muffy bolding

Christ…how I love language.

When used properly, it’s like a well-honed sword — it cuts both ways.

Santorum

san-TOR-um n. A frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex. See also: Sen. Rick Santorum (R – PA).

In April 2003, Republican senator Rick Santorum made some asinine comments in defense of laws banning gay sex. While this in itself may seem unremarkable, many people were amazed at how much detail he went into. Rick wasn’t satisfied to call it ‘degenerate’ and move on. He really, really wanted to talk about sex, so he told the Associated Press: “If the Supreme Court says that you have a right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.” Well, little did he know that two months later the Supreme Court would rule anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional… whoops!

While I agree with the spirit of naming something objectionable (to him) after Rick Santorum, I think it should be a substance, not an act. I would never want to Santorum anyone I liked. What a turnoff. Instead, I think it would be better to name some kind of sexual byproduct after him. After all, ending up with idiots like Santorum in elected office is a byproduct of the otherwise desirable practice of letting any old yokel vote. Specifically, I nominate the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. As in, “We had a great time, but we got Santorum all over the sheets.” Or better yet, “Before I sodomize my gay, unmarried dog, I like to give him an enema so there won’t be any Santorum.”

(from http://www.rotten.com)

For further information on how to do your part in altering the cultural lexicon in order to memorialize this insane, fascist prick forever:

http://www.spreadingsantorum.com

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”
— Sylvia Plath

I was thinking about the following mindless, superficial, conspicuously consumerical topic last night as I was dropping off to asleep:

Back when I was a young newlywed (ummm, fuck you…the first time I was a newlywed), I worked as The Bridal Registrar at Gottschalk’s, an aspiringly upscale department store in Fresno, California. It was at that time that my complete and utter obsession with dishes began — and it continues to this day.

While there, I made it my personal bidness to know and memorize the name of every gottdamned china pattern known to humankind. I also made it my personal bidness to talk newly-engaged Armenian Princesses out of registering for 18 place-settings of hideous, trendy, NO-talent, 80s, faux-Asian, pastel-lily-bedecked, black-rimmed, Mikasa horseshit dishes. I told ’em, “Honey, you are gonna have these dishes forever (or at least until you get divorced in two years) so, for the love of christ, DON’T FUCK THIS UP.”

This relentless obsession has never left me; I am still in love with dishes.

So, yes — here is yet another fabulous way in which I have not yet poked and prodded you dames into revealing something about yourselves and your lives. You do realize that I am obsessed with all of you, as well, correct?

So…come on along — and let’s play…

Name Your Pattern!

I’ll start: Franciscan Ware: Desert Rose and Fiesta Ware

Would somebody PLEASE tell my darling husband that instead of the usual matted, white, lice-infested, fun-fur teddy bear with “True Love” inscribed across his satin stomach, sweetly clutching the plastic rose-scented rose…that this is what I really want for Valentine’s Day?

Yeah, that’s right, motherfuckers — it’s a chihuahua in a Barbie car.

You got a problem with that?

Since everyone is posting old(er) pictures of themselves…I feel compelled to join in the merriment. This one is from about 5 years ago — and I post it not because I am necessarily enamored of it…but because it is the only one I have scanned.

This is myself and my best friend and creative partner, Subatomica, at the dive known as Tokyo Garden. When this picture was taken, I was preparing to climb my wicked ass onstage and give a kickin’ karaoke rendition of Tom Jones’ “Delilah.” In true Jackal form, we were also smoking and mocking like fiends. I am the one with the bare legs and the wry smile.

By the way…Fresno was never quite the same after hearing my searing version of “Delilah”.

I fucking killed.

Continue reading →

‘Captain Kangaroo’ Bob Keeshan Dies at 76

QUECHEE, Vt. (Jan. 23) – Bob Keeshan, who gently entertained and educated generations of children as television’s walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died Friday at 76.

Keeshan died of a long illness, his family said in a statement.

Keeshan’s ”Captain Kangaroo” premiered on CBS in 1955 and ran for 30 years before moving to public television for six more. It was wildly popular among children and won six Emmy Awards, three Gabriels and three Peabody Awards.

The format was simple: Each day, Captain Kangaroo, with his sugar-bowl haircut and uniform coat, would wander through his Treasure House, chatting with his good friend Mr. Green Jeans, played by Hugh ”Lumpy” Brannum.

He would visit with puppet animals, like Bunny Rabbit, who was scolded for eating too many carrots, and Mr. Moose, who loved to tell knock-knock jokes.

But the show revolved about the grandfatherly Captain Kangaroo, whose name was inspired by the kangaroo pouch-like pockets of the coat Keeshan wore.

”I was impressed with the potential positive relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, so I chose an elderly character,” Keeshan said.

Keeshan, born in Lynbrook, N.Y., became a page at NBC while he was in high school. He joined the Marine Corps in 1945.

His first television appearance came in 1948, when he played the voiceless, horn-honking Clarabell the Clown on the ”Howdy Doody Show,” a role he created and played for five years.

Later he played Corny the clown, the host of a noontime cartoon program in New York City.

”Captain Kangaroo” debuted on Oct. 3, 1955, and Keeshan remained in that role until 1993.

Keeshan, who moved to Vermont in 1990, remained active as a children’s advocate, writing books, lecturing and lobbying on behalf of children’s issues.

He was critical of today’s TV programs for children, saying they were too full of violence. And he spoke wherever he went about the importance of good parenting.

”Parents are the ultimate role models for children,” he said. ”Every word, movement and action has an effect. No other person or outside force has a greater influence on a child than the parent.”

When Fred Rogers, the gentle host of ”Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” died last year, Keeshan recalled how they often spoke about the state of children’s programming.

”I don’t think it’s any secret that Fred and I were not very happy with the way children’s television had gone,” Keeshan said.

In 1987, Keeshan and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander co-founded Corporate Family Solutions, an organization that provided day-care programs to businesses around the country.

Keeshan believed children learn more in the first six years of life than at any other time and was a strong advocate of day care that provides emotional, physical and intellectual development for children.

”Play is the work of children. It’s very serious stuff. And if it’s properly structured in a developmental program, children can blossom,” he said.

Keeshan’s wife, Jeanne, died in 1990. He had three children.

Fred McFeely Rogers 1928-2003

Among other astonishing tidbits of wisdom — like, say, a behind-the-scenes look at how crayons are made — Fred Rogers provided me with my very first lesson on how you can totally and completely love someone with all your heart…even someone you’ve never met.

In the early 1990s, I read a newspaper story about Mr. Rogers’ stint as the main guest speaker at the graduation ceremonies of some fancy Ivy League college back East. I smiled as I read that he was overwhelmingly chosen — from among a rather large field of quite renowned and impressive possible candidates — by the graduating students themselves.

However, because of the great affection that I felt for this man, as I read the story I distinctly remember also feeling a small, but palpable twinge of fear in my chest — fear that perhaps this bored, jaded, favored, overly-educated, disenchanted slice of my generation had chosen him to speak at their college graduation as some supreme statement of kitsch, or even as an opportunity to poke fun at his tender, gentle ways in a very public forum.

When I got to the part about him walking to the podium to begin his speech — in that purposeful, patient, and unhurried walk of his that we all know so well — the protective concern that I was feeling instantly shifted into a sense of great pride, relief, and community. They hadn’t let me down.

And I began to weep. And I weep again, even now, just remembering it.

As Fred Rogers was introduced and began his walk to the microphone where he would address them, thousands of voices — voices that were soon to take their place in positions of great power, leadership, erudition, and meaningful discourse in this nation – spontaneously and enthusiastically erupted into song; his song:

“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor…
Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won’t you be my neighbor?”

They hadn’t invited him there to their hallowed halls to make fun of him at all. They had invited him there, with great reverence, to pay him tribute. He had — one song, one smile, one loving word at a time — been a part of each of their journeys to adulthood. They had asked him to be there, on this symbolic last day of their childhoods, because they loved him.

Those thousands of voices raised in song were a profound and heartfelt “thank you” for the many years that he gave them his kind, patient, and undivided attention. A voice that was there, everyday, even when parents or friends weren’t. A voice that, to a tragic few, may have been the only loving and reassuring words they might hear all day.

I miss him, and his kindness…his cardigan and his sneakers…his calm, sweet voice and his silly puppets. But most of all, I miss his unfailing belief that all things are possible.

Because they are.

That simple, glimmering truth was his gift to us all.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers — and Happy New Year.

TV Special Honors Mr. Rogers’s Legacy

A TV documentary honoring Fred Rogers, one of America’s favorite small-screen heroes, who died this past February at age 74, will air New Year’s Day evening on PBS and celebrate the gentle host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” reports the Associated Press.

“We obviously didn’t know back then that ‘Neighborhood’ would become the longest-running program on public television,” continues the actor. “It was a simple, old-fashioned production that everybody really enjoyed working on.”

Last night, I proudly wore the following holiday headpiece to a glittering Christmas shin-dig held downtown. A festive time was had by one and all:

At one point, a well-meaning society matron — dripping with philanthropy and great-grandmother’s pearls — approached me and loudly pronounced, “Why, that’s positively fabulous! Wherever did you get that wig?”

I just sat there, calmly blinking back at her…and with a face of absolute stony granite, I feigned sucking an imaginary piece of food from my tooth, and answered, “What wig?”

“We are all worms. But, I do believe that I am a glow worm.”

–Winston Churchill

3 things which scare me: harm coming to one of my chilluns or sweet husband; the black gelatinous horror that is BushCo; not fully appreciating the exquisite nature of every single fucking moment of my life.

3 things which I don’t understand: the whole Celine Dion thing; how Whitney Houston — in a FULL ON baggied-out crack-burned voice — can seriously have told Diane Sawyer that her incoherent ass isn’t currently on the pipe; anal sex.

3 things I’d like to learn: to direct a film; “Prufrock” by heart; the FULL, REAL, and UNCUT STORY of MM and JC.

3 things I am wearing right now: creamy delish Victoria’s Secret panties; grey leggings; ancient hunter green GAP thermal (my husband’s).

3 things on my desk: “A Beautiful Final Tribute” (Volumne 7) by Bee Lavender; “Oscar Wilde” by Richard Ellmann; and “Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald” by Matthew J. Bruccoli.

3 things I want to do before I die: to smell the heads of my grandbabies; to finally fucking get through “Ulysses”; to lie fully prostrate and weeping on the grave of Ted Hughes in the wild English moors.

3 good things about my personality: I belly laugh like a jackal — and frequently; my ability to be “present” at all times; my profound appreciation for the odd, the misunderstood, and the disenfranchised.

3 bad things about my personality: my pathological ability to walk away from someone or something and never ever look back; my extreme capacity for denial; my limitless dilettantism for all things interesting.

3 parts of my heritage: Sicilian, English, Filipino.

3 things I like about my body: my hair; my eyes; my non-existent nubbin-like “Why the fuck did god even bother?” little toes.

3 things I don’t like about my body: my mammoth ta-ta’s; my parched heels; my much-too-feminine hands.

3 things most people don’t know about me: I have never slept with a woman; I absolutely adore “The Three Stooges”; and that despite my bawdy, lecherous, and quite public posturings to the contrary — I am OVER THE MOON in sickening syrupy love with my pretty Willie Wonka-like husband, Gregory.

3 things I say the most: “That’s strictly horseshit.”; “Fuck off, lady.”; and “How fucking NO-talent is THAT?”

3 places I want to go: Ireland, Scotland, and back to my beloved Languedoc with my Beloved.

3 screen names I use or have used: MrsDorothyParker, BellyTenant, NoonBlueApples.