WHAT? MONDAY

Dear Readers,

What did you do to welcome the New Year?

I did something I have never done before: I committed murder. 

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. It was much easier than I thought it would be. 

 I killed Lola. Since she was a blow up doll, all I had to do was take a nice big needle and puncture her in a few places.

Please forgive me for leaving her chest uncovered in this photo. She isn't all that realistic-looking, so I wasn't too worried about covering her up.

Lola didn't suit me anymore.

I want to explore my identity without Lola hanging around. I want to find out who I am.

Yes, it's true: I am 52 years old, and I don't know who I am. I've had many identities, but I don't know if any of them were me. I made them up in acts of avoidance, such as avoiding abuse. Recently, I tried on a new identity. I thought she fit me perfectly. I thought at long last I knew who I was. I made her the best of me.

But she wasn't good enough. Now I'm lost again.

And I'm not going to find myself in a blow up doll box.

 So that's what I did at midnight. I poked Lola full of holes and threw her in the trash. The demise of Lola does not mean we'll never enjoy her sense of humor again or marvel at her quirkiness. But the aspects of her personality that we like will have to come from within me.

So, what did you do to welcome the New Year? Please don't tell me you killed someone unless you also had an unwanted Lola.

Infinities of love,

Janie  

POETRY TUTORIAL

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Those of you who are regular readers have no doubt seen me mention that you should never confuse the speaker in the poem with the poet. Just because I write about something in a poem, it doesn't mean it happened to me. Let's consider the two poems I wrote for my children: "Mama Zeus and Katrina Athena" and "Boy" at http://dumpedfirstwife.blogspot.com/2011/12/boy.html ."

Am I the poet? Yes. Did I write these poems for MY children? Yes. Am I the speaker in the poem? No. My daughter did not spring from my head to be born as a fully-grown goddess. My son did not have to fly away from an island on wings made of wax and feathers by his father.

I learned to conduct the critical analysis of literature through the use of New Criticism (not really new -- it started in the 1930s and is coming back into vogue). Try thinking of New Criticism as placing a poem or a short story or a novel in a bell jar and studying the text from all angles. Don't compare it to other poems; don't consider the poet's experiences; don't concern yourself with the time period in which it was written unless it's relevant to the text.

New Criticism = Close Textual Analysis

As for poetry, poetry does not make statements. Poetry suggests; poetry indicates. Although the sound of the poetry achieved through the words I use is important to me, I am more concerned with the images I present by putting the words together. And I don't care if the words rhyme.

I appreciate the many kind comments you have made on my poems, but I want to make sure we're on the same page. When Yeats wrote "Leda and the Swan," I assure you he was not present when Zeus turned himself into a swan to rape Leda, a young woman. I can suggest all sorts of things in poetry, but it doesn't make them true.

Normally, my poetry and my fiction come from a kernel of truth in my life -- but that's all.

Infinities of love,

Lola

HIDE UNDER YOUR DESK!

Gentle Readers,

When I was in school we had fire drills and tornado drills. But the days of bomb drills were over. I have never ceased to be amused by the idea that having children crawl under their school desks would somehow protect them from the dreaded atomic bomb. Fire bombs? Maybe. Napalm? Perhaps.  But not atomic bombs.

Here's how Sharon Doubiago describes her elementary school bomb drills in My Father's Love: Portrait Of The Poet As A Young Girl :

We had to learn to distinguish between the sirens to know the correct thing to do. The Bomb siren would go off and instead of lining up and filing out of the building to the sand dunes we had to jump out of our desks, throw our right arm up across the back of our neck to shield our selves -- the neck is where the Bomb's radiation will penetrate -- while maneuvering with the left to get under the desk. Being exactly between Los Angeles and Long Beach, being a neighbor of Douglas Aircraft and right on the Los Angeles River, at the very heart of the Basin, Hollydale School was a prime target.

When I worked at the nursing home, we had a book with instructions to follow in case of an emergency. The instructions for nuclear warfare were hilarious:

Stay inside. Do not open any windows or doors.

Yeah, a lot of fucking good that would have done.

 
  Close the door! Here it comes!

Infinities of love,

Lola

TAKE TWO ASPIRIN

Gentle Readers,

Long, long ago, when I became pregnant with Someone I Love, a lovely woman at church whispered a joke to me that she thought was quite naughty: You know how to keep from getting pregnant again? Take two aspirin and clamp them together between your knees.

I guess it worked because I never had another baby, thank you Jesus.

But man, my legs got tired.

I'm telling you this silly story because also a long time ago in another city in a different state, I worked in a nursing home. I'm sure everyone I took care of there has been dead and gone for a good long time now, and not because I killed them. Time has done its work on them.

Anyhoo, we had this patient who kept her thighs clamped together so tightly all the time that we couldn't even wash her yoohoo in the shower. We had to cath her one night and getting her legs apart was a nightmare for all of us. She was screaming as we slowly pried her open, feeling that our hands and arms might break before her legs did.

Other women we had to cath, no prob. Women are accustomed to spreading them. Most women have had sex and had babies, and it's pretty difficult to engage in either one of those activities with your thighs clamped together.

This patient had been married and had a child; thus, I'm pretty sure her legs weren't always closed like that. So I asked her why she held her thighs together.

She said, I don't know. Just habit, I guess.

What did you do when you went to the gynecologist? I then queried.

She said, What's a guy . . .  What?

I looked at an older nurse and she told me that most of the women we had in our care had never seen a gynecologist, never had a pap test, never a mammogram, never any specialized care that many of us women now take for granted.

So I write this to you now because the thought of keeping your legs closed that tightly if you want to avoid sex might never have occurred to you and perhaps the idea will be of some assistance to you and will greatly strengthen your thigh muscles I want to remind you to be grateful when you get your boobs smooshed and find out you don't have cancer or should you have it, grateful you found out before you had a tumor the size of a third boob. When you spread your legs, sometimes you can do it for a really good reason, like making sure you don't have cervical cancer.

And please be sure to prepare your daughters for their first experience with the gyno. A speculum can be quite a shock even if you have some idea of what to expect. When I saw my OB/GYN the first time I was pregnant, oi! was I dumb! It's too embarrassing to share that I took off my clothes as commanded and sat in a chair instead of getting up on the table and covering myself with the sheet because I didn't know what in the heck was going on what happened that day, but I'm sure all the nurses were laughing at me.

Another important something that our ladies in the nursing home didn't know: Wipe your butt from front to back. Older people tend to wipe from back to front, pushing feces into the yoohoo, and risking an unpleasant and uncomfortable infection. Many of our ladies had UTIs constantly, even though we tried to keep them clean and we poured cranberry juice down them.

O.K. Now you can go off and make sure you wipe your butt correctly -- everybody except Sandra at Absolutely Narcissism, who is the most constipated person on Earth and loves to write about it. She has no need to wipe.

Poor, poor Sandra, whose constipation issues give her more readers than God has.

Infinities of love,

Lola

EVERYONE KNOWS IT'S WINDY

Gentle Readers,

You may need to back away from your monitors once or twice while reading this post because I don't know what sort of noises and odors will come along with the words.

You see, I'm gassy. I think I've added a little extra fiber to my diet, but I'm not pooping more. In fact, I'm pooping a bit less. Instead, I'm farting. It's not stinky most of the time, but we are talking audible farts here.

I go to church and sit there with my cheeks clenched trying not to let loose with a whopper that can be heard over the angelic sounds of the choir. I walk across a parking lot, along the sidewalk, down the street, and worry who might be behind me because I know I'm going to cut the cheese good and loud. No two ways about it.

I gave the dogs their breakfast one morning and BRRRRRRRRRWWWWWTTTTTTTT let her rip so loud that the boys all jumped back from their bowls. I could outgun Hell's Angels with my butt.


What to do, what to do, Oh Lordy, what to do?


Good thing I lost my teaching job or those kids who pretend to be so tough would, in reality, be frightened and appalled by the cloud that currently follows me. 


Ahhhhhh, there goes another one. 


Run, I say, run! I don't know where it might land and sometimes they are squirty.


Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
Hemorrhoids burn 
And my butt bubbles.


Infinities of love,


Lola the Windy Shakespeare

MEMORIAL DAY: AFTER THE FALL

Gentle Readers,

Memorial Day, for most of us, is a day to honor our fallen heroes. But for a particular hate group in my home town of Topeka, Kansas, every day is a day to despise our fallen heroes.

Yes, you may have heard of them before: It's Fred Phelps and his family, who use their Westboro Baptist Church as a front for their campaign against the people they call fags. According to the Phelps, 9/11 was caused by the fags because God was showering his wrath on the people of the United States. And people who serve in America's military are fags, and I'm a fag, you're a fag, everyone except the Phelps family is a fag, fag.

(By the way, they call their church Baptist, but they are not recognized as such by any other Baptist churches.)

I'm not going to provide a link to any of the Phelps' Web sites. You can find their crap if you want. I write this to call attention to their activities in case you are not aware of them, and because my dad served in the military and died on Memorial Day. I know my parents detested the behavior of the Phelps.

The Phelps like to protest. They go out with their signs and call people fags and blame the fags for everything that's wrong. Worst of all, they protest at the funerals of our fallen soldiers. Because of them, President George W. Bush signed a law that prohibits protests within a certain distance of military cemeteries before, during, and after a funeral. But that doesn't stop them from protesting at other cemeteries and it doesn't stop them from protesting at other venues and it doesn't stop them from protesting at other times. They also protest at the funerals of gay people. They were there for Matthew Shepard's funeral, as if his family hadn't already suffered enough.

I've seen some news clips about various ways people deal with the Phelps, and don't think the Phelps are just a Topeka problem. They show up all over the place. In one town, the Phelps obtained permission to picket on a certain corner. So, many people in town showed up and parked their vehicles near the corner so the Phelps would have difficulty getting a place to park their bus, and then the townspeople took over the corner and left no room for the Phelps, who actually gave up and left. When they protest at a funeral, sometimes motorcyclists show up and form a ring around the family and rev their engines to drown out their noise.

Yes, the Phelps family is entitled to freedom of speech. But families should be entitled to bury their loved ones in peace.

I recall Fred Phelps mostly from his days as a lawyer, when I was growing up in Topeka. His antics were always in the news, and eventually he was disbarred for unethical conduct. Some of his 13 children have become lawyers and they now fund the protests with the money they earn from the family law firm, according to an article I read in the Topeka newspaper. Although Topekans hate what the Phelps do, one person admitted that if you want to win your case, you go to the Phelps. It's a shame Kansans don't boycott the firm in a shared commitment to dry up their money.

Recently I watched a documentary about the family called Fall From Grace: Westboro Baptist Church. It was  made by a young man named K. Ryan Jones, first as a short film for a film class he was taking at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and then it became a full-fledged documentary. As Jones himself says in a DVD extra, he had to try very hard to be fair to the Phelps because "everybody hates them."

As I watched Fall From Grace, there I saw one of the boys, now in his fifties just as I am, but with the same face he had when we were in the seventh grade together. And I saw one of the girls, who was in the ninth grade. I sometimes saw the girl in the ninth grade laughing and talking with other kids, but the seventh grade boy seemed to stick pretty close to his brother, who was in the eighth grade. Those boys looked so sad, and I have never forgotten the miserable and embarrassed silence that fell over the school cafeteria the day those two boys came to school with their heads shaved. Guys did not shave their heads then, and we felt so sorry for them.

Other students who had known the Phelps for years explained to me that Fred Phelps had shaved his sons' heads to punish them, just as they were punished by having to run to Lawrence from Topeka and then back home again. They also had to sell candy for hours after school to support the church. One of them came to our door once, and my mother said NO immediately. She mentioned afterwards that she knew the money went to the church so she wouldn't buy anything from the Phelps.

What I didn't know was that the children and Mrs. Phelps were severely abused, according to two of the children who have left the family. One of them, Nate Phelps, writes a thoughtful and intelligent blog that I suggest you check out. Nate is interviewed by telephone during the documentary, and he recommends ignoring his family if you should encounter one of their protests. They are definitely attention whores, so cut them dead (figuratively of course). Don't engage them in an argument; don't give them what they want so desperately.

Why do they do what they do? Who knows why such evil lives in the hearts of humankind? Fred Phelps is a sick man and his sickness has infected most of his children. And now his grandchildren, right down to the youngest ones who are barely understandable when they speak, parrot what they hear from their parents and their grandfather, although it's obvious they don't know what they're saying. They are already brainwashed and if someone doesn't help them, it will only get worse.

I found it fascinating that in the documentary one of the Phelps daughters says, My father had 13 children. Hmmmm . . . did he become pregnant and give birth? Mrs. Phelps is never mentioned, I think because her husband's control over the family is so complete.

Thus, I recommend the documentary; I recommend Nate Phelps' blog; and I recommend ignoring the Phelps family if you should ever have the misfortune of seeing them in your town. They have fallen. Don't let them take you down with them.

Infinities of love,

Lola

DEEDEE NEEDS A MIRACLE

Gentle Readers,

We need your help. My friend Carol has learned that her daughter DeeDee has multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer). Please pray for DeeDee.

You can pray, ask your friends and relatives to pray, ask safe strangers to pray, ask any congregation to pray. If you aren't someone who prays, then please send positive thoughts to DeeDee.

If you would like to write a prayer or a message to DeeDee, I will pass it on. With your permission, I will publish your prayers.

DeeDee needs a miracle!

Infinities of love,

Lola

Dear Lord, our Father, 


We ask that you send healing and comfort to your daughter DeeDee. Be with her in this time of great need. Please help her doctors know the best treatment for her. And please help her family. Give them the strength to do everything that DeeDee needs.


In Jesus' name we pray.


Amen.

JESUS PICTURES

Gentle Readers,

I simply do not understand the pictures of Jesus that a lot of white people have up in their houses. In the first place, they usually look like pretty cheap crappy prints and they're in cheap crappy frames.

But what's really ridiculous is that Jesus is usually depicted as having light brown, almost blond hair, very fair skin, and blue eyes. Jesus was Jewish and he lived in the Middle East. Does a light haired pasty-faced blue- eyed Jesus make the slightest bit of sense?

I don't think so.

A friend of mine who is black (not that this is necessarily a black and white thing; I'm just turning it into one based on my limited experience) has a beautiful portrait of Mary and Jesus. It's a lovely print in a lovely frame and Mary and Jesus are black.

I think Jesus probably would have had olive skin and dark eyes and dark hair, but black certainly makes more sense than white. And if we're going to put up pictures of what we think Jesus looked like, then let's at least make them respectful by using a nice print and not some doo-doo picture.

And that's all I have to say about that . . . for now.

Infinities of love,

Lola

KATHY'S KIDNEYS

Gentle Readers,

Recently my Kathy underwent some medical tests and learned she has a kidney problem. It doesn't seem to be serious right now and apparently some people spend their entire lives with this problem and it never gets worse. Of course, if it does get worse, then it leads to dialysis and the need for a donated kidney.

Thus, I made the pledge to her over the telephone, and I now make the pledge in writing, that if she should need a kidney, I happen to have an extra one with her name on it. I was going to make it into a kidney pie, but I can keep it in the freezer instead.

I also mentioned that if she should happen to end up with part of me inside of her, that she would probably start doing some of the things I do, such as pole dancing, streaking, writing porn . . . oops! I didn't mean to reveal so many of my hobbies. Things do just seem to slip out of my mouth.

Tee hee.

I gave Kathy my heart long ago. She can certainly have a kidney if she can tolerate it.

Infinities of love,

Lola

CARTS AWAAAAAAY!

Gentle Ladies and Gents,

I come to you today with a pet peeve: I do not like, I detest, I absolutely abhor the leaving of shopping carts in the parking lot.

Now that doesn't mean I'll be irritated if you leave your cart in the cart return center that most parking lots have. That's fine.

But gol' darn it, and I am warning you but good, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CART IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LOT. It's rude. It's obnoxious. Carts sometimes take off on their own and hit cars or attempt to run down little old ladies or small children. Furthermore, they're usually in a spot that prohibits someone from pulling into a parking space, and at this time of year,
that
parking
space
may
be
the
very
last
one
in
the
entire
parking
lot.

So beware, beware. If you're going to take a cart out out, then be prepared to put it back back. It will not hurt you to walk a few extra steps to the cart return or to take the cart back into the store, where it's all ready for another shopper to use. Even better, when you arrive at the store, help out someone who is unloading a cart and offer to take the cart for that person and give first consideration to the elderly and people with small children.

But do not take the cart until they are finished unloading. A word to the wise.

By the way, just want to mention that the search terms gentle readers use to find my message center appear on my Stats page. A recent search that led to lovely Lola was How To Prevent Foot Fetishism. Hmmmmm - must have come up because of Franklin's great and enduring love for my feet. I found one of my socks in the back yard recently - filthy and soaking wet and very much loved.

Infinities of love,

Lola