Idiots aplenty, idiots galore……

A friend just emailed me that someone won 123 million dollars but hasn't come forward to claim it because the lottery ticket was purchased in an adult store.

The idea of that gives rise to so many questions….

I think I'd claim the prize in costume [masked] and ask the lottery commission not to release my name.

On the flip side….

If this is someone who might be in the market for amour…..claiming the giant check IN THE STORE in front of a bunch of jiggly leather things and posting the photo on the web could conceivably attract the kind of companion they might be looking for..... [they'd be broke in a month....and probably dead...but the corpse would be smiling]

They’re creepy and they’re kooky…..they’re altogether ooky….

I wrote this first part last week but didn't get a chance to post it:

I was driving along in a school zone a few days ago and saw something that freaked me out. Off to my right, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a nice normal looking house. The house sported a nicely manicured lawn and three pretty trees spaced equidistant near the sidewalk. But…and here's the creepy part…. someone had lashed a toddler sized snowsuit to each of the trees. A pink one, a blue one and a white one. I slowed my car to a crawl and looked really hard to see what was up with the snowsuits. After I ascertained that the snowsuits seemed to be filled with leaves [not babies] I felt a little bit better.

I'm going to drive back by the house a bit closer to Halloween to see if anything changes with the display. At this point I don't know if the creepy snowsuits were Halloween decorations in progress [they had no faces] or a warning to the other children to stay away.

All I do know is it was freak....y, and it's probably one of those houses that mothers should hold tightly to their children and pick up the pace to walk quickly past when they go out trick or treating this year.

I'm just wondering if I should call the cops….

~

Then yesterday I drove by the house again, stopped, crept up quietly and took a photo to share. Each snowsuit has a "face" now, and the display is definitely geared toward Halloween, but take a look at the photo and see if the face they added to the snowsuit is likely to make me feel any better about the owner of the house……

I need a cabana boy…..

Oh I know what you're thinking. You think I want a young stud with a washboard stomach to run around scantily clad fanning me with palm fronds, bringing me iced tea and slathering SPF40,000 sun protection lotion on my creamy white skin.

Nope. I need a cabana boy to firmly but gently take the paintbrush out of my hand when a canvas is done. And to firmly but gently stand shaking his head in front of the painting hanging in the same room that seems to be shouting at me: just add a little bit of color
right here in my middle -- when that painting has been done for months.

So maybe what I actually needed this past weekend was one of those big burly men in white from the basket weaving factory who discreetly carries a telescoping butterfly net around in his jacket pocket.

What would prompt this sudden realization? Well, I recently had what we'll delicately call a creative moment. Long story short, this past Sunday I finally sealed a canvas I painted over the winter. Then about an hour after I hung it back up over my sofa, I had an urge to paint something new.

I painted a new canvas and ended up with something I love. It's really vibrant and has a lot of movement. I stood and admired it for a while and then sat it off to the side to dry. I found myself deep in creative thought, standing there looking from the freshly painted canvas to the one hanging over my sofa. Back and forth, one canvas to the other ….. and like a sleepwalker….. I saw myself freakin take the freshly sealed canvas off the wall and start messing with it. Well, messing is the right word because I ruined it. And I mean really ruined it. Thankfully, since I was working with acrylic paint, I had the idea of taking it into the bathtub and seeing if what I had added would wash off the sealed canvas. Well, miracles of miracles, it did, and against all odds I dried it and then when I [maybe somewhat inadvisably under the circumstances] added some blue to the finished work, I was really pleased with the result.

I now have two paintings I love hanging in my living room.

But it was a near thing.

The next time I have an urge to paint I'm hiring a cabana boy. Or a robot. One of those with a timer and some sort of sensor that can tell when you've temporarily jumped your rails and need to be led by the hand to a place where you can have a nice quiet lie down. Oh and since Windstorm isn't sealed yet, when I get ready to do that, maybe I'll hire a robot with a laser and a countdown sequence that makes me evacuate the room or be fried after 15 minutes so I won't be tempted to go outside the scope of sealing it. But I still think I'd want one who'll bring me iced tea afterwards. But we'll skip the lotion; those robots have really cold hands.

Windstorm copyright Karen Schindler 2010

Spin……

I just saw the most entertaining spin that I've ever seen when someone came in and behaved in a less than grown up manner while commenting on an artistic expression.

Oh hey, that never occurred to me until just now, maybe childish commenters are actually children who are up way past their bedtime and cranky.

*gives that some thought*

First commenter: [we'll call him/her X]

cliiiiiiiche.

Second commenter:

I find X's use of a period in the above comment strange for several reasons. Since X did not see fit to put his/her blanket criticism into a sentence, the formality of a period seems out of place. By typing a single word, the assumed nature of the comment is that it is being typed in imitation of a spoken catcall. This sense is reinforced by the fact that the word cliche is not capitalized and by the reduplication of the letter i, which is apparently meant to give the reader the impression that this transcribed catcall is being delivered like a punchline from a 90′s sitcom. And so, naturally, any punctuation other than an exclamation point seems out of place. Or, to put this criticism in a way that X might better understand:

duuuuuuuuuuuuumb.

This poem is fantastic by the way.

I laughed and laughed. I wanted to leave a response to the second commenter consisting of just the word *applause* but I figured that there was no reason to poke the first commenter with a stick ……

The poem being commented on was penned by the Daughter of my Heart, Lauren Carpenter, and it's a beauty. If you'd like to go see it you can visit Dark Sky Magazine HERE.

Oh and just to finish off the part where my buttons are popping off my vest from being proud….Lauren's poem Field Woman was just published in The Greensboro Review Spring 2010 Number 87.

I've always been quite fond of the number 87.

Godzilla, earthquakes, firemen, and not very well thought out plans....

I have a theory about all of these tiny earthquakes happening in the Great Lakes area. I think it's Godzilla waking up. I just hope I have enough popcorn when he stops hitting the snooze alarm.

-uncredited google image-

My chair shook around a bit yesterday during the tremor, and I waited a few minutes to see if there was going to be any kind of announcement... [and this may surprise some of you] ....especially reluctant to hear one along the lines of.... Attention earthlings we now have control of your planet... but all remained quiet, so I went back to work.

That moment or so spent waiting for any kind of "official" announcement reminded me of something that happened to me in my twenties. One Saturday I was in my teeny tiny house on the way west side of Cleveland on a scorching hot day. Everybody on my block was indoors with the A/C on high and the windows shut tight just waiting for the blazing hot sun to give it a rest so we could come out at nightfall and scurry like rats out to run our errands and not melt.

Suddenly the city wide warning siren went off, followed by sirens close by in the street and a male voice repeatedly making an announcement. So, of course, we all wandered out to see what was up. It turned out to be a fire engine with firemen in full HAZMAT gear going up and down the street announcing:

"Stay in your homes with your windows shut, a transformer has blown nearby and the air is filled with dangerous levels of pcb"......

Hulu……

Since I no longer have cable and was out of fresh books and needed a brain break over the weekend I spent some time on Hulu watching Firefly. And yes before you ask I saw the episode that opens with Nathan Fillion naked in the desert. [insert some unintelligible sounds here]

The thing with Hulu is they have figured out that if they make the commercials 15 seconds long people will actually sit through them because there isn't time to get up and go make a sandwich in 15 seconds, well unless you're Flash Gordon but that's a different story. And speaking of different stories….[everybody catch that really smooth segue?]…… one of the funniest tv lines EVER is in a Firefly episode called "Objects in Space" when a character says that the possibility of someone having psychic powers sounds like science fiction to him and his wife says "We live on a space ship, Dear."

After I exhausted Hulu's supply of Firefly, I went trolling on the interweb and found more episodes on The WB. Now, The WB is not a channel that I've spent time on in the past. And although they also present their web episodes with short commercials, I was exposed to a couple of commercials that I don't think that I would have ever had the opportunity to [voluntarily] view had I been watching mainstream tv. In retrospect I realize that my only defense against this mind numbing onslaught would have been…….two seconds in when realization struck……. placing my hands over my eyes and hitting the mute button on my laptop, but since I was so gobsmacked the first time this commercial rolled up on my screen, I now have an audio/video clip seared into my brain pan.

So no one gets their dander up, I'll preface this with telling you that I'm not a fan of "reality" tv. If you are, stay with me, and try not to feel judged, because I fully believe that every adult has their own god given right to whatever brain softening pleasure they crave, as long as they don't go around pushing it to middle schoolers in dark alleys……

So there I was, innocently counting down the seconds left on a commercial break until the conclusion of my Firefly episode…… and up pops a commercial featuring Buzz Aldrin. You know, Buzz freakin Aldrin. Space hero? The second person to ever set foot on the moon? Buzz Aldrin? Astronaut? In a tuxedo, holding an American flag, to the backdrop of "Let's Dance" by David Bowie.

Well, my mouth fell open and I just sat there kinda stunned. I didn't even laugh, which is my normal reaction to something that gobsmacks me.

What I wouldn't give to have been in that "Dancing with the Stars" planning meeting. Um, guys? You know how we get celebrities to dance and the show is called dancing with the stars and everything?

What do you think about getting a guy who's actually been up in the stars…………..????

There's another planning meeting that I would have loved to have been in. I was just telling Cat about it this morning. The planning meeting for The Nook. It's one of those electronic book reader things. Really the NOOK? I laugh every time I see it. Then I wonder……..didn't those guys go to high school?

[or is that one just me?]

A Bit of Black Comedy

I do have a dark side. A deep down, bloody-clawed, dribbly-fanged dark side. I keep it locked in my sock drawer.

In the holiday season sometimes things can look a bit bleak. So I wanted to take a dark moment and turn that frown upsidedown. What follows is a list of the #1 good reason not to commit suicide depending upon your personality type:

-OCD: What if you forgot to turn off the iron?

-Driven by guilt: Who'll clean up the mess?

-Procrastinator: It can always get worse, wait for tomorrow

-Control Freak: People will touch all your stuff

 

Yes, this was written and posted by me, the sparkly happy go lucky Karen…..but as a word of explanation….. I AM operating on little to no sleep. My upstairs neighbors got a drum kit for Christmas and it's set up DIRECTLY over my bed.

For all the devious minded folks who read me…..I'm taking suggestions for untraceable poisons….not ones that KILL mind you…..just ones that make the hands not be able to hold drumsticks after oh say…… 11:00pm.

Now I’ve seen everything [twice]

A couple of weeks ago a prescription drug to grow longer eyelashes started showing up in commercials on tv. You read that right. A prescription drug to grow longer eyelashes.

Oh, and the possible side effects that are announced while showing film of long lustrous eyelashes are:

Increased hair growth in other areas of the face, redness, itching, swelling, bacterial keratitis from the product itself or a contaminated applicator, darkening of the eyelid skin [possibly reversible] increase in the brown pigmentation of the eye [probably permanent] and changes in the internal pressure of the eye.

That's all. Just those little niggly minor side effects.

But won't it be worth it to have longer eyelashes? I mean it's not like there's ANY OTHER WAY to get longer lashes…….apparently all the mascara and false eyelashes in the world have disappeared into the ether and this is the only way to have eyelashes that will make you the envy of anyone who gazes upon your glamorous puss.

But the killer thing? This isn't the strangest beauty campaign that I heard about this month.

The next thing that I'm going to invite you to consider with me is not the product itself, but the commercial and advertising campaign for the product.

The product is a cleanser designed for daily use to remove dirt and makeup from the face.

If you notice that the music introducing the commercial is from I LOVE LUCY there will be no doubt in your mind that a lot of people in the fifties saw this particular campaign.
[here's the video]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q1gksqqhLU

In the commercial the cleansing properties of the product are demonstrated by putting radioactive dirt on a model's face and verifying the dirt with a Geiger counter.

[I'll wait while you read that part again]

Then the announcer calmly states that they tested the leading facial cleanser, complexion soap and Dorothy Gray Cold cream to cleanse the model's face of radioactive dirt and the cold cream worked two and a half times better than the other leading products.

The commercial doesn't say that the radiation no longer registered on the Geiger counter. They just left any details of residual radiation out completely.

So of course after seeing these two things together my mind wove a little time travel fantasy.

What if the model who had already been exposed to radiation showed up in our time plane?

What if she wanted to grow longer eyelashes?

What if the eyelash prescription went ballistic when exposed to radiation?

We could have a model running around out there with really itchy dark brown eyes that bulge from her overly hairy face who can suddenly shoot laser beams out of her eyes at will.

But the sad reality of that scenario would probably be that as soon as she shot the lasers her twelve foot long eyelashes would catch fire.

*sigh*

The things we do for beauty.

Prepare to be shocked

If I'm flipping through the channels and I see a giant radioactive ant, I'm laying the remote down.

There's a siren like call that hits my brain when I see an opportunity to see a really bad B movie.

Especially if it's in black and white.

With really bad special effects.

And has guys in suits with matching hats and women who run away from danger in heels, and then swoon and let the monster carry them away to its evil lair.

Or to its space ship.

Case in point? Patricia Neal in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Patricia swoons JUST as Gort gets to her.

Gort comes at her…. his giant robot plodding steps slowly…oh so slowly bringing him nearer…. he gets bigger and bigger in her field of vision…the tension mounts…..he gets closer and closer……until finally she is backed to the edge of a metal barrier….topples a chair, screams and swoons.

Classic.

Now, to be clear I am NOT saying that The Day the Earth Stood Still is a bad movie. Or even a B movie.

Not the original one anyway.

It's an amazing movie.

And it really speaks for its time.

Which was 1951.

And in 1951 Michael Rennie was hot.

Swirl together Rennie's great English cheek bones, a swooning heroine, a giant robot, really fake looking visual effects and sound effects that anybody swinging a piece of a hot wheel track in circles over their head could recreate in their living room and you couldn't pry me out of my chair.

To sum up?

The only thing that could have made the original The Day the Earth Stood Still a better movie would have been a giant radioactive ant.

Maybe they should have put one in the "remake" with Keanu.

Two or three more folks might have gone to see Keanu's version if it had featured a giant radioactive ant.

My excuse? It was the eighties…..and I was stylin’

Impulse shopping on the way to a dance club

The first time I went shopping for a car on my own the salesman came out to the lot where I was looking over a car and actually said

"So, are you a working girl?"

I probably should have rethought stopping while wearing a mini and pink stilettos…….

*sigh*

But I did get a heck of a deal…..

At least the car was stopped at the time

Two days ago I saw something that I never thought I'd see a woman do in public, let alone in traffic.

Sit back, make yourself comfortable and let me set the scene.

I was sitting in traffic.

It was a sunny day.

There was a lovely breeze.

The temperature was hovering around 77.

In other words, perfect convertible weather.

There was a woman in a car sitting next to me at the light.

Her car was a convertible.

An expensive high end one.

She also had an expensive high end look about her.

She was wearing good jewelry, she had a nice even tan and her clothes fit well and looked new.

Her hair was honey blonde, expensively cut with professional highlights as though she'd just come from the salon.

But if she had just come from the salon, she seemed to have forgotten to ask the stylist to go the extra mile and remove some other hair while she was there.

Because APPARENTLY while checking her lipstick in the mirror on her visor she noticed some whiskers.

And was intent upon removing them.

Right then.

Right there.

Now I may be old fashioned, but I think that female facial hair grooming should be done in private.

Not this woman.

She spent the whole time we were sitting at the light moving her tongue under her lip to thrust it out so she could tweeze her whole mustache area in her visor mirror.

She must have plucked twenty or thirty stray whiskers while we sat there waiting for the light to change.

Did I mention that she was doing this in the daytime, in a convertible?

A convertible.

As in open to the sky and all the cars surrounding hers.

Nothing between her and my eyeballs.

And nothing between her and the eyeballs of the grinning guy in the car on the other side of hers.

He locked eyes with me and gave me the universal do you see this eyebrow lift and hand gesture.

I gave him back the universal I see it but I don't believe it smile and head shake.

Then we both laughed.

I just sat there shaking my head and laughing until the light changed.

I thought about the lady off and on for the rest of the day and never did decide if a) she didn't care that people could see her b) she was oblivious to the audience c) she was just so freaked out by the whiskers that she couldn't wait ten seconds to pull into one of the multitude of parking lots available to her to tweeze the offending hair in a less public setting.

I don't know what she was thinking.

I do know that as she drove off I found myself thinking that I hoped that whoever she was driving to meet was well groomed.

Because if they weren't they might be in for a surprise.

This woman owns tweezers, and is not afraid to use them……

What were they thinking?

I was flipping through the channels yesterday and saw John Cusack so naturally I put the remote down.

I picked it up about 30 seconds later.

I had happened upon the last 15 minutes of The Ice Harvest; which I had never seen.

And I never will.

Let me tell you why.

Twelve seconds into the scene I had landed on, John had a handgun in his hand.

His goal in the scene was to save a girl who was in obvious danger, so the gun seemed reasonable.

He DID look incredibly uncomfortable holding a gun so they got THAT part right.

The gun was sans bullets, so he went off to find bullets.

John's characters are often unprepared for emergencies, so they got that part right, too.

What he found instead of bullets was a shotgun.

A shotgun that he then pointed at Randy Quaid.

[insert that sound that a record needle makes scraping across a record]

That is just soooooo not John Cusack.

A few seconds later John was disarmed and had a big knife stuck THROUGH his foot by a very upset Randy Quaid..

……...*YIKES*

I actually felt ill.

I went off and found baby deer and kittens to look at for a while.

Doesn't it say IN HIS CONTRACT somewhere....play nice with John Cusack, he's fragile?

I'm all for actors stretching their acting chops. But there are some things that I just have a problem with certain actors doing.

For instance, I can't picture John Wayne in a tutu. (oh damn, I just pictured John Wayne in a tutu) But you know what I mean, even if the man, say to settle a bet, would wear a tutu, there is no way that the CHARACTER of John Wayne would wear a tutu.

Same with John Cusack. John plays fragile, complicated men who ultimately get you to feel that you should be scooping them up into a blanket fresh from the dryer and offering them cocoa.

I have no idea if that is what he is like in real life. I did, however see a video of him being interviewed by a reporter who had mixed him up with Kevin Spacey. She kept insisting that John was in American Beauty and unfortunately she was one of those people who once they have an idea in their head, they don't let it go. He remained calm and classy. He did look a little miffed by the end there though.

But not nearly as miffed as when Randy Quaid stuck that knife in his foot.

[shudder]

http://www.maniacworld.com/how-not-to-interview-john-cusak.html