My Fave Twitter Accounts from Non-Crybaby Losers

The internet got a little duller when President Trump was booted off Twitter. Or as I like to call him, soon-to-be-ex-thank-all-the-stars-and-planets-even-little-Pluto President Trump Poopyhead Esquire. I’m all about dignified political discourse, you guys.

Your obedient servant, A.Ham.

Anyway. I never followed the man on Twitter. There was no need. Whenever he fat-fingered some brain-damaged nonsense into the Twittersphere, I invariably saw the responses, retweets, and I Love Lucy reaction gifs from people I do follow within approximately a nanosecond. 

And I did have a guilty habit of checking his blighted feed daily. He was always near the top of my search list, so it was easy to keep tabs on his poorly written proclamations and badly produced propaganda videos, yet by doing so I contributed nothing to his follower count. To this day I don’t understand why more people didn’t do likewise.

I frequently responded to his tweets - to him directly (or, more accurately, to Dan Scavino, the lackey who actually gets paid to type out the swill Trump dictates as it flows unimpeded from drug-addled brain to tiny butthole mouth), and to the myriad trolls, bots, and deeply deluded acolytes who invariably amplified his lies and stroked his flaccid, er, ego. Guys, if you don’t frequent Twitter, you should know this: I’m not always nice on Twitter. I don’t post cute memes or report on what Precocious Daughter is up to or share pictures of monkeys wearing clothes.

I'm a fool for the singerie.

Twitter Chuck is Chuck unfiltered. You can find me at @DrunkBaudelaire if you want to know, or ignore me if you want to preserve the image of me as a little ol' dirtbag blogger with not much to say.

Unfortunately, Twitter does make me angry sometimes. Ask the poor Siamese Kitten, who often gets aggressively skritched as I scroll through utter bollocks from QAnon idiots, alt-right assholes, Constitutional illiterates, and Ted Cruz. I think the Siamese Kitten forgives me my frustrated petting, likely because she expects one day to eat my face when I die alone.

This is what is known as
a mutually beneficial relationship.

But that's not what this post is about. It's not about calling the soon-to-be-ex-etc. POTUS a bloated Nazi, or pointing out that Kim Guilfoyle looks like she can and regularly does put Don Jr.'s entire head in her mouth as a show of dominance, or asking Tom Fitton why for the love of God he can't pay a personal shopper to buy him a shirt that fits when he shows up on Fox News to say crazy things.

No, this post is about the Twitter accounts that actually don't make my eyes hurt and my blood simmer.

This is a shout-out to the people and aliases whose opinions, humor, and outlook on life I unironically love and respect. It's hard to do anything unironically on Twitter, you guys. On a platform where people guilelesssly post "succeed" when they mean "secede," or castigate black athletes for disrespecting the American flag while cheering on insurrectionists who literally beat law enforcement officers with a pole carrying the same flag, a healthy sense of irony is all that stands between me and a straitjacket emblazoned with "I Really Don't Care Do U?"

Apparently this means "complicit" in Slovenian.

 But let's forget all that for a moment. Here are a half-dozen Twitter accounts that make me smile on the regular. That's a very big deal. They may also educate and elucidate, and that's just icing on the social-media cake. But mostly, they're what I dare to call kindred spirits on the journey to all the better tomorrows I hope to see. I want to say thanks and give a virtual fist-bump to them all. Please give them some love if you see them in Twitterville.

In no particular order:

Daniel Dale @ddale8

Daniel is the king of the fact-checkers. A Canadian journalist whose tweets CNN quoted so often they finally hired him. So thorough, it's exhausting to read his work sometimes. He also features his adorable Pomeranian Breezy on a regular basis. Latest tweet:

Devin Nunes' cow @devincow

Devin Nunes is a Republican Congressman who is both unethical and not particularly bright. He likes to sue people for reasons that can only be described as baffling. One time he sued a Twitter account that facetiously claimed to belong to a cow on his family's dairy farm. That account, Devin Nunes' cow, is a sharp, witty, accurate source of information on all kinds of government shenanigans, not just Rep. Nunes'. Cow is badass. I like Cow. Latest tweet:

Phil Sledge @Phil_Sledge

Not all my favorite Twitter feeds are political, or from well-known people (or bovines). Phil is a British gentleman who loves dogs, particularly Basset hounds, which immediately endeared him to me. His videos and captions are always good for a smile. Latest tweet:

Men Write Women @menwritewomen

The fact that many male writers - from hacks to bestselling authors - are unable to create female characters who function outside the sphere of their own social and sexual biases is both hilarious and infuriating. This account presents ample (like boobies, get it?) evidence of the phenomenon. It also regularly promotes smart and inclusive writing along with the snark. The tweet that started it all:

Random Snake Facts @random_snakes

One of my newest favorites. This account serves up two of my favorite things: Political snark and pretty sneks. They regularly highlight examples of ignorance and ineptitude that need to be "snaked TF out" and then oblige with gorgeous pictures of, and facts about, snakes from around the world. Highly recommended. Latest tweet:

Becky Holmes hates spinach @deathtospinach

Becky has a singular talent for attracting DMs from men who are both mentally and physically, shall we say, under-endowed. Rather than merely being disgusted by unwanted dick pics, she responds to her online suitors with hilarious results. Even though Becky artfully censors the wee willies, this is definitely a NSFW account. And she's working on a book! Recent tweet:

This barely scratches the surface of accounts that make swimming into the Twitter cesspool worthwhile. If this post gets any traction, I may post a sequel. In the meantime, thanks to all these fine folks. Love you mwah mwah mwah.

Ten Ways I Won't Celebrate My Birthday This Year

My birthday is Thursday, Drunkards. I'll be 52 years old - one for every week in the calendar, one for every card in the deck. The same age as Adam Schlesinger, who wrote "Stacy's Mom" and "That Thing You Do!" - and who died of COVID-19 last week.

Ssssssigh.

Fucking COVID-19. Just come out of nowhere and turned everything to shit, hasn't it?

My natural, morbid response to our current pandemic has been to re-read Stephen King's "The Stand." I love this book, always have. It's got its flaws and its anachronisms - even King couldn't quite imagine how much pop culture would have changed between 1978, when he wrote it, and 1985, when it's set. No one had really conceptualized or categorized GenX at that point, and as a result almost every character in the book, no matter what their age, is written with the attitudes and experiences of a Baby Boomer. I've always found it hilarious that Larry Underwood, the up-and-coming rock star character, was supposed to be stoked to have done a recording session with Neil Diamond. Come on, Mr. King. Even in 1978, Neil Diamond had become a middle-of-the-road pop crooner. Maybe in 1968, when you were about Larry's age, he had some hipster cred.

Don't get me wrong - 1968 Neil Diamond
was hot.

But I digress.

One of the main differences between the events of "The Stand" and the 'Rona is the timeframe. In the book, the superflu sweeps through America (and presumably the world, although that's only hinted at) literally in a matter of days. By the time anyone realizes what's happening, 99% of the population is dead. There are no quarantines, no shelter-in-place orders - one infected man escapes a top-secret government facility in mid-June, and by the end of the month all but the immune have succumbed.

Here in the real world in 2020, we're not so lucky. Our plague is unfolding in slow motion, relatively speaking. Especially here in America, our fortifications against the Coronavirus have gone up with too little speed, too little urgency, and almost no consistency from place to place. And where the America of "The Stand" has Randall Flagg, the dark incarnation of evil, presiding gleefully over the anticipated annihilation of humanity, we have a fat orange asshole who thinks he has all the time in the world to screw around and be some kind of hero. And the death count keeps rising as the days go by with almost agonizing slowness.

What was I talking about? Oh, right - time.

See what's become of me.

So whereas in fiction, characters are drop-kicked from normality to devastation, here in the real world we're in suspended animation. We can't do most things or go most places (but not all, because some people are too stupid to understand the concept of ripping off a Band-Aid). And so we're stuck, not knowing if we're going to get sick and with little to do while we wait.

And it's my goddamn birthday this week, and it going to suck. I mean, I'm not someone who makes a big deal out her birthday, but even by my standards it's going to be as dull as the part of the daily Pandemic Response Team briefing where the experts all stand around waiting for Trump to finish taking a shit or applying his orange coating or whatever the hell he does before he lumbers out to the podium to spew lies, hate, and nonsense.

Anyway, here are ten things I won't be doing on my birthday this year, thanks to the Coronavirus:

1. Going out to dinner
2. Having lunch with my co-workers
3. Treating myself to a little something from the bookstore or Target
4. Seeing my family
5. Seeing Drummer Boy (OK, so I almost never get to see Drummer Boy on my birthday, but on other birthdays I could at least be disappointed when he didn't come over)
6. Going to the movies
7. Meeting up with a friend and saying "You shouldn't have" when they give me a present
8. Buying a cake just big enough for Precocious Daughter to eat on my behalf because I don't eat cake
9. Getting a hug from anyone
10. Getting a birthday spanking (I haven't actually gotten a birthday spanking in ages, but I couldn't think of one more - and anyway, if I did get birthday spankings, they would definitely be a huge no-no this year)

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I'm healthy, and the people I love are healthy. I actually get to leave the house every day to go to work, so even though it's the only thing I'm doing, I'm not housebound. Things could be much, much worse.

But this is a rotten time to have a birthday.

On Thursday I'll drink a toast to myself and probably donate some money to a worthy cause. If you want to celebrate my day with me, you could do the same things, wherever you are.

Maybe I'll listen to some Neil Diamond.

Au Courant

Me, currently.

Reading: Elton John's memoir, Me. It's fabulous. I really feel Elton and I could be soulmates if I worked harder, had more talent, and weren't afraid to wear satin during the day. Other than that, we're like this:

But with, like, sequins and feathers
and stuff.

Watching: Fleabag on Amazon Prime. Amazing show. Great for exercising to. I love, love, love Andrew Scott. I have one more episode to watch, and don't you dare tell me what happens. I will go off on you like the Godmother.

Drinking: Diet Squirt. Does anybody drink Squirt? It's supposed to be a grapefruit-flavored soda. But I loathe grapefruit, yet I love Squirt. And I had to search high and low to find the diet version. I don't think it tastes like grapefruit at all. If you're a certain age, you may remember that 7Up used to be called "the un-cola." I think Squirt tastes like the un-7Up.

Digesting: A bowl of fettuccine with yummy homemade sausage-studded marinara that Drummer Boy and I made last weekend. But also pondering: Why the box the pasta came in (in which the pasta came...whatever) says "fettuccine" when it's clearly linguine? This is fettuccine:

And this is linguine:

And they are totally different. Get your act together, Market Pantry. Linguine rules, fettuccine drools.

Envying: Precocious Daughter, who earlier this week got to see a screening of Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood that was attended by Mike Moh, who played Bruce Lee in the movie. How great is that? I don't recall doing as many cool things in college as she does. When I was her age I was on the brink of getting engaged to my future ex-spouse. I thought that was pretty cool at the time. I really should have gone to more movie screenings.

Mourning: The end of Elizabeth Warren's candidacy. I was very, very late to jump on the Warren bandwagon. In fact, until I watched her on the debate stage over the last several weeks, I had never warmed to her at all. But I was so damn impressed with her positions, her intelligence, her poise. So I voted for her on Super Tuesday, and two days later she dropped out of the race. I am a political Grim Reaper, apparently. Hell, I voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988. That was also just before I got engaged to my then-future-former-husband-to-be. The 80s were a decade of bad choices, children.

Writing: This, and kicking myself for not writing more. I'd really like to get back to writing and blogging on a regular basis. Maybe even tilting at my personal windmill of having something accepted by McSweeney's. Bwahahahahaha. No, seriously, it could happen. I mean, Joe Biden is finally winning primaries after 30 years of trying. Anything could happen.

Believing: Elton John and I could sing "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" together wearing matching lime-green tuxedos.

Not currently. But you gotta start somewhere.

Love Is...

What is love?

"Two naked eight-year-olds
who are married." - Homer Simpson

Uh, no.

Love is when your sweetheart texts you at midnight to let you know he's pre-ordered matching copies of the hot new book for both of you.

I guess "Sturm und Drang" was taken.

Love is when he doesn't actually mention the name or subject of the book...but you know anyway.

I've never read Fifty Shades of Gray, but I just know there's crossover potential between these two bestsellers. They both have ties in them or something...right?

I'll have to get my fanfic on after I've read at least one of them.

Thank you, Drummer Boy. You get me.

Fair Day, 2016

Yesterday was Fair Day.

I told you guys that Drummer Boy and Precocious Daughter and I would be attending the State Fair of Texas together this year. And yesterday was the day.

For those of you who don't live in or come from Texas: Just about every school child in the Dallas Metroplex gets a day off during the Fair, specifically to go to the Fair. Every child gets a free ticket.

That's how Texas rolls.

You should see this before you die, seriously.

Of course, PDaughter left hers at home and we ended up buying her a full-price ticket (despite my suggestion that she should remain in the car for six hours while Drummer Boy and I went in, to teach her a lesson about responsibility). But still.

I had never been to the Fair on School Day. When I was married, my ex and I actually used to pull PDaughter out of school on a Tuesday during the Fair's run, when admission was $2 with an empty can of Dr Pepper (again, this is Texas), and all the rides were discounted. But now that she's in high school, with a greater courseload and, of course, marching band, that's not really possible. So School Day it was.

Holy crap, was it crowded.

You don't understand how crowded.

Sort of. But more.

Here's the thing: I don't like crowds. They freak me out. But they freak out PDaughter even more, and so it fell to me to be the strong, unruffled adult as we made our way through, like, 12 billion people. Yes, more than the population of the Earth. That's how popular the State Fair of Texas is.

It was a crowd of old and young, black and white and brown, muscle shirts and hijabs, able-bodied and wheelchair-bound, families and couples and packs of rowdy teens. And with one exception, every single person we encountered was polite and cheerful and respectful. That exception was a loudmouth, rude, aggressive middle-aged white guy, who wasn't wearing a "Make America Great Again" gimme cap but might as well have been.

There's almost no chance that guy will read this, but just in case: You are damn lucky you stopped talking smack to me when you did, because my boyfriend was about to break you into pieces.

I should totally not be proud of that. But I kind of am.

So. One of my favorite attractions at the Fair is the World's Largest Traveling Reptile Show. It's so cheesy. PDaughter and I have gone in for several years. My ex never wanted to go with us, but Drummer Boy was totally game.

Alive Reptiles, you guys!

This year they had a "Siamese Spitting Cobra," which Google tells me is actually properly known as an Indo-Chinese Spitting Cobra. This is a beautiful black-and-white speckled serpent. The specimen in the Reptile Show was particularly active: slithering, rearing up, flicking its fork-ed tongue. And then, as we watched through the glass, it turned to look us straight in the eye, and it hooded at us.

Holy shit. Beautiful but deadly af.

It was. So. Cool. And terrifying.

We also ate Fletcher's corny dogs. Which is required by state law. No shit.

And we saw the famous Budweiser Clydesdales. They are beautiful, you guys.

They also tend to attract loud, rude Trump supporters, unfortunately.
Not their fault, thought.

We did not ride the Crazy Mouse, which was the favorite ride of the Baudelaire family. PDaughter decided the line was too long, and I was legit relieved, because it would have been weird to ride it with Drummer Boy.

Yeah. The Texas State Fair with Drummer Boy and PDaughter, the two most important people in my life, was amazing. But it was hard to shake the decades of Fair memories I accumulated with my ex and with my little Baudelaire family after PDaughter joined us.

It was sweet. It was difficult. It was joyous. It was bittersweet.

I had such a good time. Despite the traffic, and the expense, and the crowds, and the weird, intrusive memories.

If you have a bucket list, attending the State Fair of Texas should be on it.

Really.

I may be biased, having attended it with the two most important people in my life.

I had an awesome day.

The rest will be in the book. I promise

Shelves

Today Precocious Daughter and I built a bookcase.

It's not the first piece of furniture we've built together. It's not even the first bookcase. We've built a number of furnishings in the last 10 months, and we love them all the more for the effort we expended to bring them to life.

This is my favorite. Thank you for understanding
independent women, IKEA.

Long story short: PDaughter's bookcase survived the move from house to apartment, but not well. A few months ago, it collapsed in a blaze of low-quality MDF. Such is life. We disposed the dead case, and PDaughter's library took up residence in a corner of her bedroom. Where it sat until today.

The thing is, our path to replacing the late bookcase has been much longer and stranger than it should have been.

Gratuitous Grateful Dead reference, because why not?

Here's the thing. PDaughter's late bookcase was white, like most of her bedroom furniture, and so she wanted its replacement to be white as, well. It proved difficult to find a white bookcase in the size she wanted at local stores. So I eventually placed an order with Wayfair for a bookcase that was extra-tall and white (like Larry Bird), and I paid a premium for said bookcase.

Why would I not post this adorable picture?

Well, the Wayfair bookcase was a disaster. The "extra-tall" MDF side panels literally broke in half when I tried to raise them upright. I ended up throwing the entire $200+ enterprise into the trash. 

And since then, her books have stayed on the floor. :(

Until my city government forced my hand.

See, a couple of weeks ago, I received a notice from my apartment complex that my home had been randomly selected to be inspected by the city in its annual inspection.. OK, no big deal.

Except!

Earlier this year, PDaughter experienced water intrusion in her bedroom from a leak in the roof. Total kudos to apartment maintenance for fixing the leak, but it did leave an area of blistered, cracked paint in one corner where the rain got in.

And as it happened, the collapse of PDaughter's bookcase occurred shortly after the leak. Therefore, I couldn't schedule a maintenance call to repaint because the affected corner was completely blocked by books.

So the city flagged the peeling paint in PDaughter's bedroom as a violation. And our property manager informed us that we needed to provide access to the offending wall on September 1st.

Thus buying a new bookcase became a priority.

One of the reasons we hadn't previously gone out and bought one was that PDaughter insisted that the replacement be white, like the other furniture in her room. But I finally pointed out to her that what she critically needed was a goddamn bookcase, regardless of color, and she agreed.

So today we found a (non-white, but gorgeous) bookcase at Target, and two extremely nice employees helped us load it into Benedict Cumberhatch, and we took it home and put it together.

It was easy, and even fun. Then PDaughter meticulously organized her books and shelved them.

Ta-da!

This is a well-designed, attractive, and sturdy book case. And you can totally see it here if you're interested. 

I want you to know that the books shelved here include those by Joseph Heller, Anne McCaffrey, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Douglas Adams, and many more.

My kid is so freaking well-read. I could not be prouder of any of her achievements than that.

#NerdMom

Anyway, my kid and I built a bookcase today. Which we purchased, brought home, and carried into our place by ourselves, together.

I thought that shit was pretty neat.

Also...books.

Yeah.

Books As Old As You

A couple of months ago, Good Housekeeping published a pretty cool slideshow called "The Most Popular Book the Year You Were Born."

It covers the years 1930 to 2016. I'm not sure how many babies born this year are already reading popular literature, but for those who are, you best get your chubby little hands on a copy of Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, pronto.

There's so much more than his famous duel
with Aaron Burr! Also, I made poopie!

I bookmarked GH's list because I thought it would be fun to read every book on it that I haven't already made it through. For the record, I've read only 15 of them, which kind of stinks, although many of the ones I haven't read have been on my reading bucket list for a long time. That...sort of counts? No, it doesn't. I'm lame and way behind on my reading. Hence my bookmarking.

The most popular book the year I was born was John Updike's Couples. I've never read it, although I've read a couple of Updike's Rabbit novels. So I'll be seeking that out pretty soon. The most popular book the year Precocious Daughter was born was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She was amazed to learn that the Harry Potter books predate her. Apparently the universe began when she was born, which I guess is a pretty normal attitude for a 16-year-old.

I'll let her believe it while she can.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun if you guys checked out the list and then shared which book was most popular the year YOU were born. And whether you've read it. Or want to. It would be crazy cool to hook someone up with a new favorite book this way. Also, I'll get to find out how old/young my Drunkards are. Then I can leverage that data into...Fuck it, I don't leverage data. I'm just nosey curious.

How about it? Let me know the name of the book that defined your birth year, and whether it defines you or just seems like a sign that you were born in messed-up times. (Spoiler alert: We were all born in messed-up times.)

Ready, set...go.

Recap

I know. I haven't posted in days. Because reasons.

Always with the reasons.

Let me catch you up on what's been going on.

1. My IRL job continues to knock me on my ass. I'm working so far above my pay grade, and getting so little recognition for it. My attempts to achieve sobriety are being severely hampered by my desire to drink away the stress of my job every single night.

2. I just finished reading an amazing debut novel, The Enthusiast, by Josh Fruhlinger. Josh runs the blog "The Comics Curmudgeon," and he's created a lovingly specific, obsessively immersive world in his story. I'll be posting a full review in this space very soon.

3. Speaking of novels, my friend, gadfly, pedant, and probable terrorist Bill the Butcher will publish his debut novel, Fidayeen, this month. I'm so goddamn happy for him I could just shit. I don't even know if that's sarcasm or not. I'll read it and review it here, of course.

4. So I bought this gorgeous lamp with a clear glass shade. But when I got home and opened the box, the shade was broken. I'm very bummed. I'm sure this qualifies as a First World Problem, but dammit, I really love this lamp, and I really hate returning things. Le sigh.

5. Tried an awesome burger joint for the first time tonight. There are actually two burger places in walking distance of my apartment. One is upscale and trendy, the other is an authentic dive that has been there in its grimy little strip center for God knows how long. That's the one Drummer Boy and I went to this evening. It was delicious. It was downscale, basic, and sans frills...but the half-pound burgers and seasoned fries were right on. Cheap, too. Yum.

6. This last one is for Dallas peeps only: WTF is going on with the Dallas Observer? It's smaller, it's thinner, it has fucking staples. And there's absolutely no sign of "Ask a Mexican" or "Tom the Dancing Bug." RIP, underground Dallas journalism. You've Rolling Stone'd yourselves quite successfully.

OK, it's late and I have to do my goddamn job in a few hours. Good night, Drunkards. I'll be back soon.

Free Association Thursday. Let's Make That a Thing.

OK, first of all, Miss Othmar wins Comment of the Week for her response to my last post.

I do drink the zombie from the coco shell, thank you very much.

Damn, I love me some Steely Dan.

Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite books, which I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned here and am too lazy to check.

Paperback Writer is a humorous novel by Mark Shipper that was released in 1978 and reissued, like every single book even marginally connected to the Beatles, after John Lennon's death. It's currently out of print, but you can probably find a used copy somewhere.

Here's what my copy looks like.

It is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Laugh out loud funny. Yet filled with love and devotion to the Beatles. Highly recommended.

The reason Steely Dan reminds me of Paperback Writer is that, in the book...

*spoiler alert*

Linda McCartney threatens to quit Wings to go on tour with her favorite band.

Steely Dan.

Believe me, it's hilarious.

And thinking about the Beatles reminds me of a fun fact.

When I was a kid, I heard Elton John's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" before I ever heard the original.

Let's face it, Elton was that decade's closest thing to the Beatles.

The first time I listened to Sgt. Pepper, I was flabbergasted to hear it. It sounded funny to me.

I also heard the Carpenters' version of "Please Mr. Postman" before I heard either the Beatles' OR the original version by the Marvelettes.

I'm a child of the 70s, OK?

When do you think bands will start re-making grunge songs?

I can't imagine that Nirvana's "About a Girl" or "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam isn't ripe for a 21st-century makeover. Right?

What's the last remake that was a big hit? Honestly, I can't think.

Hm.

OK, this has been my stream-of-consciousness musing for the day.

Feedback welcome.

Lifestyles of the Obscure and Awkward

For the three of you out there who haven't heard, Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess released her second book today.

Here's a free fucking plug.

I'd attempt to lay out a rational argument that I'm not insanely jealous, except fuck that shit, I'm insanely jealous.

I'm happy for Jenny Lawson, really and sincerely. Because in my own cramped and unheralded way, I'm a writer, and I totally dig how thrilled she must be today. Getting one book published is fantastic. Getting a second published (after the first was a runaway success) is...I don't even know, I can't imagine, it's beyond what my inferior mind can imagine.

I hope she enjoys the shit out of it, for herself and on behalf of those of us who have no hope of approaching, let alone equaling her success.

But hey...it's not as if I don't appreciate what I have, right here in Baudelaire World.

Welcome.

I mean, sure, The Bloggess had a book released today, which is sure to become a best seller, just like her first book. She's getting tons of press coverage and will probably appear on talk shows and whatnot, because people love her and everything she writes.

But I...I...I got a tetanus shot today. And a Pap smear. I got to hear a physician's assistant say, from between my thighs and with a speculum in her hand, "Looks like you may be starting your period."

 I mean, this shouldn't be funny, yet it is.

I got to deal with foundation contractors and cracked concrete and realtors. I got to sign electronic documents that I didn't even read, because I don't even fucking care what they say any more, just sell my goddamn house, please.

I got to stay late at work to download PDFs to individually numbered folders that took me half a day to set up. MY IRL JOB IS GLAMOROUS AS FUCK, YOU GUYS.

Once I got home, I got to listen to my almost-ex whine about co-workers who are not nice people. And then I got to endure berating when I didn't express sufficient sympathy for his problems.

And then I got to hear that clearly we need to divorce because I don't care about his problems enough.

So yeah. I didn't release a book today. After all, The Bloggess is an amazing writer and I'm just a middle-aged bitch who doesn't know what the fuck she's doing.

Probably I'll buy her book in a year, and read it and love it, as I did with her first book.

Best wishes, Jenny Lawson. From the 50,000 or so bloggers who deserve and are waiting for (and most likely will never get) their chance to shine.

Feel fortunate today. Because you are.

I'll keep writing, just in case.

I Have a New Target Audience, and It Is Sad and Celibate People Who Miss Sex Things

I haven't read any of the 50 Shades of Grey books. Or seen the movie. I'm not a prude. I'm just offended by bad writing.

Snoopy gets a pass. E.L. James, not so much.

But I did just read this BuzzFeed post by a guy who live-tweeted the newest book, which apparently is exactly the same freaking story from the guy's point of view. Which is a thing the world needed? Anyway, his post is as hilarious as the excerpts he put up are cringeworthy.

And this E.L. James person is now a millionaire for writing this crap?

And people wonder why writers kill themselves.

I can totally write my own version of 50 Shades of Grey and its various sequels.

Are you ready to make me a freaking millionaire?

Let's do this. (NSFW coming up)

******************

Huh-huh-huh, let's fuck, baby.

Tee-hee, I'm not ready.

I stuck my cock in her mystical womanly canyon of pleasure, aka her vagina.

Then I, like, moved it in and out because sex.

I came. She came. We came.

Metaphor about oil or earthquakes or freight trains or some shit.

She's like all sweaty but I tell her she's hot. She thinks I'm a bastard but fucks me some more.

She meets my parents and we fuck.

I have angst and we fuck.

We fuck.

For 200-some pages, we think about fucking, talk about fucking, fuck, then talk about the fucking we did and possibly the fucking we will do again.

We are sweaty and we have sex organs.

We rub them together because apparently we have no friends or hobbies.

Weird metaphor about sex here.

Brief thought about whether this is rape. Nah. More fucking, possibly in the presence of kitchen appliances.

The end, featuring no personal growth or resolution of conflict.

************************

I hope you are aroused and inspired to spend money on my line of sexy sex products as sold at major chain retailers near you.

Meanwhile, don't discuss current events or politics, because they are not poorly-written fiction about fucking.

Baaaaaaa.

If LEGOs Came from Germany, "Everything Is Awesome" Would Be a Dirge

I used this picture to illustrate part of yesterday's post.

It was just something vaguely appropriate and disturbing that I Googled. But completely awesome Drunkard Miss Othmar just informed me that this is in fact an illustration from Der Struwwelpeter, a German children's book from the 19th century. It consists of ten stories that teach moral lessons to German children. And by "teach moral lessons," I mean "traumatize and scare the crap out of little kids who may later grow up to be Hermann Goering as a result."

This is not the face of a man who was exposed to
"My Little Pony" in childhood.

Germans are great storytellers, but as a people, their outlook on life is less than sunny. I know; I'm three-quarters German, and my veins run with a viscous mixture of stoicism, moral inflexibility, and black humor. We're great at parties, but we kill at funerals.

Literally. Not literally. But sometimes literally.

If you've never read the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales in their original, non-Disneyfied form, it may surprise you to learn that Cinderella's stepsisters tried to fit into the glass slipper by chopping off parts of their feet, or that a certain princess reacted to a certain frog by throwing it against a wall instead of kissing it. The moral, of course, is that...uh, most people are dumb shits and life is full of pain? Yes, that.

Anyway, I went straight to the Wikipedia entry for Der Struwwelpeter and was absolutely delighted by what I read. Essentially the entire book is a dire warning to children to never ever ever do anything wrong, lest they suffer pain, humiliation, and general torment.

Suddenly I feel I've failed as a parent by not imparting this important lesson to Precocious Daughter.

For example, the image I used is from the story "Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher" (The Story of the Thumb-Sucker), in which a little boy who won't stop sucking his thumb has it lopped off by an insane tailor with a huge pair of scissors and some kind of grudge against harmless childhood vices. No wonder my mother was so adamant that I stop sucking my thumb when I was a toddler; she knew what the next step was if brushing my thumbs with bad-tasting goo didn't work, bless her heart.

Then there's this story, as described on the Wikipedia page: 

"Die Geschichte vom Suppen-Kaspar"(The Story of the Soup-Kaspar) begins as Kaspar, a healthy, strong boy, proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup. Over the next five days he wastes away and dies.

WHOA.

Gott im himmel, I love being German.

Über alles, baby.

You totally need to read the synopses for all ten stories. You thought Lemony Snicket was dark? He's a pussy. 

Thanks, Miss Othmar, for making my day with this information.

Oh, and if you want to read another amazingly effed-up German children's story, check out a post I wrote a few years back about Hans Huckebein, the Unlucky Raven. It ends delightfully badly for the titular bird.

The End.

For My Mom

I look like my mom. A lot. And I'm OK with that, because I think my mom is beautiful, even though I don't think I'm beautiful.

I love my mom so much. And since Sunday is Mother's Day, here are some reasons why.

My mom is gifted when it comes to raising house and garden plants, in a way she did not pass on to me.

My mom gave me a love of reading at a very early age. And she taught me that reading to your child is imperative, even if your goofy voices and exaggerated cadences make you seem ridiculous. And she gave Precocious Daughter the first book she ever read by herself.

Thank you, Biscuit. Thank you, Grammy.

My mom was my Girl Scout leader.

My mom insisted that I watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood when I was a pre-schooler, because she saw how valuable they were. And she was right.

My mom made a lot of clothes. Some of them were polyester nightmares, but she made them. For me. The clothes I'm wearing in (at least) my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade school pictures were hand made by my mom. Wow.

My mom should have a college degree. But she doesn't because she had three children before her 25th birthday, and she raised us instead.

My mom taught me to cook and bake. To this day I love to cook and bake.

My mom taught me to do needlepoint and cross-stitch, although she never did get me to pick up knitting and crocheting. It's not her fault. I just don't get them. (PDaughter can crochet, however, so I'm grateful it skipped a generation and picked up again.)

My mom was raised Lutheran, but converted to Catholicism when she married my daddy, and she raised three kids as Uber-Catholics. It didn't take with any of us, but that's more the Church's fault than hers, clearly.

My mom introduced me to the writings of Stephen King, and Anne McCaffrey, and Robert Heinlein. Three of my favorite authors to this day.

My mom had a complicated relationship with her parents, whom I never knew. I relate, but I also work hard not to be estranged from mine, because I see through her how painful that can be.

My mom loves cats.

My mom said "crap" in my presence once. It's the only time I've ever heard her curse. I've never known anyone with her ability to get good and mad without resorting to cursing.

My mom could have had a very different life from the one she's led. Should have? Maybe. But she's my mom, and I love her and am selfishly glad her life made her my mother instead of something else.

It is the prerogative of the child to be selfish of the mother.

I love you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.

Not enough roses.

How Much Is a Good Book Worth?

Precocious Daughter and I have packed up all of our books.

We have a lot of books.

I know, Kindle, e-reader, blah blah blah.
But, BOOKS.

We both culled our collections pretty severely in the process. It's one of the things you do when you have books. They're like friends, in that some are forever keepers and some outlive their benefit to you and some you must painfully but firmly bid adieu when their time comes. Books, like friends, must be curated to retain their value.

Thank you, you're free to go.

PDaughter is fortunate that her collection contained many books of the Young Adult genre. YA is super-hot. Today's teenagers have a lot of disposable income and a nearly insatiable appetite for stories about vampires, dystopian societies, doomed romances, and cancer. One of these days, some savvy writer is going to concoct a tale about a post-apocalyptic vampire in love with a cancer patient from the wrong side of the tracks and make all the money. The movie series will star Emma Stone and Anton Yelchin. Mark my words.

I got this.

Anyway, PDaughter assembled a couple of boxes of books to sell to Half Price Books. She got a pretty decent amount for them. They included favorites like The Fault in Our Stars, Thirteen Reasons Why, Scat, Holes, Monument 14, and The Secret Garden. Pretty much all guaranteed to sell when put out on the shelves.

All books she was completely willing to part with. With which she was willing to part. Whatever.

And I was fine with her choices. They were her books, so it was her decision to keep or sell them.

I was also really, really fine with the books she adamantly wanted to keep. They included:

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

The Owl and the Pussycat and Other Poems, Edward Lear

The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift

All of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming

My girl.

She's embracing the change that's coming in her life, and she's doing it by affirming and refining the person she is and wants to be.

Goddamn, she's an amazing person.

She's got me reading In Cold Blood now. She said she loved it.

And that's good enough for me.

My Admiration Just Edges Out My Envy (A Book Review)

OK, so one of my fellow bloggers and best-friends-I've-never-met, Michelle from "Rubber Shoes in Hell," is featured in a new book called I Still Just Want to Pee Alone. It's a collection of essays from a group of very talented writers who fall loosely into the category of "mommy bloggers."

Gotta love a book with a toilet
on the cover.

Aside: I don't consider myself a mommy blogger. First of all, I don't consider motherhood to be a competition of who is having the hardest/easiest/most hilarious child-rearing experience. Secondly, I win that goddamn competition hands down, so I stay out of the fray.

Amateur.

Anyway, Michelle is much, much more than a mommy blogger, but she writes hilariously and touchingly about raising her kids. And she honored me beyond all reckoning by sending me a copy of the book. It arrived yesterday. I may have squealed when I opened my mailbox.

Also, this.

I'm so thrilled that Michelle thought enough of me to share this with me. I went straight to her essay on page 169, which is called "The Last Time We Did One, Two, Three."

It's wonderful.

What I really love about her writing - apart from the fact that it's drop-dead funny and makes liberal use of the f-word - is that she has a true gift for picking unique perspectives and details that turn the most mundane incidents of everyday life into delicious little word-nuggets.

Shiny.

Did I mention she's funny as hell?

Her contribution to the book is funny, as well as poignant and sweet. I'm insanely jealous of her. Bitch.

Check out I Still Just Want to Pee Alone.  You can order it here. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but so far every chapter I've read has made me laugh. I can't wait to finish the whole thing.

Probably yours won't be personally autographed by Michelle, like mine is.

Maybe if you stalk her, the way I do, she'll sign a copy for you.

Thank you, honey. You and all the bloggers in the book absolutely freaking rock.