Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Justin Bieber Fails DNA Test!



EXCLUSIVE! The world held its breath as Justin Bieber provided a sample of his sperm - oops, I mean his blood, or was it that saliva thing-ie,that swab thingammie from your cheek? Anyway, he did that thing you're ssupposed to do to prove you didn't get that girl into the bathroom and do the nasty with her while she had her little bare butt in a cold sink (or, worse, a urinal).


We all know the Beaver - oops, the Biebs or whatever he's called - is way too young for sex in the bathroom, or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, there is an avid discussion as to whether he has attained his full manhood. Perhaps, like his predecessor Ronnie Howard ("Opie" on The Andy Griffith Show), he will be one of the few human beings on earth never to reach puberty.

All that aside, we still have this mercenary bitch saying that Justin lost his virginity with her when he was, like, twelve.

Can you imagine him having sex? Even with himself?

I mean, just look at that face!








It's obvious that nary a sexual thought has entered that cutely fringed brain. He's too busy sangin' to get into that sort of messy sticky stuff.

Then came breaking news that shattered his legions of androgynous 12-year-old fans: Justin had failed his test. He only got 68% and had to take a makeup exam. Oops, that's not what we meant at all.

Lucinda Dagnabbit of Extortionville, Texas stood triumphant in front of cameras, while Justin dove under the bed with his lawyers. "I just knew one of them-thar li'l swimmers made its way through his Dacron pants," she stated, cradling little Abner Dagnabbit in her arms.

The resemblance between the baby and his father is remarkable.





Rumors abound that Lil' Abner is actually a girl, a claim his or her mother does not dispute: "Waal, his father's a girl too," she explained.

After reluctantly coming out from under the bed, The Biebs confessed his paternity to legions of fans waiting under his balcony.

"It's true, guys," he said. "This little package here is mine."



Obviously, the guy with the most famous bangs in the world has a whole lot of 'splainin' to do.




BREAKING NEWS! Geneticist Sheldon Cooper, best known for playing a wingnut genius in the hit comedy The Let's Bang Theory, has disputed the results of Justin Bieber's recent paternity test. "Someone spilled Diet Coke on the sample," he claims. A retest reveals shocking news!

The true father of Abner Dagnabbit is none other than. . .



Justin BEAVER! His treacherous bitch of a girl friend switched samples to try to blackmail poor innocent little so-and-so (and aren't you tired of hearing about him by now?)

As a matter of fact, Bieber didn't really dangle that baby, because that baby was only a decoy created by Anne Geddes and available on Craigslist for $249.00 (very useful if you want to get your in-laws off your back every time they say when are you gonna have that baby anyway?).



Close examination reveals that the actual offspring in question, Abernathy Dagnabbit Beaver, now 17 years of age, bears absolutely no resemblance to Justin, whose eyebrows are much closer together.

But nagging questions remain. Some fans still believe Bieber is a biological hybrid capable of fathering a child with very large teeth. Suspicions were raised when he bought the family a $10,000,000.00 mansion in Beverly Hills.



When questioned about the validity of all this genetic bickering, Dr. Sheldon Cooper offered what is perhaps the final word on the subject: "You're in my spot."







The World's Most Beautiful Baby: Part Two



The World's Most Beautiful Baby: Part One




Talking Babies: world's youngest standup comedian

Monday, November 7, 2011

War is hell (but what is writing?)



WRITING IS HELL


If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.
Poppy Z. Brite



Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?
Bennett Cerf






I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
Gustave Flaubert


Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Robert A. Heinlein



It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in january. 
Richard Krzemien







Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.
Rosemary Mahoney



Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.
Paul Valery



Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
Jessamyn West




















I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde



If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser



Easy reading is damned hard writing.
Anonymous





Ahhhhhh, JESUS, not one of these blocks of quotes again, all about "the writer's life" and what sheer hell it is to write and about how you must shed your skin and ooze out quarts of blood and etc. etc.

It's not like that. Not like that at all. At least, not for me.

I love to write. Sitting down to work on this blog every morning is more fun than going to the beach. Hell, the circus! I don't worry about the quality of it at all. It's play.

No one wants to hear this, but I have to say, though I've had my share of struggles with the craft and was not really ready to try to publish a novel until well into my 40s, most of it has been pleasurable in a way that borders on the sexual.




I don't know why that is. Many of these quoters, not to mention gazillions of others, would conclude, "That's because you're a lousy writer." It took me a while to disagree with this. Actually, what it took was getting two novels published. It still breaks my heart that they ended up selling so poorly, but out of something like thirty reviews between the two of them, only one was negative.

My publisher at the time said, "It's a miracle, Margaret." I wanted to say: how 'bout twenty years of hard work? Yes, but hard work that still brought a smile to my face.




Writing is hell, supposedly - nearly everyone says so, or wants you to think so - but in my mind, at this stage, right now, what is really hell is trying to get it out there. I think I still have something valuable to share: in fact, I know it. Maybe I am being punished for this, although at the same time we're all supposed to be brimming over with self-esteem (see My Declaration of Self-Esteem, yesterday's post).

It's so weird: writers are supposed to be furtive (as if it's a secretive, even dirty activity). They're supposed to sweat blood: if there's an exhilarating flow to the work day-to-day that results in a work you are immensely proud of, you must be doing it wrong.

You've got to suffer. SUFFER. Big-time. If you don't, it can't be any goddamn good.
































I suffer all right, but suffer in the process of trying to get my story into the hands of readers. Here, too, public perception is extremely odd. People react with a kind of embarrassment that you even want such a thing. Shouldn't you just be content to write it and put it away somewhere? What about the process; shouldn't it be its own reward?

I hate to go back to the old saw about the professional cellist or ballet dancer who has trained all her life, is at the very top of her field, and never gets to perform. Shouldn't she be OK with that? Shouldn't she just be content to play her Steinway in an empty hall?

Phhwaaaaaahhh!




Writers who want to share their stories are egotists, and if they actually want to make money, they are mercenaries. Never mind that they have bills to pay like everyone else.

It's odd, but I've noticed over the years/decades that the first thing people ask you when they find out you're a writer (and I never tell them any more because they always look so doubtful) is, "Have you published anything?" When I tell them, they invariably ask, "Did you self-publish?" (or "e-publish", that other free-floating form of the vanity press). When I tell them no, they look at me quizzically and say something like, "However did you manage to do that?"




It's kind of like my freelance work. I've written at least a thousand columns and reviews which have accumulated over 25 years or so. (No one believes this, either. But I wrote weekly pieces, which adds up to 50 or so a year. Do the math.) This is what I heard, all the time, but furtively, as if someone was opening their coat to show me dirty postcards:

"Do they pay you for that?" (in a doubtful tone).

When I say yes, they then ask:

"How much?" (Last time I checked, it was rude to ask someone who works at McDonalds how much they are paid. It just is not done.)

Then comes (incredulous):

(a) "That much?" (or, conversely):

(b) "Is that all?"




Anyway, this is turning into a load of complaining again. I don't complain about the writing process too much any more. Blogging has broken the ice jam and brought back the exhilaration I used to feel before everyone started trying to convince me that Writing Is Hell.

But I'm still on that road. It's called The Glass Character, folks. It's a novel. I think it's the best thing I've ever done. As far as I know, no one has even looked at it: my reviews mean nothing, I guess, because my previous two (PUBLISHED!!) novels didn't sell very well.





And yes, THIS is hell, and always will be. There are a gazillion quotes about how desirable failure is, about how we should all have as many failures as we can possibly manage because we learn so much from them and become Better People.

But in publishing, even one failure (or perceived shortcoming) can sink you forever.

Be warned.

Getting published is hell.



Sunday, November 6, 2011

The self-made monster






My Declaration of Self-Esteem

by: Virginia Satir, Source Unknown



I am me.















In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me.  There are people who have some parts like me but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it.




















I own everything about me- my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all my thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they might be -- anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth and all the words that come out of it -- polite, sweet and rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud and soft; all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.































I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.




















Because I own all of me, I can become intimately aquainted with me in all my parts. I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.
 


















I know that there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and find out more about me.



































However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.





When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.


























I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.





I own me and therefore I can engineer me. I am me and I am okay.