Closet Space Musings

Pulp Fiction: Meet The Hack

2012-01-22T14:18:00.002-05:00

Don’t let the Pulp Fiction-esque covers fool you.

What you need to know about Greg Crites is that he can write a mean story. And by mean, I mean escapist fiction for the masses that includes bigger-than-life antiheros and satirical and/or pop culture related “villains” - who may or may not be a metaphor for all that is wrong (or right) with the world. His writing is a heady feast of linguistic endowment rarely found in commercial fiction today.

Greg Crites is to words what Paula Deen is to butter. But, while both artistes create insanely appetizing fare, the former won’t necessitate a prescription for Victoza - the diabetes medicine for which America’s chubby culinary connoisseur is now the paid spokesperson.

He’d probably never admit this but... methinks Mr. Crites actually has something to say. His work, while entertaining as hell, not only speaks to the pulp zeitgeist and the simple, ironic absurdities of life, but also to universal truths. Thing is, you’re so busy laughing, you don’t pick up on things like exploration of social themes and mores until long after you’ve finished the book.

As an author, I can tell you that’s a good thing.

When asked about the key to his success as a self-published author (by Jeanne Bannon, author of Invisible… read the full article on her blog ) Crites said:

“My stuff is always first draft... I do things the way the Pulp masters did. The guys who wrote Doc Savage, The Shadow, Tarzan, Conan. They got paid by the word and they churned out some words. I don’t do litrachur, which I’m unqualified for. I aim to entertain and I never lose sight of that goal. I keep a steady stream of stories underway. You have to produce. You have to imagine you are a writer for ‘Lost’ and you had better get some words typed or start looking for a real job.”

By his own admission, audio books make up the largest part of his sales, and having benefited personally from his oratory offerings, I can testify to the fact that he’s got a set of pipes Deity-made for narration.

So, without further ado, strap yourselves in and let’s chat with the author, himself. He’s sitting in a comfy chair with a drink at the ready and, now… me in his lap - which is how we’ll proceed with the rest of this interview.

Greg, (may I call you Greg?) I recently read Crusade. Tell the folks out there what it’s about, then kindly explain to us what you have against God and organized religion.

Crusade is my tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. It is my inferior version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thompson took a cynical look at America during a period when America really needed someone to take a cynical look at it. Not that it did any good. Or changed any minds. Or elevated anyone to at least try and do better.

I started with outright theft of his premise, two crazed journalists on assignment, and went from there. (Or, it could be based on my actual adventures as a reporter, but the statute of limitations has not yet expired on some of the crap we did.)

This will disappoint the thousands who’ve read Crusade, but I actually have nothing against either religion, or God. It is organized religion that I took to task in Crusade. As individuals, being religious has little impact on civilization, and, is actually a positive phenomena. But, when folks get together and start attempting to legislate or force others to adhere to their beliefs, it’s a negative thing and they should be hunted down and killed. In much the same manner organized religions have done throughout the history of humankind.

As in every human endeavor, greed sooner or later takes over, the greedy realize they need fanatics—and they find them. Contrary to new-age, liberal, progressive, hipster delusions, some folks are just smart enough to become dangerous but not smart enough to contribute anything to civilization. Hence, there always exists a ready pool of borderline imbeciles to whip into a frenzy of fanaticism. All that said, I am a spiritual person in that, I take comfort in the knowledge that there is no way my species sits at the top of the food chain.

I see. Well you put a lot of thought into that answer. I’m impressed. Now, you seem like a guy who would take great pleasure in screwing the man - metaphorically, of course. Any suggestions for the sheeple reading this interview? How can they make a difference in the world around them while simultaneously pissing off the establishment?

Stop electing lawyers. Plain and simple. They complicate everything until it becomes unworkable, thus guaranteeing they always have work. Think for yourself. Analyze, don’t just swallow the popular line. Stop giving money to those whom you know are douchebags. Hit ‘em in the wallet. Works every time. Finally, love your friends, plot to kill your enemies.

You seem a little… stressed. On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you?

I’m sober now, so I’m at a negative 2 or 3. Later, after a few drinks I’ll hover around the ten mark.

Are you comfortable? Here… let me scoot this way a bit. Don’t want your legs to fall asleep. There. Now, tell me about the worst boss you ever had.

Myself. Way too lenient on the worthless fucker I see in the mirror. I could write a book a month if I weren’t a worthless, undisciplined, lazy bastard.

Pretend I’m interviewing you for your dream job (bartender, professional taste tester - anything to do with a bar, alcohol, and/or sardine packaging plant). What are your three best qualities? What should I watch out for, other than theft and imbibing on the job?

Any bar that would hire me is far too dangerous a place to work. That said, for some reason, I feel it crucial that I actually do the best job I can if someone is paying me. I have no idea why. Some kind of genetic flaw. If you pay me to do something, I’ll figure some way to get it done—even if it requires me admitting defeat and suggesting you find someone else to do it.

I enjoy taking broken/non-functioning things apart to try and fix them. Usually I do, and that shit feels good.

I like to wander around and drink beer directly out of the pitcher.

Let’s talk politics. If you could pick - er, scratch that. I don’t have time for all the railing against the machine I assume your answer would include. How about this: Tom or Jerry? Why?

Foghorn Leghorn! Because I love that voice and ain’t that all that counts? In this society don’t we all worship the strong delivery of platitudes and vagaries full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing.

Why are you so drawn to me? And, feel free to make use of your mental thesaurus for adjectives and adverbs.

I’ve always been fascinated by Scientology adherents and Kat told me you’re like a twelfth degree moonbat soon to be elevated to Exalted Unicornucopia of Abundance. A level which is rumored to be the highest attainable short of metamorphosing into an immortal butterfly.

As an amateur scientist with no credentials, no formal training, no qualifications, and no slavish need to adhere to long-accepted scientific best-practices, my empirical observations of others always yields verifiably funny lines.

If my feminine instincts are correct - coupled with the full sixty-two seconds it took you to come up with that answer - I believe you may have been trying to decide between a moment of intimacy, and humor. You chose humor. That’s fine. I’ll let it slide… for now. Next question: If you were invited to give the commencement speech at Harvard’s graduation ceremony this year, what advice would you have for the nubile minds about to embark upon the rest of their lives?

Young scholars, we beg thee, hie your numerous skills to another country and elevate them to the next level in civilization. You’ve done enough to us, and collectively, we can’t thank you properly.

To follow up on the last question: What would the hospitality rider in your contract for said speaking engagement look like? (Dietary restrictions, requested items, etc.)

Two bottles of Sailor Jerry rum on ice, an eight-ball, and a fully-charged cattle prod.

I assume the cattle prod will be used when your heartbeat goes on hiatus. I feel you squirming… don’t worry, just a few more questions. How would you design a spice rack for a blind person?

Hanging Scratch ‘N Sniff cards. BAM!

What’s in your refrigerator right now?

Sliced jalapenos, beer, salsa, cheese, bacon, and a long-forgotten science experiment.

Based on your answers to the last few questions, you may not be long for this world, so I've decided that you and I should write something together before you break on thru to the other side. So, what do you think? Fictional tell-all, tele-novella script, collection of poems, manifesto… whatever. If you can curb your enthusiasm for the drink enough to add another project to your list, and I can curb my enthusiasm for Twitter, what do you think we should write?

Bring Kat in and we’ll write some porn. That shit always sells.

Done! But I’m gonna need that in writing, so I’ll have my people forward your people a contract immediately. One last question: What is the meaning of life?

An opportunity to experience long periods of mind-numbing boredom, punctuated by ass-clenching instants of stark terror, sprinkled bouts of abject misery, and priceless moments of pure, unadulterated joy.

Unadulterated joy, indeed. You have been a pleasure, sir. Let me hop off your lap so you can regain feeling in your lower extremities.

You can find Greg’s books on his website. In fact, if 1,000 of you could find it in your hearts to purchase one of his e-books, he might be able to join Kat Nove and me in Las Vegas in April. There will be a camera involved, and possibly a live radio broadcast. But in order for that kind of magic to happen, you all have to do your part.

I recommend starting with Crusade and working your way through his massive oeuvre slowly and with great diligence.

IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE: While preparing for this hard-hitting interview, I came across this ridiculous website and shamelessly appropriated a few of the questions. I thought the one about the spice rack was brilliant.

It’s all Fun and Games Till Someone Loses Their Mind

2012-01-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

How do you make every teacher and kid within a 50 mile radius
happy at 5:30AM while simultaneously making every parent weep?
SNOW DAY!!!

That’s how the day started. And life was fine…

Thing One headed back to his bedroom to pull up Google Earth, his newest obsession, while Thing Two took to the bathroom to set up today’s Lego universe, as seen through the eyes of a 10 year old, still in Pull-Up’s, slightly verbal autistic boy.

I amused myself on Twitter, joking around with a few friends about this and that and some such nonsense, including an upcoming trip to Las Vegas, that I will, in just a few hours, begin to think can't possibly come soon enough.

At exactly 11:32 AM, I was staring at the alarm clock on my bedside table and praying for something to happen. ANYTHING to shut him up. Thing Two, at that point, had spent an entire hour screaming in my ear, poking and cajoling me, physically and emotionally.

“Mommy, Jake, Jaxson, Grammy, Grammy’s car, seatbelt, Walmart Store, Lego Jungle, Singing Mickey, Gamestop, McDonalds. I wuv… Mommy, Jake, Jaxson, Grammy, Grammy’s car, seatbelt, Walmart store….”

On and on and on and on and on… repeating the same thing over and over and over until I found myself on my bed in the fetal position with my fingers jammed in my ears, eyes scrunched closed and humming loudly enough to get his voice out of my head.

For the first, let’s say, thirty minutes of this tiptoe through Hades, I would like a huge dollop of credit for the patience I was able to exhibit.

“No, honey. Not today. No store today.” I said it as many ways as I possibly could, very sweetly and calmly, interspersed with portions of time where I ignored him completely - going about my daily routine of laundry and dishes, with him trailing behind me as I continued to hope the broken record would finally skip to another song.

He was on a roll. It was as far from a “normal” tantrum as one can possibly get. Because I can’t reason with this child. He doesn’t “get” words of reason, with the possible exception of “NO!” which I finally screamed - having done everything else I could possibly do, starting with TRYING to reason with him - hoping it would be the one time he would understand - “Mommy can’t go to the store today. The roads are icy and even if they weren’t, Mommy doesn’t have enough money today… and even if I did, I’d have to use it to pay the phone bill, not buy you another set of Legos to add to your ever-expanding collection…”

Reason. Ha! The universe mocks.

I knock, knock, knock on his little head. Nothing’s getting thru. So I try ignoring him, closing myself in the bathroom until he breaks in to join me - because we don’t have locks on ANY of the interior doors in the house. Locks? Are you crazy? Two autistic kids live here. The last thing I need is to have to crowbar either one of them out of a room they’ve barricaded themselves into with a lighter and a four pack of generic toilet paper.

Okay, so Thing One wouldn’t do that, but that’s totally within Thing Two’s modus operandi.

So, I’m in the bathroom and he’s at my feet and he’s whining and crying and it only takes ten minutes of this sheer hell to realize that the acoustics in the bathroom - coupled with his hysteria and the decibel level of such - is not conducive to me retaining a sanity level that is greater than or equal to a sanity level necessary to keep me from being carted off to a padded room somewhere.

For a moment, I laugh - the horrible guffawing of the clinically insane - as my mouth waters for a few moments in that goddamned padded room. I bet it’s quiet in there… and at this point I’d take ten seconds of silence over a ten minute orgasm.

I flushed (at least I got something done while I was in there), stepped over Thing Two and escaped to my bed, where I burrowed under the covers. Unfortunately, he burrowed right along with me.

I tried the finger to lips, “Shhhh.” A gentle cue for him to SHUT THE HELL UP BEFORE MOMMY LOSES IT!!! - one I’m certain he understood. But, then come the tears. Tears in earnest, as if I’m torturing the kid because I won’t take him to Walmart. He doesn’t understand. He’s not getting it. And there’s not one goddamn thing I can do about it but ride the tsunami of dysfunction till he tires out or I have a stroke - whichever comes first.

And he’s poking me. Non-stop poking. This is not the hard, barbed, LISTEN TO ME poking at this point, but the very gentle, almost-a-tickle poking that says, “Please give me some attention because it seems, Mommy, that you’re not understanding my wants and needs and all I require is a little understanding.”

It is so sweet and so sad and so damned absurd… and if the little guy only understood that I completely understand his wants and needs, but his wants and needs, at this precise moment, juxtaposed against my particular wants and needs, seem to be at loggerheads.

I need him to stop touching me.
I need him to be quiet.
I need a cigarette - which I cannot have because I’ve recently quit - ironically, for my kids because if it were only me I had to worry about, I’d gladly smoke myself into an early grave while enjoying every menthol-y drag on my road to emphysema.

Poke, poke, tickle - he continues his non-stop refrain, quiet, soft and accompanied with tears, and it is worse than the screaming of earlier: “Mommy, Jake, Jaxson, Grammy, Grammy’s car, seatbelt, Walmart Store, Lego Jungle, Singing Mickey, Gamestop, McDonalds. I wuv… Mommy, Jake, Jaxson, Grammy, Grammy’s car, seatbelt, Walmart store….”

I lay there thinking about my flippant early-morning tweet and how the universe is a sarcastic bitch, (and how I could probably put this torturous situation to good use by inventing something similar as an effective form of torture for our government to employ on “enemy combatants”) when I start to laugh. It’s so over-the-top, having gone on almost two hours, so ridiculously, morbidly horrifying, that I’ve now reached that point where there’s nothing to do but laugh.

So I laugh, taking a brief few seconds to GROAN LOUDLY in frustration, then continue my hysterical laughter of the insane…

Then, it happens. Thing Two stops, the record skips to another song and suddenly he’s in the living room and I’m on the bed alone and I’m not quite sure how I got there, or what I did to make the bad thing stop, but it has stopped.

I close my eyes and do some yoga breathing I picked up somewhere, who the hell knows where because I’ve never done yoga in my life, and would most certainly risk pulling something vital like my aortic valve if I did.

When the coast seems clear, I tiptoe over to my computer and jot down this rant - which will never get properly edited because there are only so many hours in the day…

“Mom, look. Mom…”

Now, he’s at the computer, watching some Lego video on YouTube and pointing to something he wants me to help him build. I smile wanly and nod as he pulls the huge box of Legos into the living room.

Then, I sit down next to him, dreaming of a day, 79 days from now, when I will have four consecutive days to do whatever the hell I want to do …and I assure you, whatever happens in Vegas, it won’t include Legos or Walmart or me being screamed at or poked.

…and for 4 days, life will be fine.

It's finally here!!!

2011-12-22T10:05:00.001-05:00

Time to get your read on, folks!

“I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames” (my memoir about living and laughing with my two autistic sons) is now available in HARDCOVER and in KINDLE ~ and will be available in bookstores in January.

*Early reviews*

VERDICT: Brash, sarcastic, irreverent, heartfelt, and touching, Decker’s memoir is all this and more. Highly recommended. —Library Journal

“This is not your mother’s autism book! Raw, honest with ‘she said what?!’ laughs on every page.” —Kim Stagliano, author of All I Can Handle: I’m No Mother Teresa

As always, I'm continually working on my documentary about autism, so if you've got some time, I've uploaded some clips of what we've been up to in 2011.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Step Away from the Cliché

2011-12-20T16:30:00.001-05:00

Javier Boredom
1212 Superior Lane.
Road to Welleville, USA
RE: Book Pitch

Writers are full of clichés just as old barns are full of bats.
… anything you suspect of being a cliché undoubtedly is one and
had better be removed. ~ Wolcott Gibbs

~*~

Dear INSERT AGENT NAME HERE,

Haven’t you had just about enough of manuscript submissions so rife with trite expressions, their heady stench wafts around your inbox long after you’ve hit the delete button?

Writers who employ such pathetic, phoned-it-in-because-I-wanted-to-get-5,000-words-written-today phrases and ideas, which have become the epitome of flotsam bobbing down the proverbial river toward the graveyard of good intentions, will absolutely benefit from my book Step Away from the Cliché.

To transform lackluster seen-it-all-before prose, writers can utilize the handy annotated glossary to look up cliché “keywords” and “phrases” that will turn their customary dreck into dazzling nuggets of literary genius.

Just like Glen Close’s character in Fatal Attraction, sluggish, cliché-ridden prose is hard to ignore. But if writers insist on upping their word count with drivel, at least the drivel should be inspired. Short words are lazy words, let’s be honest. (NOTE: Roget’s Thesaurus is a good companion to my book.)

“Live and learn” could be transformed to “Subsist, observe, and sip a nice cup of coffee while you ponder your lack of alternatives.”

“What goes around comes around,” says your protagonist as he stares (under hooded eyes) at the “villain.” I don’t know about you INSERT AGENT NAME HERE, but when I read lazy dialogue like this, I want to chop the author’s arms off and feed them to my pet iguana. They don’t deserve appendages when they could have written something like this:

“Karma’s a sarcastic bitch and she’s got a wicked backhand.”

At approximately 310,000 words, Step Away from the Cliché is certain to be a must-have for the robust manual-buying body of aspiring writers who lap up every published book on the “art” of writing in the hopes of producing the next vampire tome that has you agents creaming in your Fruit of the Looms.

If you think this book has legs, (and I think we both know it does) you’ll also be interested in my other work in progress - a two part series for screenwriters: Step Away from the Voice Over and Step Away from the Cheesy Flashback and/or Montage.

INSERT AGENT NAME HERE, should you decide to take me on as a client, you’ll be making 15% off me for years to come. I am nothing if not prolific.

Much appreciation in advance for your solicitous (and astute) consideration on this matter,

Javier Boredom

~*~

Confederacy of Dunces

2011-11-14T14:14:00.000-05:00

I have a premise. I’ve spent months working on it while riveted to the television and internet, watching the 2012 Presidential campaign develop like an origami snake - one pointed crease and sharp fold at a time.

I’m certainly not the first person to ask themselves what vicious trick Fortuna is playing on us now. It can’t just be me who watches these GOP debates and thinks that scraping the bottom of the Republican barrel doesn’t even come close to describing what we are witnessing as a Nation.

I cringe when I imagine what the world at large thinks of the line-up of Unusual Suspects vying to be President of the United States. It’s that same feeling I had every time George W. Bush came out to the podium to speak during his two terms in office. I wasn’t sure what gaffe he would commit next, how many times in one conversation he’d mispronounce the word ‘nuclear’ and on which foreign land he’d declare war next. I just knew that anything was possible and I spent eight years popping Tums.

He seemed, to me, a shelter puppy who'd suddenly found himself in a new home with lots of carpet to pee on; wide-eyed, shocked to be there, and ready to rip into a juicy bone. Good thing for him he had multiple puppet-masters like Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney - who clearly played the part of middle finger.

I’ve had to break out the chewable antacid pills again as I ponder the current crop of GOP contenders and consider the possibility that one of them could eventually become President of the United States.

Consider Rick Perry: from his disturbing and seemingly drunken, rambling speech in New Hampshire, to his debate performance in Michigan where he drew a blank while trying to name the third federal agency he would abolish if elected president. It was painful to watch. I felt sorry for the guy, but I’m sure pity isn’t the emotion he was going for. Just trying to imagine this guy in talks with foreign officials gives me heart palpitations.

Then there’s Herman Cain; the King of the ridiculous 9-9-9 plan that would assure the top 1% will continue to benefit while the rest of us 99%’ers would be pushed further to the bottom of the pile. Now the former pizza magnate and motivational speaker - who is backed by the strong arm of the Koch brothers and their Americans for Prosperity - is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal. But despite the drip, drip, drip of accusers, Herman continues to operate from atop a pedestal of righteous indignation.

I’m going to skip right over Ron Paul and Rick Santorum because while Ron has that crazy Grandpappy vibe and I sort of enjoy him, Rick is so far to the right he’s almost invisible at this point. There’s no way in Hades either of these guys will get anywhere close to being the nominee and they both know it. It seems they’re just there for the free food in the many media green room pit-stops. Or perhaps they both enjoy hearing themselves speak.

I can think of no other reasonable explanation for them continuing to travel the country, flushing contributor dollars down the toilet by the fist-full. My suggestion to both of them is to throw in the towel and donate the rest of the cash in their coffers to their favorite charities. It would do far more good in the grand scheme of things.

Michelle Bachmann continually rails against entitlements and big government, but she and her family have benefited greatly from land subsidies and federal monies for her business. That is disingenuous at best... insidious at worst. And consider this statement: “Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

I wonder what she’d say to one of her constituents who relies on food stamps as the only thing standing between him and starvation because he was laid off a year ago and cannot find a job in this economy. Ditto the other 13.9 million people like him, all trying to scoop water off the bow of the Titanic with soup spoons.

I further wonder why nobody has the cahones to publicly call her on this statement. At not one of these debates do the moderators seem intent on actually holding these debaters feet to the fire. Repeatedly, the GOP contenders are asked a question and repeatedly they do not answer that question, but circle around to their talking point of the day, which invariably begins with them waxing poetic about feeling our collective pain regarding the economic disaster and massive job loss, and ending with Obama’s failed policies being the cause of it all. No mention, of course, of how that pile of guano ended up on the President’s desk in the first place. Nor have any of them suggested that the GOP stranglehold via their Congressional amigos might have something to do with our inability to rectify the jobs situation.

Why are these debate moderators and media pundits not asking direct questions and demanding they get a direct answers? At this point the word debate has become a joke, along with most of the media coverage - and all one has to do to see that is spend a little time on Twitter, Facebook, and any number of social networking sites and blogs.

The general consensus: there is no debate going on. It’s a recurring sideshow-esque reality show featuring actors with virtually no accountability - and in some cases, no conscience.

But the sideshow continues…

Newt Gingrich and Mitt “Flip Flop” Romney appear to be the least problematic of the bunch, politically speaking, though neither of these men meet with anything other than tepid reactions from possible voters, pundits, and their own GOP party members. Probably because they’ve both been around long enough for everyone to have decided they’re not anyone's first choice. Or even their second one... both in his own way like a document run through the photocopier one too many times; a tired image of what might have been… if only. And there are a lot of “if onlys” for both men.

Which brings me to my premise.

What I’ve outlined above is a collection of undesirable contenders no more able to successfully lead this nation than my albino frog, Humbert Humbert.

We must also take into account all of the forces behind the scenes: the Brothers Koch pulling the purse strings of Herman Cain as well as plunging their grubby paws into any political fight that serves them personally; Grover Norquist holding an entire governing body of lawmakers hostage due to a Tax Reform pledge penned and signed over a decade ago.

For heaven’s sake, Grover. I have a kid who’s gone from diapers to big boy undies and is almost out of elementary school in that amount time. Am I to assume that I shouldn’t adjust the particulars of his daily care and rearing based on the circumstances of today rather than ten years ago when he surfed out of my who-ha on a tidal wave of amniotic fluid and only required a clean nappy and a bottle milk to keep him content?

Cue the gaggle of Grand Ole’ Partiers like Mitch McConnell and his cronies, all bent on seeing our sitting president as a one-termer, and what we have is a recipe for a bilious stew of governmental gridlock; self-sustaining dysfunction with no end in sight.

But perhaps that’s the intent. At least from the perspective of the congressional GOP. Imagine, for a moment, if there was effectively no pesky POTUS to get in the way of the daily Senate and House shenanigans. Imagine a United States where the President was a puppet for Congress; a figurehead bought and paid for to do their bidding. A leader who was just ineffective enough to bow to every demand of whichever party held the most seats in Congress - a group of lawmakers who change the rules when it’s convenient for them; when it’s politically convenient and skirts around silly little issues like simple majority votes cast.

I don’t see anyone in the current line up of Republican contenders who, if President, would have the mettle to effectively do the job, or stones big enough to stand up to Congress when the need arose.

And I suspect that certain members of the House and Senate don’t either. Only to them, that’s a good thing.

Meanwhile, we, the American people are strapped to Fortuna’s wheel and can only hope she does not crush us beneath her spokes.

Man Up! (Ode to Rachel Maddow)

2011-10-23T13:55:00.000-04:00

You know you have too much time on your hands when you spend your Friday making a horribly off-key song parody video while sitting in your car waiting for your kids to get out of school. This one was inspired by a wonderfully epicene political wonk and her Thursday segment about the Koch Brothers.

It was a coincidence eerie enough to make me wonder if I needed to update my spyware and my life insurance policy. See, I’d spent the day working on some chapter segments for the sequel to Waiting for Karl Rove - tentatively titled Waiting for a Plot. Yes, Kat Nove and I are hard at work writing book two, and on that very day I’d been writing a scene about the Koch brothers and their involvement in the current 2012 election run-up.

Satire + fiction + a sprinkling of facts (divided by) what might or might not be happening behind closed doors = humorous conspiracy theories that have the ability to saunter a bit too close to reality for my good taste.

You’ll have to wait and read the book to know what I’m talking about.

At any rate, I settled into my comfy recliner and tuned in to hear Rachel Maddow challenge Charles and David Koch to “feel free to man up.”

See, that’s the difference between Rachel and I; why she has a show, while I merely have a tiny little inconsequential blog. She simply, succinctly, sublimely (alliteration, suck it!) told the Bro’s Koch to “feel free to man up” while I’d have told them to “feel free to…” do something that involved a lower orifice accompanied by a few badly-chosen naughty epithets.

Her way was much more effective…

Holy Sh*tballs, Batman! She just told the overlords of the beltway to f-ing MAN UP! Boy, oh boy - I’m one smitten kitten. Ms. Maddow has my full attention. If she shows up for work on Monday with all of her appendages intact, Kat and I should be OK with what’s going into Waiting for a Plot.

Hopefully.

Rachel, this one’s for you. Keep up the good work!

The Not-So-Great Debates: The Politics of Fear and Self-Loathing

2011-10-03T12:51:00.001-04:00

Clearly the word "debate" doesn't mean anything anymore.

To actually debate something, it helps to have people who have vast differences of opinions be the ones asking the questions. Also, it helps if those questions are a bit more probing than "wall or no wall".

As it is, all we get from the current crop of GOP presidential "debates" is a look at which might be the lesser of 7 or 8 evils. We’re forced to peruse the political meat on the chopping block and decide which cut is furthest from its expiration date by the heady scent of disingenuous decay wafting through our TV screens. Unfortunately, their collective stench mingles into a festering potage; it’s impossible to determine where one stink ends and another begins.

I suppose I sound jaded; angry even. And I fully cop to being a liberal, but you know what? I would welcome some diversity - would love to see a Republican contender who was close enough to the middle - where I honestly think the majority of Americans hover, politically - to give the Democrats a run for their money. Why? Because a good candidate from each side going up against one another in a fair fight is what this country deserves.

I think we’ve earned it.

We deserve better than a candidate who had a racial epithet painted on a sign outside his family hunting camp.

We deserve better than a candidate who thinks “praying the gay away” is a viable option.

We deserve better than someone who belittles the marriage discussion by using a pathetically moronic metaphor involving a napkin and paper towel.

We deserve a candidate who doesn’t change his or her stance on any given topic with the regularity that they change their undergarments.

We deserve honesty.

We deserve to have a media that doesn’t follow faux candidates around and monitor their every word and self-promotional sound byte.

Instead we get a plate full of crazy with a couple of self-serving teasers à la carte.

As time goes by, it becomes more and more painful to watch these debates and whistle-stop stump speeches, particularly when you consider the reactions from the audience members - a throbbing mass of sign-toting hysteria permeated by fear and loathing.

This kind of vitriol only comes from one of two places: fear and/or ignorance. I choose to believe these people are not all stupid. That wouldn’t be fair. So one can only assume that the candidates, as well as their “followers” are filled with a fear that is so absolute, so ingrained, they can’t see how truly self-centered it is to assume that everyone should think the way they do - that diversity is a bad thing, a blight upon the American existence, rather than what the Founding Fathers actually intended the American melting pot experience be.

Based on some of the things these candidates have said (with a microphone present) it’s not hard to imagine what their inner monologue sounds like:

Those gays want to drag American morality to hell in a frilly hand basket with all that marriage talk and… stuff they do to each other. Insert collective GOP shudder here. What about those horrible, scary, jihadist Muslims - evil, all of them, bent on our imminent destruction. And don’t even get us started on those filthy Mexican immigrants stealing all our jobs. Gays, immigrants, non-Christians, terrorists, liberals, women seeking to decide what they do with their own bodies, union workers, a middle class who insists on fair and balanced taxation - it seems the majority of America is the enemy of the GOP.

The sad truth is, the grubby little not-so-secret psychology from which the wellspring of the New Right Wing originates is an omnipresent blanket of fear that envelops their entire agenda. Consumed with paranoia, intolerance and gluttonous self-indulgence - everything from the Muslim down the street who threatens the very fiber of their way of life, to their fellow (wrong-thinking) American who dares fight for their own nugget of the American dream - every imagined “enemy” endangers their inalienable rights given to them by God; their God.

Any other God need not apply.

It is a group simmering in a belief system that stems from Old Testament rage. One can’t be sure whether we should pity this new breed of Republican or declare the lot of them enemies of the state. It would be easy to feel sorry for them, and even easier to ignore them entirely, if it weren’t so dangerous to do so.

So America is held hostage, rapt attention diverted toward debates that are a cross between a deranged carnival and a fifteen car pile-up where the audience rubbernecks its way past the collective mayhem.

Where are the GOP members who would say, “Sorry, I’m not buying into this nonsense. That’s not what we’re about. That’s not what we stand for.”

That’s the Republican I want running against Obama. I’m just not sure there are any out there anymore.

I find myself thinking about that eternal line from Anne Frank, and the context within which is was written:

It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace & tranquility will return once again.

I am loathe to compare the politics of any party to an ideology that ended, historically, with the deaths of millions of people, but there is something to be said here for the comparison if it is used metaphorically and applied to what we are seeing played out, daily.

If we can all agree on one thing, I would hope that it would be that the politics of fear and loathing have no place in America.

I wonder, though, if we can even agree on that, anymore.

Letter to Rush Limbaugh

2011-09-02T10:17:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

We’re two humor writers who would greatly appreciate the opinion of a pill-popping, bi-polar, bigoted racist with regard to our book, Waiting for Karl Rove. http://amzn.to/q8INuc

It is presently doing the “behind-the-scenes” rounds all over Washington and New York and we've already managed to piss off Geraldo Rivera and irritate Karl Rove - but that’s another story.

In the book, you make an appearance along with a handful of other powerful Americans - Geraldo, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter and Karl Rove, to name a few. As you can see, you're in pretty shitty company.

We would love to send you an autographed copy so you can introduce our brilliance to your gargantuan (racist, homophobic, Republican) listening audience - or you can buy 300 copies, since you’re rolling in cash. Consider it “supporting the arts.” Probably a tax deduction - check with your accountant. (The one that does your “dirty” set of books.)

We’d be honored to be attacked by you on-air after hearing Molly Ivins say it was ‘akin to being gummed by a newt, but leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle. ’

That sounds like a perfectly interesting, if not slightly sadistic way to spend an afternoon.

Thanks in advance for the time and attention,

Kat Nove
http://katnovian.com

&

Jeni Decker
http://closetspacemusings.blogspot.com

*Next blog up: “How to Torture Your Autistic Kid for Fun and Profit” (with video!)

Rick Perry is the Devil

2011-08-17T19:05:00.000-04:00

For those who are happy to espouse the blatantly untrue rhetoric that Rick Perry is “The Job-Creation Miracle Worker” perhaps they should dig a little deeper into what kind of supposed “jobs” he’s creating.

Texas leads the nation in minimum wage workers. Thirty-seven percent of the 211,000 jobs Texas added (by Perry) in 2010 were minimum wage or BELOW.

Couple that with the fact that the Texas unemployment rate has steadily increased (from 7.7 to 8.2 percent) during this supposed job creation time, and what you have are lots of jobs for undocumented workers. Approximately 550,000 workers made $7.25 an hour or lower—and that’s more than double the number of Texans making those wages in 2008.

But the bitter irony is that with 100,000 jobs due to be slashed because of his mismanagement of the state budget, we’re now witnessing a candidate whose entire Presidential Premise is false.

Boy howdy, them Texans are enjoying some serious f*cking prosperity, aren’t they?

Yes, Mr. Perry. You’ve shown sublime perspicacity in fucking your state over. At best, you’re disingenuous; at worst—chock full of self-serving malevolence. You may be the king of the Lone Star State, but the majority of your subjects are barely surviving your tenure.

If this Texan takes the White House, Americans should promptly assume the position; bend over your kitchen tables, let the back-door pillaging commence—President Perry (shudder) would happily deliver Americans a collective fisting.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.” ~ The Usual Suspects

Blatant Self-Promotion: Menopause, Slim-Jim's, Hemorrhoids, Zombies, Vampires...

2011-08-06T17:04:00.003-04:00

What do the above all have in common? Well, if you're menopausal and happen to eat, say, twelve Slim-Jim's, (in a hormone-induced rage after a sweaty, sleepless night) you'll probably get a case of hemorrhoids.

But, what they have in common here are books. Behold, a cornucopia of schlock delivered with brilliant literary prowess:

Waiting For Karl Rove by Kat Nove & Jeni Decker

Who are we?

Kat Nove is a native Texan who loathes cowboy boots and would rather insert a colony of fire ants into her ear canal than listen to country western music. Her last wish is to have her ashes placed in the gas tank of her ex-husband’s most expensive vehicle. Many Russian porn bots visit her blog at http://katnovian.com/.

Jeni Decker lives on a farm in rural Michigan with her husband, two autistic sons, some chickens, the occasional pig, her dog, and an albino frog named Humbert Humbert. She has two books coming out in the fall of 2011; her memoir I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames http://amzn.to/r63afS and Far From Happy, (PD Publishing).

Kat’s a half-bottle of Stoli away from a twelve-step program and Jeni has suggested that, perhaps, if she doesn’t get out of the house soon, she’ll be spending time in the local pokey for multiple murders. (Don’t judge her.)

See, the thing is, we’re struggling writers and we’ve just self-published a book called Waiting for Karl Rove - an utterly improbably road trip memoir. Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.

We self-published because Big Publishing is at a crossroads right now. (By crossroads, we mean a steaming, hot mess.) There's a reason literary agents are as irritable as Dick Cheney’s bowel after a bucket of greasy chicken. It’s because they constantly see very talented writers passed over for those who have written the newest vampire tome about angst ridden teens, not to mention former Vice-Presidential candidates from Alaska who have little to say but a huge platform from which to spew it.

It’s truly a sad state of affairs, but it is what it is. And here’s what it is: Beelzebub is driving the gravy train called Big Publishing and rather than stoking the engine room with coal, he’s tossing in shelter puppies and the virginity of pre-pubescent girls, lighting a bonfire sans intégrité under all our asses. It’s just easier to give someone like Heidi Montag or that disingenuous James Frey a publishing contract than take a risk on new (risk-taking) authors. (Or authors who might alienate an entire political party).

Until we manage to get Young Republicans and the entire NRA creaming in their skivvies for a signed copy of our latest book, we’re forced to clamor for new and interesting ways to promote (pimp) ourselves. http://amzn.to/ohbBjg

PREDICTION: Waiting For Karl Rove will soon have Rush Limbaugh crapping his pants, Geraldo Rivera shaving his mustache, Jon Stewart begging us to be on The Daily Show, and Karl Rove tapping our phones. http://bit.ly/9lcahB

We’re giving away a couple of copies on Goodreads this month, so be sure to hop on over and enter:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Waiting for Karl Rove

by Kat Nove

Giveaway ends September 01, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

A Fit of Hissy is a mélange of schlock, a cornucopia of wisdom; observational satire, short stories, delectable musings, and the occasional song parody.

A Fit of Hissy is available in Kindle:
http://amzn.to/mRqFAO

It Was a Dark And Stormy Night ~Pill Hill Press

Among the other horror parodies in this book you'll find my Twilight parody, aptly titled Twilight: A Parody

A Dark and Stormy Night Anthology is available in Kindle:
http://amzn.to/p0kLmE

You can pick up the book at Pill Hill Press:
http://bit.ly/bQxfPG

And last, but certainly not least...

Zombies Ain't Funny (the brain-child of Greg Crites at http://veinarmor.com )is an anthology of humorous zombie tales.

Early reviews:

This conversation piece overflows with hilarity, both in the original stories read alone and double the fun in audio with the narrator's unique voice. Highly recommended, and I challenge you to not laugh! ~ Dream Catcher

This is a solid collection of short stories about the always loveable undead. If you like zombie stories, it's worth picking up! ~Mark D. Ellestad

This book is available on Kindle: http://amzn.to/nfgAJb or you can get the paperback and/or audio version at Greg's website: http://bit.ly/p00wR4

And for a treat, you can check out my contribution to the zombie anthology, McGarrigles Bed, Breakfast & Smoking Cure Farm, as read by Greg Crites:

So get on over and buy some books. Those extra-large Pull-Ups (for autistic kids who can't seem to get the concept of shitting on the toilet) aren't buying themselves. Besides, if you're like me and have overdosed on all the recent debt ceiling drama (AKA: WTF is going on in Congress?!?) you could probably use a laugh.

Angst and Autism…

2011-07-18T08:00:00.036-04:00

Last night Jake came out of his bedroom sobbing and handed me the above letter...

Let me digress and set this up for you...

This week we all had a great time at the beach, as well as going bowling and to the arcade with his cousin Max, (who is visiting for the summer) but it seems Jake is starting to think about Max returning to Florida when summer vacation comes to a close. He’s also experiencing a surge of hormones mixed with teenage knowledge that has him feeling self-conscious, unhappy and unsure of almost everything he does.

When Max first arrived, Jake quickly realized they didn’t necessarily like to do the same things they did when they were much younger. It also became glaringly apparent that the vast chasm between the neuro-typical boy and the non-neuro-typical boy had become even more vast. Where, when they were five, his cousin just laughed or dealt with all of Jake’s autistic ‘quirks,’ now Max found it harder (and sometimes frustrating) to understand where Jake was coming from. His up and down moods and acting out.

With high-functioning autistic kids, often their behavior manifests itself in what would normally look like rudeness or tantrums. The key is being aware of where these behaviors come from - in Jake’s case, his fears and feelings of being ‘less than’ other kids his age.

Jake has few friends because he has trouble communicating with others. He doesn’t immediately understand how other people think and feel, and often his reactions to them seem impolite or off-putting, even though it comes from a place of not ‘getting’ the other person. Autistic people are often socially inept because they are very literal thinkers. Jake only understands how his mind works and has to be told how others feel - unlike most of us, who can suss out the meaning of an emotion based on body language or facial expressions. In essence, most of us take for granted the things that autistic people have to learn, rather than innately know.

Jake’s sudden morose mood culminated in him writing me a letter to express his feelings. He sat while I read it, waiting patiently so we could then discuss it:

[TRANSLATION of the letter above in case you can’t read his writing]

Dear Mom,

When Max leaves I will be sad
because I will have no friend.
I decided I don’t like my friend
Cody because he thinks of life
with no meaning. I’m also sad
that when you die I don’t
know what to do. I will be very
sad and I just can’t live without
you because I will not have
anyone to love and follow orders
and keep me safe. I’m just
soooo sad right now and I don’t
know what to do. I love
You very much Mom

Love Jake

This is what you’d call a truly heartbreaking parenting moment. What do you say to your fourteen-year-old kid when he tells you he’s afraid of what will happen to him when you die? How do you make it better for him so that he doesn’t spend every day of the rest of his life obsessing about existential things like heaven and hell? Not to mention not-so-existential things like his future well-being…

I got him calmed down by telling him that he was tired from all the activity of the day - doing my best to make light of such a huge topic, so as not to further alarm him - but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, He’s right. He’s worried about the same things I worry about. This kid is just smart enough to understand the frightening aspects of life, but not pragmatic enough to push them to the back of his mind like the rest of us do when we know something is out of our control.

His daily inner monologue is a perfect storm of fear and confusion that ultimately creates a tsunami of angst for someone already suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.

I get choked up thinking about my kids’ futures. It’s my biggest fear as a mother. I think Jake could make it if he could rid himself of his debilitating fears and insecurity. He’s an odd little duck but he might be able to trundle through life, bobbing and weaving much like his mother does on a daily basis.

Jax is another matter, altogether. He’s blissfully unaware of even the existence of social ineptitude. He’s on a stage of his own and we’re all bit players, coming in now and again to offer clothing, shelter and affection. Jax is barely verbal and even though he’s making great strides, at almost ten years old, he doesn’t understand basic concepts and is able to speak, but only enough to get his needs met - and even then, only to those who understand his ‘language.’ He’s unaffected by social mores or his lack of appropriate actions because they do not exist within the context of the production he’s starring in. They don’t exist for him yet, anyway. I almost hope they never do. What you don’t know exists can’t hurt you… as much.

Some days, I think Jaxson is the lucky one. He is able to skip through life without the kind of worries that plague his older brother.

But one day I won’t be here… and neither will the rest of their family. Who will take care of my adult children when they’re unable to take care of themselves? There might come a day when I’d have to realistically consider a group home. Even writing those words make me shudder because calling this a last resort is a vicious understatement.

There isn’t a horror movie in the world that’s as frightening to me as wondering where my children will end up when I am no longer around. I’m certain I’m not alone in this fear because it is something many parents of disabled children have to deal with. But on a personal level, it feels very isolating. It is my cross to bear and it will never go away.

So, tomorrow I will continue to laugh and take everything in stride, shoving the worry into the depths of my mind - that special place I reserve for things that are mostly out of my control. But today I worry…

… and spend a little quality time in the bathroom, longing for the days when a nice bong hit could fix anything.

Thanks for the Sperm!

2011-06-19T16:20:00.000-04:00

Well, certainly it starts there, but when it comes to Dads, it doesn’t end there - or it shouldn’t, anyway.

Let me introduce you to my dad: Melvin Decker. He spent most of his life as a mailman (now retired) and has the scars to prove it. I bet you didn’t know that being a postal carrier can be hazardous to your health, but it can. From the little things like paper cuts and dogs chasing you as you try to do your job, to the big things like cancer - which can happen when someone spends the better part of their life with half of their body hanging out of a vehicle in the hot Florida sun. Yeah, Dad’s battle scars took the form of a cancerous growth on the side of his head and eventually he had to have half his ear removed.

All of you people who got your mail delivered in a timely manner can thank him now.

I’m just glad it was removed and he’s in remission, though that heart attack he had last year wasn’t exactly a picnic for him, I’m sure. He’s had his personal crosses to bear and he’s always born them with dignity and his trademark dry sense of humor.

Dad had the distinct pleasure of only siring female children, and I’m pretty sure he’s purchased more than his fair share of tampons. Yes, he’s the type of guy who will go up to the store at night if called upon, and not complain about it.

I also remember him being woken up well after midnight once, and driving me to the beach to fetch a few of my stranded friends. Again, no complaining. (Out loud, anyway.)

I was always bad at math and I remember sitting in the back yard one year, going over my ‘7’ multiplication tables with him. For some reason, I had the hardest time with those damn “sevens” and now they’re the ones I can count off with ease:

7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70...

He also had the horrific task of popping my knee back into place when it dislocated, which happened no less than four times before I had it surgically repaired when I was in seventh grade.

I vividly remember doing an unsuccessful one-handed cartwheel in my neighbor’s front yard and landing wrong. Horribly wrong, in fact. What followed was mind-numbing pain and instant nausea, and a kneecap suddenly located on the left side of my leg; not a position a knee is ever supposed to be in. It doesn’t look pretty and feels even worse.

The pain is unimaginable; the worst pain I’ve ever experienced (no less than four times). This is saying something because I’ve since given birth to two big-headed kids AND have a permanent case of painful hemorrhoids to show for it. Neither were (are) as painful as my knee dislocating.

Wherever he was, Dad would come running, pale faced at the sight of his eldest daughter on the ground with her leg wrenched into a position that no leg is ever supposed to be bent. He’d calmly take my calf in one hand, cup his other hand over the out-of-socket knee and say, “Ready?”

I’d nod, on the verge of puking, and he’d firmly jerk it back into place. I still get sick to my stomach when I think of it and, looking back now, I know that beneath his calm exterior was inner tsunami of emotion he had to keep in check… for me.

The picture below is just one time when either my knee went out or I knocked it in just the right place that it caused me to faint. At the time, we were at Niagara Falls, I believe. I’m lying on a cool rock, recovering.

There are way too many memories I have of my father for me to share in one blog post but, on this special day, I want him to know that I remember them all, and love him dearly.

Not to get too mushy, but to this day, he’s still one of the best men I’ve ever met.

My dad: former pot-smoking hippy, guitar player, avid boater, amateur photographer, Beatles fan, mailman, father of three, husband (twice, God help him!), son, husband, brother, and all around great guy.

Happy Father’s Day Dad. I love you.

Some pics, oldies but goodies:

Me and my sister, Resi

Resi, Dad, Mom & I, circa 1974

Resi, Mom, Dad, and me behind him (with the “haircut that dare not speak its name”) NOTE: My sister could always pull that shit off; I, however, never could.)

Spam I Am

2011-06-07T13:44:00.000-04:00

Human junk they say I am.
They do not like me, Spam-I-am.
So what if I don’t know Voltaire?
I don’t think that’s here or there.

I don’t give a tinkers dam,
I’m representin’ Uncle Sam

Have you seen my big ’ole house?
Or my sporty, hunky spouse?

How I hate every lame-stream louse,
Can’t they appreciate my nice blouse?

Did you see my appearance on FOX?
The rest of the media can suck Todd’s co*&!

Only on Fox…Only on Fox…
Not in Wolfe’s house. Not with that mouse. (Rachel Maddow!)

I won’t speak to them here or there.
I won’t speak to them anywhere.
I will not take their oral exams;
gotcha questions from the lame-stream band.

I do not like bagels and lox,
but I will eat them live on FOX.
I do not really trust my spouse,
but I’ll fake it till I hit the White House.

I couldn’t care less if you hate who I am.
Just, please, follow me with your video cams.

A brain! A brain! I’ve got a big brain!
How ‘bout a misquoted quote from Mark Twain?

I know Mark Twain! Wrote a book, didn’t he?
I got it right! Look at me, look at me!

I would not, could not, stop in the Bronx.
I heard “those people” would give me small pox.

What did you say! There in the dark!
That’s no place for my bus to be parked!

I would not, could not, step on the F Train.
Around minorities my interest does wane.
I’m not comfy with disenfranchised peeps,
I do not like mediocrity.

Not in my house. Not in a box.
Not with my spouse. Not even on FOX.
I will not meet them here or there.
I will not meet them anywhere!

Did you ever read Green Eggs and Ham?
Seuss was a fascist, wasn’t he?

Could you, would you, buy MY books?
There’s lotsa big words, just take a look!

You will not like them? So you say.
Try them! Try them! And you may.
Buy them and you may, I say.
Do it for the USA.

If you liked that, you might also like:

http://www.notsarahpac.com/index.html

The "Blatant Self-Promo Ho's Tour"

2011-06-06T08:35:00.001-04:00

AMERICA NEEDS TO EXPLAIN HERSELF.

Premise: Two average Americans cross the country as rapidly as possible because one needs to get back home to her two autistic sons and the other needs to get back to babysitting her grandkids.

Two writers on a mission to discover as many real Americans as possible - average farmers in the Midwest; bar owners in New Orleans; kids whose parents came over illegally years ago and who now serve in the military; elderly native born Americans who only speak Spanish; gay advocates in San Francisco; football fans; opera lovers; rodeo clowns; Muslims; Jews; Atheists; mimes...

America needs to tell us why we're all in this together.

If the “One Nation” bus is still on the road, we’ll catch up to that rolling behemoth and choke down their exhaust fumes as we tail (stalk) the Palins around the country. With a camera in hand. Hopefully we’ll get pics of Todd or Bristol or Sarah filling the gas tank.

In honor of Sarah Palin, we’ve dubbed it the “Blatant Self-Promo Ho's Tour.” Please, won’t you send a poor retail worker and a tired mother of two autistic kids on a whistle-stop tour of America this summer?

Remember, we’ll only get as far as YOUR money takes us.

God bless America!

PS: We’re happy to plaster ourselves AND our bus with YOUR ads, so if you’d like to sponsor us, click on the notSarahPAC picture in the sidebar and head on over to the site!

The Curious Incident of the Stinky Dog, Vomiting Kids and Hemorrhoids in the Night Time

2011-05-30T14:52:00.000-04:00

It all started Friday afternoon.

~ Call from Thing Two’s school: “Jeni, I don’t think Thing Two is feeling well. He took himself to the quiet area and is lying under the weighted blanket. He feels warm.”

“I’ll be there right away!”

~ Bring Thing Two home, get a dose of medicine in him, he falls asleep.

SuperMom on the job! Check!

~Midnight, same night. I hear moaning from Thing One’s room. (You know, the kid that WASN’T previously sick.)

Wait for it, wait for it…

Three seconds later, he bolts upright from sleep and projectile vomits all over the carpet, his bed, himself, the wall, and for his grand finale, me. If you’ve never seen projectile vomit, let me tell you, it’s a thing of wonderment. It sprays from its origin with the force of a fireman’s hose taking down a three alarm fire.

I was disgusted and in awe at the same time.

~1a.m.- I stripped down, made Thing One strip down, and began cleaning the carpet. The kid had three brats for dinner with red Gatorade to drink so his room looked like a gory crime scene, complete with chunks of what looked like brain matter IN THE CARPET!

~ Next day: Two sick kids intermittently puking up medicine just as I administered it. (Which is a Catch-22 situation, as any Mom knows. You need to figure out how much they’ve puked up. Do you risk giving them another dose so they don’t wake up with a fever, or do you wait it out? I always opt for not overdosing my kids, but that’s just me. A trip to the ER with a comatose kid doesn’t make my top ten list of things to do on a holiday weekend.)

We all scraped by during the day. Puke basins were placed around the house at targeted locations. I washed three loads of sheets and towels in between scrubbing my hands 5,348 times, always topped off by a generous slathering of antibacterial hand sanitizer.

SuperMom Status: Withering with every hour that passes.

Seventeen Thing Two baths later, after a few hits to my teetering sanity, it was bedtime again. (Thing Two still wears a Pull-up® at nine-years-old. Because of this, the autistic kid who’s not-interested-in-shitting-on-the-toilet must take a bath after every bowel movement in place of wiping his ass. At least hygiene is a priority for him.)

~ 9 p.m. - Sweet, silent bliss. Husband conveniently spent the day outside, then hightailed it to a friend’s house to drink beer and hang out anywhere else, presumably where vomit wasn’t flying around in all directions. (He did take the pukey sheets out on the front lawn and hosed them off before I put them in the washer.)

With two resting kids, I had an episode of House cued up and ready to go when I heard the dog scratching at the door. I got up to let her in and, as soon as she crossed the threshold, I noticed she smelled like she’d just spent a few unseemly hours inside the vagina of a skanky ho who’d recently finished working a double shift.

SuperMom Status: Debilitating depression has set in.

Let me back up and mention that earlier (between puking kids and a particularly nasty Thing Two diarrhea incident ) I spent 30 minutes brushing the dog because she’s in the process of shedding her winter coat. Also, I’d vacuumed the entire house three times because golf-ball-size hunks of fur had taken up residence around the house.

“Out!” I screamed and pointed to the door. My sweet dog hung her head - knowing she’d been a naughty, naughty girl - and went back outside. The stench! It took half a bottle of Lysol to surmount the insurmountable smell of whatever she’d rolled in - and the dog never made it past the mud room.

I grabbed my phone and called The Bread Winner, fully aware he wasn’t going to be amenable to the message I was about to leave. Unfortunately he answered. I hadn’t counted on that. (Leaving testy messages is easier than an actual phone confrontation.)

“Hey hon. Just to let you know, Sugar rolled in something that is abhorrent to my general sense of well-being, so before you can enter the house tonight, I’m gonna need you to give her a bath. I left a towel and some shampoo outside. Also, I taped a note to the front door in case you forget.” (Remember, he’s out having a beer… or twelve.)

MY SILENT BUT DEADLY INNER MONOLOGUE: I’ve also engaged the dead bolt so neither of you will be getting in until the job is done.

Yeah, I’m hardcore. Call me a bitch; whatever. Listen, I’d done multiple loads of laundry, vacuumed more than twice, washed every sheet on every bed in the house and disinfected every flat surface. After all that, I’d taken a bath and was smelling all girly and nice, so there was no way I was going to take my fragrant ass out there and get that stinky crotch smell on me.

I heard a sigh on the end of the line. “Okay, I’ll be home later.” Good answer!

“Okay hon, see you later.”

Click.

~ 11 p.m. - The Breadwinner comes inside, fresh from bathing the dog. She ran past him and proceeded to shake, shimmy and roll her way to getting the carpet nice and wet-dog smelling. Although there was a faint scent of rose emanating from her drenched coat, wet dog is wet dog.

To my credit, I did not yell. Breadwinner HAD bathed the dog and it was my fault I wasn’t specific enough. Next time I will elaborate on the importance of drying the dog thoroughly BEFORE entering the house.

So, now along with the rosy-wet-funk and slightly wet carpet, I had a dog dragging her body over every carpeted surface in the house in order to rid the water from her ears and fur. It sounded like someone was having an epileptic seizure in my living room as she pounded her way to a state of dry-ness that would please her. I noticed, however, that everywhere she dragged and rolled was left matted with fur. No longer were they weightless tumbleweeds, but globs of wet hair; furry landmines all over my living room carpet.

~11:15 - Vacuuming again because my OCD would not allow me to watch TV in peace without my eyes wandering down to the hairy mess on the floor. (Shit, will I ever get to find out what that sexy Gregory House is up to this week?!)

SuperMom Status: Goddamn it!

An hour or so later, everyone had fallen asleep, nestled comfortably between clean sheets. I finally got to watch that episode of House before dragging my weary bones to bed. I was out before I knew -

BLOODY FUCKING HELL! I woke up somewhere around 2 am. I believe my hemorrhoids wanted to have a chat; at least this was the impression I got as my anus throbbed and my stomach, legs, and back dealt with evil tendrils of fire wrapping their way around me from the inside. (Because of my distaste for Karl Rove, I’ve decided to hereinafter refer to them as Rovian tendrils.)

This time, unlike the first time this happened, I knew what I needed and exactly how many steps away it was. I slowly hobbled to the bathroom, found the tube, and took care of business. Still, after five minutes, the evil Rovian tendrils of enmity only minimized to a dull, throbbing animosity.

Step two was in the freezer.

This was not the first time I'd foraged behind the frozen peas and popsicles to grab the lime green screw-on lid attached to a protruding six-inch plastic dowel. Meant to keep a sports cup cool for hours, the frozen phallus jutting from a convenient handle had once spent a memorable night talking the little perpetrators in my poop-chute down from the proverbial ledge.

SuperMom Status: Alive, barely; possibly experiencing SMPTST (SuperMom Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

I shuffled back to my bedroom, dropped my panties, laid down on my side and let the icy phallus get reacquainted with my anus.

For the second time in my life I feel it necessary to note that there was no insertion. Again, I want that on record. Anus-adjacent should paint the picture for you, so we’ll leave it at that.

So… how was your weekend?

Waiting for Karl Rove - NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE

2011-05-18T11:03:00.002-04:00

Waiting for Karl Rove is irreverent, politically incorrect satire masquerading as road trip memoir.

Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.

And now it’s available on Kindle! (*also available in paperback on Amazon.com)

Early praise:

~ Although both authors profess to be left wing liberals (and truly their opinions reflect that) the writing style - snarky, sassy and satirical - is such that even a right wing conservative like myself found humor on every....single....page.

~ "Waiting for Karl Rove" is filth, pure and simple. These two ladies (I use that word loosely, as they are probably loose women judging by this Left-Wing D-Crat LIEberal CRAP) need their mouths washed out with soap and hot sauce.

~ Oh. My. God. This book is NUTS! I've never read anything like it and was laughing out loud by page two… a great way for the authors to self-promote …they do it through the entire book, plugging themselves with all the aplomb of a leaky bathtub drain.

~ ...a psychotic poke at some of the most powerful people in the country. Not to mention poking fun at the publishing and movie industries. Laugh out loud funny. Brilliant, and a must read for all. I'm still laughing.

~ Wow, this book will make Preparation-H sales go up overnight, I'm off to my broker to buy more stock!

Menopause Rhapsody: Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

2011-05-07T23:11:00.000-04:00

In my house, when you want to pay tribute to your family matriarch, nothin’ says lovin’ like an off-key song parody of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody - particularly if said matriarch is the butt of the joke.

Okay, so I look like an idiot, I can’t sing, and Freddy Mercury is rolling in his grave. But I had fun making it.

Mom, this one’s for you. Love ya dearly, you madwoman! (You have only your DNA and Dad’s sperm to blame.)

The Exquisite Corpse

2011-05-05T08:00:00.018-04:00

I'd like to think that my President would be the bigger man - or woman. I'd like to think that the person holding the highest office in the land wouldn’t think it necessary to release gory death photos, even if said photos are of someone who has proven himself a monster.

So far Barack Obama hasn’t let me down. Sarah Palin, however, is another matter. (And I’m not sure if that matter is made of animal, vegetable or mineral. Probably potato.)

Always ready to fan the flames of reason into a full blown bonfire of insanity, Palin said this on Twitter:

SarahPalinUSA
Show photo as warning to others seeking America's destruction. No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama; it's part of the mission

~ Here’s what a few responded:

TruthOrBetter
@SarahPalinUSA it wasn't a hunting trophy. it was a man with powerful allies that already want to destroy the US - it’s not a bragging tool.

F_r_e_d_o
@SarahPalinUSA You gave George W. Bush all the credit in the world for Bin Laden's death...have him release the pictures.. #goodluckwiththat

Jeeta Gurjeet
@SarahPalinUSA I thought the mission was to capture or kill Osama. Didn't know we were going to make greeting cards.

Sarah - if you’re OK with simply rising to the level of a terrorist, that’s fine. But I'm not. I’d like to think I’d be the better person. Not the person showing the gory photos of my sworn enemy. Clearly that’s not you. You think it’s “part of the mission” to release a photo that will then be Photoshopped with wild abandon; Dead Osama with a thought bubble saying one of a myriad of catchy phrases. Dead Osama holding a dildo, Dead Osama next to the President holding a thumbs up and standing under a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED SIGN, Dead Osama Coffee Cups and t-shirts...

And this WILL happen. Why? Because this is what we have become. (Lest we forget the picture of Obama’s face on a baby monkey recently e-mailed widely by Marilyn Davenport, Tea Party activist and elected member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee.)

This is the face of America. Do you actually think the crazies out there screaming for photos want them because they somehow think Osama is still alive? I don’t. At its core, it's about something much more base. It's rubbernecking as you slowly drive by a bloody seven car pile up, gawking at the gal with the severed head who’s being wrenched out with the jaws of life.

I like how Obama has handled this, but if he bows to the pressure of rabid extremists on either side who, for some reason, simply must see graphic photos of a man shot in the head, I will be disappointed in my President. He knows it isn’t right - I assume that’s why he made the decision. Okay, so the “official” reason is that they are inflammatory and could create retaliatory situations. But I’d bet, in his heart of hearts, he knows it’s wrong. He knows that we're better than that.

I can’t say the same for Sarah Palin. That there are many who would have preferred it if we strapped Osama’s corpse to the grille of a NYC fire truck and took him on a whistle-stop tour around the country… well I think that disturbs me most of all.

I asked someone at the store today how they felt about the Osama pics, and they were apathetic. “I didn’t like the guy. I don’t care if they release them or not.” That, I can live with. But someone who revels in seeing bloody pictures of a monster - doesn’t that kind of make you a monster, yourself?

I think it does.

So that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Don’t agree with me, that’s fine. But save the nasty e-mails for someone who gives a ripe, squirty one. On this, you won’t change my opinion, and I’m certain if you’re that other type, the one I’ve illustrated above, I’m not going to change yours.

But, I'll leave you with this: How about we make a deal NOT to let the terrorists' past bad actions dictate what our future actions will be.

Peace.

(…and sorry for the “downer” blog post, folks. I know you usually expect humor from me, but sometimes, you just have to get shit off your chest, or you’ll find yourself pondering the inhumanity of humanity while dipping into a hopeless state of malaise, with a empty bottle of wine in one hand, and a dull Lady Bic to your carotid.)

You Can’t Have it Both Ways

2011-05-04T10:10:00.000-04:00

HEARD IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL A FEW MORNINGS AGO:

JAKE: (14 year old autistic boy) "Mom, if Jaxson doesn't learn to poop on the toilet, he'll NEVER be able to be President of the United States."

After I cleaned the mocha frappe spray from the windshield, I took a moment to ponder just how much damage a 9-year-old, autistic, barely verbal, non-toilet-trained kid could do in the White House. Remembering Dubya Bush, I realized Jax could probably hold his own.

Which brings me to today's topic:

It seems Republicans are happy to take credit for the dead terrorist, but Allah forbid you remind them that our country is circling the drain today mostly due to their last leader’s tenure - or what I like to call “the eight years of breaking wind heard ‘round the world.”

According to them, Osama Bin Laden is dead because someone in the Bush Administration provided a bit of shock and awe in the form of water-boarding. But the ass-raping of America’s economy? Not them, that’s all on Barack.

You can’t have it both ways, people.

Then there’s The Donald. The Trumpster. The Don - otherwise known as the guy who has taken American media-fed politics to the level of theatre of the absurd. With his merkin-topped head and his blathering mouth, Donald Trump, having been given Obama’s long form birth certificate, has decided that’s not enough.

He needs more. Obama’s education records. What’s next. Dental records? Amazom.com account information and his recent purchases? Perhaps the length and girth of the Presidential wee-wee?

Donald, sir - you’re a dick. Well and truly, an ass-hat for the masses. This vid’s for you. Enjoy!

And don’t forget to run (not walk!) over to get your copy of WAITING FOR KARL ROVE at Amazon.com. I promise, it’ll be worth it! (just scroll up to the top of the blog and click on the Waiting for Karl Rove BOOK COVER)

Look who else has a copy:

Suspicious of His Penis

2011-04-19T11:10:00.002-04:00

“I’m suspicious of my penis. I don’t trust it,” my fourteen-year-old autistic son, Jake, mumbled from the passenger seat.

Sigh. There are so many things about that statement that trouble me.

Along with toileting issues, “weiner” issues are a recurring theme in my household. Jake’s nine-year-old brother would rather poo in his undies than hover a single butt cheek over the commode. He’ll go in his underwear, thank you very much, then proceed to knead the PlayDough-like load with his hand (through his skivvies). (I’m pretty sure I don’t have to tell you people what kind of smells, as well as hygiene issues arise from this kind of behavior.)

If Jax is my problem pooper, Jake is my problem obsesser. If it can be obsessed about, Jake will obsess about it. (See my blog post:” I’m Going to Heaven, Right? )

Jake’s penis is also a constant source of distress for him. In my upcoming book I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames, I have a chapter called “Tickling the Weiner. ” I discuss how I came to know that Jake found out “tickling his weiner” was normal. The doctor who gave the discussion in health class said so, and all was right with the world (briefly) when Jake got off the bus that day.

Other, more troubling things, were covered in Heath Class this year, but I won’t bore you with all the rape and oral sex talk. (If you’re interested in middle school sex-ed and what it (disturbingly) consists of these days, see my blog post: "Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby")

So, Weiner Tickling, OK. Check. I try not to form a mental image of my fourteen-year-old autistic kid, in his room, doing whatever fourteen-year-old boys do, because if I - blech… Ugh, no thanks.

But these changes in Jake’s body are very disturbing to him, hence the first line of this blog, which he uttered this morning on the way to school. Jake has sensory issues. He doesn’t like the feel of paper in his hands, or the sound a pencil makes when he writes on paper, or the dry sound of someone touching paper. Stop to consider what a fucking ticking-time-bomb this kid has to be on a daily basis, at school.

Paper, pencils, not to mention, he’s very sensitive to sounds, is grossed out when people eat, and gets particularly rattled by certain smells. I imagine the pubescent sights, sounds and smells are unbearable to Jake; kids in the lunchroom eating sloppily with open mouths, loud cafeteria, hallways and (aneurism-inducing) gym class, and the natural funk of five-hundred middle school kids.

Now, add to this, all of these new “feelings” he’s experiencing south of his naval, and you can see how his school day might seem more like being sent to a third world country and expected to immediately assimilate.

I shudder to imagine Jake’s internal monologue. Probably something like, “Help! Me!”

Also, his sensory processing disorder translates these “feelings” that might be considered tingles to the ordinary teenager, into something more closely related to pain. Jake gets one new “twinge” and he’s off on a crying jag - standing, pants around ankles, in the bathroom, with an ice pack or sopping wet washcloth on his private area. These new sensations can freak any teenage boy out, but for an autistic boy who obsesses about everything, it’s more akin to expecting something really painful or freakish to happen any minute - like his penis falling off, or Pop-Rocks® spontaneously shooting out of his “penis hole”. (His phrase, not mine.)

It’s not that he’s actually experiencing pain (I’ve had him checked by a doctor - everything’s working fine), it’s the apprehensive, debilitating “What if?” that plagues him.

God bless this kid. Truly. I’ve got my own hang-ups, but if I had to constantly worry about my vagina falling off, or gummy worms sliding out my who-ha - well, let’s just say I’d be taking copious amounts of prescription drugs.

It’s at moments like these that I truly need people to know how much MORE autistic people have to deal with than the rest of us. How much stronger they have to be than the rest of us. How special they are, compared to the rest of us.

Do me a favor. Today, take the time to tell an autistic family member or friend how inspiring it is that they are able to navigate waters most of us would drown in. Type “autism” into the search engines of Twitter or Facebook, make a new friend, and let them know that they are seen, heard and appreciated; that the extra mile (or fifty) they trudge daily isn’t lost on you.

Or just plain tell them they’re cool. I assure you - the effort won’t go unappreciated.

~*~

~Oh yeah - and don’t forget to pick up your copy of Waiting for Karl Rove. It’s out now on Amazon.com (Just click on the book cover in the left-hand column, above.~

The Grateful Undead: They're So Vein

2011-04-18T08:00:00.017-04:00

Okay, I guess I’ll (grudgingly) take a minute from pimping WAITING FOR KARL ROVE to do my mom a solid… and perhaps I’m biased because she wrote it (and I’m a character in the book) but I think you should check out The Grateful Undead: They’re So Vein (Black Matrix Publishing).

Mommie Dearest (as she’s known in Waiting for Karl Rove - SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT!! Available now on Amazon.com!! - wow that minute passed fast, huh?) based the main characters on herself, my sister and me, my eighty-something Nanna, and my aunt JoAnn. Yes, she too has committed the ultimate in literary horrors - writing herself (and family) into a work of fiction.

But, I have to ask - what’s funnier than a octogenarian who suddenly finds herself undead, with a vociferous appetite for sex and the lingering mentality of a senior citizen? (Except, perhaps, potty-mouthed fifth-grade cartoon kids a la South Park, and since there’s a Vampire tyke in the story who’s got quite a dirty mouth, she’s covered all the bases.)

A fresh take on the oft-bitten vampire milieu, They're so Vein is a book that illustrates (hysterically) what happens when all (except one) of the estrogen-producing members of one family suddenly find themselves blood-suckers.

The characters are each funnier than the next: Susan is their bitchy leader, who got them all into this undead mess, but couldn’t care less since she’s now wrinkle-free and has perky tits.

Then there’s her sister, JoAnn, who can't quite get on board with the whole "drinking-human-blood-thing." She ends up screwing with the eco-system by feeding on animals and accidentally turning them. PETA would be pissed.

Susan’s eighty-something mother keeps bringing home men half her age, and is having a love affair with her battery-operated sex toy.

And the kids… one daughter who’s happy to play the fanged version of a kick-ass action hero, while the eldest daughter (me!) - the only sane one among them - decides to stay human, thank you very much. (This is true to life. I do NOT want to be a vampire. And I am still wondering how I should feel about her writing a werewolf character as my love interest.)

Anyway…it's all fun and games until the "serious" (old!) vampires come knocking, and expect this motley crew of newly-turned idiots to pay for their every Vampiric transgression. Sex, blood, and heads will roll...I think you’ll find They’re So Vein a funny, enjoyable romp.

(PS: I smell a sequel!)

BOOK TRAILER:

Oh, and while you're over at Amazon.com, don't forget to pick up a copy of Waiting for Karl Rove...do it for the children, people. (My children. You know - the two autistic kids who need new video games, food and, (unfortunately) little Jax still requires pull-ups due to his toileting issues. Those puppies are EXPENSIVE! Ha!)

Both books will make you laugh, and isn't that what we need a bit more of in this world? A little bit-o-funny, yes indeed.

Last Will and Testament

2011-04-15T08:00:00.010-04:00

To Whom it May Concern,

If I die or end up in a stupid coma & become a vegetable (I hope yam or tomato because I don't want to be spinach) then my half of the proceeds from sales of Waiting for Karl Rove shall go in a trust fund for Thing One (Jake William Lopez) and Thing Two (Jaxson Walter Lopez) - because I have blatantly exploited them for personal gain, so it would only be fair.

This windfall, however, should be administered by their step-grandfather Bob, because my mother, sister, and husband cannot be trusted with such a chore. Mommie Dearest would drive everyone crazy, husband would buy way too much pay-per-view and beer, and sister would instantly bury herself under a ten-foot high mound of scratch-off lotto tickets.

If something happens to Step-Dad Bob before an anvil falls on my head or I slip in the shower, the above duties will then go (grudgingly) to Resi Decker (sister with lotto fetish) with the IMPLICIT STIPULATION that no lotto tickets, hair color, or chocolate shall be purchased with the proceeds from Waiting for Karl Rove under the guise of “Thing One and Thing Two management”.

If Step-Dad Bob and Resi Decker should succumb to a fishing/hunting/home repair accident, said duties should then fall to my husband - hereinafter called The Bread Winner. Oy, vey… I don’t even want to think about it. (SEE: ABOVE REFERENCE TO PORN AND PAY-PER-VIEW)

If a fishing/hunting accident, terrorist attack, home repair accident should befall Step-Dad Bob AND Resi Decker, AND The Breadwinner, simultaneously, then I REALLY GRUDGINGLY pass the buck to Mommie Dearest and hope like hell she doesn’t drive Thing One and Thing Two batshit crazy while lording over their money. She will...(sigh) but I will have no other options at that point.

If everyone above dies, I guess a stupid meteor hit the earth and it won't matter, anyway. (Which would be a damn shame.)

This official half of a contract between Jeni Decker and Kat Nove* is electronically signed on April 15, 2011 by:

Jennifer L. Lopez (YES, this is my legal name, so stop laughing, NOW!)

*to see her official half, go to katnovian.com

No More Tears from the Clown

2011-04-07T11:48:00.007-04:00

Ring the church bells! Sing a chorus of Hallelujah!

Glenn Beck has LEFT THE BUILDING !! (His “imminent departure” not imminent enough for this gal.)

I break here to dab the corner of my eye with an American Flag hankie. I'm feeling a bit verklempt.

No doubt, he’ll pack up his conspiracy chalk board, the mountain of Kleenex hidden under his desk, his teetering sanity, and zip them all up in the suitcase of unmitigated hubris he calls "truth".

Beck often vacillated between describing himself as a “voice of truth” (she coughs into her hand, “Bullshit!”) and “an entertainer” (if sobbing, retching, ranting, conspiring, and whining is considered entertainment) - though this writer would describe him as a “blathering idiot with sociopathic tendencies" who had no place in prime time on a news network (even if it's a Faux News network), to begin with.

But, I’m nobody, (just an average American) so my opinion doesn’t matter.

I will shed no tears for this clown. This is, most certainly, a happy day. Now, if we can just get rid of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Ann Coulter, the world might begin to spin a bit more soundly on its axis.

Here's his 'announcement'. If this video doesn't scare the beejezus out of you (or make you laugh hysterically at the irony), nothing will...

And... here’s a video I did a while back about the absurdity of American ‘politics’ and my personal disenfranchisement. (Glen makes a wacky appearance.)

It’s a fitting tribute to The End of Glenn Beck.

Haiku: Trypdick(s)

2011-03-25T10:24:00.001-04:00

birther talk aside
merkin on your head trumps you
disingenuous

pop goes the weasel
Do me baby goes the whore
everything makes noise.

rusty cogs groan, why?
Bleating, attention seeking
absurdist tweets trend

(the making of) Waiting for Karl Rove

2011-03-21T08:00:00.030-04:00

Who’d have thought a bunch of crazy e-mails would turn into a book?

Surely not I.

Okay, I lied. It was all a part of my Sixteen Step Master Plan to Take Over the Universe…(along with Kat Nove, my sidekick).

Here we are, about to publish Waiting for Karl Rove (already available on Smashwords and soon to be available on Amazon.com for Kindle) and I decided to take a trip down memory lane and fondly remember how it all started…

(I will say, preparing manuscripts for e-book format is a slow, painful walk through hell and whoever invented the process should get a pick-axe through the temporal lobe. There’s simply got to be an easier, more effective way to get something to print on an e-reader and STILL not screw the formatting six ways from Sunday if you make any of a number of tiny errors. Seriously - Bill Gates, get right on that, will ya?)

The whole thing started when a writer friend told Kat and I we’d be perfect co-writers. So, first we thought about something like “My Day Sucked Bigger Balls Than Yours Because…” and then we’d just compile our saved e-mails and have ourselves a bestseller.

At some point, however, we decided an actual plot might be nice. Sometime later I said, “Hey, what about if we write ourselves into the story - and it’s a road trip book about a menopausal woman and her erratic sidekick who are on a mission to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary?”

Kat sent an e-mail that went something like this:

LMFAO AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

And, we were off...

JENI: Holy *bleep*-a-Doodle!

That's a lot of e-mails. If even a third of them are remotely interesting, we've already written a book. Well, that's assuming anyone else finds us even half as funny as we do each other. But let’s not use any that make me sound stupid... or fat. I want people to think I'm sublimely intelligent and wasting away at 99 pounds--until we end up on David Letterman.

Oh, screw it. We’ll use it all. ;) On to greatness - or infamy, whichever comes first

KAT: Hmmm...I wonder which agent will call me first as I'm being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer.

"Well, Wolfie...may I call you Wolfie? I always knew she was a total nutjob because anyone with access to that many dildos and boob lifters has to have access to guns, right? So the truth is, when she demanded I write Waiting For Karl Rove with her, I was too scared not to. Is Blitzer a Nazi name?"

Then I’ll stop in and see Geraldo…

“Nice to meet you Geraldo. So this is the Fox News Studio? Frankly, I thought it would smell much worse in here. So kind of you to interview me after Jeni Decker's treatment of you in WFKR - which, by the way, was NOT my idea. I can tell you the exact day she snapped if you're interested in the truth. You are? Hmmm...surprising. It was the day she gave Rick Sanchez the Geraldo treatment via song parody. Yeah, it drove her bat-shit crazy. Uh...I can't say batshit on Fox News? You're kidding right? I assumed bat-shit was okay, what with the two most obscene words in the English language having their own show. Snap, Geraldo. I thought you'd get the joke seeing as how Puerto Ricans usually have a better sense of humor than old white people. The two most obscene words are (drum roll) Glenn Beck. Now, let's talk about me.”

Oh, and Jeni - screw Letterman…I'm shooting for The Daily Show. I'd ignore my menopausal tendencies to sit next to short little Jon Stewart and fantasize about his circumcised Jewish penis. I'm certain it must be massive. Har!

JENI: While I, myself, don't care to ponder the length and or girth of Jon Stewart's penis, circumcised or otherwise, I'd be happy to genuflect before his greatness, with you by my side. Are you saving all this, because if you're counting on me to do it, your screwed. It's bad enough I'm having to spell check things before clicking send.

KAT:

TO OUR READERS : Jeni is referring to compiling a book from our unorganized e-mails. Thank you for your attention and for your money.

Kat Nove

JENI: We accept checks, money orders, and the occasional bartering agreement, in the form of sex. ;) Expect to be de-loused prior to engagement, and it's probably advisable to BYOB.

KAT: Do to my current menopausal state, Jeni will be providing the sex, unless your check or money order is taped to Jon Stewart's circumcised penis, in which case I'll suck it right off and deposit it into my bank account.

JENI: Sure, sure. Leave me the dirty work. Ah, well. I suppose it'll be my penance for blatantly riding your pantyhose to literary success. Though that shouldn't surprise you. I have no issue exploiting the two autistic children I squeezed out of my uterus for literary benefit, so why should you be any different?

KAT: You idiot! I'm riding your coattails. And now I'm walking over to the skateboard park to find the skater who said he'd buy a copy of Global Swarming. That *bleep*er better be there with the cash, I need a pack of cigs.

JENI: Well, that's just dandy. Looks like we've got the menopausal leading the morbidly obese. Look out world, here we come.

KAT: Uh, I had to pee before I went to shake down the skater dude and made the mistake of looking at your emails again! Okay, now I'm off to a drug...I mean book deal.

JENI: BTW, Mitch thinks a better title for Engulfed would be: Where's My *Bleep*ing Bliss? Do you think dropping the f-bomb in the title would put agents off?

KAT: I guarantee they would make you change it to Where's My Freaking Bliss? I like your original title better, but that's probably because David Sedaris and I are such good friends. Oh! And when you respond, maybe you should reply using what you're responding to. That way we won't have to try to figure it out later.

JENI: Oh! so already you want me to make your life easier? What's next? Shall I draw you a bath? You're SO going to hate me before this is all over. And, where is the world heading that a writer can't use the word *bleep* at their leisure? I'm not sure I want to be a part of that world... Oh, yeah. How is Mr. Sedaris, anyway? Let him know I'm gunning for him - though I could be persuaded to cease and desist all future writing endeavors if he and Hugh found it in their hearts to adopt me. I think I'd have turned out better, all things considered, if a gay couple had been my parents.

KAT: Draw me a bath? Har! Quit imagining me naked, you pervert. Besides, in my world, bathtubs are not safe for baths. It's showers only, baby. Otherwise something worse than a yeast infection would be crawling up my who-ha.

JENI: I'm sorry, my dear, but being that it's almost 2010 and a free country (at least until the Republicans crawl back into power) I am free to imagine anyone I wish naked. Don't get all excited - there's quite a list in front of you, including but not limited to Rachel Maddow, Andre Braugher, Hugh Laurie, Suzanne Malveaux (CNN) and Newt Gingrich... (that last one, merely as a curiosity under the sneaking suspicion that something's gone horribly awry there, physically, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it...) And, clearly you're under the mistaken assumption that I'm not 'stoo-pid' as Mitch says...

KAT: Seeing Newt Gingrich falls under my 100 million tax free dollars umbrella, wherein for said amount I'll have sex with anyone on the planet of legal age, regardless of gender, religion and/or political party affiliation as long as most of them are gagged with duct tape, hosed down with disinfectant, the lights are off and nobody ever informs me I just *bleep*ed Ann Coulter.

Months later…

KAT: Last night I went to a college production of The Foreigner and laughed my fat ass off, which is a good thing because the cheap-ass seats in that dinky theatre are like sitting on a turned-on chainsaw (and I don't mean a chainsaw that is so aroused by my asshole that it wants to return the favor) I mean a chainsaw that wants to rip out my asshole, make me eat it and then rip it out again. Then I came home to a paranoid Richard who has finally snapped that I'm writing down his every word and sending it to you. He told me to tell you he'd like to apologize for his inappropriate remarks. More later on his idea to start a gang (as in Bloods and Crips) of pink-curler wearing, rubber dishwashing glove prancers.

So, where are we at on the next WFKR chapter? What am I supposed to be writing next? Help me get the order straight. We go to casino and we're wearing our Mardi Gras masks. We start riot and Conga line and run out being chased by security. Right?

JENI: Yes, that's your part. You can end inside wherever we are and do your usual RUN line because mine takes up with us actually running down the street.

KAT: You take it up and we crash a wedding and we're both super drunk.

JENI: Yes, mine takes us running down the street, going into the wedding, and ends with us walking down the strip leaving the bride and groom…then a bunch of shit happens while we're drunk that we don't remember. I thought it might be good for the next book to leave some stuff purposely open so that if we need anything to 'come back to haunt us' we can use that as a tie in. LOL I cover it briefly in the FBI interview - but that part of the document is REDACTED.

KAT: Then I wake up with black Elvis. We do some shit and end up at the fund raiser wearing masks. Did we decide who wears which mask (Palin/Cheney) ? Because whoever is wearing Dick Cheney's needs to be exposing some hellacious cleavage.

JENI: Entirely up to you. You're choice. Do you wanna be the Dick or the Bitch? LOL Take care to time your 'day' so that we end up in the bathroom at 7:02 PM. I figure Karl's speech could be around six or so in the evening.

KAT: How do I need to end that chapter? Being chased out by security again? Or one of us needing to pee and we hide in the men's restroom?

JENI: Mine starts with us sitting on the toilets, Geraldo comes in after that. You have to get us there or at least establish a chase because somehow we heard Rove was heading to the toilet (does he have handlers or security that we could overhear but get the message wrong--go to the wrong bathroom?) and we assumed that's where he was going.

BTW, which hotel is this that we're in the bathroom of? I assume whatever one the speech is in.

KAT: Let's have that scene in the Parisian. Probably some good jokes to be made about Freedom Fries and how ironic it is since Republicans hate the French. And I'll have us leaving in a hurry, but not writing about getting there. I think it's funnier to have us sitting on the toilets.

Oh. My. God! Did you hear that Cheney is in the hospital again? Be just like that *bleep*er to die and *bleep* up our book. Of course if he does kick it, we can substitute all his parts with someone else equally vile.

Zombies and Superheroes and Writers…oh my!

2011-03-08T08:57:00.000-05:00

Writers: we play (often with one another).

When I’m not in the mood to write (which is rarely) I feed my Photoshop addiction. My friend Kat Nove (and co-writer of Waiting for Karl Rove - a book which will eventually launch us both to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List) suggested I make us, as well as fellow writers John Hamler and Greg “The Hack” Crites (veinarmor.com) superheroes.

Just for shits and giggles.

So I spent (wasted) the entire day yesterday bringing our alter egos to life. Since The Hack is working on an anthology of humorous zombie stories and pretty much ordered us to write one for the compilation, I was in the Zombie Fighting mood.

So, without further adieu, meet sexy-hot fellow writers; zombie hunters extraordinaire:

The Scatologist (that’s me) - She sniffs shit out and disposes of it with ease.

The Hamler (John Hamler) He’s a cheeky monkey that we keep around because of his scathing wit (and he looks sexy in his Daisy Dukes).

The Novinator (Kat Nove) and her Pussy - Cat scratch fever never felt so good!

The Hack (Greg Crites) - Our fearless (Captain Morgan’s guzzling) zombie hunting leader.

Ah, good times. Now I’ve got to go to the DMV and have my driver’s license renewed. Admittedly less fun than playing with Photoshop, but maybe it’ll inspire another zombie story. That place is usually crawling with the walking dead - on both sides of the counter.

Have a nice day!

I'm Going to Heaven, Right?

2011-02-28T10:47:00.002-05:00

“I’m going to heaven, right Mom?”

Jake asks me this about 1,593 times a day. Seriously, the kid will be in his room and peek his head out just to ask, then waits for me to respond in the exact same way every time, “Yes, sweetie,” before retreating back to the safety of his Pokemon game.

He asks this question, not because he's busy pondering death, so much as because he's obsessed with being a good person. Also, he hasn't wrapped his head around this whole heaven thing, and probably never will, so he continues to obsess about it...

I don’t think I have to spell it out for you, but I will. The kid is riddled with OCD.

According to the National Association of Mental Health, obsessive compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as hand-washing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these rituals provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety.

This question is like a tic for Jake. He’s completely unable to keep himself from asking, and he needs to hear my answer. It gets so bad, the barrage of The Question(s)! occurs with such urgency and frequency, that while I answer the exact same way every time (Yes, sweetie!), my tone of voice ranges from sweet, to exasperated, to just plain pissed off, depending on the time of day. Well after the sun has set, I sound as if I might be clinically depressed as the onslaught of The Question! ratchets up with frightening exigency.

“I’m going to heaven, right Mom?” Jake yells from the bedroom, threatening to wake his brother while eviscerating the last vestiges of my crumbling sanity. By the end of the night, I want to become an ice cream eating zombie who gets to watch a few episodes of House (I believe I’ve mentioned I have a huge crush on Hugh Laurie) without being interrupted. I do NOT want to be yelling back and forth from the living room and the bedroom… “Yes, sweetie… yes sweetie…YES SWEETIE… YES SWEETIE!”

So, the other day I was in the bathroom straightening my hair and Jake, having had a stressful day, was yelling The Question! to me from the living room, where he sat watching television with his brother, who was settled comfortably within his own tic-like OCD moment - rewinding and replaying a thirty second clip from Robot Chicken he’d somehow taped. I freely cop to the fact that it was not even remotely close to being an age-appropriate clip which contained an expletive and I immediately erased it when he went to bed that night…

“Mom, I’m going to heaven, right?” Jake must have asked more times than even his nine year old just-becoming-verbal brother could bear, because suddenly (and because I was purposely pretending not to hear) Jaxson sighed very dramatically and screamed, “Yes, sweetie!”

Ha! Okay, that was f-ing funny. Jaxson and I understood one another in that moment - the nine year old autistic boy and his overworked mother came together over the sacred bond of complete and utter annoyance.

It was a beautiful thing.

Not so beautiful, however, a few days later when Jake was particularly worked up and spinning like a top because the following day two very big changes would be made to his normal Friday school schedule - changes which involved a field trip to the ice skating rink and an hour after school for some much needed socializing, via the geek-lab.

(TRANSLATION: Computer lab video game night.)

Yes, both would seem to be fun changes, but changes are changes in my boys’ lives - good or bad, they’re not particularly welcome. Because I change my haircolor with about the same regularity as I change my panties, you'd think Jake would be loosening up a bit in this regard. Not so much.

So Jake had been tossing out the question with alarming ferocity and I was answering him like a good mom when Jaxson started to mimic the question, not even realizing he was doing it - his eyes glued to the inappropriate fifteen second clip from MAD which involved Dora the Explorer barfing into her lunch bag before being dismembered. (I’m not sure how he manages to tape episodes of wholly inappropriate shows that come on well past the time he’s in bed, but I spend at least twenty minutes every night erasing them form the DVR.)

“I goin’ heaven, wite Ma?” little Jaxson mumbled four times.

Oh, sweet Jesus, not him, too. I am not sure I’ll be able to handle it if The Question(ing)! metastasizes to the second kid. Maybe I can get the boys to answer one another and I can free myself from the OCD loop altogether.

“I’m going to heaven, right Mom?” Jake will ask.

“Yes, sweetie,” Jaxson will answer, before asking, “I goin’ heaven, wite Ma?”

“Yes, sweetie,” Jake will say, rounding out the circle jerk of dysfunction.

Now that will be a beautiful day...

***

This post is dedicated to my friend Michael Amrien, who has sailed into Plato’s invisible - where every sound tastes like butterscotch, where smells mingle and crescendo to a ballet of wind chimes - where the sun shines with the force of a thousand unblemished truths, and laughter swirls in Technicolor; a place of perpetual early spring. Where the Sisyphean task we call life is no longer in his memory, and for that I am grateful.

I’ll see you when I see you, my friend. Till then, like the song says: …Take it easy.

The Wisdom of Repugnance BOOK TRAILER

2011-02-15T12:19:00.000-05:00

Here’s the completed book trailer for The Wisdom of Repugnance. A little ghetto-claymation, a book excerpt, voice editing software and voilà…

(NOTE: Three fish and a crab lost their lives during the making of this book trailer. Don’t blame me - blame Humbert Humbert, an albino frog with a big appetite.)

(WARNING: To those easily offended...STOP right here. OK, consider yourself warned.)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LP2W1K

I'm no Donna Reed

2011-02-14T11:33:00.000-05:00

I spent the weekend preparing for a photo shoot, hoping I would end up with a picture or two that were good enough to use as a bio picture for the book jacket of my memoir, I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames (to be released later this year by Skyhorse Publishing).

First, I went to the local beauty supply store where my sister (former hairdresser and makeup artist) picked me out some fake hair. Not that Yak bull-shite, but real human hair. I don't know what a Yak is, but I don't want to end up with hair on my head that was formerly on or anywhere near the ass of a long-haired animal.

The idea for the shoot was to tease my mop into a 60's beehive-ish style and do a white trash version of Suzie Homemaker. I readily admit it: I'm enamored with all things white trash. (I'm also enamoured with Hugh Laurie from House, and Rachel Maddow. I like my men slightly abrasive and my women smart & sassy.)

But, I digress...

So we got home and Resi put in the hair extensions, which immediately threw Jake into a funk. The fake hair grossed him out. Shame, really. He probably won’t be able to eat for a week. Not that I’ll be letting a little thing like my kid starving get in the way of having hooker hair. No sir, I’m keeping it till it starts falling out in clumps in the shower. The hair makes me feel sexy in a slutty kind of way, and it’s not often I feel sexy and slutty. Like rarely. (Sexy, slutty, white trash - are we seeing a pattern here? I'm thinking menopause is right around the corner because this all sounds suspiciously mid-life crisis-ish, isn't it?)

Will has been chasing me around the house since the hair appeared. I can’t bend over to open the oven or pick up errant toys without him trying to slip it to me. Perhaps that’s why I never grew my hair long, subconsciously anyway. I never wanted to be the sexpot girl. I liked being the girl the boys enjoyed hangin’ out with. As a kid I was saddled with extra baggage early - I was wearing a training bra in third grade - and from that moment on, most people of the male persuasion (and a few of the female one) had a hard time meeting my gaze.

“Focus, toots - I’m up here.”

I’m not sure what all the hubbub is with big tits because I prefer smaller ones. Perky little B-cups would be my tetas of choice - but alas, God had other ideas for me. I got my share and more. It's my burden to bear…sigh.

Anyway, now I’ve got my healthy chest AND hair that makes me look like I charge by the hour. The masculine gal at the gas station this morning winked at me, which was kind of cool.

But, back to the photo shoot. I was going for the cheesy pictures old Hollywood movie and TV stars took back in the day when they wanted to represent themselves as normal homemakers and families - or were doing damage control after snorting coke off the backside of a call girl who ended up dead the next morning. I always saw something sinister in those photos. Nobody is that squeaky clean, it screams of desperation.

So that was the theme of the shoot: squeaky clean desperation.

Here are a few pictures. Mostly, we laughed a lot, Mom, Resi and I. Which is nice, since we’re just as likely to end up screaming at the top of our lungs when we’re in the same room together these days.

And here is some behind the scenes footage I put together of us working on the clay figures for my Wisdom of Repugnance book trailer. The actual trailer will be up on the blog later in the week. (You’re welcome!)

Oh yeah, by the way -

You can get The Wisdom of Repugnance on Kindle here: (no pressure or anything, but there’s a cadaver fondler and a guy who is in love with his German Shepherd in the book…just sayin'. Also, there might be some ‘characters‘ in the book that seem familiar to readers already familiar with my family.)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LP2W1K

Stay tuned for another video later in the week!

Coming This Year to a Bookstore Near You!!

2011-01-31T18:28:00.000-05:00

Following a botched circumcision, Ezra the drunken mohel—

—wait, this isn’t about permanently indignant foreskin. This is about autism…

The whole thing snuck up on me like the swine flu, the symptoms fairly banal until suddenly it felt like I was hooked up to life support with a priest administering last rites in the form of a cattle-prod shoved up my—
—okay, so that lasted about fifteen minutes, relatively speaking. A friend recently told me I was lucky to have my life, “While you’re enjoying an eight course meal, most people are sitting down with a frozen dinner.”

Boy, was she ever right.

Profundity; you can’t find it in the frozen food section.

As if by God’s divine, metaphorical, slightly perverse hand, during the delivery of my firstborn I acquired a souvenir that would hang about long after Jake was weaned from the bottle. In fact, my little friends continue to accompany me on my travels and travails in life; a tiny bunch of deflated mini-grapes just inside my anus. A dormant volcano. My kids are like my hemorrhoids, often a pain in my ass but we’re in it together for the long haul so I might as well learn to live with them.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—my kids also have to learn how to live with me. I refuse to censor myself for my children. If I’ve got to deal with rampant obsessive compulsive disorder and finding poo-pebbles behind my entertainment center, they’re gonna have to accept me for who I am.

So I wrote a book about my crazy life. And, much to my amazement, someone is going to publish it!!

I am the mother of two amazing autistic children on different ends of the autism spectrum, and these are our stories. With chapters including: Tickling the Weiner, Why I Hate Pokemon, Santa: Give it a Friggin’ Rest, Already, and Oprah’s the Reason My Kid Thinks I Want to Drown Him in the Tub, I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames also includes mini-chapters written by my eldest son, Jake.

Look for it in a bookstore near you this fall.

While I have no issue exploiting my children for my own literary benefit, I don’t necessarily consider this exploitation, per se, so much as the preservation of their essence for posterity.

Yes, that’s it. I’m an essence preservationist.

The Wisdom of Repugnance

2011-01-11T08:00:00.009-05:00

You might be wondering what nefarious thing that guy in the left column (the one with his pants down) is up to and what part the dog plays in said debauchery.

Well, I guess you'll have to read the book. (Just click on the cover to be taken to the link.)

The Wisdom of Repugnance is a despicable novel written by none other than myself. And you can upload it to an e-reader near you for the low, low price of $1.99. That's quite a bargain, considering people will be paying big money for my autograph on e-bay one day (after I commit a series of illegal activities which will involve Betty White, a Snuggie, a shit-load of Pop Rocks and three illegal aliens - all in an effort to become (in)famous. I'm looking forward to jail. As I see it, it's three squares a day cooked by someone other than me).

WARNING: if you don't have complete control over your gag reflex, or you're easily offended, you might want to pass on this one. This is not your Nanna's kind of story. (It is my Nanna's kind of story, but that's another story...)

~Summary~

Dr. Bertrand Diesel is a sexual psychologist who spends his days listening to stories of dysfunction and perversion, including a patient involved in a physical love affair with his dog, and a mortician who can’t keep his hands to himself. Unfortunately, the good doctor is unable to control his need for self-gratification, secretly taping his sessions with patients, and bringing them home each night to use for his own dysfunctional pleasure.

Necrophiliac mortician Larry O‘Malley is referred to the doctor as a condition of his continuing employment, fresh from dealing with the death of his father. His troubles only worsen when he switches toe tags in an effort to keep Daddy around for a while longer, sending an urn-full of John Doe home for the family to grieve over.

Things take an unpleasant turn when Larry is fired before he’s able to cremate the family patriarch, and his coterie of corrupt kin are suddenly forced to deal with corpse disposal.

Dual morality plays ensue: O’Malley against O’Malley, while Dr. Diesel spars with step-brother Del, purveyor of all that is right and holy, bent on bringing him down.

The Wisdom of Repugnance is a black comedy, exploring that internal shudder we are all supposed to have, which helps us differentiate between, say, someone who loves their dog, and someone who loves their dog.

~*~

Stay tuned. Soon, I plan on posting a few of the book covers that didn't make the cut and when you see the perverted lot of them, I'm pretty sure you'll understand why!

Decapitating Oprah

2011-01-04T08:00:00.031-05:00

My wack-a-doo friend Kat often e-mails me with strange Photoshop requests, so I was not surprised to get this from her in an e-mail yesterday (along with some pictures she’d snagged for me off the Internet) :

“What I need is one of the Oprah heads (it can be sitting on the sidewalk if necessary and doesn’t have to be attached to a body, but a body might work better) -the cymbal flying through the air - the guy flying through the air - the band bus stuck under the overturned garbage truck. Simple, eh?”

Later she told me Oprah was to be decapitated by the flying cymbal… Yeah, probably information I should have gotten up front.

So, as I’m putting my photo masterpiece together, while simultaneously shirking my manuscript editing duties, something occurred to me:

Oprah could squash me like a bug.

Really, if you’re a writer who hopes to be on the New York Times Bestseller List one day, (hopefully before you’re too old and wrinkled to appreciate it) is it wise to be using Photoshop to decapitate the Queen of All Media? I mean, look what she did to that disingenuous James Frey when he dared to tell a few little (READ: humongous) white lies in his book. She took to Larry King and ripped his anus (and reputation) into a million little pieces.

The woman could drop me with the flick of one of her perfectly manicured pinky fingers. And yet… I threw caution (and common sense) to the wind and created the picture, anyway.

What the hell, you only live once. Being decimated by Oprah isn’t the worst way to go, I guess. But since I spent so much time working on Kat’s blog picture, I figured I’d parlay it into a blog post of my own. (Editing isn’t the only thing I’ve been shirking lately.)

Good news is, you get a double dose of yummy today - my back-story on the picture above, AND a copy of Kat’s blog to see what the image was created for.

Hopefully I’ll get back to blogging on a regular basis soon, but I just finished my first round of edits for Far From Happy and still have two more to go.

So, sue me - I’m about to become a PUBLISHED WRITER!!

Now, for our feature presentation:

WATCH OUT 2011, by Kat Nove *

I’m not going to start this by mentioning what a shitty year 2010 was for me personally. Millions had a worse year. And after all, some good things did happen to me.

A stranger begged me to take an adorable black kitten. I named her Mow (rhymes with WOW!) and she’s hilarious. This brings the official cat census at our house up to five. The unofficial number is eight due to three strays who now seem have made themselves at home.

I had a blast co-writing Waiting for Karl Rove with Jeni Decker. Now if only someone would publish it.

I won a writing contest and my short story It Ain’t Funny is now part of an anthology – The Cloud. Very gratifying since literary fiction is not exactly my comfort zone.

On December 30th Richard passed the test to become a master electrician, so within a few months we might actually go from living below the poverty level to sub-level middle class Americans. Woo-hoo!

Jeni and I have decided that 2011 is going to be our year. Her novel Far From Happy will be released soon and we’re making plans to finally meet in person so we can film ourselves doing something (no telling what) which will go viral on YouTube. Any suggestions? And no, I’m not into slap fighting. Unless it will sell books, and then I’ll slap that bitch on her bare ass if I have to.

For once in my life I’m going to be positive about a new year. I got up on the first morning of the new year and really looked in the mirror. I rarely do this because it’s counter-productive and can send me spiraling into a black hole of depression which makes a life sentence in a Turkish prison seem like a trip to Club Med. As I gazed at my reflection, I snapped to the fact that with the help of a professional makeup artist and approximately $10,000 worth of dental work, I could be beautiful. Who knew?

This year is definitely our year. After all, it’s 2011 and I was born in November. (The 11th month for those of you who aren’t calendar savvy.) My birthday is the 14th and if you add the 2 and the 2 ones, that equals 4 and if you put one of the ones in front of the 4, that’s 14! How could this not be our year?

Gotcha! I don’t believe in the power of positive thinking (or I would have won the Lotto by now), astrology, numerology or any other shit like that. There’s not a damn thing you can do about bad luck. Even someone like Oprah could be decapitated by a cymbal flying at thirty mph after a metal band’s bus collides with a garbage truck.

It’s our year because we’re good writers and we believe this well-kept secret is finally going to come out. (Now if Anderson Cooper only would.)

I refuse to let the silly omens which occurred January 1, 2011 diminish this belief in myself.

Omen #1 – The first sip of coffee I took slid down the wrong way causing me to nearly drown.

Omen #2 – One of the cats peed on the kitchen floor and I stepped in it.

Omen #3 – As I walked the first two miles of one of my new year’s resolutions, a punk biker tried to run over me. No, he didn’t have a skull and snake tattoo – he appeared to be about eight years old. I fucking hate third graders, don’t you?

Omen #4 - The first day of every year, my mother always made us eat black eyed peas for good luck. Next up to spoil my new year buzz – the black eyed peas. While eating mine, I discovered I am lucky since I didn’t choke on what I hoped was a piece of plastic and not a factory worker’s gnawed off big toenail.

Omen #5 – While watching a movie late in the evening, Mow decided to jump right on the stray cat Super Snatch. (I think Super Snatch loves me so much because I gave her such a cool name.). Unfortunately, Super Snatch was sitting on my lap at the time. I headed to the bathroom to staunch the bleeding in fifteen places. (Fucking cat missed with five of her claws so I guess that’s lucky.)

Omen #6 – In an uncharacteristic lapse into total honesty, Richard revealed he only watches dreadful movies like Megashark vs. Crocosaurus in the same room where I constantly sit in front of the computer as a form of retribution. For what? Can someone really receive a defective blow job?

I don’t believe in omens either. Even after I saw The Omen on my honeymoon and realized if I got pregnant that same night, I’d have a kid born on June 6, 1976. Three sixes in that birthday! Explain to the groom there’s no way you’re going to have sex with him because you don’t want your legacy to be mother of the Anti-Christ. (As if you can explain abstinence to a Mexican. So, yeah. We did it.)

So watch out 2011! You’re our bitch!

* If you're not following Kat's blog yet, you should be:

katnovian.com

'Priscilla The Great' author, Sybil Nelson

2010-12-18T08:00:00.017-05:00

Today I’d like to welcome Sybil Nelson, recently published author, as my guest. Welcome Sybil. So…let’s jump right in, shall we? Do you remember the first book you ever read?

I’m pretty sure it was Green Eggs and Ham. I’d have to ask my mother though.

Can you tell us what was one of your favorite books as a child? As an adult? Why?

Just one? I don’t know if I could pick just one. I know when I was in middle school my favorite author was V.C. Andrews. I just loved Flowers in the Attic. I recently re-read the entire series. I still love it. In high school, I loved Jane Austen, but I think my favorite book was Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I went through a huge European literature phase. Currently, I think my favorite book is I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. If you can’t tell, I love books with female main characters. I always find a way to relate to them in one way or another.

What made you want to become a writer?

Honestly, I wanted to become a writer because so many books I read did not feature any black female characters. I used to find that books were either all black or all white. I wanted to write books that were diverse and featured a mix of characters.

How do you handle writer’s block?

I do math homework. I’m studying to get my PhD in biostatistics and I find that I get my best ideas while I’m doing something that’s as far away from writing as possible. Doing math fits that.

As a writer, what types of stories and characters do you gravitate towards? As a reader?

I usually like to read and write books that have a romantic theme. I’m a sucker for a love story. But my debut novel is a superhero kids’ book. It’s actually not my thing, but it’s what came to me so it’s what I wrote. I do have a couple of romantic suspense novels written under my pen name, Leslie DuBois. I’m also a big fan of historical fiction, oddly enough. I love Philippa Gregory. I’m not likely to find any black characters in those books, that’s for sure. But I still love them!

As a writer, what responsibilities do you feel toward your readership, if any?

I feel that I have to let the character tell the story. Sometimes I don’t agree with what the character says or does, but I feel I have to be fair to both the character and the reader and tell the story the way it’s supposed to be told.

What book are you reading now?

I’m reading A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by him and decided to give one of his other works a try. So far, it’s fantastic.

As a reader, what are some of your pet peeves when reading a published book?

I know I’m bound to have typos in my book. Some always slip through the cracks, but I hate glaring errors, especially with continuity. I once read a series of books that had tons of grammatical errors. I let those errors slide and made it to like book four, but when book four mistakenly reported something that happened in book one, I was done. It was like a different person wrote the book and didn’t know what happened in the previous books.

You’ve recently published 'Priscilla the Great'. Congratulations! Can you give us a quick synopsis?

Priscilla the Great is about a spunky twelve-year-old who learns that she can shoot fire out of her fingers as well as a bunch of other cool powers. With the help of her genius best friend, Tai, they figure out that one of her parents was a genetic experiment and that she inherited certain gifts. When her parents’ identity is discovered, Priscilla has to come to the rescue and save her family.

What was your inspiration for this story?

The original book was called The Adventures of PMS Girl and Priscilla got her powers along with her first period. The book went through three revisions with a major publisher and they convinced me to take out the period angle. Even though that publisher eventually dropped me, I don’t regret the changes. I think it’s an even stronger book.

Oh, I remember that! At the time I remember thinking, “What a fantastic premise!” I think these behind-the-scenes book negotiations are fascinating, but also help writers see things from the perspective of the publisher. So, what was their reasoning for taking out the menstruation angle?

They didn't think a story about the menstrual cycle would appeal to kids. They thought it was too embarrassing for the age group. I agree to a certain extent. I think it would be a great concept for an older audience. I think I might try to turn the idea into a chick lit novel one day.

I think you should. I love the idea. So, on that note, what are the challenges and/or differences in writing for a YA audience?

I think all ten books that I’ve written could be considered YA. I don’t think I know how to write to an adult audience. I love the innocence and the open-mindedness of Middle Grade and Young Adult readers. I remember when I was that age, I would read anything and everything. Older readers tend to have a specific genre they gravitate towards and mainly stick to that area.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on a Young Adult Historical Fiction novel about an interracial couple during the 1917 race riots in St. Louis

That sounds interesting. We'll look forward to hearing more about it and your other work soon. Again, congratulations on the publication of Priscilla the Great!

~~~

Sybil Nelson is represented by Uwe Stender of TriadaUS. Her debut Novel Priscilla the Great was published on December 15th, 2010 by WorldMaker Media. She is currently a PhD student at the Medical University of South Carolina and has a master’s degree in mathematics from the College of Charleston and bachelor’s degrees from Washington and Lee University.

Her Websites:

www.priscillathegreat.com

www.sybilnelson.com

www.sybilnelson.com/wordpress

The Amazing Let Down

2010-12-13T11:28:00.002-05:00

THE AMAZING RACE: Well, the Season 17 finale was last night. I was happy for the winning team (though I’ve been forbidden to mention their names because Kat taped the show and hasn’t watched yet.)

As a teaser for next season, they announced that it would be called: The Amazing Race: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Dun, dun, dun!

Basically, season 18 will be returning team mates - you know the ones - previous contestants who argued the whole time or regularly broke the rules, whined their way through the race, couldn’t drive a stick shift, forgot their travel documents, were prone to crying jags. Yes, the entertaining people. So even though Kat and I won’t be accompanying our ‘dream teams’ -

- a pair of nuns, two gay guys who argue like an old married couple, an Italian grandmother/granddaughter team who have to be ‘bleeped’ every fifteen minutes because they have naughty mouths, a magician and his dimwitted apprentice, a sheep farmer and his wife, brothers who own & operate a sex toy manufacturing business in New Jersey, an old nudist couple who have trouble keeping their clothes on, a biker couple, and a pair of karaoke rappers - it should still be the most amusing Amazing Race yet.

The producers must have seen my pleas for more entertaining cast members on their web boards. Yeah, that’s probably what happened.

As you all know, we were preparing our submission package for next season - this newest announcement kind of puts the kibosh on our plans, but it’s just as well because we could both stand to lose a pound or twenty before we’re chosen as contestants.

And we will be chosen as contestants, mark my words. Any producer in their right mind - after reading our applications - wouldn’t be able to resist a menopausal woman and her erratic sidekick with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids (which we made much hay of in our video presentation, as well as the combined size of our mammary glands.)

Boobs + running = RATINGS, baby!

Below are some of the questions and my answers from the application. I've decided to share them because by the time a year rolls around and we're ready to submit for Season 19, I could be dead...or have figured out even better answers - in which case, why waste the clever bon mots, right?

You tell me: doesn’t this sound like a contestant you want to see fumble their way through a leg or two of the race before being carted off on a stretcher following a mid-air heart attack after being forced to bungee jump from the Eiffel Tower?

What is your current occupation? Please describe in 2 words.

Homemaker, writer

In two sentences, please describe what you do.

Mine the house for shit-pebbles hidden behind furniture by my toilet-challenged nine year old autistic son while fielding obsessively compulsive questions from my thirteen year old (also autistic) son. Then, I write about it.

How will these skills help you to win the Race?

I am a multi-tasker; I have dealt with enough bodily fluids that I don’t get queasy easily, and I have a good handle on my gag reflex and temper, respectively.

How long have you and your teammate known each other?

Three years

How did you meet?

Oh, we’ve never met in person. We’ve written a book together, though. We belong to the same writer’s workshop on the Internet. Tell me, how cool would our first meeting be if on THE AMAZING RACE? I see HUGE ratings. Huge like my boobs that would bounce up and down if I was required to run.

What do you hope to gain from participating in The Amazing Race with your partner (besides winning)?

Getting out of the house. I have two autistic kids, I don’t get out much.

What communication issues do you have with your partner that you would want to address while on the Race?

Kat (like my kids) has her own toileting issues. Apparently I’d be required to be at least 50 feet from the bathroom door at any time she needed to pee and 50 miles away should the need to evacuate arise. I would address this by regularly tormenting her in this regard, since the idea of going to the bathroom anywhere out of her comfort zone (the bathroom at her house) is most certainly a mental health issue for her.

What is the biggest disappointment you have experienced from your teammate?

She has steadfastly refused to videotape herself belly dancing so I can post it on YouTube. We’re working through it.

How did you resolve it?

I Photoshopped her head onto the body of an overweight Belly Dancer and sent it, via-email, to sixty of our closest friends - and all of her co-workers. Because, that's how we roll, people.

What famous person reminds you of yourself?

Bette Davis

What famous person reminds you of your teammate?

Truman Capote

What is your biggest pet peeve about your partner?

The above mentioned toileting issues and her inability to discuss said issues. I’ve suggested therapy. She’s suggested I mind my fu*%^ng business.

What time(s) together with your teammate are/have been the most memorable? Why?

We’re both fantastic writers, so working on our novel WAITING FOR KARL ROVE was pretty damned cool. (SHAMLESS PLUG: Soon to be e-published on Amazon.com for Kindle.)

What is the worst experience you have had with your teammate? Why?

I will direct your attention to what I refer to as The Snuggie® Incident. I purchased one and Kat said that spoke volumes about who I was, as a person, teasing me about it relentlessly and with the same regularity as an octogenarian whose first meal of every day consists of bran cereal and prune juice.

How are you and your teammate most alike?

We have the same sense of humor as well as a great love of coffee, chocolate and cigarettes.

How are you and your teammate most different?

She is menopausal while all my hormones are all still working effectively.

How could the Race change the current state of your relationship?

We’d actually meet in person for the first time - which could possibly mean the slow disintegration of our relationship…but anything for ratings, right? Because of her malady, you could look forward to tension between us, particularly if we were the first team to be eliminated because of our inability to work together effectively due to her hot flashes, mood swings and regular flatulence issues.

What is your opinion of foreigners?

Foreigners are people too. I’m very foreigner friendly. In fact, I would probably enjoy foreigners more than most of my immediate family.

What was the last vacation that you took?

Does my overnight stay at the hospital giving birth to my second child count as a vacation? If not, it’s been over 12 years and I only have a slight memory of a zoo in Miami and sand chafing my thighs.

Are there any locations in the world to which you absolutely will not travel? If so, identify where and explain why.

I’d rather not spend the night at Karl Rove’s house, though I would if it was one of the stops on THE AMAZING RACE itinerary. I’d do it, but I wouldn’t like it.

Have you ever traveled outside of the U.S.? If so, to where?

Is Mexico considered outside the US? I took a cruise there once in high school, but can only remember half of it due to the Singapore Slings. (which was the last time I drank alcohol, BTW)

Do you speak or read any foreign languages? If so, which one(s)?

My husband is Puerto Rican, so I speak a little Spanish, but only the naughty words. Basically, enough to get me beat up or arrested.

What country and place would you most like to visit and why?

Beggars can’t be choosers, but I’ve always wanted to see Yemen. Because I like the way it sounds when you say it: Yemen….Yemen…

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

2010-12-01T08:00:00.009-05:00

Oh boy. It would have been more funny if it hadn’t left the poor kid traumatized for life. And yet, it was all I could do to stem the tide of giggles threatening to explode from within me and wash over Jake like a tsunami of parental dysfunction.

The topic for today: Sex, via a study sheet from 7th grade Health Class. Let me remind you that Jake is thirteen years old, autistic, and riddled with OCD. He’s smart, overly sensitive and worries over everything to an infinite degree.

I pulled out Jake’s homework file and began quizzing him on his vocabulary words in preparation for his health test. It became immediately clear that he had a handle on the True/False questions as far as sexually transmitted diseases were concerned.

Quite a conundrum, then, that when I asked him to define sexual intercourse, he seemed to draw a blank. So while he knew, for instance that, ‘some STD’s are very dangerous; a few can permanently damage or kill you’, he didn’t actually understand how someone would get the STD in the first place.

“Jake, what does sexual intercourse mean?” I asked nervously.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what sex is?”

We’d briefly covered the whole ‘how babies are made’ a year or so ago, but apparently Jake hadn’t put together the fact that penis + vagina = baby (or anything else, for that matter). They’d also covered the topic at school last year, via one of those ‘Your Maturing Body’ movies. But Jake doesn’t even like the idea of discussing kissing, so it’s somewhat of a touchy subject. We’d also previously discussed matters of which we Catholics refer to as ‘self-abuse’. He’d been duly informed that ‘tickling his wiener’ was completely normal and wouldn’t cause it to fall off. It was touch and go there for a while, but after what I assume were many private trial runs, and his penis remained firmly attached, he’d stopped obsessing about it.

Now, with his vocabulary list clutched firmly in one hand, I proceeded to give Jake a nuts and bolts description of sexual intercourse using one erect finger and a hand curved into a little circle.

“So…” I concluded, using as many of his vocabulary words in the sentence as possible, “…this is the penis (finger) and this is the vagina (hand in a little ‘o’) and a Mom and Dad have sex like this and the semen comes out of the penis when the Dad ejaculates, and there is sperm in the semen.” I was about to explain that the Mom produces an egg and when the sperm and egg meet, a baby is made, but he’d already put his hands over his ears and started whining.

“Oh my God! Stop. I don’t like Health Class. I want to take Spanish. When does Spanish class start?” Jake’s face was in full-on panic mode, while my inner sadist was hopped up on Red Bull and ready to rumble. I am proud of the fact that I was able to keep it under control, letting only a minor chortle escape.

“Not until the end of the semester, Jake. Calm down. This is a perfectly natural thing.”

“No, it’s gross! And now I don’t know why someone wrote on the bathroom wall, SEX RULES, because it does not rule, it’s GROSS!” Jake turned his back on me and sat in a nearby chair. “Only weird people do that.”

“Jake, I hate to tell you this, but if your Dad and I hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t be here.”

Jake mumbled something I didn’t catch, slumping down further into the chair. I took a deep breath and looked over the rest of the vocabulary words. Next on the list: clitoris.

Are you kidding me?!

Listen, we’d only minutes earlier discussed the definition of foreskin and circumcision - before we got into the whole STD thing - and he wasn’t happy about the fact that I’d let the pediatrician lop off a part of his penis he never knew he had. He found it pretty disturbing, but managed to assimilate that information and move on. If the whole sex thing had him freaked out, I was sure it was unwise to venture further into female pleasure.

Even though the definition on the study sheet seemed rather banal…

Clitoris - The part of the female genitals that’s full of nerves and becomes erect. It has a glans and a shaft like a penis, but only its glans is on the out side of the body, and it’s much smaller.

…I can assure you that this definition - should I have chosen to explain it - would have left Jake thinking I had a tiny penis, and that wasn’t something I was comfortable with. I made an executive decision to skip it. In fact, we skipped a few, which didn’t bode well for his future test score, but at that point I felt the need to pull him back from his horrified, trance-like state, rather than try to explain things that I didn’t think the kid was even remotely able to process.

I nudged him around to look at me and after a few moments of obstinate silence, we went over a few of the easier words like erection. I used the finger again for a visual aid.

Jake cringed.

Unfortunately, when we got to buttocks, the politically correct Mom in me felt it necessary to elaborate on the fact that not only man and women had sex, but also men and men, as well as women and women. Don’t judge me! Anus was one of the vocabulary words so the discussion naturally progressed! Also, we’ve had the homosexual discussion before - when Jake was six, in fact - and asked if a man could marry a man. I’d used age-appropriate language, but he knew the basics. (I will also note that the vocabulary list alluded to oral and anal sex in the definition of sexual intercourse.)

“So, not just men and women, but also men and men can have sex, and when they do, a man can put his penis into the anus of another man.” I held my breath.

“Oh, come on! Be serious, Mom.” Jake groaned.

“I’m serious, buddy. That’s how gay men have sex. It’s nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Nothing about sex is bad as long as both people want to do it together.”

“I’m never doing it. NEVER!”

“Well, that’s up to you, but I’m pretty sure you’ll change your mind one day.”

The thing is, I don’t really know if Jake will change his mind one day. Any sort of physical intimacy, shy of a hug or a peck on the cheek, makes him uncomfortable. All I can do, for now, is give him the facts and hope that one day he comes to a better understanding of sex, love and emotion. There will certainly need to be more discussions to follow, but all in good time.

I’m just thankful he’s only got about four more weeks of Health, and then he’s on to Spanish class.

Hola Jake. ¿Cómo estás?
(TRANSLATION: Hello Jake. How are you?)

Bien gracias. No vamos a discutir el sexo de aquí, ¿verdad?
(TRANSLATION: Fine thank you. We won't be discussing sex in here, right?)

Amazing Race: Chunky Addict Edition

2010-11-30T08:00:00.025-05:00

…or as Kat calls it, Death March 2011.

You see, I’ve got an idea, spurred on by the fact that I doubt Kat and I will ever be chosen by the producers of The Amazing Race. As one website describes the show:

“The producers of The Amazing Race are looking for a certain charisma and personality from the contestants and want the teams to have an interesting or strong relationship. You have to look good on camera and offer a certain dynamic and confidence if you want to be chosen.”

We’ve got charisma, confidence and personality in spades - but neither of us are ‘camera ready’ in the sense that you won’t find a six pack, eating disorder or head of blonde hair between us. (Unless an anorexic, bleach blonde aerobics instructor happens to come stand between us.)

So we bandy about ideas in a flurry of e-mails discussing our next move:

KAT: Okay, the looking good part disqualifies me right away...they probably wouldn't even bother reading our HILARIOUS applications if they saw the video first. Although I'm not opposed to putting it up on YouTube and making an ass of myself. Now how on earth do we get followers, though? Could it be possible that people would click on this particular video when they seem determined to avoid all our other videos? We’ve done everything short of appearing on camera in a ménage à trois with Dick Cheney, to no avail.

JENI: Hmmm. Yes, people seem to be purposely obstinate regarding our continued need for attention and praise… (youtube.com/agorophobejeni)

KAT: I'm TOTALLY committed to losing 20 + pounds by the end of January, so at that time a new video can be made where I SHOULD look better...or at least thinner. Jeni, start walking and lifting weights! The Race requires major upper body strength which I KNOW I don't have and SUSPECT you don't have! Hahaha!

JENI: Yeah, all my upper body strength is in my mouth. ;) But, I’ve got an idea. Let’s pitch them a BETTER reality show idea. One that would provide much more humor (as well as audience participatory mocking and even higher ratings!)

Amazing Race: Chunky Edition

All contestants must be at least 20 lbs. overweight and be smokers. They will not be allowed to smoke at all during the race (on and off camera times included). Any contestant found cheating (on first offense*) will be subjected to a loss of 4 hours of race time and public humiliation in the form of mud-wrestling a native of whatever country we’re visiting, while wearing a bikini (applies for women AND men).

(*Second offense - Immediate expulsion from the show with a parting gift of two King Size Nestle Chunky™ bars to comfort them on their humiliating trip home. NOTE TO PRODUCERS: Look at me! I’ve even got your first sponsor.)

Also, contestants will be given a strict diet to adhere to which contains no sugar, saturated fat or carbs. They could weigh contestants before the start and at the end to see how much weight we lost running our fat asses off!!! It's like The Amazing Race and The Biggest Loser rolled into one!

I can already see it:

Death March 2011: Update

Excerpt from a report from the producers to the Studio Execs. after first round eliminations:

As the contestants wheeze their way toward the end of the first day, thighs chaffed, skin mottled and sweaty, the first pair to be eliminated was Jeni Decker & Kat Nove, who mutually decided they’d have more fun spending the rest of their time in Amsterdam in ‘Toke Up’, a popular cigar-slash-marijuana bar. They were last seen entering the establishment, laughing uproariously before an ensuing coughing jag required Ms. Decker to drag Ms. Nove the rest of the way inside the building.

What I'm Willing To Do To Get On The Amazing Race

2010-11-29T08:00:00.007-05:00

I have one question. Where are all of the Reality-TV-Worthy oddballs - people we can really sink our teeth into? If I were on The Amazing Race, I’d want to compete against a pair of nuns, two gay guys who argue like an old married couple, an Italian grandmother/granddaughter team who have to be ‘bleeped’ every fifteen minutes because they have naughty mouths, a magician and his dimwitted apprentice, a sheep farmer and his wife, brothers who own & operate a sex toy manufacturing business in New Jersey, an old nudist couple who have trouble keeping their clothes on, a biker couple, two politically incorrect humor writers (my friend Kat and I could cover that base) and a pair of karaoke rappers.

I think the producers need to spice that show up, so my friend Kat and I are going to apply. I’m told that show needs an injection of humor. I don’t watch reality TV much, but since Kat asked me (begged, actually) to apply to be her partner on the show, I started taping episodes in mid-season.

So, I watched last night.

What I’m seeing already concerns me. I don’t look like any of the contestants, and for me to watch an entire season of this show, I’d need more than what they’re offering.

So, Kat and I are willing to help them out in that regard. I think a menopausal woman and her erratic sidekick (the mother of two autistic kids with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids ) would be a welcome addition to the show.

When I told Breadwinner (the husband) what I was up to, he was pleasantly supportive, though I’m pretty sure his left eye started twitching, ominously. He asked, “How long would you be gone?”

I said, “A week…or twelve.” I’ve never been away from the kids for more than the time it takes to do my grocery shopping, so it would also be an adventure for him. He’s a good father, but he’s not exactly tuned in to the delicate balance required to deal with two autistic kids on a daily basis. I’m not sure he’d even be able to get them both ready for and safely delivered to school. But for a chance at winning a million dollars, I’d do just about anything and cheerfully make Breadwinner suffer for it.

Let him deal with scat-a-licious undies, bedtime rituals, and Jake’s asking him, “I’m going to heaven, right?” like 759 times a day. Besides, I’m pretty sure it’s his turn. I need a vacation.

What would I do, you ask, to get my hands on that cash? Anything they ask. (Is the whole casting couch thing still a reality?) I will run till my big bazooms give me black eyes - and still keep going like the Energizer Bunny - I will eat anything but a cockroach, I will jump out of an airplane (with a parachute) I will tongue-kiss a sweatshop owner in Yemen (I’m hoping to go to Yemen. I like the way it sounds when you say it.) I will run topless through the middle of town singing Ricky Martin’s “Shake your Bon-Bon”…I will do a great many things and the stuff I won’t do, I’ll force Kat to do.

That’s what partners are for. Stay tuned for blog updates on our Amazing Race effort.

Shut up and Let Them Touch Your Junk

2010-11-24T11:51:00.001-05:00

Man I’m tired of all of the media coverage about the TSA crap. Seriously, how slow does the news cycle have to be that we’ve got to make such a huge deal of this? Isn’t North Korea making more bombs, or doesn’t that count as terrorism? I guess that isn’t as ‘sexy’ a story as a little public molestation.

Frankly, I don’t get what all the hubbub is about, bub.

For my money, I’d rather know that everyone getting on the huge metal object that I’ll be shooting through the sky in, is being fondled for bombs. I have no problem with submitting to any and all procedures required to make sure my airplane lands safely and I get to live another day. Hell, I’ll take my bra off if you need to check underneath the twins, and I won’t even need to remove my shirt to do it* - THAT’S how serious I am about pat-downs in the interest of my safety. (*All the ladies out there will know what I’m talkin’ about. It’s a party trick we’re taught when we turn fifteen and we spend our lives amazing the males in our lives with it. Apparently it never gets old.)

Look at it this way. The whole premise of the ‘last line of defense’ is frightening in and of itself. I mean, if someone has managed to make it into an airport with a bomb, we’ve kind of dropped the ball, haven’t we? That means the CIA and FBI and all of those other secret government agencies listening in on phone calls - presumably to ferret out possible terrorist intent - haven’t done what they get paid the big bucks to do.

I’m not sure why a terrorist group hasn’t figured out that they could get three or four of their buddies and each strap on a bomb, then position themselves in a few different areas of the airport: Check in, baggage claim, airport bars and the duty-free shop. And don’t forget the guy who could set off a bomb WHILE IN LINE to be screened - you know, when he’s in the middle of a crowd of a few hundred impatient passengers. Talk about irony.

3 - 2 - 1- KABLAM! I don’t know much about explosives, but I’m pretty sure they could at least take a few chunks out of a terminal and maim or kill a few hundred people in the process, without ever getting near the airport screeners.

And what about Disney? They aren’t patting people down to get inside the Magic Kingdom. I always thought, if I were a terrorist, that sending a small militia of terrorists in with bombs inside their Mickey Mouse backpacks would be a fantastic way to get our government’s attention. The children, people!!! They’re taking aim at the CHILDREN!!

Or what about dispatching terrorists to apply to be Santa’s at the local department stores!!!! Macy’s doesn’t require a full body scan on entry, so at noon on the ‘big day’ every jolly-old-terrorist could push the button and blow St. Nick to smithereens right in front of dozens of kids. Multiply that by a couple of stores per state and you’ve got a story that won’t lose steam till Easter, my friends.

Okay, take a breath now and hold your hate mail. What I’m trying to say is this: if the ‘bad guys’ want to get us, there are plenty of ways they can get us. So, if airport security wants to feel us all up prior to boarding so that we are able to take another flight on another day, and not crash in a fiery explosion, I say let them do it. I think it’s pretty damn amazing that we can walk onto a big flying machine and in two hours be in another state. That alone seems kind of risky, and if I’m willing to take that risk, I’d like to mitigate any other risks, whenever possible.

(By the way, I'm not saying the proceedures in place are the most effective - that's another topic altogether. But until such time as they implement different proceedures, how 'bout we just do what we're asked to do?)

So, if I may be so bold…just shut the hell up and let them touch your junk. You never know, you might just like it.

Or, you know, you could just… not fly. It’s not a right, people. It’s a luxury.

Just sayin’.

I'm Tired of America

2010-11-22T13:12:00.001-05:00

I think I watch too much ‘news’. I feel guilty if I don’t try and keep up with what’s going on in the world around me - specifically the United States and what we’re doing, what we’re not doing, what we should be doing but can’t muster up the balls to do - and yet, I feel this gnawing sense of dread when I do.

I know that I’m tired of America, but I don’t want to lose faith in Americans. If we are to believe everything we watch in the national media, you’d think we as a society are a festering pustule bent on infecting those around us; we’re a sociological version of the swine-flu and we’re catching.

I refuse to believe that. I have neighbors, good ole’ beer-swilling boys with tractors who would be the first to stop and pull you out of a ditch if you slid off the road in a snow storm. Lovely men and women who are compassionate and kind to one another in their dealings. People who have hope for the future.

But I’m not seeing so much of that on television news coverage so I’m starting to have my doubts.

I’m seeing political rallies and campaign ads where the signs and sound bytes have crossed from rude to racist; violent and incendiary. I’m seeing talking bobble-heads on every news program who seem to think they know what’s best for me and my family and are bound and determined to make sure we get it, whether we like it or not - via less than meaningful reporting and the hawking of blatant lies.

I’m seeing people who should know better pervert the Constitution in a way that suggests if they don’t like how things are going, it’s perfectly appropriate for them to pull out their guns and bust a cap in the ass of anyone who disagrees with them. (Second amendment remedies for those of you who don’t watch the news channels with morbid fascination like I do.)

I’m seeing senators and representatives who treat their jobs like a political chess game with no thought for how their partisan wrangling and manipulation is going to pull a country that’s already teetering on a precipice into a vast chasm from which we will not be able to escape.

I’m tired of newly elected politicians saying ‘America has spoken’, even though it’s abundantly clear they think we’ve said something we haven’t. Just because people overwhelmingly said ‘no’ to one thing, doesn’t mean that gives policy maker’s carte blanche to tick a little ‘X’ in the YES box next to everything on their own agenda - not to mention propagandize everything the other side says to the point of absurdity.

No, I do not think the rich need tax cuts, because of some sort of misguided assumption that certain people espouse, which presumes jobs will miraculously trickle down like powdered sugar on the doughnut that is America. That’s just not going to happen. How do I know that? Because small and large businesses have tightened their belts and happily learned how to work with less manpower since the rise in unemployment. If consumers aren't consuming, there isn't the demand there once was. So until such time as the demand rises, I don't see businesses taking that kind of risk - and if they do take that gamble, I'd be concerned about the viability of that business. To me, it's common sense.

To politicians, not so much.

We’re in an altogether different economic time than we’ve ever had to endure and it’s hard to cure all that ails us when there are powerful forces bent on heading backwards and hoping it’ll all come out in the wash, simply because they don’t have any practical solutions.

We might as well consult the Magic 8-Ball* at this point because I’m not seeing much in the way of real and lasting solutions that will ever come out of a congress bent on logjam.

*ANSWER: Outlook not so good

I find myself wondering how Obama’s message of HOPE and CHANGE suddenly translated into: I WILL FIX EVERYTHING IN TWO YEARS AND WE'LL ALL BE DANCING IN THE FUCKING STREETS. FREE McRIBS FOR EVERYONE!!!

When did he promise that? And how, pray tell, did we come to the untenable conclusion that it would only take twenty-four months to clean up the steaming pile of guano that was left in the Presidential inbox by the last Oval Office tenants? I’m here to tell you - as someone with a vast knowledge of everything scat related - it takes a butt-load of disinfectant to clean that kind of mess up.

Is it just me, or have we become an impatient and unforgiving lot, incapable of understanding that not everything is drive-thru ready? That we’re going to have to dig our heels in for the long haul - that life is not Twitter, where you can tickle out 140 characters and move on to the next topic. Where our future health, security and well-being aren’t instant gratification kinds of things. There is a lot of heavy-lifting, compromise and fixing to do in America. It’s not going to happen overnight and we should understand that, but it’s not going to happen at all unless we start listening to one another, instead of SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF OUR LUNGS, trying to shut down the debate coming from the other side.

I wish everyone would just simmer down and listen for a minute so that, perhaps, clearer heads can prevail. As a famous song says… you can’t always get what you want…but you get what you need…

What I’m really afraid of, though, is that we’re not only not going to get what we want, but we’re not even going to get what we need. Particularly our children; the beneficiaries of the mess we’ve all created. And make no mistake - we’re all guilty. We’ve all participated in one way or the other.

The state of our Union doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So while the greedy banks, mismanaged car companies, shady, self-involved politicians and partisan media have all done their fair share of fucking up, we’re not exactly blameless. The fabric of our collective society is sewn with many individual threads. Each thread represents one of us and when one thread weakens or breaks, a hole forms. A hole can cause a tear.

From my perspective, Old Glory’s in need of some mending.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as guilty as anyone. So let me proffer a supposition, and you can assume the following applies to the ‘royal you’:

If you didn’t get out and vote and instead chose to sit and yell at the TV on election night - if you took out a loan you knew was not within your means or charged those credit cards up to the hilt - if you said things like nig—(insert racial slur here) or fa—(insert homophobic word rhyming with maggot here) in front of your kids, or even subtly disregarded who someone else is, all out of misguided fear and/or ignorance, allowing the hatemongering to spread like an insidious disease - if you’re happy to blog, Twitter or Blackberry your life away, or watch hours of reality television instead of helping your kid with his homework (or reading to him) because his school is severely under-funded and he’s not getting the attention he needs, but you justify not taking that extra hour with him because you’re just too tired and, anyway, that’s his teacher’s job (and she should be happy to have one in this economy) - if you think those people over there on unemployment are just lazy and don’t want to work - if you think your religion is THE religion - if you think because you make a certain amount of money and have health care, but that other guy, over there shouldn’t get quality medical attention because he can’t pay for it—

…if you did or said anything causing that little voice in your head to whisper in your ear, you might be contributing, however little, to the huge mess we’re in now.

If you are one of those few people who doesn’t have that little inner-voice, well then you’re just a sociopath and probably beyond help. But, if you’re the average American who can’t plead insanity in a court of law, and find it easier to blame the person who has a different outlook on things, so be it. But I’m here to tell you we’re ALL to blame. You can take that to the bank. (Just don’t try to get a loan because you’re screwed in that regard.)

We’re all either actively doing it or doing it by default, because every day, in every way, if we’re not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem. We’re all to blame. Except our kids. They’re not to blame…yet. But one day, they will be. They’ll be the ones making the choices and decisions based on how we taught them - and the way it’s looking right now, it won’t be long before they’ll be looking for someone to blame.

One guess as to who they’ll be looking at.

When future generations don’t have those things called Medicare and Medicaid because they’re effectively non-existent - and when we’re ninety and find ourselves homeless because the well of Social Security has run dry - who will we look to then?

Who will we blame?

I suppose it will be easy enough to rely on tried-and-true habits; to blame it on the media or politicians or the guy down the block who doesn’t agree with us. But in the end, it won’t matter who we blame because it won’t change reality - we’re giving our kids the shaft and we’re doing it blatantly and knowingly and there is absolutely no excuse.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I need a Xanax…or five.

I have to believe America's better than how we appear in High-Definition TV - or I might as well not even bother to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe I’m wrong. God help me if I am. God help us all.

God. Yeah, that’s a topic for another day, so I’ll leave you with a little video. Feel free to address all hate mail to Jeni. There’s even a convenient little clickable e-mail link at the top of the page.

God Bless America…or something like that.

Mise en abîme

2010-11-16T08:00:00.010-05:00

She was a stunner, a poet; Sylvia Plath was one of her many peers…

Anne Sexton was an amazing poet, complete with the obligatory mental health issues that seem mandatory to creative genius.

What is it about the creative process that often attracts persons of ‘challenged’ mental health or substance abuse? I tend to think it is our propensity for self-examination, to the point of self-flagellation. It is not easy to look deep into the crevices of the soul—particularly when what you find there is something less-than Thanksgiving Dinner conversation material.

It is also fascinating to note that writing, in particular, seems to be a narcissistic endeavor. “Look at me! Look at me! Listen: I have something you need to hear!”

It is no wonder, then, that many writers have gone the way of alcoholism, depression and in many cases, suicide. That isn’t an option I could ever ponder, simply because in my case I’d consider it the ultimate in selfishness. I have two autistic kids. They’ve got enough shit on their plates without me bending over and taking a dump on their peas and carrots.

But I can relate to the inclination in theory, anyway. I’m not a poet but I can understand where it all comes from…that need to discover self or other; to shine a light on life’s sores. That taste in your mouth when you stumble upon the perfect word or phrase. The urge to get it all down, lest it disappear forever.

Anne, this one’s for you, lady.

~ Mise en abîme ~

feelin’ very Plath today
trouble keeping ennui at bay
the straw that broke the proverbial cliché
was running out of mayonnaise

earsplitting life rains on my cavalcade

how long
can over-ripe fruit hang
before the inevitable thump
where hope and reality collide
bruising skin and ego

slightly Sexton round half-past three
with no fur coat, vodka or garage
forced to rethink my hapless homage
grudgingly substituted mustard

I have a king, Mr. Dream
smaller than yours, no doubt
equally dear
I wonder will it whimper to a close
last regret siphoned like stolen gas
from a tank already parched

‘I’m going to heaven, right Mom?’ he asks for the seventeenth time today

Yes! with conviction I mutter
though I do not really feel that way
I’m not against God, per se
kids should have imaginary friends

grousing Woolf due to winter’s malcontent
pond behind the house is frozen
gathering stones for my pockets, it seems
time was not well spent

chores and drudgery the tender frenulum
between need, want, must do something
halting frenetic energy
with no deliberate target

“Heaven’s real, right Mom? ” OCD!

standing between two mirrors I see
me within a me
want
need
crave
yearn
what? is it
where? are we going
when? I’m ready
why? not now

‘I’m going to heaven, right Mom?’ Is death the freedom to begin?

Now!
now, now
Nownownownownow
I foment to a mercurial eruption

Babushka!

standing between two mirrors I see
the containment of the container within the contained
constant self-reflection, endlessly repeating frames
hauntingly familiar

stalled between am and will be
I could shuffle toward Sylvia’s path
but with my oven out of gas
I’d have to use the microwave

I Love My Snuggie®

2010-11-15T11:22:00.001-05:00

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for those as seen on TV products. Now that proclivity is leaking over to my kids.

Jake put a Criss Angel Mindfreak Magic Kit on his Christmas list; his resolution for 2011 is to learn to levitate.

Then, on Thursday when I took Jaxson in to school, one of the little girls we see going to class every day had a Pillow Pet®.

As soon as Jax saw it he started to sing: “Isss a piw-wo, isss a pet. Iss a piw-wo PET!”

(TRANSLATION: It’s a pillow! It’s a pet! It’s a pillow pet!)

Perhaps I should consider cutting down their television time, because it’s getting perilously close to Christmas and the advertisements are coming fast and furious. Jaxson screams out his requests during every commercial break and because those appear at intervals of every seven minutes or so, I find myself screaming, “We’ll see!” about eleven hundred times a day.

(Please don’t do the math or you will be able to accurately extrapolate the amount of time I allow the kids to watch television and, frankly, I don’t need your judgment—silent or otherwise.)

Anyway…my favorite ‘as seen on TV product’ is the Snuggie®. I used to be ashamed to admit I actually bought one, but now I am an unabashed card-carrying member of the Snuggie® contingent. My friend Kat Nove teases me about it with the same regularity as an octogenarian whose first meal of every day consists of bran cereal and prune juice.

She asserts my Snuggie ownership says a lot about me. I assert she can take her assertions and shove them into her Texas-sized boca grande. I will no longer apologize for my Snuggie-love. Snuggie keeps me warm on frigid Michigan nights as I watch Dexter or Glee. Snuggie is machine washable—the importance of which can not be underestimated in my household. Snuggie is soft and cuddly when I add a capful of lilac-scented fabric softener to the rinse cycle.

Snuggie is my friend.

My only complaint is that Snuggie is ‘backless’, meaning it’s basically a fancy hospital gown with longer, plusher, sleeves. I know, I know… it’s supposed to be sort of a lap blanket, but the thing that would make it perfect would be to sew two Snuggies together at the seams:

Snuggie II: The Ultimate Schmatte

Sales would go through the roof if they invented Snuggie Ulti-schmatte. Every Jewish, Italian and Puerto Rican septuagenarian (and I) would be lined up to get one.

So, get on it, Snuggie people. My ass is cold.

If you’d like to see what Kat Nove has to say about the Snuggie (and more) , check out her v-log post:

And now your moment of absurd Zen:

Snuggie Parody

Addicted to....Deadpan Karaoke

2010-11-09T09:15:00.000-05:00

As the Remote Control Terrorist says, ‘the crazy broads’ are at it again. Just to refresh your memory, the RTC is Kat Nove’s significant other and that’s the moniker she thought best suited the man she occasionally shares her vagina with. At any rate, because we wrote him into WAITING FOR KARL ROVE (our fantastic book that hasn’t been snapped up by a publisher yet) we had to give him an alias. Family members can sue and the last thing either of us wants is family cashing in on the eventual success we know is imminent. We’ve both worked too long and hard for anyone but us to reap the rewards of our literary genius.

What the RTC was referring to when he called us ‘crazy broads’ was the following video, which we put together to cheer up a sick writer friend. Much Photoshopping was involved, not to mention more deadpan karaoke (sung to the tune of Addicted to Love) and a really cheesy musical rendition of Robert Palmer’s song - one that will cause him to roll over in his grave when he eventually dies. (He’s still alive, right?)

Anyway today’s blog is only for one person - you know who you are mister - but the rest of you are more than welcomed to partake.

ADDICTED TO DILL

The Sound of Music

2010-11-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

Nine year old Jaxson is a music aficionado. Never mind that he’s just learning to put a complete sentence together. Music, it seems, is the great equalizer - no matter who you are, race, religion, sexual orientation, left brained, right brained, pea-brained, autistic or not, it’s one of the few things in life we all agree on. Content, perhaps not, but I’ve never met a person that wasn’t somehow moved by music.

Shaken, stirred, encouraged, befriended, buoyed, comforted; whatever word you choose to associate with how music affects you, none among us can say music doesn’t do something to that inner part of our souls that only being touched by harmony and melody can.

Jaxson is able to associate the track numbers on the CD’s loaded into the car stereo with his favorite songs. I can load up to six disks at a time, and once he hears the first few notes of any particular disk, he remembers his favorites by number.

With camera in hand (because he films on the way to school most days) he shouts out his requests from the back seat.

“Seven, Mom!” That would be Sunny Side of the Street off Willie Nelson’s Stardust Album.

…just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.

I had an Erasure disk loaded this week and he simply had to listen to Drama over and over:

…one rule for us, for you another - do unto yourself as you’d see fit for your brother…

If I’m listening to Ringo Starr, he loves Six O’Clock:

…I don’t treat you like I like to treat you. Every planet in the sky’s in your eyes…

That one always chokes me up because it could be the soundtrack of our relationship. (He and Jake are my Venus, my Mars - my little Mallomars!)

Jaxson loves Rufus Wainwright’s Movies of Myself:

…start givin’ me something, a love that is longer than a day, stop makin’ my heart say something that it doesn’t want to say…

And to my utter delight, the child loves The Beatles. Because this is something I share in common with my own parents, I get a little misty every time he yells, “Three, Ma!” ( Maxwell’s Silver Hammer )

“Seven, Ma! Hurry!” he happily requests. ( Here Comes the Sun )

But only once has he ever tried to sing along to a song. I will never forget that day. It was one of the most miraculous experiences of my life, particularly because of the song in question. For some reason, the child - out of nowhere, mind you - started singing The Beatles’ Because, giving voice to the sounds and lyrics he’d heard so many times before:

…because the world is round, it turns me on…because the wind is high, it blows my mind…love is old, love is new; love is old, love is you…because the sky is blue, it makes me cry…

My children blow my mind, their amazing brains turn me on, and their ability to connect to things in a way that I cannot imagine—well, it makes me cry. Whatever your preconceptions are about autism, make no mistake: while my boys might not be making the SAME connections you or I are making, they’re making their OWN connections. To music, to people, to things they taste, touch, smell, feel… and our differences, however significant or insignificant are a daily reminder that there is never one way ( or right way ) to experience anything.

Every journey is unique and we should all remember to be happy for the simple privilege of life and the little miracles we experience along the way.

With that, take a moment to enjoy one of those little miracles - The Beatles, Because.

Do it for the Dead Birdie…

2010-11-02T13:17:00.000-04:00

Did you vote? I did, see:

I would have taken a picture inside as I fed my ballot into the machine, but the octogenarians watching over the small town voting process didn’t look like they’d take too kindly to any deviation from the process. God forbid I caused a ruckus that ended up on CNN tonight, having contributed in some way to a re-count.

Okay, people - here’s the deal. I was raised a Catholic, so I know how guilt works. See this picture:

Sometimes you’re the bird, sometimes you’re the grill - (a perfect metaphor for where we are as a country right now--either you’re getting screwed or you’re the one doing the screwing) but either way, this little birdie lost his life. Let’s pretend he did it for his country.

For AMERICA.

Don’t let his death have been in vain. Do it for the birdie, people. For the birdie… (sigh, sniffle, choke back tears)

GET OFF YOUR ASS AND VOTE.

Can't We All Just Get A Bong?

2010-11-01T08:00:00.021-04:00

My cohort, co-author, co-conspirator and friend, Kat Nove went to the Austin, Texas Rally to Restore Sanity this weekend, and all I got were some lousy pictures.

No, that is not bitterness you hear - it’s sarcasm.

I watched from the cheap seats (my couch) switching back and forth to various cable news channels looking for coverage. I started getting irritated due to the universal lack of knowledge vis à vis the demographics of the attendees. The talking bobble-heads were saying things like:

“But will these translate to VOTES on Tuesday?”

“The audience is predominantly young and white.”

“Is this crowd as big as the Beck rally?” (“Yes, and the collective IQ was much higher as well,” I replied in requisite snarky fashion.)

I’d like to challenge these ageist misconceptions with Kat’s photos of the crowd. But, first off, you should know that Kat - her own self - is menopausal.

From left to right, that would be:

Itchy
Bitchy
Sleepy
Sweaty
Forgetful
Crazy &
Bloaty

At any rate, here we have an attendee who’s blatantly not conforming to bobble-headed presumptive demographics. By the way, I’m not posting this to shame my almost-senior friend - Her Moodiness has spoken well and often about her particular affliction and its symptoms. Besides, at 41, I’m not that far behind her; I’ve already got the aches, pains and mood swings to prove it.

Here’s Kat with her Jon Stewart sign. Ain’t she cute?

Now here’s a picture where I’ve taken the time to point out ‘old folks’ (READ: Anyone over 30) There was plenty of gray hair in the crowd.

Regardless of your political affiliation or age, one thing is certain: Tomorrow you need to get your ass to the local polling station and cast your vote. Otherwise you don’t have any room to complain when we collectively start to circle the drain. Make your voice heard, people.

Get out and vote!

And now, your moment of Zen:

Friends Don’t Let Friends Speed-Dial Drunk

2010-10-26T08:00:00.006-04:00

My blog theme this week seems to be stupid is as stupid does. Since we know whatever we post will be here forever - just like a drunken early morning phone call that’s captured on an answering machine - I feel the need to get this all down on the net. I’d like to have a record of exactly what was going on in October of 2010 for when I’m an old codger who wants to take a stroll down memory lane.

So, you remember the Clarence Thomas hearings, right? Where Anita Hill, a co-worker, accused him of sexual harassment? Let me refresh your memory: Pubic hairs on sodas - yeah, that’s the one.

Okay, so Clarence’s wife is either a morning drinker or she’s extremely pissed at her husband and it has taken her a few years to decide which passive-aggressive path to take toward revenge. It seems a morning phone call to Anita Hill is what she decided.

"I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day."

I’d say someone had a nice 7am highball with her Cheerios. The message was left on Saturday morning at 7:30 am, which makes me wonder if Clarence was a little less than….um, generous in bed the night before.

ONE WORD to Supreme Court Justice Thomas: RECIPROCATION.

I’m pretty sure if you’d curled your wife’s toes Friday night, she wouldn’t have felt the need to dial under the influence.

Ginny, if your hope was to ‘put this all behind you’ (Satan, get thee behind me!) I’m not sure you understand what BEHIND means. Your wacky early morning antics did just the opposite. You tossed that bomb AHEAD of you, right in the path of the oncoming politirati.

My advice: A little less happy hour and a little more Sesame Street in the morning. I’m sure Bert, Ernie and Big Bird can teach you a thing or two about opposites.

Plus, that Grover is a pip!

Karl's Angels

2010-10-25T08:00:00.041-04:00

Yeah, I’m pretty sure HE’S up to something. This has Karl Rove’s chubby, grubby paw prints all over it. These chicks can’t be for real, so unless this is round one of the newest reality show - America’s Most Idiotic Politicians - I’m going on record now:

This is a classic Republican tactic: obfuscate and redirect.

While all of America is distracted by the whirlwind of lunacy that is the primary election coverage, something is happening behind the scenes.

What I want to know is, what's the great and powerful Oz doing behind the scenes while the rest of us guffaw our way through debates and absurd sound bytes? Be afraid, people. While we pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, I’m certain he’s up to no good. Like starting another war. Take a look at his gals and you tell ME if these wing-nuts can be ANYTHING but subterfuge for some greater rear assault on America:

First, the big guns:

Sara Palin

Momma Grizz is traveling all over the US with her bottled water and bendy straws in tow, working TeaBaggers into a mouth-frothing tizzy. Anyone who doesn’t think she’s running for President in 2012 has probably had a lobotomy. Sara is making waves AND cash, hand over fist. I guess quitting her old job was a money-making proposition, but not exactly a quality I want in a leader: Sara. Palin. Is. A. Quitter.

I’d also like to think all possible political appointees have at least a general grasp on basic geography, science and…reality - real reality, not the TV show version. But Sara and the gals following her lead don’t seem to think that kind of stuff is important.

Take, for instance…

…Christine O’Donnell

Oh, Christine. I just want to hold you to my breast, rub your head gently and say, “Oh, honey…no. You don’t need to be in politics. Sweat pea, we know you’re trying to be Sara Palin’s mini-me but don’t you think that’s lowering the bar a tad too low? We’ve been told you’re not a witch, but I’d rather be represented by Broomhilda than someone who doesn't have a firm grasp on the Constitution and Amendments. If you're applying for the job, I'd like to know you can tell when an entire room of people are laughing AT you, not WITH you.”

And, let’s talk a minute about what the Catholics like to call self-abuse…

"It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery, so you can't masturbate without lust." --says Christine-who-is-not-a-witch.

So according to you, I can’t touch myself? Oh, and didn’t you say evolution is a myth?

Let’s move on to…

…Sharron Angle

This chick looks less like a radical conservative and more like an escaped mental patient. Her bullet points:

--she called the unemployed spoiled welfare queens.
--she said entitlement programs are like worshipping a false God
--she calls flouridization a Communist plot
--under her care, American prisons would implement a Scientology massage program.
--she once opposed a local high school using black athletic jerseys, which she called un-Christian and wicked
--she opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, saying pregnancy under those circumstances is God's plan.

Of course, those in her own party would just love her to knock Harry Reid out of his seat, but once she’s sitting in it, I’m wondering if those forced to sit next to her would be concerned with their sudden proximity to wack-a-doodle. I can hear their inner monologues:

“Can I catch crazy?”

I can see the morning conference call. I can see it, I can hear it and I shudder:

KARL ROVE VIA SPEAKERPHONE:

Isn’t anyone else afraid?

De plague, de plague!!

2010-10-19T08:00:00.010-04:00

Sick kids in ‘da house, so I’m not much for blogging this week. That whole snotty, gooey, hacky-cough while I’m trying to sleep has really harshed my mellow.

I will post a couple of social stories because I’ve had some e-mails from readers wanting to know what they look like. Actually they’re so damn cute! I save them since his teacher usually laminates them for me. Probably because it’s harder for him to rip them that way when he‘s not happy about the content.

First, here’s what his daily schedule board looks like: (each kid has their own)

JAXSON’S SOCIAL STORIES

I think I’d like to have one made with regard to ‘sickness etiquette’. It would read something like this:

When Jaxson coughs in Mommy’s face or wipes his snot-ridden hands on her mouth, Jaxson will cause Mommy to run to the nearest anti-bacterial dispenser in the house and douse her face as if she’s been given a dose of the plague. That is NOT GREAT. When Jaxson covers his mouth when he coughs and then washes his hands that is GREAT. When Jaxson is home from school sick and Mommy doesn’t have time to write that is NOT GREAT.

“How ‘bout a kiss, buddy?”

2010-10-15T08:00:00.010-04:00

When I picked Jaxson up from school yesterday, I asked how he did that day. I always ask and then I hold my breath and hope for the best.

“Great. He was a little squirrelly for a while. Anytime we change something up he gets tense. Oh, there is something…”

Then his teacher walked over and told me Jax was chasing boys around the playground and when he caught them, he kissed them. “Yeah, we may want to figure out a way to get him to stop doing that.”

I had to laugh. Social story, perhaps? I love social stories. The teacher prints up these one page ‘stories’ that involve pictures and symbols to explain a teaching moment to the child that might not otherwise understand the lesson if given verbally without visual cues.

I know where the behavior comes from. Jax loves Popeye. We have DirecTV and he records episodes and watches them over and over. Popeye says it to Olive Oyl all the time and Jax has taken to saying it. Sometimes he grabs my face and says, “How ‘bout a kiss, buddy?” and then lays one on me. I think it’s cute. If chasing boys and kissing them is the worst faux pas he commits at school, I’m fine with that.

His father wasn’t as charmed as I after I relayed the story to him. Bread Winner said to Jaxson, “Don’t kiss boys, kiss girls.”

“Don’t tell him that!” I chastised. “He’s not supposed to be kissing ANYBODY. Kids pass around germs! Plus it’s not socially appropriate to be kissing his peers in a school setting. He needs to respect personal space.”

Bread Winner leaned in again and whispered to Jax, who was wriggling in his arms because he was being tickled. “Only kiss girls.”

I groaned. “You know, sometimes you’re not very smart. I could care less if he’s kissing boys or girls.” Bread Winner gave me an upward eyebrow and I silently said my standard prayer for at least one homosexual child.

You gasp?

Well the thing is, in his young life, my elder son, Jake, has done, said and asked more than a few questions that leave his not-yet-burgeoning-sexual-preferences up in the air. I want to make sure I’m open to all options so he knows that he, too, can be open to all options.

When he was five Jake asked me, “Mom, can a man and a man get married?”

I’d been cleaning up the back porch while he played on his swing set and I stopped sweeping, resting my chin on the end of the broom handle.

“Well, yes they can.” Because I knew he wasn’t asking if two men could go down to the county courthouse and obtain a marriage license or civil ceremony certificate, or move to Canada and marry without the Jesus freaks stoning them on the way in. He wanted to know if two men could live together, love together, and have a family. So I believe I gave the appropriate response.

“Is that weird?” he asked, sitting in the swing, using a toe to dig in the dirt.

“No, nothing’s weird if you don’t think it is, honey.”

“But is it normal?”

“What’s normal?” I asked, wondering how he defined the word.

“Mom! You know what normal means!” He’d become irritated, because Jake only likes to deal in facts. Black or white, right or wrong, his mind left no room for the possibility of fluidity in any circumstance. Yes or no answers should be given whenever possible, and as far as he was concerned, the world would be a much easier place to navigate if everyone conformed to that notion.

I can’t even remember now how I’d defined normal. With Jake, there were always these discussions that left me feeling anxious and slightly nauseous. Not because of the content, but because I was always afraid I might say something that would come back to bite me or him in the ass later in life. I wanted him to make his own choices; about sexuality, about politics, about religion, about people in general.

But his most recent questioning on the topic, at age twelve, now led me to believe that I couldn’t win for losing.

“Mom, can I read your book when it gets published?”

We were en route to school, and damn if I didn’t already have to deal with a hot topic.

“No, honey. It’s for adults.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about a young boy who leaves home when he’s seventeen and lives in New York for twenty years before he returns home.” The book in question was Far From Happy, a novel I’d recently signed a contract for publication on. My first published work.

The protagonist was a male hustler.

“Is it like your Macy movie? With the boys kissing?”

Yes, in fact. Macy’s Wait was a short film my mother and I had recently completed, and apparently he’d seen me editing the video, though this was the first time he’d mentioned it.

“Well, sort of. The boy is gay. Remember when I told you what gay means?”

“Yeah, that’s gross Mom.”

I had exactly nine minutes before I dropped him off in front of his middle school and I used every second of it explaining the facets of the word tolerance and how I didn’t actually like the word, because it presumed that there was something that needed to be tolerated about another individual and I preferred to believe that we are all equal and beautiful because of our differences and no matter who someone is, or what they believe, love was never wrong and it was nobody’s place to judge someone else for who they loved.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I finished with this, “Now, you understand that some men love men, and some men love women, and some women love men, and some women love women, right? And any of those combinations is perfectly acceptable. It’s okay that you would rather kiss a girl, but—”

“—eeeew, Mom! That’s even more gross!” he hissed as he opened the car door, grabbed his backpack and looked around to make sure none of his classmates had heard the end of the conversation.

When the car door slammed and I pulled around the circle, I was shaking my head; no closer to an answer about my own child’s sexual preferences. It seemed, at the moment, kissing anyone was gross.

And that was just fine with me.

At any rate, a gal can dream. In my version of future paradise, Jake will be the eccentric, homosexual Dog Groomer to the Stars, and take me with him on his international travels.

Jax—because he’s just recently become verbal—traipses around in my dreams, multi-lingually. He not only speaks perfect English, but goes on to master Spanish, French and whatever they speak in Yemen, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Yes, my dreams include one kid escorting me to Broadway shows when I’m seventy, and the other, my personal translator while I experience a bit of long overdue globetrotting. I’m not saying they have to do these things, just that it would be a nice repayment for my maternal efforts.

But, as someone very smart once told me, hope in one hand and crap in the other—see which one fills up first.

Ten Minutes to Wapner

2010-10-14T08:00:00.005-04:00

You’ve all probably seen Rain Man. Dustin Hoffman’s character was inspired by real-life autistic Kim Peek who could read eight books a day, taking ten seconds to read each page, devouring two pages simultaneously, his left eye reading the left page and his right eye reading the right one. He had an unbelievable memory and knowledge of rote facts. But, here’s the interesting conundrum: throughout his life he still needed 24-hour care. Despite his amazing mental agility, his motor skills were limited and he needed help with things like dressing himself and combing his hair.

The movie wasn’t necessarily a bad depiction of someone with autism, although neither of my kids can count toothpicks if they’re dropped on the floor, or perform other entertaining party tricks. And I’m here to tell you if they could count cards, I’d be the first one to hop on a plane to Vegas and figure out a way to exploit the situation to my financial advantage. But my kids aren’t savants. Most autistic people aren’t - only about 10% of people on the autism spectrum have savant skills.

So for that reason, the Hollywood portrait painted wasn’t entirely realistic with regard to most people on the autism spectrum. But it told an engaging story and illustrated some things rather well:

The Ten Minutes to Wapner thing was very realistic. I can hear Jake saying that, only it wouldn’t be about The People’s Court, it would probably involve Pokemon or Mario or some cartoon character on one of his shows. “Mom, it’s coming on in five minutes. Mom…only three more minutes, HURRY!”

Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

The movie also hit the nail on the head about things like having to eat specific foods a certain way, or requiring a certain brand of underwear, lest the wearer might, say, lose their shit (pun intended). Jake is a boxer kind of kid and he’ll go commando before putting on tightie-whities. If it’s a school day and I haven’t gotten to the laundry fast enough, obviously commando wouldn’t be an appropriate option. So, yeah - that would be a bad start to what presumably would be a bad day. Needless to say, I try and stay on top of the laundry situation in my house.

People on the autism spectrum are often restricted, rigid, and even obsessive in their behaviors, activities, and interests. When this rigidity is challenged, in the form of making changes to their rituals and structure, challenging behaviors (AKA: tantrums) may arise.

The thing to remember with autistic children is that the behavior is not on a vindictive or malicious level. They are not trying to blackmail you emotionally because what’s happening - from their perspective - has to do with them, not you. Autistic children are completely without guile. They have no understanding of concepts such as passive-aggression or manipulation. Autistic persons’ reactions are simply their reactions to whatever stimuli they’re being confronted with. Unlike some neuro-typical children, their actions are not a conscious way of getting something they want. In fact, they’re probably not even aware how their actions are affecting you. That’s something they often need to be taught along the way, rather than simply ‘getting it’ from your behavior, facial expression or body language.

For this reason alone, I wish everyone had a touch of autism.

Jake can’t lie. Seriously, he can’t tell a lie. It’s like a tic for him. He’ll get right in the car after school and give me a laundry list of every bad thing that he might have said, done, or encountered that day. He’s unable to move forward until he’s sure I’m completely aware of anything that might have been considered inappropriate. Then he feels better. If I ask him a direct question, even though he MIGHT try to keep something from me, he’s got absolutely no poker face, and the moment of silence is quickly followed by him coughing up the truth, however uncomfortable it makes him. This might very well be the coolest thing about him, from a parenting perspective. Well, that, and the fact that he can’t abide cursing, which he regularly calls me on, as well as fellow students. Yeah, I imagine that goes over really well with the ‘normal’ kids. (Actually I know it doesn’t because he was recently bullied for it.)

Just interacting socially can be draining for someone who can’t read facial expressions, isn’t verbal and doesn’t understand many things involved in social interaction, like reading body language. It’s like trying to get something from someone who is speaking another language. So pile that on top of any changes in the structure of their life and you should expect the guano to hit the oscillator, my friends.

Although their routines might seem strange to us, they serve a purpose to the autistic person. After all, routine itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I go grocery shopping on the same day of the week each week, simply because it’s convenient. If I wait longer I will run out of something. If I go earlier, I may have too much of certain items and then they go bad before I can use them. Ritual and routine help us feel secure and safe within our environment and makes the world around us more predictable. Too much unpredictability and uncertainty can lead to stress, more so with autistic people.

When these rituals and routines are interrupted or changed, the reaction you might get could well seem to be disproportionate, but you must remember that the autistic person who you are interacting with may have communication problems and doesn’t understand the reason for the disruption of their routine. Even Jake, who is a teenager and very verbal, is extremely literal. Try using things like sarcasm, irony, metaphor or pun on him and what you’ll get in return is a blank stare.

Jaxson and Jake both have issues with change. Jaxson, for instance, is unable to come into school and unpack his backpack and put his items into his locker like the other six children in his class, until his teacher comes out of the classroom and greets him in the hallway. He won’t let me leave until this happens. As soon as his teacher comes out and Jax sees her, I can leave. But if I try to leave him with his fellow students to unpack his backpack, he whines and pulls at me. It is how things went on the first day of kindergarten, so now if I try to change it up, he freaks out. This doesn’t bode well for the day - which is swiftly approaching - when he has a substitute teacher.

The ASD teachers want children to become more independent, thus tending to certain chores at school by themselves, without the aid of a paraprofessional or teacher. They need to be able to do things, like walk down the hall without holding the para-pro’s hand or change from their snow boots into sneakers in the winter, all by themselves.

This is all grand, but when something ‘new’ comes up - something out of their normal routine - this can throw an autistic child off, terribly. The way to try and change this is to regularly change-up their routine, at home and school. To toss them something unexpected and get them used to navigating change. Needless to say this isn’t always fun and so far I haven’t seen it actually work. You’re bucking their internal sense of order and it doesn’t go well. But as a parent, I still need to try, because life is messy and full of changes. The need for a detour often arises.

Shit happens.

But, try relating that concept to an autistic child and see how far you get.

Would the Devil Get a Publishing Deal?

2010-10-13T08:00:00.015-04:00

Sigh. There are at least three things wrong with the photo above and their names are Conrad, Palin and Beck, in order of appearance from left to right.

Sigh, again. Really? I had to google the Conrad chick, because although I recognized her face, I didn’t even know from what show she’d been spewed forth, I only knew where she’d ended up. Published. I suppose I should be happy it was her and not that Heidi Montag Living Barbie, because had I seen her face while walking down the aisle at Wal-Mart, I might have had a spontaneous cranial bleed.

For a writer it’s difficult to see faces like the faces above and know that some of them hit the NYT Best Seller List. For the love of God, Katie Couric couldn’t even nail down whether Sara Palin reads newspapers on a regular basis, and now she’s a New York Times Bestselling author?

Then there’s Glen Beck and his book Arguing With Idiots. Reading between the lines, I assume he’s had lots of practice arguing with himself.

Who the hell is reading this shit? Seriously. I get it. Publishers will publish what sells. That’s not what concerns me. Publishing is a business, just like television. If we gobble it up, they're gonna serve it up hand over fist.

So, I’ll ask again: who is reading this shit? The same people, I presume, who are watching all that reality TV, buying Snuggies ™ and eating sugar-free foods laced with aspartame. We can not complain about the offerings on TV, movies and books if we're the same people following Snookie's every move or watching Glenn Beck's show and believing everything (or anything, really) that comes out of his wacky mouth.

We're the problem. And why do we watch/read this stuff? Is it the whole 'train wreck' thing? (READ: Mid-term elections have caused everyone to lose their minds because some REAL TURDS are running for office - homophobic turds, turds who dabbled in witchcraft, etc.) I see too comfortable a correlation here and it disturbs me. The loudest wackadoo in politics - do we support them just to ensure an entertaining news cycle once they're elected?

Is it just fun to watch someone humiliate themselves, watch someone's marriage disintigrate before our eyes (Jon & Kate + 8 - 1), or watch some young person's hopes and dreams become shattered (American Idol try outs). Does anyone else find this whole disturbing trend...yucky? OR is it just me?

So as I’m preparing this blog, I google Heidi, praying, I mean really PRAYING that she didn’t have—

Oh, you’ve got to be f-ing kidding me with this! She and Spencer wrote (I am playing fast and loose with the word ‘wrote’ here, clearly):

How to Be Famous: Our Guide to Looking the Part, Playing the Press, and Becoming a Tabloid Fixture

So, it appears the surefire way to get a publishing deal (or get elected to a Senate or House of Reps. seat) is to say something stupid, do something stupid, or be someone stupid. And yes, I am bitter. A bitter ,bitter girl. But I did find a way to purge the pent-up bitterness threatening to overtake me. I rearranged the bookshelf at Wal-Mart. With a bit of quick work, I was able to move every copy of the above books to the bottom shelf and put other books in front of them.

I considered it a public service. My way of paying it forward to the shoppers who would follow me down the aisle that day. Grocery shopping is a daunting enough task without having to ponder the pervasive absurdity of whether the Devil Himself would get a publishing deal.

Come November, we might have an even more frightening 'reality' show going on in America. I predict a high number of new CSPAN viewers.

Sensory Stew

2010-10-12T08:00:00.005-04:00

Picture this:

You’re locked in a speeding car at night, racing down the highway at breakneck speed. It’s the middle of summer; you’re hot, uncomfortable and sweaty. There are sirens wailing outside, and there’s a baby with a stinky diaper next to you, screaming. The interior car lights flash on and off, blinding your senses. The radio is turned up full blast to heavy metal music. Nobody is driving; you have no control.

Now you might have an idea of what it’s like to be autistic on any given day.

You are expected to deal with this, and get through your normal daily routine without exploding. You are expected to listen and follow directions; you are expected to thrive. One after the other, sensory arrows are being shot at you, only your mind is unable to process them in any meaningful way. All noises are translated at the same level, none being relegated to background noise.

Every sense is heightened, over-stimulated.

What must it feel like for them, all of these bothersome things festering in the mind of the autistic child, clouding anything brighter from shining through? Jake, my 13 year old, can’t stand the way paper feels and at school this just has to be nerve-racking. Book pages turning, graded papers being passed out, notes shuffling between hands at every desk; the sensory minefield he has to wade through daily is something most people can’t even remotely relate to. Jaxson, my 9 year old, doesn’t like loud noises or clothing. Yeah, I said clothing. As soon as his feet hit the front doormat, he’s pulling off his clothes. He’ll wear them when we go out and all day at school, but at home he’s a little guy runnin’ around in his skivvies. I have no idea what it is about them that bothers him, but he just doesn’t like being dressed. I buy all cotton, everything loose and breathable, cut out all the tags—still, he prefers life sans clothing. Who am I to begrudge him?

His home is his castle just as it is mine and I want him to be comfy there.

Children with sensory issues must do what other children do throughout their day at school and in daily life, but they’ve got the added burden of wading through an often debilitating sensory assault as they do it.

In my opinion, that’s what makes them a little stronger than you and I.

Below is an example of a Sensory Stew and how Jaxson dealt with it. (READ: His 2007 School Christmas Pageant. Damn my kid is cute! )

A Few of My (Least) Favorite Things

2010-10-11T08:00:00.007-04:00

1. Reality TV.

Seriously, do we have an ETA on when that stupid trend is going to peter out? Because I think America’s been dumbed-down to the point of reckless abandon at this point. It’s been scientifically proven that for every 30 minutes of reality TV you watch, you lose 5 IQ points, so some of you people should be in a cage with the apes at the Bronx Zoo, tossing excrement and sniffing your fellow inmates’ asses.

The only two network shows I watch are The Office and Glee*. (*Wouldn’t life would be wonderful if we all occasionally broke into song with an accompanying perfectly choreographed dance number and flawless costuming? And Jane Lynch is so yummy I could dip her in couscous and wash her down with a glass of chardonnay. )

2. Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

I probably don’t need to elaborate here. This also goes for FOX News. I prefer my propaganda with a big Nazi flag in the corner of the screen, accompanied by grainy black-and-white pictures of soldiers screaming ‘Heil Hitler’.

3. Seeing your underwear in public.

This applies to persons of the male and female persuasions. Guys, if you think it’s so important for me to see your Joe Boxers, just wear them over your jeans. It’ll look less stupid than having the crotch of your pants dangling somewhere around your knees.

And gals, (I’m talking to you if your jeans only cover half your ass and I can see your thong), if you’re under 25 and wear obnoxiously low-riding pants, you might want to re-assess your fashion sense. If you’re over 25 and embracing tween-fashion, you might need to re-assess your common sense.

AND NOW FOR YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN:

Ladies, have you ever wanted a bejeweled beaver? Well then, get in on the new fad that’s sweeping the nation. Everyone from Jennifer Love Hewitt to Kathy Griffin have gone the way of the shimmering snatch, so don’t be the last one on your block with a festooned frontage. Start Vajazzling*!

(*va-jazzle - to decorate your ‘down there’ area with shiny, glittery gems.)

My Va-Jay-Jay Bling sung to the tune of A Few of My Favorite Things.

80 Year Old Chick

2010-10-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been posting videos of my octogenarian Nanna on YouTube for a few years and the video CHICK ON GAY PEOPLE has over 50 thousand hits and was taken from an interview I did with her a few years ago. I simply sat her down and asked questions, to which she responded in her very Nanna-like way: without guile and completely honest.

CHICK ON VIBRATORS

I don’t know what is so funny about senior citizens and ‘dicey’ subject matter, but here’s another short film I made called VD IS FOR EVERYBODY. The doctor in the film was my actual doctor at the time, and the actress in the stirrups is a lovely woman named Regina Mancino.

For more of my Nanna, check out the 80 Year Old Chick page of this website. I’ve included interviews with her, as well as some short films she’s acted in.

'Roid Rage!

2010-10-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Most of my writer friends know of my troubles down under because I’ve regaled them with stories about my little anal hitchhikers. I’m slightly obsessed with my hemorrhoids, I'll be the first one to admit.

But mostly, I figure if you’ve got an issue that once almost caused you to shove the ice blocks in your freezer - normally reserved for your children’s lunchboxes - into your lower orifice, you might as well get some literary mileage out of it.

If you can’t laugh at your own put-upon-pooper, what can you laugh at…I ask you?

As anyone with a similarly disenfranchised ass can attest, when those little buggers are angry, the pain they can cause is beyond the ability to comprehend. I have been awakened from a sound sleep, suddenly feeling like something untoward happened to my rear orifice while I slumbered - like a brutal ménage à many. Vicious waves of angst filtered up through my innards as I crawled to the kitchen for ice because I’d let the literal tube run dry.

That’s a mistake a ’roid sufferer only makes once. What follows is an early morning jaunt to the nearest drug store, whereby you avail yourself of every tube on the shelf and are only moderately embarrassed as the clerk rings up your seventeen boxes of Prep-H. (generic of course, I’m nobody’s fool.) After you’ve experienced that kind of pain, you could care less who sees you spending $94.76 on off-brand ass cream. You just want to make sure you never run out again.

To this day, even though I’ve got a butt-load (pun intended) of overstock under my bathroom cabinet, I still grab another box every time I’m in the Wal-Mart Supercenter. There can never be too much emergency preparedness in this situation, and I promise you FEMA hasn’t got your back.

I’ve been lucky as of late. I’ve had no flare ups, but it hasn’t been long enough that I’ve forgotten the brutality. I remember praying for death in between suppressing dry heaves and mopping the sweat from my clammy brow. It is a memory that haunts me to this day.

Because he gets a kick out of shit like this, my amazing writer friend Mitch Geller wrote a song about my affliction and I’ll share it with you now. Notice the personal elements he added. A reference to flies (a Jake obsession) and a lighter (Oh, have I not told you that Jaxson recently set fire to his bedroom? I guess a Fire Blog is in order, huh? Stay tuned!)

Jeni is a Gal With Hemorrhoids
(sung to the tune of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles)
*song raped and pillaged by Mitch Geller*

Picture yourself on a smoking hot poker
With cottage-like cheese and watery eyes
Somebody tells you your face is all chalky
To you that’s not quite a surprise
Big hangin’ berries the color of spleen
Flowering like tulip beds
Sat on the one that brought tears to her eyes
And it’s wrong

Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Ow-w-w-w-w.....

As big around as an Austrian mountain
And rocking on bar stools is very unwise
Everyone smirks as she swells by the hour
To grapes in the blink of an eye
Flatulence sounding much more like a snore
Splashing it with her iced tea
Climb in the sack with her butt in a bowl
And it’s wrong

Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Gonna have to get some Venapro
Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Ow-w-w-w-w.....

Tinctures herself in the hopes of salvation
With fermented spirits and big blocks of ice
Suddenly someone is there in the bathroom
A kid with a lighter and flies

Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
One of them looks just like Dan Akroyd
Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Ow-w-w-w-w.....

Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Even took a couple-a Polaroids
Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids
Ow-w-w-w-w.....

Jeni is a gal with hemorrhoids

Hit the Road, Rick. And Don’t Come Back No More, No More…

2010-10-04T08:00:00.016-04:00

There I was with Monday’s blog about my hemorrhoids primed and ready, set up on auto-schedule to post itself at 8:am.

But, then it happened:

Late Friday afternoon Rick Sanchez shoved his oversized loafer into his babbling maw for the last time on CNN. Adios, Rick. The Cubano has left the building.

It’s a shame, really. I watched Rick’s List occasionally— okay, watched might be playing it fast and loose with the word. Often my TV was tuned in to CNN while his show was on. As I tended to a myriad of chores around the house, I was able to listen in and wait for his next gaffe. He was entertaining, our Mr. Sanchez. Kind of like the bumbling uncle we all have - not the alcoholic one, or the one that’s a bit too grabby-hands. I’m talking about the affable one prone to inadvertently tossing in a malapropism or two while telling you an inappropriate story, usually involving a fart or boob joke.

So now Uncle Sanchez is no longer with us. I am sad to see him go - but seriously, it’s not like this is the first time he’s said something that either made me cringe or do a double take, causing me to turn toward the television with a duster in one hand and a pile of dirty laundry in the other.

Remember that ‘he’s the cotton pickin’President!’ thing? Yeah, classy. I had a feeling he'd been waiting a long time to work that one in, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and presume it was a slip of the tongue.

How about the time he had a bit of trouble locating Hawaii on the large studio map? That was painful to watch.

And let's not forget the stun gun incident. Really, Rick? You did that of your own volition AND thought there was even the remotest of possibilities Jon Stewart, Colbert and the rest of the mainstream media WOULDN’T play it on a loop for the better part of a week?

Even my nine year old autistic kid who’s barely verbal probably saw that one coming.

Rick, it’s kind of hard to feel sorry for someone who went on live radio and basically bent over and shat on the hand that signs his paycheck. Thinking those kinds of things - well that’s one thing. Saying them aloud - that’s your one way ticket to tool-ville, my friend, where you’ll be walking the buffet-line of shame along with the likes of the Huckabees, Becks and Limbaughs of the world.

One good thing came out of this whole mess, Rick. At least it happened late on Friday afternoon. You didn’t have to wake up the next morning to every media outlet splashing your face all over the screen while you tried to get your morning java down. No, you had a couple of days to hide out and lick your wounds before this kind of stuff started -

(behold, my song parody. Yes, that is my voice. I've got a cold. Don't judge me. PS: The blog about my hemorrhoids will be up tomorrow.)

Action!

2010-10-01T08:00:00.016-04:00

I’m perfectly aware that I’ve put my family through the ringer when it comes to my elementary filmmaking endeavors. Forget about the mountain of footage I have of my kids. The adults in the family have not been safe either. I had no problem tossing my octogenarian Nanna into the mix.

There was The Happy Tongue Incident - a story involving death by hot-pink dildo.

And once I had her on her arthritic knees in her front yard - which is a 10 X 10 patch of grass, complete with garden spinnaker because she lives in a mobile home retirement community where the neighbors regularly vie for the top spot in the tacky yard accoutrement category.

She kept saying: “Hurry up, the neighbors will see!”

But tricking Nanna into thinking we’d just tossed the box formerly known as her husband into the gator-filled lake behind my Mom’s house was probably the one that would make most people cringe. Not me. Nothing is sacred in our family, and to her credit, when our little plan didn’t go as we’d hoped, Nanna manned up like a good actress and did take two.

Here’s part four, but for parts one through three, you can check out her YouTube page:

http://www.youtube.com/80yearoldchick

My sister Resi has played everything from a gun-toting redneck in a horrible Godzilla spoof, to a blushing bride marrying a homosexual groom twice her age, while decked in Pepto-Bismol puke pink. She’s actually the only real actress in the family, or at least the one that does it well.

But, when Mom and I get together, and it’s the middle of winter with nothing to do, we eventually pull out the HD cameras. The Bait Pile was mostly improvised when we realized neither of us could remember our lines or stick to the script. We wrote, directed, acted, ran the cameras and edited it ourselves, and it's the only one of our films that managed to make it into a film festival - though to be fair, their motto that year was: “The films nobody else will show.” But hell, it premiered in NYC at a small venue on 42nd Street so we were pleased as punch.

Below, find my mother and I together in all our glory - a montage of madness from various things we’ve done together, including The Bait Pile.

WARNING: The Barbie-Porn discussed in a previous blog post is featured -selectively - but as far as I’m concerned, if a little doll on doll action offends you, you probably aren’t my target audience, anyway. (in which case I'd say to you:)

For God's sake, lighten up. We could all die tomorrow if some crazy dictator in China or Iran decided to push the button - get some perspective and a sense of humor. I promise, it'll do you good.

Are You Sure I'm Not an Alien?

2010-09-30T10:36:00.000-04:00

Jake popped his head out of his bedroom with an inquiry. “Mom, you’re sure I’m not an alien, right?”

“Pardon?” Oh, here we go...

“I mean…you remember seeing me come out of your vagina, right?” he asked, scratching the little furrow in his brow.

“Honey, it’s not something I’m likely to forget anytime soon.” I was trying to concentrate on The Rachel Maddow Show and knew if this little tête à tête went on for much longer, I might as well forget about enjoying her take on the wackadoo mid-term election campaign ads. Since Ms. Maddow is one of my few guiltless pleasures, I don’t like missing her show.

“What does that mean?” His brow wrinkled further as he tried to process my last statement.

“That means I was in labor for eleven hours with you - three of which was actual pushing. And the experience left me with the gift of little hitchhikers in my butt.” I know when I say things like this it will only serve to drag the conversation out further, but for some reason I can’t stifle the urge to shut the hell up.

“What?!?!” I’m pretty sure it was the ‘little hitchhikers in my butt’ that now had his attention.

“Never mind. Suffice it to say I have a very vivid recollection of pushing your melon head out of my who-ha and leave it at that.”

“What’s in your butt?”

“Forget it. Nothing…” Bad Mommy, Bad!

“What about Jaxson?”

“What about him?” What were we talking about, again?

“Do you remember Jaxson being born - because he’s kind of weird.” This from the kid who regularly bathes in anti-bacterial hand sanitizer.

“Yes, I remember it, though he was a month premature so he slithered out like a lizard. You paved the way for the little guy so he didn’t have as much work to do on the way out.”

“So you remember us both being born?

“Yes, Jake. Now go finish watching your show. It’s almost bedtime.”

...and Rachel is back from commercial break.

“Okay, thank’s Mom.”

“You bet.” Possible OCD crisis averted.

~*~*~*~*~

>TODAY’S VIDEO ENTRY:

Jaxson's Developmental Evaluation and First Day of School

Dissecting Jake

2010-09-29T10:44:00.001-04:00

My son Jake has OCD. In fact, since hitting his teens, he’s practically teeming with hormones and his obsessions have multiplied; like the explosive acne that is sure to follow. For Jake, it materializes in the form of rapid-fire questions that he simply must get answered before he’s able to move on to the next thing.

If he can’t wrap his head around something, he will be asking about it all day.

Well, last week he spent an entire school day obsessing about a frog.

When he plopped into the passenger seat and I pulled out of the school parking lot one afternoon, this was the first thing he said to me:

“I lost a square today because of a frog.”

Losing a square, in the context of his world and classroom, means he got a warning. Squares on the whiteboard, used as visual cues, keep track of how many warnings each student in his ASD classroom has, and once they loose three, they get lunch detention.

“Okay, tell me about the frog.” This ought to be good, I thought. I immediately conjured that Looney Tunes episode where Michigan J. Frog kept making a fool out of his owner. Every time they were alone, the frog would hop out of its box and sing, “Hello my baby, hello my darlin’, hello my ragtime gaaaaaaal…” But whenever the guy tried to show someone his singing/dancing frog, it would just sit like a lump and croak.

“I saw these two high-school kids kicking a frog and I wanted to go rescue it but Chris said that we should just tell Mrs. D. and—”

First I needed to acquire some context. Frog? Where? Inside the building? So I interrupted - which he hates - and found out this happened immediately after I’d dropped him off, earlier that morning. The high school and middle school are attached by a library, so the middle school kids have to pass the roughhousing high-schoolers in order to get inside the building. Apparently the little amphibian hopped too close to the wrong crowd.

“Well I think Chris made the first appropriate choice this morning,” I said.

“But I wanted to hit those stupid kids and rescue the frog and bring him inside.”

“First, we do not hit. And messing with high school boys is asking for trouble. Second, we do not bring any animals of any kind into the school building. Ever. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but…”

“No buts. Your friend Chris did a good job giving you advice this morning. What would you have done with the frog if you brought it inside? Where would you have put it?”

“I was gonna take it to my science teacher.”

A giggle started to bubble up from somewhere inside me. The sadistic giggle of a mother about to shine the ugly light of reality across the face of her innocent autistic child. “Uh, Jake… What do science teachers typically do with frogs?”

He looked at me but hadn’t put two and two together to equal formaldehyde… yet. That would require a bit more prodding on my part.

“Do you know what dissect means?” I asked.

Jake’s eyes widened considerably. “Oh no! I wouldn’t want him to dissect the poor frog! I dissected one once and now I have guilt about it.”

“I didn’t know you dissected frogs last year.”

“I didn’t. I dissected one by myself. In the basement. When I was ten.”

The LOUD RECORD SCRATCH in my head was immediately followed by a laughing jag that was so boisterous, Jaxson - who was sitting in the back seat playing his DS - raised both hands and yelled, “Guys, guys…CALM DOWN.” (Yes, very clearly. His speech is coming along quite nicely!)

Because I’m getting over bronchitis, I coughed up half a lung, grabbed the antibacterial from Jake - who is on constant on germ patrol - and managed to swerve back into my lane.

“Oh Jake. I love you. But why did you dissect a frog? And how did you kill it, or was it dead when you found it?” I didn’t even want to ponder what implements of torture he’d used.

“I dissected it while it was alive.” Jake mumbled. “I won’t go to hell, right?”

The other half of my lung came up, and out came the hand sanitizer, again.

“No, honey. You won’t go to hell. But you won’t be dissecting any animals outside of science class anymore, right?”

“I’m NEVER dissecting ANYTHING again! I have a passion for animals now.” Jake yelled.

I sighed and wondered how that would go over when the fetal pigs came out in science class in a few years. I remember them being particularly gnarly.

The morning after what will now be referred to as The Frog Incident, I had a meeting with the school psychologist, speech therapist, behavioral specialist and a few other regulars - just for a check-up on Jaxson‘s progress. (Which is rolling along splendidly, I might add!)

But, the first thing on the agenda - because the same staff treats both of my kids - was, “Did you hear about the frog episode yesterday with Jake?”

We had a nice chuckle and I learned a bit more about the story. Like, as soon as he’d entered the building and rushed to his ASD room, he relayed the frog story to his teacher, who promptly took him outside in order to see if they could locate the frog and put Jake’s fears to rest. I think she hoped they’d find the little bugger alive and well and that would be that. I can only imagine what would have happened if they’d encountered a pile of frog pulp.

The school psychologist arrived soon after to head up the ‘social interaction’ class. This is where Jake and his fellow socially inept brethren learn about conversing with others, discuss personal space and facial expressions, and other things that you and I might take for granted. As she exited her car, she saw Jake pacing up and down the sidewalk, watching his teacher look for the frog that would remain on his mind for the rest of the day because the frog would never be found.

And that’s the story of how a frog caused Jake to lose a square.

Today's video--The beginning of our journey...Moving to Michigan and all the changes for the kids.

STAY TUNED! for the next blog post which will include a video showing Jaxson's first developmental evaluation and first day of pre-school in the Early Intervention program.

Not Just a Mama: My Pen is My Sword and it is Rarely Sheathed

2010-09-20T08:00:00.022-04:00

My mother tells me when I was a shy little girl in kindergarten, I wrote a story about a gumball machine, comparing the little round balls of varying colors to people in the world. I'd share the poem with you, but Susan isn’t exactly the scrapbooking kind of Mama - no hoarding of precious little memories for her. I'm guessing she read it, smiled, then rolled something into the tiny piece of paper and smoked it.

It was the 70's, after all.

I should note, my mother is the type of mother who would, years later, wake me with a three a.m. phone call: "I just had the best idea for a porn movie!!" What followed was a three hour trip to a local store the next day, where I was horrified to find the toy dolls made for young girls looking suspiciously like whores. Out of that shopping adventure came a three page script for a movie that could only be described as Barbie-Porn, and would years later come back to bite me in the ass.

Mom and I were working on a film project with learning disabled students at the local elementary school when the school administration became aware of Making Porn With Mom. (catchy title, right?) Well, apparently someone thought to look up our production company name and not only found my blog, but also my Internet Movie Database Listing and my cache of YouTube videos. The whole thing left me with a raging case of the runs, but frankly a simple Google search before we spent a year working with the kids might have been a good idea. Alas, they dropped the ball, not I. I was merely doing what I always do.

I have spent almost forty years reading and writing and I've learned to speak out when I have something to say. As a ten year old Catholic School girl I checked out The Diary of Anne Frank and it made a huge impact on me because I related to her. I was about her age. I could be her. I could rage against the horrors of a life lived in secret. I, too, could be remembered long after I was gone.

I asked for and was given a diary to record my own juvenile thoughts. My entries were decidedly less awe-inspiring than Anne's.

July 9, 1978

Dear Diary,

We went on vacation and it was nice, except there was a strange smell in the VW van the entire trip from something Mom and Dad were smoking. She said they were ‘herbs‘.

(note to self: look up the definition of herbs)

At the Grand Canyon I was surprised that the railing to keep you from falling was so small. Resi ran right up and swung from it, but I stayed back. I don't know why but suddenly I thought one of my family members might push me over the edge. Could that happen? I don't think any of them are THAT crazy, but the idea would not leave my head, so I stayed back while they all looked.

(p.s. I do not trust them.)

Then we went back to the campground and while Mom and Dad took a nap, Resi and I played with two brothers named Nick and Roger. Roger asked me if I knew what a ‘blow job' was.

(note to self: Ask Mom what a blow job is.)

~*~

July 12, 1978

Dear Diary,

My parents are horrible, horrible people. I must be adopted!!! Resi asked Dad what a blow job was and he said "What the hell?" and his face got all red and he pulled the VW van over and got out. I hid under my pillow in the back seat and cried, so Mom told me and Resi what it was. My parents are GROSS!! She said when two people love each other, they do certain things. I said "Gross things..." and she said, "Come back and tell me how you feel about it when you're thirty." I told her she was going to hell and so was Dad. Resi just asked if she brushed her teeth after. My sister is so stupid. I hate my family!!!!!!!!!!! ...And I am stuck in this van with them for three more days.

At that point in my writing life, what I was regurgitating was a plethora of unmemorable material which could only qualify as melodrama. Sappy, unrequited love story type of stuff that even now causes my lunch to take a sudden u-turn, heading back from whence it came. (READ: Kind of like anything that appears on Lifetime Television for Women.)

Next came my dark period. I cannot recall what these stories were about either, except to say that after reading some of them, my father had one comment: "Jennifer, must everything you write be so maudlin?"

I had to look up maudlin and thus began another unfortunate chapter in my writing life: my obsession with the dictionary and thesaurus. ...which spawned my poetry phase. It was not pretty, but in my defense, I thought everything was supposed to rhyme.

Today, as a writer, often my job is to put a spotlight on life’s sores. So, if I have something to say about how today’s dolls look suspiciously like streetwalkers - and choose to do that through a satiric Barbie Porn - I’m going to do it.

Just like I’m gonna write raunchy song parodies with two writer friends and assume people get that I’m not singing them to my thirteen and nine year olds.

If I have something to say about former President Reagan and his treatment of AIDS in the 1980's, I’m going to shout it from the rooftops in the form of a short film entitled Macy’s Wait.

If I don’t like what my government is doing, I’m gonna have something to say about that as well, hopefully providing a little entertainment in the process. (READ: Waiting for Karl Rove--Come on publishers, you KNOW you want it!)

And if I want to volunteer my time to help a class of learning disabled children on a project that helps them not only learn the art and fun of writing, but help them gain self-confidence, I’m going to do that too. Until such time as I’m told I’m no longer able to because somehow what I write about or film is unseemly when juxtaposed against working with special needs kids.

Bump that, my friends. I’m not just a Mom. I think there’s an inherent danger in being all autism, all the time. Or all Mommy, 24/7. I’m a woman, a writer, a mother, a sister, a wife, a daughter, a citizen of the world - and so much more. I refuse to make my life all about the one thing in my life (autism) that takes more effort and attention than the rest of those other areas. That would not only be unfair to me, but would be extremely unfair to my kids.

They’re more than their autism. They’re amazing, profound, funny, delicious little creatures that deserve better than to be summed up by a medical diagnosis, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be the person who shoves them into a box.

By all means, stay in your box if that’s where you feel most comfortable. But don’t concern yourself if someone else jumps out of theirs, bends over and takes a crap on it, douses it with lighter fluid and watches it illuminate the sky.

To each his own.

I am one person with many facets, each one as important as the other. I don’t believe one facet negates another. For me, it’s as simple as that.

If this is the one thing I manage to pass on to my kids, then my job here is done.

Tales of a First Grade Drama King

2010-09-13T10:00:00.000-04:00

Today’s offering: Five minutes of film shot by Jaxson Lopez. (*compiled and edited by Mommy)

Watch carefully and at times you’ll find the little director wanna-be has purpose, intent and motive written all over his face.

My job: I’m just the gal who fishes cameras out of the toilet and waits for the next shoe to drop, because one always does—and they’re never Prada or Manolo Blahnik, they’re Ked’s, Crocs, and Dollar Store flip-flops.

I'm Ready for My Close-Up!

2010-09-10T09:25:00.000-04:00

It should come as no surprise to anyone, given my filmmaking proclivities, that I’ve had a camera in the faces of my children from the moment they sloshed out of my who-ha on a tidal wave of amniotic fluid. (Well, Jake anyway. Jax didn’t slosh, he sort of slithered out.)

At some point, I fully expect Jaxson to take over in the filmmaking arena, given he’s now prone to carrying his little video camera wherever he goes. He's presently got three cameras, but I'm sad to report at least a dozen have previously lost their digital lives due to his early experimentation with the toilet and running water. (It's a pricey hobby, but when my kids show an interest in something, I do my best to support them.) Thankfully, Jax has finally come to understand that SD cards and cameras do NOT mix well with liquids.

Now the little guy spends his time putting together movies with his Buzz Lightyear and Woody action figures. Let me just say, as a director he's quite the little task-master. If I don't get a line right, he lets me know it. And I can't tell you the surge of joy I got the first time he said 'ACTION!'

Today, I’m posting a 14 minute short film from the longer version of Every Journey is Unique, a documentary about autism that I continue to work on.

My hope is that one day I’ll have footage showing their progress from toddlers to adults and since I have a mini-filmmaker in my midst, hopefully Jax will add some of his own footage one day.

He already uploads his masterpieces into the editing software on my laptop and even tries to make rolling credits at the end. I say tries, because he’s got the words CAST and THE END down, but everything else in between those words is written in his own language. But I give the kid credit, he can even score his films with music from my own personal files. Willie Nelson’s version of Sunny Side of the Street and Ringo Starr’s Oh My My are among his favorites.

Jake, being the thirteen year old that he is, scoffs every time I pull out the camera, but that’s to be expected. He’s had his fill of my cinematic endeavors by this point. He did star with his cousin Max in an early movie (a really BAD early movie) entitled Toyzilla, though. He was seven at the time.

UPDATE: By the way, as of this writing, the boys will have successfully completed their first week of school and I’m ecstatic to report they’ve both done extremely well.

Won’t you join me in doing a little happy dance? VICTORY IS OURS!

I Hate School

2010-09-01T11:04:00.000-04:00

(This is the back to school face.)

T-minus six days until my boys go back to school.

Next Tuesday is going to be rough. When you know there’s a good chance you’ll be physically dragging your 77 lb. child into school on the first day, and probably for many days thereafter, it makes it hard to rise to that giddy level of ‘Back To School’ elation that plagues the Wal-Mart and Staples commercials for two months every year.

In fact, those commercials aren’t even advertising the products I need.

“Now, for a limited time, when you order your HoverRound-Up™ - invented for the little second grade cherubs in our midst who have to be rolled into school like Hannibal Lecter - you’ll get the Mommy-Nerf®, squishy full body armor, available in sizes up to XXL. If your Lil Tyke punches, bites and kicks when they’re anxious, this product is for you!”

Perhaps I should start drawing up some prototype schematics.

Thing One and Thing Two hate school. (Try and look at that like a Seussical reference, not a totally inappropriate one.)

I’d like to say I’m one of those parents who is relieved when my kids go back to school - happy to enjoy a quiet house and do my chores before partaking of a few hours of uninterrupted writing time. This is not the case. I worry when they’re not with me. As soon as the alarm goes off on day one, up and until the last day of school, I spend most of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of a call from school. Either Thing Two is acting out and three para-pros have him pinned to the floor, or Thing One is obsessing about one of the fifty-two thousand things he obsesses about on a daily basis - like his penis falling off - and they can’t get him into class.

It’s heart-breaking, gut wrenching, toilet hugging stuff. The ‘I Just Dropped My Two Autistic Kids off at School Diet’ consists of lots of coffee and a fair amount of time on the john.

Yesterday, we (Mom and I) went to register the boys for school and Thing Two lost it before I could get him out of the car. He doesn’t even want to look at the elementary school building, never mind go in for five minutes while I fill out his forms. Because Thing Two is not very verbal, (but making great strides!) he can’t say: “Mom, I’m frightened and I don’t know how to deal with this.”

There is no ‘talking him thorough it.’

After the parking lot meltdown, the hallway meltdown and the library-slash-registration-holding area-meltdown, we got back into the car fairly unscathed, only to have Thing Two melt down while we waited in line at the middle school for Thing One to get his picture taken for his school ID card.

Mom remained with Thing One (who was also over-stimulated and stressed) while I cajoled Thing Two out to the car, a guerilla maneuver that ended with two sweaty, slightly mauled and out of breath people - one adult, one child.

God bless my little Thing Two. He’s terrified. And it’s not like I can say, “Okay, honey, just stay home with Mommy.” Man, that would make things easier. But, kids have to go to school and I fear if he can’t pull it together, there’s no telling where he’s going to end up. I want to make something better for him that is out of my control. So I round up the troops, talk to the psychologist and pediatrician, make a plan, and hope everything comes out in the wash.

Till then, my ass spends plenty of quality time on the toilet. Luckily I’m reading a good book.

But, then, there are other moments. These truly sweet gifts that make everything a little more okay than they were fifteen minutes earlier. In the evening, after the chaotic day, Thing Two had settled down and was giggling as he made his Buzz Lightyear fart on his Woody action figure - and, of course, filming the process with his video camera.

Thing One looked at his brother and said:

“Mom, he’s just trying to find his place in the world, isn’t he?” Sometimes Thing One says something so profound, I want to cry. And these little gems stand out because most of the time he’s saying things like:

“Mom, say stupid monkey butt fart.”

“No.”

“Say it!”

“Honey, please…”

“Mom, please, just say it!”

“Stupid monkey butt fart.”

Farts are the great equalizer in my house.

Thong, thong, thong, thong, WRONG!

2010-08-30T11:14:00.000-04:00

It’s not often that I am stopped short as I amble down the feminine hygiene aisle at my local Wal-Mart, but I was this weekend.

Yes. Someone, somewhere, thought a thong pantiliner was an appropriate idea. That someone was an idiot. Here’s the thing: there are only two reasons why a woman would need a pantiliner in the first place.

One: It’s that time of month.

Two: Leakage issues.

I never thought this was something I’d have to publicly address, but here we are. If you are someone who falls into Category One, why are you wearing a thong? Your trendy, polka-dot Hanes Hip-Hugger Cotton Briefs were all in the laundry?

If you happen to fall into Category Two and you’ve got leaky pipes, let me be the first to inform you that you have passed the thong stage.

Yes…there is a thong stage. If you cannot cough, laugh, sneeze or fart without dribbling a little in your skivvies, your thong days are over. While I can sympathize with the Gotta-Go, Gotta-Go, Gotta-Go Right Now! phenomenon, I cannot sympathize if you continue to wear a thong.

That’s just stupid and, frankly, unhygienic.

…now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

The Colonoscopy Theory

2010-08-25T20:32:00.000-04:00

I’ve been thinking about terrorism a lot lately. (Probably because I just finished Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb ) What to do with presumed terrorists when we find them? How do we get vital information out of someone without our American Moral Compass plunging into dangerous territory? And I’m not talking about someone like Dick Cheney’s moral compass. I’m talking about the average forward-thinking NORMAL American who isn’t psychotic.

We all know that America doesn’t torture, or at least we’ve been told that, ad nauseam. We all also know that’s complete bullshit. (SEE: Extraordinary rendition, meaning state-sponsored-kidnapping, or outsourcing torture.)

I’m personally against torture because I’m not so sure we ever get any kind of reliable information from it. I mean, if I was being water-boarded or made to stand on my feet with my arms out at my sides for days on end, I’d toss my eighty-four year old Nanna under the bus to make it stop.

And beyond that...it's just icky, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to be better than that? People in general, I mean. The Human Race.

But then it came to me. Epiphany!

The Dreaded Colonoscopy. First, you’re forced to drink a gallon of vile-tasting swill, 8 ounces at a time - one every ten minutes - until you’re ready to puke.

Then you wait while your tummy-tum-tum begins to gurgle and grumble, after which you spend the rest of the day on the john. You can’t eat anything until after your appointment with the sadist who will blather on about the latest shenanigans on Jersey Shore as he rummages around in your pa-dunk-a-dunk with a tube that has a camera on the end.

There’s not a person alive that wants to be subjected to this fresh hell, but since it’s something four out of five proctologists recommend to their patients when they turn fifty, it can’t be considered cruel and unusual punishment, can it?

And because here in America we’re givers, if it turns out the person being 'tortured' is innocent, they can go ahead and remove any pre-cancerous polyps for them as a parting ‘sorry for the inconvenience.’

What’s a Girl to Do?

2010-08-18T15:39:00.000-04:00

…while awaiting query responses ?

I could write a poem:

~Proem~

a stir
a flurry
a cascade of echoes

all prologue to the epilogue
frenzied fingers en route to denouement
beat a stiff meringue of phrases and voice

words like ripe plums
drop to the ground beneath the tree
waiting to be harvested

adjectives, like Lawrence’s lover with a pilgrim’s soul
meander among verbs and prepositions
yearn to nail down a simple truth, an alluring oeuvre

present perfect tense delights in its slow, sultry dance
so sit with me in my fin de siècle
and, breathless, I will share my story…

~.~

Now what? After preparing another round of queries for three different novels — when my to do list becomes frighteningly: done — my go-to diversion is DUN, DUN, DUN…

PHOTOSHOP!

Photoshop is to me what oxycodone is to Rush Limbaugh. I just can’t kick the habit.

I wonder if there is a 12 Step Program for Photoshop-o-holics?

There! I've created the book cover for Kat's next book!

(You're welcome, Kat!)

Courage and Consequence

2010-08-11T14:18:00.000-04:00

TO: The Architect of Guano: Karl Rove
FROM: A Satisfied Customer

Dear Mr. Rove,

I just returned from one of my thrice-daily bathroom sabbaticals where I read portions of your book, Courage and Consequence, one ‘sitting’ at a time. (I eat a lot of roughage, hence the 3x a day thing.)

Thank goodness I have a hearty septic system because I find your book serves dual purposes: laugh out loud satirical reading material, (it’s satire, right?) and I won’t have to buy toilet paper for a good long while. (that’s what I call recycling!)

Thanks again!
Jeni

If you DIDN’T like this…

…you might like these:

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” --Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects

“The next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election.”
--George Carlin

"The great masses of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one."
--Adolf Hitler

"[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
-- Karl Rove

Waiting for Karl Rove--TEASER

2010-07-30T10:45:00.000-04:00

Well, here it is. Our one minute Waiting for Karl Rove trailer.

I want to thank a couple of agents and a publisher who responded to our query with a sense of humor. It's refreshing to know there are some out there who haven't become too precious about themselves. Frankly, that's a real turn off. If you can't summon up a quip or two now and again, I don't want you representing me.

We get that taking swipes at the publishing world might not endear us to everyone, but it's a sure-fire way to weed out the undesirables--and all part of our master plan.

Consider us Snarky Gardeners...

Below are a few of the better responses, with portions redacted to protect the writer's anonymity,

Chris (you know who you are!) had this to say:

Hi Jeni and Kat,

I read the first 40 pages of Waiting for Karl Rove – what a ride. The email exchanges between Kat and Tense are a perfect jab at the publishing industry – if you can’t laugh at yourself… While I have no doubt that the book will – should - be picked up for publication, I’m afraid that it is off-target for our (BLANK) fiction catalog. I ran the manuscript by one of our senior editors, and her comment was, “nice and snarky - and I hate Karl Rove – but it’s going to miss (OUR TARGET AUDIENCE).”

Thanks for thinking about (SO AND SO) Books, and good luck on your trip up the New York Times Bestseller List. I’m sure you will make it. Cheers.

*****

...and Ann...

...Thank you for thinking of me, Kat and Jeni, but the subject matter of Waiting for (that a**hole) Karl Rove didn't grab me the way I would need it to in order to consider representation, so unfortunately I've decided to pass. (I'm more of a thrillers, mystery, & suspense agent now.)

(the ‘that a**hole’ was her addition!) How cool is that?!

*****

An agent that I really, really would like to be MY agent rejected it — but responded with good humor:

1 agent
2 words "no thanks"
1 wish "that you find your ideal agent as quickly & painlessly as possible"

…and in another time and another place, I might have been YOUR agent. But I am overwhelmed. My overwhelmingness appears to be long term.

*****

Thanks M. I'm still holding out hopes for this one. He'd be my dream agent, and if I get an offer on another book at some point, I'm running (not walking) back to him and begging him to rep me.

We’d hoped for some snarky query responses so we could add them to the book, but alas, none yet.

Have no fear--if they do arrive, we'll post 'em!

WANTED: A brilliant LITERARY AGENT with size XXL cajones.

2010-07-20T12:52:00.000-04:00

Serious inquiries need only apply:

jlcallmejeni@aol.com

NOTE: Please put Waiting for Karl Rove--Agent Query in the subject line. Queries sent with attachments will not be opened (unless it’s a contract) and any e-mail sent without the above subject heading will be deleted unread.

Please allow 2-4 weeks for reply, as our offices are inundated with agents querying us. Patience is a virtue. No calls, FAX’s or singing telegrams will be accepted—unless the singing telegram in question involves a scantily clad male or large quantities of chocolate —in which case, contact us with the scheduled delivery time at: jlcallmejeni@aol.com

Kat Nove & Jeni Decker

The Human Centipede

2010-07-13T12:57:00.000-04:00

Excerpt from Waiting for Karl Rove
(FOOTNOTES BELOW)

“Jeni, this is the worst idea since I rolled over in bed that night and said to South-of-the-Border. 'Are you gonna marry me or what?'” (1)

Jeni turned on the blinker—about thirty seconds too late in my opinion—and eased off the highway into the rest area. “You are such a chicken-shit. Consider this another adventure.”

“Another adventure? Sure why not? It’s not as if anything exciting has happened to us so far on this trip. I still have most of my motor functions and my spleen.(2)

“Listen, Kat. I can drive in my sleep, but you’re such a whiner about making sure nothing happens to your car, (3) it’s best we stop for the night.”

“I’m not arguing that point. I’m arguing about where you’ve decided to stop.” I looked around at the rest area on the side of the highway where we sat parked next to a large horse trailer hitched to the back of a double-cab pickup. I lit a cigarette off the one I’d been smoking, looked out my window and squinted in the light provided by the squalid mercury vapor lamp attached to a twenty-two foot metal pole. The driver’s side door of the pickup read BAR-NONE QUARTER HORSE RANCH.

“We’re surrounded by truckers, Kat. What could be safer?”

“Gee, let me think. A mall Santa Clause’s lap? (4) My bed at home? A public library? The back seat of a police car?” (5)

She laughed. “You’re funny, Nove.”

“Yeah, I’m funny. And my corpse will be funny-looking once the cops piece it back together. If they ever do,” I added darkly. “Do you watch horror films, Jeni?”

“Not usually. I’m not about to let my kids watch them and by the time I wrestle them to bed, I’m usually too tired to take a shit.”

I winced and ignored her three hundred and twenty-fourth scatological reference.

I rolled my eyes at her and said, “Fine. Let me fish my pepper spray out of my purse. No way we’re entering that restroom this late unless we have a way of defending ourselves.” (6)

“Go on with your delusions, Kat. I find them fascinating.”

“My point is, that no victim expects to be murdered, just as none of the characters in those movies expected to be stabbed, bitten, run over, chain sawed, decapitated, or torn in half. Otherwise they’d have stayed at home. But the film characters’ misfortune began because they took to the road. And spending the night here with a broken car window, without a sawed-off shotgun and a S.W.A.T. team in the backseat is a terrible idea.”

“You’re overreacting to a hypothetical and highly improbable situation,” Jeni said, trying to fake me out into thinking she’s a rational human being. “There’s no way we’re getting killed by a serial killer because we’re spending the night here.”

“Not just killed. Turned into a human centipede.”

“You keep saying that,” Jeni said, right at the moment the trucker exited the restroom. “What the fuck is a human centipede?”

“A human centipede is three people sewn together. There’s a Dutch director named Tom Six who wrote and directed the most revolting horror film ever made. The Human Centipede. Six is an AK-47 enthusiast who once said he gets a rash from too much political correctness.”

“So do I. What’s wrong with that?”

“You own an AK-47?” I asked.

“No, doofus. I get a rash from too much political correctness.”

“Jeni, you’d get a rash from a baby’s diaper rash cream.(7) Anyway, can we get back to The Human Centipede?”

“Why not?”

“Many horror fans loved the movie.(8) But Roger Ebert didn’t even give it a star rating. Do you know what he did?”

“How could I?” she replied, smirking.

“He told his readers the review was not only a spoiler alert, but a public service announcement. Then he revealed the entire plot AND drew a diagram of the human centipede.”

“Oh, come on. I doubt it’s that bad.”

“Really? He said what happened to the victims is the worst thing he’s ever seen done to human beings.” (9)

“Worse than Hostel?”

“Jeni, the victims in this movie saw Hostel and begged the killer to do the disgusting things in that movie rather than turn them into a human centipede.”

I pulled my notebook and a pen out of my purse and began to sketch a crude drawing. After I finished, I shoved it in Jeni’s face. “There! There’s what’s going to happen to us if we spend the night here.”

She said, “What the fuck is that?”

“That’s what the insane German doctor in the movie created. He kidnapped two young American women and a Japanese man. He was a retired surgeon who specialized in separating co-joined twins. In the demented mind of Tom Six, this doctor had a hankering to attach people.(10)

Jeni peered intently at my sketch. “Am I understanding this correctly?”

“If you think each person is attached by sewing mouths to anuses all in a row, the answer is yes. But it’s worse than that.”

“How could it get any worse?” Jeni said, clearly horrified.

“The psycho doctor also attached their digestive tracts.”

“No!”

“Yes! So that means the first person eats, then the digested food passes from his asshole into the mouth of the second person, then the third who eventually evacuates.” (11)

“You saw this movie?”

“Hell, no! But I heard it from my corner while playing Peggle on the computer. The Remote Control Terrorist watched it.”

“And you live with this guy?”

“I did ask him after it ended if he got emotionally involved with the characters.” (12)

“What did he say?”

“He scoffed at me and said of course not, it’s only a movie.” (13)

“Why are you telling me this? I might have nightmares,” Jeni whined.

“Because I can’t believe a writer could come up with something so vile out of his own imagination unless he’s creating human centipedes in his garage or attic. Tom Six is douche bag who must be destroyed for thinking up such crap. When a movie is made of our adventures,(14) I shall insist that in this scene he is played by Steven Seagal.” (15)

“Well, that’s a relief. I thought you were really worried about being turned into a human centipede.”

“Of course I’m worried about it. My luck, you’d be in the front and I’d be in the middle. With your ass situation, I’d rather go skinny dipping with Freddy Krueger.” (16)

__________________________________________________

1. My ex-husband’s family came from Monterrey, Mexico and are millionaires. Know what I got in the divorce? Can you spell J-A-C-K-S-H-I-T?

2. I didn’t expect that to last long the way Jeni drove.

3. Not to mention the aforementioned motor skills and spleen.

4. Unless he happened to be a pedophile and even then what’s he going to do with all those elves as witnesses?

5. Where I predicted I’d soon be sitting because three years ago I made the mistake of joining a writer’s website – thenextbigwriter.com. It’s frequented by a high number of crazies, Jeni being the Crazy Queen of the Forums.

6. My spur-of-the-moment plan didn’t really include wasting my expensive pepper spray on a rapist or serial killer, but rather shoving Jeni into him and running like Marion Jones on steroids while he bounced off Jeni’s tits into the cinderblock walls. I call this the Trampoline Defense.

7. But I wouldn’t put it past her to mug the Gerber baby if she thought his diaper rash cream might be the solution to her ass issues.

8. I picture anyone who loves this movie never leaving his room in his parents’ basement and looking like Jabba the Hut existing on a diet of maggots and pizza.

9. And he watched Hannah Montana: The Movie so he should know.

10. A little hobby to pass the time in his retirement. More creative than crossword puzzles and less tedious than gardening.

11. Who knows where. Under these circumstances, it seems a toilet would be difficult to manage.

12. Keeping my fingers crossed he wouldn’t tell me he wished he could be more like Dr. Crazytown.

13. Same thing he says about romantic comedies.

14. Alternative title – Waiting for a Plot.

15. Check out my Steven Seagal rant on katnovian.com.

16. Not-so-thinly-veiled reference to Jeni's 'roids, which she talks about ad nauseum.

________________________________________________________________

As it turned out, we did run into some trouble that night, in the form of Gollum the rest-stop masturbator yanking his way to crazy-town on the hood of Kat's car. But we got the upper hand. The police later found him bound with duct tape and a little message written across his chest in lipstick.

I MAY BE A SERIAL KILLER
I MAY BE A RAPIST
I HAVE A PUNY PENIS
ARREST ME!

Don't screw with a menopausal woman and her erratic sidekick... Just sayin'.

Waiting for Karl Rove (and for Kathy Griffin)

2010-07-11T17:51:00.000-04:00

Today a Special Treat--guest blogger: Kat Nove

I wrote a scene for Kathy Griffin in Waiting for Karl Rove because she’s my role model. When the movie comes out, I won’t sign any contract that doesn’t include Kathy Griffin playing herself in that scene.

A couple of years ago I went with Moses (my own personal gay) to watch her show in San Antonio. She was fantastic – what I could hear of her. For weeks before the show, I’d fantasized about sitting next to a hot gay MALE Kathy Griffin fan. Imagine my distress when my seat mates turned out to be two chatty lesbians instead. These women wouldn’t shut the fuck up so I could hear Kathy.

Then I ended up falling asleep for a few minutes due to the fact I suffer from sleep apnea and never get more than four hours sleep a night. I’m certain drooling and snoring were involved and I’m so grateful Jeni Decker, my co-author of Waiting for Karl Rove wasn’t’ there to film it. Other than those two incidents, it was a wonderful evening.

On August 6, I’m going back to see her with my two gays, Moses and his boyfriend High IQ. I’ve only met High IQ once, but I get to claim him as my very own gay because at that time he gushed about what a wonderful human being I am. He’s right. It’s strange how evangelical Christians, Tea Party members and/or wealthy white Republicans don’t get that about me.

I only have two gays, while Kathy Griffin has millions, but someday I hope my gays will number in the double digits! All you gays out there can help make this happen by getting on Twitter and twatting about Waiting for Karl Rove and how much you want to see Kathy Griffin playing herself in the movie. Bless your hearts!

For more about Waiting for Karl Rove go to the website.

http://waitingforkarlrove.wordpress.com/

Visit Kathy at her website.

http://www.kathygriffin.net/

You can find out more about Moses by clicking the link. He’s really cute!

http://katnovian.com/?p=49

And if you’re the type who likes to mock computer end users – mock away. While trying to imbed the links, my monitor shouted – FORBIDDEN! Then it spit rattlesnake venom in my eye. I’m finishing this post while wearing an eyepatch. I’m certain that’s what Kathy would do.

Waiting for Karl Rove

2010-07-07T19:44:00.000-04:00

It was an inspired idea. All I had to do was convince Kat.

“So, what do you think about packing up and heading out to visit Karl Rove?”

Thus began a road trip that started with two separate terrorist incidents at the San Antonio Airport—both attributed to us—and ended with an FBI interrogation.

Most of what happened in between is a hazy horror-show that we’d both sooner forget. Unfortunately, my predilection for always having a camera handy assured every humiliating detail would forever be captured on film.

When I dreamed up this little scheme to find Karl Rove and throttle an apology out of him, I did not count on being accosted by Junior Hillbilly in an outhouse, chased by Geraldo Rivera, ...or witnessing Gollum the rest stop masturbator jerking his way to crazy town. Kat got tasered (twice!) and humped a Teabaggers leg at the Alamo, I stripped at La Teta Pequeña, and one of us woke up in bed next to an Elvis impersonator after a long night of drinking on the Vegas strip.

Then we wrote a book about it. And now we’re ready to publish.

Our ultimate goal: Appear on The Daily Show and make ridiculous sums of money after selling the movie rights to Harvey Weinstein.

Oh shit…I think this means I have to compose a query letter.

Yuck.

I don’t suppose the following will suffice?

Waiting for Karl Rove is…

75,461 words
629 footnotes
351 pages
2 authors
1 good fucking book

If you become befuddled by the first person perspective told from the point of view of dual-protagonists, you’re probably just stupid. That’s a personal problem as far as we can see; yours, not ours.

We are two writers on a wild road trip to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List and this book is blatant self-promotion.

And what is this titillating tome about, you ask?

Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.

That’s really all you need to know.

Mike Huckabee is a Tool.

2010-06-21T14:38:00.000-04:00

I cannot for the life of me believe some of the utter windbags that managed to fly so close to the Presidential Flame.

Can you say John Edwards? Ugh, the guy had me fooled. I would probably have voted for him and his ridiculously overpriced haircut—only to later learn that he not only cheated on his wife with a woman who proved to be a tool in her own right, but did so while his wife dealt with terminal cancer.

Tool.

Then there’s Mike Huckabee.

Ah, Mr. Huckabee, who came off so folksy and sweet—until he started saying shit like this:

“It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.”

“I think there’s been a real level of being disingenuous on the part of the gay and lesbian community with their goal of civil unions. You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them. Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”

LOUD RECORD SCRATCH

Now, according to an article in the Advocate, we learn the former Presidential Candidate cites an ‘ick factor’ as part of his reasoning for being against gay marriage.

In an e-mail exchange with the author of the article, he ‘joked’:

‘The only thing worse than a torrid affair with sweet, sweet Nancy(Pelosi) would be a torrid affair with Helen Thomas. If those were my only options, I'd probably be FOR same-sex marriage!’”

Ick factor, huh? Mike, I’m glad you didn’t become president. Because you’re icky. Really icky. (Not that I’m particularly fond of Nancy or Helen. Both have managed to tickle the sensitive gag-reflex of my personal ‘ick factor’ as of late.)

People like Huckabee and Leon Kass, former member of George Bush’s counsel on bioethics, became the ‘stimulating factors’ for my desire to write The Wisdom of Repugnance. (My as yet unpublished dark comedy exploring this 'internal shudder' we all supposedly have.)

Let’s explore this ‘ick’ factor. The term wisdom of repugnance, or the ‘yuck factor’ basically describes the belief that an inherent negative response to some thing, idea or practice should be interpreted as evidence that the thing in question is harmful…evil. Supposedly this ‘wisdom’ brings on feelings of disgust that should intuitively tell the person that the object of said disgust is morally wrong.

Mr. Kass’s comments against cloning-- “we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear.... Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”

Oh, I’m shuddering, Leon. I’m shuddering. According to your ‘theory’ if I’m repulsed by leaders of the free world who are unable to pronounce the word nuclear, George Dubya Bush MUST, then, be deemed amoral.

Okey dokey, works for me, Mr. Kass.

What this ‘theory’ fails to address is that my sense of repugnance at something might not equal or even mirror your sense of repugnance. Too many of our talking heads, politicians and religious zealots (SEE: Pat Robertson) with microphones and a pulpit from which to blather, seem to think that their personal sense of repugnance should be the standard the rest of us must adhere to. Unfortunately, these same folks all end up filtering over to Fox News, where they’re given a national stage from which to preach. (I guess the separation of church and state has gone by the wayside.)

Sigh. I long for the heady days when the only thing of import I was being ‘icked-out’ about was a Presidential blow job.

Mr. Huckabee, you are a tool. I find you repugnant. You and others like you cause me to shudder. Riddle me this: What remedy, then, am I to expect with regard to stupid comments that fly out of your mouth? (Water-boarding would work for me.)

Perhaps you should just shut up and worry about your own ‘ick factor’.

I think the Marquis de Sade said it most eloquently --

There is nothing either fundamentally good, nor anything fundamentally evil: Everything is relative, relative to ones own point of view. …something perfectly indifferent in itself may be indeed distasteful in your eyes, but most delicious in mine: and immediately I find it pleasing… amusing. Regardless of our inability to agree… would I not be a fool to deprive myself of it merely Because you condemn it?

--The Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

BP Spills Coffee

2010-06-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

Lazy blogger here again. Okay so I have an excuse. I’m in the middle of writing another book and there aren’t enough hours in the day to write, edit, Photoshop, deal with two children who are off for summer break and get in at least a bit of reading so I don’t totally lose my mind.

Now, first thing’s first. There’s nothing funny about the recent BP OIL F$%KTASTROPHY.

Truly, lives are being ruined as we speak due to a one/two punch to the Louisiana area that nobody deserves (With the possible exception of Karl Rove) and the eco-system is being damaged beyond repair. Let’s be realistic, there’s not a thing in the world that I, you, BP, Obama or Kevin Costner is going to be able to do to fix this thing. It’s not fixable. We’re at the damage control stage and even that seems an oxymoron at this point.

That said, being a writer, I believe there’s no topic that can’t be used to comedic advantage — or at least as a band-aid to keep us from slitting our wrists in angst for another day.

If you don't believe me, ask any stand-up comedian. They'll tell you that the marriage of any truly horrifying incident with the ability to make said incident palatable, or even entertaining to someone else, is a rare gift.

This is why I watch Jon Stewart regularly. I still get the bullet points, but I also get to laugh while Mr. Stewart rips someone a new one in the pithy way only he can do. Sometimes it’s too painful to tune in to CNN or MSNB, and I think every forward-thinking person in the free world knows it’s always painful to tune in to FOX News.

Today I offer up a video from the good folks at UCB comedy.com, who felt like taking a stab at the Oil Spill Crisis.

Enjoy!

Born to be Alive

2010-05-13T10:16:00.000-04:00

What does a lazy blogger do when she's busy writing the next chapter of her newest tome (in this case a co-written adventure with Ms. Kat Nove) and has little time to blog?

Well, how about a blast from the past, sure to tickle your funny bone or provoke your gag reflex. Either way, good stuff.

Thanks to John Hamler, wackadoo writer extraordinaire, for supplying me with the link.

Enjoy!

Patrick Hernandez - Born To Be Alive