What’s that you say!?

Extremely time-consuming job for a writer!?

Focused on the North Idaho Organized Crime scene!?

Wait. Hold the phone for real this time.

No, I mean it. Put the phone down. Put it on hold or promise to call back and hang up.

Ummmm….

Is there a North Idaho in Sicily?

You’re talking about Idaho? Like in the United States?

Okay. If you say so.

Federales is spelled wrong, but whatever. Apparently you were tangling with them and not pen-palling with them. And you’re looking for a ghost writer, so I guess it isn’t fair that I pick on you for not being able to spell (uniagnosed ADHD, extrodinary, succesfull, isnt, right writer. Just sayin’…)

However, lest I continue to discuss this outstanding example of Craigslist without letting everyone else in on the moment, let me cut and paste your ad here:

Writer Wanted For Ex North Idaho Drug Kingpin:

Looking for someone to write life story, unique story, unique Individual. Story consists of dealings with Colombians,Cubans, Mexican Federallies, 16 years in prison hanging out with mafia members from the Phildelphia Scarfo gang, Charlie Iannache, Anthony Pungitore, Gene Gotti-brother of John Gotti of the New York Mafia, being successful jail house lawyer. Story begins with the consequences for a boy with a gifted IQ who deals with uniagnosed ADHD and the path he takes in life through taking over the underbelly of the drug world,prison,self inflicted extrodinary rehabilitation efforts to his succesfull entrance back into society. This isnt some run of the mill drug dealer story! I SHOULD BE DEAD A HUNDRED TIMES OVER. GOD HAD HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER TO GET THROUGH IT. ps: All Statue of Limitations are finished and all prison time completed. The story just needs to be told by a gifted writer. If interested, please submit writing proposal/compensation plans. I would prefer to give the writer a portion of proceeds, but would pay the right writer to do the story. Follow up to the book would be self help videos/books for children-parents-educators-inmates to not go down the path I took, or to change an inmates life around through education.

• Location: SEATTLE
• Compensation: writer to submit required compensation/or proceeds from book
• OK to highlight this job opening for persons with disabilities
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Be still my heart.

I love you, Craigslist.

I too had a high IQ and undiagnosed…wonderfulness? Adorable Human Syndrome? (AHS. Don’t laugh. It has its down side. Such as being stalked. Twice.) Possible wheat intolerance (perhaps more on that one day. From my toilet.)

I too have known Colombians and Cubans and been to Philadelphia!!!

I have no idea who the rest of those people are, but I love the colorful names. The only thing missing are the fun nicknames like Charlie ‘The Tuna’ Iannache, Anthony Pungent Pungitore, and Pee Wee Herman.

If you ask me, this is both ridiculous…and strangely compelling.

Really.

A non-paying questionable gangsta scene playa gig that PAYS NOTHING.

And yet…

I’m compelled. Tell me why I SHOULDN’T write him. Because I kind of want to.

p.s.

My favorite part is the self-help videos for high-IQ kids considering mafia activity in poor, remote areas of rural America. The forgotten Appalachia. I get it. I’m into it. I’m on it.

p.p.s.

I know the blog still looks, well, like crap, but I wasn’t kidding when I said this was totally over my head. Thank you, Chad, for your feedback. I passed it onto to someone who may (god willing) be willing and able to fix this (totally innocent, and I cannot even believe my bad luck, and I’m not willing to focus on it. Cleansing karma, cleansing karma, cleansing karma…!!!!!) snafu.

The fix (Permalink Redirect Manager) didn’t work.

***sigh***

We may just have to live with the new ‘layout,’ because – barring outside help – it is seriously beyond me to know how to fix this.

In other news, if my new book is as good as I think it is, I may someday be a successful author with people (a.k.a. peeps, a posse, a crew, an entourage) who manage this website business for me, and if they screw it up like I have, heads will roll!!!

Before I get into the subject matter of the title, let me just say I’ve decided to go with the flow.

In general, I am NOT a ‘go with the flow’ person. I am a ‘battle upstream and crush the will of anyone trying to oppose my agenda’ person…not that I’m proud of that.

At the same time, I am a true believer in nature/nurture, and – as near as I can tell – it’s all nature, baby.

My mother tells a story that I was 18 months old and playpen-bound, when my father and she started some minor remodeling. Apparently they were repainting the living room, and put me (in said playpen) in the room while they worked. (And Dad, feel free to chime in if this is nonsense, as this is not a story where I come out looking like Ms. Awesome Toddler 1974.)

And by day two I was throwing every toy in the pen at them and screaming at the top of my lungs.

This may or may not be true.

However, when I imagine having to sit in a small, enclosed space and watch two people paint and ignore me, the thought of having stuff to throw at them is strangely calming. So I don’t rule it out.

What I’m saying is that I am wired to be HIGHLY STRESSED by the current f-ed up state of the blog (appearance -wise. I am, in fact, cogently aware and grateful that it’s up and visible and more or less intact despite it all, and I’m willfully focusing on that fact. Actually, the last time the blog went nuts I suggested moving to a ‘generic’ format: Black on white, non-de-script font, and UPC codes here and there . Zen and non-committed blog, if you will).

Anyway, nature aside, I’ve decided to embrace the chaos and go with it and trust that it will work out (via the excellent feedback of my genius readers or some other measure) one way or another.

Make it so.

MEANWHILE…the oysters of the world are onto me.

Word has spread.

So if you have an oyster serial killer streak, I suggest that you do not start a blog and commence bragging about it. Never mention the words ‘oyster’ and ‘it puts the cocktail sauce in the basket’ in the same sentence.

‘So, what’s happened?,’ you ask.

Well, I discovered that the even more local grocery store will sell you SIX monster great-great-grandfather oysters for $.20 each (six for $1.25…whatever that works out to) and those oysters are trying to kill me.

Seriously, I am skilled and I am determine, but those bastards will not budge.

So I was working on a dandy that was at least 2″ by 7″ (a monster! The oysters inside border on unmanageable and – this coming from me – unappetizing. Ron Jeremy is fascinating in theory, but not on the half-shell), and I had my typical towel/oyster knife/hand protection stance going, and I got in under the joint and wedged the knife deep and twisted…and felt the cold spray of mud and the hard impact of calcium as the shell shattered and hit me like a bullet.

Seriously.

It split my lip.

And covered my face in mud, but that was secondary.

In short, egg on your face is nothing next to oyster in your lip.

And watch your back, fellow oyster killers.

They’re reading the blogs, and they’re pissed.

Yeah.

Me neither.

This came from trying to backup (since migrating to this new host, none of the backup stuff will work) and then somehow (mysteriously – as always – to me) it went wacko. Obviously the theme got corrupted, but I’m not sure how it happened and thus I’m not sure how to undo it.

At the moment, I’m too afraid to touch it and make it worse, but hopefully I can find some help (any WordPress experts out there want to help???) and get it back to normal soon.

With any luck, “soon” will actually be soon.

The first pop star to ever really register in my little world (well, okay, the VERY first was Kenny Rogers, but that’s only because I thought he looked like Santa Claus, which doesn’t really count) is gone.

I honestly remember first hearing the song “Billie Jean.” (and apologies, as this is not even remotely an interesting story). So I was freebasing with the Rolling Stones…

No, actually, I was in the J.C. Penney with my friend Jeannie and her mother, and we were playing by the mannequins and the song came on, and Jeannie – who was always impossibly hip despite the fact that we were only nine years old – apparently had an early release copy of the album and knew all the words and was maybe dating a tuned-in dj or something,  explained to me what the lyrics meant, and I felt scandalized.

THIS was the poster. Seriously. Exactly this one.

However, as would eventually become a theme in my life, what was first obscene and repugnant quickly became compelling.

Soon thereafter, I had the tape AND had erected a poster on the wall AND developed a shameful habit of kissing it goodnight. Always one to outdo myself, I added six additional men to the mix in no time – Simon, John, Nick, Roger, Andy, and Prince. The first five were Duran Duran, if you didn’t already know that.

But back to Michael Jackson, this afternoon I was driving home from an overly long OB/GYN appointment (why on earth does a man go into that business? To me, looking at anyone’s goods all day long is super gross. Is there a job where I can sniff armpits? If so, put it on the list with gynecologist, dentist, and Turkish Bath employee; a.k.a. Jobs I will live on the street in a cardboard box before I will do them.). Anyway, I was in the freezing cold exam room for over an hour (after a half hour in the waiting room – until I started complaining and they moved me into the coldest exam room in the building to shut me up) with more than enough time to read the latest ‘Real Simple’ and ‘People’s 100 Most Beautiful People’ (once again, I did not make the list). 

Eventually, my doctor came in and registered exactly no memory of my face or hoohah, and the exam was the typical fare of ‘who the hell are you?’ and generic, mindless babble while he feverishly pawed through the notes and tried to remember my (not particularly interesting) background story. At least in a gynecological sense.

Why am I talking about this?

Only to set the scene that while Michael Jackson was in cardiac arrest and being raced to the hospital and pronounced dead, I was comparing myself to the other ‘most beautifuls’ in my age range (me being the clear loser. Although, in my own defense, it wasn’t the best day for me with the harsh flourescent overhead lighting, the irritiated ‘I’ve been waiting over an hour, and I’m freezing my @ss off’ scowl, and the harsh ballerina bun necessitated by my dirty hair), and trying to figure out who Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato are, and learning that my cervix looks good.

And then, as I was driving home, I managed to dial into a radio station with an actual human being disc jockey (so rare these days, especially at 3:30 in the afternoon, as it falls outside the valuable rush hour drive time windows) who announced that ‘bad things come in threes. First Ed McMahon, then Farrah Fawcett, and now Michael….[honest to god, my mind went to Jordan. I don't know why. Nothing against you Michael Jordan. Long may you run) Jackson.

And then they played Rock with You and - and I am not entirely embarassed to admit this - I cried.

You do have to wonder - and lament - what kind of self-hate drives a person to make so many unncessary changes.

I don’t know. It’s kind of that he’s an icon, and I would say the most important one of the 1980s (suck on that, Madonna). It’s kind of that he struck me as someone who got both the long end of the stick (talent and fame) and the short end of the stick (bad father + related abuse and possibly some tendencies toward pedophilia) at the same time.

In short, he struck me as someone who could have used a little more time with his young children and to find a way to work his shit out.

So then I went into the store to get some cucumbers, and the mid 20-something girl giving away (I think she said) Juicy Juice samples caught my eye. And I stopped to tell her that I was okay and didn’t want any Juicy Juice, and she locked eyes and said to me (and I am totally not making this up), “It’s been a really weird day. And ****something I don’t remember because my brain was partly checked out in ‘is she talking to me!?’ mode**** and Michael Jackson is dead.”

And I told her, “I know. I heard it on the radio on the way here.”

“My boyfriend called me and told me.”

“It’s sad.”

“I think maybe it’s just that everyone dies.”

“Yeah. But he wasn’t that old. And it’s still really sad.”

And she just looked at me and nodded and teared up and then we both teared up and – THANK GOD – we did not embrace and bawl like girls (strangers, but still girls), but we did have a moment nonetheless, and it really hit me how much the man – despite all the immense insanity that seemed to surround him in the last decade  – touched people. Which is in and of itself pretty amazing.

And the girl wished me a blessed day, and I went off to find some egg noodles.

So there you go.

RIP, Michael Jackson.

You were my first pop star crush. And now that you are in the great beyond, you may get a kick out of the following (true) story: In the fall of 1982, I wrote impassioned (for me. I was basically Amish in my own mind and had a Catholic altar in the closet, so I’m sure there was nothing either ‘im’ or ‘passioned’ about it)  letters to both you and Prince (your alleged arch-enemy, yet with really weird coincidental overlap in your lives, but that’s a story for another day) and approached my mother with them.

Sadly, due to her own extensive personal issues (which we will not discuss further in this blog. Wait for the book.), my mother took one look at the addressees and chewed me out extensively for ‘writing letters to black men.’

Then, not surprisingly, she refused me stamps.

And, perhaps also not surprisingly, she brought up my ‘letters to black men’ for years to come.

But I never felt guilty, because you, Michael Jackson, were freaking awesome and a rare one in six billion, and the rest of us could only stand in awe and admire it.