Erasure Alert!

Don’t get me started.  I am seeing red.  Have you heard about the stupidity of the two Hasidic Newspapers who Photoshopped Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason out of the picture of the Situation Room during the Ben Ladin Raid?

One Orthodox Jewish newspaper, Der Tzitung and one weekly magazine, De Voch were admitting that both publications do not publish photos of women. In a statement about the controversy it caused, Der Tzitung said it follows this practice "because of laws of modesty” and that they do not print any photos of women because they “could be considered sexually suggestive.”

Well, Excuuuuuuuussssssssee Me!

Here is an open letter to the editors of the Der Tzitung and De Voch,

To: Misogynist Religious Zealots Nim Node Editors:

I feel sorry for you if can’t trust yourself or your readers to withstand the image of a woman so much that you are compelled to erase her from a photo that you want to publish in your newspaper/magazine.

How do you live in this world?  How do you restrain yourself in the presence of women? Let me guess. You blame women.  Ever since the story of Eve, you and your kind have been blaming women for causing you to sin and I for one am sick of it.  As I see it, the real snake in the Garden of Eden was under Adam’s Fig Leaf.

From the beginning of time men like you have played the, “Look what you made me do, card!” which has allowed you to shirk your responsibility for your own wicked behavior.  It is this sense of entitlement and blaming that has enabled crimes against women to exist from the archaic past to 2011.

In the name of religion, men have a get out of responsibility-free-card.  Women are inherently evil.  They tempt men.  They make you do what you wouldn’t normally do if women weren’t being women, according to your kind.

In the past, men who blamed women burned them at the stake.  In some countries, where women are still considered to be property, it is permissible for men family members to burn their women to death who don’t conform or who have been besmirched by another man.

You may state that your religious beliefs are sacred and will be upheld.  Well, Bozo, your religious beliefs are wrong if they discount, devalue and approve of erasing half of the worlds population.   As Hasidic Jews, don’t you know how it feels to have someone want to erase you from the planet?  Shame on you.  You should know better.

Subsitu-Tooty Mom

Aunt Tooty was my mother’s sister.  She lived too far away to take my mothers place but she never failed to show up for the important events my father tended to forget like birthdays or a choir presentation.  She sent me cards for no reason.  Sometimes they had two or three dollars in them.  She called and asked me nosy questions about what I was doing with boys.

“Ida, did that boy, what’s his name, Eddie or Freddie ever ask you out?”

“No maam.  He’s going steady with somebody else now.”  I was sure she could hear my heart breaking over the phone.

“Well, then you have to move on.  Don’t be making cow eyes at him any more.”

“I don’t make cow eyes,” I whined instead of mooed.  I still made cow eyes at any number of boys but I wouldn’t admit that to Aunt Tooty.  They could have gotten the milk for free too if they’d only known.  Boys are so stupid.  Tooty was not.

“Don’t be in a rush.  Boys will chew you up and spit you out if you let them.”

“I would just like to have a boyfriend so I won’t be a freak.  I get tired of going places by myself.”

“You go to the movies by yourself?”  Aunt Nosey wanted to know.

“No.  Tina and I go together.”

“Do you have a good time?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”  Aunt Tooty wanted me to have manners, though god knows, where they were supposed to come from, I couldn’t say.

“Yes maam.”

 “Listen, Ida.  If you went with an old boy, you’d never get to see the movie because once a teenage boy gets close enough to a pretty girl like you, they sprout tennacles that are every where you are.  You’d spend all your time trying to push their tennacles away from you.  You know what I mean don’t you?”

 “You’re talking about them trying to touch you.”

 “Yes, in your feminine areas, Ida.”

 “Can we talk about something else, Aunt Tooty?”

 “Only if you promise me you will stay strong when you get alone with Eddie or Freddie.”
“I told you, he doesn’t want me.  He has a girlfriend.”

“Well, it’s his loss.  You are a beautiful, fun, sweet girl.  And you’re smart as a whip.  Any boy would be lucky to be seen with you.  Don’t worry your time will come.”

“You mean some day, my prince charming will come?”   I seriously doubted this, but I liked it when Aunt Tooty tried to cheer me up.  She did a good job mothering me over the telephone.

“Oh I’m sure you are going to have lots of Prince Charmings.  You just wait and see.”

I did wait and see. But Tooty didn’t get it quiet right.   Most of the men in my life turned out to be Prince Alarmings.  You know what I mean.  They were the kind of men you don’t take home to Mama.



Happy Mothers Day.

Long Island Iced Tea and Strumpets

Ok, now that the hupla has quieted down and my royal hangover is over, I can confess that my BFF, Lady Tina Tiny and I did in fact have a Long Island Iced Tea & Crumpets Strumpets Party to celebrate the Royal Uniting. 

We were also celebrating that we know how to make Long Island Iced Tea (LIT) and that we happen to have between the two of us all the necessary ingredients.  In case you don’t know about Long Island Ice Tea, I have included a how-to video at the bottom of this post.  I’ll let you figure out how to be a Strumpet* all by yourself.

The one good thing about returning to Big Thicket is my best friend Tina. Tina Fredricks and I were best friends all through school.  Okay she was also my only friend.  Tina and I were both shy and could hardly speak to another person but for some reason we could talk to each other and we did, all day long. This was before texting when we actually wrote notes on paper with pens or pencils and passed them to each other in class or in the hall.

We couldn’t have been closer if we had been born Siamese twins.   We did everything together including having crushes on the same boys and it didn’t matter.  There was no competition or jealously because we both knew the boy didn’t have a clue that we were alive.

Tina never left Big Thicket but we stayed in touch through the years and it has been really great to get to see her everyday.  Tina married a local boy after I left town and is still happily married to him. 

Robert Timothy Tiny, the oldest son of Ben and Louise Tiny, and no, to my knowledge no one in the world has ever called him Tim Tiny.  You see when he popped into this world forty something years ago, he came in at 11lbs and 5 ounces and everybody who saw him from the doctor to the nurses to his parents said exactly the same thing, “My God he is big.” And it stuck.

Tina who is now Tina Tiny is married to Big Tiny and they are one of those couples that I admire so much, even if they have those really dumb names.

As promised here is a strumpet giving you directions on how to make the "Tea".



Beware the Long Island Iced Tea:  It can set your Inner Strumpet Free!
Hugs,

P.S. *A strumpet is a loose woman first described by Shakespeare. A crumpet is a piece of cake served with butter or a person (or, collectively, persons) considered sexually desirable.  Either way, it's good to be a tasty little morsel.

Royal Happy Ending or Royal Pain in the End?

Will you be watching the Royal Wedding as Kate Middleton marries Prince William?

Here in Big Thicket, we’re still enamored with Prince Albert.  In case you are too young or too innocent, Prince Albert was ground up into tobacco and doled out in a red can with a hinge lid.

This is the same Prince Albert that children were referring to when they phoned their local drug store and asked, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”  Because the woman who answered the phone was not born yesterday but did her store-clerk duty and answered, “Yes, we do.”  She knew full well the punch line,” Well Don’t you think you better let him out?!” was coming amid giggles of laughter and a kerplunk as the phone slammed in her ear.

The Prince Albert that I am referring to here is pipe tobacco and is mild enough to be used for cigarettes.

When I was growing up my juvenile delinquent cousin rolled his own.  E.J. loitered at my grandfather’s house when he wasn’t loitering around the domino tables at the courthouse or pulling up his baggy blue jeans that he wore down around his hips.

He had those thin cigarette papers that he would gingerly take from the pack, crease in a little trough between his fingers that he filled with Prince Albert tobacco so that before you could say, “Dude, that looks like a doobie,” he was puffing away.

With the price of cigarettes these days, E.J. could probably take all the money he has spent on cigarettes and pay for Kate Middleton’s shoes.  I was going to say E.J. could have paid for the wedding, but even E.J. never smoked that much.

I confess I have to watch the wedding.  I am somewhat of an expert at weddings, since I have gone to the altar more times than one should.   I want to see if I can gage how long it will last from the ceremony.  Sorta like reading tea leaves.  If I could have just figured out from the beginning how long before the end, I could have had an entirely different life.

I wish Kate and William all the best, as if that will help them survive what can only be a nightmare way to live with all the scrutiny and publicity.

Now we can see why Prince Albert wanted to stay in the can.

You Can't Keep A Good Girl Down

From the "Can't Keep A Good Girl Down" Department. Here is a girl at the top of my list.

In August of 2008 Nicole Marquez was an aspiring young dancer who fell six floors from her apartment building in New York City. She lay for 8 hours before being found. Nicole broke her neck, back, pelvis and ribs. She also punctured a lung.

In the hospital Nicole endured multiple surgeries, a bout of pneumonia, and a series of mini-strokes. Nicole was also on a ventilator for over two weeks. She is back in her home in Jackson, Mississippi learning to walk again.

Nicole is the young lady in the video




“Weight of the World” is by Grady Champion, a great singer, managed by a good friend of mine. A mutual friend of Grady and Nicole's, who is doing a documentary on Nicole, made the video.

Bless your heart Nicole!!!

Lindsay on Jay Leno

Ok, Lindsay.

Is it true the old sentiment, Anytime a addict's lips are moving it means she is lying?

Come on Lindsay, walk the talk. I'm rooting for you.

I Fought The Law And The Lawyers Won

I don’t know the Low Down on Lindsay Lohan but that’s not going to stop me from commenting about it.

 I feel your pain Lindsay, but only just a little. Let’s see, you are:

Young,
Beautiful,
Photogenic,
Look great in skin-tight white dresses,
Controlled substance expert,
Jewelry connoisseur,
Possibly talented, and
Able to afford high-priced lawyers (Always a plus!)

Being in trouble with the law is like having all your very bad days at once.  Lindsay gets to have hers in public with cameras following her every move and most likely with a hangover and a no-pot chaser.

I got in trouble with the law without all of the above advantages, although I probably had the hangover in common.

Without writing a dissertation on the justice system, suffice it to say: you don’t want to get on the bad side of John Law.  Just ask Lindsay.

And me.

Lindsay may actually be innocent of something for a change so the irony of her actually going to jail for something she didn’t do would be a pisser.

Like it was for me.

Getting busted is bad enough but then they make you put on the orange jump suit.

 (And would somebody tell me please why jump suits?  I mean if you have to use the bathroom, you have to pull your top off in front of anybody who wants to get an eyeful.  And then you have to be careful where the top half of your jump suit goes and not let it fall around your knees or get twisted and floating.  Ewwwwww and awkward.)

I don’t know, maybe in Hollywood they get designer jumpsuits and actors who play great lawyers on TV.

Remember that old song, “I fought the law and the law won.”  I’m sure that song was written by someone from Texas. In the Texas judicial system, you will be judged by a jury of your peers who will decide who has the best lawyer.  Not necessarily on your innocence. 

Sadly, I speak from experience. 

Lindsay may have won for today and be out of jail, but the law has been practicing for centuries and it doesn’t screw around when it is out to screw you.

Best of luck, Lindsay.  And say, can you tell me where did you get that white dress?

Yall Behave!