The Kate Escape

To Be

2012-03-15T01:34:00.001-04:00

To be a successful as a blogger who has chosen the "personal journal" category to write under, I can't hold back. When it comes to the internet, I don't owe anyone my social life, but to be a great writer is more than being a great reader. It is being able to take great risks. I risk unintentionally hurting the feelings of others or embarrassing people I care about. I have so much I want to share with the world but I don't want to hurt anyone.

I suppose if I change names to protect the privacy of certain people who I literally cannot write about because if their boss or co-worker could sniff around the Google machine and the last thing I want is someone losing their job over some unsavory, off-the-cuff observations or anecdotes of mine.

I've been wanting to turn my journals into a book ever since I started writing a diary when I was first grade. Even my father said I should do it (with discretion, of course). I have so much to tell. Years and years of trying so hard to find out exactly who I am. It's raw. That's the best way I can describe my journals. Raw. Especially after I fell in love with Anais Nin. Should I create an expurgated version of my life and wait until certain "characters" have left this world in order to publish the full truth? If my family cannot take what I have written, I suppose I should warn them not to read it. There is a lot that has been held back from them. Maybe the truth will set me free and the burden of my past will be lifted.

I have been deliberating this for long enough.

Semi-autobiographical. I believe this is my best bet. Lord knows I am good with making up characters on the internet.

I feel good about this decision.

Fickle Weather

2012-03-14T18:33:00.000-04:00

The weather has no business being this warm in the middle of March! Either we're in for a blizzard or something in April or this is the mildest winter I've seen in a long time.

Lexi woke up at around 6am this morning, and I sat with her until it was time to get her dressed and ready for school. A few minutes before the bus was supposed to come (which she is usually jumping up and down at the door ready to go), she just had a complete melt-down and I had to practically drag her to the bus. I don't know why she gets so upset like that: maybe she was confused and thought it was the weekend or something because she had to stay at home tomorrow for a dentist appointment.

She came home in a good mood and had a snack and bounced around in front of the window for a while before passing out on the couch.

She had a note in her backpack that she was running around the playground today. Apparently she likes to ride the "motorcycle" rocking ride there: go figure. It would be just my luck if she grew up loving motorcycles.

Yesterday she was with my mom and I at Target:

This is the first time that she wasn't grabbing everything in site and actually stayed in her seat, giggling the whole time.

I'm in the middle of Edith Wharton's autobiography and will post a link to the review I'll write as soon as I'm done.

kateescapereviews.com

2012-03-10T17:45:00.004-05:00

This will be where I write my reviews of products, books, cosmetics, skin care, etc. You can go ahead and subscribe if you'd like:

http://www.kateescapereviews.com/

redgage.com

2012-03-08T15:16:00.001-05:00

I'll be posting all of my reviews there from now on. I'm going back to having my personal journal be more like my diary again. I'll talk about pop culture and other things from time to time, but they won't be the main theme of my posts anymore.

Find me here and don't be afraid to add me if you have an account there:

http://redgage.com/slyparadox

Counting Down to April Fool's Day

2012-03-08T12:41:00.001-05:00

Before I know it, Lexi will be five. I can't believe that she's in school and she's going to be five!

(Lexi at her 1st birthday party)

Lexi at the park with my BFF Jo

At Aunt Kelly's house (my sis Kel's cat hiding)

Lexi at Six Flags:

I've been acting like a typical mom and looking misty-eyed at all her baby pictures. She was never petite even as a newborn. She sprouted and continues to sprout fast.

We're having a very small party at McDonald's this year, and I've managed to get a game for us to play along with the Play Place. It's a Spongebob theme. I ordered all the decorations and party favors online and I'll pick up Mylar balloons and maybe a "birthday girl" T shirt for Mini Me if they have them at Party City.

I'll have lots of pictures and videos to post and share.

Yay! Stevie Ryan just got her own show on VH1!

2012-03-02T13:49:00.002-05:00

Things that make you say.......buuuhhhh!

2012-03-02T13:04:00.001-05:00

Bully (The Movie)

2012-03-01T17:30:00.000-05:00

This movie was based of the book on this true story: "Bully: a Tale of Highschool Revenge". The real Bobby (played by Nick Stahl) was a person of color, and Brad Renfro (RIP) is way better looking than the actual Marty.

From wiki:

Bobby Kent (May 12, 1973 – July 15, 1993) was an American who was murdered by seven others, including his best friend, Martin Joseph "Marty" Puccio, Jr. (born March 21, 1973), in Hollywood in South Florida. Kent attended South Broward High School in Hollywood, Florida.According to Tim Donnelley, who tried all the conspirators for his murder, one attorney described Kent as "very Eddie Haskell like. Adults saw him one way (polite and charming) while the kids saw him in a completely different way."
Marty Puccio was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Hollywood, Florida. He is an Italian-American and was raised Roman Catholic. Kent and Puccio had known each other since third grade, had lived on the same block in Hollywood in Broward County since that time, and were good friends as adults. Bad blood, however, existed between the two. Puccio felt "ill-will and hatred" towards Kent because he would bully and pummel Puccio. Both sets of parents were wary of the friendship as well. Puccio's parents, Martin Sr. and Veronica, were cautious because Marty often returned from being with Kent with bruises or bleeding. Fred Kent thought of Puccio as a wayward slacker who had no future (Puccio was a high school dropout) and felt the friendship with his son would destroy the future he was helping him build. Avid body builders, both boys used steroids, which, in Kent's case, according to testimonial accounts, significantly contributed to his erratic, aggressive behavior.
Kent and Puccio had experimented with making homosexual porn movies, hoping to sell them to local shops. Neither Kent nor Puccio actually participated in these movies, but rather allegedly directed them and coaxed Harry Suiter, a Florida man in his early 40s, to perform on camera. Kent tried to peddle a movie, entitled Rough Boys, to porn shops across South Florida. None took him up on the offer, however, due to the poor audio and video quality as well as the lack of any sexual activities in the film beyond Suiter dancing nude and playing with a dildo.

The Murder of Bobby Kent

Bully: A Tale of High School Revenge

Bully (the movie)

Scott Thompson fruit blog!

2012-02-26T19:49:00.000-05:00

http://youtu.be/zWyTNGLSRns

Moar fruit:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ScottThompsonVideos?feature=watch

Philosophy etc. haul

2012-02-23T14:08:00.000-05:00

What to do on a date

2012-02-22T22:00:00.003-05:00

http://youtu.be/GVytXppIFw0

Update 2/21/2012

2012-02-21T13:40:00.000-05:00

My wish was to blog from the beginning of February til July, but I've been suffering a series of head-splitting migraines as of late and it's only been about three days since I was in so much pain I wanted to kill myself. It has to do with my having been on too much Prozac. The dosage was only lowered two weeks ago so I'll still be dealing with adjustments. Actual posts for the next four weeks will be minimal and not very chatty. In the meantime I'll be working on some short stories. <3Katie

Harry Chapman

2012-02-20T20:02:00.000-05:00

At about 3:30 you'll get to see what Nicola Chapman's son looks like now:

Valentine's Day 2012

2012-02-14T17:21:00.000-05:00

Lexi brought this home for me:

Today she came home with Valentine's, two of them either were candy or had candy with them. I ate the cherry fun dip and Lexi ate three mini Twix (before dinner but hey it's a holiday).

Hope everyone had a good day!

The House of 1000 Corpses

2012-02-12T04:57:00.000-05:00

The House of 1000 Corpses (Legendado) on Vimeo:

'via Blog this'

Slither

2012-02-12T01:44:00.001-05:00

Jenna Fisher from the American version of the television show "The Office" (who was married to the director James Gunn at the time) made a cameo. James Gunn is the brother of Sean Gunn, who played "Kirk" in TV series "The Gilmore Girls".

From Wiki:

Slither is a 2006 science fiction-horror-comedy film produced by Gold Circle Films and Strike Entertainment, released by Universal, written and directed byJames Gunn, and starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Tania Saulnier and Jenna Fischer, and is produced by Paul Brooks and Eric Newman. Slither is James Gunn's directorial debut.

A meteor housing a malevolent alien parasite called the Long One crashes into the town of Woodsville. While frolicking in the woods with Brenda (James), local big shot car dealer Grant Grant (Rooker) is subsequently infected and killed by the parasite. The parasite takes over his body and absorbs his consciousness and memories. With the alien now in control of his body, 'Grant' begins to slowly change into a hideous sluglike monster.

Suspiria de Profundis

2012-02-08T15:06:00.001-05:00

I talked about the movie "Suspiria" a bit ago, but I wanted to know the origin of such a word, since I have never heard anything like it until I saw Bravo's "100 scariest movie moments".

Suspiria de Profundis

From wiki:

Suspiria de Profundis (a Latin phrase meaning "sighs from the depths") is one of the best-known and most distinctive literary works of the English essayist Thomas De Quincey.
First published in fragmentary form in 1845, the work is a collection of short essays in psychological fantasy — what De Quincey himself called "impassioned prose," and what is now termed prose poetry. The essays of the Suspiria "are among the finest examples of De Quincey's or anyone else's English style."
"Some critics consider De Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis the supreme prose fantasy of English literature."De Quincey conceived of the collection as a sequel to his masterwork, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Like that work, the pieces in Suspiria de Profundis are rooted in the visionary experiences of the author's opium addiction; and at their best, the Suspiria capture the same type of dark grandeur found in the Confessions.

The essay "Suspiria":

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/38290/

Celebrities Without Makeup part three

2012-02-07T08:30:00.000-05:00

Snooki:

Beyonce

Shakira:

Jennifer Love Hewitt

Ok one more and then I'll be back on Feb. 6th!

2012-01-23T20:05:00.000-05:00

In the meantime: questions!

2012-01-23T19:36:00.000-05:00

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
Which is worse, failing or never trying?
If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do?
When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?
Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?
If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?

Answer them in the comments!

UPDATE-1/23/2012

2012-01-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

I need to take a couple weeks off because on goodreads.com I'm trying to see how many books I can read in a year. I already have some stuff to post that I wrote a while ago, and I'll just save a bunch of entries as drafts in the meantime.

I'll make sure to talk and vlog more about my life when I get back, since I've been posting a lot of movie reviews and I'm kinda bored sitting around and watching movies. I want to find topics that will help me write about my life more.

I'll be posting on my indy wrestling/MMA blog about wrestling, MMA, comics, and anime. I just started my comic book collection so I'll probably talk about that on there:slyparadox.org

In the meantime, here's a pic of Lexi in her new winter coat:

I know she doesn't look too happy: she hates anything on her head!

I'll be back a few days before Valentine's Day. :)

Idiot Boy....

2012-01-21T21:27:00.001-05:00

The 10 Fastest-Growing And Fastest-Declining Cities in the World | Digg Mynews

2012-01-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

The 10 Fastest-Growing And Fastest-Declining Cities in the World | Digg Mynews

Girl Crush: Marya Hornbacher

2012-01-19T15:44:00.002-05:00

Marya Hornbacher is one of my favorite authors: Wasted is one of the best memoirs about anorexia and bulimia you will ever find.

Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia in 1998, when she was twenty-three. What started as a crazy idea suggested by a writer friend became the classic book that has been published in sixteen languages, is taught in universities all over the world, and has, according to the thousands of letters Marya has received over the years, changed lives.

Her new book,Madness: A Bipolar Life, is about her discovery of her Type I rapid-cycle bipolar disorder.

http://www.maryahornbacher.com/home.html

From Wiki:

Marya Justine Hornbacher (born 4 April 1974) is an American author and freelance journalist. Her book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, is an autobiographical account of her struggle with eating disorders, written when she was twenty-two. It has been translated into fourteen languages and sold over a million copies in the U.S. Wasted was banned in many public school systems due to its many drug and alcohol references as well as repeated sexual encounters. Her second book is the critically praised 2005 novel, The Center of Winter, which follows a family in the aftermath of a suicide. Her third book, published in April 2008, is a memoir called Madness: A Bipolar Life, written after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Marya Hornbacher was born in Walnut Creek, California and raised in Edina, Minnesota. She is the only child of Jay and Judy Hornbacher, professional theatre actors and directors; her mother worked as a school administrator before converting to theatre. She became bulimic at age nine and developed drug and alcohol problems by age thirteen. When Hornbacher was fifteen years old, she was accepted into the prestigious arts boarding school Interlochen where she developed anorexia.

The summer following her first year at Interlochen she was hospitalized for her eating disorder and then moved in with her father's ex-wife in Northern California. While there, she met her future husband, Julian Daniel Beard, but her eating disorder steadily worsened and she was re-hospitalized after Christmas. She was released in February but readmitted again after only two weeks. Eventually her parents sent her to Lowe House, a residential treatment hospital for adolescents with severe, long-term mental problems.

After her release that summer, she enrolled in the University of Minnesota and started writing for the university's student newspaper The Minnesota Daily. At the age of eighteen, despite her continued eating disorder, she signed out of treatment. In the fall of 1992, she entered college at American University in Washington D.C. Her eating disorder rapidly worsened and by the winter she had dropped to fifty-two pounds. On a visit home to her parents, she was admitted to the ER and given one week to live.

Though Hornbacher survived her ordeal, she has been left with many physical ailments as a result, including osteoporosis, a heart murmur, and infertility. Her second autobiography, Madness, also describes a near fatal incident of cutting but Hornbacher herself seems unclear about whether or not this was an intentional attempt at suicide.

Sugarpill Cosmetics - Welcome

2012-01-18T20:59:00.002-05:00

Sugarpill Cosmetics - Welcome:

'via Blog this'

From the website:

Sugarpill Cosmetics is a custom line of vibrant, richly pigmented, velvety pressed eyeshadows and sparkling loose powders.

The dream started in 2003, while I was running my colorful fashion line, Shrinkle http://www.etsy.com/shop/shrinkle. To compliment my flashy clothing designs, I began wearing theatrical makeup I adopted from performers in the underground drag queen clubs I frequented. After showing it off online, I immediately realized there was a huge demand for this bright makeup in the club scene. So I decided to make it accessible to my fellow internet friends by offering it alongside my clothing.

However, I always wished I had control over the makeup’s quality, brand image, and the products and colors offered. In 2005 I began plotting a new line of luxury eyeshadows in my own formula, unique colors and dream packaging. Sugarpill was born in 2010, offering dramatic shades with long-lasting wear that remains flawlessly bold throughout the day and night. I hope I've made those drag queens proud!

XOXO
Amy (Shrinkle)

News Radio Bloopers S3 #1 - YouTube

2012-01-18T20:39:00.001-05:00

News Radio Bloopers S3 #1:

'via Blog this'

sexboy the kids in the hall - YouTube

2012-01-16T23:48:00.001-05:00

sexboy the kids in the hall - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

Death Comes to Town Bloopers The Kids in the Hall - YouTube

2012-01-16T23:41:00.000-05:00

Death Comes to Town Bloopers The Kids in the Hall - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

Long Distance

2012-01-15T21:46:00.000-05:00

Written on:

03/27/10

I am currently involved in my first long distance relationship.

To say it is difficult is cliche and pointing out the obvious.

We have been dating off and on for years, but I decided on my own to have him be my main squeeze. However, since we do not get to see each other as often as we would like and we are both still young, I decided to keep it as an open relationship.

This means that he and I may go out on dates in between seeing each other, but I do not take any other men that I may date seriously. It is casual dating more to have fun and enjoy what I have left of my youth more than it is trying to juggle men.

I have no desire right now to get married and I have sworn over and over that I never will, but with this person it is different. I can honestly see myself marrying him, and I guess it is in my Sagittarius nature to balk at that. I have never had a guy who consistently treated me the way I deserve to be treated, and that is very new in and of itself. That is not something anybody should take lightly or for granted.

Being constantly hurt is another huge reason for my disdain for even the thought of marriage. You can only have your heart broken so many times before you just say "Forget it!" I live in the 21st century, I do not live in a time where if I do not marry I am doomed to be the town spinster or even the crazy cat lady. I can have my career be more important than being married and I have grown to become perfectly fine with that.

Everything that has happened to me romantically aside, my freedom is the most important thing in my life. The older I get, especially now that I have a daughter, the more I crave it. While I do factor my main squeeze into what I do in the long-term sense, in the short term sense, I want to be able to do as I please and go as I please in my downtime.

The only way we make this work is constantly keeping in touch with each other by any means we can, and keeping the passion and spark in our conversations as much as we can. It is so easy for the romance and passion to just fizzle out if you do not do the work and become complacent with your affection towards your partner. Be consistent and thorough as you can be with your affection and a long distance relationship is so much easier to handle. Above all, be honest. It will save the both of you a lot of heartache.

Grow Your Twitter Network - Twitter Followers, Users & Apps Directory | Twiends

2012-01-14T23:34:00.000-05:00

Grow Your Twitter Network - Twitter Followers, Users & Apps Directory | Twiends:

'via Blog this'

Short stories: The dump - by Jade LaFemme - Helium

2012-01-13T03:50:00.000-05:00

Short stories: The dump - by Jade LaFemme - Helium:

'via Blog this'

Girl Crush: SayanythingBr00ke

2012-01-12T15:59:00.000-05:00

I found Brooke by way of XSparkage. She is in Massachusetts, not all that far from me, and she is at the top of my list of Youtube Gurus I would love to meet in person and hang out with for a bit, or longer, if I am lucky enough.

She is witty, funny, and does not hold back with expressing her opinion. Girl after my own heart!

Brook's JPMetz impersonation

Girl Crush: Xsparkage

2012-01-12T15:52:00.000-05:00

Leesha, aka Xsparkage on Youtube is the first Guru I started paying attention to. I never was one to really browse the different categories of channels, and one night I stumbled upon "howto and style", and Leesha was frequently at the top 20.

She is a girl who naturally only feels comfortable wearing dramatic, sometimes glow-in-the-dark makeup creations, and the "makeup geek" that lives within me loves her for that. As much as I tend to lean more towards a "Bobbi Brown", bring out your natural beauty philosophy when it comes to cosmetics, I also firmly believe in just sitting down and playing with what you have, and in buying colors you would normally never wear and taking them home and plunging head-first into experimenting with what you think goes together and what does not.

She is always smiling and bubbly and seems like a genuinely happy person even when she seems annoyed about something (usually it's trolls leaving nasty comments on her videos). She seems like the type of girl I would have been really good friends with in high school, even though she is younger than I am. Some people find her perkiness annoying, I find it adorable.
ette
http://www.xsparkage.com/

Xsparkage:

http://youtu.be/VeUFBP-FrHg

Matt Classic (Apr 23, 2010)

2012-01-12T11:13:00.000-05:00

January 12 2012: This is a post from slyparadox.org that everybody there seems to like, and I just wanted to post it here because it's gloomy outside in my part of NJ and I need a giggle.-Katie

Looks like Rey Mysterio's brother fell off the wagon a bit and could use some A.A.

Hey Mr. Matt Classic: don't wind up being a drunkard. It isn't pretty to be forced to watch a slobbering drunk fall asleep in the middle of a match after he just got done screaming incoherent obscenities at the top of his lungs.

Just ask Sandman.

Uh, yeah, dude. Not attractive. :p

Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free

2012-01-12T10:49:00.001-05:00

I don't normally blog about promotion and advertising of blogs, but I thought I'd post something about once a month about how you can promote/advertise your blog for free. -Katie

Ways to Promote Your Blog for Free

-LINK BUILDING

Exchange links with other bloggers

Use BlogRush

Submit to RSS directories

Submit to blog directories

Submit to general directories

Start a 2nd blog and link to yourself

Create and give away blog themes (with a link to your blog in the footer)

Create free plugins

Create link bait

Participate in blog carnivals

Comment on DoFollow blogs

WordPress Backlinks Plugin (link removed due to possible security issues)

Continued.....

click here

Romney wins N.H. primary; Paul finishes 2nd – USATODAY.com

2012-01-11T10:20:00.000-05:00

Romney wins N.H. primary; Paul finishes 2nd – USATODAY.com:

'via Blog this'

Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny - YouTube

2012-01-10T12:23:00.000-05:00

Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

What Happened to Regulating the Banks? - YouTube

2012-01-10T12:22:00.000-05:00

What Happened to Regulating the Banks? - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

Sunday, November 28th 2010

2012-01-09T21:32:00.000-05:00

I don't know really what to write now. I'm watching the movie "Some Kind of Wonderful" which I haven't seen in a while. The red-headed guy, Eric Stoltz, actually turned out to be a pretty handsome guy. The girls in that movie look the same, as does Elias Koteas (everyone mistakes him for Chris Meloni from Law and Order SVU).

I want to get started on my book of erotica that I want to get published, but I suppose I could simply make it into a zine. It has been so long since I have done one, but I don't really think I have the funds to use a self-publisher. In the long run, I would only have enough money to publish one book.

I should write down some ideas for new stories. I might do a sapphic story, since I have never done one.

It's just really difficult to write about sex when you don't really have a sex drive to speak of. I have said that a million times, but it's a burden that I have to deal with and it's really annoying. It's been getting harder and harder (no pun intended) for me to remember what I wanted to write down because of these stupid medications that I am on, but that mess is a story for another time.

I have been getting into Charles Dickens a lot lately. My sister was heavily into him back in the day, according to one of my history teachers. He also have her an old collection of Jane Austen's books.

I think about how many books I myself have read I have read in my lifetime. I think I might spend some time on Good Reads to see what books my mom could get me (she works at one of the county libraries).

Sometimes I think I should read more "sagas", like The Vampire Diaries by Anne Rice. I haven't read any sci-fi either, even though I have been given the titles of many that I should read. I am not sure why but I never could get into sci-fi. I've always been so drawn to classic literature my whole life that it is hard for me to pry myself away from it.

Can anyone recommend some good sci-fi books (besides Phillip K. Dick I believe his name is)?

The First Christmas

2012-01-06T15:58:00.003-05:00

This Christmas was the first Christmas without my brother in law. I still miss him terribly, especially during my nephew's 2nd birthday party. He was my sister's best friend and the best brother a gal could ask for. He was kind, patient, funny, and selfless. I still remember the day my sister, Lexi, my brother-in-law and I went to the mall on my birthday so that Lexi could get her pic taken with Santa for the first time. All I have of him are birthday/Christmas presents, and my memories of him, and I am thankful that I have so many. I am thankful he lived long enough to see his son be born. I wish he could have held out to see him on his 1st birthday. I wish I had had the courage to step up and say something during his funeral, but the minute I saw him in the casket I was paralyzed. All I could think was "Do not break down, my sister needs me to be strong. It's my turn to take care of her". My sis is 8 years older than me and has always been my second Mom. I couldn't believe how composed she has sitting right in front of the love of her life.

It feels as though a shadow had fallen over my family after he was gone. This shadow will take time to disperse. The only thing I can do is be there for her and my nephew and make sure our family celebrates the existence of this piece of immortality that is his son.

Steve and Nicky:

http://youtu.be/Px4eCpFPDds

Halloween and H2 directed by Rob Zombie

2012-01-06T14:22:00.000-05:00

I have seen "House of 1,000 Corpses" as well as "The Devil's Rejects" (I like "The Devil's Rejects" a lot better than House. I just love the "B" movie exploitation feel.) I personally became a fan of Rob Zombie as a directer after seeing these movies. Even though I am a fan, when I heard he was going to tap into "remakes", I was apprehensive. A lot of flicks that have been remade suck. But Malcolm McDowell was in both movies, so in the end I had to see it. I can't really say anything bad about the remakes even though I was afraid they were going to be sub par. I have not seen the originals yet so I don't know yet if I'll like the originals more than the Rob Zombie remakes. I'm looking forward to seeing the originals.

Halloween trailer: http://youtu.be/_u8blffLgtc

From Wiki:

Halloween is a 2007 American slasher film written, directed, and produced by Rob Zombie. The film is a remake/reimagining of the 1978 horror film of the same name, the first in the rebooted Halloween film series and the ninth Halloween film in total. The film stars Tyler Mane as the adult Michael Myers,Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Sam Loomis, and Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode; Daeg Faerch portrays a ten-year-old Michael Myers. Rob Zombie's "reimagining" follows the premise of John Carpenter's original, with Michael Myers stalking Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night. Zombie's film goes deeper into the character's psyche, trying to answer the question of what drove him to kill people, whereas in Carpenter's original film Michael did not have an explicit reason for killing.

Working from Carpenter's advice to "make [the film] his own",^[2] Zombie chose to develop the film as both a prequel and a remake, allowing for more original content than simply re-filming the same scenes. Despite mostly negative reviews, the film, which cost $15 million to make,^[1] went on to gross $80,208,039 worldwide, making it the highest grossing film in the Halloween franchise in unadjusted U.S. dollars. Zombie followed the film with a sequel,Halloween II, in 2009.

Halloween 2 trailer: http://youtu.be/cHslouUNi00

From Wiki:

Halloween II is a 2009 American horror film written, directed, and produced by Rob Zombie. The film is a sequel to Zombie's 2007 remake of Halloween(1978), and the second film in the rebooted Halloween film series and the tenth Halloween film in total. Picking up where the 2007 remake ended, and then jumping ahead one year, Halloween II follows Laurie Strode as she deals with the aftermath of the previous film's events, Dr. Loomis who is trying to capitalize on those events by publishing a new book that chronicles everything that happened, and Michael Myers as he continues his search for Laurie so that he can reunite with his sister. The film sees the return of lead cast members Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, and Tyler Mane, who portray Dr. Loomis, Laurie Strode, and Michael Myers in the 2007 film, respectively.

The sequel was first announced at the 30 Years of Terror Convention, which was held in 2008. Shortly after the release of the 2007 remake, Zombie expressed that he was not going to make another Halloween film. After more than a year of unsuccessful attempts to draft a script for a sequel, Bob andHarvey Weinstein, and Malek Akkad secured a contract for Zombie, who had a renewed interest in the film, to write and direct. For Halloween II, Zombie decided to focus more on the connection between Laurie and Michael, and the idea they share similar psychological problems. Zombie wanted the sequel to be more realistic and violent than its 2007 predecessor. For the characters of Halloween II, it is about change. Zombie wanted to look at how the events of the first film affected the characters. Zombie also wanted to show the connection between Laurie and Michael, and provide a glimpse into each character's psyche. Filming primarily took place in Georgia, which provided Zombie with a tax incentive as well as the visual look the director was going for with the film. When it came time to provide a musical score, Zombie had trouble finding a place to include John Carpenter's original Halloween theme music. Although Carpenter's theme was used throughout Zombie's 2007 film, the theme was only included in the final shot of this film.

Halloween II was officially released on August 28, 2009 in North America, and was met with a negative reception from critics. On October 30, 2009 it was re-released in North America to coincide with the Halloween holiday weekend. The original opening of the film grossed less than the 2007 remake, with approximately $7 million. The film would go on to earn $33,392,973 in North America, and $5,925,616 in foreign countries giving Halloween II a worldwide total of $39,318,589. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray, with a theatrical version and director's cut of the film offered.

Jon Heder On "Napoleon Dynamite" Animated Series

2012-01-06T14:01:00.002-05:00

Hella Heaven: Jane Elliott: How does it feel to be treated like ...

2012-01-05T04:27:00.000-05:00

Hella Heaven: Jane Elliott: How does it feel to be treated like ...: " When am I gonna quit? When racism quits. Do I have a job for a lifetime? I'm afraid so ." Jane Elliott Last month I published this post ...

Celebrities Without Makeup Part 2

2012-01-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

1). Marilyn Manson

2). Britney Spears:

3). Charlize Theron

4). Drew Barrymore

Blog Watch 1-3-2012

2012-01-03T00:52:00.000-05:00

http://escapingnewyorktoagreenerlife.blogspot.com/

http://reflectionsonamoderncircus.blogspot.com/

http://thestoryinme.wordpress.com/

http://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/

Nicky's 2nd Birthday Party

2012-01-03T00:35:00.000-05:00

My nephew Nicky's 2nd birthday party

The "Saw" Franchise

2011-12-31T22:09:00.000-05:00

Annoying Orange: Saw

Annoying Orange: Saw II

The most interesting thing about the "Saw" movies are the torture devices. It may sound weird but I find torture devices to be really interesting. Mostly because not too long ago it was ok to use such devices (I don't know if "water boarding" was going on during the Spanish Inquisition and whatnot, but there are times from long ago that make water boarding look like a trip to Hersey Park.)

The Saw franchise isn't the scariest movies I have seen, but I have to say I do like Tobin Bell a lot more. I had originally saw him in an episode of the TV show "Charmed" where he played a blind man who's son kills gypsies and steals their eyes so that Tobin's character can get the power that comes from that particular gypsy clan. He had a great voice for horror and he fit in very effortlessly. I also loved Scott Patterson being in a few of them because I am a huge "Gilmore Girls" fan. Hearing Luke use the "F" word was definitely a change of pace!

I debated seeing the final chapter in 3D: I wound up not going. I think I'll save my "3D movie money" on something else.

All in all I found the Saw franchise not so much as a classic horror collection but more as "torture porn". If you've ever seen the movies "I Know Who Killed Me" or "Audition", those are other examples of torture porn.

http://listverse.com/2009/07/20/top-10-gruesome-medieval-torture-devices/

10 Most Frightening Torture Techniques from the Middle Ages:
http://www.oddee.com/item_96596.aspx

One of the best blooper reels ever

2011-12-28T18:05:00.001-05:00

http://youtu.be/IHjc1XmRnOM

Christmas 2011 Videos

2011-12-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

Nicky with the iPad

Lexi's new haircut

Merry Christmas from Pixiwoo!

2011-12-23T13:49:00.002-05:00

The Dark Knight Rises: Official Teaser Trailer

2011-12-20T00:40:00.001-05:00

http://youtu.be/-yh6SriAjdE

Athiests

2011-12-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

It's AMAZING the lengths they will go to try to shut somebody up! This makes Myspace drama look like a game of Candyland.

(I originally thought this stat update was about bible thumpers but it's about really unreasonable Atheists lol my bad. But you can see how I could make that mistake because from what you read below they're just as bad as bible thumpers!)

War is over

2011-12-19T22:56:00.002-05:00

I think this is the first time I didn't post my "I Won't Be Home For Christmas" blog in four years. I just hope the troops all get home before the New Year!

Last House on the Left

2011-12-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite scary movies. The original, not the remake. I'm kind of a horror movie purist and I don't pay much attention to remakes unless they're critically acclaimed. I gotta warn y'all: it's a disturbing movie because it feels like it could happen to your teenage girl.

Trailer:

http://youtu.be/8W9KPhmYYtg

From Wiki:

Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) plans to celebrate her 17th birthday by attending a concert with her friend, Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham). Her parents (Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr) express concern both at the band and Mari's friendship with Phyllis. They let her go, giving her a peace symbol necklace as a gift before she leaves.

Phyllis and Mari go to the city for the concert. On the way, they hear a news report on the car radio of a recent prison escape, involving criminals Krug Stillo (David A. Hess), a rapist and serial killer, his son Junior (Marc Sheffler), Sadie (Jeramie Rain), a psychopath and sadist, and Fred "Weasel" Podowski (Fred Lincoln) a child molester, peeping tom, and murderer. Before the concert, Mari and Phyllis stroll the streets, seeking someone who might sell them marijuana. They find Junior, who leads them back to an apartment, where they are immediately trapped by the criminals. Phyllis tries to escape, then tries to reason with the criminals to let her go, but their captors subdue and rape her. Meanwhile, Mari's unsuspecting parents prepare a surprise party for her.

Paved Paradise

2011-12-18T10:01:00.001-05:00

Written :12/09/08

I sat in that bar by myself, in my hometown, alone, having a few drinks and doing a lot of thinking. Basically what I came up with was this; I do not want to raise my daughter in this town. I hated growing up here. It's going to be even worse for my own kid to grow up here. All they do is pave paradise (a.k.a. any sort of vegetation that kids can play in) and put up parking lot after parking lot. There used to be a bit of forest not very far from me. We would build tree forts and play all sorts of games there. It is always wonderful to have some forest to play in growing up, even if I was insanely allergic to poison ivy. That forest was all taken away. There is also an abandoned drive-in movie theater right in front of my house. It ran when up until I was about six or seven I believe; it had to be torn down because of all the damn honking that would go on during the midnight movies. I wouldn't be able to make it to school the next day sometimes because I would get woken up and not be able to get back to sleep because they used to make so much noise. They want to turn that into blocks of stores. It seems like anyone who runs New Jersey wants to just pave it over anymore. Soon enough we'll all have to walk around with oxygen tanks strapped to our backs. It'll be The Turnpike State; no more gardens will grace its soil ever again. Not when there is so much money to be had creating retirement communities.

My Grandma's Nut Balls

2011-12-15T20:15:00.002-05:00

1 c. butter
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. flour
1 c. ground walnuts

Beat butter to cream it, beat in sugar and vanilla. Add flour and ground nuts. Mix thoroughly. Shape in balls about 1 inch thick. Arrange on buttered cookie sheet. Bake in preheated 300 degree oven for 35 minutes. Cool and roll in confectioners' sugar.

Nature vs. Nurture

2011-12-15T17:53:00.000-05:00

I find myself fascinated with whom are considered the most evil women and men in history. I've also started reading online about the most famous psychopaths. I suppose it's because since I'm a Mom now I'm neck deep into the whole "nature vs. nurture" argument. It's all very similar to the butterfly effect, how every choice you make will write the future of your children. Day to day choices, routines, events that pass us by, things we don't give a second thought about until one realizes just how clear hindsight really can be. I believe everyone takes stock of the year that has passed them around this time. Are children born bad, or did their parents make them so? Does such "evil" run in the family the way suicide flowed through the veins of generations of the "Hemmingway" family? What is the catalyst, the fork in the road of one's psyche that causes them to decide: a life of sin and darkness or a life of peace and light? Who is it that decides what double-helix will turn up in the fiber of one's being? Where does this catalyst come from; family, friends, people, places, things?

What causes a woman to accuse hundreds of women of witchcraft all for the sake of her quest of immortality? For example, Erzsébet Bathory did not find the secret to immortality, but she surely lives on as the most heinous female serial killer of all time. How does a young boy from Germany who happened upon a picture book about war one day morph into a living breathing symbol of hate? What clay molded Uday Hussein? Why aren't Andrew Jackson's genocidal ways taught in American schools? Since Eve took first bite of the apple, we humans have been entangled in a never ending dance with our sadistic/masochistic streaks.

It all comes down to a catalyst: trauma happens, and in the most extreme cases, we either take the pain out on ourselves (suicide) or we take it out on others (homicide).

To get high from self inflicted pain or inflict that pain on others? Does our conscience really boil down to the toss of a coin?

the most evil men

the most evil women

(You can find more just by Googling "the most evil men and women in history"

The Ward

2011-12-15T16:09:00.000-05:00

~This is a movie that I was not impressed with at first. You really have to stick with it til the end because that's when it gets interesting It reminds me of the ending to "The Usual Suspects".~

http://theward.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/

From Wiki:

The Ward is a 2010 American horror film directed by John Carpenter.^[2] The screenplay is written by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen.^[3] It stars Amber Heard, Danielle Panabaker, Mika Boorem, and Jared Harris.^[4] It is Carpenter's first full-length feature film since Ghosts of Mars in 2001.

The story revolves around a young institutionalized woman named Kristen (Amber Heard) who is haunted by a mysterious and deadly zombie.^[5] As danger creeps closer, she comes to realize that this zombie might be darker than anything she ever could have imagined.^[6]

Thoughts on Thirty Updated

2011-12-15T09:23:00.000-05:00

Written Monday, December 6th 2010

Well, 28 doesn't feel too shabby to me. I really am for the most part. I honestly am just in awe of the fact that I will be 30 before I know it. I really amazes me sometimes, because as your body gets older, inside you do not feel as though you have changed much but your body is always ready and willing to give you a reality check.I am just wishing for better health in the New Year- my body really got beat down with my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

I hope I have energy to play more with my kid and to keep house better and of course to write consistently in my paper journals at least. I love how the volumes of my diary are piling up. I cannot even describe what it is like to sit and look through them every time I get the chance. I do not do it often, usually around the time of my birthday I'll pull out the big container of diaries and notebooks. Seeing my life go by at the turn of the page-it may sound narcissistic, but that truly is my favorite type of reading.

UPDATE: 12/15/2011

My chronic fatigue comes and goes. I think a lot of it had to do with the amount of a certain medication I was taking that was causing excessive drowsiness on top of my already having CFS. Now that I only take that medicine at night, I've seen myself start to improve. Now if I could just stop catching colds from Mini Me I'd be all set! Lucky for me I got my flu shot already because I have a feeling this is going to be a rough winter.

As far as being 29- it isn't all that bad. All I have to do now is to make sure I save up money for my 30th because I really only celebrate milestone bdays with a big party. When you've had a near death experience at 17, the milestone birthdays are really important. They're even more special now that I get to share them with my daughter.

What is CFS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNhDQSAsdyk

This Year's Holiday Cards:

2011-12-13T20:13:00.001-05:00

this is the stack so far:

Cabin Fever #1 and #2

2011-12-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

"Cabin Fever" caused me to have a nightmare where all my skin was falling off. It is a really good movie, though. If I didn't have such a strong constitution it would have had me covering my eyes during a few scenes.

From Wiki:

Cabin Fever is a 2002 American horror comedy film about a group of college graduates who rent a cabin in the woods and begin to fall victim to a flesh-eating virus. The film was the directing debut of filmmaker Eli Roth, who co-wrote the film with Randy Pearlstein. The inspiration for the film's story came from a real life experience during a trip to Iceland when Roth developed a skin infection.^[2]^[3] The film's title is a double entendre, referring both to thephenomenon, which is seen in the declining of the student's friendships, and also to the illness spreading through the cabin, although fever is not one of the disease's symptoms.

Roth wanted the style of his film to make a departure from many modern horror films that had been released in recent years.^[3] One modern horror film, The Blair Witch Project, did inspire Roth to use the internet to help promote the film during its production and help gain interest towards its distribution.^[2] The film itself, however, draws from many of Roth's favorite horror films, such as The Evil Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Last House on the Left.^[2]^[3] Roth was tired of what he called the "watered down PG-13" horror films of the studios, and refused to compromise on the violence or nudity, saying they were essential ingredients to an '80s-style horror film.

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was not as good as the first one, but watch it for the animation. I honestly enjoyed that.

From Wiki:

A very disfigured Paul escapes from the creek and wanders through the woods, leaving pieces of his own flesh in the way. When he finally makes it to the highway, his body explodes when he is hit by a school bus. His remains are checked by Winston, the local policeman from the previous film. Winston assures the shocked bus driver that he had hit a moose.

The creek Paul was lying in was connected to a bottled-water company and the infected water was distributed to the local high school.

John, a senior at the high school, is deciding whether to go to prom with his long-time crush Cassie or stay home. His friend Alex is against going until he hooks up with a girl named Liz. She then says if she can get off work that night, she'll meet him there.

Lust

2011-12-09T14:50:00.001-05:00

He sat in the corner

waiting

Her pulse inside her ears, her heart in her throat.

His voice as rough as his fingertips

"You know I want to watch."

Her shirt on the floor

She hesitates for a moment before

Her pants follow

She could hear the catch in his breath

"You didn't wear underwear."

Even she had to smile at that

As nervous as she was

She watched him adjust himself.

From on all fours on the bed.

"Well?"

She met his gaze.

"Put on a show."

Cassia Jones Pt 3

2011-12-09T14:45:00.001-05:00

I have no idea what happened to part two, but here's part three:

Wonderlust was something Cassia was all too familiar with. It began when she turned 14. Her mother had gotten her a vacation for the both of them to London. They went the summer before she was to start high school. Her mother wanted to make sure Cassia Had some fun before school started.

Cassia had had always wanted to visit London because she was heavily into the punk scene, thanks to her girlfriend Mary Anne. Mary Anne was a sprite of a girl with a great sense of humor and a slight British accent, and was sitting by herself in the cafeteria when Cassia asked if she could sit with her. They introduced themselves and have been best friends ever since. Mary Anne introduced Cassia to the genre while her parents were in the middle of their epic divorce. She was an only child and wanted to live with her mother. Her father was a drunk who did nothing but beat up Mary Anne's mother from one end of the room to the other. Thankfully the judge saw the condition of her father and how put together and calm Mary Anne's mother was, she was awarded full custody. Mary Anne said she hasn't seen her father since.

"The punk music helped keep me sane, what can I say" she mused the day we met.

Mary Anne had a pink mohawk and all 4'10 of her was covered in the latest punk fashions. She even had a nose ring, which Cassia was very jealous of. She had always wanted a nose ring but knew her mother would kill her. She got ridiculed horribly for her fashion choices, as she was attending the most WASP-y suburban town in all of New Jersey. Cassia would have loved to dress like Mary Anne, to have the freedom to cut her hair any wild way she wanted, to shop at thrift stores that Mary Anne shopped at for her vintage early Punk movement attire. There weren't very many vintage clothing stores in New Jersey that compared to those in London.

CHAPTER FOUR

The day Mary Anne first came to school, all eyes were on her. She and Cassia had the same math class, and all Cassia could do for the first few minutes when class started was stare at her. Mary Anne was two seats ahead to Cassia's right, giving Cassia a good view of Linda's many ear piercings and the streaks of pink in her perfectly molded mohawk.

Cassia was very adept at math. It was her favorite subject. She had been invited to join her school's "Math-letes" team, but Cassia figured she really didn't need to give the popular kids at her school another major reason to make fun of her. She was already ostracized frequently for always having her nose in a book during any minute of free time she had. She usually sat alone with her books and the lunch she always made herself the night before. Cassia's mother had raised her on an all organic diet, and she insisted Cassia continued this diet in school. She didn't get picked on during her old elementary school, but being a freshman in her new high school, it was considered majorly geeky. Cassia had tried buying whatever the hot lunch was that day but she soon realized there would be no way she could choke down that much processed muck. So she sat alone with her homework or a book.

Lunch was right after math class. Mary Anne came into the cafeteria like a gust of fresh air. She walked right into that cafeteria as though she had been living with Cassia's class all her life. Mary Anne looked around at the various tables, her own brown bagged lunch in her left hand. She walked up to Cassia and asked if she could sit with her. Cassia motioned to her to come sit.

"I've never seen you around before. Did you just move here?" Cassia asked.

"Yep! I'm an army brat- my father was stationed in some far away places, but I was born in London. My British accent sort of drifts in and out at any given time. The moving didn't start until I was about ten years old. We've been to Japan, Germany, India, and my mother just came down from New York City where my parents and I lived until the divorce. I have to say that Tokyo is my favorite city, even more so than NYC."

"Wow, Japan? That's pretty amazing!" Cassia was impressed. I've always wanted to visit Japan. The Harajuku girls alone are enough for me to want to go. I've always liked sushi- I think I am the one of the few in this town and school who isn't afraid of exotic cuisine. Most of the kids here make fun of me for it. Once I had brought some Vindaloo I had made and the popular kids never let me hear the end of it. That group of Indian kids over at that table were actually impressed with me and asked if they could try some. They said I have great promise as a cook."

Cassia paused for a moment and blushed-that was the most she had ever talked to a student she didn't know in her whole life. Still, she felt comfortable in Mary Anne's presence. She had a very calming aura that Cassia picked up on.

"Oh, I love Vindaloo!" Mary Anne exclaimed. "I certainly remember eating my fair share of it the six months we were stationed in India. I also remember the horrible fights my parents would get into. That's when everything started going downhill. My memories of that and a lot of other countries are bittersweet for me because in every base the fighting got worse and worse. Germany was when my mother had finally had enough."

Mary Anne paused with a sad, distant look in her eyes.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

2011-12-08T05:55:00.000-05:00

Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning was mediocre. Next.

The original Chainsaw Massacre was much better. I am sure I'll be having dreams that Leatherface is after me one of these days. (Not too long ago I had a dream that all my skin was falling off a la "Cabin Fever") If I did not have such a strong constitution that movie definitely would have shook me up a little. The thing is, however, I could not stop laughing at the scene where they keep trying to give Grandpa the hammer. If you've seen this movie you know what I'm talking about.

GBE2: WEEK #29 (12-4-11 to 12-10-11): TRUTH

2011-12-07T13:53:00.000-05:00

The truth is.....

Ironic, yes?

Patrice O'Neal RIP

2011-12-07T13:13:00.001-05:00

Patrice's last interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PDnKrwWQDQ

Day After the Birthday

2011-12-07T13:02:00.001-05:00

Cassia Jones-Rome Part 1

2011-12-07T12:27:00.001-05:00

“Remember that trip to Rome we took the summer we graduated high school?” I asked her.

“Where did that come from?” she laughed, shaking her head. “I’ll never understand how your trains of thought work, Cass. We could be sitting here discussing an Antony Burgess novel, and you’ll come out of nowhere with something obscure like, ‘I think I forgot to pick up my dry cleaning last night.’ You have the attention span of a humming bird!”

I smiled and smacked her arm. “I was just looking at all the skyscrapers and I got to thinking about architecture, and our trip came to mind”.

Our parents had given us both a trip to Rome as our high school graduation present. It was our first trip ever as official adults and we both felt terribly chic and sophisticated the entire time we were there. My Italian was horrific, but Mary Anne was able to remember just enough for us to manage by ourselves before our trip had begun. I always was jealous of her photographic memory, especially since she loved to show it off any chance she got.

Her eyes lit up as the memories started flooding back. “Ah, yes: two whole weeks of lounging around in the sun, gaining five pounds, sight-seeing and meeting gorgeous young Roman men whom probably couldn’t even spell their own name in Italian, let alone English”.

It was true; we had spent many restless nights involved with a couple of locals during our trip. Gabriele and Nicolas were two young men that worked at one of the vineyards we had stopped at during our wine tasting tour of Florence. We had snuck it into our itinerary without our parents knowing about it. One thing we were sure to do during our holiday was to take full advantage of the considerably lower drinking age of Italy.

So there we were, two newly minted adult single females sitting at a posh vineyard in the middle of Florence, sampling one glass after another. It was the first time in our lives we had felt as though we were our own full-grown individuals, not just some kids stumbling around life trying to hash out identities.

It was only fitting that Mary Anne should happen to notice two very handsome young fellows who worked there. They were loading crates full of bottles of wine onto a flatbed truck to be delivered to the various restaurants they were in contract to work with. They were both rather tall, with olive skin; one darker than the other. The man with lighter skin had long, thick black hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. He reminded me of some of the male models I had seen on the covers of romance novels I sometimes read back home. His muscles strained against a wife-beater tank top, and his jeans where frayed with purple stains scattered around. His friend had the same outfit, only he was slightly thinner. His hair was light brown and cut very short. They were too far away to see what their faces truly looked like, but it was obvious that they were checking us out as well. They kept looking back at us and smiling at each other as they worked. We could hear them chatting in Italian, but due to my limited knowledge of the language and their distance away from me; I had no idea what they were saying.

“Oh, my goodness: look at what we have here, Cass!” I heard Mary Anne whisper under hear breath. “Fine specimens, those are. Oh, I sincerely hope they are really stupid!” I laughed at her as I snuck a peek at the two workers. Mar always seemed to be able to read my mind most of the time; I was thinking the exact same thing. Neither one of us were in the mood to fall for anyone on our trip. The dumber the local, the better and a little bit of a “bad boy” quality to them thrown in wouldn’t help, either. Those were the types that would be able to show us the best time. We had our fill of pretentious intellectuals at NYU: young men with sweaters tied around their shoulder s or polo shirts with alligators on them waxing on about Proust or some such nonsense. Before we had made it up to NYC we thought those types were exactly what we would be dating our whole college careers, given the constant throng of meatheads we had to deal with back in Philadelphia. Turns out males in their prime at the end of the millennium are the same no matter what package you put him in. They all have the same one tract mind for the most part. All of them with the same insecurity towards the intelligent, confident, and most of all independent women who seemed to be multiplying since the feminist explosion of my mother’s day that made finding someone to settle down with next to impossible.

The thing was: the two of us had also reached a point in our lives where we pretty much had a one track mind as well. The difference was that we were too afraid to act on it much due to all of the chaos surrounding the AIDS epidemic. We did not believe in the double standards that everyone else seemed to, and sexual politics was a topic we often debated with fellow male NYU students. Most of those males became intimidated with our progressive views and would start resorting to the same tired pot-shots we would hear from the meatheads back home.

On one particular night, we were on the receiving end of a particularly brutal litany of verbal abuse from a pair of alligator accented polo shirts, and Mary Anne burst out into laughter right in the middle of it. The sudden outburst startled the two yuppies next to us, and I asked her what was so funny.

“What do you mean, what is so funny?! You haven’t caught on to the irony of this particular situation yet? Cass, either you’re getting slow in your old age or it’s time to cut you off from the one cocktail that fine gentleman over there bought you. By the way, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you have since proceeded to act as though my friend over here ought to be lying spread-eagle across the bar as repayment. Sorry boys, but our respective pussies are worth more than three dollar happy hour cocktails. I am sure there must be plenty of dates much cheaper than us littering the city as we speak. Have a good evening”.

My jaw dropped right along with Mutt and Jeff’s, and Mary Anne grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the exit. The people around us who had heard Mary Anne’s little diatribe were laughing and applauding as we went. I glanced back and noticed that Cocktail Boy was turning about five different shades of red before I was whisked outside into the dense fog of yet another New York night spent being single. That incident was the last straw for both of us.

“I’m out. I know you’re supposed to kiss a lot of frogs, but I really do not have the stomach for much more of this,” I told Mary Anne while we teetered down the sidewalk on our matching high heel sandals searching for a cab.

“That’s fine, dear. I doubt I could handle much more of it myself, obviously” she said while casually lifting a side of her skirt before raising her arm. Seconds later a cab seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, and we were on our way back to our dorm. “Those gams haven’t failed us yet!” I exclaimed, giving her a playful swat on the bum before ducking into the yellow taxi.

29th Birthday

2011-12-06T14:15:00.001-05:00

Celebrities Before And After Photoshop

2011-12-03T21:19:00.000-05:00

Heavy

2011-12-03T21:16:00.001-05:00

February 1st 2011

I'm watching this new show on A&E called "Heavy". At the beginning of the program it says that "100 million Americans suffer from debilitating obesity". One hundred million! Doesn't that just boggle your mind?!

Even at my heaviest (about 200lbs) my doctor never considered me as obese. I have a lot of muscle and can gain muscle very easily, so I loose inches fast but my actual scale weight doesn't budge much.

Excessive obesity seems to me like being on death row for doing something you have no choice but to do-eat. These people I see on this program are under the most intense form of imprisonment I have ever seen in my life. It is akin to the way a person with a mental illness is a prisoner of their own mind.

The lymphodema that the obese/morbidly obese is actually kind of fascinating to me in a really strange sort of way. A clinical way, like the way I am fascinated with abnormal psychology and various forms of eating disorders.

When I was younger I was obsessed with anorexia and bulimia- the polar opposite metal illness of obesity. I was knee-deep in websites and groups about the "lifestyle"of anorexia and bulimia.

I am all for fat positivity. I do not believe everyone should look like they were molded the exact same way. I guess I'm grateful I don't live near a place in the world that is warm most of the time because I don't have to worry about looking like a fat cow in comparison to the stick insects that are submerged in climates such as this. I am not hating on the naturally skinny, but you can ask around Hollywood and the more courageous people who don't care about their status will tell you a big part of the reason why so many celebs are so skinny is because the majority of Hollywood (esp. women, since they like to turn it into a game of "whom can be the skinniest and not die") are flat out starving themselves.

I know better than to take on this borderline anorexic lifestyle. I celebrate fuller figured women every chance I get. I think every size is beautiful, but if someone winds up needing to knock down a wall in order for them to leave the house and go to the hospital: that person as major issues.

Dear Anon.

2011-12-01T09:54:00.001-05:00

You, the two eyes reading this: you are not whom you think you are.

You have talent, humor and charm, and even though you seem like you aspire to be a scumbag, you are capable of so much more and you know it. It doesn’t make you cool to shrug off the expectations of those who care about you. It just makes you look like a fool. You don’t have to be a nice person if you know that’s not who you truly are. Being jerk and being a bad person can be two different things.

It is not ok when friends try to keep you from growing up because they themselves do not have the guts or the will power to become adults themselves. If they cannot balance responsibility with living life to the fullest, all they will ever do is drag you down so that you cannot make anything of yourself even if you tried. Simply having known someone your whole life doesn’t mean you need to keep them in your life for the sake of your future. That is something I am all too familiar with.

I have never thought you were a bad person, even when I tried to just get rid of you and never think about you again. At the time,that plan failed miserably.

From day one you’ve shown me a side of you that I doubt very much you show very many people, and maybe that is what scared you. I am sure the risk of my seeing it face to face (which I saw the moment you first laid eyes on me–I severely doubt you were even aware that your face lit up like a Christmas tree) probably scared you even more.

Whatever spin you want to put onto whatever it is we have: this is the real deal, Evander Holyfield. If you think I am just going to back out like I have before, then you’re in for a bumpy ride (and I say bring it).

I have made up my mind once and for all about you, and I will keep my distance so that you can gain distance from everything that has happened between us.

However, I said a long time ago that from the first time I saw you I knew I was in for it with you.

his is something I haven’t told anyone: the night before we met up, I had a dream about finally getting to meet you. When you guided me by the small of my back up the stairs: I dreamed that right down to what you said about me finally coming to hang out. All your attempts at chivalry that night I already saw in my dream.

At the end of the day, who knows if I will ever get lucky and find another person who took the misery away like you did. Maybe I never will.

It may be best that I just prepare myself for the latter. Just in case.

The whole package (daughter, career, spouse) may not be in the cards.

No matter what, from now on, I live for myself and my daughter. Whatever happens, happens.

Something in the Way She Moves

2011-12-01T09:52:00.001-05:00

You think you know me well: but you don't know me

Just because you read whatever is written on my blogs, does not mean you know me. No one in my life can truly say they know everything about me, and it’s a safe bet that no one ever will. Not my parents, not my daughter, no one.

I will censor myself to a certain extent, but I am not going to completely, because of what certain people may find. Why should I have to hide and be afraid of what other’s think? That isn’t who I am anymore.

I do not usually speak one on one with whatever is bothering me. I write it down. That’s the way it has been since I truly started keeping a journal, at the ripe old age of ten.

Almost my whole life is kept in a box somewhere. Soon I will have to take out a safe deposit box in a bank; the best place to keep them safe and away from harm or prying eyes.

My paper journals are for no one’s eyes but my own.

You read snippets of my life, but do not ever assume you know me simply from what you have perused. I am not my blogs, I am not this article, I am not the words contained therein, I am not any one thing. The minute anyone assumes that I am I know once and for all that they will never understand me. I am not your compact luggage; I don’t slide easily into the overhead compartment.

Maybe it is easy to piece together an image of what you assume I must be by reading this. Maybe it isn’t.

All I can say is this; I speak from the heart. I am more than my words, but my words are everything to me.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this makes absolutely no sense to anyone but myself. That’s fine with me. I’m used to it.

The Most Evil Women in History: Marybeth Tinning

2011-11-30T16:12:00.001-05:00

WARNING: This post contains material that may be triggering or upsetting to some viewers.

Link to video:

http://youtu.be/U-iGadI4XW0

From Wiki:

Marybeth Tinning (née Roe, born on September 11, 1942) is an American serial killer currently serving a 20 years to life sentence after being convicted of the murder of one of her children. Her case is held to be one of the most extreme cases of Münchausen syndrome by proxy.

In the first five years of their marriage, the couple had two children, Barbara and Joseph. In December 1971, Tinning gave birth to a third child, Jennifer. Jennifer was sick at birth and never left the hospital. A few weeks later, she died of a severe infection, which was diagnosed as meningitis.

On January 20, 1972, Tinning took Joseph, then two years old, to the Ellis Hospital emergency room. She said that he had experienced some type of seizure. The child was kept under observation for a time and, when doctors could not find anything wrong with him, was sent home. Several hours later, Tinning and her son returned to the ER, her son now dead. She told doctors that she had placed him in bed and returned later to find that he had turned blue, and was tangled in his sheets.Less than six weeks later, Tinning was back at the same emergency room with her daughter Barbara, four. She said the little girl had gone into convulsions. Though the doctors wanted the child to stay overnight, Tinning insisted on taking her back home. Several hours later, she returned with Barbara, who was unconscious and later died. Her death was attributed to Reye's Syndrome. All three of Tinning's children had died within 90 days of each other. Tinning became pregnant with her fourth child the following year.

On Thanksgiving Day 1973, she gave birth to a son, Timothy. On December 10, three weeks after his birth, Timothy was brought back to the same hospital dead. Tinning told doctors she found him lifeless in his crib. Again, doctors found nothing medically wrong. His death was listed as SIDS.

Two years later, on March 30, 1975 (Easter Sunday), Tinning gave birth to her fifth child, Nathan. On September 2, she showed up at St. Clare's Hospital with the baby dead in her arms. She said she was driving in her car with the baby in the front seat when she noticed that he had stopped breathing. Again, there seemed to be no explanation for his death.

In 1978, the couple made arrangements to adopt a child. The same year, Tinning became pregnant again. The Tinnings did not cancel the adoption and chose to keep both children. In August 1978, they received a baby boy, Michael, from the adoption agency. Two months later, on October 29, she gave birth to her sixth child, Mary Frances. In January 1979, Tinning rushed Mary Frances, to the emergency room, directly across the street from her apartment, saying the baby had had a seizure. The staff were able to revive her. However, on February 20, Tinning came running into the same hospital with Mary Frances, who was brain dead. Once again, Tinning said she found the baby unconscious and did not know what had happened to her.

Once Mary Frances was buried, Tinning once again became pregnant. On November 19, she gave birth to her seventh child, Jonathan. In March 1980, she showed up at St. Clare's hospital with Jonathan unconscious. Like Mary Frances, he was successfully revived. Due to the family's history, Jonathan was sent to Boston Hospital where he was thoroughly examined. The doctors could find no valid medical reason why the baby simply stopped breathing. Jonathan was sent home. A few days later, Tinning returned to the hospital with Jonathan, and he was brain-dead. Jonathan died on March 24, 1980.

Less than one year later, on the morning of March 2, 1981, Tinning showed up at her pediatrician's office with Michael, her adopted child, then two and a half years old. He was wrapped in a blanket and unconscious. She told the doctor that she could not wake Michael and had no idea what was wrong. When the doctor examined Michael, he was already dead. Since Michael was adopted, the long-suspected theory that the deaths in the Tinning family had a genetic origin was discarded.

On August 22, 1985, Tinning gave birth to her ninth child, Tami Lynne. On December 19, next-door neighbour Cynthia Walter, who was also a practical nurse, went shopping with Tinning and later visited her home. Later that night, Walter received a frantic telephone call from Tinning. When Walter arrived, she found Tami Lynne lying on a changing table. Walter testified that the child was not moving and she could not feel any pulse or breathing. At the emergency room, the baby was pronounced dead.

Suspicion mounted against Tinning, who was always alone when the children died, but there wasn't any evidence of wrongdoing. However, after a police interrogation, Tinning confessed to smothering Tami Lynne, Nathan, and Timothy (which she later retracted).[3] She denied having harmed the other children. She was convicted in Tami Lynne's case and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.[2]Her first attempt for parole was in March 2007. At the parole board meeting Tinning said, "I have to be honest, and the only thing that I can tell you is that I know that my daughter is dead. I live with it every day," she continued, "I have no recollection and I can't believe that I harmed her. I can't say any more than that." Her parole was denied.[4]

In late January 2009, Tinning went before the parole board for the second time. Tinning stated "I was going through bad times," when she killed her daughter.[5] The parole board again denied her parole, stating that her remorse was "superficial at best."[5] Tinning was eligible for parole again in January 2011.[5] In 2011 parole was denied again.[6] [7] Her next opportunity for parole will be in January 2013.[7]

Mark Taylor

2011-11-29T18:37:00.001-05:00

WARNING: This post contains material that may be triggering or upsetting to some viewers.

From Youtube:

On the tenth anniversary of the Columbine shooting, Mark and Donna Taylor give an interview. This video documents Mark's shocking decline since being forcibly hospitalized and 'treated' with psychiatric drugs in 2006. He used to be coherent, give television interviews and be able to drive himself. Now he's in a very disconnected, almost zombie-like state.

http://youtu.be/AWyP8uS4-JE

http://youtu.be/vP4rW6PzmtI

Disposable Teens

2011-11-29T17:52:00.001-05:00

WARNING: This post contains material that may be triggering or upsetting to some viewers.

And I'm a black rainbow, and I'm an ape of godI've got a face that's made for voilence and pornAnd I'm a teen distortion, survived abortionA rebel from the waste down

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah

I wanna thank you, Mom, I wanna thank you, DadFor bringin' this fuckin' world to a bitter endI never really hated a one true god, but the god of the people I hated!

Chorus:You say you want an evolution? The ape was a great big hit!You say you want a revolution, man? Well I say that you're full of shit!We're disposable teens, we're disposable teens, we're disposable teens, we're disposable.

http://youtu.be/5XTIOs4YK_c

The Hour I First Believed is not the best work of Wally Lamb in my opinion (because I personally didn't like the ending), but as someone who was a sophomore in high school when the Columbine shootings happened, I really appreciated it.

http://www.amazon.com/Hour-First-Believed-Novel/dp/0060393491

From Amazon.com:

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).

In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.

When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.

The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

The Ugly

2011-11-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

WARNING: This post contains material that may be triggering or upsetting to some viewers.

This is a 1997 New Zealand horror film about a young serial killer named Simon. You see the abuse he goes through up until the moment he meets a criminal psychologist who wants to know why Simon kills. His explanation that he simply enjoys it is not enough for her. Most serial killers have patterns, most collect mementos of their victims. The only thing Simon has left behind is a trail of corpses. In Simon's case, randomness is his pattern. This is another film that shows what bullying and abuse can turn someone into.

The man who plays Simon is very good, but the one thing that will annoy any horror flick buff is the black blood that gushes out of his victims throats after he has sliced their necks open. It's so annoying!!! I give it three out of five stars.

From Wiki:

A criminal psychologist begins a series of interviews with a mental patient/serial killer named Simon Cartwright. As the interviews progress, the doc is drawn into Simon's world and seduced by his boyish charms. But as she delves deeper into his psyche she discovers that Simon, who claims to be haunted by the voices of his victims telling him to kill, as well as a malignant alternate persona called "The Ugly" may not be so much crazy as he is tortured inside from years of physical and psychological abuse.

The Ugly trailer: http://youtu.be/JmD7r1RJJ88

The Most Evil Women In History: Ilse Koch

2011-11-29T16:39:00.001-05:00

WARNING: This post contains material that may be triggering or upsetting to some viewers.

Link to video:

http://youtu.be/5izTLWi_tCk

From Wiki:

Ilse Koch, née Köhler (22 September 1906, Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony – 1 September 1967), was the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of the Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald from 1937 to 1941, and Majdanek from 1941 to 1943. She was one of the first prominent Nazis to be tried by the US military.
After the trial was remitted under worldwide media attention, survivor accounts of her actions resulted in other authors describing her abuse of prisoners as sadistic; a shadow image as "concentration camp murderess" transfixed itself to post-war German society.[1] She was accused of taking souvenirs from the skin of murdered inmates with distinctive tattoos. She was known as "The Witch of Buchenwald" ("Die Hexe von Buchenwald") by the inmates because of her alleged cruelty and lasciviousness toward prisoners. She is also called in English "The Beast of Buchenwald"[2] and "The Bitch of Buchenwald".[3] The "Queen of Buchenwald"[4][5][6] The "Red Witch of Buchenwald"[7][8][9] The "Butcher Widow"[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Koch

I Really Miss Brad Renfro

2011-11-28T14:54:00.001-05:00

He was my first celebrity crush, and it was a crush that has lasted to this day. A piece of my heart belongs to him. Sounds silly because he's someone I have never met a day in my life, but the first person a girl REALLY crushes on is something you don't forget very easily at all. Mini Me (Lexi) was barely introduced to the world when he died.

It really isn't fair that the Academy Awards cut him out of the Oscar Montage of actors and actresses whom we've lost in 2007.

Brad Renfro Cut From Oscar Montage Of Those Who Died

Brad Renfro's last interview:

Link to video of Brad's last interview:
http://youtu.be/vV5pxCUlTSU

From imdb.com:

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee on July 25, 1982, he was discovered at age 10 by director Joel Schumacher and was cast in the motion picture, The Client (1994) which starred Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. Although this would be his zenith, he went on to appear in other films such as The Cure (1995), Tom and Huck (1995), Sleepers (1996) (1996), and _Apt Pupil_ (1998). Renfro won "The Hollywood Reporter's Young Star Award" in 1995 and was nominated as one of People Magazine's "Top 30 Under 30", though addiction problems in his teens and early twenties led to several police arrests and hampered his career. He died of a drug overdose in January 2008, aged 25.

GBE2WEEK #27 (11-20-11 to 11-26-11) : Laughter

2011-11-26T15:21:00.001-05:00

You can't listen to this song and not laugh:

I'd link it back but it links back to a porno site. Instead, I'll just write the lyrics:

(To the tune of "Hey there Delilah)

Hey there vagina you're a fragrant little kittyWith your landing strip and camel toeTo me you look so pretty yes you doYou know what I just wanna doIt's punish you

Hey there vagina you're a fancy little beaverLet my penis play the quarterback And you can be receiver yes it's trueI'll throw a touchdown inside youYes it's true

Oh, it's what you do to meOh, it's what you do to meOh, it's what you do to meOh, you little penis sleeve

I love your little heart-shaped boxA pair of lips that never talkIt's everything that a man could ever wantThe only problem in the worldIs you're connected to a girlAnd that makes you annoying in the endIn the end

Hey there vagina, you're a man's reason for livingYou can the most frugal gentlemenBecome quite givingYes it's trueYou sausage wallet, I love you

Horror Movies

2011-11-25T13:52:00.001-05:00

I am on a horror movie bender. I am trying to watch all the classics and I will probably write about the movies I see as well.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-25T13:17:00.001-05:00

It was pretty quiet because it was just Lexi and I. My parents went to my Aunt's house (so did my sister and nephew), but Lexi has a cough and my nephew is recovering from pneumonia so I didn't want to expose Lexi to that.

It wasn't a bad time though. Lexi and I ate a lot of ham (I stuffed myself with stuffed mushrooms) and watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special.

All in all it was a good Thanksgiving dinner (mostly due to the fact that I got to eat as many stuffed mushrooms as I wanted) My parents came back with a plate of food for Lexi and I along with apple pie. I ate the pie and Lexi wanted ice cream (ps caramel ice cream with apple pie OMG so good).

I got to spend Thanksgiving with the thing I am thankful for every day.

Myspace Blogging: the Illusion of Celebrity

2011-11-21T11:09:00.001-05:00

Written 4/19/2008

A year ago I decided to begin blogging on Myspace. I was interested in seeing whether or not I could achieve any sort of fame by posting or commenting blogs.

I began by joining every blog ring that had to do with writing that I could. Blog rings are a type of online group where you can find new blogs to read and where others can find your own work.

I then began commenting on other blogs, doing my best to have my comments be as interesting as I could manage. The comments section of a blog on Myspace is just as important, if not more so, than the blog itself. It is where the author has the ability to interact with their readers, and depending on how popular the author is, it can even go so far as to build a sense of community within the comment threads.

Within a few months, I found myself getting multiple friend requests a day that had notes attacted to them saying things such as, "I've seen you around the blogs; you're hilarious!"

Evidentaly, all of my commenting on blogs had cemented me as a Myspace blogger comedian, and I didn't even know it.

Blogging on Myspace is a very easy way to gain a false sense of celebrity. Once your blog makes it to the top of the rankings (which is much easier to do than most realize), people begin clicking on your blogs to see what exactly all the fuss is about that would make said blog rank in the first place. If they believe your work is any good or has any sort of merit, they will then tell their "Myspace friends". In addition to adding people to your friend's list yourself, inviting them to your blog, posting bulletins advertising your blog, you can become "Myspamous" in about one year's time.

Most blogs that you will find in the top of the rankings are filler. They either cover safer subjects or they are overtly offensive. Some of them cater to the very large demographic of sexually charged males (who anyone with any common sense knows are, for the most part, perpetually 12 years old). They are also occupied by many reality TV stars and some celebrities who's status is higher than the "D" list. They are the junk food, the cotton candy of Myspace. Not often will you find blogs that have any real substance to them.

Attempting to become a celebrity by blogging on Myspace is a fruitless effort. It does not pay any money, anything you write in your blogs is owned by Myspace, and it takes a lot of time and effort to become successful. If you have an occupation that causes you to be home a lot (a stay-at-home mother such as myself), then this can be a great way to meet new people and pass the time.

For the most part, don't expect it to ever truly get you anywhere in life. Think of it as a mere jumping off point to bigger and better things.

November Rain

2011-11-21T11:02:00.001-05:00

Published 1/3/2009

As the rain hits the rooftop of my house, I can only think of the cloud that has settled over me the past few days. Light precipitation gently beating down on the top of my head, yet no matter where I turn or how many times I attempt to outrun it, there it is, as glued to me as if it were my shadow. I feel like Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoons.

The little cloud is a culmination of every negative emotion and experience I have had this year. It manifested itself into a mass that only I can see. It causes me fatigue, and I feel listless, morose.

I have begun to re-read the copies of Anais Nin’s diaries that I own. I could have sworn I had a copy of Henry and June, but I can’t find it anywhere. I just got finished Incest, the second volume of her unabridged diary, and am now almost finished with Fire. I need a copy of Nearer the Moon and I’ll probably have to wind up looking for another copy of Henry and June. I have the first three volumes of her edited diaries, and I have to get the remaining volumes of that, as well as the book of letters between her and Henry Miller. Reading her diary has made me realize that my best bet to get published is just to publish my own blog as a book. I have to do what Anais said to do; write as though no one would be reading it. Certain people and events I obviously can’t name or publish, but I will do my best to utilize creative license. I figure in seven months or so I’ll have enough for a book.

The 2011 Holidays UPDATED

2011-11-17T17:21:00.001-05:00

I am in the middle of moving all of the stuff I wrote on hubpages.com over to my blog and then deleting my account. I don't really like it there much. I'm sticking to Helium.com.

What Guys Think About During Sex

2011-11-17T11:39:00.001-05:00

http://youtu.be/MuylOVfR374

Hello Baby Harry!

2011-11-15T09:19:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite makeup artists just had her first child, a son named Harry. Nic Chapman had suffered a series of miscarriages before baby Harry, and I am beyond excited for her and her little baby!

http://youtu.be/GB_WLxgmxS0

A Bedtime Story Pt 5

2011-11-15T09:18:00.001-05:00

So there I was, in the winter of 1989, on the cusp of becoming a modern woman of the 90’s. Mary Anne was visiting from Paris (she had gotten into a culinary institute), and we were still mourning the death of Graham Chapman. We stood among the patrons and guests lamenting about the first person to say “shit” on British television died of such a horribly incurable cancer. “He was one of the only fairies we had left who was truly in love with bad taste”, Mary Anne quipped, squinting at a statue. “Oh yes, because we are in such low supply here in New York,” I scoffed. “You speak as though Michael Alig is such an upstanding member of the gay community,” I said, winking at her.

“S’il vous plait!” she cried, rolling her eyes at me. “That little Warhol wannabe is not a fan of bad taste, he is a fan of hijacking every brilliant idea he sees and labeling it as his own. Mark my words, Cass, if that boy isn’t careful, that brat, trouble-maker personae of his is going to eat him alive! Something tells me those charms of his won’t always keep him out of trouble”.

We had been tracking the rise of Michael Alig by corresponding through the letters we would write one another. I would add newspaper clippings to my letters and she would write back with her venomous yet always hilarious commentary on what her perspective of what was happening to Manhattan nightlife after the death of Andy Warhol.

“He honestly thinks that he’s going to fill Warhol’s shoes and be the next king of Manhattan,” she had written in one letter. “Cass, I bet you five bucks that if he ever does land on top, it isnot going to last long. He may be a sweet kid from the Mid West dying for fame and adulation, but the line between his bratty antics for attention and who he really is will blur to the point that he will be the “Bad Seed”, just like Sullivan always told us”. Barnard Sullivan was an old friend of my grandparents. He always fascinated me any time he made an appearance at my grandparent’s house, which wasn’t very often. My grandparents had lived in Brooklyn at the beginning of their marriage, and had become friends with Barnard’s parents. They all would migrate to Philadelphia to spend Thanksgiving with us, and Barnard would go on and on about how much he adored me. He amazed me with his writing, and his sense of humor was laced in even the fairy tales he would create off the top of his head Thanksgiving night as I was snuggled under the covers. I thought he was such a wonderful boy and wondered why he wasn’t interested in any of the girls who would have crushes on him. When I was twelve Mom had sat me down and gently explained the complicated subject of sexuality.

“The best way I can describe it is that sexuality is usually not black and white. A lot of people want to believe it is, and that’s fine. Not every boy likes girls, and not every girl likes boys. Sometimes boys like boys, and girls like girls. Sometimes, boys like girls and boys, and vice versa! I’m sure it all sounds very complicated to you now, but the older you get, and the more you experience, you’ll get a better grasp of it”.

She never liked to flat out say the word “homosexual” or any of the charming and sordid nicknames attributed to that word. Not when I was younger, anyway. My mother had a deep aversion to any words that had any sort of vulgar connotations. She never saw homosexuality as vulgar, but some of her gay friends were, as my grandfather liked to call it “rather swishy”, and they would breeze through my mother’s house on nights she had functions at the Art Museum. I would sit on her bed watching her friends ransack her closet for just the right ensemble. I played among the rejected outfits, startling every now and then at my mother’s squeal of disapproval over something a friend of hers would exclaim.

He would spend a couple of hours before Sunday dinner and sit in the living room, martini in hand, gushing about all the latest gossip to hit the New York City art and entertainment scene.

He wrote for The Village Voice, and when I was always captivated by his sense of humor. Barnard always said that since he made sure to mock himself first, it gave him free reign to ruthlessly mock those around him. Mary Anne was an even bigger fan of his, and she picked up on the rhythm of his wit as though it were a second language. His commentary about New York City nightlife had become a sort of guidebook for the two of us as we meandered our way through our college years. This night was one of many that we spent at New York art galleries with the rich and fabulous.

He was the one who introduced me to the notorious Franklin Belding, heir to the Harvest Luxury Hotel fortune. Franklin was tagging along with Barnard one afternoon while we were waiting for him to arrive for an early Sunday supper. He was running late, which is nothing we were not used to. Barnard never wore a watch because he always assumed that there wasn’t anything in New York society that truly went underway until he got there. He was usually right. That habit of his managed to bleed over into his personal life. Those who loved him learned to put up with it and knew better than to take it personally.

Finally, at six-thirty, I noticed Franklin trailing in behind Barnard, who was waving his hands around in protest.

“It really wasn’t my fault this time! There was a terrible car accident on the freeway about twenty minutes from here. The gaper delay had us waiting about ten minutes, and by the time we finally made it past, one of the blessed cars involved in the crash blew up! It nearly hit the other cars that were trying to crawl by the accident, but we have no idea if anyone was hurt. Well, I have no idea, I should say. Did you manage to get a look at anything, Franklin?”

Barnard turned around towards Franklin while he draped his coat over his forearm. Franklin shyly stepped up and mumbled something.

“Oh, dear, you must learn to speak up, child! How are you to absorb the grand Harvest fortunes when you speak as though you were afraid to be heard?” Barnard gave him a playful shove towards the living room. I approached the two gentlemen so that I could hang their coats in the hallway closet. Franklin blushed as soon as he caught me smiling warmly at him while I stood next to him.

“May I take your coat, Mouse?” I asked him innocently, and Barnard broke out in that loud, ridiculous laugh of his that is terribly infectious.

“Oh don’t you go giving the boy an even harder time! Your first inclination is always to tease, isn’t it? You are the spitting image of your mother in that respect”. I extended my forearm and Barnard laid his creamy brown suede jacket on it, and I turned back to Franklin expectedly. “I tease everyone, so no worries, my dear” I assured him.

Upon closer inspection, I was struck by how completely pure the color of his eyes were. I myself had always been complimented on my eyes, but they were the type of hazel that was a grab bag of a variety of colors, depending on what I wore. Franklin had these dark brown eyes that were almost like looking in a pool of maple syrup. They were the warmest eyes I had ever seen. I must not have realized I was staring at him because Barnard clearing his throat gave me a start. Franklin smiled at me, and my knees trembled a little. If Franklin were remotely aware of his looks, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would be New York high society’s most sought after bachelor.

Barnard must have been able to read my expression, because he grabbed my arm and said “Now Cass, come catch me up on everything that’s going on in your life. I can’t believe how fast you’ve grown! You’re a knockout just like your mother!“ I giggled and shook my head while Barnard prattled on, flailing his free hand in the air in the animated way that he loves to do. I had seen him do this exact gesture so many times in my childhood that I had adapted it for my own without even noticing.

After we hung the coats, Barnard pushed me into the master bedroom and closed the door behind him.

“I know what you were thinking: that boy has no idea how incredibly gorgeous he is!” he hissed at me while flopping down on the bed next to me, our feet dangling over the edge so that our shoes wouldn’t mar my parents pristine comforter. This was our ritual before every event held at my house where he was a guest. It had started when he noticed one of my grandparent’s neighbor’s sons could not keep his eyes off me during a summer barbeque when I was eight. He rushed up to me and insisted that we go to my parent’s room for a bit to talk about everything that was going on with me. It was similar to a pair of girl-friends going to the bathroom together after they have met a pair of fellows at a bar or night club. You leave under the guise of needing to use the ladies room, when really you’re just looking for a private place to gossip out of ear shot.

“How is that even possible, Barnard? You just mentioned that he’s the heir to the Harvest Hotel fortune, right? That means not only is he gorgeous, but he’s one of the richest single men in New York City! He stands to inherit about half a billion, last I checked. Imagine being the only son of such wealthy parents. I doubt I would be able to handle it. I’d crack like a tea cup!” I started twirling my hair and staring off into the distance, thinking. Franklin seemed like a nice enough young man. He certainly had not allowed his wealth to turn him into an arrogant, pompous ass like so many of the more attractive high- society bachelors that littered the most expensive parts of Manhattan and Philadelphia.

Barnard knew better than anyone my aversion to dating anyone that has too much to do with New York society. I had to deal with them whenever they migrated down from New York. Every one of them treated the trip as though they were Eskimos on a deadly mission for whale blubber and not simply taking a two hour limousine ride through New Jersey and over one of Philadelphia’s many bridges. Such dramatics over leaving the city were beyond me, but that was what always cast me as the odd girl out. Anyone who understood that there is a big wide world other than that tiny island floating in the Atlantic Ocean was frowned upon. There has been a societal protocol that has been alive and well since my ancestors came over on the Mayflower to escape the religious persecution that they had to endure in England.

To be continued

I got my t-shirt, how about you???

2011-11-14T13:08:00.001-05:00

http://twitter.com/#!/GregoryIron

http://www.facebook.com/thehandicappedhero

and yes that is my Motor City Machine Guns dogtag :)

A Bedtime Story Pt 4

2011-11-12T14:36:00.001-05:00

“That is what I want our daughter’s name to be”, she whispered to Dad one night. “Cassia Hope Jones. Has a lovely ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Unfortunately, I was given the same affliction that my mother had. I am unable to have another child, but at least I have my Cassia”.

She bent down, planted a kiss on my head, and grinned, because I had fallen asleep. It was a position that we had been in countless times before; curled up on the porch of my grandparents’ townhouse in the middle of Philadelphia. Just two specs on the planet, really, but as far as the two of us were concerned; the world consisted only of us, for the time being, at least.

I had always thought that the name bestowed to me was a lot to live up to when my mother had first told me what my name meant that night.

“You are going to be the light when it seems as though all hope for women has gone dark, just by being you, my darling.” I had heard her whisper to me while I was huddled on her lap, lost in the limbo of reality and unconsciousness. Luckily my head has been attached solidly to my shoulders starting at a very early age, so her ultimate message of “be yourself” was not lost on me.

My mother and I had been through so many trials and tribulations that it was a wonder you couldn’t see the scar tissue of countless battles etched upon our skin. I believe the traveling freak show would be reinstated if they somehow became visible. Struggle was more than a simple, random noun for us; it was a way of life. It is natural for me to hold my mother in higher regard than my father, for despite the fact that I know he loves me, sometimes there are people in this life who just cannot be a part of your own, for whatever reason. In this case, the reasoning was that the wanderlust that had been so intoxicating to my mother when she first met him was a huge liability not long after they had found out I was coming along.

I was conceived during the opening bars of a Brian Adams song, that is to say, in the summer of 1969. They were not married, and they were not at all prepared for me. My mother said she became a mother the minute the doctor told her she was expecting. My father took it as an affront to his own personal freedom, and snuck out the door in the middle of the night without telling my mother. After that, there was no sweetness to their relationship; all that remained was the bitter taste of abandonment on the back of my mother’s tongue. She never saw or heard from him again.

I often wonder what it would be like to have my father in my life. I witnessed all the girls my age that had both parents at every recital and every “back to school” night and I felt the same sting that every girl feels when the man who was supposed to be her role model for every subsequent man she meets in her life abandons her. My mother was smart, though. She made sure to burn it into my brain that just because her man disappointed her, does not mean that every man in my life would follow suit. I kept that in mind when I was introduced to the unforgiving beast that is puberty.

It hit me when I was 12. One morning I woke up and I thought that I was bleeding to death. I burst through my room and ran screaming down the hallway into my mother’s room. I probably looked like a bloody, headless chicken a farmer nicked with his axe; I was totally incoherent and flailing my arms around wildly. After screaming her head off at my dramatic entry, my mother calmed me down enough to march me into the bathroom and clean me up.

“Wait here”, she said. She gave me a kiss on the forehead, and disappeared down the hall. She came back with a fresh change of clothes and some underwear.

“Before you do anything, I have to show you something.”

My mother then proceeded to demonstrate how to place a sanitary pad. Once we were finished with that particular rite of passage into womanhood, she guided me to the living room and put a kettle of water on the boil for tea. She sat down next to me on the couch, and while we waited for the water to boil, she gathered me in her arms and raked her fingers through my hair, over and over. The motion was one as familiar as breathing; she had been using it ever since I could remember to calm me down.

The kettle whistled in the background. Mom got up and told me that she was going to make some chamomile to calm my nerves. She came back, handed me the mug, and settled back down next to me. She then proceeded to explain what was happening to me in the poignant yet direct way that only she could. My mother has made hundreds of little mistakes while raising me, as many mothers do. This crisis was one that she handled beautifully. She was honest and unafraid to talk about menstruation, sex, and boys. She even made sure to bring up the subject of drinking and recreational drug use for good measure.

That day I learned about the minutia of the teenage existence and what I had to look forward to once I became one. Mom told me that the times may change, but the game remains the same. Hormones will be racing through me faster than a Chevy barreling down the track at the Indy 500. Not only that, but I had mood swings, acne, depression, hair growing where it had never been before, irritability, and cramps.

“To top it all off,” she said after she had caught her breath, “you will suddenly find yourself thinking with your libido far too much. Be smart, and fight the urge at least until you turn 18. I did, and I can’t tell you how thankful I am for it. I do not expect you to stay a virgin until you’re married, but it goes without saying that I will support you if that happens to become your final decision. The bottom line, baby girl, is this: the world is full of a countless number of people who will try to pressure you into being a version of yourself that they can live with. The question is: which are the ones that are worth making yourself more palatable for?”

As I sat and absorbed her words, my breathing calmed and my mind cleared. The gist of my mother’s message to me, as I understood it, was that once I found out who I ultimately was, it was ok to soften the edges for a select few. There is no need to constantly prove yourself to the people who accept you for who you are.

Peer pressure was another thing she was adamant about teaching me about. According to her, once a girl’s body starts morphing into a woman, the rest of your life will consist of females subliminally trying to dull the attributes that make you stand out. Jealousy will be a huge factor in almost every friendship I have with the same sex.

“All you have to do is make sure to remember who you are, and have the courage to stand by your convictions. If you can do that, you’ll be fine”. She smiled, kissed me on the forehead, and left me alone in the living room. I set down my mug on a crotched coaster that rested on the mahogany end table next to the couch, stretched out my legs, and closed my eyes. I thought about the fact that nothing was ever going to be the same after this day. My mother went through the same talk when she was around my age, and her mother before me, and her mother before me. Such thoughts shouldn’t occupy a 12 year old mind, but I was always an old soul, as Mom liked to call me. I was too astute for my own good, and I paid for it dearly on a constant basis. I knew that high school was a bigger pond than the middle school I was attending at the time.

It was a time in my life that had I any idea at the time, I would have made sure to enjoy much more than I did. I suppose no one really knows when the line between their childhood and adulthood will be drawn. If I had realized just how fleeting being naïve and emotionally unfettered, I would have made a conscious effort to hold onto it just a little while longer.

Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. The next thing I knew, summer was over, and I was preparing for my first year at Delaware Valley High School.

I didn’t have many friends in middle school. The only people I managed to forge any type of relationship with were the bookish outcasts such as me. I was the weird girl who constantly had her nose in a book wherever she went. I had the ability to walk down the hall and read at the same time without any fatalities. I had my mother’s looks and from what my mother always told me, my father’s dramatic grey eyes. Combined with the curly auburn hair whose origin no one can seem to locate, I was a strikingly beautiful kid. So I had been told. In those days I was so lost in adolescent uncertainty that I couldn’t see myself for what I truly was. It was not a full-blown body dysmorphia situation, but I never gave myself the credit I deserved. Any attempt at confidence was instantaneously rebuffed by my more popular, more precarious school mates. My mother’s words to me when I had started my menstrual cycle always rang in my head during times like those, but ultimately, there were times when they were no match to a determined bully. Every slight chipped away a piece of my confidence, and left me that much more unsure.

The good thing about going to a bigger school was the expanded sense of anonymity. A couple of my middle school friends had come with me, and one managed to be in my homeroom, so at least I had a friendly face to greet me first thing in the morning. It was little consolation compared to the agony of what it is to be a girl, but you take what you can get. Her name was Louise, and she was of the dark, brooding “art freaks” set. She had a genius ability to sketch anything she saw down to the last minute detail. She had managed to sketch me sitting under a tree reading a diary of Anais Nin during the lunch break of our first day of school, and I hadn’t even noticed. I still have it, framed and mounted on my apartment wall.

I had stumbled upon Anais by accident one day while on an outing to a used book store with Mom. I was heavily into diaries from the time I had learned how to write, and I had developed an obsession with collecting every diary from every famous author that I could. My mother and I had sat down to lunch one day a few years after I had made that wonderful discovery, and we were in a deep discussion about what was once called “women’s lib”. She had said that Virginia Woolf had once said that keeping a journal was the key to a woman’s personal liberation.

“Woolf didn’t say that, Mom”.

She did a double take. It was the first time I had corrected her on one of her quotes.

“Oh? Who said it, then?”

“Anais Nin.”

A grin broke across her face, despite herself.

“So my little girl has discovered Nin, then?”

“And then some,” I said, winking at her.

Throughout high school I was enthralled with everything about this enchanting woman. I had to know as much as possible. I had begun with the first volume of her abridged diary. I had read dozens upon dozens of books to date, and her writing was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was evocative, sensual, intelligent and witty. The sensation derived from her words were like a security blanket, a guardian angel whispering comforting things to me in my ear at night before I nodded off with one of her works in my lap.

In high school I was rarely without a work of Anais Nin or Henry Miller. I am surprised with the fact that I never got in trouble for bringing such books to school, considering the content of some of the books that both authors had written, especially Miller.

As for Anais’s affairs, I could never understand how one could be analyzed properly if you are having an affair with the persons whom are analyzing you, but the story of Henry and June fascinated me. I was not interested in the story of how Anais was trying to seduce her own father and cousins; that did not sit well with me at all. Sexual attraction should not ever be directed towards someone you knowingly are related to, at least in my opinion. I was, however, haunted by the triangle of Henry, June, and Anais. It was such a complication of love, lust, discussion, writing, books, art, politics, religion, and psycho analysis. Henry Miller is no role model, neither is Anais in certain ways, but as far as literary inspiration was concerned, I had found it in them. I was amazed that the tradition of challenging social and cultural norms had run so far back into history. I’m sure it ran much farther back then those two, but Henry seemed to be able to write the exact thoughts I was having in my own day to day modern teenage existence. Difference feminism was a term that I spent much of my spare time researching. I would lose myself in the philosophies, theories, and rhetoric. I ultimately decided that I would choose to follow the “integral complimentary”, now known as “new feminism”, was definitely my cup of tea. It made the most sense to me, and it was what I continue to preach when given the chance. There is nothing wrong with supporting the “feminine genius as mothers and caregivers”, as John Paul II once called it, meaning, a woman who chooses to stay at home to take care of her child is not less than a woman who chooses to enter the workforce while raising their child. There is no manual to raising your child in the first place, so no one can truly say that either choice is good or bad, in the end.

By the end of high school, I had wizened up considerably. Mistakes made and heart broken by young love, I had had a considerable amount of experience in the way the real world operated, but there was still so much to learn. There is always so much to learn. Luckily for me, the pursuit of knowledge in any form was by far my favorite pastime. I knew I was still naïve about a lot of things, but that never bothered me much.

What I learned from my formidable high school years was the fact that you must work very hard to strike a balance between trying to live in the moment while in the back of your mind, always remembering that your actions will forever have consequences. It is just basic physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For example: if I choose to be dumb enough to walk home alone in the middle of the night, then I cannot necessarily call myself a victim if I wind up getting mugged or raped. I had no business walking home alone in the middle of the night in the first place.

That is another hard lesson I had to learn during high school. You can either be a victim, or a survivor. If in fact, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then I cannot call myself a victim of my circumstances. I call myself a survivor of either someone else’s or my own choices, whether they are bad or good.

I became more and more interested with finding out exactly what went on in this “factory” that my mother had met my father in. It was so much a part of my history, yet I had become so swept up in the rapture of Anais, I had completely forgotten about it until my senior year of high school. I had decided that The Factory would be the subject for my senior thesis. I had chosen to focus on the relationship of Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol. I wanted to deconstruct what it was for her to be considered a muse.

It had gotten me thinking about the concept of the muse as a whole, and I started researching other muses. I unearthed Jane Avril, the French can-can dancer made infamous in the poster painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Dora Maar, Pablo Picasso’s lover. The relationship of Frieda Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and the indescribable pain she had to endure that could only be expressed through art. Ruth Kligman and Ilona Staller also join the ranks of some of the most notorious muses. It got me thinking about the psychology that goes into the concept of an artist and their muse. Is it truly as romantic as one would hope, or is it just a glorified example of relationship pathology? One can only assume it is a marriage of both. There is what the spectator sees, and process the artist must go through to produce the art for said spectator. The process is never laid out in black and white during an exhibition. An exhibition opens, and countless guests, pretentious or not, view what will or will not be in their minds the genius of said artist. They then can either ask for themselves the journey the artist had to take to reach their final outcome, or simply look, smile, nod, and make sure to grab a glass of champers off a passing waiter before you are on to the next one.

From what I can tell, Andy and Edie, Pablo and Dora, Frieda and Diego, Anais and Henry: there is dating back to Mary Magdalene, and perhaps even Eve. It is a practice that is not likely to end, and a practice that I myself managed to get caught up in, before I even knew what hit me. It happened one winter at an art gallery, deep in the steaming streets of Greenwich Village. I was attending my second year of NYU, majoring in photography. Try as she might, my mother’s natural talent for drawing never translated to me, but I did show a stunningly early promise of being able to capture the most amazing images whenever Mom would allow me to use her old black and white camera. It became my life, on top of endlessly having my nose in a book.

Veteran's Day

2011-11-10T17:28:00.001-05:00

My father is a Desert Storm vet. During the war he sat my mother, sister and I down and said that he had been called to duty. If he were to be killed one of my uncles would adopt me. I honestly cannot remember this conversation much: I remember my father tearing up and looking more worried that I ever have. I remember him writing to all of us. I do not have the letters he gave me and I am sorry that I didn't save them.I remember the yellow ribbon tied around the tree that was in the middle of our yard. There were decorated homes here and there all throughout the town. American flags were also everywhere. I remember being in elementary school and explaining to friends that my dad was gone and might have to go to the Middle East. I was lucky, however. I got my father back. Every year I pray for those who weren't as lucky as I am.

OFC (Overheard Facebook Convo) #1

2011-11-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

"Arrogant people are slow to learn, because learning requires admission that you did not know in the first place. That is why arrogant people are sometimes dumb. That is why religion is always following behind science, first denying the evidence, then later insisting that they had the answer first."

-Bob Dobbs (Bob on Facebook)

Indeed....trying to use logic and reason against religious faith is ultimately a waste of time. People are not brought to God by evidence but by emotional appeals..."feelings". Once we see that 'feelings' are always self-serving and can lead us astray we become wiser and more self-critical. That is when understanding can come forth at last....

-Dan Hettmannsperger III (Dan on Facebook)

A Bedtime Story, Pt 3

2011-11-10T12:40:00.002-05:00

“I have fallen in love with the whole Harlem Renaissance movement, I must admit,” she said to Marcus with a sigh. She noticed her hand was still on his shoulder, and Marcus kept glancing from her hand to her face. Reluctantly she let her hand fall to her side. She made sure to look Marcus deep in his eyes before she said:

“I always did have a habit of falling for whatever I find interesting and passionate”.

"Now we're getting to the good stuff", I thought.

My father was one of the groups helping Andy with his silkscreen of Marilyn, and he noticed my mother right away. Mom said that later on my father had told her he thought the 60’s version of Rita Hayworth had walked into the room. He barely noticed Mary Anne, who was strikingly beautiful in her own right. It seemed as though my father was quite myopic that night, and he started talking to Mom the minute she was in ear shot.

"I had kept attempting to bring up what I thought about the Marilyn piece they were working on, but all he only seemed interested in getting to know me". Her voice was soft and distant; lost in remembering what it was like to gaze into my father's stinging hazel eyes. She always described them as stinging because every time she would look into them that night she felt a prick of heat deep down in a part of her body that she had not realized was even there. It was a feeling I was going to feel myself when I was older, she assured me, and continued.

"I forgot all about trying to meet Andy, and we wound up in a corner of The Factory, talking about everything and anything until the sun started slicing through the windows and onto the hardwood floors. I looked over to Mary Anne and saw that she had been chatting with Edie Sedgwick and Andy that whole time. I didn't mind in the least. I just knew I had fallen in love for the first time in my life. His name was Robert Jones”.

I crooked my head so I could look up at her. She always closed her eyes and smiled at this part. It was the only sweet memory she had left of the bitter history she had with my father. She had done her best to shield me from the more tumultuous aspects of their relationship as I grew up.

They had been completely inseparable, falling fast and hard for each other. They shared a love of The Old Testament, along with the even deeper pagan rituals and religions that existed before Christ. They would absorb every book they could find about the many Greek and Roman myths and legends. Mom would take a train up to New York City to meet my father, and they would spend hours walking the streets, discussing which God or Goddess they would name their children after. After much research and playful arguing, they had decided upon Cassia for a girl and Ares for a boy.

Desi had always been fascinated with the story of Keziah (a rendition of the cassia plant) from the book of Job. She was the middle daughter of Job, and was named after an exotic cousin of the spice cinnamon. When the wise men came to give gifts to the baby Jesus, cassia was one of the spices given. His daughters had received inheritances every bit as prosperous as their brothers, which never happened according to those times and traditions. Therefore, Keziah became a symbol for equality

among women. She and her sisters were the prosperous rewards of the trials and tribulations Job had gone through, made flesh.

Marcus could not reply: Darcy’s eyes seemed to cause him to move towards her without him even realizing it. Without breaking their gaze, he walked up to her and cupped her face in one of his hands before kissing her gently on the mouth. While there was great restraint in his kiss, Darcy could feel his need just underneath the surface. It took her breath almost completely, and she trembled slightly at the impact of his lips on hers. He brushed against them again, catching her lower lip between his teeth, careful not to cause harm but applying just enough pressure so that there was no doubt in his mind she could feel how much he wanted her.

Her soft moan was all the proof he needed.

“Does this mean I was not imagining things when I saw you looking at me earlier?” she whispered as they parted. Neither one wanted to be walked in on by anyone at this particular function; it was comprised of a group of people who would have their business all over Page Six first thing the next morning if they were not careful.

“I can assure you, madam, you were not imagining anything”. He said that with such gravity as he looked right through her while speaking, for the first time in her life, Darcy actually swooned. Who knows if you will wind up marrying the first man to make you swoon, but any female with any sense in her head knows you do not allow him to just slip away. There are times in a girl’s life when the restraints of propriety simply just need to be thrown to the wind in lieu of the heady rhythm of your pulse softly orchestrating in the back of your throat at the precise moment you know you are going to lose your inhibitions to the man standing in front of you.

It was a rhythm that had grown into a family tradition, handed down to one generation of Bradford girls after another. Once Darcy had drunk in that first thimble full of fire, there was no going back. It was a vein on the maternal side of the Bradford clan that was sure to intimidate those who came in their paths as much as it thrilled them.

Archer was the last boy in the family; all other Bradford’s were females, my being the latest. Archer had the very same spirit of the fictional character that he was named after. He strongly believed that all women should have every freedom allotted to men, and that it was ridiculous that they were not treated as equals, just as he thought that segregation was an archaic practice. He lamented such thoughts a bit louder than usual one evening while at one of his favorite downtown pubs. It was not much for ambiance, but it was secluded. It was owned by a tiny old Irish couple who, very against form, did not drink much. The husband even less so than his wife, who would sometimes take to a stool at the bar and drink a beer with her regular patrons, Archer being one of them.

He was in the middle of mopping up a mess he had made from choking on a bite of steak because that same wife had just told an extremely racy joke. He knew that the she had a very blue sense of humor, but he had been caught completely off guard. She was sitting next to him, her weak raspy laugh drowned out by the old oak doors of the pub opening up. The remnants of a cold front swirled in from behind a rather tall, redheaded woman wrapped up in a long black overcoat.

It was 1968, and she had just been accepted to New York University as an art major. She is an only child of a pharmacist and a model. At first glance, her parents are the most unlikely duo one could think of, but they were the stereotypical story of “opposites attracting”. They met one weekend in 1955 while Nana was doing a photo shoot on South Street.

“I was walking along, minding my own business, when I saw the most beautiful woman in the world”, he would always say to me, his eyes twinkling. He had invited her to coffee after her shoot was over. They talked for so long that the staff at the café had to kick them out at closing time. They moved into the townhouse in Center City, have been together ever since.

They had tried to have another child, but Nana said that her body had decided that she was only supposed to have Mom. She was never sad about it, and made sure to pay no mind to nosey neighbors who paraded their bigger families as though there were some great secret urban contest where whomever had the biggest, busiest, and best nuclear family won. It seemed to be a competition born out of the late 1940’s and early 50’s. Anglo-Saxton W.A.S.P. families with one mother and one father, living with their 2.5 children in one of the carbon copy ice cream colored houses that line the block of any random development in America. Thankfully, my grandparents never bought into “keeping up with the Jones’s”. They stood their ground and lived their lives how they saw fit, no matter what gossip was spread about them by nosy housewives.

Her plans were to move into NYC with her best friend Mary Anne as soon as she could after they both graduated Delaware Valley High School. She had been reading about Andy Warhol and The Factory, had even trekked through subway into the city in hopes of catching even a glimpse of the man who, in her eyes at least, seemed to have carved her destiny. She had slipped out of her house late one night with Mary Anne and rode the train up to Penn Station, then took a cab ride to 33 Union Square West.

They had both heard stories of what went on in The Factory, and they traded the scintillating rumors and gossip they had read in the newspapers amongst themselves as a way to pass the time on the train. They both knew that the sexual escapades and heavy drug use were absolute facts, and both were slightly shaking at the thought of exactly what visuals were in store for them, though neither one wanted to admit to being nervous.

The cab driver overheard the girls' conversation, and told them that they seemed like really nice girls, and to be careful when getting involved with that "crazy artsy shit", as he liked to call it. "There are a lot of people who like their drugs in that place, especially that Edie chick, so be careful, you two."

"We will" they sang in unison as he pulled up to the latest rendition of The Factory.

They tentatively made their way into the building. Lined up against the back of the building was a group of people silk screening what appeared to be a photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The group was huddled together; discussing what colors should be used to create the print. The colors they chose made Marilyn look like something out of a cheesy comic book, but everyone was exclaiming how genius the revamped picture was.

"There wasn't really much to understand when it came to Andy and his 'Pop Art'", my mother assured me while she stroked my hair. "A lot of people want to twist his work to fit their own agendas, political or otherwise, but the truth of it was he just loved to be weird. He was fascinated by it. That night I had the pleasure of witnessing the climax of his genius with that Marilyn silkscreen, and I managed to meet your father, all in one night".

What Girls Think During Sex (MUST SEE!)

2011-11-10T12:34:00.001-05:00

http://youtu.be/-xxkE30elDk

A Bed Time Story pt 2

2011-11-07T13:51:00.001-05:00

A Bedtime Story pt 1

“People have often wondered where I get such strength and determination from, and I tell them that it’s in my blood,” Desi said to me in a low voice. She was absent-mindedly stroking my hair as she talked. “Your distant grandmother Sarah had the Bradford spark naturally. She was the most beautiful and revered women in the entire settlement. I know she is where I got my tenacious spirit from”.

The Bradford women grew more and more tenacious with the coming generations. They were heavily involved in the suffragette movement after World War I. Darcy Bradford tirelessly campaigned for women to finally be able to vote. American women everywhere could not keep their mouths shut after having spent so much of their blood, sweat, and tears trying to make sure the nation didn’t completely fall apart during the war, only to have all of the amazing things they had accomplished completely taken over by their male counterparts once they returned.

“We had gotten a taste of pure freedom. It is what this nation was built on,” Darcy had said during a rally at Washington, in a speech that was to go down in the history books long after she passed. “Do you want your daughters to live in a world where she continues to have no voice? Are we to forever be slaves to the almighty phallus? Are we, the very vessel of life, to continue being treated like second class citizens?”

Darcy got her answer in the summer of 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. There it was, our own moon landing, yet just as my beloved Anais once said:

“We are going to the moon. That is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself”.

Darcy was only eighteen years old when she made that speech. In the year of 1930, she had an she had been suffering from dizzy spells and went to her doctor for a check-up. She found out that she was actually carrying a baby. She refused to get married or hide the fact that her child was illegitimate. Darcy had authored three very successful novels before she had given birth to Archer (named after a character in her favorite novel The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton), and she was perfectly capable of providing for both herself and her son very comfortably without the aid of a husband’s income, so it had never occurred to her to marry Arthur’s father. The truth of the matter was that Darcy had been carrying on three affairs with three different men up until she first found out she was pregnant, and had no idea who the father could have been. No one had any idea that she had more than one lover, because she only was ever seen out in public with one, the great love of her life, Marcus Root, the son of Elihu Root, the Nobel Prize winning lawyer.

Darcy had met him as the date of one of Marcus’s partners in the law firm that Eilhu had left him after he died. She had not been dating Marcus’s partner Fred for very long. They had only been on two dates prior to this function, two fundraisers: one for the children’s wing of St. Peter’s Hospital, and one for World War I veterans. This function that she met Marcus was a fundraiser for diabetes awareness. It was held at the Harvest Luxury Hotels New York ballroom. Darcy had been pleased with Fred’s invitation one evening while she was sitting alone in the lobby of the very hotel they were now dining in, but the stuffy atmosphere and extreme attention to social rules and order made her listless. She had just submitted a manuscript that was a fictionalized account of her tribulations during the suffragette movement to McBride Publishing House, and they had immediately offered her a one thousand dollar advance, which was monumental at that time. No woman had ever been paid nearly as much for a manuscript that was authored under her own name. Not only that, but if the book sold well, they would offer her a twenty thousand dollar contract to publish five more books over the remainder of the decade.

Darcy had just become one of the first women in New York society to become wealthy completely based on her talent alone. Her new independence was incredibly intoxicating, and she was seen going about New York City whenever she pleased with whomever she pleased. Luckily for Darcy, her charm was so contagious and addictive that no one in New York society really paid any mind to the fact that she was not bothering to settle down with a suitable young man that she would eventually marry. She was wonderfully humorous and always had everyone in hysterics at parties (her wit rivaled that of one Dorothy Parker; it was even said by Nana that Dorothy has admitted to borrowing a saying or two of Darcy’s), but she never flirted with men she knew to be already betrothed to another woman by marriage or by courting.

So that night when Marcus happened to have caught her eye, she was in a particularly aggressively playful mood.

She noticed that he was standing alone at the corner of one of the sitting rooms in the hotel, looking over a piece of art that was hung on the wall at the far side of the room. There was a stenograph playing Ella Fitzgerald softly in the corner.

“Oh, that’s that new Langston Hughes piece that Belding bought. Isn’t it spectacular?” Darcy said, tilting her head to the side while she stood in the entrance. Marcus had not heard her approach, and jumped at the sound of her voice.

“I’m sorry Marcus, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Darcy said while she threw her head back in laughter. “You’re white as a ghost! I knew I should have checked my makeup after supper! I didn’t mean to give you such a fright, dear,”

Darcy patted his shoulder gently with her white silk glove-covered hand. Darcy always kept right up with the latest fashions from all over the world. She did not spend much on her work clothes, but when she bothered to go out for the evening, she made sure it was an event that she and everyone around her would remember. Now that she had a bit of a disposable income, she went to her friends that were much more up to date with all the latest clothing trends than she was. A few months prior to this event were the first she had even heard of the new “flapper” movement. She had always wondered why the ladies where insisting on cutting their hair so short, and now she had an explanation. Her hair was naturally very wavy, so she thought that this trend was the perfect time for her to try something new. She went to the stylist who normally did her hair and told her that she wanted to go modern. The result was astonishing. Her shorter hair allowed the striking contours of her face to be displayed. She loved the style because it was so much easier for her to manage, and New York City loved it because it had made her into one of the most beautiful socialites the town had ever seen.

My dream lesbian couple

2011-11-07T13:11:00.000-05:00

JP Metz and Jenna Marbles=biggest bestest lesbian couple of the internets ever, and I'll show you why:

Jenna Marbles:

http://youtu.be/IQHtAsLsq8E

JP Metz:

http://youtu.be/wJsenvhi5yQ

One of my 8th grade teachers got Bells Palsy like you have for no reason just out of the blue. I had come back to see him during my freshman year and he still had it. I have no idea if it went away but I'm hoping it did.

A Bedtime Story pt 1

2011-11-04T15:04:00.000-04:00

My mother named me Cassia. While she did not agree with the hypocrisy that is often incorporated with the practices of various churches, she firmly believed in the Old Testament. She loved the story of feminine equality that is behind the second daughter of Job, Keziah, but Keziah was a bit too eccentric a name for her taste. She decided on naming me after the word that Keziah comes from; cassia. It is the Hebrew name for a relative spice of cinnamon that grows in India, China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam.
One night when I was eight, I ventured up to her to ask her why she chose Cassia. She was sitting on the screened-in porch, curled up on the swing. The moonlight soaking into her face was a stark contrast to the dark silhouette her body made. She was gazing out at the sterile facsimiles that were the suburban homes lining our street.
My mother’s name is Desdemona, but everyone calls her Desi. My grandmother had always been a fan of Shakespeare, and she knew the minute she discovered the name “Desdemona”, that was what her daughter’s name would be. The irony of how my mother’s and my own name came to be was never lost on me. Both were born from an obsession with some sort of ancient literature.
Hurricane Katrina had swallowed up her art studio in New Orleans, where I was born, so we were forced to move to the upper east coast, where Nana and Pop (my mother’s parents) lived. We had lived with them for three weeks while Mom had gotten a job right away as the head curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The two of us moved to an apartment near Fairview Park, but we often spent weekends at Nana and Pop's enchanting little townhouse in Center City.
That is where we were the night I crawled up next to her on the porch swing and asked her where she got my name.
“I thought I told you that story already”.
“No Mom; you’ve only told me about your name. I want to hear about mine”.
“I haven’t told that story in ages. All right, then. Get comfortable, because this is a rather long one”.
Mom smiled as I scooted down to borough my head in her lap. She wrapped her arm around me and said:
“Well, I can’t tell you about the story of your name without first telling you the story of my ancestors. I have not told you that story, have I?”
“No, but I would love to hear it. I know you mentioned that we are linked to English royalty before, but you never told me much more than that”.
My mother’s bloodline starts with a group of women who would meet after church every Sunday in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Women were not allowed to speak in church, according to Puritanical rules, so they had to meet in female-only groups afterwards. One of those women was Sarah Bradford, the wife of Joseph Bradford. Joseph’s father, William Bradford, apparently was the founder of America’s first Thanksgiving. Bradford was the most perfect example of a leader that ever there was in the brand new settlement of Plymouth. His wife, unfortunately, did not get the chance to see just what an amazing man her husband was, and the cause of her death is still debated to this day.

Reading

2011-11-04T14:59:00.001-04:00

If you want to read the articles I have written on Helium.com:

http://www.helium.com/users/edit_show_articles/382292

I write under the name "Jade LaFemme" by the way. Hope you enjoy what you read!

Popularity

2011-11-03T09:42:00.001-04:00

GBE2 Week #24 (10-30-11 to 11-5-11):

This is one of the many movies I think of when it comes to "popularity". Usually they are written so that the underdog wins out in the end in some way, but none where the protagonist does not have a happy ending, not off the top of my head, anyway.

I suppose the best way to describe me in high school is not by a character in a movie, but a cartoon character:

Daria, the best thing that ever came out of Beavis and Butthead, in my opinion.

From wikipedia:
The character Daria Morgendorffer first appeared as a recurring character in Beavis and Butt-head, which featured two comically ignorant and vulgar teenage boys. MTV senior vice president and creative director Abby Terkuhle explained that when that show "became successful, we ... created Daria's character because we wanted a smart female who could serve as the foil." During production of Beavis and Butt-head, MTV representatives approached story editor Glenn Eichler, offering a spin-off series for Daria. A five-minute pilot, "Sealed with a Kick", was created by Eichler and Beavis and Butt-head staffer Susie Lewis. MTV gave a greenlight for a series order of 13 episodes. Eichler and Lewis became executive producers.
The first episode of Daria aired on March 3, 1997, about nine months before Beavis and Butt-head ended its original run. Titled "Esteemsters", it featured Daria and her previously unseen family members settling into their new hometown of Lawndale (having moved from Highland, the setting for Beavis and Butt-head). Now the central character, Daria's caustic and sardonic personality became stronger.
The series ran for five seasons, with 13 episodes each, and two TV movies were also produced. The first movie, Is It Fall Yet?, aired in 2000. MTV planned a six-episode sixth season, but at Eichler's request this project was cut down to a second movie, Is It College Yet?, which served as the series finale in January 2002.

I didn't have a popular, self-absorbed sister, but I did have a popular, self-absorbed best friend who was my version of "Quinn", Daria's younger sister. She still is just as self-absorbed as she ever was, and also doesn't care whom she hits on, even though she's married and you're not supposed to go after other people's boyfriends/husbands. I have been "the other woman" before, but there was only one instance in which I knew the guy I was fooling around with had a girlfriend. (The guy cheats on every girl he has ever been with, including me, so trust and believe I made sure to always use protection with him and when our eventual fallout happened, and recently we had our last one, I get tested.)

I digress.

The only popularity I ever concern with is when I've done something meaningful, something that benefits others in some way. I like my popularity to come from people who genuinely like me, not huge crowds of people who have no idea what kind of person I really am, and more importantly, do not care. I am never in the mood for sycophants or mindless drones. I want genuine connections with my readers.

Wordless Wednesday: 11/2/2011

2011-11-02T10:20:00.001-04:00

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