Fandango No. 5 [FPQ]

It’s like Chanel No. 5, only a lot cheaper and won’t trigger a migraine.

So here’s this week’s provocative question (actually three questions):

“Is there a ‘blogging-you’ who is different from the real-world you? If so, how are the two ‘yous’ different? How has the ‘blogging-you’ evolved since you first started blogging?”

Yes. I am different here, but not just in Blogville.

There is an online-me who is somewhat different from meatspace-me. In the real world, I’m a small, older woman and I’ve been alone for many years. I have no one to back me up, physically, financially, emotionally, etc. So, I’m very careful. Extremely cautious. I am known as kind, sweet, helpful, by most. In fact, when people have met me in person after knowing me online for a while, they said I’m a lot nicer than they thought I’d be.

Online, I feel freer to state my opinions, to make jokes about whatever thing. To diss our horrible POTUS whenever I please, no matter who is around. I dgaf about people’s delicate feelings, nor do mine get hurt easily here. It’s words on a screen. Move on if you don’t like what you read. I do. I block racists on Twitter; I don’t cry over them. I also feel free to say no, to not do things I don’t want to, to simply fucking ignore irritating people, to ghost them, to delete, to mock, to parody… and there were years I used to troll the trolls. I’ve quit that though.

In meatspace, I don’t do most of that ever. I only make jokes when I am comfy with my audience. I did do a few rounds of stand-up comedy at a venue I felt okay about ~ it was tame comedy, relatively speaking. I usually don’t ignore people. I say thank you and no thank you and sorry, even to bums asking for money. If the gross guy dumpster diving at my apartment complex says good morning, I say it back. I try not to make enemies. I try very hard not to make anyone angry or displeased. When I fail, which is rare but it happens, I feel bad. Online, I don’t care.

Sometimes it turns out that characters on the screen and real people occupy the same space in the Venn diagram intersection, which can be tricky for me to deal with. It’s hard to go back and forth, and I haven’t fully mastered that task, since I am also a character of my own creation, continually evolving, except exactly the same person since I was 14 years old. Paradox. I think only one of my readers will possibly be able to grok this paragraph. No, not you. 🙄

That’s two questions answered. As far as the third, I have become much more discreet since I began my first blog. I say waaay fewer personal things now, hard as that may be to believe. But those who were reading Ultrablog know. Plus even this blog had much more daily life type stuff for a while. It’s not that I’m paranoid now, but more that my life has become such a bore there’s simply nothing to say.

I’m not complaining. You can have the “interesting life” fortune c00kie. After the drama I’ve had, I prefer boringness.

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Feeeeeeeelings…

Cue Barry Manilow. I don’t trust feelings and here’s a nice quote from Goodreads for One-Liner Wednesday to sum up why:

In my otter poast today I said I wasn’t a fan of the feelings blurt. I don’t need the brutal truth about your feelings at all times… they’ll probably change anyway. Mine do, especially the most intense ones. Not all of them ~ I always love my children more than anything ~ but I often get angry and that passes. I know not to burst out at folks in the heat of rage. Also, I prefer not getting shot.

Back when I was on dating sites (barf), it had become trendy for men not merely to list “honesty” as one of their traits but to preface it with some adjective such as fierce or fearless or bold. 🙄🙄🙄 Yeah, that’s what I want, some tactless warrior to tell me when I look like crap.

But think about all the declarations of love and passion and forever everness that have been uttered by so many over the centuries only to fade away and die when one of them falls for someone new. Just transitory feelings, not to be trusted… give me some math. Numbers, data, facts. Those I like. Your feelings? Pffft. Clouds in a windy sky.

Three of a Mind

(Via the Blokey Guy)

Name Three …

Cold things?

– Chicago winter, doggie’s nose, how best to serve a dish of vengeance

Hot things?

– jalapeños, molten lava, Taron Egerton

Boy’s Names beginning with Z?

– Zachary, Zev, Zorba

Countries beginning with the letter G?

– Greece, Germany, Greenland

Animals species that begin with the letter P?

– Porcupine, porpoise, platypus

Things that are square?

– old TVs, those little tiles in Grandma’s bathroom, YOUR MOM

Holidays you have been on?

– Portlandia, Seattle, SF

Words that rhyme with Pink?

– think, blink, wink

Urban Legends?

– soul mates, twin flames, true love

Things that are pink?

– Champagne, pearls, white panties after being washed with a red tee shirt

Things to do with baseball?

– that guy in the underwear ad, the funny Meatloaf song, the Abbott & Costello routine

Marvel Heroes?

– Spiderman, Wolfman, Crocoman

Ice Cream Flavours?

– salted pretzel logic, peanut brittlefingers, mocha polkadots

Things that come from the ocean begining with the letter O?

– Octopus, owlfish, onionshark

^^^ Taron Egerton, FYI.

30-Day Song Challenge [2]

I lumped the first two days together and now I see that lots of the consecutive days have themes that go together (for me). Days 3 and 4 definitely do, so I’m doing them here in this poast.

A song that reminds me of summertime is the Motels “Suddenly Last Summer.”

(Note: I knew this was an old movie with Elizabeth Taylor, but I’ve never seen it. Out of curiosity, I just went and read the Wiki summary. Whoa. Btw, if you use Wikipedia frequently, as I do, kick in a few bucks during their pledge drive. I did.)

https://youtu.be/b9Ox-lGm-wA

Generally, I don’t mind being reminded of heartbreak because I harvest all that kind of stuff for my writing. In fact, I was in a bit of a lull until my last painful experience, which was so bad I’m now good to go for the rest of my life on it, like those turkey leftovers that just won’t quit. It helped me reignite all the past heartbreaks too, so now I have a huge pile of feelings to draw from and don’t need any further meatspace experiences (eesh).

That said, there is someone I would rather forget, and there’s a Motels song to remind me of this.

https://youtu.be/Ooi8Cnb1fx0

Mamma Mia! [SOCS]

Mama, you said there’d be days like this, but Mama, you also told me not to come, and you know if I had remained in Massachusetts with Mac the Knife what would have happened. What a maniac! Like I’d marry a man who drives a Camaro. Please! That would have been madness. I’d much rather be here in Grandma’s Market, learning the art of calamari tamales and just chilling with mango🥭 manhattans. No, don’t give him my email! Jeez. I’m not interested in romance. I don’t need any drama!

Rolling on a River [SOCS]

Roll does make me think of “rolling on a river” from “Proud Mary,” a song I love. But I also think of rolls, like the kind you eat warm with butter, not that I do much of that. I hardly eat any bread these days, just some boringly healthy whole wheat for the occasional snadwich, not that I’m doing paleo gawd no, but I try to avoid it because eh. Bread. So high in cals & carbs. I love the group Bread though… didn’t I mention that already recently? Those songs break my heart. “If the world should stop revolving…” Kills me. Dead. And there was that line in Young Frankenstein about rolling in the hay, which was hilarious… and I said I was going to rewatch YF at Halloween but I didn’t. I just haven’t been into movies lately. I do want to see Bohemian Rhapsody though. And Mary Poppins. I thought I might talk about role play, but it would just be talk, IYKWIMAITYD.

Yeah, I didn’t do troll and droll and proletariat. Whatever dudes. I’m tired. 😜

Comedy Is Hard

It’s easy to be funny on the fly ~ most of us have come up with a zinger or three and cracked up our friends. I do it pretty often, but a lot of my jokes fail, especially in text. Imagine being funny for 5 minutes straight or 10 or 30… think that’s easy? No, it’s not.

Beware of the man who insists he’s funny all the time and humor is easy for him. They are manipulative and scary. There’s a reason why so many people are terrified of clowns ~ I’m not, but I get it. When you don’t laugh at the clown, he gets angry, very angry. It’s never his failure to be funny; it’s always you not getting it.

I love parody, but it has to be good. Crappy parody makes me cringe. I’ll give you an example. I think Alec Baldwin’s parodies of Trump on SNL are crappy. They’re simply imitating Trump’s stupidity, not adding any dimension to it. When someone came out portraying Bannon as Darth Vader? That was great parody! Larry David’s parody of Bernie Sanders had me on the floor. So effing funny.

One of my favorite parodies of all time is the film Analyze This! It gently mocks the entire mob movie genre, starring Robert DeNiro as a caricature of all the mob guys he’s ever played. I love it so much. Billy Crystal is wonderful as the straight-man psychiatrist.

I love language-centered humor and wordplays. I find a lot of country music has super funny lyrics, which is why I roll my eyes at peeps who dismiss it outright. Have you ever heard “She’s Got a Way with Words” by Blake Shelton? Omg hilarious!

The best kind of humor imo is the kind that’s intertwined with the story, not the focus of it, but inevitable, despite drama and trauma, because ~ let’s face it ~ you have to laugh at the absurdity of life lest you go completely bonkers.

Or you can do both. Some people are better at multitasking than otters.

Mean Genes [SOCS]

Meandering through the online dating world, starting in the fall of 2011, I was surprised to find so many mean-spirited men, supposedly looking for love. I wasn’t surprised by the truly angry guys because I knew they’d be out there ~ easy enough to give them a swerve. But out of the blue, some trollish dude would message me and criticize the glasses I wore in my photo or whatever thing. Just stupid, sarcastic stuff. Why? I mean, maybe that was a successful approach some of the time for them: start off with a critique to spur a meaningful convo. But I’d had enough criticism when married, so to me this was a misdemeanor from which there could be no recovery.

I prefer kindness and compliments, if you know what I mean. ❤️🌹💋

Snack Time [flash 100]

“What’s this word?” Honey asked.

“Mosaic,” Sugar replied.

Cocoa laughed. “Bears can’t read! It’s not feasible. We don’t have the right skill set.”

“Reading is the farthest thing from my mind,” Honey said. “I’m trying to find a recipe.”

“Those yummy cookies the family had last week?” Sugar sniffed the air as if she could already catch a whiff of baking.

Honey rubbed her tummy. “Yes.”

“Sorry to disrupt the fantasy,” Cocoa said. “But this isn’t a cookbook.”

The bears were sad for twenty-seven seconds, but then they forgot because they were bears. Also, they ate the book.

The End.

~*~

Inspired by a photo from The Haunted Wordsmith.

PS: To nitpickers, I know the diff between further and farther, but these are bears, so give them a break. 🐻

Page 62, Line 6

Idea via The Haunted Wordsmith: pick up a book, turn to page 62, copy line 6, and use that to inspire a poast. Naturally I am being naughty and copying more because it’s so interesting…

But they’re not an accident. In 2004, psychologist John Jones and his colleagues examined fifteen thousand public marriage records from Walker County, Georgia, and Liberty County, Florida. They found that, indeed, people more often get married to others with the same first letter of their first name than would be expected by chance.

This is from a book I’ve had in my desk for a long time: Incognito by David Eagleman. I keep meaning to finish it. Look at this cool thing above! A treasure for an OCDer like me.

The theory is that people like people who remind them of themselves (“implicit egotism”). There are more examples given besides the names, though of course I am suspicious of these Southern marriages. Why no studies of cold-climate spouses? How about Chicago or Minneapolis? I’m kidding. Of course people like people who are like themselves. If I want to play board games, I’m going to look for a kibbitz of nerds, not a slope of skiers. Sometimes they’re the same people, but mostly not.

I’ve dated a couple guys whose names started with P and that’s worked out as well as every other letter. Maybe I should start using a different alphabet. Any recs?