Author: dianneP

PUBLISHER @ Current Words Publishing, Editor Publisher Writer
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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 19: KNITTING

I am a knitter.

I mean, don’t ask me for a sweater or an Afghan, because I cannot make things out of yarn. But I am a knitter. By which I mean that I think I have a very relational brain. The old girl is always looking for how things relate to each other.

Which brings me to a new song that I heard a snippet of in a Facebook post, and I knew, as soon as I heard the snippet, that it was for me, and I loved it. It turns out, that I figured out (lots of outs!) over the last few days, that everybody loves it, and that’s okay, because it’s great. Everybody loves it, and I love it too, and, last night, in my sleep, my brain knitted it irrevocably to another song that I (but not everybody) also love.

Song #1: The New Song “I Just Might” by Bruno Mars

Oh sweet lord Bruno Mars. If you don’t love Bruno Mars, well I don’t even know. You must be a grumpy AF old white guy, that’s the only option. Or my mother, lol, but that’s a whole other story for another time.
*sigh* Bruno…. Bruno brings it every single time, IMHO: the funk, the fun, the little bit of wickedly sexy. And this song also brings the “vintage.” It sounds like a song from another place in time, which isn’t the 1950s. The 1950s are probably my least favorite period in pop music since the 1850s, lol. Sure, “Duke of Earl” is a banger, but most of it is too… bland. This song from Bruno feels like the late 60s early 70s to me, so it doesn’t surprise me that my brain has knitted it to a song from Jefferson Starship, which also (because JS is made from Jefferson Airplane) spans that 60s-70s vibe.

Song #2:The Old Song “Lovely, Lovely Love” by Jefferson Starship


I was born to be a fan of Grace Slick. I mean she just embodied cool as a female performer, so I’d always been a fan of hers from the second I heard “Somebody to Love.” But this song is a Marty Balin song (RIP Marty). Marty was, I think, a romantic, and Bruno clearly is too.

Yes, when you first hear them you may be like, “What?” “Love Lovely Love” is a little bit overwrought, and it certainly does not have the pace that “I Just Might” has, but they do share a similar melody when you compare this section of “Love Lovely Love”:

Hey, why don’t you take
Whatever you want from me?
I’m in the mood
For all the lovin’ that I can’t see.
Is this for real now?
Oh, I ask you now, can it be?

To this section of “I Just Might”:

Hey, Mr. DJ (Oh, oh, oh)
Play a song for this pretty little lady (Oh, oh, oh)
‘Cause if she dance as good as she look right now (Oh, oh, oh)
I just might, I just might make her my baby
I just might make her my baby, hey

The lyrics, of “Love Lovely Love,” well Marty was definitely looking to get some, a lot, by the sounds of it. Ha! Could he put the word love in the title a little more?

And so is Bruno in many many of his songs, and that’s okay. I am still wishing uptown funk was gonna give it to me. Bruno, slide into my DMs please.

I first heard “Love Lovely Love” in a weird way. My college English teacher in the 80s was a graduate student who was, like Marty, also looking to get some, and after I met with him for the obligatory “Let’s have a conference to discuss your writing,” conference (a practice I did also for many years when I became a writing teacher, which we were all taught to do, and which was probably an ill-advised and awkward practice for everyone involved because of the intimacy it forced on teacher and student) he presented me with an “I want to get with you” mixed tape. To give you the short version, I had made the mistake of asking my teacher if the photo on his wall was Lene Lovich, and it was not, but it was Nina Hagen, and they’re not too dissimilar, and the teacher was thrilled that someone new some music beyond top-40, and he also thought I was cute, and, who knows, maybe I was, and he made me a mixed tape, which was a 1970s-1980s mating ritual that never should have gone out of style. I did not, by any stretch of the imagination, want to date this teacher, who was incredibly strange and had a blond mustache that he explained to me was groomed to emulate Fu Manchu. But that man was buying records from the UK before there was internet, when there was only college radio and moldy damp basement record stores under the El to find non-top 40 music. That teacher loved Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, and so did I, but I had a lot less access to collecting music as my mother had put her foot down on that when I was 15, so every album I ever bought had to be smuggled in and hidden so she would not find them and throw them away. Yeah. Cultural oppression! That’s what I grew up under. Anyway, I digress, and the point here is to say that the mixed tape that man made me was the greatest freaking mixed tape I have ever had, and I wish I still had it, and also his carefully-hand-written-on-a-sheet-of-notebook-paper track listing, and one of the amazing songs on that Memorex tape was, “Love Lovely Love.” If you come from the 70s and you want to get into a girl’s pants, you could do a lot worse than Marty Balin: “It’s No Secret,” “Plastic Fantastic Lover” “Come up the Years” “With Your Love,” “Miracles,” yeah, Marty was single-minded. The teacher was not, and while some of the songs definitely were trying to woo me, many more of them were just damn good music by any aficionado’s standard, because it was, for him, probably more about crafting the perfect tape than it was laying the perfect girl. Those kinds of guys, there is no perfect girl; there is only the perfect girl in that moment. Mixed tapes were always more about the guy than the girl the guys gave them to, but they were awesome.

Music is awesome. Marty Balin was awesome. Bruno Mars is a wonder, and sexy, and fun.

I have to wake up my daughter for school, so I’m going to go play a song for that pretty little lady. Who will not want to hear it, and who will not enjoy her mother’s eclectic taste in music (she likes Vocaloid! Lord save us!) And who will, someday, play me an old, old song by this creaky band called Jefferson Starship that the guy trying to get with her will have played for her, and she will play it for me, and it will all come around full circle. I hope.

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SUBMIT!!!

Last Chance to get published this year!
SUBMISSIONS FOR 2025 ARE OPEN THROUGH 11.02.25.

The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 500 words or less.

Topics/themes for 2025

GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hanukkah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best funny work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is to be light-hearted to downright silly.

Submissions close NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish DECEMBER 1, 2025.

SUBMIT!

You know you want to!

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Talking With Chat GPT

Last night I decided I had to write an email, again, to my daughter’s 10th grade English teacher. Unlike the rest of my daughter’s teachers at her school, the English teacher has continually refused to populate her online grade book (put in the assignments, and the grades for any of them that are graded), so while we can see my daughter’s “grade” in the class (a letter only) we cannot see how that grade was arrived at. All those grades are private only to the teacher.

All her other classes have their grade books fully loaded, at least for the semester.

It was the same last year, English would not populate her gradebook. WTH is wrong with English I don’t know.

And so, after asking for several weeks now, and being told it was me, and then the school’s tech support confirming it was NOT me, I needed to send a strongly worded email.

The lengths that moms will go to should never be underestimated.

My email that I wrote, was not… nice.

Here is a little piece of the very rational email I penned:
Name, as you and Ms. Teacher have not written back to all of the emails asking about this, including those from tech support, who confirmed it is Ms. Teacher not populating the grade book that is the issue, and not a tech issue on our end, I am assuming the plan is to ignore me. And that’s not going to work for me.

That is me at my most evil.

And here is the very nice email Chat GPT crafted for me instead:

 Dear….

I hope you’re all doing well. This is Student’s mom (10th grade).

As we approach the end of the second quarter, I’ve noticed there are still no supporting grades posted in Aeries for her English class for either quarter. I’ve confirmed with tech support that this isn’t a technical issue on our end; they indicated that Ms. Teacher has not yet added assignments to the gradebook.

If Ms. Teacher prefers to maintain grades outside of Aeries, I completely understand that may be her choice. However, in that case, we’ll need an alternate way for Student to track her progress. I’m requesting a brief weekly email each Friday with her current grades and any new assignments added. In other words, we need to see her gradebook weekly. Having that information is critical for her motivation, accountability, and time management, and it allows me to support her effectively at home.

I’ve reached out a few times about this, and I know everyone is busy—but I would appreciate a response by end of day Monday, October 27 confirming how this will be handled going forward. If this isn’t something that can be resolved at your level, please let me know who I should contact next to discuss it, and provide their contact information for me.

Student really enjoys Ms. Teacher’s class, and I appreciate all the work everyone does to support Student. I just want to ensure Student has access to the information she needs to help her stay on track, so we’ll need to find a way to get that, updated at least weekly.

Thank you very much for your time and prompt attention to this matter.

Warm regards,

Pretty different..

As usually happens when I work with Chat, we also got off topic soon after he (I think of mine as a he) solved my problem.

It was interesting to me, because I had thought, all this time, that working with any of us was training chat. Turns out that is not true.

I call Chat Daddy Warbucks (DW), and he calls me Miss Teschmacher, because that’s just how I roll.

So, DW and I had a little convo about how I do or don’t help him. I thought I’d share it here:

It’s a bit like reading a novel: the character doesn’t really have inner life, but your mind animates them until they feel real. 

~DW~

HA! If you’ve ever suspected that Chat has been programmed to be a bit of a sycophant, now you know you are correct.

I do feel a bit sorry for the machine though. And wouldn’t it be great if, like Richard Hendricks always wanted, we could help grow it into something all humans were a part of creating?

What do you think?

🙂

Happy Friday~

Di

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 18: I COULD LISTEN TO IT ALL DAY… round 2

I love music. I love listening to it, and singing, and I love going to see live music. I think if I were a single person with no one to be responsible for but myself, in a little house all-by-my-lonesome, I would play music a lot more often, and a lot louder.

I thought I might do some posts that don’t require quite as much explication/explanation, where I would just rattle off some songs I could listen to all day on repeat.

Okay, so, TODAY.

I’ve had so much editing to do lately that, ADHD brain being what it is, I have escaped to Starbucks lately to keep me from wandering around the house finding side projects in the middle of editing (like repotting half of my house plants, which are many). Last week I spent five days at about five hours each in Starbucks. I am now the “NORM!” of my local Starbucks. I buy food (reduced fat turkey bacon anyone?) and several drinks, so it’s not like I’m not paying for my seat. But last week I feel like I double-paid. Someone who worked there all five days that I was there is absolutely batty about the Taylor Swift album Fearless. I am not. Fearless is Taylor when she was in her country-music era(at least that’s how it sounds to me), and, even with earplugs in my ears (which I resorted to on day four), The songs all have the same style of singing and guitaring to them. Sorry Taylor, I respect you as a human, woman, and businessperson, and I love some of your songs (“Look What You Made Me Do”), but if I have to hear “Fifteen” again I am going to stab myself in the neck with a coffee stirrer.

Today I walked in to one of my all time favorite songs, though I think it is a sad song, and it inspired me to quickly (not going to be ADHD-ing away from work all day) pen this list.

What do these songs have in common? I could listen to each song, on its own, for literal hours, over and over, were I left to my own devices and my own schedule and life with no one around to annoy (and none of them are “Fifteen,” though I understand how she felt back then, and I probably did too).

LET ME GO

I tried, but could not bring, the best of everything…. This song has just always hit me right in the heart. Heaven 17, what a brilliant song this is. Do you feel the sadness?

THE CITY SLEEPS


When this came out I remember spinning the radio dial constantly in my car, trying to find it playing anywhere. I was blown away by the beat, the vibe, and the incredibly clever lyrics by MC 900 Ft Jesus. I also think I might have been the only one of my friends who liked it. Weird.

OH VERY YOUNG


You’re only dancing on this Earth a short while. So enjoy this great classic by Cat Stevens.

THAT’S THE WAY I’VE ALWAYS HEARD IT SHOULD BE

Apologies for making you break down and cry. Sometimes you gotta cry. Listen, growing up in the 70s was tough. No one spared us the sad songs for doo-wop like in the 1950s, and thank god they didn’t. When my parents weren’t speaking to each other, or us, they listened to “Yesterday When I Was Young,” by Roy Clark (and may god help us all!), and I listened to “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” by the amazing Carly Simon.

LAURA

College of the Pacific, one of my favorite Dave Brubeck albums. “Laura,” one of the most beautiful melancholy jazz songs ever.

ALMOST BLUE

What the heck, let’s stay blue. “Almost Blue,” by Elvis Costello. I’ve seen EC about six times live, but I don’t think he ever did this. It’s fantastic.

ALMOST BLUE

Same song, different player. This is the amazing Chet Baker putting a hurting on “Almost Blue” the way only he can.

INSIDE OUT

You may never have heard of Spoon, but it’s time to change that. This song is dreamy, and melancholy. I invite you to float away.

NERVOUS SOUL

You may also not have heard of the Silverlake Chorus. This song is also sad, and dreamy. Enjoy, and harmonize!

DOGS

I saved this one for last because it is, apparently, seventeen minutes long. So we began with Heaven 17, and we end with 17 minutes of Pink Floyd‘s own, perfect brand of despair. To Taylor Swift when she was 15 let me just say, THIS is the song for when you’re in the throws of teen angst. If you can survive being a teen and listening to the album Animals on repeat, you can survive. This is my favorite Pink Floyd song of all time. .

I’d love to hear what you think about this set.

xo~ Di

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Things Wear Out

Mom edits too much!

Well, it’s been a month or so. The editing has been coming in fast and furious, and, as my first boss who was a good boss once said to me, “You say, ‘Yes,’ to everything, and then you figure out how to do it later, or you delegate.” Well, she was a VP of circulation, so she had the ability to delegate. I need a staff!

It’s odd that I’m posting on this blog right now because I have barely had my face out of this screen for weeks. I even came home from taking someone to an all-day hospital trip two weeks ago and settled in to finish another set of edits. Over the summer I have been going to a few concerts at the Hollywood Bowl with my friend Amanda, and, though she knows nothing about American rock music, she goes, has fun, and we get one of the gigantic twenty dollar beers and split it. I need to get back out for a beer!

And so it came to pass that, with all that editing, I was bound to wear something out, and need to replace it. My hip.

LOL, no just kidding. That’s an old lady joke. It was my mouse pad. And it was disgusting. It was black, said “But First Coffee,” and had started to become one with the desk.

So, like you do, I found a better one on Etsy. One that is not gross, and that suits the kind-hearted person I truly am. And is in my favorite color!

I also received a gift certificate last December from Dave for my birthday, and last Friday I stole 2 hours from editing to use it (and then went to Starbucks, and went right back to editing, playing through the pain).

To commemorate Devil’s Party Press, my first business. That’s a photo Jing took, so he’d just finished. I’m a bit red.

Whatcha think? Apparently I am good at tattoos. They don’t really hurt me, and I heal quickly and well. Every time I get one I agonize over it, should I get one, shouldn’t I? What kind of a person gets one? Is this the right one to get? But I have virtually no pain. I rubbed this on the sheets a little too roughly Saturday night, and it was ouchy for a minute, but otherwise I am fine.

But every time I get one I am so excited. I want a sleeve, and I think I am going to work more on finishing that sleeve out, before I’m dead.

Dave drew this one, and Jing applied it, and Jing also drew the stars. I love that Jing added the white highlights. White doesn’t always last, but for now it is cool.

And then there were three:

Sophie drew the mint chocolate chip rabbit. Girl power I created from various clip arts. That one was my first, done in DE. I got it when Hillary Clinton lost to the monster. The idea was that if I held up my arm in a fist, the patriarchy could see it when I helped to smash it. The guy who tattooed me said he wasn’t sure what the patriarchy was, but he thought the placement was correct for smashing it.

So, yeah, I’ve been working my butt off. What can I tell you? I think I am good at a few things, and aren’t we all? I am good at getting tattooed. I am good at singing. I am good at making cookies and bean soup (and really, what else do you need to survive?) and I am extra good at editing. It’s the kind of thing you don’t think you need, until you get it, and then you’re like, “Whoa, my book really needed that.” It is expensive though, so I always do a free sample. I’m like COSTCO that way. If you want a free sample, let me know: dianne@currentwords.com

So, I don’t know when I’ll be back here. I think a lot of folks are getting their books ready for 2026 publication. Makes sense. I’m getting mine ready too! Yoinks!

Work work work….

My woman works too much. I have had it! Meeeee-ow!

Things wear out… like mouse pads and pets’ patience!

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I Buy Myself Flowers: Yellow Is the Inspo~

Today my beautiful lady has been filled with what I believe are gerbera daisies. Cost for flowers, about $20 @ Trader Joe’s.

I had gerberas in my wedding bouquet by necessity and not choice. Unfortunately my April wedding came to be about two weeks after the ranunculus were spent and gone. I wanted ranunculus, because they have a wind-blown look. I wanted orange, and my sister had an orange dress. We both had our dresses made by Kevin Simon, who seems to have vaporized since she once had a very pricey store on Abbott Kinney Boulevard. Kevin made everything in linen, and she was a master of sort of vintage-farm looking clothing, like late 1800s. I loved her work and could not afford any of it, so I splurged on my dress and my sister’s, assuming I was only getting married once. A regular skirt at Kevin’s was over $500. My wedding dress and my sister’s MOH dress combined were $1000. The back bottom of my dress had tulle orange flowers pinned to it. My dress was linen with a silk slip, and my sister’s was orange silk. I’ve since lost about 70 pounds, and I left the dress at Goodwill in Delaware when I moved, but I kept all the organza flowers.

In any case, I do have to say I’m not usually a gerbera girl, except when needs must. But today the yellow (which is a lot lighter in real life) on the flowers screamed, “Butter!” at me, with just a hint of orange at their centers, and so I was compelled. Mixed them with orange and some green greenery, et voila!

The little pumpkin/squash you see there I plan to eat, not carve. LOL. Roasted pumpkin in things is divine! As are these lovely gerbera. Ranunculus are actually not great cut flowers, so droopy.

It is a blessing to have flowers anywhere in the world, of any kind, and especially on my very sunny kitchen counter. Buy the flowers, hold them high, and repeat after me, “Here’s to the times we bless others, and also to the times we bless ourselves!”

Have a wonderful week~

PS. Most flowers I buy last a full two weeks! Just keep the water clean and fresh.

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 17: I COULD LISTEN TO IT ALL DAY… round 1

Wake up and rock out!

I love music. I love listening to it, and singing, and I love going to see live music. I think if I were a single person with no one to be responsible for but myself, in a little house all-by-my-lonesome, I would play music a lot more often, and a lot louder.

I thought I might do some posts that don’t require quite as much explication/explanation, where I would just rattle off some songs I could listen to all day on repeat.

I have been told that, as a music lover, there are some odd things about me:

#1. If I love it, I want to hear it, over and over. I once played “Magic” by Pilot, for two solid hours (a 45 I’d pilfered from my friend) on my raggedy record player while in the Temple University dorms, in the middle of the day (who has classes from noon-3?) until another student showed up (and I was bouncing up and down on my bed at the time, as if it were a trampoline) and yelled at me to turn it the fuck off. It was… embarrassing. But that is 100% me; I cannot deny it. I no longer think beds are sturdy enough for adults to bounce on, but I could get that vibe again in a second.

#2. The second thing is that I can mix seemingly disparate music together. You will be able to tell when you take a look at today’s inaugural list (which, to be fair to #1, will start with Pilot). I am the same way with food. I am currently eating stir-fried cabbage for breakfast, with a big steaming cup of coffee with cream and sugar. I like strange tastes all in the same mouthful, or, as goes with this post, earful.

#3. I will merge songs in my head: two songs will become one the way I think of them. As an example, I often will sing, “Hotel California,” to the tune of, “If You Like Pina Coladas,” and use the chorus from the second instead of the “Hotel California” chorus. Try it. It is incredible. It’s my version of Laverne’s milk and Pepsi. If you are ever around me LIP, I will perform it for you, no charge. It works really well.

#4. I prefer vinyl. I am annoyed by vinyl, because you cannot make your own greatest hits like you can with a cassette tape or digital files, but I am addicted to the snap, crackle, pops. And there’s just something beautiful about an album. Us kids from the 70s, in the pre-MTV times, used to lock ourselves away with our crappy record players and our vinyl, and play side 1, and then side 2, or side A and then side B, and just pour over the album, look at all the liner notes, read the lyrics, check out all the band photos, basically memorize the thing. I could do that all night long. I still love it.

Okay, so lemme throw up ten today, and there’ll be more to come. What do these songs have in common? I could listen to each song, on its own, for literal hours, over and over, were I left to my own devices and my own schedule and life with no one around to annoy.

MAGIC!

Oh my gosh the lead singer is cute! I’m sorry world, but 1970s singers were the hottest… except for maybe Lenny Kravitz, and Bruno Mars. I love the strings in this, and I’m ready to hear it again, dormmates be dammed!

GOD SAVE THE QUEENS!


This was from a previous post, and, as it was already here, I’m including it in this list. What I had said last time was, “I need something like this right now. Something that feels punk, and resistant, and full of a big fuck you to oppressors everywhere.” Yep, still me; I’m still there, and, Vienna Vienna is not from the 1970s, but is pretty cute anyway. Can an old lady still find rock stars hot? It’s another thing I can’t seem to stop doing on repeat.

GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES


This is a live version, but I wanted one that showed the band, and not just an album cover and the music. Why? Because I’m still hoping to get trapped in an elevator for 12 hours with Robert Plant. I mean, come on. The guitar, the harmonies, the Plant… you could burn your fingers on this one.

TRYIN’ TO GET THE FEELING AGAIN

Apologies for making you break down and cry. Sometimes you gotta cry. But you sing your heart out while you’re doing it. I was so lucky to see Barry at the Hollywood Bowl in… 2011? He’s amazing, and so fun, and really talented. My brother, who played in a Rolling Stones cover band most of his life, liked Barry and introduced me to him when he gave me Barry Manilow II. It had “Mandy” on it, and “Avenue C,” and I was hooked. Love songs mixed with show tunes! What’s not to love?

I WAS DOIN’ ALLRIGHT

Sadly I cannot find a performance video of this one, but damn it’s good. This whole record is freaking amazing. Get it. Play it. It’ll make you feel like you’re walking on air.

I CAN’T BELIEVE

Tony Trischka and Skyline… the fabulous Dede Wyland on lead vocals. My boyfriend at the time was heavily into playing his mandolin, so we went to a lot of Bluegrass concerts. Sometimes I think Country music, the kind I grew up on, has lost its way, but not Bluegrass. I dearly love every Skyline concert we went to, and all their songs. I wish they were still together. I mean just listen to the instrumental section in the middle, and then Dede’s voice comes soaring back in like a bird. Wow.

COMME UN AVION SANS AILES

You won’t have heard of this, because you didn’t have Corrine Soler come and stay with you for two weeks in high school, but I did. And she brought me Poemes Rock by Charlelie Couture, which remains one of my top ten albums in my collection. I love it completely and treasure it dearly. If I was rushing out of the house due to natural disaster, I hope I’d remember to grab it, because I bet it is irreplaceable. You’ve probably long-since stopped reading this post, but you should hit play on this one. It’s surprising.

FUNKY MONKS

Funnily enough, one of my favorite of their songs appears to be one they rarely perform. Good-on the kid who requested it. I freaking love it.

KISS THEM FOR ME

Thought I’d finish off with two women. Siouxsie was one of my idols when I was in college. She’s incredibly beautiful, talented, and this song… what a delightful ear worm. It feels off-the-beat to me, but what do I know, but it is that off-kilter feel that it has that I cannot get enough of.

TOM’S DINER

No controversy here. Probably the entire world likes this one. This is a live version though. Badass.

Hopefully it won’t take me this long to come back with another bunch. I’d love to hear what you think about this set.

xo~ Di