Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
With his ears cut short and his tail cut long.
Oh where, oh where can he be?
Nikita has only had a sporadic presence online during the past couple of months. Other than making a couple of rock stars’ deaths all about himself, and pimping his 5+ year old books as if they were new, I haven’t heard a peep from the guy about his anticipated new living quarters with roomies, somewhere in Joliet.
Granted, I haven’t been paying much attention, given that gardening season is on, and the black raspberries are within a day or two of ripening on us, which means twice a day picking once they get going. Then, it’ll be the red raspberries, then the blueberries, and finally, the blackberries. None of the berries grow in our kitchen garden, so that’s another matter altogether, but what’s there is mostly on schedule.
Anyway, where is La Femme Nikita?
State hospital would be good.
I’ve been wondering that myself…the Orlando shooting is just what he would love to be going on and on about.
Ah, but he can’t go on about it in his usual self-pitying fashion unless he outs himself. Frankly, I believe that was an attack on Americans, regardless of the fact that it happened in a gay nightclub. Rumor has it that Mateen was himself closeted; that may well be the case, but he was going on abut ISIS, not gays. I think he picked that particular club because it was an easy target.
Also, it pisses me off to no end that within 24 hours, politicians began using this tragedy as an excuse to try to chip away at our 2A Constitutional right to bear arms, making straw man arguments about lack of background checks (ATF Form 4473, anyone?), fully automatic rifles being legal for civilian purchase (not since 1986, they haven’t been), how evil AR-15s are (Mateen used a Sig Sauer MCX, not an AR-15, although both are semiautomatic), etc.
I could go on for half an hour. Even these no-fly and terrorist watch lists illegally do away with our Constitutionally guaranteed right to due process. Hell, Senator Ted Kennedy was erroneously placed on the no-fly list, and was denied boarding on commercial flights five times before he died; he never could get his name off the list. There was no due process involved, period. Suffice it to say that pols chipping away at my Constitutional rights gets my dander up. Grrrr.
A lot of straight people go to gay clubs for the stage performances (ref: the movie “Victor/Victoria”) so, yes, this was an assault on everyone.
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
— William S. Burroughs
how the politicians tried to use the tragedy to try and gain voters pissed me off too >.<
oh, and I’d say send some blackberries my way, but I don’t think they’d be in good shape when they got here! 😀
Not fresh, they wouldn’t, but made into syrup or jelly, and canned properly, they’d last for years on a shelf, unopened. Once opened, they’d have to be refrigerated, but would still theoretically be good for several more months — if not consumed long before then. 😉
They’re a bitch and a half to harvest, because none of the varieties we have are “thornless,” but it’s worth donning hazmat gear, and blazing trail into the 8′ tall brambles to harvest them. The syrup is heavenly in iced tea.
mmmm blackberry jelly is good I usually buy a jar of that at the farmer’s market if I can find someone selling.
I’ve been picking blackberries and blueberries by the bagful for about a month, but they may ripen quicker here in the South.
I’m wondering if one of Nicky’s family members didn’t put the fear of god into him ever since Uncle Don’s death. They may have warned him that if his online vendettas bring them any unwanted attention he’ll get kicked out, and maybe it sunk in even past all his dementia. Or, maybe he just got some better meds.
There’s some new jag-off harassing Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni on Twitter… some jerk named Bradley Snow, who sounds like a clone of Nicky (claims he’s writing an expose of the horror writing industry which has maligned him, claims they’re picking on a disabled guy, claims to be the world’s greatest horror writer, narcissistic personality disorder on steroids — all the same type of Nicky bullshit). This guy seems to also be a really, really terrible writer. He’s more coherent than Nicky (who isn’t?) but doesn’t appear to know what a compound sentence is. Loads and loads of little four-and-five-word sentences. He’s too coherent to be a Nicky sockpuppet, but he’s still a huge ass. I don’t know why Brian and Mary seem to attract these goofs like a magnet…
Hmm. I haven’t been paying much attention to Twitter lately, but I may have to go check out this Bradley Snow guy. He sounds like a real, um, gem. Why these Nitwits target Brian and Mary is beyond me. I finally met them in person at The Poe Museum in Richmond, and both were just as nice and gracious as could be, not only to me, but also to every other fan who was there that day. Neither one deserves any sort of harassment, but I have to agree that they do seem to attract Nitwits who think harassing people online is perfectly acceptable.
If I get this correct, Bradley Snow (b. 1953) worked in Canadian printing industry, dabbled in horror writing in the late 1980s, published one book “Andy” (1990), had an anxiety attack at his first horror con, the writing side gig faltered, he kept his day job until health forced his retirement in 1997, released chapbook “The Karaoke King” (1997) but had basically dropped out of writing until he released a few novels via Createspace 2012-2014. He now re-emerges as “the World’s greatest living Horror Writer” to write a big poopybutthurt memoir “The Buddy System” about poopybutts like Brian Keene and Jeff Burk not taking him seriously.
My pet theory is that he’s Nicky’s father 😀
I fear that Steve King and I are also on Mr Snow’s list of folk who have destroyed horror fiction, which it is his declared mission to restore to excellence.
Oh, wow. @seriousbeast is a real piece of work. At the very least, he seems a little paranoid, and a lot jealous of others’ success. Bitter much, Mr. Snow?
It’s one thing to be able to write a coherent, gramatically correct sentence, but quite another to weave a compelling tale. As of now, I’ve only read his Twitter timeline. I’ll have to plug his name into Duck Duck Go for further research once I get the errands and yard work done.
He can be read at greater length on Facebook.
You can also read some of his work on Amazon, via the “Look inside” feature (which is the best invention ever, especially if we’re not going to have actual editors and publishers involved in the book industry anymore):
https://www.amazon.com/Second-Perversion-Perversions-2/dp/1496146115/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466428264&sr=1-1&keywords=bradley+snow
It’s really bad writing. Not Nicky-level bad, o’ course — it IS English, at least — but his sentences read like the captions in a coloring book. Almost every sentence starts with “He” — a long string of “He did such-and-such,” total telling-not-showing. No compound sentences. The jokes in Reader’s Digest have a more compelling narrative style than this guy’s juvenalia. But at least there is sort of a story in there somewhere, unlike Nicky’s word salad.
I don’t know if they’re related, but I’m starting to wonder if there’s some viral disease that only affects wanna-be horror writers. They all seem to have the same symptoms (narcissistic delusions of grandeur combined with persecution complexes), a need to write “exposés of the horror industry,” and have crazy jealousy fixated on the same targets — Brian Keene, Mary SanGiovanni, and Ramsey Campbell, even though they’ve always struck me as very nice people who wouldn’t be inspiring anger.
The Nicky-and-Bradley Syndrome could be the basis for a horror story in and of itself…
Sabledrake may have something. Bradley Snow (@seriousbeast). About the time his novel “Andy” was released (Downhome Pub 1990): “I was invited as a guest to a Horror Convention in Chicago. When I got there I panicked. Things were happening too fast.” Worked in Canada, visited Chicago. Nick DoB 1976 – Brad DoB 1953 = Brad 23 yrs old at Nick’s birth. Ponder. Ponder. Snow’s rants: greatest living horror writer, thwarted by insiders in the industry, claims exclusive right to cliche’ titles pre-used. NAP’s dementia: the same. “My parents had no idea how mental illness fell into the family. They were guessing it has to be the biological father….” — NAP May 2004. Why did Nick make his infamous trip to Canada sleeping in the snow? Was it a trek in search of his father? Is that why he was fascinated with former classmate Monika Fugate’s facebook photos of her snowbound KY mountain home or his obsession that she traipse the Appalachians in a burka for his classmates’ project and write about sleeping in the snow? (Maybe my data points are weak, but Nancy Grace has based whole series of TV shows on less.)
I wish I knew where to pick blackberries around here. We used to be able to pick them off the side of the road, but the state started spraying pesticides a few years ago so they wouldn’t have to mow. 🙁
That’s a shame. Ours, according to my next door neighbor, were planted by the original owner of the house, but they also grow wild along the roadside, as well as along hiking trails through the parks in the area. Other than mulching the trails from time to time, and mowing the baseball field used for Little League games, the township doesn’t do much maintenance.
Although we do have a fair number of red raspberries on our own property, our best source of them is now gone. We called it “Raspberry Hill.” It was in the woods between our house and the one next door. When the woman who owned that house died, and the house was sold, our new neighbors mowed over that hill, and planted grass. Turns out it was their septic mound. For some reason, when they had the property lines surveyed, part of their septic mound was on our property. Oh, well — it’s in the woods, so it doesn’t really matter.
He is still in the same place, but with better supervision in the form of his other Uncle. This uncle will not put up with the crap he has been doing. Nick will never be in a regular apartment. We as a family have made that decision. If he moves it will be to a independent living facility. Hope this helps everyone with a bit of peace!
Thank you for the clarification. It’s good to know that he’s getting some proper attention. And that a moved to a care facility is being considered. All joking aside, it’s important for a mentally disabled person to have proper care. It’s good to see that he’s getting it. Life is better for him, those around him, and the extended internet community at large.
Thank you! He really needs this supervision. He is taking his meds. I can’t promise he wont fall off the wagon so to speak, but he is being very well supervised at this time 🙂
It’s good to know he’s getting the supervision he needs. Thanks for the update.
Thank you and anytime! I try my best to keep you all informed the best I can 😉
Thank you for this information. I’m glad that Nick is finally getting the help and support that he needs.
I’m looking forward to some figs pretty soon. Fig jelly or ripe off the tree. Get get a ton of ’em. My potato garden up and died on me, and i only got one banana pepper, but the tomatoes look like they’re hanging in there.
We put in a fig whip last year, but it’s not mature enough to produce anything, and probably won’t for a few more years.
Bradley lost me with the first 2 sentences of his description.
“The genre of Horror is a decaying animal. Brick and Mortar Bookstores do not carry horror anymore. ”
Writers like Stephen King and Joe Hill might beg to differ. I picked up Hill’s latest book ‘The Fireman’ at a “Brick and Mortar Bookstore” 2 days ago and an thoroughly enjoying it. And if people knowing that they’re going to burst spontaneously into flames at any moment because they’ve been infected by some intangible spore, while dodging execution squads who kill the hapless infected by the dozens, isn’t horror, then Betty Crocker didn’t write cookbooks.
…Hill writes it better than I do.
Point being, the horror genre is healthy and well, thanks. The only people who complain that it’s not seem to be writers who don’t have what it takes to succeed in it.
Everybody, except Nitwits, writes better than I. I know my limits. I’ll stick to growing vegetation, both indoors and outside. It’s my thing, now that I’ve retired. As long as I enjoy it, it’s harmless — and a great source of organically grown food.
I wish I had a place to grow stuff 🙁 I guess I”ll stick to knitting dish cloths for my friends for now. Hand knit dish cloths are MUCH nicer than what I buy in the store, and easy now that I’ve got the pattern practiced. At least it’s a hobby that probably won’t harm anyone unless they annoy me when I’m counting stitches then they may get jabbed with one of the needles. 😀
I’m getting black raspberries and blueberries now! Tons of blueberries, but I only have a small patch of raspberries growing behind my row of blueberry bushes so there’s not enough to make jam. Tomorrow morning I plan on going into the woods where I scoped out some raspberry brambles a few years ago. I hope I find them full of ripe berries because I’d like to teach my Katie how to make jam!
Have you ever been to Sunfish Pond in Worthington State Forest, on the Jersey side of the Delaware Water Gap? A couple of trails lead up there: Adirondack and Douglas. I prefer the Douglas because it’s much steeper, but only 2.5 miles, instead of 4. The blueberry shrubs surrounding the lake are the best. The week to pick them is roughly the 4th of July — gallons for the picking, at the peak of ripeness. It’s the elevation that makes them ripen a couple of weeks later than they would in the lower half of the state. All they really need are loads of water, acid soil, and semi-sun. A glacial lake is almost as good as Southern Jersey.