Top Ten Ways to Persuade a Cop Not to Give You a Ticket

 Creativitiy, Humor, Parody, Self-Help, Top Ten Thursdays  No Responses »
Feb 212013
 

Cop with DoughnutsOne of the worst feel­ings in the world is to be dri­ving along, mind­ing your own busi­ness (albeit over the speed limit), and sud­denly see the flash­ing light and hear the siren behind you, urg­ing you to pull over.  Well, instead of pan­ick­ing and resign­ing your­self to another speed­ing ticket, here are ten ways to per­suade a copy to give you a warn­ing and send you on your merry way:

01. “Actu­ally, I’m a prac­tic­ing Jehovah’s Wit­ness for the Pros­e­cu­tion and we don’t cel­e­brate any sort of citation.”

02. “I’m try­ing to get the emer­gency room before the alien explodes out of my chest.  How about a police escort?”

03. “Are you sure your radar gun isn’t clock­ing too fast?  When was the last time you had it checked?”

04. “Frankie says, ‘Let me go.’”

05. Sniff! Sniff!  “Someone’s bak­ing Toll­house Cook­ies.  Fol­low me!”

06. “Look, we’re both adults here and we both know what you want, so I’ll just give you my dig­its and you don’t have to write me a ticket just to get my phone num­ber because you’re too shy to ask me out.”

07. “I apol­o­gize.  I didn’t take my med­ica­tion for my nar­colepsy this morn­ing, and my foot must have got­ten heavy on the pedal while I was doz­ing.  No harm done, though.  Are we through here?”

08. “With you’re body and that a uni­form, I bet you could moon­light as a strip­per, easily.”

09. “Sorry, I was turn­ing on my wind­shield wipers and I acci­den­tally turned on the warp drive.  I swear it’ll never hap­pen again.”

10. “What do you say I give you one of my Krispy Kreme dough­nuts and I drive away and we for­get this ever hap­pened, okay?”

How Do You Describe a Sinus Headache?

 Creativitiy, Humor, Illness, Memory Mondays  1 Response »
Jan 142013
 

Sinus HeadacheI don’t expe­ri­ence sick­ness often, how­ever, when the weather becomes unsea­son­ably warm in Jan­u­ary, I do some­times develop a sinus headache.  Today was one of those days.  I woke up with my head throb­bing and took some pain reliever.  When that didn’t help, I for­aged around in the med­i­cine cab­i­net and found some sinus med­ica­tion.  I took it, but the con­stant, throb­bing pain remained.  I lay in my dark­ened bed­room with the blinds shut, alas there was still no relief.

A friend called and inquired as to what a sinus headache felt like.  I paused for a moment and tried to imag­ine how to describe my pain.  “It feels like a troll doll try­ing to dig its way out of your skull with a pickaxe.”

“Oh, that sounds painful,” she said.

How would describe  a sinus headache?

Local Woman Strangles Herself with Bow-Maker

 Creativitiy, Holidays, Humor, News of the Weird, Tall Tale Tuesdays  No Responses »
Dec 182012
 

Bow-Maker

Fam­ily, friends, and neigb­hors all used two words when remem­ber­ing Ter­rie Wooler, 35, a stay-at-home mom in sub­ur­ban Kissim­i­coochee, Geor­gia: crafty and ambitious.

“She made Martha Stew­art look like an ama­teur,” said Jes­sica Tucker, 38, a Mary Kay con­sul­tant and Wooler’s sister-in-law. “What Ter­rie could do with corn husks and pipeclean­ers would take your breath away.”

Annie “Pick­les” Hogg, 29, a teacher’s assis­tant at Kissim­i­coochee Ele­men­tary School, echoed that sen­ti­ment. “When Mrs. Wooler built a dio­rama of the Bat­tle of Atlanta with cup­cakes last fall, it was a feast for the eyes, and when you bit into one, you heard angels sing. Her death is a tragedy for the com­mu­nity and the art and cup­cake world.”

Wooler had embraced bow-making for the 2012 hol­i­day sea­son and had chal­lenged Amelia Rath­burn, 34, an inte­rior designer in neigh­bor­ing Opos­sum Butt, Geor­gia, she spent hours per­fect­ing her bow-making techiques on her Acme Bow-O-Matic.

“She mas­tered the Holy Berry, the Frosty Twist, and the Angel o’ the Lord Mohawk,” said Randy Wooler, 37, a con­struc­tion fore­man and Wooler’s wid­ower. “She was deter­mined to per­fect the Blessed Vir­gin Half-Nelson before Amelia did–or die try­ing, she said.”

On the after­noon of Wednes­day, Decem­ber 5, Wooler’s twin girls, Mindy and Molly, both 8, came home from school and found their mother blue and uncon­scious, with a per­fect Blessed Vir­gin Half-Nelson tied around her neck.

Accord­ing to Dusty Decker, 52, Kissimicoochee’s Coro­ner, Wooler most likely acci­den­tally man­aged to get the rib­bon wrapped around her slen­der neck while work­ing on the bow. He was able to saw Wooler’s head off and reat­tach it with­out com­pro­mis­ing the integrity of the bow. “We’re going to have to have a closed cas­ket funeral, now,” said her hus­band. “But Ter­rie would have wanted it that way.”

When asked for a com­ment, Wooler’s rival, Rath­burn, said. “This tragedy never should have hap­pened. To honor Ter­rie, I will never make another bow again, with or with­out an Acme Bow-O-Matic.”

Bring a Little Superman into Your Life

 Creativitiy, Essays, fashion, Humor, Pop Culture, Religion, Self-Help, Spirituality  No Responses »
Nov 052012
 

My friend Trixie and I once took a class at church where we met a middle-aged man who was a nice guy yet obvi­ously did one drug too many back in the seventies.

One Sun­day when I had stayed home, sick, Trixie called to check on me that after­noon. “Guess who I saw at church this morning.”

“Um … God?” I said.

“Well, I sup­pose He was there, but I meant a person–not the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.”

“I give. Tell me.”

“You remem­ber Sev­en­ties Guy? Well, he came to church today wear­ing a Super­man costume.”

I tapped the receiver of the phone. “Did you say a Super­man costume?”

““Yeah, blue tights, red under­wear, boots, and cape.”

““Why would he wear a Super­man cos­tume to church?”

““Well, after the ser­vice, I asked him that, and he said he was look­ing through his closet that morn­ing and just felt like he wanted to wear some­thing dif­fer­ent today. That’s when he saw the Super­man cos­tume at the far end.”

I let the details set­tle in. “You know, I have to respect that. That’s cool.”

““I know,” Trixie said. “I wish I had the guts to just wear a Won­der Woman cos­tume to church on a ran­dom day in April.”

Ever since then, when­ever I feel stale in some area of my life, I ask myself, How could I bring a lit­tle Super­man into this? I haven’t donned a cape yet, but it’s helped me to bring a fresh­ness into the choices I’ve made.

How could you bring a lit­tle Super­man into a stale cor­ner of your own life?

Woman Plans Addition to Uterus for Household Storage

 Creativitiy, Family, Home Improvement, Humor, News of the Weird, Parody, Tall Tale Tuesdays, Women's Interest  No Responses »
Oct 162012
 

Mag­gie Fisher plans to add on to her uterus next week in a dras­tic move to make more stor­age space for her family’s clutter.

““With the hous­ing mar­ket upside down, we can’t afford to sell our home for more than we owe, so mov­ing to a larger home is not an option,” Fisher, 31, a home­maker and extreme cup­cake dec­o­ra­tor, said.  “As a result, I’ve had to become an ama­teur home orga­nizer and make use of every bit of space that I have.”

Fisher first had the idea to use her uterus for stor­age space when her mother-in-law called from the air­port and said she was on her way for a sur­prise visit.  “I was fran­ti­cally run­ning around the house like a chicken with my head cut off, shov­ing tup­per­ware under the sofa cush­ions and hid­ing stray chee­rios under the pot­pourri, when my youngest said, ‘We need more woom, Mommy,’ only I heard her say, ‘We need more womb.’  Sud­denly, I had a flash of inspi­ra­tion and just started shov­ing clut­ter up inside myself.”

By the time her mother-in-law arrived, Fisher had man­aged to put a remark­able amount of clut­ter out of sight.  “I thought I had got­ten it all, but as we walked through the house, I kept find­ing things, so I’d stick them into my uterus when my mother-in-law wasn’t look­ing:  junk mail, galoshes, a kite, and a soft­ball bat.”

When asked if her mother-in-law ever caught on, Fisher said, “Not at all.  In fact, the only time she gave me a sus­pi­cious look is when I sneezed and the Hello Kitty umbrella opened up inside me.  Whoo, that’s a sur­prise feel­ing I’ll never forget!”

Sur­prised at how much the walls of the womb can stretch, Fisher con­tin­ued to store more clut­ter inside her­self; how­ever, she finally reached capac­ity.  “My stretch marks now have stretch marks,” she said.  “Most peo­ple think I’m preg­nant with octuplets.”

Plas­tic sur­geons in Thai­land have promised Fisher that she can add another ten square feet with the surgery, which she and her hus­band have sched­uled as a joint sec­ond honeymoon/medical tourism.  “I saved up a lot of money bak­ing erotic cup­cakes for bach­e­lor and bach­e­lorette parties.”

Although most peo­ple would sug­gest that a sim­pler approach might be just to cull some of the clut­ter out of her life, Fisher dis­agrees.  “I’m afraid I’m too sen­ti­men­tal for that.  I can’t give away my children’s baby clothes, and where else am I going to stick the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions?  I can’t stick that seven-foot imi­ta­tion fir just anywhere!”

The Healing Properties of Salt for Storytellers

 Books, Bookstore, Creativitiy, Essays, Humor, Memory Mondays, Story, Writing  2 Responses »
Sep 102012
 

This past week­end I attended the South­east­ern Inde­pen­dent Book­sellers Alliance (SIBA) Trade Show in Naples, Florida.  As we drove from the air­port to the Wal­dorf Asto­ria, I kept won­der­ing why there were so many Ital­ian restau­rants, then remem­bered that Naples is also a city in Italy.  Duh!   (I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out why Naples also has so many Asian mas­sage par­lors.  If you have any the­o­ries, please let me know.)

Inde­pen­dent book­stores face a lot of chal­lenges these days, so it’s impor­tant to attend events like SIBA every year, so they can com­mis­er­ate, exchange ideas, but, mostly, share sto­ries.  After all, sto­ries are why peo­ple got into the book busi­ness, right?  No mat­ter if it’s fic­tion or non-fiction, it’s still a story.

There are a few things you should know about book­sellers:  They like sto­ries and they like to eat and drink.  Authors also like sto­ries and to eat and drink.  When we come together at events like SIBA, we like to swap sto­ries over food and, as my friend Steve likes to refer to them, Refresh­ing Adult Bev­er­ages (R.A.B.).

On Sat­ur­day night, 2Fs and I went to din­ner with authors Lisa Alther,  Echo Gar­ret, Cliff Graubart, Cyn­thia Graubart, Patti Calla­han Henry, and Katie Crouch at Sea Salt, which is a won­der­ful restau­rant.  If you ever find your­self in Naples, Florida, Sea Salt is not to be missed.

Nat­u­rally, there is a story behind the restau­rant.  Chef Fab­rizio Aielli and his wife, Ingrid, moved to Naples in 2007 with plans to retire, but soon found they were eager to cre­ate a new fine din­ing adven­ture in their new city, so they crafted a restau­rant around Chef Aielli’s love of sea salt.  I thought there was only one kind of sea salt; Chef Aielli has over one hun­dred dif­fer­ent types of sea salt in his restau­rant.  Our server brought us three sea salts from the Peru, Japan, and India to try with olive oil and bread.  The sea salt from the Andes Moun­tains was a hit; Patti and I agreed that the salt from India tasted like a pun­gent sweaty armpit.  (Don’t ask me how I know what a pun­gent, sweaty armpit smells like.  That’s another blog post for another Mem­ory Monday.)

Chef Aielli sent over six more of his favorite salts for us to try.  One was a white truf­fle that melted on the tongue with a hint of choco­late.  The ghost spice had a lot of heat to it, but the one that really cap­tured the senses was the sea salt with a smoky fla­vor.  In fact, I could smell the sub­tle scent of smoke from the salt even when the plate was at the end of the table.

Now when you bring together authors and book­sellers who’ve never met to break bread together, it’s very much like speed dat­ing on steroids; how­ever, the nov­elty of dif­fer­ent fla­vors of sea salts uncon­sciously low­ers bar­ri­ers like when we were chil­dren and con­gre­gated on the play­ground.  Before you even real­ize it, you’re laugh­ing and shar­ing with one another.  (I sup­pose the wine didn’t hurt, either.  See above where I refer to book­sellers and authors lik­ing to eat and drink.)

Over the next few hours, every one of us shared sto­ries.  Liza told me about what it was split­ting her time between Ver­mont, New York City, and Ten­nessee.  Echo recalled how she was so lonely as a child that she once res­cued a frog that her father had sev­ered the legs from and pro­ceeded to play with him in her sand­box and pushed on her swing until her mother put it out of its mis­ery.  Cliff spoke about how it was a treat for his par­ents to take he and his brother out to din­ner to the del­i­catessen once a year when he was a kid.  Cyn­thia enthralled us with the con­cept of but­ter­milk bis­cuits meet­ing choco­late gravy.  Patti warned us against the evils of absinthe.  “The last thing I remem­bered was the sugar cube,” she said.  Katie talked about research­ing a famous mur­der case that had been in the news.  2Fs told a story about a marine lit­er­ally pick­ing him up in a bar.  (He didn’t believe Jeff when he men­tioned how much he weighed, so the marine picked him up.)  And I recalled the time I had to share a bed with class­mate on an overnight col­lege trip who squeezed my breast in the mid­dle of the night and whis­pered his girlfriend’s name in my ear.  (Patti insists that she’s going to call me Keisha from now on.)

As the evening came to an end and I looked around the table, I noticed how for a few hours every one seemed to have for­got­ten about the threat of  Ama­zon, e-readers, hit­ting sales num­bers, author plat­forms, and who’s mind­ing the book­store back home.  For the time it took to eat our meal, we focused our atten­tion on the taste and tex­ture of our food and wine and the sto­ries that we shared.  Every per­son at the table told a story that was as unique as their age, gen­der, back­ground, or per­spec­tive, yet–somehow–proved to be uni­ver­sal in that short time and brought us closer together, which started when the server brought a sam­pler of sea salt to our table.  It reminded me of how salt has been used for cen­turies to heal, as well as fla­vor food, and book­sellers and authors need each other to reju­ve­nate and reminds our­selves why we’re in the busi­ness of telling sto­ries in the first place.

Human beings need to remem­ber to peri­od­i­cally fill their inner well by seek­ing out new expe­ri­ences and new fla­vors, tak­ing risks by tak­ing the first step to turn a stranger into a new friend, which we do by lis­ten­ing to them and shar­ing our own sto­ries.  Authors write the sto­ries that book­sellers read and share with our cus­tomers, who need sto­ries that enter­tain, learn, and grow. It’s a sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship, much like remoras that attach them­selves to sharks, but don’t ask me to tell you whether the author or the book­seller is the suckerfish.

The Dirt on the Lambda Literary Foundation's 2012 Writers' Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices

 Creativitiy, Essays, Gay, Humor, Lesbians, LGBT, Memory Mondays, Writing  No Responses »
Aug 062012
 

2012 Lambda Literary Foundation Young Adult Fiction FellowsI was writ­ing on my lap­top in my dorm room when I heard the door open and a sin­gle roll of toi­let paper wheeled across the floor and stopped in front of my feet. It pretty much summed up the Lambda Lit­er­ary Foundation’s 2012 Writ­ers’ Retreat for Emerg­ing LGBT Voices: You nei­ther knew what would hap­pen next nor where inspi­ra­tion would spring from.

Pic­ture this–46 LGBT writ­ers from around the world come together on Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­sity (AJU) cam­pus in Bel Air, Cal­i­for­nia to study fic­tion, cre­ative non­fic­tion, poetry, and young adult fic­tion for a week with Dorothy Alli­son, Cris Beam, Jew­elle Gomez, and Alex Sanchez.

I have wanted to study with Alex Sanchez ever since I fin­ished the first Rain­bow Boys book and went, “Aw …” I didn’t have a lot of expec­ta­tions when I picked up that book out of curios­ity, but I was amazed at how gooey I got inside after read­ing about the romance that devel­oped between the math whiz and the bas­ket­ball jock. I totally believe that there is now a par­a­sitic 14-year-old girl liv­ing inside of me and I’m okay with that. So when I saw that Alex was going to be teach­ing the YA sec­tion of the LLF Writ­ers’ Retreat, I sent in the first two chap­ters of the novel I have been work­ing on since Feb­ru­ary, and I was delighted when he selected me to par­tic­i­pate in his workshop.

You never know how those “cre­ative types” can be, so I’m always cau­tious enter­ing a work­shop set­ting. How­ever, I couldn’t have asked for a more well-suited group of fel­low writ­ers. I learned as much from read­ing their work and cri­tiquing them as I did from them read­ing my work and cri­tiquing me. Alex was a very gen­er­ous facil­i­ta­tor. In fact, he was so nice, I began to won­der if he might be, in fact, a pod per­son. As it turns out, he really is super nice.

My YA fel­lows are an extremely tal­ented group of peo­ple. Some of us have already pub­lished or are in the process of being pub­lished, oth­ers were just start­ing out. The sub­ject mat­ter ranged from migrant worker chil­dren to inter­sex and trans­gen­dered kids to more typ­i­cal teenagers try­ing to make sense of their sex­u­al­ity, fam­i­lies, and school. My cri­tique con­firmed what I already knew (the pro­logue, now mat­ter how pretty it sounds, has to go), and what I didn’t know (con­tem­po­rary YA read­ers are not inter­ested in read­ing about teenagers in 1985).

“Why did you set your novel in the ‘80s?” Alex asked.

“Um, because I didn’t want to write scenes about tex­ting,” I confessed.

In the end, I received con­fir­ma­tion that the major­ity of what I had was solid, so I can make some minor adjust­ments and have a man­u­script that is closer to being ready to query agents.

One of the most refresh­ing things about the retreat was hav­ing access to all of these incred­i­ble writ­ers. We work­shopped with them. We ate with them. We sat in on read­ings, pan­els, and lec­tures with them. (We did not, how­ever, sleep with them, so they did receive a respite from us.) One of my favorite moments was hav­ing din­ner with Dorothy Alli­son and dis­cussing North Car­olina bar­be­cue, pol­i­tics, and adult nov­elty items, just like I was hav­ing lunch with a friend or one of my neighbors.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of my room­mate, Miguel. Judg­ing from his bio and blog, he seemed a tad seri­ous. I was con­cerned that he might not be able to tol­er­ate my silly ass, but we ended up get­ting along fine. In fact, we found out that we were the same age and had actu­ally lived, at times, in the same town grow­ing up. How weird is that? We could have been in the same movie the­ater or fast food place at the same time and never knew it. We got in the habit of hav­ing long con­ver­sa­tions in the morn­ing after we woke up. He kept shar­ing all these incred­i­ble mem­o­ries from his child­hood, and I’d say, “Miguel, that’s a story.” And then I’d see this light go on in his eyes and he’d real­ize it, too. Miguel is going to have an incred­i­ble book when he’s fin­ished, so be warned. It was so hard to say good­bye to him when it came time to leave.

It’s amaz­ing how quickly you bond with ten strangers over the course of a week. We not only spent time together in class, but at meals, and we’d fre­quently gather in the com­mon room. Christina explained British col­lo­qui­alisms to us, and we explained all the weird things about life in the United States: “New Orleans is in Louisiana, which is east of Texas.” “In the South, every car­bon­ated bev­er­age is referred to as a Coke.” “Water sports may refer to a num­ber of sports that involve water, such as ski­ing, kayak­ing, snor­kel­ing, or also be an euphemism for uri­nat­ing on a sex­ual part­ner.” Beth shared about oper­at­ing her own farm for a num­ber of years and home­school­ing her chil­dren. Brid­get is an artist and healer. AJ is an actor and singer. Nina pub­lishes zines. Rachel used to own a book­store. Lydia knows some­thing about every­thing. (She is a librar­ian.) And Annamee­kee, a high school Eng­lish teacher, and I were sep­a­rated at birth, because we had way too many freaky things in com­mon, which included know­ing the lyrics to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Do You Want Me.”

I must say that one of the rea­sons the retreat went so smoothly was due to the efforts of Tony Valen­zuela, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, and Jenn Reese, Pro­gram Assis­tant for the Lambda Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tion. Any time you had a ques­tion or needed any­thing, they were always avail­able. I’ve never been taken bet­ter care of. We also had quite a few laughs, too.

There are a ton of mem­o­ries that I want to share, but space–and the need to sleep–prevent me from doing so. How­ever, there is one mem­ory that will always remain very spe­cial to me. On Wednes­day after­noon, AJ, Alex, Annamee­kee, and I drove one exit down from the cam­pus and vis­ited the J. Paul Getty Museum. (It was designed by Richard Meier, who also designed the High Museum here in Atlanta.) It’s a breath­tak­ing set of build­ings filled with lots of nat­ural light and open spaces and stun­ning works of art. I was espe­cially excited about view­ing the Herb Ritts exhibit, as he is one of my favorite pho­tog­ra­phers. While we walked through the museum, I kept look­ing around at AJ, Alex, and Annamee­kee, and I thought, This is one of those moments that I’ll remem­ber for the rest of my life. It was such a pow­er­ful feel­ing that I swear I could almost feel all of the mol­e­cules in my body vibrat­ing. Then I locked eyes with Annamee­kee and I knew exactly what she was think­ing: “Omigod, I’m totally at the Getty with Alex @#%*ing Sanchez and I’m look­ing at pic­tures of naked people!”

Why Writers Must Understand the Importance of Embracing Their Inner Mofo

 Creativitiy, Essays, Humor, Memory Mondays, Self-Help, Writing  No Responses »
Jul 302012
 

I recently con­fessed to my friends Fey Ray and Testos­terone Tom how the label writer can be a loaded word for those who write.

“I’m intrigued,” Ray said.  “Tell me more.

“Well, if I men­tion to some­one that I’m a writer, they’ll usu­ally ask if I pub­lished a book or if I write for a news­pa­per or mag­a­zine,” I said.   “When I admit that I haven’t, I can see this dis­mis­sive look in their eye, like they’re think­ing, ‘Yeah, right.’”

Ray sipped his mar­tini (dirty, of course) and swilled it around his mouth.  “So, unless you’ve actu­ally pub­lished in a major peri­od­i­cal or a New York Times best­selling novel, you don’t feel that you qual­ify to give your­self the title.”

““In a nut­shell, yeah.”

““But write is a verb and you do write.  How much have you written?”

““Um, I’ve writ­ten seven man­u­scripts, seven full-length screen­plays, a note­book worth of short sto­ries, a box of poetry, a num­ber of essays, and my blog,” I conceded.

Ray arched an eye­brow.  “Hello, Hem­ing­way!  You’re a writer.”  Ray tossed his head back and fin­ished off his martini.

““But …”

““But what?” Ray asked.

““I“m not a real writer, because I haven’t been paid for it.”

Ray looked at me as if I had sug­gested that he pair a striped shirt with plaid trousers.  “So you’re sug­gest­ing that if some­one swims recre­ation­ally, they’re not really a swim­mer unless they bring home the Olympic gold.”

““No, but–”

““Ray’s right,” Tom said.  “You know, peo­ple call me a mother ****** all the time.”

Our heads spun around like syn­chro­nized swim­mers toward Tom.

““Do tell.”  Ray reached for the mar­tini shaker.

““No one asked me if I had ever ****** my mother or any­body’ else’s.”

““Tom, I’m not sure I want to go there with you.

“Let him fin­ish,” Ray said, pour­ing a healthy serv­ing of gin into the shaker.

Tom took a pull off his long­neck.  “I’m just say­ing, words are only as pow­er­ful as the mean­ing you give them.  I don’t lit­er­ally have to **** anyone’s mother to appre­ci­ate the extreme bad-assness of the term mother ******.”

Ray took a swig directly from the mar­tini shaker.  “Per­haps it’s the gin, but he makes a good point–an obscene one, yes–but a good point, none the less.”

Tom got into my face and looked me in the eye.  “Dude, don’t be afraid to embrace your inner mother ******.”

I’ve been think­ing about that moment ever since.  In spite of Tom’s crass­ness, he had my prob­lem on the head.  He was telling me to own the aspects of writer that empow­ered me and reject the aspects that dimin­ished me.  Some peo­ple might con­sider me a hack just because I hadn’t pub­lished any­thing and exile me in their mind to the group of peo­ple who love to call them­selves writ­ers and are always work­ing on a novel or a screen­play, yet never seem to make time to write.  When they speak of writ­ing, they fre­quently speak about the wealth and fame that come from writ­ing that Great Amer­i­can Novel.

I write every day.  In addi­tion to blog­ging, I also write three pages per day on my novel.  I am a writer because I write.

But I’m also a writer because I have to write.  If I don’t put words on paper or a com­puter screen, I get anx­ious, like a cat that needs to scratch it’s claws on something.

I want to make a reader think, or laugh, or feel an emo­tion.  I don’t need to change the world, but the words I type could change a heart or a mind.  When I really exam­ined the fear I had about call­ing myself a writer, it really had noth­ing to do with money; I was really about intention.

I also knew that I hadn’t got­ten to this place over night, so I knew it was going to take me time to change, as well.

““So, do you think you can embrace your mother ******?” Tom asked.

““Not yet, but I’m will­ing to shake hands for now,” I said.  Hey, it’s a start.

What words hold power over you? Why?

You Never Know Who's Vajayjay Will Inspire You

 Creativitiy, Humor, Kids, Memory Mondays, Pop Culture, Retail, Toys, Women's Interest  No Responses »
May 212012
 

In her Artist’s Way series of books, Julia Cameron sug­gests that artists take an Artist Date every week to fill their cre­ative well.  These cre­ative adven­tures often inspire or show a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to what the artist has been work­ing on, or just pro­vide a prompt to stim­u­late the imagination.

Lately, my cre­ative well had dried up.

Every time I go into work at the book­store, though, I feel that I have an Artist’s Date.  I never know whom I’ll meet or what they’ll say.  Sat­ur­day was no exception.

I had just fin­ished ring­ing up a pur­chase when the cus­tomer asked me, “Do you play games?”

I gin­gerly handed her the receipt and said, “Could you be more spe­cific?”  I wasn’t sure if she was ask­ing if I was a playa, a swinger, or a Monop­oly enthusiast.

She told me that she was work­ing with a client that man­u­fac­tured a game for baby show­ers.  “Basi­cally, it’s Pin the Tail on the Don­key, except the tail is a baby and the don­key is a vajayjay.”

“You mean a vagina?”  I’ve always been fairly clin­i­cal when it comes to mat­ters below the waist, so I wanted to ensure there was no misunderstanding.

“Yeah,” she said.  “Do you think you’d be inter­ested in car­ry­ing it here in your store?”

I paused.  She prob­a­bly thought I was delib­er­at­ing about the prob­a­bil­ity of being able to sell such a game in the shop; how­ever, I was try­ing to fig­ure out how one spells vajay­jay.  (I actu­ally had to look it up on Google, if you can believe it.)  “I don’t think our cus­tomers would be inter­ested,” I said.  “And the peo­ple who would be inter­ested, prob­a­bly wouldn’t think to look here, either.  It’s a great idea, though.”

After the cus­tomer had left, I found myself spec­u­lat­ing on the tech­ni­cal aspects of the Pin the Baby on the Vajay­jay game.  I imag­ined that a small piece of vel­cro could be applied to the back of the baby, which would easy attach to the vejay­jay, unless it had received a Brazil­ian wax.  Then again, if the game came with detach­able pubic hair, it could help keep the game chal­leng­ing for play­ers who had mas­tered the basic level at pre­vi­ous baby show­ers.  Then again, if one just served alco­hol at the shower, that would make the game pro­gres­sively more chal­leng­ing, anyway.

I’d never been to a baby shower before, so it got me think­ing about what fun, cre­ative ideas I could come up with to amuse guests.  Maybe the guests could bond by eat­ing a com­mu­nal gummi after­birth.  This, of course, reminded me of the time that I had to pre­pare a pre­sen­ta­tion for Jonathan Swift’s  essay “A Mod­est Pro­posal” in my col­lege Eng­lish class, and I served my no-nonsense teacher lime Jell-o with a plas­tic baby doll in the mid­dle of it.  He actu­ally gig­gled when I served it to him.

I real­ized that my cre­ative well had been replen­ished with­out eat­ing any after­birth or encap­su­lat­ing a baby doll in gelatin.  My writer’s block was gone.

I made a men­tal note:  You never know who’s vajay­jay will get your cre­ative juices flow­ing again, so to speak.

How to Motivate People to Get Out of Your Way

 Creativitiy, Essays, Humor, MARTA, Memory Mondays  No Responses »
Mar 262012
 

One of my biggest pet peeves is the peo­ple who line up in front of the doors of the MARTA train so that you can­not exit.

Logic would dic­tate that if you want to board the train, you should allow a path for the peo­ple on the train to dis­em­bark, so that there is room for you on the train. Instead, these peo­ple line up right in front of the door, a wall of flesh that one must push through to exit. Let me tell you, Moses would prob­a­bly have bet­ter luck with his staff just knock­ing them in the head than try­ing to part them like the Red Sea.

On Thurs­day of last week, I had worked late. I’d been fin­ish­ing up a tedious project and my vision was blurry from star­ing at the mon­i­tor all-day. When the train came to a stop at Five Points, I peered through the win­dow and saw the wall of peo­ple lined up in front of the door.

Some­thing snapped inside of me.

When the door opened, I screamed, “Get out of the way! I’m gonna blow chunks!” I slapped my hands over my mouth like I was about to throw up at any moment. Let me tell you, kids, those peo­ple got out of my way.

It all hap­pened so quickly, it took me off guard. How­ever, I recov­ered quickly and ran through the path the bystanders left open for me. I dashed around the cor­ner and hopped on the esca­la­tor that leads up to the east-west line. The andren­a­lin rush was incred­i­ble. I started laughing.

And then I began to feel guilty about the whole stunt. It was dis­hon­est. It was mean-spirited.

And it also worked.

I made a note to myself: You should be spon­ta­neous more often.

Page 1 of 212