On the musings of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Retail Therapy or Retail Hell? You decide.

Black Friday. Cyber Monday.

Have you often wondered who is coming up with all these nom de plumes?

I often do.

So could it be some Luminous Luminary, possibly named Linus Lapel Lomchamper III, mirrored in tempestuous tandem on Facebook and Twitter with his joint venture old-college-roommate-turned-business partner, the equally egregious Biosphere Bigwig, perhaps named Boyd Bragg Braxton, Jr., who makes blasphemous biochemicals in his biggie bonus time and who blitzes the market blissfully with his ideas, meanwhile blogging about it in the Blogosphere?

Or could it be a Cyberarmy of philanthropist and shopaholic Cyberdogs in space, with popular canine names such as Ginger, Rover, and Fido? On hold from their online loves of internet café and chat room addiction so that they can pursue some offline activities for once?

Or could it be conjoined triplets, with the moniker of Lala, Momo, & Neelie, the Olive Princesses? Who are indeed princesses of marketing ploys! Dubbed LMNOP, for short. And who choose all the best and most popular Mediterranean olives for their chintz-pink colored Girlina Girlie drinks?!

Or could it be their Quaalude-popping Raucous Sting-ray Twins, Urianne & Vivienna, who absolutely LOVE to shop, are Born and Bred to shop, and want EVERYONE to do the same? Labeled QRSTUV, for short.

I’m sure I could research this phenomenon, but it’s more FUN to guess instead! (Although I’ve never been that good at guessing games. I normally hobble at the helm of that dastardly diversion.)

Or could it be some Cyborgish Certified Cryobotic (a merge of Cryogenics + Robot) who is a Cyber-loving wartime effort ex-marine-turned-metallic War-Monger in distress because the wars are not as profitable to his business as he’d like? And quite likely he wanted to use his favorite word “Cyber” merged with “Monday,” one of the most feared days of the week, especially after returning from Thanksgiving Land.

Perhaps this is enough web wackiness to ponder for a while.

So if you are out among ‘em shopping for luxury items or bargains or gifts at boutiques or at the mall or at outlets and so forth, shuffling through the swill and snot of suburbia and/or the urky-ness of urbania in manic Monday mode, trying to maneuver the testy traffic, heartfully hopeful about the holidays, remember to relax, take a die-hard deep breath and try to have some fun. I wish you well.

Chick Lit , Chocolate, and Sex...Oh Yeah!

I want to THANK YOU for reading my blog, and hope that you visit back whenever you have a chance.

I hope I am entertaining you, at the very least.

I’m not sure who ALL of you are - well I do know who a few of you are and I do love you! - and if you can relate to chick lit.

But maybe, just possibly, you can relate to what my chick lit novel is about.

It’s about addiction. I’m sure you can relate to that. I’m sure there is something in this universe that you LIKE A LOT. For me, it’s plenty of things, a plethora of FUN things to do. One of them is to write.

Another is to consume large quantities of chocolate.

I am probably the type of person who’d become a chocoholic, shopaholic, foodaholic, sexaholic, movieholic, relationshipaholic, internetjunkieholic, and others. Gambling? Oh yeah. I like it and games, too. Workaholic too. Writeaholic especially.

So I am writing about addiction in my dark comedy/murder mystery/thriller/chick lit novel:

Ghosts! Sex! Madness! Murder! And Chocolate! Jara Jade and all her quirky addicted-addled friends have serious problems. She has a chocolate addiction, AND she’s just been stabbed almost-to-death by a mysterious X, and the best she can do right now is recover and stay with her sex-addicted best friend, Jazhette, sleeping on an acid pink couch after losing her shitty temp accounting job. Her boyfriend having kicked her out, her “career” in the toilet, and herself a major chocoholic with a tendency to foam at the mouth and hallucinate, she realizes that all she really needs to do is recover and Get A Life. But reality checks in badly when her friend, Chryssa, a spy-in-training (a SPIT) is subsequently murdered. Jacy attempts to solve the crime with help from her quirky and odd friends. Her quirky friends include Gloria, a magician friend who is flanked by a pissed-off ghost; Sheena, a gambling addict (they do daily interventions and now she has an assigned “bodyguard”); Sabrina, who winds up being an ex-serial killer in therapy (a SKIT) turned hit woman, which doesn’t help matters much; and of course, Jazhette. There are several questions Jara needs to answer: whose body was buried next to Jazhette’s newly planted organic tomato plants, will she make it with her new career as a writer, has her dead friend Chryssa really hooked up with Gloria’s ghost/past life ex-boyfriend, Victor, and is there life after NOT having a life, and if so, why does it have to be smack-dabbled dunked-down-deep in the heart of murder and much foul play? This is an acid-spiked black comedy from the quirkiest depths of despair and…well, Hell.

It’s a vast madcap galore roller-coaster ride of glitz, glamour, sex, murder, intrigue, and bathroom humor comedy.

It’s a tossed salad/salad bar of: sex, murder, addiction, jealousy, love, comedy, paranormal – ghosts, exorcist, séance, creative writing groups (and the dynamics of them), girlfriends, girlfriend code of ethics, breakups, bad breakups, dating, crushes, nosy neighbors, serial killers, whodunit, clues, red herrings, threats, stalkers, magic and magicians, spy and snoops, dead bodies, kidnapping, girlfriend dynamics, boycrazy, chocolate addiction, gambling addiction, intervention, secrets, love affairs, getting fired, one night stands, parties, therapy, career change advice and articles, overbearing aunts, loser friends who get great boyfriends, fab friends who get horrid boyfriends, etc.

I’ve posted Chapter One and Chapter Two in earlier blog posts. I will be posting Chapter Three soon. Not sure when. I am very non-linear.

Enjoy and have a fantabulous day!

The Chocolate Loving Uncle

Here's a short scene in my Chick Lit novel depicting Jacy's chocolate-obsessed uncle who finds love in the 21st Century:

Maurice was a mustachioed curio of a man. A champion. A conqueror of many many things, and especially of all things, chocolate. He would, naturally, get it in his moustache, which was a deep dark auburn color, and which a lot of his girlfriends had always suspected was a faux and rather faint impression of years long gone.

His moustache was a euphemism of machismo serenades along sandy shores of serpentine, tenacious journeys. He was an adventurer. Even his prosthetic leg didn’t - and couldn’t - hold him back. He had many walking sticks shaped in many various shapes: elephants, bears, lions, all kings of things he loved and held dear.

Today he plodded up the hill with his chocolate-colored dinosaur walking stick.

And he saw her before she saw him.

He rather charmingly stopped at the ladies’ tea break table to say hello in his whimsical, wry way.

He caught Jessalyn’s eyes and his own eyes twinkled.

He then winked.

Jessalyn blushed. She had chocolate colored hair and and light chocolate golden brown eyes. He really liked that about her.

Maurice sighed happily. Maybe she made chocolate pie? Chocolate cheesecake? Chocolate mousse? Chocolate martinis? Chocolate cake? Chocolate fudge? Chocolate Hoo-hoos? He'd heard she was a very good pastry chef.

Her friends, the ladies’ of 17th Century War Widows of Yore Winding Rivers Southern Tea Party Club twittered uncontrollably and unappreciatively.

One in particular cast her evil eye at his direction and quite judiciously sneered, spilling her tea in the meantime.

He grizzled and stepped backwards, but there was an angry pebble that had somehow snaked itself up and beyond and behind his grandiose dinosaur walking stick - which was his favorite one.

He quite conspicuously stumbled backwards. Over the nasty nugget he fell. He rolled backwards down the hill.

Down he rolled.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Jessalyn bustled. She was a dithery lady who chided the others for teasing him behind his back and snubbing him to his face.

All eyes watched him moving steadfastly, surely, bumbling idiotically.

As he did trailblaze through life, he trailblazed through the field – dashingly and despairingly - as he continued to fall and roll:

Down. The. Hill.

All the way down that one can possibly go until KerPlunk he landed SPLAT! on a stagnate rock, then tottered up into mid-air for a nano-second, then twirled madly over the rock and SPLASHED! madcap-galore into the swan pond.

His body then fell down beneath the surface of the water.

Yes, Trailblazer.

The Splashing of the snarky-blast of contempt erupted from the ducks, the geese, and the wild of the pond from this man interrupting their pristinely peaceful absorption of life.

How dare he!

This uninvited philistine!

The ducks quacked their obstinate fury. The swans honked their rabid annoyance. The queen heron barked her bulky irritation. The turtles poked out their heads from their slumberboxes and chortled their aggravation. The geese cackled their exasperation.

Bubbles appeared - as Jessalyn and her lady friends avidly watched - then finally Maurice spluttered. He rose to the top and splashed his way about.

With watermelon-ic warp speed, he swam clumsily to the shore.

He sordidly clung to the shore and rose with bravado and waved at Jessalyn.

Jessalyn and her friends watched with drooping down mouths, wide open like fat blank-faced mind-numbing whales.

The next thing Maurice could interpret was that they all stood at once to help.

This was when the phenomenon occurred, he later thought.

When the snarky-blast contempt of the creatures of the high afternoon tea decided or had his fall forced upon them metamorphosed into their liking him - or feeling especially sorry for him – and possibly feeling especially guilty for having been so mean to him. At any rate:

Hortensia Blobbhorn-Frensia lowered her brows and her nose from the mid-continental air and erased the furrowness of her manner SO much that she gently slid out of her pale peach cardigan and covered his shoulders with it, then she gave him her pink and green multi-colored quilted picnic blanket from her chair so he wouldn’t freeze;

Gertrude Grazelle gasped that she was so completely sorry that had just happened and how horrific it was and poured him a cup of green tea and eradicated a quite newly minted whiskey bottle from out from under her underling-things from below the tea table and gave it to him, quite gingerly and a little ashamedly;

Mirabella Snyder-Lake sniffed she was crying so hard at her guilt at having snubbed him, she also reached below the underneathed portion of her bosom hiding behind the table and pulled out a fresh handkerchief and dabbed her face, and then pulled out another one from the abyss of her dress and handed it respectfully to Maurice, who took it.

“Thank you, Mrs. Snyder-Lake.” He said. “Thank you, Mrs. Blobbhorn-Frensia, and thank you, Mrs. Grazelle.”

“Please have a seat, Mr. Maurice,” Said Jessalyn.

“Thank you, Mrs. Vossfire,”

“Please. Call me Jessalyn.” She smiled.

“And you may call me Maurice,” He said.

Even right after that, Maurice found himself with Jessalyn in her summer cabin, which was right round the corner of the swan pond, and they bundled up with more whiskey, fire, and solitude from the other ladies.

She looked lovingly into his eyes and this was where the courtship really began.

They were married after a whirlwind courtship, and right after married life took hold of him was where the trouble with Jessalyn began.

He became one of those henpecked hackneyed husbands that we often wonder and worry about. We often say to ourselves, how did this happen to him? How did he get here?

Later Maurice disappeared and Jacy wreaked havoc all over the world trying to find him. Had Jessalyn murdered him?

Are You Fucking Kidding ME?

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Guess WTF I dreamed about?

Yup. That I was At The Mall. The Great Big Gobby Soggy Universe of Retail Hell.

I am SO glad to be awake this morning.

It's a GOOD THING I Volunteered for Nightmare Therapy at the local University nearby. Can't wait.

Getting Fired on Purpose

So here is a scene where my Girlina character, Jacy Yates, in my Chick Lit novel gets fired. Because she wants to. Hope you enjoy it:

Where does bad luck come from?

Do we bring it on ourselves? Jacy wondered.

Why had Neville Ormonde Thornbridge (otherwise known as NOT) treated her SO badly?

And why had she been so stupid to take him back the three times they broke up? Never more thorn in my butt! she thought.

Stuck in purgatory and extremely pissed because NOT had dumped her, Jacy thus tried in vain to get fired so that she could collect unemployment and move back to her hometown. She was so over NYC. She was now working at this horrid shitty temp job that did some sort of Widgets R Us and had NOTHING to do with chocolate. (And she'd always worked with chocolate before.)

Argh! She was appalled that she was there in the first place. It was a sweatshop type of place.

How did I get here? she often wondered.

Oh! That's right, one of her recruiter "friends," Banna Maine had begged her to help with a short term project.

Jacy listed the ways that she could get fired, fantasized about them.

The problem was, this Widgety place was a horribly run company. People yelled non-stop all day long (and they were obviously dreadfully unhappy). It was manufacturing after all. And it smelled really bad. It smelled like mildewed cottage cheese and nobody except Jacy seemed to notice. The noise echoed throughout the day. The stenchy smells emanated and fixated themselves in crusty torrid nightmares under Jacy's nose all day.

Even though she got to wear jeans every day, and listen to the radio, she wasn’t allowed to check her personal email on the internet because they had a filter, and the systems were not run perfectly. So that really pissed her off bigtime.

She had the job of listing all the not-so-perfect parts on a long treacherously endless spreadsheet.

She was actually running out of room on this spreadsheet and realized that she would have to ask her head supervisor named Dena Dilpwater for help.

She was told that if you asked Dena for help that you would get axed.

But she wanted to get axed! But her immediate supervisor named Lorne Vorne Morne forbade her to even try to go to Dena Dilpwater's office. He had one of those wandering eyes and sat opposite from Jacy so she could never actually tell if he was really looking at her, and whenever Jacy got up from her desk, he would follow her.

Dena Dilpwater the head big cheese/supervisor, was slightly over 500 pounds and rarely left her office. Everyone was afraid to go into her office. Some people said that she actually lived in her office. There was an escape route by her desk in the floor and they had to lever her out at the end of the day every day because she was too fat to go through the door. She didn’t even have a chair but she did lay on this big couch-like thing and spoke slowly into a remote voice controlled activated computer to get her work done. It was rumored that she had once had a baby; it was further rumored that she had eaten her baby. Nobody ever went into her office that Jacy could tell. How Dena ever rose up through the ranks, Jacy couldn’t imagine. She was a very bad communicator. She grunted and grumbled from her office to cronies at their cubicles. She had an online sametime demanding things constantly. She was also constantly on speakerphone. Jacy had only seen her once in the interview. Dena Dilpwater looked like Jabba The Hut. Except uglier. And her favorite color was Pondwater Scum Green.

Sometimes people rumored that Dena was atropied and never actually left her office and that there was actually a body double that would be transported out of the office via this lever.

For fear of the wrath of Dena, people neglected to confront Dena when they had a problem. As such, there were a lot of problems at this Widget-ous company.

So instead of confronting Dena about the problem of running out of room on the spreadsheet, Jacy just stopped doing the spreadsheet.

Maybe she would finally get fired!

Maybe Dena would notice and fire her ASAP and then Jacy could get back to being In Misery from being dumped from NOT (her supercharged asshole ex-boyfriend) and think about finally moving back to her original hometown where all her friends were still. She missed her old life.

She looked out of the window, she doodled, she drank 13 cups of coffee everyday and spent 10 minutes making each cup. It had to be JUST the right color, with plenty of cream.

She sametimed or IM’d all of her friends back home.

She fixed the email filter problem and played on the internet and emailed her friends. She downloaded porn sites. She was rude on purpose to the IT guy so that he would discover the downloaded porn and help get her fired.

She ate beans straight one day and spent the bulk of the day farting the alphabet.

Nothing happened the first two days, other than Ella Meyers aerosal sprayed her cubicle and complained that someone or something was truly vile and had had too many onion hamburgers, or something wicked like that.

The third day, Jacy brought out the big guns: a People magazine she read blatantly at her cube and as she walked down the hall, and she brought out her big Crayons and started coloring in a coloring book.

She decided if this didn’t do the trick, she’d do some more things.

She brought a Playgirl the fourth day and wore her hot pink jammies AND brought her stuffed teddy bear named Bernard to work. She dubbed it "Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work Day." She made stickers and passed them out. They were of Jabba The Hut.

But she noticed that Lorne Vorne Morne was suddenly on vacation, so nobody really noticed her with the Playgirl magazine. She also noticed that the other girls in the surrounding cubicles started wearing THEIR jammies to work AND bringing THEIR stuffed animals.

All of a sudden it was: stuffed bears, stuffed birds, stuffed Beanie Babies, stuffed dolls, stuffed lions, stuffed zebras, stuffed Panda bears, and even a stuffed monkey.

The IT guy developed a crush on her and never told anyone about her downloaded porn.

The fifth day she’d brought her vibrator and hung out in the bathroom for the bulk of the day, moaning loudly and wearing her short short hot turquoise and hot pink Victoria Secret jammies. She even brought her colored candified pacifier (also from Vicky's Secret) and sucked on it worse than a babboon sucking three-year-old sucking a lolly pop. She made obtrusively loud sucking noises.

The next day the girls in the office brought their own loudly sucked lolly pops and hoards of candy.

It suddenly became a nice happy place to work.

One girl was stuck in the bathroom for 30 minutes and came out looked quite relaxed and happy. (Jacy heard her later asking the IT guy if he knew where anymore batteries were.)

The sixth day was like Halloween: she dressed in Black Asshole Goth princess mode and did matching blackish killjoy Goth makeup. She got several complements from the ladies in the office. Even some of the men in the office wolf whistled her.

People were having so much fun that nobody told Dena what was happening.

But nobody told on Jacy to Dena!

But everyone watched Jacy when she would slink by Dena's office. They did NOT want Jacy to leave. They did NOT allow Jacy to talk to Dena.

This sixth day she was doing all this cheesy crap to get fired, they noticed that she wasn’t actually doing her work. They took the spreadsheet away from her and gave her something even worse and more boring to do. She had to now log the phone calls in an even more nightmarish screwed up spreadsheet.

The lady training her, Elvertal Myrtle, told her that it would be less challenging work and that she could doodle or play on the internet in between logging the phone calls. "We know how creative you are, Jacy," she told her.

She decided that she wouldn't do THAT logging spreadsheet either. It was like there was no way out, no matter how hard she tried!

But they did send a memo saying that candy was allowed and stuffed animals were a plus. They wanted a better comfort level for their employees.

Very much like House Arrest! Jacy just could not believe it!

After the seventh day of THIS, Jacy, in her Superwoman cape outfit with a mask, tried to get fired again. She suddenly had a case of the runs and let everyone know. She would get up in mid-conversation with a customer and go to the bathroom. And she ran.

Later that afternoon a sign magically appeared that said: No Running Please.

She thought the War of the Job was over when she actually squirted ketchup down her leg and left a big stain in the chair, pretending to have her period. When they didn't even complain about this to her she pointed to the sign that said “No Running” and that she could not get to the bathroom in time. They simply murmured their sympathetic responses. Most of them were women, after all.

But surely this latest disgusting fake period thing would creep out Lorne Vorne Morne when he returned?!!!

She still fantasized that whenever Lorne Vorne Morne returned from his vacation he would say:

You are out of here! And I don’t have to get Dena’s permission to get rid of ya this time!

Finally! Freedom! Jacy would ring Banna and ecstatically tell her what happened.

You win, Banna would say. I’ll try to get you something OTHER than accounting for god’s sake. You told me it was not the right fit for you anymore and you were right! So what about sales?

But that didn't happen. Jacy stayed for another month longer.

She continued to bring fake blackbirds to work and fake black crows and would place them on her computer screen.

When she was rude to people they said she had her period again.

When she was supersweet over-the-top annoying to people they said she was probably overworked and they would lighten her load.

She continued to drink tons of coffee and eat tons of beans and fart the alphabet.

Everyone started bringing potpouri to the office, they even started selling it.

Some of them sweetly brought Jacy presents of perfume and deodorant and sweet smelling candles.

One girl brought her Beeno to control her flatulence. "My husband has the SAME problem, honey! Don't worry! This should help you."

She wrote her entire erotica porn novella at work. She caught two girls at work looking over her shoulder, laughing hysterically. "Oh Jacy, you ought to re-write our training manual!" One of them giggled. "You have such a way with words!"

She finally started attending meetings and would start insulting everyone in the meetings. For some reason, they seemed to think she knew what she was doing. "You sure are assertive and such a go-getter, Jacy! We might put you up for a management trainee position! Maybe you aren't being challenged enough?"

It was only until she burned the popcorn in the microwave that she got let go.

The smell of burnt popcorn is the worst smell ever.

It had set her free! And she was filled with glee!

Creative Cussing

I have two sisters and I’m the MIDDLE sister. My younger sister had a baby and when the baby turned two the baby repeated EVERYTHING that we say, which is rather unfortunate, thus we have had to completely redirect one of our favorite things to do: our cussing.

My older sister who cusses a lot now has to do something that I like to call: Creative Cussing.

I actually rather like it.

Instead of “Mother Fuck Me Running,” which is something she says when she is driving, especially on a certain expressway in our universe,

She uses:

“Son of a Mother Monkey!”

If she just stubbed her toe, she adds “run” and “sucking” to the mix:

“Son of a Mother Monkey Run me Sucking!”

Instead of “Dick in the Butt,” which is what she says to stupid people doing stupid things, which is ubiquitous in our world of the universe, she yells:

“Corn Dog in the Buns!”

Instead of “I Feel Like Ass,” after a heavy night of partying with a morning-after hangover, she says:

“I Feel Like Mash!”

Etc.

None of the words are considered cussing but they actually really work. Just Try it. You might like it better.

Now go run and suck mash! Mash potatoes, that is. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Big Dick Blow-Off (or why a Man should Not Brag about the Size of his Penis)

This is a scene of a breakup/blow-off that I wrote last year for one of my characters, Jacy Yates. She does NOT like penises that are too large (more on that later).

Four score and several swarthy bad dates later, I went to the drugstore to pick up some Magnum Condoms. My new boyfriend, Peter Goldstone had been bragging about his elephantine dick.

“I have a Very Big Dick,” He told me. I hadn’t yet touched it for it was like saving hard expensive special candy for later.

“Oh,” I’d say, whenever he brought up this ravaging topic of conversation. “Really?”

“Yes, it’s Very Large.”

“Well…” I’d act all impressed and all that…but…I was Very Hesitant about the whole thing.

Frankly, I was a little scared.

He bragged SO much about that it was starting to freak me out. Like I was some swarmy Stealth-Bomber Girlfriend that could handle the ride. And I’d just gotten back from the yucky doctor, too.

But I decided to brave it.

So one afternoon I drove to an out-of-the-way drugstore in the Very NorthWest-West region of my universe to pick up the goodies.

After getting Ginormous Condoms in bright obnoxious-orange neon-thwarted packaging, that made me feel like Madame X-acto Butterfly-Blade from some bad ‘70s porn-o, and having the drugstore clerk look me up and down suspiciously several times, and then asking me if I needed any Ryder-Glider or Jelly-DoNutt’ry Butter with that or anything else at all, I stiflingly said NO THANKS, shoved the cash in her face (not wanting any change), then stormed out, and jumped in my getaway car speeding away. I then did an about-face U-turn right round and headed straight home like a big fat chicken ass.

What an ordeal.

A day later, he rang me, mad.

“What’s the deal, Jacy? You stood me up last night."

Oh Man.

We had scheduled to Do It at his place. He would supposedly make a gourmet meal with some fantastic uber-auspicious wine imported by his priggish parents (who were quite snotty – I wouldn’t miss them). I was to supply the Magnum Condoms.

“I must’ve fallen asleep.” I muttered.

“What’s wrong? Jacy, Jacy…” He murmured. Then he started singing. This always drove me up the wall. I dropped the phone “accidentally” on purpose.

The next day we broke up but he completely started stalking me and still does to this day.

So WTF is a META Tag anyway? and other Internet Marketing Foibles…

I just want to hire some nice mild-mannered computer geek who can build me an empire to make millions blogging on the internet.

Okay *REALITY NOW PLACED PLACIDLY IN CHECK* I just want to hire some computer geek (who doesn’t have to be NICE or even particularly mild-mannered, albeit having a personality is optional and would be rather nice) who can help me get some traffic to my Chick Lit blog and show me the ropes/solution/logic to this marketing madness so that I can replicate this internet ideology on my futurama blogs.

Someone who knows about META tags and what-not. And, NO, you QUIMs back there in the Peanut Gallery acting persnickety, that’s NOT META standing for:

Murky Erotic Train-wrecked Assholes

or for

Men Eating Taffy Asshats

or for

Miles of Elephants Trumpeting Agog

or anything whatsoever quirky or silly like that. And stop throwing your peanut shells on the floor!

META?

Well, does it stand for:

Milkdud Eating Twits Asplender?

Meat Eaters Transgender Aplomb?

Mannish Elves Twiddling Aloud?

Millisecond Ever-ready Twitter Absorption?

Marketing Etcetera Twats Aging?

Millicent Elvira Tweets Alot?

Monsters Effervescently Twaddling Altogether-now?

Mountains of Evolution Twatting About?

Mrs. eHow Taunts-a-lot Again?

I’m not even sure myself really what a META tag is!

After all, I’m just a Jobless Wonder and QUIM (Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged Woman) who has read more than her fair share of internet jargon, enough to make those back in the Peanut Gallery snigger, snarl, and smirk. Enough to make the irascible lesbian morph into a Transgender Transyberian Transylvanian and grow her own penis. (Must admit have been reading too much about Sony Bono and Cher’s daughter-turned-transgender-now-son, Chaz. Well good for him, to thine own self be true and all that!)

BTW – I’m NOT on Twitter and I STILL have NO clue as to what that is…but Don’t Even Get Me Started…and NO, I have NO idea how to Twat, Twit, Tweet, Twiddle, Twaddle, Twort, Twout, Twonder, Twondle, or the like. AND I DON'T WANT TO KNOW! (People keep asking me if I Twitter. I have a lot of sharp retorts to that. I finally succumbed to Facebook and THAT was bad enough. It will take me a while to Twitter. Someone will have to seduce me. Possibly with LOADS of chocolate.)

Wonder if I should put an advertisement on Craiglist for internet marketing help or at one of those coffee shops where I hang out pilfering swarthy, swaggering (and staggering!) amounts of my once semi-precious time?

Thank you for reading! Enjoy your day and have a terrific Thanksgiving!

I write Chick Lit, and NO, that’s not Chiclet as in the gum!

Monday finds me diligently scouring my weekend-warped and blasted brain trying to think of an inexpensive way for internet marketing help since not many are reading this Chick Lit Blog O’ Mine, and it’s lost loquaciously and sadly in the Blogosphere.

So here I am at the local junior college querying for help at the Help Desk, trying to find someone CHEAP and pithy and uber-savvy on the internet, whether it be an eager pimple-faced knock-kneed 19-yr-old boy or a 30-something computer software designer, preferably male.

The guy at the Help Desk IS someone who looks like he could help.

Here’s how the convoluted, rather cumbersome conversation went:

Hi, what is your question, ma’am? This young spry skinny pseudo 20-something-year-old asks me. He pushes up his wire-rimmed glasses.

There’s a woman standing there already, whom he is in the midst of helping. I kind of look at her apologetically, not wanting to bust in line ahead of her. We trade wan smiles.

Yes, hi, how are you? I need to find someone – possibly young and technology oriented - who can help me with my blog, someone who knows internet marketing, like, um, how to help me make money on the internet, you know, who knows how to navigate the net pretty well. You know? I say.

The women standing next to me smirks.

What for? What precisely are you trying to do? He says.

Oh I need help with that, too! The woman next to me says, understanding exactly what I am so sadly trying to convey.

Sure, she understands but HE does not seem to get it.

Hello? I just SAID I am trying to find someone to HELP ME. But I say to him:

Well, I know that I'm just a middle-aged woman who doesn’t know all the right terminology, but I have this blog, you see, and I am trying to get traffic to my blog. Nobody’s reading it, you see, except for the random mix of sympathetic friends I’ve sent my URL to…so, um, I just need help.

The woman standing next to me, let’s call her Abigail Everheart, laughs out loud. I’m middle aged too! She exclaims.

I throw her a smile.

What kind of blog is it? He asks, and while we're at it, let's call him Worley E. Wormwood.

Oh, um, I write Chick Lit.

Worley E. Wormwood gives me a blank stare.

Oh I love Chick Lit! Abigail Everheart says. How wonderful!

Chiclet? What’s THAT? Worley's eyes immediately glaze over. I’ve seen this look before. It’s usually what I get once I tell someone what I used to do for a living, which is analogous to boredom-ensued careers such as tax preparer, undertaker, and the like. But at the moment I am a Jobless Wonder and I don’t have to tell people what I do anymore so their eyes don't glaze over, like a wandering-eyed deer in headlights.

There’s a semblance of how I perceive myself: overweight, under-employed, over-educated, middle-aged, quirky, bizarre, idiotic when it comes to a zillion things, including technology, the computer, and the internet. In this mixed bag of what-I-don’t-understand or relate to also includes men, specifically young men aged 12 through 29 years old, except if I’m making out with them IF THEY ARE OF AGE. For those of age, our libidos DO seem to match, but that’s altogether another story.

Abigail Everheart laughs again and I laugh with her.

It’s literature for women, you know, like those films your girlfriend might make you see. I explain to him.

But I don’t have a girlfriend, he says. Chiclet? Worley E. Wormwood repeats.

Okay, well have you ever seen a movie with Meg Ryan? Or seen the movie Bridget Jones’s Diary – romantic comedy stuff?

Oh yeah, right. But his eyes glaze over AGAIN.

We're not getting anywhere here.

So this is how the rest of my day’s been. It’s such a Monday. And it's dragging on whimsically distressed.

I did happen to exchange phone numbers with Abigail Everheart. But Worley E. Wormwood and I have NADA in common, and he was never able to help me.

Maybe it’s time for Fantasy Job Monday, in which I dream about what I’d rather be doing.

Well I am blogging and I do like to do this. I’m just not getting the traffic I’d like. Maybe that will change soon. I certainly hope so. Maybe I'll send Abigail Everheart this Chick Lit blog URL!

The Marriage Mêlée

I am a passionista about a lotta things. Lately I am a passionista about writing on this blog. I hope this continues. I recently found a short story about the breakup of a marriage. I was inspired by a friend going through a divorce. I wrote this last year, hope you like it. Here goes:

This is who you are.

I’m an out-of-work overweight former bad B movie actress, infamous for “Planet of the Sexaholic Kittens,” now married to a late bloomer, philanthropist, and famous psychologist, Dr. Boyregard Swittle, who told me this morning that he’s leaving me for a Playboy Bunny (famous AND infamous) named Gigi (from France, barely speaks English, doesn’t need to) and that he wants all my things out by the end of the day.

Mind-boggling.

This is what you are.

A statistic in the dogma of feminist issues, items, org charts. A new blip in the roller coaster ride of DivorceLand.com, snuggled crusty knee-deep in the death-and-destruction-of-relationship universe. Voted off the Marry-Go-Round. Kicked off the Kaboodle. (And not allowed to take the Kit.) Decreed a has-been socialite, a once-thespian and soon-to-be ex-wife of a multi-millionaire – a genius/extraordinaire being whose saved thousands of lives emotionally with counseling. Yet another future divorcee; Prêt a Porter = Ready to Wear. Suddenly comatose at 8:01 am. Sordidly blinded by so-called “love.” Someone who stashed quick cash in the bank from B movies such as “Cat Man Do from Mars” while he went to medical school.

Implausible.

This is where you are.

Middle America. Suburbia = Hell, to be exact. My future ex-husband hired movers, who haul into our three-car garage driveway. Time Flies When You’re Having Fun reads the van’s name. I am: in the kitchen, with a butcher knife, seizing and slicing red pulsating meat while it dribbles on the floor. I am: in shock, on the phone with my best friend, Deirdre, who sympathizes with me. I am: in my fuzzy pink bathrobe, torn between calling the police and suicide (Death by Chocolate ice cream awaits me in the freezer). The movers thrust into my home unannounced and track muck and gore all over the hallway floor. I am: in my skivvies, underneath the fuzzy pink bathrobe; I reel backwards into this hellhole. I set down the bloody red meat-encrusted knife. I breathe deeply. This is sheer madness. This thwarts me (more than I was in “Dr. Peculiar’s Strange Purple-Twisted Pussycat”).

Unreal.

This is why.

The movers pull everything hysterically out of my closet into hard moving boxes, and then pummel everything into the van. This is all I can take. Not even my movie poster for “Kruelle de Da-Da-Da, All the Way Home” (which was indeed received very badly in the states, but critically acclaimed in Bangladesh). The Demon King rings to tell me that I have one hour to get out of the house because he’s bringing Playboy Bunny Bitch home. He’s not in love with me anymore. Never was.

Unbelievable.

This is when.

I steal his family heirloom! I bolt upstairs. The Demon King desires to find buried treasure at his ancestor’s home (Scotland). His family home is a castle, a moat, and a “famous treasure” (never found). In his closet, I twirl the combination on the hidden vault. The door springs open. I pull out the plastic baggy containing the ratty-looking Treasure Map. I rush away to hide forever. He will abandon everything to find me. It means more to him than anything, maybe even more than his newly minted toy, the Playboy Bunny. Something wicked stirs inside me; I feel alive. The wanderlust buried deep beneath my surface burbles and rises; I am ready to rumble and roll.

Ready? Set: go.

What’s happening now?

It’s raging chaos. I’m at Mattie Wilder’s party; Hortensia Petuneveille divvies up the drinks, mainly chocolate martinis for all the chocoholics, one Ethan Frome-look-alike with owl eyes dishes chocolate fudge in yawning-large black bowls (did I mention it’s a chocolate party?), and wild Cajun music fires the room. I groove into chocolate bliss, this extreme heaven.

I’m hiding from The Demon King. He’s no doubt on the prowl for me since I stole his family’s Treasure Map. It’s in my pocket and I’m not putting it down for a second, no matter where I go. I feel the effects of a chocolate coma; I’ve overdosed on the stuff.

How did I get here?

Ten minutes ago I scurried around in my house stashing my suitcase with jewelry and the Treasure Map while Clover Dangerfield (my nosy next door neighbor and pseudo-friend) pounded on my front door. I ignored her. She persisted by shrieking with her annoying whistle-stop-traffic sort of voice that actual loons from the 17th century have.

She told me that our favorite party animal neighbor was having a party where I could hide. She’d figured out that my husband and I had split. I’m sure the moving van
was a huge clue.

Her favorite hobbies: spying on neighbors and playing with new boy toys (the Fed-Ex Man, the Plumber, and last year the Landscape Architect before he moved to L.A. to pursue Californication Dreamin’).

She handed me a ticket to Mexico that she’d never used (still open, first class, one-way) and told me I could drink heavily at Mattie’s party while I decided what to do – besides, it was three doors down from my house and my husband would never think to look for me there, plus she told me she’d drive my get-away car to the airport for me. She made it sound so easy.

What is happening right now?

Mattie Wilder supplies me with chocolate Jell-O shots. I imbibe, getting trashed, having usurped the comatose-chocolate effect. I’m at that scantily clad point of no return, not only with the chocolate, but also with my life. I yearn to find hidden fortune in Scotland, but I have to think of a circuitous way to get there without The Demon King knowing.

As I mull this over in my chocolotta-raged-alcoholic-basin-brain, a man sidles up to me and slurs his words.

Don’t Trust Her.

Excuse Me? I say, but he dives into me, leans on me, and I flinch. A woman behind me screams: He’s dead! Suddenly, he falls over and a steel gray knife slices into his back! Blood gushes everywhere and squirts on my jacket.

People scream as I squirm away. I dash through the drunken chocolate party-animals and burst outside, leaving my luggage in the guestroom. I slide into my car quickly.

Clover darts behind me; she bursts with energetic guise, this time a fierce look in her golden cat’s eyes. Oh, she’s crafty! Suddenly I see her: a vixen, a real spy. She waves her arms but I pull the car in reverse and roll backwards.

I zigzag down the drive as gunshots fire!

I burrow down in my seat, and peel my car out of the neighborhood. Just as I pass my own house, The Demon King’s car lights flash. He screeches after me in his Hot Rod, a Blazing Red Jaguar XJR-15. I gun my Lexus; press hard on the gas, engine-cringing out of sight!

Metal-to-the-pedal! I never-crunched-hard-ravaging-madness this much!

I flee, I lunge, and I push away. I turn, spurn, burn, chomp, munch, gnaw, gore, hack, hurdle, spittle, tear, rasp, pant, charge, and grittle-gritch-gallop down the streets, fitfully looking in my rear view – and he’s right behind me!

It’s a crazy-race chase through this nightmare. It’s really madness, masqueraded by all these slow subtle years of marriage, of badlands of boredom. The humdrum elements swell and surge through my brain.

How can this be? This whimsical distress of a nightmare clogs my mind; I flash by all the capacious houses, green fledged trees, flourishing flowers, lavish gardens. My world’s impression: haphazardly a farce. Underneath the belly of this normalcy bouillon of my life blasts a balloon of a blaze, brimstone, fiery madness, and bizarre wilderness. All suddenly erupts!

What. The. Hell.

I decide quickly: lose The Demon King! I think quickly. What would he expect me to do now? I do the opposite!

He’s planned this! He’s plotted this moment, foraging all his spineless brain cells - but he has no idea how desperate and ferocious I am. He squelched my rising star, but now I’m free!

Highway 13 spurns ahead, a new unknown highway (totally unfinished, near the river, blocked-off). I plow ahead and hurdle over the precipice part of the highway. I glance back and he is still right there! My car careens. I splash down below into the depths of the wily river, as he follows in his car. Everything burbles, bends, beckons, billows beneath, in the heavy water. Blurp!

His weaknesses: bad night vision, and he never learned to swim.

What now, the Morning After?

A mid-morning poem engages me, post-war, and present bliss:

Bravado so rash,
Over his spine-tingly ass,
A champion among evil prevails today.
Cajole, callay, an-dah-lay!
Hey! Chocolate, ahoy! Hooray,
I won’t have to take any more,
Splash, dash, crash, and I win the war!

Viagra Spam-A-Lotta and Vibrators

So this is completely random and hellarious to me: Lately I’ve been asked by two of my girlfriends (whose names will be unmentioned, but for the sake of obscurity and FUN, let’s call them VeriLicious and SimplyDivine) to purchase VIBRATORS for them.

The following flow of word vibrate and ebb effervescently in my brain: anonymity, online, Dr. Ruth’s fave toys, and SPAM.

I surmise - and rightly so - that these two friends are both living in suspenseful situations of Close Cloistered Quarters in which they will be discovered by members of their family if they surreptitiously purchase said items on the internet. They perhaps feel that it would be sticky and sordid for them if they got caught.

Now why would that really be a BAD thing to be discovered buying necessary sexual devices on the internet?

Wouldn’t it be much worse to be discovered buying poison, or ingredients to make Meth, or other unmentionables?

My Serial Killer In Transit (SKIT) character in my Chick Lit novel would perhaps buy some lethal type of poison such as arsenic or certain gun-making parts of miasmatic, caustic destruction. If she got caught, she’d have Hell and Trauma to pay. (And the FBI’s already after her, but that’s altogether another story.)

Me? I don’t mind purchasing two vibrators for my gal pals. Notta problem. I’d Love to do it!

Why? It’s not like I’m worried about getting spammed from any more sexually explicit emails. I’m already SPAMMED A LOTTA from those vigilante vacuous vapid Viagra emails (BOY ARE THEY EVER PERSISTENT. Marketing aficionados they are NOT because they do not realize I am still in the prime of my life, female, and in NO need of Viagra – I actually need something to calm my libido and to quell it and make it wither and whimper obsequiously back into its pious and perfunctory corner.)

The next step in this adventurous ancillary jaunt will be to discover what wild, woolly and wonderful type of vibrator to get for my gal pals.

Will it be The Rabbit, which one of my other gal pals (let’s call her Marvelous) owns and loves? I think a company called Babeland makes it, they perhaps saw a sprightly spike in their sales when Charlotte on Sex & The City wouldn’t leave her apartment because of this lovely gadget. (Her friends had to rescue her from her bliss.)

So looks like I’ll be spending some marvelous, simply divine and very delicious time reviewing vibrators online. Hurrah for that! Yay me!

Chapter two - X strikes again!

I’m in a reverie of heyday madness. Not to mention heavy doom and gloom. I’m at Jaz’s house, knocking on her door when I notice blood on the sidewalk…and so I follow it down the path.

I tremble.

"Jazhette?"

Then I see the nosy neighbor, Horace, has just been kaboshed on the head and blood has spilt from his head. He’s laying there in a crumpled heap off to the side around the garage.

There’s just so much blood. I’m fixated on it. I can’t move…

“What’s going on?” A deep voice erupts.

I twirl to see Gil as he purportedly sees what I see because he makes a funny mirfled sound. He spins into control just as I lose my balance. Somehow. Because I can’t fucking move.

"Gil! Help me," I say. We bend over Horace, but he is completely zonked cold.

Gil is here! I realize he obviously tailed me after I dashed out of the creative writing group. If I wasn’t so Zombie-like comatose and warped right now, not to mention stumped, stupefied, and stunned by all of this, my heart would be doing gargantuan flips in the air.

The next nanillion second later – I think I’m not sure I’m still in my reverie of madness extreme-aganza – the cops are swirling around like grazing cattle feeding on this frenzied nightmare: taking notes, interviews, zoning in on the swarthy spillage of neighbors who apparently have not seen anying, or heard anything bad or unusual going down.

Well…this isn’t true exactly…of course the neighbors HAVE seen several thousand badland virtuouso pompadored husky young studmuffins flying in and out like a Quasar bullet from outer space - since Jazhette LOVES to get laid A LOT.

The neighbors actually do not take too kindly to this type of behavior, believe it or not. This is suburbia and there exist a higher echelon of unwritten sparky particularly abundant rules, you see. The proverbial housewife + husband + 2.5 kiddos, dogs, cats, etc. and all that come with that package deal in life. They follow their rules in the game of life, but Jazhette (and I for that matter) do not.

There’s really a lot of…well…JEALOUSY of Jaz’s fun-loving heyday madness quirky ways. She is QUIMMISH (being a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman) after all, in her own sluttish ways. She gets away with her boytoys galore and string of lovely short-lived love affairs. The guest may not stay long, much like a hotel, but they sure do enjoy themselves!

It’s all a sordid glorified mystery. Turns out that Horace is really comatose and they take him away on a gurney. They have no idea what happened to him. (It’s too soon to tell apparently.)

My guess is that the neighbors are used to parties all hours of the night and boytoys roaming in and out of Jaz’s house so they just don't pay attention because they've gotten used to it OR there might be a few who DO watch the comings and goings BUT they've decided to keep mum and not help us find Jazhette. Like I said, they see her as a Slut and they do not approve. But you gotta love her. She’s got lots of love to give.

I come to life finally and start yelling for Jazhette again.

She’s nowhere.

Gone.

Vanished.

Vamoose.

Sadness washes over me.

A freaky deranged thought: what if she wasn’t a REAL person and she was my imaginary friend, the same one I had when I was little?

In sixth grade, when I had no real friends, not really, unless you counted Mrs. ZeWhelderfly, who lived next door and smelled like her six Siamese cats, along with formaldehyde and burnt bacon, and yes, she was the Crazy Cat Lady that nobody in the neighborhood liked…except for me. Not only did she smell weird, but she cooked weird food, but I liked it and I liked her. She’d always told me strange stories that were dreamy and divine.

So. Back to Jazhette. What if it was like that all-time fave children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit? What if I wasn’t real and this was all just a sordid nightmare?

The police question us and it's so surreal I don't even know what I say.

Later, Gil and I are inside the house and I crash down from my ultimate neon-thwarted high, which occurred vapidly amind post-numbness feelings.

Gil finds the alcohol and now we’re sipping vodka, the only half-full bottle of Jazhette’s.

“She’s been taken,” I say. “X got her. But who the hell is X?”

I explain to Gil getting stabbed at the Halloween party last week and who X might be: Chryssa’s ex boyfriend Ryan, who just got out of prison? Perhaps…

Gil kind of knew about my stabbing and Near Death Experience since he knows my therapist who set me up in the NDE - pronounced INDIE - program, this new type of therapy that draws in creative writing and subconscious thoughts, dealings, all for NDE's.

“How do you know it was Ryan who stabbed you if everyone was in costume?” Gil asks. A sensible question.

I ponder this.

“Well, Ryan’s been stalking Chryssa for seven years. Chryssa told me he was at the party, trying to get her.”

“How reliable is this Chryssa? She a good friend of yours?”

“Yes, she’s one of my best friends. I trust her – except, well, she has been snooping and spying on me – and really, all six of us…” I trail off, confused. Tired. Feeling ridiculed by her suddenly.

“Jara, you need to look at the facts. Did you see who stabbed you?” Gils changes the focus.

“Casper the Not-so-Fucking-Friendly Ghost!” I explode. He should have stabbed Chryssa, too, not me! I almost died from this!

“Look, Jara, I know you’re upset. And I don’t know you very well, but I can tell that you need help. I’m good at this kind of thing. I –" He falters just then and touches my hand. “I like you, I mean to say I think you need a friend. Especially one on the outside looking in.”

“Sure, Gil,” I give him a hug and he holds me for just a split second before releasing me. It feels good to breathe him in and be held in this way. He is warm and he seems tender. And kind. I really need that right now.

Later we go back outside trying to piece it together at the scene of the crime. It doesn’t help that we just had about four vodka shots each. But maybe we need more.

{Please see Chapter One on 11/15/09.}

Boomerang Love, Happiness, and Chocolate with the Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction dictates that whatever you send out will come back. Send out a search for love and happiness – and well, even chocolate for that matter – and fun and success and it will come back.

Send out the message that you don't really believe it, and guess what? it will come back the same way, so be careful of the intentions you put out there.

We are all looking for something! So continue to put out those positive intentions of being HAPPY and FINDING LOVE and YOUR BLISS and IT WILL HAPPEN.

It might be one thing or it might be something else, but keep believing. Sometimes that's all you have, but it's always enough.

Just believe!

Me? Personally, I DO believe in chocolate! And love.

Ex-boyfriends on FaceBook?

Thought of the Day: As we change so will the people around us. That being said, don't worry about people in your past - there is a reason they didn't make it to our future. Clean out your social closet!

I do have to relay this to personal experience. Possibly about what NOT to do. You see, I do have to brazenly admit there are PLENTY of my exes scattered on my FaceBook. They are ubiquitious.

So why and how did I LET this happen?

As a reminder perhaps? Of the past?

Boyfriends of Christmases and blissful V-Days and Birthdays past?

Like a ghost?

How Girlina of me to ALLOW them to pummel themselves happiliy and wantonly all over my FaceBook, especially when my current beau is SO PROMINENTLY displayed on my FB status, on my pics, in my life?

I don’t have a clear cut answer, but I might have a morose cluttered one: I simply would like to remain friends with some of them. Not all, mind you.

List of some of those Not on my FB:

1. The one who stalked me and is now in prison! Enough said. If you want to read more about it, you'll have to read my future bestseller about Jara and her quirky friends.

2. The one who killed his best friend in a battle outside a prominent restaurant (it was involuntary manslaughter), who is the same one who cellphone stalked me at 2 in the morning, post-beer bliss at random bars. BTW – did you know you cannot block a cellphone? Yep, this is ALSO the same idiot who cyberstalked me with suicidal emails at 2 in the morning, and yes, I did call the police on him and yes, they did bust into his house and point a gun to his face, waking him from his beer enfused crusty-addled slumber. What a Jackass. Aha, yes, this is the same one who my criminal attorney sister represented in the involuntary manslaughter case, but he was such a moronic toad that she had to fire him. Rather rare of her to do.

3. The one future AA member (he’d just downed some Merlot, and three Heinken’s) who told me, on our first (and LAST!) date that he wanted to become a mercenary. This, after hanging out with an actual mercenary of strange décor and questionable descent at a random bar in our midtown. One-sided alcoholic annihilistic conversation went like this:

“Jamila, if after we’re married, do you mind if I go to Africa and kill people for money?”

Say WHAT?

Yes, he had a lot of good qualities: flamboyantly passionate about ME, well-dressed, well-read, eloquent speaker, pseudo-good at picking up women:

”Are you Italian?”

That gets me every time. I just love the Italians.

4. The one who invited me out to eat and ordered every lonesome and radical thing on the menu, including dessert, and then at the end of the meal, looked at me with his soulful brown eyes (Bambi’s twin bro, I swear!) and then asked me if I have any money. Good Lord.

Well that’s enough for now, isnt' it? I do not want to overwhelm anyone, or leave anyone slack-jawed and complacent about the whole affair of ex-boyfriends! One of my future bestsellers will be www.baddate.com.

The one I’m working on now is simply about Jara and her five QUIMMISH friends: The Chocolate Thief, The Accidental Magician, The Serial Killer Turned Hitwoman, The Ghosthunter, The Sexaholic, and The Gambler. You might recall that QUIMMISH is how someone like me acts and who is a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman. Festooned with spirally swirly girlina acts of doom, agony, despair, chocolate, and fun! Ha!

My current novel! It’s a random vast madcap galore roller-coaster ride of glitz, glamour, sex, murder, intrigue and chockfull of bathroom humor comedy.

Now…so DO YOU have your very own exes on YOUR FaceBook?

I’d like to know. I gleefully and ravagely and ravishingly invite your comments!

Bad Breakups and Being Dumped, Rise of the BRUHUS

In my Chick Lit/Thriller/Murder Mystery novel I have invented a support group for Unceremoniously Dumped Women, as well as Severely Abused and Broken and Battered Women, but it turns irreverently funny, and also raunchy and explosive and brutal when some of the women in this group decide to take matters into their own hands and start avenging themselves on the men who’ve hurt them. Women who have been dishonored. Women who want their dignity back. Dehumanized by men.

Now I must say that I do like men. This is purely fiction. I have been inspired by many female friends and my own bad luck with certain unsavory men. Men who turned out to be no good. I've dated nearly all types.

This support group will thus be dubbed:

Ballbusters R Us Hegemony Unit and known as BRUHUS and will be pronounced "Broo-hoos."

Some of you might be reminded of a bar called The BruHouse. I must admit that my fervently loyal female members of BRUHUS do actually all love beer. Some of them even brew their own.

In BRUHUS we have several levels of women, and even the group who help those in need - Tech Support. Tech Support consists of Functionable Scary Goons, including three butch women:

1. one who resembles Andrew Dice Clay, except far hairier, and with an immutable NY accent.

2. another resembles my cousin Carma, who is scary and eats broken glass for breakfast and barbed wire for dessert.

3. a third one resembles and IS the spitting/mirror cloistered image of Rosie O'Donnell.

Levels and degrees. Level 1 through Level 10.


Level 1: The Fallen Angel Crowd Killers (FACKERS): normally the wind up being snarky snotty drunken drugged out wasteland girls who dress cheap and easy and are slutty and gossip. Crusty and dirty and naughty and depraved, too. Gone to the dark side, if you will.

Level 2: Slated and Armed For Fucking Eternal Revenge (SAFFERS) – they’ve been trained to fight and are ready to roll and rumble…rock n roll! A higher level of FACKERS, except they might hide their sluttishness and dress a little more nonsensical or extremely brutishly, donning more black than usual.

More to come...

Bad One Nite Stand and In Pursuit of Passion with my Pussy

Since I am a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman, I can act like a QUIM anytime I want; thus, I am rather QUIMMISHLY brazen, flamboyant, spunky, and scandalous about using the word, Pussy, and I don't CARE whether it is a taboo word or no.

Some people think it's vulgar or morose or over-the-top or bizzaro or whatever, but it works for me and what I'm trying to convey and write. Pussy: I think it's a FUN word. I am altogether uncertain as to use it in my novel; nevertheless, here is a scene about it that I wrote a while ago. It's fun and quirky and I hope you like it. Besides, there's a cat in the scene - a Pussycat! Ha!

Here is the Pussy Scene:

Oh shit.

This is a reverse Goldilocks moment.

Who the fuck is that next to me in my fucking bed? Because Goldilocks in reverse means that there is SOMEONE or SOME THING that is pierced and young and weird and smelly, complete with nappy-rappy-crappy hair, who smells very bad (am sure I mentioned that already but its fungus-sy and the wrong kind of seaweed putrid) STILL IN MY BED, WITH ME!

At this point the cat stretches and sniffs ruthlessly. “Hmmm. We haven’t had THAT smell before,” Winston thinks lazily and happily. “This is a damn fine one. I wonder where this one came from?”

The cat jumps up onto the bed and climbs over to me and purrs loudly. I grimace at Winston, who is idyllically happy and purring, oblivious to my turmoil. As usual. The purring grows ferociously louder, almost ominous.

I just don’t understand my cat.

And I don’t understand or remember a damn thing from last night.

At least, not after those six tequila-me-upchuck-into-the-toilet shots.

Oh gawd. I look at the lump under the bedding next to me but I can only see the nappy hair. I have to plug my nose to avoid the stench. I am assuming it’s a he, not a she, but I just can’t tell at this point. It could even be dead.

I poke it, gingerly. It moves every so slightly and the bed creaks creepily. I think I’ll throw this bed away - if or when I can get the creature to leave.

Which reminds me - I hope he doesn’t wake up and I hope I didn’t...at this point I have to look down at Miss Purdue (my pough-pough) to see if she got some unwarranted, uncontrollable, unremembered action. Miss Purrfection, Miss Penelope, Miss Pussy-go-lightly-tread-this-year-at-least. Miss Purrcatmonger-jonger-wronger. Miss P-diddly-riddly-quiddly. Miss PDQ Bach-little-music-little-romance-get-down-tonight...uh huh. Miss Piquant-tonight-hot-n-spicy-mama. Miss Priss. Miss Prissy. Miss LMNO...P. Miss paraded-then-jaded. Miss Practice makes Perfect. Miss Pleased-as-Punch and on a Purple passionate ex-Plosion of Cloud Nine. Okay, maybe not that last one…

Oh, she is sad, but that means I am happy. So nothing happened. She was not even rubbed down, needled or bumped into, not even accidentally and I am so relieved. NO redness, no atrophies, no wilting, no blooming — just nothing but neglect. Good. I apologize to her (for the umpteenth time this year for her having NO action).

Let’s flashback to last night and the parts I do remember...

Okay, so Jazhette and I are sitting at the Upswing Bar and this guy comes up with three shots of Tres Generaces tequila...

“Argghhh!” The thing in my bed is now yelling, grunting, and moaning with the wrong kind of moan. Not the blissful moan that SHOULD be happening in this bed.

Winston steps back a foot in horror, then retreads to pounce on the thing in my bed. He lands, all four paws and claws on the lump of the smelly thing on my bed.

“HAAAAAAA!” it screams. The dawn of the living dead rises. Or the waking of the dawn of the living dead. The creature tries to shake Winston off, but Winston is stuck, like a prickly cactus on the buttocks of something huge, living and scary.

The blanket falls off. I gasp in horror.

Clad in a mildewed pink ballerina costume, half-ripped and half-grogged out by a green slimy sewage stuck to its forehead, is a man with scary stick-up straight hair and blue and black makeup sliming down his teary-eyed, sweaty face. He is big, bad and ugly.

This is my nightmare risen from the remnants of last night? It is! Oh gawd.

“Jara? Is that you?” His oh-so familiar voice creaks out crisply into the clean morning air. “Oh Jesus, what’s that smell?” He frowns. “OH shit, I think I was mugged last night and thrown in the sewer!” He looks around. “They stole my purse!”

His purse is missing? My mind is missing! I cannot think for the life of me who this is. He is a warbled scary big smelly creature who has come to life from my worst nightmare. Ferocious smelly nightmare come true.

He stares at my blank leer at him. “It’s me, Oscar. From art history class. Der!” Now he knows I know. He and I have been friends since birth. One of my oldest friends. More of a flamer than flambé at a fancy restaurant.

“What ARE you doing in my bed?” I ask.

Winston starts swatting at the seaweed on Oscar’s face.

“We left the party together last night, sweetie. Don’t you remember? I knew you were drunk, but Jesus, Jara...you don’t remember anything?” He throws up his hands and steps off the bed, bending over to pick up feathers from a bright pink lame-excuse-for-a-boa that has fallen off him.

So I am wondering to myself, again, now sober, why did I have those shots? I do not normally do tequila.

“Man, I’m sore down there.” He looks down his pants and rubs Mr. Ya-Ya Brotherhood. “You’re one wild woman!”

Oh shit.

You have GOT to be kidding me!

Chapter one - Reinvention of Myself and finding my bliss

Here is an excerpt of my Chick Lit/Thriller/Murder Mystery novel:

Chapter One

So here I am smack-dab allegorically and rhetorically phoenix-rising-from-the-dead in my new creative writing group trying to find myself! Because somehow in the past year and a half I’ve been lost. (Or so my therapist BrightAnna Winthrop tells me.)

A perfunctory Lost Soul; proverbial disjointed and discombobulated, plundering, blundering, hither and thither, a pious wake of a life, losing its heart and hearth and everything heavenly and delightful, like a posthumous artist-at-large pillow-talking its fickle way into the depths of despair and hell. Now needing to snake it’s wanderlust heartless ways back out of the Hades abyss, back into the throngs of life, of reality, but isn’t reality hell, too, sometimes?

Ah yes, my Lost Soul. How it had mired me so. It hankered to be returned to me. With the help of this new age creative writing therapy, somehow.

But my Lost Soul could have had something to do with merely ONE of the following, but more likely it was just a sad hodgepodge conglomerate of the following:

1. My uber-addiction to chocolate – which really spiraled out of control when my relationship woes began a year and a half ago.

2. My sucky-ass love life which led to the chocolate habit (see number 1.).

So really my chocolate addiction caused the downfall of my romance with Farkley Farley Farvenator III (v. bad name, but v. delicious-looking guy who owns a smattering of chocolate factories – HELLO! – can you say HOT HOT HOT?) AND my lack of love/attention/sex in the relationship, because Farkley is a workaholic (hence HIS addiction), caused me to consume even more vast quantities of chocolate (which I stole and subsequently got caught. It’s never good when you shit where you eat, and if you live there as well.).

Farkley Farley Farvenator III neglected me. So I ate more chocolate. Our romance was doomed from the start because he is a workaholic.

I ate more chocolate and got fat so Farkley lost interest. Our romance was doomed, always, because I am a chocoholic.

3. My career being in the toilet. (Again because of my chocoholic addiction!)

4. My finances. Or lack thereof. (Ditto reason!)

5. And now my homelessness. (Same!)

Homeless? Actually, technically, I’m currently crashing at Jazhette’s pad for the moment but wondering how long I can stay there amidst the empty red Chinese cartons from Wong My Jong Express (buy four eggrolls, get the fifth one free), vacant and stench-encrusted Jose Cuervo Tequila bottles with the equally egregious encroached worm within, stacks of raunchy Playgirl magazines, empty battery boxes for her Eroscillator, all the raucous parties, and the endless revolving door of vapid boytoys galore.

Or…drumroll please…number six.

6. Or it could be that I almost died last week.

You see, what feels like just a nanosecond ago, I was strapped in tightly on a charismatic rollercoaster ride to Hell.

It all happened when I was helping a friend at Gretel’s Halloween party last week. At the time, we were all ensconced having a perfectly marvelous jolly time, just having a fantastic jubiliant macabre-laden spooky Halloweenie madcap galore time…and all of a sudden my friend, Chryssa, my needy pushy freaked-out-to-the-gills agoraphobic friend, grabs me and pulls me aside amidst downing tequila shots supplied by Sabrina.

“Jara, he’s HERE, I just know it! You’ve gotta HELP me!” Rabid fear in her voice, I smelled fear. Oceans of it. Smelled like dead fishies in saccharated and saturated pondwater. And her stalker, Ryan, probably smelled it too. Well, he was probably good at sniffing that stench in the air, he’d been staking her straight for seven years, even during his stints in prison. Somehow he always got to her, always found her, or had his creepy cronies from the outside find her and harass and stalk her, but she’d always somehow survived.

“Oh!” I hiccuped. The tequila’s getting to me, I had to stop somehow. “Who – him? What? No way. I’d heard he just got out of the slammer, but HERE? Seriously?” I said. My eyes roved around but naturally, everyone was dressed in Halloween costumes. It would be difficult to spot her stalker.

“How do you know he’s here?” But then I saw her ghastly face. It didn’t matter if she had proof or not, I’d help her no matter what. Ryan had already driven her to becoming too pokey-petrified to leave her home and this was the first time I’d seen her outside of her home. She had a few overgrown hairy-ass man escorts tonight, too. But they were nowhere in sight right now.

“You HAVE to switch masks with me. I’m really scared,” Chryssa said, shaking.

“Really? No problem. I’m not scared of him, or of anything!”

“Thanks, Jare. I knew I could count on you! That’s right, you’re not scared of anything, after what you’ve been through…”

I was Vampira Death Goddess Blackest Whore of the Night, and she was Cleopatra, but since she insisted that her ex-boyfriend, Ryan, was stalking her again (we know how nerve wracking that can be and how it always freaked her out) she wanted to throw him off. He’d just gotten out of prison. He’d been stalking her for 7 years and wouldn’t leave her alone. She told me she just wanted a night of peace.

So we swapped masks straightaway.

It was when I was doing the hootchi-cootchie on the dance floor when all of a sudden someone grabbed me and started swirling me around. Which wasn’t a good thing to do because I’d just had scads of tequila.

I was getting incredibly dizzy so I tried to wrench myself away from this Casper the Way Too Friendly Ghost, when he refused to let go of me and then grabbed my arms.

I screamed. I flailed my arms away from him but he lunged for me.

I was trapped on the dance floor and I couldn’t get away. There were too many people dancing and the band was rip-roaring road-rage hellbent on fucking wheels tonight. Gloria was up there playing the bass guitar badly and Sheena was singing lyrically, madly. But my good time had ended for the night.

Casper lunged for me again. I felt a warm rush of blood in my arm as he stabbed me with what I imagined was a sharp stiletto.

I screamed again. I lurched out of the room, clutching my bleeding arm. I felt him come right behind me so I started knocking people out of the way. It was just too goddamned crowded.

Other people on the dance floor screamed. I felt blood surging out of my body. I scooched out of there and through the dining room, bumping into people, who called out after me. I scooted out of that room then and into another.

It was such a maze, Gretel’s damn blasphemously big house.

Gretel yelled at me in the séance room because I skirted through, interrupting her hard work at it, as the gypsy that she was. I saw Jazhette dressed in her warped witch costume, but couldn’t stop as she called out my name wistfully, but she didn’t come after me. I thought I saw Sabrina in there, too, but I wasn’t sure. I was wrenching in pain at this point. Chryssa was seated at the table, too, because I recognized my original mask. She waved as if nothing were wrong which seemed a bit unusual but I had no time to mull that over. She’d probably drank as much as I had, too, though.

But couldn’t they tell that I was in trouble, clutched over, bleeding, and running around like a crazy woman, sceaming my fucking head off? Out of control? And that someone was chasing me?

Didn’t they hear me scream?

Jesus.

My hurt lurched in my throat and I felt the warm flush of blood gust out. It was some kind of wonderfully bad cut. I couldn’t even look at it. I had to escape. I couldn’t stop to explain to Gretel or any of my other friends.

So I kept running throughout the vast house, pushing past the mass of people streaming in every room. The house loomed larger than ever, maze-friendly suddenly swarming into pseudo rat-in-a-maze syndrome.

Where was the exit? The stabber wearing the Casper the Friendly Ghost mask chased after me with a real knife, my blood squirting from it.

The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital, which was a week later. Apparently I’d gotten stabbed again above the chest and almost died. I’d lost a lot of blood.

It appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. They could never prove Chryssa’s ex did it. They couldn’t even find him.

So this is a fresh start for me. Start over. Somehow. Forget about the near-death experience. My therapist and the docs all gave me a clean bill of health anyway. Aunt Aganesia’s relieved. Oh, I told them all, I’ve had worse. And I have.

“Write about your friends.” Says the moderator of our creative writing group, a guy named Gil, dreamy, 30 something, somewhat laid back, blazing blue eyes. Mel Gibson’s effervescent younger and fleshier cousin, probably likes the chocolate doughnuts too much. Which means that with my chocolate addiction we’re already like best friends!

He sits across from me and I just stare. I gaze longingly into his gorgeous baby blues. I swoon.

My page is blank though. He looks pointedly at it and winks.

“Jara? You alright?” He says.

I nod blankly, still mesmerized by him. He then smiles. I melt. Swoon further sway this way and that. I’m so Jell-O Brand Jell-O Pudding, the creamy lemony custardy kind (with chocolate sprinkles on top – don’t knock it til you try it.). My stomach see-saws.

Everyone else in the group sits at our long vast table scribbling madly. Pencils scratch. Paper scuffles. Chairs shuffle. Some pencil movements sound angry, others easy, steady…most are so thar she blows and billows happily. It’s a kind hearted comforting rhythym and I like it just fine. Otherwise all is still.

We’re in the back room (specially reserved, blackhouse-dark, boomingly-austere) of an intellectual-afficianado’s coffee shop hangout called Karl’s Marx, which is pretty ironic since two of the crew in our group actually look like Karl Marx. Murph: adorns a long crusty beard and looks post-acopalypse hippie with his retro peace-marked jeans and neon-thwarted-green spiraled-paisley cowboy-pocket-flared long sleeve shirt; Viv: has fiery-red tangly-angry fly-me-away hair (scary merged with cool) and bushy caterpillar come-hither eyebrows that tantalize and tease when she talks. A hubrious husband and wife team. I’ve often heard that people who live together for long periods of time begin to resemble one other. It’s true. They must eat the same things so their nutrition is similar, perhaps even their facial features are the same since they perhaps mimic each other.

At this café, they have the best non-fat mocha latte, sprinkled top-heavy with chocolate doo-dads. Mine rests happily next to me, strangely untouched. That’s how hot Gil is! He by far surpasses my latte. It is a delicious juxtaposition, having this hot, uber-intelligent leader of our group and being surrounded by warm, funny newfound writer buddies in a comforting quintessential coffee café (I know this is SO cliché but what can I say at this point in the story? I’m so Muh!). What else can possibly surpass this moment in time? Oh yeah = surviving death last week! YES!

Gil moves easily and slides over beside me in a funny comedic super-nerdy way. No more shy-guy, must be wrong about that. Everyone laughs at his hyped-up over eagerness. He’s got his flirt-on, I can tell and I smile at this. To your rescue, he says, grinning and I am hamming it up here. But dying a little too because I’ve sworn off men (like this drought will last – NOT! Did I mention I have next to No Willpower?). It’s bad enough that my dentist is HOT and always making me salivate – not fun when you are at the dentist. Dentists are supposed to look more like Warren Buffet, not Warren Beatty. Salivate and slobber vs dry mouth? They both pretty much suck ass bigtime. But now this…I was told by my therapist to get a creative outlet since I almost died and I keep getting fired at temp jobs for writing and inventing stories in my head and this is supposed to be my sanctuary. My new bliss. My haven. Not my lust-riddled heaven.

Gil says, “Just write about your closest friends. Who are they? What do they desire most? What evils lie in the hearts of our closest friends? What secrets, lies, and glory of such waxes and wanes? Go to it!” I watch his gorgeous mouth move. I am mesmerized. I sit up in my chair and start to scribble about my best friend.

Evil? In the hearts of my friends? Secrets and lies?

Really?

Are you serious?

My friends. Real pieces of work. After what I’ve been through, this should be quick and painless.

But my friends don’t have evil in their hearts! They might be weird and quirky, have many flaws, but they’re all fun-loving and affable. Sweet, really, goofy and funny, too.

Should I actually really write about my friends? Or about my near death experience? It would be too easy and too fresh to write about almost dying at the Halloween party last week so I decide against it. I don’t want to be reminded of it again. It frankly scares the Bejeezus Bolshevicks out of me. I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since. Now I know how Chryssa feels. Especially now, with Ryan out of prison and his person being unaccounted for. He has gone missing and nobody knows anything and nobody has a clue about what to do about it. Chryssa’s locked herself up at her house again, the agoraphobia back in black as a rabid panic Mars attack.

I’ve never been scared of anything before, so this is a really weird feeling for me. Drugs zonk me out to sleep, but the nightmares still loom heavily in my head. Especially while sleeping. I quit taking the meds for a mini-moment but Jazhette’s visitors wake me up so I still have to rely on them so I can snooze.

And so I decide to write about my friends. I have six very good girlfriends, all quirky, all with flaws, all close. So here goes:

“Jazhette Zing is my best friend and she is a…sex addict.” I write.

She’d actually just lost her job because she DID IT with one of her many bosses, the VP of Finance and gotten caught – by his wife AND 36 of us because it was Brian’s (the VP’s) birthday and we were going to surprise him. We even had a giant German chocolate cake with all the candles racked up top-heavy and everything… but it got tossed with the condom wrapper.

This happened the week before my near-death experience last week.

So I’ve had a series of seriously foul weeks.

“She and I both got canned. Sacked. Yep, “gunny-sacked” how my uncle Maurice used to say after fishing on his Shrimp Boat, Lila Loves Lace, back in the heyday yesterdays of my youth.”

My cell rings. I ignore it as everyone stares. I catch some glares. “And she just got caught screwing around on a large mahogany desk and…” I continue to write as I mute my phone quickly. “just as 36 of us stride in the VP’s office with a surprise birthday greeting, along with his pregnant wife and a large birthday cake and…”

A text message erupts on my phone. I glance at it.

Naturally. It’s Jazhette with one of trillion daily and many minor-emergencies madnesses, meltdowns, and misgivings about her life. Mundane mind-numbing musings about her munsie kitten, myriads rambling morosely over the minutiae of her conquests…like I cared! Not!

“HEP!” Reads the text. She misspells HELP meaning she is in dire straits AGAIN. Lately we always seem to be bailing each other out of trouble.

I text back: “BUSY. Ttyl.”

Wonder what it is THIS TIME? She’s already gotten me fired. I’m a little sore with her at the moment, and having to deal with all her bulbuous boywonders trolling in and out of her townhouse (and in and out of her hoo-ha), just so she can get her femininny fickle fix. Staying with her is torture. Agony. I feel pathetic that I have nowhere else to go. And it certainly doesn’t help that I’m not getting any, either. Or that I am recovering from being stabbed in the chest and am now on heavy meds!

I cannot always jump when she calls anyway. I have a life, too.

Actually I don’t really have a life anymore and that’s absolutely my biggest problem. I need to GET A LIFE. That is what I want most on this earth. To get a life, a normal life. No more weirdo workaholic witless boyfriends. No more shitty sullen sophomoric (sycophantic) dead end jobs. No more annihilating near death experiences. No more moving in with drippy doldrum rain on the parade boyfriends who dump me and leave me high and dry, virutally homeless.

I sigh thinking about it all as I continue to write about Jazhette. My fucked up sex-addicted pornographic brain-addled best friend, who has her own set of issues, come to think of it.

“I first learned of Jaz’s sex addiction at summer camp when she’d gotten caught by the resident director for having cheap beer in her room (illegal), Simple Simon’s pizza splattered on the wall (defacing property) and a boy in her room (he was underage, too). Naked. With used condoms smattered on the floor. Actually half a box. Since she was staying with me for the summer, my Aunt Aganesia (who still does not approve of Jazhette and snorts loudly and humphy-hoo-hoos everytime I bring up her name) had to somehow explain the egregious explosion of Jazhettes-coming-of-age in a burst of blast to Jaz’s seemingly displeased parents. Actually I suspect that Jaz’s mom, an ex-stripper, ex-bad B movie actress, and ex-showgirl and ex-model and ex-fashion designer, was proudly pleased. Jaz’s dad was livid. (He skipped town that year, never to return.) When she started she started hard-core and it’s been downhill ever since. A rocky road to disentangle her and rescue her, etc.” I continue to write.

Jaz text back to me: “Urgnt. Has to do wit a body.”

Good grief. I don’t have time for this. I’m trying to retrieve my Lost Soul and experience my creative writing therapy, Goddammit!

A body? There she goes again. She’s probably at our neighborhood liquor store, Slam Dunk N Drink, checking out some hot studmuffin’s body. Yet again.

“Everything allright, Jare?” Gil says, raises his dark brows up quizzically.

“Oh, sure, Gil. Just fine.” I say. I melt again looking at him. Feeling warmer and red-faced by being noticed again by him. Let me stand next to your fire.

I breathe deeply and continue to write one of my favorite type of character sketches: “In a world that has seven supposed wonders, here is Jazhette’s own list of Seven Wonders of Her World:
1. Russel Crowe tied with George Clooney tied with Clive Owen (on any given day she’d vascillate between this worthy trio)
2. PlayGirl magazine (the ultimate!)
3. The Eroscillator vibrator (previously endorsed by Dr. Ruth in the 90’s on the internet)
4. Corsets (especially the kind you can buy at www.CorsetCopia.com, but Jazhette, a fashionista, Renaissance Costumer Designer, and fashion designer, creates her very own concoction)
5. Goth music (Jazhette is pseudo-adult goth, when she wants to be, did I mention that?)
6. Sarah McClaughlin’s music (Random Book of Insults)
7. Tequila (3rd place: Cuervo Gold! 2nd place: Agave from Mexico! 1st place: Petrone – a smooth blast of heaven!)

Next!

My brain’s on fire! I’m loving this. Who’d have thought that I would be writing, getting a life again.

Ah! To the beginnings of getting a life!

“Gloria is a starter magician. But she is awesome and glorious. She totally rocks. She changed her fumbling career as an administrative assistant so that she could be on stage and since she has virtually no talent that any of us were actually aware of – she can’t dance, act, sing, or make people laugh, she recently and secretly took an interactive internet class (supplemented by some of those Dummies and Idiots’ Guide books) about how to become a magician. It’s not like you just morph into one, you know, so she’s told me.

So Gloria has this show a few weeks ago BUT the person she made disappear was missing for longer than the usual time frame. Was trapped in the wrong trap door for a little over 5 hours and he is now suing her. We are trying to help her get a good attorney to help her. She is in more trouble than she’d ever dreamed and is actually a good magician, ironically. Maybe too good for her own good. She is now joking about making herself disappear. Out of the country. Apparently this man missed an important business deal, missed out on making millions and is blaming Gloria. He is trying her on gross negligence. She swears she looked for him but didn’t hear his protests. It didn’t help that he has a high pitched tenor voice that was quelled by the old building squeaks and the construction that is going on in the theatre where she did her show. Also his cell phone died because he had forgotten to recharge it. Also his wife failed to look hard enough for him or insist that Gloria and her crew look longer for him.

So after looking for five hours, Gloria finally found him. That is how big the theatre is and she did not know the inside and outskirts of the theatre she’d actually left to get the manager to get an outline of the theatre and it took one hour to drive to the manager’s house and another hour to drive back so really she spent three hours looking for the guy, who had merely been a volunteer who likes to be up on stage. The entire thing is a mess. Gloria just realized that her friend Gretel swears the place is haunted, and that some ghost is fucking with her and following her around messing up her act. So Gretel performs a Ghosthunt so she can do an exorcist.”

“Gloria’s own list of Seven Wonders of Her World:
1. David Copperfield
2. The Wonder Bra
3. Houdini
4. Idiots Guide to Magic Tricks
5. U2
6. Nikola Tesla
7. Vodka Gimlets

“Sheena has a gambling problem. We had to pull her away late last night. We staged an intervention. It was actually kinda fun. She is now being watched by Chryssa – sort of our own rehab idea. Besides, Chryssa never leaves her home. Sheena’s is in too deep. Her car got repo’d last week. She is late on her rent and might be evicted.”

“Sheena’s top seven wonders of her world:
1. Probability books
2. Society of Actuaries (she is an actuary)
3. Her favorite prized possession: her Binary T-rex Texas Instruments Calculator
4. Gambino’s Casino
5. Blackjack – her game of choice
6. some infamous card sharks
7. Whiskey, straight up

“Chryssa is a snoop and a spy and also recently got caught.” I wrote. “By me.”

That was a mess. We were trying to straighten things out – turns out she’s been snooping on the entire pack of us. She says she was practicing for her new career. She wants to be a private investigator and she wanted to practice for her new job. But unfortunately she found out some shit about some of us. Which wasn’t her intention. Or was it?

Like she found out that her neighbor Ariel was cheating on her fiancé. With the hot postman. Being so The Postman Rings Twice and Thrice, etc Good grief. She followed Ariel, tailed her like a crazyperson and then caught her and proved it by taking pictures.

And that I had a crush on Theo – who is Gretel’s new boyfriend – and that I’d been writing him anonymous love poems for the past 6 months – but stuffing them in my desk drawer. I had not even sent them and she ratted me out to Gretel! Who’s pissed. Scratch another one on the Ex-Friend Totem Pole side of life, and one off the Friend Totem Pole side of life.

And that Sabrina’s boyfriend was missing and didn’t really go to France like she’d said. She was lying and Chryssa was dying to find out why. We all were. She had all of us going off our rockers about it. Where was he? Rehab? Sabrina was just probably too embarrassed to speak the truth, that he was an alcoholic. Save face and all that I suppose.” I continued to write. Just as I wrote it I realized what Jazhette had been texting me. Something about a body.

I wrote: “Sabrina’s top seven:
1. Tim Burton movies
2. Johnny Depp (who doesn’t love Johnny Depp?)
3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre – she is a freaky fan
4. Hannibal Lector
5. Stephen King
6. Horror Movies, especially bad B-movies
7. John Waters (Sabrina was him for Halloween)

Chryssa’s top seven:
1. Aldous Huxley
2. James Bond
3. True Crime stories
4. John Le Care
5. Billie Holiday
6. Frank Sinatra
7. Martini’s – shaken not stirred

Me?
1. Edward Gorey
2. Agatha Christie
3. Addams Family
4. Mystery on PBS
5. Chick Lit
6. Chocolate (especially Godiva, Dove, and etc.) including Chocolate Martini’s
7. Gustav Klimt - The Impressionists and Impressionist art in general

Speaking of that, and the word, body, I looked at my next test message from Jazhette.

“Its a body in ur backyrd. I dug it up. Horace’s calling the cops and –“

Stop. The text message stopped right there!

Why would it stop? What was happening? I shuffled back in my chair. It scraped and everyone looked at me. I stood, shaking.

“I have to go now!” I erupted, grabbing my stuff and sprinting out of there! Like hell on a roaring river. Like madness interrupted…and wonderland wilted.

Death Becomes Her

Here is another excerpt from my Chick Lit/Murder Mystery/Thriller:

Jara fantasized about all kinds of Quimmish things. As a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman, she sometimes dreamt about her own death and quirky ways of dying and how many of her friends and family and ex-boyfriends would show up at her funeral. Her list included:

1. Died, age 41, in the middle of the night when slipping away to the bathroom and stepping in cat vomit (which was on the threshold floor of the bathroom door arena) and falling backwards on her head and slowly tumbling down the stairs. How would her adorable beau tell her family? That she tripped on cat goop (vomit) and died? HOW HUMILIATING! Would her beau lie? Would he THEN FINALLY GET RID OF THAT FUCKING CAT? It was always throwing up!

2. Died, age 41, at work temping at The City of Stable in the midst of the day, while her co-workers and bosses were in their day-long meeting, nobody noticed except the cleaning people, who had to tell her bosses the very next day and got HR to tell her beau and her family. At first they simply thought she was asleep. Had she actually DIED OF BOREDOM? Most likely. It was actually quite common at The City of Stable.

3. Died, age 41, from an overdose of chocolate, mostly leftover from Christmas and from not having enough sex, she was always making up for losses in voids in her life (neglect from being a middle child, she spoils herself), and from having a broken vibrator, hence overdosing on chocolate. She mainly lived in her head, having a fantasy-sort of life. And you thought the Fantasy Job Mondays were not real? That’s what kept her going all these years, that and her vibrator, and loads of chocolate. She just overdosed the portions this time round…

4. Died, age 41, from being shot to death by her ex-boyfriend (but she’d only dated him for a nano-second and doesn’t think it counted because he never actually went down on her, and that’s not a real relationship, is it?) 12 times, he’d told her the amount of times that he got raped in jail (which he blames on her because naturally it’s HER fault that he landed in jail in the first place…but that’s altogether another story), she was found by her mailman, the door was ajar, who found her cellphone and who rang her beau, and her family and some of her friends. Her ex had busted out of prison and found out where she lived and was still mad at her for being dumped, especially on the answering machine, and especially on Christmas Eve, and also still mad at her for helping her move, blamed her for pretty much everything that had gone awry in his life. Even though they’d only dated for about a month and a half. Go figure. She’d had a number of stalkers and weirdo exes, but this one was the worst.

5. Died, age 41, from suicide. Her career was in the toilet, she had writer’s block and couldn’t finish her novel (which she surmised was shitty swill anyway), her social life had gone awry, her family was sick of her, her boyfriend didn’t want her any more and she’d gained too much weight and she couldn’t get over it. And without love she did not want to live.

6. Died, age 41, from a train wreck. And no, not of her life, but of an actual train. She was in a mad rush to go to a family party. It was her birthday party and she’d be 42. She thought she could outrun the train, but she was wrong. It was a chance death. If she'd left earlier and been on time, she wouldn't have been racing the train. She knew she shouldn't have fed that damn cat!

How to Cut a Deal with a Serial Killer In Transit (SKIT)

This is an excerpt from my Chick Lit/Thriller/Murder Mystery novel;

“You just KILLED your boyfriend!” I said, pouncing out of the closet, my supreme hiding spot; not realizing that now she would perhaps have to kill me to shut me up about the whole thing. That incidental thought bridged itself morosely in the back of my mind…as I attacked her vehemently with my words, brazenly, dangerously…

“Oh, Chryssa!” She jumped, but then stepped forward, IN MY FACE. “You really got me there!” She tossed back her head and hyena laughed. She was so close to me, her purple eyes dilated, her breath quaking, her body shaking.

I thought she’d be speechless. Oh she was clever, this one. I gulped my fear and faced her, murderer that she was.

“You have MURDERED boyfriend!” I repeated. I stared at the blood on her hands. I could not move, and my eyes stuck to the splotches on her hands.

“Chryssa, I told you, about a jillion times, he wasn’t my boyfriend. Just a boytoy, you know?" she smiled again, as if we were at a garden party, discussing prized daffodils or roses. She laughed, a tinkly sound like bells in wintertime, merry little sleighbells on a sled. “Mind if I just step in the loo to wash up?” She held up her bloody hands. She winked. “It’ll just take a nanosecond, I promise.”

I grimaced. “Sure, uh, that’d be fine.” I mean, what was I supposed to say to that?

“I used to be a serial killer, but I got better.” She said, flicking her Liz Claiborne jacket over her princess Dolce Gabana ivory colored sweater and avant garde demeanor. She smiled and turned to step into the bathroom. She came out a moment later and smiled again. It was a million dollar smile, and even her violet eyes flashed. “Now I just kill people for money.”

I just looked at her. I’d just caught her killing her boytoy, with blood on her hands, dragging his clunky body down the staircase, out the front door, and plunking it into the trunk of her silver Mercedes, like it was a mere sack of potatoes, and now, here we were talking about killing, like it was just another quilting hobby. She was so mundane and nonchalant about the whole thing.

“What! Like a mercenary? Like you go to the deepest darkest pits of places, like East Africa and kill people for money? I said.

“That sounds really dramatic…and bad.” She said, as if I was accusing her of doing something terribly wrong.

“Duh! News alert: Killing people IS bad.”

“Chryssa, I HELP people. Don’t you see? I am the equivalent of an exterminator. I get rid of rubbish, of bad, ugly, horrid people. Those who are in the way of others’ happiness. Don’t you want to be happy? Don’t you even have a tiny problem of your own?” She smiled again. “Whiskey? John Powers?” She said, indicating that we go downstairs for some refreshment. Her voice was calm.

“I am what people call a hired hit woman.” She continued as we sat on the couch downstairs a moment later. Sipping whiskey. Conversing about killing. “I used to have a temper, but now I can cool it. I just do it for the money now. So technically, if you want to strike a deal, you’re going to have to pay me and we’re going to have to have a contract. By the way, I’m also not going to kill you because I actually like you. I don’t kill my friends.” We sipped our whiskey and she patted my hand.

“Gee thanks a lot. But…ex-serial killer?” This was just now hitting me, this massive array of information, of who she was, what she did, what she possibly had done. How many people had she killed?

“Yeah, I used to kill my ex-boyfriends in college. But I am a serial killer in transit. I don’t do it any longer. You probably want to know how many are dead because of me. I’d say I’m up to forty-five now, but I’ll have to get back to you on the number.”

“How’d you get away with it?”

“I changed my identity. Got plastic surgery. It’s easy to kill…” Her voiced trailed off, her eyes glistened, and she smiled at me, just beaming. A radiant smile. As if nothing was wrong with what she’d just done, our morbid conversation, a dead bloody body in her trunk.

“No way.”

“Way.”

Huh. Changing her identity? I’d like to change my identity. Disappear. It’s actually part of my fantasy. I really do dream about it. Simply diappear. Now there was a thought that I certainly liked. With all of my problems, that would really work.

“Speaking of which, wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could get rid of your problem, that stalker, old whats-his-name?” She asked. Here was an alternate solution, or maybe part of the solution to my biggest problem.

“That would be like too weird to have you get rid of him for me."

“He’d be out of the picture, never stalk you again, never cause you any more harm.”

“And he would never bother me again.” I said, smiling for the first time that day.

“Nope, he would never bother you again,” She repeated.

"Never. It's a dangerous word," I said.

“There’s a way…” She said.

I put down my glass of whiskey and leaned in. “Go on…I’m listening…” I said.