Makes me bloody sick

One of those things floating around Facebook that gets 967 "likes" and all sorts of squeals of hilarity and
delight. Makes me bloody sick. I'm not even going to illustrate this crap. WHY does anyone think there is anything positive in this swill? I would have hated it when I was 20 years old. There's a name for it -
ageism/misogyny - and it's worst when we're being fired on by our own troops.


Older Ladies by Donnalou Stevens

Well, I ain’t 16, not a beauty queen.

My eyes are baggin’ and my skin is saggin’,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


Well I ain’t 20 either and I don’t care neither.

My hair is gray and I like it that way.

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


If you don’t think I rock, well we ain’t gonna roll.

If you don’t think I hung the moon, my hot just turned to cold.

If you want a younger model, I wish you well, sweet pea.

‘cause if you can’t see what it is you have,

Then you ain’t having me.


I got cellulite and achin’ feet,

And my thighs kinda jiggle when I giggle or wiggle,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


My tummy ain’t tucked or liposucked.

It’s a little poochy, but I still Hoochy Koochy,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


See, I’m no longer desperate. I’ll only have a man,

If he has the smarts to see how hot that I still am.

If you want a younger model, I wish you well, sweet pea.

If you can’t see what it is you have,

Then you ain’t having me.


Older ladies, older ladies, older ladies… are DIVINE!


Well I gotta chicken neck and I love it, by heck,

It makes a double chin whenever I grin,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


I got saggy breasts that droop from my chest,

Pert near down all the way to my nest,

And if that’s the reason that you don’t love me,

Then maybe that’s not love.


If you don’t think I rock, well we ain’t gonna roll.

If you don’t think I hung the moon, my hot just turned to cold.

If you want a younger model, I wish you well, sweet pea.

’cause if you can’t see what it is you’ve got,

You ain’t getting me.


Older ladies, older ladies, older ladies… are DIVINE!

Older ladies, older ladies, older ladies… what are we ladies? We’re DIVINE!


Make sure you share this with all the beautiful ladies in your life!


Share this with your friends and family by clicking the button below.

Something wonderful

This is a man who thinks with his heart,

His heart is not always wise.

This is a man who stumbles and falls,

But this is a man who tries.

This is a man you'll forgive and forgive

And help and protect, as long as you live.

He will not always say what you would have him say

But now and then, he'll say something wonderful.

The thoughtless things he'll do will hurt and worry you,

Then all at once, he'll do something wonderful.

He has a thousand dreams that won't come true

You know that he believes in them and that's enough for you.

You'll always go along, defend him when he's wrong

And tell him when he's strong, he is wonderful.

He'll always need your love and so he'll get your love

A man who needs your love can be wonderful.

This is a man you'll forgive and forgive

And help and protect, as long as you live.

He will not always say what you would have him say

But now and then, he'll say something wonderful.

Post-blog thoughts. This sort of welled up in me out of nowhere - no, it was somewhere. I had to trundle all the way in to Vancouver by bus today - God, it seemed like a long trudge, though I used to do it several times a week. Had to go see my doc. Had to go see my HEAD doc, as a matter of fact, who has helped me probably more than anyone else I can name, but just the fact that I GO to one is somehow ice-floe territory. But there you are. 

It wasn't quite time for my appointment on the 17th floor of this luxe building that has such a gorgeous lookout on the waterfront, it would be the ideal place to commit suicide if you could only get through that 2"-thick plate glass. At any rate, having had a bad lunch at the food fair and having a teensy bit of time left, I forced myself to walk into the "local book store" (a big impersonal chain I've called Big Booky in my posts), which I knew to be the only place that might still be carrying The Glass Character. "Still" referring to the three-month window most small-time authors get before having it all sent back to an unhappy publisher. 

Anyway, I walked past all the displays of useless high-end gift items, plus a few tables of mass mega-best-sellers by people everyone knows/no one knows, and ascended the TWO giant escalators - up, up, waaaaaaaay up - until, buried at the very back of the third floor, I found a rather small, obscure section called Fiction. And I began to hunt. Surely it wouldn't be there. But I had to look. In nine interminable years of non-publish-hood, I never again thought I would see a book of mine on a shelf in Big Booky or anywhere else (and in Vancouver, by now, there literally ISN'T "anywhere else"). And I saw the H's and I worked backwards and.

And, he was sitting there - listen. This isn't just a book. I wish you'd read it. It's a piece of my heart and it's still aching and breaking, even now. I came to be familiar with Harold the way some people must have actually known him, almost intimately. He was a heartbreaker. And I saw him up there, and oh God, and yes, there his is, by the holy. The phrase "something wonderful" kept echoing in my head after seeing him in all his blue-ness on the Big Booky shelf (and it's unlikely they have sold even one of them).

Something wonderful.

Then I thought of that melody, and couldn't get it out of my mind. I kept hunting for a good version to post here, and one didn't seem to exist. They were all oversung and schmalzed-up, the worst offender being Barbra Streisand, whose version I used to like 20 years ago. Then I found something strange - a delicate piano version, just the tune, in fact sounding more like music minus one, an accompaniment that peeled back the Broadway schmaltz to reveal the iridescence of the chords beneath.

I think Harold's character was a lot like the man in this lovely translucent song from The King and I. Then I got that yearning or craving or whatever-it-is, and because I can't make art I had to start pasting things up, to try to express some of this. I wanted to keep Harold out of it entirely, but I couldn't. If I COULD paint, maybe I never would have needed the head doc in the first place.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

Eaten right from the tin

Stupid Facebook thing on what writers eat, but I like the illustrations. God I wish I could draw or paint, or something, which is why I muck around with images so much. Good night.

DAM IT ALL: beavers kick polar bear ass!

(To celebrate July 1, I'm going to goof off and eat those cheese thingies and stuff like that. In other words, I don't want to work. But here's a nice piece, so old it's new, almost! Enjoy it, folks, and remember to respect your beaver friends, or they will gnaw down a tree that will pound you into the ground like a tent peg. Happy Canada Day!)

Adrian Humphreys, National Post  

Oct 28, 2011 – 7:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 28, 2011 12:55 PM ET

Polar bear should replace 'dentally defective rat' - the beaver - as Canada's national emblem: Senator

A Canadian senator has called for a national “emblem makeover” by replacing a vegetarian rodent that defends its territory with urine with the world’s largest walking carnivore that thrives in the cold.

Referring to the beaver as a “dentally defective rat,” Nicole Eaton called on Ottawa to replace the critter as the national emblem with the polar bear, an animal she hails as strong, majestic and brave.

“It is high time that the beaver step aside as a Canadian emblem or, at the least, share the honour with the stately polar bear,” Ms. Eaton said in the Senate Thursday.

“A country’s symbols are not constant and can change over time as long as they reflect the ethos of the people and the spirit of the nation.”

The Department of Canadian Heritage has the beaver as the only animal on its list of “national emblems,” a tally that includes the maple tree, the maple leaf and maple leaf tartan.

The beaver is certainly deeply entwined in Canada’s history.

The trade of beaver pelts during European colonization was so lucrative the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company put the beaver on its coat of arms in 1678, four of them, in fact. That same year, the governor of New France suggested the beaver as a suitable emblem for the colony.

When designing the first Canadian postage, they . . . awww, screw the rest!

WE HAVE THE BEST!

Didja ever see a beaver makin' lodges in the lake

And the way he chews on tree bark

It can can make your tummy ache

For beavers are so busy,

busy, busy all the way

You can keep your goddamn polar bears

Coz beavers rule the day!

(Chorus) Beavers, beavers, beavers, beavers,

Beavers rule the day!

Now a beaver never ate someone

But bears eat kids all day

Their breath it stinks from all that fish

We know it's not OK

But beavers only eat the trees

And chop the maples down

And swamp the fields and wreck the roads

and flood the whole damn town!

(EVERYBODY!)

Beavers, beavers, beavers. . . OK, you get the idea, eh?

Now the beaver once was very big

Just like a buffalo

And cave men kept him as their pets

They loved his flat tail so

So you shouldn't say he's boring

You shouldn't say he's small

Cuz when the earth began, he was

The meanest rat of all!

 

(Patriotic interlude)  Where would our country be without the beaver? Maybe people wouldn't make fun of us so much for having a rodent as our national emblem. But hey, he made good fur, didn't he? I mean for those, like, fur hats for Hudson's Bay or something?  He's busy all the time eating wood and chopping down the trees. Bears lie around and do squat all day, almost as bad as those eagles. Who needs trees anyway? There are way too many of them. But there can never be too many beavers. Eh?

Beavers! Beavers! Beavers!
We really think they're fine

We love him more than stinky bears

He's yours, he's ours, he's mine

He's part of our, like, history

He sacrificed his pelts

Let's hear it for the BEAVER:
We don't want no one eltse!

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Outtakes