This was yesterday's Savage Chicken cartoon.



I love me a bad pun.

A Very Long Time ago, when I was young enough to be president of the Dade County Young Democrats I went on a radio talk show to debate the president of the Dade County Young Republicans about a woman's right to choose. (That's abortion rights to you). He was sincere in his beliefs that women should have the right to consult with men who could make the decision for her. I was and am sincere in my belief that it ain't nobody's business but my own. (And by my, I mean each woman and her own conscience and her own body.)

The POTDCYR postulated thus: "What if you and I met at a party and went home together and made love and you got pregnant? Wouldn't I have some say in what happens next?" To which I replied, quicker than it took him to get through Part B of his sentence:

"Inconceivable."

The host cracked up. I cracked myself up, and the poor Republican tool spent the rest of the hour trying to convince me that it was not totally out of the realms of possibility that I could ever find him attractive enough to go to bed with him.

Lost cause, even if he hadn't been a dweeb. I NEVER (knowingly) slept with a Republican.

Hurricane season is barely two weeks old and we have the first storm of the year. Hurricane Alberto. To which I can only say: Oh, bite me.

Back at Jackson (We Treat Everyone Like Crap) I always tried to get the hurricane information live on line June 1st. The PR department (It Doesn't Have To Be Done Right, It Only Has To Be Done) felt that nobody pays any attention until August, so the web site didn't have to be updated til then and the special edition of the company newsletter that dealt with hurricane preparedness was never distributed (oh, hell, who are we kidding... was never even sent to press) before mid- to late August.

Here at my new job, we've been having drills and meetings and consciousness-raising since May.

The storms of last year did the work of G-d's own weed whacker on my trees, so this year I have no mangos to lose. Or to eat. Nor avocados. Nor royal poincianna flowers. The mulberry tree managed to put out berries, but the spring was so hot and dry that for the first year since I've been in the house, they were too small and tart to be worth eating.

I finished another quilt top this weekend, except for two borders that would have been done, had I cut them correctly. It's turquoise and brown, and a lap-sized beauty. I love the colors so much that I already have another one worked out in my head using the same two fabrics that were in this one, with additional fabrics filling out a large palette of browns and turquoises. It'll be much larger than this one, as well.

By the time I head over to the Gulf for my annual week of laying around doing nothing but drinking and laying around on the beach chair (will break for naps and food) I should have four to six tops heading off to my sistergirl's place for quilting.

Being a secretary has been the greatest boon to my creative energy ever. Why did I waste so many years working as a commercial artist when all it did was sap my creativity?

Oh, yeah. I remember. It filled my coffers with filthy lucre and enabled me to have health insurance.

And I'm not talking about the kind from Star Trek, that got into Ensign Chekov's head, or any of the other varieties that are always popping up in horror movies. No, I'm talking about the song that gets in there and attaches itself to your synapses and won't let go.

Thanks to Reecie, damn her,
this is now stuck in my head and on a permanent loop on the i-pod.

Play at your own risk.

I spent the entire weekend in my pyjamas. Eeyore ones, in lavender, if you must know. I slept late, took naps, finished one quilt top and got a third of the way through another. I made a pan of brownies, roasted a turkey breast, had a couple of tangerine martinis, made a big bowl of tabouli, and a dinner of angel hair pasta with steamed rabe, sauced simply with the best olive oil and a little red wine vinegar and a handful of shaved parmesan cheese.

I watched another several episodes of Firefly (and how did I ever miss that when it was on?) and a couple of movies and the season finale of the Sopranos.

I did not answer the phone, or read my e-mail or work on my blog or my very overdue podcasts. I did not leave the house, not once, not even to get the mail or walk the dogs.

And you know what? It was fucking divine.

Here are some of the random thoughts that came to me over the past two days:
1. In a battle between fingernails and fabric, fabric will always win. Especially if it's silk.

2. I first saw my little house in the rain, and it is still at its best in the rain. It's snug, and the rain mists down through the screen over the pool, and seems like it's in the living room. I love this house in the rain.

3. I am the biggest dilletante I know. About pretty much everything.

4. The New York Times Sunday crossword is best done in bed, with a cup of coffee on a tray.

5. Just because you sleep in till 10 a.m., that doesn't preclude an afternoon nap, especially if there is a thunderstorm.

That is all.

Every time I fill my prescriptions, the pharmacist asks me if I have any questions about my medications, and every time I reply "Yes. Why don't we put Prozac in the water like Flouride?"

I'm thinking that it might be time to double up on the meds, though, at least today, when Microsoft Word and I are having a major battle of wills about formatting and how auto-format prints. I don't think it needs to be highlighted, and Word does. This is new on Word's part, since it has never highlighted things like printer's quotes and elipses before.
I've done all the usual things: closed and reopened my program, rebooted my computer, deleted and recreated text, turn auto-formatting off (in any number of locations and permutations) and still... three periods converts to an elipsis and the elipsis prints with a highlight.

All of this is on a POS Dell running POS Windoze. Of course. This shit never happens on a Mac.

This is on top of any number of other aggrevations I am dealing with today: I have had to tell the IT/Web Guy for at least the fifth time that he needs to unlock AND unprotect all the files I send him in order to copy and paste text. But, no. He gets a file and rather than type in the password (7 letters), he sends me an e-mail to complain that even though he put in the password, he still is locked out. DUDE!

Open with password. Unprotect file with password. Done and fucking done. Or, open with password. Open e-mail. Type a whiny complaint to me. Wait for me to respond (same way I always do, "No. I am not going to unlock the file for you and resend it, unlock it your own lazy-ass self.). Rinse and repeat.

Next aggrevation: searching for all the zip codes for every county in every state where the company does business. I can only do 50 searches a day before the server kicks me off and asks me to pay big money for the use of the search engine. Then, I have to cross reference the zip codes because zip codes can cross county lines. Then I have to cross reference the zip codes to the individual offices because catchment areas can overlap. Then I have to go home and drink.

As my people are known to ask: Why is this night different?

I have spent the entire evening sorting through six or more years of zip disks. I have found duplicates and triplicates of fonts. I have found memos from the bad years at Jackson, and that dates back ten years. I have found the shards and crockery of my career as a graphic designer in a burial mound of out-dated media.

I have also found my (unfinished) novel, which, upon review, is better than I remembered.

I have found photos I thought were lost, and some of them are, since no current application can read them.

I have found about two square feet of floor space in my studio. Whether or not the usuable space was worth the pain of the exercise is another question, entirely.

You all know how much I love me some America's Next Top Model. And you know that I, and about the entire viewing audience this season loathed Jade. Or J'Hayde. Or Darth Jader. Whatever.

Imagine my delight this morning when I opened Savage Chickens. Click it and howl.

Item one was sent from my cousin whose son is about to become a yeshiva boy. I love saying that. I love that this is what he wants to do. How cool is that? A baby rabbi in the family. But I digress.

Item One
Apparently there is a Dylan bio-pic in the works with an assortment of actors lined up to play The Bob. Cate Blanchett has signed on to portray him during his "androgynous phase." He had one? News to me. How did I miss that? Masked, yes. White-face, check. Cowboy, ditto. Uni-Bomber, good with that one. But femme? When?

And didn't we go over this once before on this site? The only person who should play the young and pretty Bob is none other than the pretty Johnny Depp.

Item Two
The Bob is now a DJ on XM Radio, which I knew. What I didn't know is that he does a theme show. Yesterday, in honor of his own birthday, he did a show on Baseball. BASEBALL!!! Is there any more proof needed that this man and I are lost soul mates? Huh? Is there?

Here's the story from AP about his show:
Bob Dylan to Be Satellite Radio DJ

May 23, 6:08 PM (ET)

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) - Coming from the radio speakers, Bob Dylan sounds as craggy and weather-beaten as he looks - and quite playful, too.

As he reaches his 65th birthday Wednesday, the rock 'n' roll poet is carving out a new role as a part-time radio disc jockey. His weekly "Theme Time Radio Hour" airs 10 a.m. EDT Wednesdays on XM Satellite Radio, with Dylan as both curator and narrator. (It's available eight times throughout the week.)

Much like his concerts, Dylan's radio shows are a journey through 20th century musical Americana, the sort of thing he would have heard growing up in Minnesota with a transistor radio hidden under his pillow when he went to bed.

So far, about the only thing missing is Bob Dylan music, unless you count the off-key verse of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" that he croaked at the beginning of this week's show on baseball.

Each week Dylan builds his show around a theme, like the weather and drinking songs. For Mother's Day, he celebrated moms with an hour that mixed Buck Owens'"I'll Go to Church With Mama," Ruth Brown's "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean" and LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out."
The majority of the music Dylan plays predates his own heyday.

"I think it's more akin to the way radio sounded in 1952 than it does in 2006," said Lee Abrams, XM Satellite Radio's chief creative officer.

Dylan's entertaining baseball show also mixed in calls from classic baseball games, like Curt Gowdy announcing Ted Williams' home run in his final at-bat with the Boston Red Sox.

He refreshingly avoids the obvious: Dylan spins Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Joe DiMaggio Done it Again" and not Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" ("where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio ..."). He plays Buddy Johnson's "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball" and ignores John Fogerty's overexposed "Centerfield."

"If diamonds are a girl's best friend, why do so many girls get mad when you want to go to the ballpark?" Dylan says during this week's show. "You tell me."

That sort of absurdist humor is what may most surprise listeners. Dylan told mother-in-law jokes a la Henny Youngman during one show ("I just came back from a pleasure trip - took my mother-in-law to the airport"). He discussed - seriously, we think - watching the old country-flavored musical/variety TV series "Hee Haw."

His intro to "Mama Said Knock You Out" became an old white man's rap.

"Here's LL Cool J," he said. "Don't call it a comeback. He's been here for years, rockin' his peers, puttin"em in fear, makin' tears rain down like a monsoon, explosions overpowerin' the competition. LL Cool J is towerin'."

And catch this opening to that show on mothers:

"Going to pay tribute to that bountiful breast we all spring from, mother dearest," he said. "'M's' for the many things she gave me. 'O' is for the other things she gave me. 'T' is for the things she gave me. 'H' is for her things, which she gave me. 'E' is for everything she gave me. 'R' is for the rest of the things she gave me. Let's talk about mothers."

Bob Dylan is secretly silly. Who knew? (Miz Shoes here: who knew? Anybody who ever really listened to the man. DUH.)

Although you can occasionally hear the shuffling of papers as he talks, Dylan sounds like a natural on the radio.

"I was completely surprised" by his radio show, said Jonathan Cott, who edited an anthology of Dylan interviews that was released to coincide with the 65th birthday. "I was surprised when he wrote his 'Chronicles' book. I'm surprised by him all the time. I didn't think he'd ever be a disc jockey."

Abrams said Dylan topped his "wish list" of celebrity DJs when he started working for XM. It took him two years just to find the right person to get a message through to Dylan.

When he finally did, he learned Dylan was a fan of XM and a subscriber. After growing up listening to those old 50,000-watt radio stations from miles away across the Plains, Dylan had secretly fancied himself as a DJ. Much to XM's delight, he said yes, and they worked out a schedule that wouldn't be too disruptive to Dylan's regular life on the road.

The singer still maintains an aura of mystery. He's not involved in XM's weekly call about the show with a producer. He doesn't record it at one of XM's studios; in fact, Abrams has no idea where Dylan records it.

"They deliver the show to us every week," he said. "It's a big surprise when we open the package and listen to it."

Today is Bob Dylan's birthday. He's 65 years old. That means if he had a real job, the powers that be would make him retire. Instead, he's still rocking.



He's made a couple of concessions to age and a bad back, I hear. Instead of standing around wanging on his guitar, he now hunkers over his keyboard. Frankly, since I play neither, I don't see that there's much difference in the backstrain between the two.

He's still my idol, OK? I skipped this last tour for a couple of reasons:

1. I read the reviews and he was only doing a 14 song set.
2. Tickets started at $65 for the bleacher seats.
3. That made it $4.65 a song, and I don't know about that. I can buy them for 99 cents each on i-tunes.
4. I really, really, really felt I could live my life without seeing Merle Haggard live.
5. Nobody, and I mean NO-FUCKING-BODY will go with me to see The Bob anymore. I've used up all the rock and roll goodwill I ever had with any of my friends and loved ones.
6. It was at a casino... I'm just not ready to start seeing my favorite performers in a casino lounge.

Anyway, this year I actually sent an invitation to dinner to his official Sony web site. I explained that I'm just an old lady myself, and not a stalker (really) but that since the guy's been on tour for what amounts to his whole freakin' life, I thought, just maybe, that he'd like a home-cooked meal once in a while and I'd be happy to provide it.

A little brisket, a little kugel... he's a Nice Jewish Boy, right?

The webmaster didn't have the decency to even answer me. I wasn't kidding, OK? Sheesh.

So, once more, Happy Birthday, Bob, and many, many, many more. And if you're passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find. You can look me up, if you've got the time.

Leave your answer in the comments section, please, because I'm at work and don't have time to research the code for a real poll.

Do you have in your closet (or attic, or where ever) a pair of shoes which you no longer wear, for what ever reason, but which you absolutely cannot part with?

I have several, myself, including a pair of 80's post-modern pop, magenta suede pumps. Photo will come later.

As opposed as I am to public grooming, I wouldn't have objected if it had been a brush in one hand. I've seen her on the train often. She always looks vaguely peeved, and never, ever has brushed her hair. She always has an air of having just rolled out of bed, walked through the shower and put on whatever was in the front of the closet, clean or not.

And yet, look at her. Not one, but TWO cellphones and talking on both simultaneously. She is obviously too important to bother with such inconsequential things as brushing her hair, or ironing her clothes. Or hiring someone else to do it for her.

There's a poll up today on Excite, about the proposals to fence off the US border. The options in this poll are that one supports the House proposal (700 miles of fence), the Senate proposal (370 miles of fence) no fence, or all 2,000 milles of the US/Mexico border (which, just to be clear, is not a proposal on anyone's table). The results of the poll?

63% of the respondants (almost 5,000 people as I write this) think that the whole fucking border should be fenced off.
Once more forcing me to ask: What the fuck is WRONG with you people?

Yeah. Because building a wall worked so well in China. Or in Germany.

The problem with a wall, as I see it, is that it works both ways. "They" can't get in, but WE can't get out. Maybe it's some weird genetic memory or something, what with the fact that whole branches of my family met their ends in box cars and showers, but the idea of a sealed border just scares the beejeesus out of me.

Next, we'll all need papers to cross state borders. Oh, wait. The national ID card idea is already gaining momentum in Washington.

Papers? We don' need no steenkin' papers. Or do we?

I don't want to be an alarmist here (oh, who are we kidding? I most certainly DO want to be an alarmist: WAKE THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE!!!) but, it is looking more an more like a totalitarian government to me.

But let me just shift this rant a little over to something else: fairness across the board when it comes to illegal immigrants. See, here in Florida, we have the wet foot/dry foot policy regarding Cubans, who, as we all know, have a special immigrant status, unlike, say, oh, just randomly searching for another ethnic group, Haitians.

Cubans, you see, can stay in this country if they make it all the way to land (dry foot). If they are intercepted at sea, or even 20 feet off shore, they have to go back to Cuba and try again. Haitians, on the other hand (who, PS, tend to vote Democratic when they become citizens, and who, by and large, are Very Poor and Very Black) have to go back to Haiti even if they have two dry feet and an adoring family waiting to take them in and support them.

We already have special status for one immigrant group. And that immigrant group has a history of being given amnesty. Over and over and over and over again. But, well, Cubans are special. They vote for Republicans no matter what. No matter that every administration that arranged boat lifts, air lifts, amnesty and every other damn thing for them was a Democratic administration, to Cubans, Democrat = Communist. End of fucking story.

On the other hand, most other Hispanic groups tend to vote Democratic. Thus, a fence, and no amnesty and the clowns like Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (whose own family came in illegally). This is a prime case of there being truer no believer than the converted sinner. Kind of like that a-hole Clarence Thomas and his stand on equal opportunity.

I just gave myself a headache.

There's a little meme going on here and here and here, and for a while, I considered doing it here.

There are a couple of things that will stick with me forever, such as my grandfather saying to the room, upon the arrival of my girl cousin "Oh. Now the pretty one is here." Ouch. Thanks, Grandpa.

And then the ever popular comment by a former boss regarding my attendance at a meeting to discuss the hospital developing a web site: "Nobody wants to hear what you have to say: you're only going to tell us what we're doing wrong and it doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."
But those are such negative things. I thought I'd mix it up a little and tell you about other words...written words, that changed me and stayed with me and that I have to read now and again, just to make sure that they are forever etched on my soul.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

"I saw this morning morning's minion"

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

And this, which was later stolen (or adapted, whatever) for the greatest scene Kevin Costner ever played, and which I give you in its entirety.

From "The Bushwhacked Piano" by Thomas McGuane copyright 1971.

"What I believe in? I believe in happiness, birth control, generosity, fast cars, environmental sanity, Coor's beer, Merle Haggard, upland game birds, expensive optics, helmets for prizefighters, canoes, skiffs and sloops, horses that will not allow themselves to be ridden, speeches made under duress; I believe in metal fatigue and the immortality of the bristlecone pine. I believe in the Virgin Mary and others of that ilk. Even her son whom civilization accuses of sleeping at the switch." Missus Fitzgerald was seen to leave the room, Ann to gaze into her lap. "I believe that I am a molecular swerve not to be put off by the zippy diversions of the cheap-minded. I believe in the ultimate rule of men who are sleeping. I believe in the cargo of torpor which is the historically registered bequest of politics. I believe in Kate Smith and Hammond Home Organs. I believe in ramps and drop-offs." Fitzgerlad got out too, leaving only Payne and Ann; she, in the banishing of her agony and feeling she was possibly close to Something, raised adoring eyes to the madman. "I believe in spare tires and emergency repairs. I believe in the final possum. I believe in little eggs of light falling from outer space and the bombardment of the poles by free electrons. I believe in tintypes, rotogravures and parked cars, all in their places. I believe in roast spring lamb with boiled potatoes. I believe in spinach with bacon and onion. I believe in canyons lost under the feet of waterskiers. I believe that we are necessary and will rise agian. I believe in words on paper, pictures on rock, intergalactic hellos. I believe in fraud. I believe that in pretending to be something you aren't you have your only crack at release from the bondage of time. I believe in my own dead more than I do in yours. What's more, credo in unum deum, I believe in one God. He's up there. He's mine. And he's smart as a whip.

"Anyway," he said melifluously and with a shabbily urbane gesture, "you get the drift. I hate to flop the old philosophy on the table like so much pig's guts. And I left out a lot. But, well, there she is."

And it was too. Now and again, you have to check the bread in the oven."

Where do I begin?

With the US government spying illegally on its citizens and then trying to spin it like "O, we are only collecting data on who you call, we aren't actually listening in on your conversations" but in the next breath rationalizing this illegal, unconstitutional, covert and terrifying activity by saying that not only will it help them capture terrorists (yeah. right. and I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let go cheap) but also child pornographers. Uh, if you aren't listening in, how would just a phone number let you know you are on the path of pedophiles? Just asking.

The whole thing is so disingenuous it makes me want to heave more than I usually do when I look at that smirking chimp and his band of devil-may-care draft dodgers, thieves, criminals, cold-hearted bastards and jack-booted thugs.
This particular cabal of evil doers (aka the Bush White House) is so fluent in double speak that George Orwell his own self could use them to write the play book for Big Brother.

I am not afraid. I will not be made to be afraid.

I will take this fight to the polling booth and despite the best efforts of the corporations who have bought this administration, I will attempt to vote all of them out of office. I will write my spineless, Republican hand-puppet representatives and demand impeachment, or at least a dog and pony show of an investigation.

While I'm ranting about the ugly and the evil, can I just say, once and for all, that I am sick and tired and disgusted with you people? You people (women) who seem to think that MetroRail is the appropriate place to pluck your facial hair and apply your pancake makeup? Look. It is really very simple.

If you need to wear makeup to appear in public, it should be applied BEFORE you appear in public. And let me define public, since that also appears to be a concept far beyond your limited capacity: Public is anyplace outside of your house. That means your car, too. Any form of transportation referred to as PUBLIC, i.e.: buses, trains, els, elevators, trams, trollies, jitneys, taxis, tuk-tuks, car-pools, camel caravans, rikshaws. All of these and anything I may have left out, are public transportation and you should shut the fuck up on your damned cell phones, stop plucking your chin hair, and curling your eye lashes and applying foundation.

And still I'm not done with the ugly and the evil, because I haven't even started on ANTM and Darth Jader. She has to be the ugliest, nastiest, stupidest, annoyingest, delusionalest (that's Darth Jader-speak for most delusioned) hamster this series has ever foisted on us. And that is saying something, since we have had girls with she-nises and Adam's apples, girls who thought all birds are blind, Camille and Ya-Ya.

She looks like a pointy, wet, pissed-off cat and acts much like one, only without the endearing quality of being cute and fuzzy when dried off. Even when the judges say they see her being soft, I only see sallow skin, squinty mean eys and an infinite abyss of stupidity.

Yet, still, I watch. I want to see her fall. I want to see her fail. I want her humbled and brought down. Is that so very wrong?

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday. She'll be 88. She won't know it. She won't know it's her birthday. She won't know that she's 88. She won't know that she's in an assisted living facility. She won't know that I've come to see her and brought her a cake. She only knows... what?

In some ways, I think, Alzheimer's Disease is like severe autism. The person with the disease has an interior life that nobody else will ever know.

I've said before that I think Mummy is in the store, taking inventory, or changing the displays. I think that because of the words I pick out from the neurological static that comes out of her mouth. There are numbers, and colors. Sometimes she'll tell an invisible assistant to put something there, where people can see it.

But who knows.

She's been saying the names of dead people for the past couple of weeks, and pointing. At them? I don't know. I've asked her if she sees her cousin Milton, who was her favorite relative. I don't get an answer.

This is what she's become: an empty shell, a blown-out egg. Fragile and hollow, with only a hint of what was inside before. Let me show you something else:


This was the hottie who did her part for the war effort by dancing with sailors at the USO. She drove them wild. Check her out, in her sailor's cap and her peacoat. I still have that peacoat. It had her name written in indelible ink on the inside label, where the sailor's was supposed to go. She always giggled a little when she let me wear it, and told me it was a REAL peacoat, one that a sailor had given her, and they weren't supposed to do that.

The old dame had some set of pins on her, didn't she? And she still has a trim pair of ankles, even if she can't really walk.

I wish she was still on that beach, smiling with those dimples at whoever took the picture. I cropped it, but his toes are in the shot, at the bottom. I wish she were dancing with the sailors, and not counting pairs of shoes.

I have to believe that she is where she was happiest in her life, because to believe otherwise is too cruel. For me, for her, for anyone who ever loved her.

Happy birthday, Momma. I love you. I made your recipe for macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight. I'll bring you some tomorrow.