9pm EST the competition's moderator, MassiveReader, will post a new thread to start the showdown. That thread will include the title of the story both Rache and I will have three hours to write. We won't know the title in advance and will have just three hours (!) to conceive, write, and proof a story that's at least 1,000 words long. After we're finished each of us will e-mail our submissions to MassiveReader who will then remove our names and forward them on to three pre-selected (and secret!) judges. It's unclear to me at this time whether or not he'll also be posting the stories to the thread at this time... shrugs.

Anyway! The mysterious judges will each decide which story they feel is best (or, as Rache put it, "least bad"). When they're done judging, MassiveReader will announce the winner of the "writer's showdown" to the thread. If he hasn't already done so I'm assuming he'll also be posting Rache and my submissions to the thread, too.

I'm really looking forward to this. I think Rache is a much better author than me and her prolific nature definitely gives her an advantage when it comes to "speed writing" or whatever, but I won't be intimidated! :)

Hope to see you all there!

-shannon-

~practicing her quick draw~

P.S. Yes, I know I still haven't posted the SG and S&L updates to this site. Give a girl a break, I'll do it the next time I have time! :)

*Regarding Rache: For some very complicated reasons I'm not sure I fully understand myself, Rache recently "retired" that particular pen-name and pulled all 200+ stories of hers from SOL.net. She's been reposting them but not under the Rache name; instead she posts each story under the name of its main character (e.g. her story "Girl Fag" is being posted under the author name "Ann Russett", the main character of that story). Oh, and FYI? On the SOL.net group she's been posting under the alias "Avid Reader".

Suburban Girl Ch. 10! (and Shawn and Lilly Ch. 3)

Hey everyone!

I just posted chapter 10 of "Suburban Girl" to SOL.net. It's quite a long and sprawling chapter but I think it sets up the rest of the story quite nicely. There's just one chapter left and I'm working on it right now... in fact, making this post to my blog is taking away from my precious writing time. Grr.

Oh, and as promised, I also posted "Shawn and Lilly" Chapter Three. Thanks so much, by the way, for all the awesome feedback about this story! As predicted my SOL.net score for it sucks (my fave explanation so far? "...I gave you all 1s on principal because I need my fiction to have some truth in it"... ???) but your positive letters buoy my spirits! :)

-shannon-

p.s. Yes, I'll be putting up SG9, SG10, and all the S&L chapters, in text format, on this site soon, too. In the meantime just register for SOL.net already... geez! :P