I’m Baaaack. Spaceship-Couch Edition

Had foot surgery last Thursday and have been stuck on the couch since. It’s feels great except when: I walk/hobble to and from the bathroom, bedroom, or couch, accidentally stretch, or have that foot anywhere below the level of my heart. Or sometimes I’ll be on the couch, leg up, minding my own business when a couple of nerves in my foot decide to say “Howdie!” Was hoping to be back to work within a week of surgery. BWA HA HA HA HA HA! Good one, me.

Prepared to be home-bound by having lots of food staples around, ready to cook. Which would be great, if I could stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Not my brightest move. Have been eating chocolate that friends brought over (Full disclosure, any chocolate brought to me was consumed within a day. A 12 hour window. After you left. Was eaten quickly.) and take-out which has been expensive and less than tasty or inspiring. Got grocery delivery in the form of apple sauce, cheese, crackers, whoopie pies (plural), oreos, a banana, raspberries, and blueberries. I’ll give you a couple of guesses as to which foods didn’t survive 24 hours near my gaping, sugar-ravaging pie-hole. Oh, I should get pie!

Anyway these are my scribbled notes from Spaceship-Couch. Time stamped.

Sunday, Day 4 on the couch.

12:00PM: Has Tom Hanks ever been punched in the face?

12:05PM: Maybe it’s time to separate my breasts from my midsection today. Will put on bra.

2:30PM: Am I wearing a bra for me or society? Both?

2:47PM: Investigated brown smear on outer left thigh. Discovered to be chocolate, score!

3:56PM: All I want is a mocha frappe. Have to order steak sandwich, french fries, AND frappe to meet $ necessary for delivery. Will eat sandwich tomorrow.

4:10PM: Tune in for Pats game.

4:50PM: Order arrives, late. The order consists only of steak sandwich and fries. “I ordered a mocha frappe. Did you leave it in the car?” “You did not, that is the order.” “Ok, but on the slip stapled to the bag you just handed me it lists: 1 steak sandwich, 1 fries, 1 mocha frappe.” …”I’ll be right back.”

4:55PM: Cold fries are simultaneously stiff AND soggy. How? Steak sandwich is cold, chewy and boring. Only eat a couple of bites.

5:57PM: Mocha frappe received. Icy and delicious.

6:15PM: Some a-hole just rang the doorbell from the back porch. Must hobble there whilst grumbling.

6:16PM: IT’S CHUCK! He drove up from Connecticut to surprise me and brought a new light comforter (less weight on my foot,) chocolate, a flying pig figurine, and a space heater that looks like a little wood stove. May have cried a little. Chuck eats steak sandwich. Snuggled on couch with Chuck and new comforter.

9:30PM: Chuck leaves. It takes me 34 minutes to get ready then go to bed. Realize I left the new comforter on the couch.

9:38PM: Back in bed with new comforter. Realize I left my pain killers on the coffee table.

9:43PM: Back in bed with new comforter and have taken my pain killers. Realize I left my Blistex on the coffee table…Grab hand lotion, smear on lips. Roll over and go to sleep.

Monday, Day 5 on the couch.

10:00am: Tom Hanks does not look like he could take a punch.

11:54am: Realize I have all the ingredients for brownies but can not stand long enough to make. God. Damn. It.

12:34PM: Friday Night Lights is THE BEST! How did I not watch this when it was on??

2:47PM: Breasts looking smug. Remove bra.

3:19PM: Opioids really, really are not friendly to bowels. Eating applesauce with lots of ground flax seed mixed in over the last few days has helped suddenly and tremendously.

4:12PM: Whole Foods delivery arrived. Come to Mama.

5:37PM: Have been eating a lot of sugar lately. Will take a vitamin B multiplex to offset damage.

Tuesday, Day 6 on couch.

10:17am: Grumpy. In pain. Out of chocolate. British serial killers true crime series on Amazon? Yes, please!

1:29PM: Switch over to watch some of Season 3 of The Crown.

3:53PM: Am pretty sure the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, could beat the snot out of Tom Hanks.

4:00PM: Switch back to serial killers and download Candy Crush Saga.

1:30am: Look up and notice the time. Had been engrossed in game. Delete game and go to bed.

Wednesday, Day 7 on couch.

7:45am: Start-up the ol’ blog again. Will post then re-edit obsessively.

 

 

 

Depression

Dear Depression,

Congratulations.

Yesterday you won, again. You convinced someone that death is the only way to be rid of you. This one better known than many, Mr. Robin Williams. You have succeeded in depriving him of his life, his family and friends of his love, people of his generous nature and enormous talent and reminded me of how painful you are, how wretched your nature. You eat what little time we have in this life and you rip people from their loved ones leaving devastation in your wake.

Depression, you are mockingly cruel. You spread your bile among millions, yet you manage to isolate us and tell us we are all alone. You tell us that we are no good. You tell us that we are not smart or too smart. You tell us that we are not liked, not loved. You tell us that things will NEVER get better, only darker. You tell us that there will only be misery. Others of us, you numb. Nothing matters, everything is flat, everything grey, everyday just like the last. You deprive us of our interests. You deprive us of our emotions or bury us in them. You give us no middle ground. You shame us into believing that even having you is weakness on our part so we don’t talk about it. You tell us this using our OWN voices, our OWN words and convince us that this is true.

Depression, you are incredibly clever. You convince us that WE are the disease, that we are BURDENS to everyone we know.  You thieve and hide every opportunity. You cloak every good moment, kind word, small gift, the smallest ray of hope to only shine a light on every misstep, every hurtful word, every human foible and cast it as failure, further demonstrating our general unworthiness. You demand nothing less than perfection in every aspect of our lives. You have us convinced that human frailties are personal failures, victories, mere accidents of fortune. Or we just don’t care. Brilliant.

Depression, your lies are incessant. The only thing we can attempt to control is how loudly you drone on in our heads. You can scream at the top of your lungs driving us underground and away from everything, everyone we love to escape you. We seek drink, drugs, fortune, fame to drown you out, making things worse for ourselves. When things are going well and and we are able catch a moment of peace, you lean in and whisper “You don’t deserve this.” Or tell us this is not important, this doesn’t matter and we become hypnotized by you. At at your loudest and cruelest, we are brought to our knees. Some of us are able to see enough to reach out of the hands of friends and loved ones who will pull us back up to our feet and will help us as we slowly learn to walk under your weight and, over time, tune you out. When we stumble again, start to feel numb again, some of us are lucky enough to remember that you, Depression, are completely full of shit and we can get up again, reach out for help and be well.  For far too many of us, however, you are so blinding, so deafening that we can not see the outstretched hands of loved ones, can not hear their words of love and pleading encouragement and will never rise again. Too heavy with sadness or too apathetic to reach out.

Bravo.

Yesterday you took a man whose mind had myriad brilliant, kind, fucked-up-in-the-best-of-ways, haunted, pained voices and thoughts in his head and convinced him to choose the thought that silenced them all.

You took several others yesterday, too. You took many more today. You will take many more tomorrow.

You don’t deserve to win him. You don’t deserve to win any of us.

So, what now, Depression? How can we help fight against you? We can talk about you. Those of us who have suffered from, still have bouts with you, Depression, need to speak up. The more we talk about you, the more people realize how common you are, the more we learn about you, the less stigmatized you become, the less powerful your hold on people, the more people will reach out for help. Those of us who have come out from under the your weight need to share our stories. Let it be known that we too have struggled.  And share when we struggle still. We need to talk about this. Talk about this. Talk about this. Talk about this so that our collective voices can cut through your bullshit noise and fog enough for those still on their knees to hear us say, “We’ve been here. You can do this. You want this.” and see open hands ready to help them up, have some wins of our own.

Skål! Na zdrowie! Cheers!

Happy New Year to you all!

Looking over my yearly stats for this blog I was embarrassed to read that I had only posted four times in 2013. FOUR TIMES! So I would like to apologize to my baker’s half-dozen readers (my Mom included) for being so negligent. I shall endeavour to post more often. For those of you disappointed that I will be posting more often, why are you torturing yourself by reading this?

Something else I discovered in those stats is that one of my most popular posts, “Impactful” Is NOT a Real F%#@ing Word!!, is re-posted on a legit English professor’s college website/blog on language use and rules. HOORAY!! As a somewhat overly reactionary and impassioned response to that word. hooray. This may explain some random/angry comments I have gotten about that post over the last year…

Anyway, good news folks…

A New Study Suggests That People Who Don’t Drink Alcohol Are More Likely To Die Young

Skål! (Pronounced “school” or “skawl”) Na zdrowie! Cheers!

Sadly, the headline did use the word “suggests” rather than “proves” but those of us who are booze hounds will take what we can get.

(Click here for the link to that article.)

With this in mind you can laugh in the face of those doomed teetotalers and raise a glass, or two, to long lives and much happiness in 2014 and remember Auld Lang Syne. May all of us have more days ahead of us than we have behind…

Skål!

Thank you to Business Insider.

Intimate Apparel

Hi,

I have no problem with people trying to spice things up in the bedroom using whatever props they wish and I thought I had a Whatever-Makes-You-Happy-and-Is-Not-Illegal attitude towards other’s  sexual proclivities.

Then I ran across the following item on  Instructables.

I.

Just.

Can’t.

The idea of someone working through…that meat is not tender…there must be a lot of intense chewing/tearing to get to…the average force of a human bite is about 175 pounds and…

Do you really want someone GNAWING at cured flesh you have wrapped around your tender bits?!?

____

Haiku

“Is ‘Call 911’ the New Sweet Nothing?”

Om, nom, nom, nom, nom,

nom, nom, *belch*, Om, nom, nom, nom,

nom, nom, nom, nom, AAAAAIGH!!!

“Teriyaki of Original Flavor?”

Dried flesh pressed against

me. Nibble gently, my sweet

or be set aflame.

‘Tis The Season

Hello All,

I love this little graph. Some of you may want to substitute “cat” with “dog,” “toddler,” or “glass of beer.”

Happy wrapping!

~Sassy

Thank you Christmas at Cheezburger.

Quotation Marks Make Reading “FUN” -or- Sign of the Times.

For the “love” of God, people.

What is this lone employee really required to do in that bathroom? I hope this employee doesn’t work in the food service industry. (You know this sign has to be in a restaurant.)

If one were to tell the manager that s/he needs to add an “S” to “EMPLOYEE”, I fear s/he’d take that “S” from the word “HANDS.”

EMPLOYEES MUST ‘WASH HAND'”

Actually, I think I would like that sign better.

Thank you, FAIL Blog, Monday through Friday.

~Sassy Librarian

Madonna’s So Shock*snore*ing

Madonna. Madonna. Madonna. There. Are you happy now, Madonna?

Whoever’s turn it was to pay attention to and jangle shiny things in front of Madonna all day yesterday must have dropped the ball and watched the news about Washington D.C. instead. (You had ONE job to do, Asshole…) Now the Material Girl (suck on that nick-name, lady–you earned it) is throwing a media tantrum and we’re all paying the price.

In the wake of yesterday’s mass shooting Madonna dropped this little love note to the press today.

Yes, Madonna. We are all completely shocked *YAWN* and you are still UBER relevant. Zzzzzzzz. May we go about our business again?

This is a still from an “Art Project” film she helped direct.

Here is the text from an article in PageSix…

—

As the identities of the 12 victims killed by a gunman in DC’s Navy Yard start to emerge, Madonna has issued a promotional picture of herself with a gun, surrounded by bodies.

Reps for the singer issued the picture as part of a press release today to promote the short film secretprojectrevoltion she co-directed with Steven Klein, which will be unveiled on September 24.

A press release explained the film was part of an initiative by Madonna, in conjunction with Vice Media and BitTorrent, to “further freedom of expression and protest persecution.”

Madonna is quoted as saying, “My goal is to show by the example of secretprojectrevolution my creative commitment to inspire change in the world through artistic expression. I hope my film and other submissions to Art For Freedom will be a call-to-action and give people a place to voice their own creative expression to help fight oppression, intolerance and complacency.”

Klein adds, “This film operates on many levels. It examines our private prisons. It questions what we do, how we do it, and how we treat others. It questions our governments, and our collective thought patterns. Think about it – the power of art can lead to peace.”

While numerous Madonna fans tell us the picture was first issued a while ago, the decision was still made to send it out wide in an email today to announce and promote her new initiative.

—

Heavy, man.

Is Madonna doing this film to “…inspire change in the world through artistic expression.”? Perhaps.

Does she “…hope my film and other submissions to Art For Freedom will be a call-to-action and give people a place to voice their own creative expression to help fight oppression, intolerance and complacency.”? If one could dig his/her way out of the morass of pretension then, maybe.

But this little stunt is beyond boring and may push some away from participating in this (Madonna perceived) cutting-edge rally for change.

I love the quote from her co-director. “This film operates on many levels.” If you have to say that, it means it doesn’t. Waah-waah-waaaaaaah.

Madonna did not become successful through sheer luck–she’s no chump. She is one of the most clever and calculating women in business. Do I think she ran out and did a quick photo shoot yesterday? No, of course not. This promotional shot was done a while ago if the “film” is going to be released next week. Also, one day would not have been enough time for the Photoshop work that would need to be done to cover her veins and soften her features. Is she trying to capitalize on a tragedy? Oh hell, yes. However, I’m sure she would argue that the photo had already been planned to drop and Ooopsie if it wasn’t magically relevant. Her reps could have easily pulled the images, but I’m sure she didn’t want to compromise her “art.”

Sometimes people think others become successful through luck. But the ones who make it are often prepared for that lucky break. Most prepare with hard work. Others fill their media rep’s office vault with “edgy” pictures of themselves dancing with dictators, submitting to potential robot over-lords’ sexual advances, etc. just in case the right moment arises. I’m just glad the news of the shooting overshadowed the news of the guy in Worchester, MA who was had built a lair equipped with al the tools necessary to kidnap, torture, cook and eat small children. Madonna would have chuckled as she flipped through her stack of vacation photos looking for just the right one to send to the press.

Thank you, PageSix.

Reasons to Carry Hand Wipes

Greetings All (both?)

Though not the most environmentally friendly of cleaning supplies, disposable wipes are useful in an emergency.

Example:

I know I wrote “reasons” in the title, but isn’t this picture reason enough?

“Just hold still, Ma’am. You got a little something on your face…”

The tragedy is that she is probably beautiful under there. Way, way under there.

A Haiku

Title: Time Sags Us–A Delicate Dance Where No One Wins

Impressive. Your face

Has managed to distract from

Your braless-ness. Yay!

Thank you, People of Wal-Mart.

She Led Me to Her Elfin Grot: The Best of the Worst

Writing can be difficult. No matter how much a writer works on a piece that author is rarely completely satisfied with the results.  There is always something to be revised, reworded, or reworked.

Writing a sex scene can be especially tricky. How do you make something that everyone does sound different? Is this necessary to advance the plot or is it gratuitous? Should you use metaphor? Do you describe what is happening in great detail without it sounding to porn-y or just go for it?

It would be great for would-be authors to see examples of what not to write for sex scenes…Luckily, for us, the good people at The Literary Review compiled their annual “Bad Sex Awards” for 2012. Having culled through many of this year’s published works, they have determined cream-of-the-crop bad descriptions of sex.

I think the authors of some of these lines were in the “just go for it” camp. Here are a few of my top choices from the top choices:

“He switched to some ancient steppe language as he ejaculated, blubbering and incoherent. She faked an orgasm.”

Calling this the worst may be unfair…was this book meant to be funny? I will not read it to discover the truth; we all need a lingering mystery in our lives…

“And then, one wet April afternoon, after a long delay of just over six weeks, his erection arrived. Arbitrarily.”

“…his erection arrived?” Like in the mail? Is this code for getting Viagra randomly?

“oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, Will, oh, yes, oh, semen-bedizened blood-pusillanimous bed onanistic quiddity fulcrating pelvic thrusts.”

oh, no, oh, no, oh, Author oh, no, oh, pretentious-vocabulary-fulminating typewriter spazmatically launching imaginary words drivel catharsis.

How did this a-hole get published? Where’s the editor?

“I waited, patient with faith, feeling his prose slowly seep into my cock, swell it, saturate it until it was replete with Muse”

What?

My favorite?

“She led me to her elfin grot.”

Wow, man. Just, wow. (Imagine me saying that while sitting cross-legged in a smokey coffee shop. Wearing a black turtle neck. Fingers up, snapping.)

Want to read more of these little delights?

Huffington Post, thank you!

Twittiots: The Philosopher/Moron: The Donald

Oh Donald Trump,

Must you always thrash and squall to get any sort of media attention? Let us remember his “offer” to President Obama. In theory, Trump-y would have given $5 million dollars to the charity of Mr. Obama’s choice if Barak produced his college transcripts and passport application in order to prove…what? I’m not sure (Trump is a big “birther” flag waver.)

Anyway, Trump was a little upset that the election didn’t quite go the way he had hoped. Some of Mr. Trump’s tweets as the presidential poll numbers started to come in…

Yes, Donald. If you’re not winning, clearly it’s fraudulent. No, Donald, the world is laughing at YOU (and learn when to use apostrophes.)

Donnie, if something is “unprecedented” then is it without precedent. Not proceeded– meaning, it’s never happened before. So to write that something “…is…unprecedented…like never before” is redundant.

My final thoughts on The Donald? To quote Bugs Bunny (because why the hell shouldn’t I quote Bugs Bunny) “What an ultra-maroon. What an im-bess-il. What a nim-cow-poop.”

Thanks to Lost in E Minor for the baby/toupee image and The Huffington Post for Trump’s tweets.