Valentine's Day wasn't too bad, a little more special than just any other day. My dad was working at the hotel but he invited the family to come and see him. It was pretty quiet in the lounge where he works because most of the guests were out to dinner. My mom's friend Tim came along (he is closer to my age, but he's a coworker of my mom's and often is alone on holidays, so she invites him to join us for things.) I found a pretty good drink in the bartender's book, called a Hot Apple Pie. It's hot apple cider and Tuaca with whipped cream on top -- basically tastes like one of those Starbuck's caramel ciders but with booze.

I've lately been dabbling in retail via eBay. Here are some of my current items, mostly hoodoo related:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120518494761
CAT BONES - used in magic for good luck. These are real cat bones, which many occult retailers often scam people on by selling in the form of what are really chicken bones or plastic replicas; but I found a source for the real thing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120527791658
LUCKY HAND MOJO BAG - used for improving business, sales, job finding and money drawing. This is an old style hand dating back at least to the 1920s -- it's attributed to Marie Laveau which if true would make it even older. Requires a cat bone to be made properly, and I'm among the few that can provide them!

Left: my $90 shoes.
Right: my $30 knockoffs of the $90 shoes.

The more expensive pair are a bit more neatly made (tightly fitted, almond toe) than the knockoffs (looser fit, round toe.) And of course the fancy pair ties with ribbon instead of laces -- I'll have to switch out the laces on the cheap pair, once I'm ready to start wearing them. I'd sort of like to wait, if possible, till there's less mud about.

My latest batch of books are shipping out for the proof copies to be approved by me, and I have to say my hopes are already low. Createspace has up the product pages already and I pray that the spontaneous gray rectangle in the right corner of the cover is just a glitch on the thumbnail and not actually going to print that way.

To cheer me up, Michael Jackson's autopsy report was released. I like autopsy reports, and that one was particularly gorey. They apparently cut out his throat organs and tongue en bloc, which I didn't even know you could do, then drained a bunch of bone marrow and eye fluid for testing. And as usual, urine in the body -- disproving that stupid myth, I don't know where it comes from*, that you piss yourself when you die.

*I suppose it could be either that old people with continence problems already -- who probably do most of the dying in this world as it is -- are the ones responsible for this "common" occurence, or alternately I can see how if you weren't found for a while and were already beginning to rot, the bladder and urethra might slime up enough for everything to leak out.

I attempted to make King's Cake, but it didn't turn out too well (the frosting wasn't right at all.) Making King's Cake requires making Brioche, so I baked up the remaining batter as a loaf of bread. Brioche seems to be the same thing as the 18th century "French Bread" I have made many times from a recipe in (I think) English Housewifery. Now it makes sense why it was called that.

Alright! Talia's Tarot has a pagerank of 1 and The Spellcaster's Source also went up to a pagerank 2!

And I am going to be happy with my book royalties next month -- I for the first time I've sold more than $100 in books ($90 of which, so far, are just from the spellbook.) Since that one is the most successful I'm trying to make some other things in somewhat the same style. I'm attempting to use InDesign rather than the awful little MS Word template I did all the other books on -- but I pretty much can't figure out how to do important tasks like actually pasting in the text, so I may have to return to stealing my templates from lulu.com

I'm trying to write a formula book, and I've come across some very interesting things while doing research; I found several 17th century perfume and cosmetic making books, for example, and am now on an interesting trail regarding 4 thieves vinegar (I suspect it came about during a French plague outbreak in the 1720s -- and if that's so, and if the story of its origin is true, maybe there are court records someplace.)

Got a lot of snow last night. Apparently, this morning my mother got up and shoveled the entire sidewalk all the way to where her work is (because she walks there, and decided it would be easier to walk if the path were clear, and decided no one else was going to do it.)

And I got a copy of the book Old Love Charms and Spells. It has absolutely the cheapest cover I have ever seen -- it looks like it was printed on an inkjet, on "Fast Draft" then laminated. Then it's written in this really awful fake Early Modern English. Here is an actual example; I have preserved the capitalization as well.

(I furthermore, could not read that without expecting 'penis' to turn up as a rhyme any moment.)

Anyway, in spite of the linguistic issues, the actual spells seem fairly sound. I may use them. It also has recipes, which are valuable things enough to come across, frankly. I'll keep my eye peeled for more from this author.

It's been months since I have managed to sell a copy of poor David Garrick! I've been writing promo articles like mad to try to stir up interest -- unfortunately, I don't seem to have hit on a good keyword yet. Here's some of the stuff I have written:

David Garrick I
David Garrick II
David Garrick III

It's a tricky one to promote... it's a 19th century play but set in the 18th century, it's only semi-historical (little to do with the real life of David Garrick), and it's a historical comedy which for some reason no one seems to want to do (people seem to think history should be dramas or romances only.)

I have noticed teenage girls seem to like it some. If I could just think of some horrible way to link it up to Twilight...

It's not even 11 o'clock and it's been an expensive day! Paid the dentist a visit to get that broken filling shaved down and pay him the rest of the money I owe him from that other filling I got in a few weeks ago, ($135, about) and then came home and decided I really probably should get that complete Zora Neale Hurston folklore and memoir, which was about $24 used (I figured it's like 3 books in one, at least, so not a bad price. It's also a business expense -- it's got spells and recipes.) I also found a good deal (about 50% off) on the present I wanted to get my sister for her birthday next month and am now contemplating it, though have yet to make the purchase official. Oh, here's hoping I sell some cat bones or tarot readings soon!

Other things I need to save up for:
Getting a crown on my busted molar instead of a filling that keeps needing replacement.
New dress that isn't see-through because of cheap fabric

I am also thinking about going for the "Pro Plan" Createspace offers on the book Death and Destruction. It's an initial $40 investment, so I'm on the fence about it -- but for that investment I'd get an extra $1.50 on each Amazon sale, and I'd also have the ability to get it put in real bookstores by means other than trying to broker wholesale deals myself through the ghetto little site I made. (Less ghetto than the cat bones site, admittedly -- but god, I don't want to have to charge extra just to be able to maintain some fancy webpage!)

And despite all this, no one in my family takes me seriously as a business person and instead thinks my cousin is the impressive one, near as I can tell because he's a boy.

I had my Muqaddar Ka Sikandar Bollywood Party tonight. It was pretty successful other than half the guests not showing. (I don't know if it's modern culture and the decline of the formal party, or if it's just the laid back attitude of Santa Feans, but people in my experience don't seem to actually understand what it means to RSVP or why it's important. I've had this trouble before, because I like to throw dinner parties. People seem to think it's fine to RSVP then not show, or to bring along other guests who weren't invited.) Reminded me a bit of that C.D. Gibson illustration captioned "At the last moment, several who were invited send their regrets" showing a large banquet table with only about 5 people seated, so they've been spaced about 10 feet apart from each other. I'm extra annoyed because one of the no-shows was my own sister who actually lives with me. Plus -- she had announced that she was going to bring her (not actually invited) boyfriend, so I made sure to put together enough food for both of them. Then neither of them came! I'm going to be eating nothing but chicken korma for a month now.

The only other trouble in the evening was the DVD froze up a couple times (seems to be the player, not the disc) but, in a 3 hour long Bollywood film, missing 15 minutes in the middle here and there doesn't make too big an impact.

I cooked Chicken Korma from scratch, made Jaipur Vegetables from a package, and got carryout rice and naan from an Indian restaurant. I have never been able to make naan successfully, but one of my guests apparently knows the secret -- he says you have to just drench the dough in ghee, to the extent that you don't even see why the bread should have so much on it, and once you do that it will taste like naan. I also made some rather good chai to drink (Stash brand chai black tea brewed strong, with evaporated milk and about a teaspoon of sugar per cup.) For dessert I served a ready-made Gulab Jamun. Overall it was a pretty good method, and not too expensive -- About $40 for (supposedly) 7 people to have a nice dinner, or a bit less than $6 a person.

Muqaddar Ka Sikandar is my favorite Bollywood film I've seen so far. It's got the usual, traditional, tacky fight scenes and inexplicable occurances (i.e. Sikandar bursting into a room through a brick wall like the Commendatore) but I actually like the love story. Plus there's a certain strange pleasure I get in seeing everyone mourning Sikandar as he dies dramatically on the floor during his unrequited love's wedding to another man, everybody realizing miserably how they've screwed him over and regretting how badly they've treated him. It's one of those things people fantasize about -- "Someday I'll be dead, and then they'll be sorry!" I first was motivated to see the film after chancing to view a scene from it on YouTube, and it just has such tension in it that I wanted to see more.



In this scene, Sikandar experiences a nightmare scenario as he discovers that the girl he's loved for over a decade is now dating his best friend -- all set to a cheerful (yet spooky and somewhat disturbingly set) song about the importance and joy of being in love. Sikandar, who had earlier promised his friend that he would give up drinking, here in a state of extreme distress consumes 4 glasses of wine and most of a bottle of bourbon during the course of 6 minutes.