I know this woman who pulls this stunt at business meetings: she stays seated and talks real soft so that people have to lean over or kneel at her side so that they can hear what she says.
It’s a stupid trick and people fall for it all the time.
I stand a few feet away so that she has
to look up when she talks to me.
She hates my guts.
I think that’s a good thing in this case.
I wrote a story about being an ‘outsider’.
It upset people- it made them feel bad – they didn’t like going back to a time that really and truly sucked.
So I asked two of my friends who were ‘insiders’ what it was like for them ‘back then’.
It sounded good- their memories came across like a Nick at Night Classic Episodes Marathon with no (I’m sorry to say) Talking Horses or Martians.
Then we get around to talking about now and I heard a lot of stories about tuition costs and cars and loans and house payments and gee we took a vacation but when we got back this thing was waiting at the office…and part way through this visit to the Adult World my head started to hurt.
“Wow” I thought, “you sound like a commercial where you’re invited to ask your Doctor about this new anti-depressant” Anyway I felt like doing just that after they got done talking.
Of course these blood rituals work both ways so we go into what I’ve been up too and I say:” My kids got good jobs and moved out, I’m writing a book, I’ve been writing short stories, my husband and I are Civil Rights Activists so we’re really busy with that and for a couple of weeks now I’ve been having a Gummy Bear Porn War going on with a Writer in California.”
I took a deep breath and dove in again “I’ve also made this really cool discovery- I’ve discovered that if I do stories about Bruce Campbell people will read them. In fact, I went back and found out that his story took more traffic then the Paris Hilton story that I did… I think it’s because he’s truly talented.That’s about it”
So my two friends, (yes, I was and still am friends with some “Shiny People“) looked at each other and then at me and asked-
“So Anita, what else is going on with you?”
The Anchors I’m writing about are the Anchors that help hold you in place when the forces of the world try to blow you around and away like so much garbage in the wind.
This is based on a writing exercise at the Soul Food Cafe – the train wrecks called ‘responses’ are mine.
PEZ – they’ve given my life meaning and purpose. Plus they were the only food I felt good about eating on the job. I worked in a Funeral Home. You’d have to have spent time working in an embalming room to understand.
One day it’s my dream to visit Area 51 and have my picture taken next to a bunch of inflatable aliens wearing sombreros. I want to wave around a fifth of Tequila and shout in Spanish, ” What do we want? The Truth! When Do We Want It? Now! ”
That way I can tick off Homeland Security and stick it to the Science Guys who suck the joy of wondering about the Universe straight out of our lungs.
I think it’ll be a rush- the same kind you get you drive up to a McDonalds and buy a Happy Meal For Kids so you can get the toy-and the thrill you get as you pull away because you know darn well you’re keeping that toy and the food for yourself.
It’ll feel just like that- I know it.
When I was about 9 I got sent to the library to do some ‘thinking time’. This kid named Jeff poured glue on my chair and when I realized he had gathered a small audience of jerks to watch me sit in that puddle of goo- in a new pair of cool purple bell bottoms to boot-I smacked him for it.
I got busted for ‘starting a fight’ I kid you not, the teacher said I had no reason to be mad because I hadn’t sat in the mess.
Anyway- there was a bright side two this- actually there were two.
The first was I felt really, really good when I popped the little bastard in the nose and the second good side was that the librarian made me sit in the corner where there was this stack of books a class had used for a project they had worked on about the Ancient Egyptians and Archeology.
With nothing else to do but gloat- which I did for part of the morning I spent the rest of the day reading.
On that day I learned that violence may not solve anything but it has it’s own rewards and that you can really learn things from books.
Before he was turned into a rock star I learned about King Tutankhamun and I also learned about a woman named Hatshepsut who, despite some serious effort on the ‘powers that be’ was not wiped from history.
A woman.
Cool.
I saved the Very Best for the Very Last.
My ” Monsters”.
They’ve made me less afraid, they’ve given me things to write about and their creators have inspired me to be more then the Anita I designed to be by doing hard time in the Suburbs with a bunch of narrow minded bigots on one side of me and scads of Latte Liberals on the other.
See, when things started to feel a little shaky and I was feeling like that maybe this time I wasn’t going to be able to hang on- you know I was forgetting who I was and what I was about- I had my anchors…Aliens, Pez Candy, Ancient Egyptians and Monsters.
You should be so lucky.
amm
When I was in High School my main tormentor was not a girl, it was not a relative, it was a short smarmy smart ass that the teachers loved and the cheerleaders loved and his dog probably loved him too.
Had we grown up in the 1950’s his nickname would have been Chip or Champ or Sport, something like that.
So you’d think that this well loved shiny bright young man who was headed for a shiny bright future in the suburbs with a shiny woman waiting for him there named ” Buffy ” ( or something like that )and 3.5 shiny children- would have something far better to do then follow me around with his mob of shiny best friends and ask me things like,
” Why do you have to wear that leather jacket? What are YOU trying to prove. Freak.”
” What is it with you and that black eye liner no one cares what you look like. Freak ”
” Nobody cares about you or your stupid guitar. How’d YOU get into a band? Freak. ”
” Why do YOU ride a motorcycle to school? Freak.”
” You’ll never amount to anything you ugly dog. Freak. ”
It went on and on and one until day I lifted the jerk straight off the ground and gave him a black eye.
The questions stopped and his Shiny friends would curl their shiny lips at me and scuttle away when we crossed paths at school (or anywhere else)
When I passed him in the halls he’d be mumbling ‘freak’-
of course.
Almost 20 years later I run into the one person at the Grocery Store who seems to know and care about what’s become of our Class.
She looks up from the Fresh Produce, sees me and practically drops her toddler as she races over to me and starts talking about my Shiny Friend.
He had gone on to get the Shiny Wife and the Shiny Life and all of that got mashed into the rear end of a truck.
My Shiny friend watched his Shiny Wife die next to him on the car seat and he expired on the way to the hospital calling her name.
” I can’t believe it, ” she cries.
By then I was working in a Funeral Home and I could believe something like this could happen to anybody. Even bright shiny people.
This woman bursts into tears and her kid slides to the floor ” the world has lost so much.”
I tasted something sour in my mouth and before I could react to it I put on my Funeral Director’s somber thoughtful face and said with concern and dignity, ” It has.”
When she turned away I smiled.
I really did.
What can I say besides-
Freak.
Who would have thought that you could have so much fun tossing gummy bears at your friends?
It is…
here you go Ms Adams
It started as a joke.
Gummy Bear Porn.
I googled Gummy Bear Porn and posted comments about the links at Max’s Blog.
What happened after that was strange.
I discovered people were really googling Gummy Bear Porn and because of my little joke some of them were being directed to Max’s site.
Gee I thought- that’s funny.
And if it was funny once it was going to be funny the fifth or sixth time right?
Right.
So I did it some more.
If I got the chance to say ” Gummy Bear Porn “ I did.
Max devoted her daily entry at her blog to me and I’m touched.
See it here
I love Max, she wrote a Play about a dog that Exorcises Demons . To bad she doesn’t have that dog in real life…because
The Blond Assassin
is about to meet
It’s Going To Get Sticky
around
Today a friend from my Writer’s Group
told us she has Cancer.
My Sister had it too.
I could use a good laugh right now.
I am so tired
and it’s not even close
to
nightfall
amm
I wonder
why
in action and adventure movies
like Gladiator
and
Rob Roy
always
kick off the
‘ Heroes Journey?’
I wonder
why
are always twenty something
girls
with twenty something
waistlines
and
how come in
Star Wars
which
“borrows its themes and fight scenes so obviously from samurai and kung-fu flicks“
do we never see an
actual
Not Even
a pretend one?
I just wonder
why.
Lizzie Borden- she was a woman- she was a killer -and she got away with two of the most hands on brutal killings in American History.
To refresh your memory, Lizzie lived in a state where ( in 1692 anyway ) you could just accuse a woman of being a witch and have her executed…just like that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in 1892 women ( including Lizzie ) didn’t even have the right to vote-
that didn’t happen until 1920.
Anway- I think she did it but to this day Lizzie has her supporters and they say she’s innocent.
One of the arguments in her defense- which I think underscores the fact that Lizzie was found innocent because of her sex- was based on the time lines established for the killings.
Lizzie’s Stepmother was supposed to have been killed an hour or so before her Father.
The theory is that it was very unlikely that someone ( like a WOMAN ) who inflicted that kind of damage on a person with an AX could have left a dead mutilated body upstairs and gone on with her day and then come back later and did the same to someone else.
Have you ever seen the pictures of Andrew Borden?
Whoever did that was good and angry, they had worked themselves up into a mindless rage and that kind of rage can happen in the blink of an eye or it can build up…
say…
over an hour or so.
Links:
Link Photos From: The Chancery House
And visit: Lizzie Borden Virtual Museum and Library
There are Three Good rock solid reasons for why Paris Hilton needs to be sent back to jail:
She broke the law.
She broke the law.
She broke the law.
And as an FYI they don’t suspend your license for fun, it’s usually a sign you’ve got a problem like this guy.
So go back to jail Hilton, you aren’t singing any song that every single jail bird before you hasn’t sung before. (I learned my lesson, I don’t belong here… etc etc ). It doesn’t work for them and it sure as hell shouldn’t work for you.
Oh yes…I almost forgot… as Hilton sat at home eating celebration cupcakes ( I’m not kidding about that part ) her attorney issued this statement:
“I want to thank the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and staff of the Century Regional Detention Center for treating me fairly and professionally,” she said. “I am going to serve the remaining 40 days of my sentence. I have learned a great deal from this ordeal and hope that others have learned from my mistakes.”
The only lesson we’ve learned here is that there’s Paris Hilton and the rest of humanity.
Irregular Bones 
