OK here are five more bitches.  The first two are bitches that Selina wrote nearly two years ago; they were just never was posted because I suck.  The next two are newer, but not brand new.  The last one was written in April of this year, so it's almost new!  I am REALLY going to try to post these more often, so keep your fingers crossed...

Lynn

Bookmarks for Bitches 1 2 3 4 5

First of the over two-years old but never posted bitches

What’s Wrong with This Country?

December 4, 2008 

            I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this country: Rush Limbaugh just signed a contract to make $38 million a year, and he says he’s worth it!?

            The guy has not once but twice been caught with his hand in the prescription drug jar, so he’s a junkie. He’s a junkie who spews ultra-conservative crap about how people like junkies are ruining the world, and he thinks he deserves to make $38 million a year.

            And they gave it to him.

            This is what is wrong with the country. It’s certainly what’s wrong with the economy.

             When one fat junkie makes $38 million to talk trash on the radio, what that means is that they can’t afford to hire dozens of other people who could make a $100,000 a year to talk trash on the radio.

            This is what corporations have done to everything they have touched. It’s easier to push one radio host than it is to give a thousand others a chance to make their own market in smaller venues. It’s easier to just print one book and make it a bestseller no matter what utter crap it is than to try to promote dozens. It’s easier to use the same actors and actresses over and over again and make them rich than it is to give the people who would be best suited to the role the job and keep hundreds employed and have better movies.

            It’s all about getting more bang for their buck all the time. It’s about getting machines to do the work of 20 people so that one person now takes the place of those 20. That one guy will make about half what 20 people would have made. He’s making a small fortune so he isn’t bitching. But the other 19 guys are now jobless, and the corporation pockets the difference -- after they pay for the machine. They have spent years sending jobs to countries where people work for pennies and live in cardboard shacks. They’re not making those people’s lives any better. They’re just taking jobs away from here, where they’d have to pay a decent wage, and moving them to places where people are happy to be able to buy a loaf of bread at the end of a work day, while the corporations put more and more and more money into their pockets.

            No one is worth $38 million a year and do you know why they aren’t? Because no one needs $38 million a year to live. When one fat bastard makes $38 million a year, thousands of people in his same field don’t have work at all, or they make crap while he gets rich.

            Look, used to be that radio stations weren’t running syndicated programming. There were people -- lots of people -- who all worked for that station and they came in and did their thing and made a decent living.

            Whirlpool was one of the largest employers in our area. Rather than continue to support the community and give jobs to Americans to build a product that was making the heads of the company rich, they decided to move most of the manufacturing to Mexico for the cheap labor. Did they pass this saving on to the customer? No. Their products went up in cost just like everything else has, but the CEOs put even more money in their own bulging pockets.

            Corporations have so centralized every damn thing that if one product stops selling -- take cars, for instance -- then thousands of smaller plants have to lay off workers, cut their hours, or close as well.

            The heads of the banks and the corporations have had a free head the last eight years, and they have screwed us at every turn. Then low and behold, all their greedy evil crap started to backfire on them. Why? Because Americans are the Number One consumers of goods in the world -- it’s not necessarily something to be proud of, but it is true. By sending our jobs other places and putting in robots to do our jobs and basically making us take pay cuts to “save the company,” they broke our wallets and our spirits. We don’t have any money to buy their products anymore because they have given one fat bastard $38 million a year to spew trash on the radio.

            When a 20% of the people in a country have 60% of the money -- can we say welcome to The New America? -- that country can NOT thrive. The CEOs of these banks and companies who are getting bailed out should be forced to sell all their assets and give up their wealth to save their companies. After all, isn’t that part of the free enterprise system that they keep screaming about any time someone suggests regulating them at any level? They don’t want the government to tell them how to run their business. They want to be free to screw the American people in every way they can -- which they have successfully done -- then when they take us down so low that we can’t make our payments or buy their products, they want that same government to bail them out with our tax money. Actually, it’s our great-great-grand children’s tax money, because the country is so far in debt now that barring some miracle, we will never be able to dig out. You know, a miracle like us being able to actually force the rich to pay their fair share of the taxes?

            Let’s all take a look at the oil companies for a minute. They insisted they had to screw us and screw us and screw us, because they were just paying so much for oil and then -- they had record profits for three years in a row. If they’re just charging us what they have to charge us, then how come their profits aren’t the same as the year before? Why do they have record profits?

            Why did no one stop them from screwing us and the country and helping to put us in this economic hole? Oh, I know: there were oil men in the White House. Yeah, that was great idea. Lets take a couple of rich white guys who’ve never had to work a day in their life and who have their hands firmly planted in the big oil companies pockets, and let’s put their asses in the White House for not four but eight years. What did people really think was going to happen? Seriously!

            Why are they able to do this to us? Because people are sheep! People are sheep that will blindly follow who ever is talking the loudest. They believe they have to have the too-expensive house that is so big that it uses more energy then six smaller houses. More than that, they think they actually deserve it.

            Look at how many people ran out and bought the huge gas-eating SUVs. Why? Because they were told that the SUVs made them look sexy and successful, that they gave them plenty of room for their expanding family, and that they deserved to ride in such luxury. A car was no longer just a thing to get you from one place to another. No. It was a symbol -- a small luxury hotel! Who cared if it ate gas and spewed CO2 at a rate you’d expect from a car designed in the 60s, before people knew about global warming and $4 a gallon gas?

            American automakers just kept cranking these things out and idiots kept buying them, because they still had decent jobs and they didn’t mind paying a little more to drive a vehicle that sang to the world that they were doing well.

            Then – well, everyone started losing their jobs, or they were getting their hours cut and they just weren’t making as much money. Gas went through the roof, and all they had to drive were these huge gas-guzzling beasts that they were told were going to make them look successful, but they were eating so much $4 a gallon gas that, since they weren’t making as much money, was making it impossible to pay the mortgage on their huge, subprime-interest, energy-eating house that was supposed to make them happy.

            So no one can make their payments and no one has any money and everyone is going under. The only people who aren’t hurting at all and who aren’t losing a damn thing are the corporate CEOs who made the mess in the first place by getting the stupid-assed government to believe that the way to make the country thrive and free enterprise strong was to deregulate them so that they could do what ever the hell they wanted to do to us.

            And now, in order to “save us”, they are bailing these companies out with borrowed money. And they still aren’t going to tell them how to spend it, because that’s regulation and regulation is bad. So what are these same CEOs who made the mess doing with that bail out money? Are they working on saving the American economy? No! They are giving themselves bonuses and going on trips to foreign countries and flying around in their private jets and -- well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it many times more I’m sure. Rich people aren’t necessarily smart, they aren’t! They are lucky and they are greedy, but they aren’t smart. If nothing else, the current state of the economy proves just how stupid and short-sighted rich people are.

            Rush Limbaugh is a hypocritical idiot. He makes $38 million a year. He’s not smart. Smart people don’t become addicted to prescription meds and get caught not just once, but TWICE. He’s lucky and he’s greedy but he’s NOT smart. He’s not worth $38 million a year, and he certainly doesn’t deserve it. The people who listen to him and believe him are the same idiots who his kind of greed has thrown into poverty.

            God bless America!

Selina

Second of the over two-years old but never posted bitches

Woman Has Litter Of Kids And Thinks It’s Her Business

February 17, 2009

            That’s right. A woman with six kids already chose to have eight embryos implanted at once. Now she wants all the help and money she can get, but no doubt doesn’t want the firestorm of disapproval that she stirred up.

            I hate to point out the obvious, but the economy is in the toilet and we’re heading for climate implosion because there are too many people on this planet and in this country. Everyone wants to procreate -- it’s built into our brains. I’m a new grandmother. I love kids. I think my only son and his wife should stick with the two they have, even though one of those isn’t my flesh and blood. We aren’t animals. Isn’t that what the religious right uses when they talk about everything they don’t like, which isn’t really any of their business and doesn’t hurt a damn thing? Why doesn’t that extend to looking around seeing that there are too damn many people and choosing as a couple to have one child or no children at all, or at the most, just replace yourself and have only two?

            This one woman -- who by the way has no spouse or significant other, so she’s on her own -- now has 14 children, eight of which are little sickly weak babies who run the risk of serious health complications for their entire life.

            I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and you know what? I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business how many kids you have. I don’t want the government to dictate how many kids people should have. But I do want people to be a whole lot more responsible in how many kids they bring into the world. I would like for religious institutions to be responsible and quit encouraging -- even ordering -- people to have as many kids as they can shell out. On a planet where resources are spread ever thinner and we are slowly killing off every other species on the planet to make room for us, it’s irresponsible to just try to see how many kids you can shove out. If you want that many kids, adopt them! You still get the kids, but you aren’t adding numbers to the planet. You’re helping a kid who might otherwise have fallen through the cracks. In other words, you’re helping instead of hurting. You’re making things better instead of worse. I wouldn’t have felt complete without a kid, so I get it. I had one. Replace yourself and stop. If you don’t really want kids, then don’t have them for status symbols or because your parents want you to.

            I think responsible doctors should say, “No, you already have six kids. Forget implanting you with all eight remaining embryos. I will not put even one more into you because frankly it’s pretty obvious that any woman who would want to risk having eight more children when she already has six -- at least one of which has a birth defect which gets her an SSI check -- is completely insane.”

            I believe the doctor who did this procedure, “which he didn’t have to do,” should have to pay any expenses that might fall to the state to pay regarding these eight babies, because he knew damn good and well it wasn’t in his patient’s -- much less all these babies’ -- best interest. Doctors are supposed to “do no harm.”

            All that said, what great character sketches you can get from these kids. What does one of these kids grow up to be, what with the health problems from being part of a multiple birth and having NEVER had one-on-one parental attention and growing up as one of eight -- a freak, really? What hang-ups might they have? What do they hate? Who do they hate? Their mother is a wacko! Each one has 13 siblings, all within like six years of each other. There is no way any of these children will ever have enough attention – or enough anything.

            Like I said, I’m a new grandmother. My daughter-in-law came with a son who is now three and who we all love. I look at all the trouble they’re having trying to make sure that Roland doesn’t think Zeb is taking his place. It’s a tough time for kids when a new baby comes home. Imagine if mom brought home eight!

Selina

First of the not-quite-that-old-but never posted bitches 

IMHO

August 21, 2010

So Eldridge Publishing rejected my play IN HERMAN'S GARAGE and they sent me a form e-mail rejection letter.

Now no professional ever answers a rejection letter but they had asked for a DVD of the play being performed if you had one and I'd sent them one with an SASE because I wanted the DVD back. So I wrote them and thanked them for their time and reminded them of the SASE and the DVD.

By the way I had to pay $15.00 for that DVD which is why I wanted it back.

It takes them two days to answer my Email and when they do they say they only read the note on the bottom of my cover letter and they recycled my manuscript and didn't know about the DVD.

Which means they never even cracked the play. They probably only checked the cover letter for my e-mail address so that they could send me the form rejection letter in an e-mail because you see the SASE and the DVD were in the middle of the package.

I didn't get really nasty but told them I thought that was pretty shabby.

Here's the thing. If a publishing house isn't reading for anything then they shouldn’t be open for submissions. If you are reading then you should be READING. If they had read even my cover letter they would have known about the DVD and would have found the SASE.

In the fifteen years I have been running YDP never have I not read something when we were reading and I have never failed to return a manuscript when an SASE was provided. Hell when I'm not reading for anything and it clearly says I'm not I still answer query letters. I still answer people who send me unsolicited manuscripts and if there is an SASE I write them a quick note and send their manuscript back to them. And remember that's when I'm NOT reading for anything.

Don't blow my work off and pretend that you read it and didn't like it and send me a form rejection letter when you didn't even read my whole cover letter—much less my work—or even open the package enough to see the real contents for God’s sake! The DVD was in a case. The only way it could have been missed is if they just opened the envelope, pulled out the cover letter, got my Email address off it and then put it right into what I presume is an industrial shredder if it can eat not just a DVD but its cover.

A novice shouldn't be treated like this by a so-called publishing house, but I'm not a novice; I'm an internationally-published writer and that play premiered to a sold-out house all three nights. The cast loved doing it; the audiences loved watching it. It's a damn good play but those fuckers didn't even look at it.

Here's the thing if the editors really read it and watched the DVD and didn't like it then that's fine. I'm a professional writer; I'm used to rejection. Everyone has different taste. Who understands why good stuff gets rejected and crap becomes the freaking Twilight Saga? You don't like my work that's your opinion and you're entitled to your opinion. But do not send me a form rejection letter that says you don't like my work and make me feel like crap when you didn't even give the play a fucking peek. When you didn't read any part of it. When you couldn't even do me the courtesy of opening my submission package far enough to see the SASE and the DVD.

In this world we're supposed to get as good as we give. At least that's what we're told. But in my fifteen years as an editor I've never done this to anyone. I've never been open to submissions but dismissed a piece without reading at least three pages. I never, ever kept anything of the writer’s whether I'm reading or not when they included a SASE. Hell, I've gone so far as to e-mail people who didn't include a SASE—who submitted when I WASN’T reading and had sent me the wrong genre—to tell them I wasn't reading for anything and when I was this was not what we took.

Damn it! I have paid my dues, more than my fare share of dues in this fucked-up business, and I think I deserve a certain amount of respect. At the very least I deserve the respect anyone who takes the time to put ink to paper and submit it should get.

It's not smart, and it certainly isn't right to dismiss writers without even looking at their work. But if you're going to do it because you're just covered up with manuscripts and don't need any more, the least you can do is not let us find out you didn't read our work. All they had to do was take my stuff from that envelope, put it in the SASE and then go ahead and send me the damn form Email rejection letter. At least then I wouldn't have lost a $15.00 DVD to their paper shredder. I'd be sad, feel rejected for a couple of days, decide all their taste is in their mouth and send it to someone else. I wouldn't feel disrespected and just highly pissed off.

And… I wouldn't be writing about how unprofessional Eldridge Publishing is on my very popular bitch of the day page.

Selina

Second of the not-quite-that-old-but never posted bitches

What The Big Boys Can Do

August 21, 2010

NOTE: This one is quite political and was written before the 2010 presidential election. If you don't like Selina's politics, don't read this.  If you read it anyway, you've been warned.

            Actually, I find this one even more interested in retrospect--considering how much of what she is talking about has actually come to pass. --Lynn

What the big boys can do is stuff like afford to send out hundreds of copies to "reviewers," whether they actually review books or not. They can take out ads to promote books in magazines and newspapers that the people who would like those books will never see. They can afford to send large shipments of books as donations to the army and libraries because after all they need the tax write off.

The tax write off a small press would get for the same thing wouldn't pay for half of the books they'd give away. Most small presses don't need a tax write off; they aren't making enough money to pay taxes and have all the write offs they need. It's called working in the red.

            The big houses can afford to schedule book tours and pay editors and top writers ungodly sums of money. They can get hundreds of books in thousands of stores and they can make three or four writers rich.

            What they can't or won't do—Spend time or money on someone or something new and different because it might not sell. If they happen take something new and different with a vast potential they will bury it in the back somewhere where no one can find it.

            Writers change their names all the time just to get away from bad numbers. This is a trend I can not stand because it has nothing at all to do with the actual readers and everything to do with fooling the bean counters into thinking the writer is someone else.

            All bullshit.

            And you know who's worse than the big guys? The Indies and small presses that pretend they can do things they simply can not do. They make all the same mistakes the big boys make without the money to pull their asses out of the fire.

            When you're an Indie or small press you can't afford to have a book fail. But they will do all the same shit the big boys do because... Well they want to look like the big boys. It's all about what things look like and not the way they really are.

            The truth is that such practices have landed the entire publishing industry into the same pile of poo the whole country is in—and all for the same reason.

            Big business has been stupidly squandering resources, paying obscene wages to people who make the mistakes that are killing their companies while they stiff their workers.

            And everyone—every single person in this country—seems to think they have to live exactly like those big-shot bastards who get paid more money than God to sit on their asses and make one mistake after another. The mistakes that never seem to cost them a damn thing but which are ruining all of us.

            In publishing, big houses have forgotten about their writers and their readers. It's all about the profits not about the product. They will find one thing, get behind it, and... We wind up with a society that has all read the same three books. Small and Indie houses too often try to pretend to be something they aren't, but without the buckets of money that the big houses have to waste they don't last long and many times do more harm to the authors than the big houses do. After all, at least at a big house a writer gets a big, fat advance.

            What's wrong with publishing is the same thing that's wrong with every business in this country—and every family—big shots doing nothing and screwing everyone and everything to get more and more. Meanwhile, everyone is else living on credit and way above their means in an attempt to look like the better half.

            It's way past time for people to start looking at what they really have instead of what the bank and creditors actually own. Why do we want to be or look like the despicable bastards who have ruined our country? For once let's all just sit down and ask ourselves what we really, actually need instead of what we think everyone else expects us to have.

            I am as guilty as everyone else because I really want the big career. Couldn't care less about fancy clothes or a bunch of slick shit, I'd just like to sell so many books that everyone would know my name. I'd like for my work to be huge. I'd be happy to make fifteen thousand dollars a year (originally it was five and then ten—inflation you know). I'd be ecstatic if I made twenty thousand, and I'd be way above where I ever thought I'd be and be able to give buckets of money away to the things I care about if I made thirty.

            To not want much, to be one of the few people willing to live within my means and still not be able to make it is disheartening, and this is where a lot of us are right now. We've lived with our belts tight and watched every penny and done without the things other people think are a necessity. Now after a lifetime of working and sacrifice what do we have to show for it? Nothing—or at least nothing like what we want. There is no pay off because big business has taken everything over and ruined it, and though we might not be in the same hole others who exceeded their incomes are in we are still in the hole with no way to dig ourselves out.

            See... if you create a problem you can fix it. We didn't create this problem. This problem was created by rich idiots who were hell bent on turning us all into joyless work drones. The pillar they hide behind is the "free enterprise system," but there is no free enterprise when the corporations rule the world. Just try to start a small business now. See if you can compete with Wal-Mart, Books a Million or Home Depot.

            They have fed us this crap that if the rich have more it will trickle down to us and all will prosper. This was proven dead wrong in the Reagan administration, it has certainly failed during the Bush administration, and yet we currently have a candidate that is once again telling us that giving the rich more and deregulating them further will save this economy. Excuse me, but didn't the Bush administration give a huge tax break to the rich when he took office? If that didn't stimulate the economy—and in case you haven't noticed it didn't—then why would taxing the rich and making them pay what we all pay, hurt the economy?

            And how come when big business takes a hit the tax payers are asked to bail them out but when we take a hit there is nothing for us?

            Come on; listen to what he is really saying. He's going to do this and he's going to do that which is going to cost this much and that much and then he's going to cut taxes to everyone but especially the rich because it will trickle down. Do the math, where is that money going to come from? Where is the money to pay our ever-growing debt going to come from? He will go on and on about ear marks and cutting pork-barrel projects and yet if you gathered every one of these together you'd see very quickly that a whole year of these isn't what we spend in Iraq in a month. You know Iraq, a war we never should have entered in the first place which has allowed terrorists to thrive again in Afghanistan and made Iran a threat because... Well while we were fighting the Iraqis they couldn't fight Iran and so Iran had lots of money and energy to put into figuring out how to kill us.

            He wants to stay in Iraq to stabilize the region even though every indication is that it has destabilized the entire area and made our real enemies stronger. He doesn't care how long it takes or how many people die. He needs to stop worrying about how much we spent studying bears and the over head projector and think about the real cost of this war.

            McCain will most likely win. He'll win because people vote party lines and other people will just believe anything they are told on Fox News. And if Obama does win I don't know that he will be able to fix the mess we are in. Whoever gets in I think it's fair to say that they are walking into one of the worst times to run this country in its history.

            I heard a guy yesterday saying that if we voted for Obama we were turning our country into a socialist state. I don't know if that's true. I don't know what he will be able to do or if he can do anything. I do fully believe that if McCain gets in he will Christianize our country further, and we will all be living in a sort of Company Country in which we will owe our souls to the Company Store.

            If you are even thinking of the “suicide vote”—where you just vote for some third-party candidate because you don't like either of the ones they've given us—take a minute to remember that the “suicide vote” is what got us into this position in the first place. It's how we wound up with Bush. Now if you are happy with Bush, if you think that what has happened in this country isn't his fault, then... I don't think there is any talking to you except to say I'm not sure you live in the same country that I do.

Selina

At Last! The relatively new bitch.

EBooks

April, 2011

Alright let's face it, if you know me then you know for most of the last fifteen years I have said that YDP had no intention of doing EBooks. For the last five years I've said we'd do it as soon as we could figure out how. Then the EReader sales exploded over December and it became obvious by the number of people who came to the table in dealers’ rooms and immediately asked if our books came in EBook formats and then wouldn't buy a real book that we were going to have to do the EBook thing or admit that something had finally kicked our ass and get out of the business. When one of our writers—who moved maybe six print books all year last year—informed us that her EVersion of one of her books was selling 500 to 1000 copies a month I knew it was time to move and move fast.

            Now I had already told several of our writers to go ahead and sell their EBook rights somewhere else because we weren’t doing them. That's my fault not theirs and not much I can do about it now. But since we've announced that we're going to do EVersions of the books and have shipped out contracts we've had a couple of writers not only say no to our EVersions, but they are pulling their books altogether. They've been nice about it, but the general attitude has been, "What have you done for me lately?" It's a little hurtful, but not the end of the earth.

            Apparently they think they can do better elsewhere or on their own, and if they can more power to them. But what we did for many of these people was publish them when no one else would. We paid them what they made—be it a small amount or a large one when their royalties were due. I never promised them their book would make them rich or famous. I never spun things to make it seem like they were a pubic hair away from making the big time. Now we want to do EBooks and I think what's happening is that they're saying, "Hey I can do that myself and keep ALL the money. Why should I give them a cut?"

            Good question why should you?

            Maybe because I laid my money out to put your book in print in the first place. Maybe because I got a cover artist and shipped copies out for blurbs and reviews. Maybe because I never cheated you out of a dime when we've all known people who have been screwed, blued and tattooed in this industry. Maybe because I edited your book, I took my time—which is very limited—and used it to line-edit your book. Maybe because we sent it out to be copyedited and hauled it all over the country with us to every convention we've done since it came out. Maybe because we put it up on Amazon and at our site.

            Is it wrong that after years of spending all my spare time and going into debt and never being able to take any money out of this company that it annoys me that people want to bail if they think I might actually make money?

Selina

If you enjoy these bitches, please contact Selina directly at selinarosen(at)cox.net—yes, I’m getting paranoid in my old age. Please replace the (at) with @ when you type the address.  Thanks!