Crack Cream, Anyone?

Thought for the day:  Hospitality is making your guests feel at home, even when you wish they were.

Is there a song that momentarily transforms you when you hear it? For me, that song is Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild. Who cared if I was actually driving around a bunch of kids in my old station wagon when that song came on the radio? All it took was the first couple of notes, and suddenly, my face changed, and my attitude changed. I was no longer mild-mannered, boring old MOM; I was a bad-assed wild woman tooling around in a '56 Chevy, or zooming on a Harley, or zipping around in a snazzy Corvette convertible. Funny thing is, I still want to belt it out and feel the wind in my hair whenever I hear that 1968 song, but there's another newer version now, and it's a bit more befitting of my age. (Damn it.)

 Check it out.



In Wednesday's post, I listed a bunch of books with some rather interesting titles. Just in case any of you would be interested in purchasing some of them for your very own, here ya go:  do it  After all, without a copy of The History of Sh*t, how can you possibly consider your library complete?

Haven't had enough weird books yet? Looking for an unusual gift for a young reader? The lovely Dianne Salerni alerted us to an hysterical list of creepiest children's books . Some of my favorites on this Huffington Post list are:

• The Pocket Book of Boners   (an omnibus of school boy howlers and unconscious humor)
• It Hurts When I Poop!   ( a story for children who are afraid to use the potty)
• Where Willy Went   (the BIG story of a little sperm)
• The Long Journey of Mister Poop   (The cover is hysterical. It shows Mister Poop, or Senor Caca, clad in a beret and plaid golf pants. And YES, Mister Poop IS exactly what you think it is!)

So, thanks Dianne, for sharing that with us. If you guys want to see the other books on this list, check the link. (Where ... bonus! bonus!...you can ALSO find some of Sarah Palin's greatest quotes.)

Last week, I couldn't help but notice a tube of ointment on the shelf at the pharmacy. I mean, how could anyone miss it? It was called Crack Cream. Now, I'm sorry, this may be a fantastic product, but that name positively slayed me. I was giggling like a 2-year-old while trying to convince my better half to purchase that particular product, but alas, failed to convince him of the need.

Anyway, seeing that unusual product name made me curious as to what other weirdo names the market had to offer.  Found some, too. Although this is a list that admittedly belongs on Tawna Fenske's blog, remember ... you saw it here first. Consider whether or not you'd like to put any of THESE products into your shopping cart:

• Trailer Trash eye pencil
• Deep Throat blush
• Fat Girl scrub
• Udder Cream
• Urban Decay beauty products  (how about some "roach" eyeshadow?)
• Pedro's Lip Schit
• Anti-Monkey Butt Powder
• Boudreaux Butt Paste
• Nads hair remover
• Cat Crap  (an anti-fog for ski goggles)

and my favorite:

                                                 

                                                        

• Chicken Poop lip balm   (Allegedly, when a gal whined about her chapped lips, her crusty old grandfather told her to smear 'em with chicken poop so she'd stop licking them. Ergo, the name. Don't know how good the product is, but um, maybe it'd sound a little better if they called it Eagle Poop? Uh, no. Never mind. A rose is a rose is a rose ... and poop ...  is poop ...  is poop.)

OK, it is once again time for the (ta-DA!)

Weirdest News Stories of the Week

* Proving that my post about the importance of a name may not be complete drivel after all, a gentleman in Britain may have tempted the fates when he recently purchased a second-hand, 16-foot cabin cruiser. She may have been a beauty, but she also sank when he took her out for her maiden voyage. The cruiser's name? Titanic II. 

* In compliance with his country's Freedom of Information laws, an Australian newspaper reporter petitioned the Department of Defense to provide him with copies of their X-files. After a fruitless two-month scramble to find them,  Defense finally had to admit that their reports of UFO sightings and other paranormal occurrences had (shhhhh) disappeared. (Abducted, perhaps?)

* The bride wore ... green? Oh, no, my mistake. Indeed, she wore a lovely white gown, but her FACE was green. Painted green, that is, and covered in 192 piercings. In 2000, when this Scottish lass was officially deemed by Guinness World Records to be the "most pierced", Elaine Davidson had but a mere 462 piercings, but she now boasts 6925 ...  including 1500 internal ones, which weigh in at nearly seven pounds. (Think her favorite kind of music is Heavy Metal?)

* To encourage the Chinese people to go vegetarian, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has been dressing an actress in ... salad. And holding the actual dressing, I presume. So rather than merely going green, this young lady has been going greens. Oh, and by the way, my husband and I are also members of PETA, only for us, it stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. Like Sarah Palin said, If God had not wanted us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

                                                                              

The Name Game

Thought for the day:  It was a matter of destiny: the streaker's name was Seymour Cheeks.

Gildersleeve, Gildersleeve, wherefore art thou, Gildersleeve?

The fair Juliet declared, What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Easy for her to say. Do you think she would've been half as cavalier about the irrelevance of a name if she'd been saddled with an onerous moniker like Bertha or Broomhilda? And I ask you, could even the great Shakespeare himself have waxed poetic about a damsel in distress if her name were Boobs Galore? (Sincere apologies to any readers named Bertha, Broomhilda, or Boobs.)

Gertrude Stein said, A rose is a rose is a rose, and even good ol' Popeye said, I yam what I yam. If things ARE what they ARE, does it really matter a rat's derriere what you choose to CALL them?

Well, yeah. I think so.

Would a bouquet of roses bestow the same romantic connotation if they were called ... fartflowers? Or suppose that lovely bunch of Mums your beloved gave you were called ...  Ugly Mamas?

Ahhhh ... Smell the Fartflowers!

True, the name or description of an object can't actually alter its essential substance, but it can ... and does ... alter our perception of it. Intellectually, we may adhere to the adage, "Never judge a book by its cover," but in reality, we tend to do just that.

Consider this:

You're exhausted, and judging by the crowd in the doctor's anteroom, a long wait stretches in front of you. Standing on your aching feet is not an attractive option, and there are only two empty seats in the room. One is beside a shabbily-dressed old gentleman with shaggy hair and scruffy beard, who is slumped in his chair, muttering to himself. The other is next to a clean-cut, GQ-looking young man, who looks right at you and smiles. (Or for you men, a shapely young woman with a sexy smile.) Where would you sit? Not gonna pull any made-up statistics out of my (ahem) ear, but where do you think most people would sit?

It's human nature. And understanding that tidbit of human nature puts potential power into our hot little pen-holding hands. When a writer (or speaker) understands the basic concept of perception, he can use it to his advantage and manipulate the crap out of it. 

Take the example of the waiting room. Before a writer brings that poor unsuspecting foot-sore patient into that room, suppose he fleshes out the people sitting beside those empty chairs. Suppose the shabby-looking fellow is a sweet, gentle, lonely soul who's grieving deeply for his wife, and Mr. G.Q. (or Ms. Luscious) is an evil Jeffrey Daumer wannabe. How's that going to change the reader's response when the innocent newcomer considers sitting beside the Daumer copycat?

Titles, names, and appearances DO matter. All of them evoke involuntary psychological  responses, and when we have an active awareness and anticipation of those responses, we wield some control over them through the power of our words. A great book title has the potential to attract a casual browser. Ditto a great-looking cover. Character names carry a certain weight. Names can be perceived as weak, strong, silly, or whatever. Descriptions can be used to reinforce a stereotype, or to mask something shocking and unexpected. Subtle nuances of word choice evoke a huge difference in both perception and reaction.  

Or not. On one hand, I think word choice and title choice can make a big difference. But on the other, if the following book titles have been published (and they have!) maybe titles don't matter at all. Consider:

Beats exploding, I suppose.

Okeydoke, then.

About a master debater?

The only game our cats play is hide and go sleep.

the perfect gift for the grandkids?

guess you have to be Catholic first, right?

  The author's name should be Lucy Bowels.

ewwwww

there's a reason it's a lost art

um, why bother?

stool softener helps

no comment

not cuddly anymore, huh?

And here's some more actual book titles to consider:

• The Pop-Up Book of Phobias
• Scouts in Bondage
• Be Bold With Bananas
• 101 Uses for Tampon Applicators
• Suture Self   (Now, I LIKE this one!)
• How to Make Love While Conscious
• Up Sh*t Creek: a collection of horrifying true wilderness toilet misadventures
• The History of Sh*t
• First You Take a Leek
• The Romance of Proctology
• Heave Ho: My Little Green Book of Seasickness
• More Balls Than Hands  (ahem ... about juggling)
• Postmortem Collectibles
• Knitting With Dog Hair
• Last Chance at Love: Terminal Romances
• The Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
• Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank and Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom

And finally, my own personal favorite:

• Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-Bye

How about you? Do you think titles matter? Come across any doozies lately?

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Secrets to Spinning a Believable Tale

Thought for the day:  If you can't win 'em over with facts, dazzle 'em with malarkey.  

Ever catch any of Judge Judy's shows on TV? She's a little bit of a thing in a lace-collared robe who sits behind her bench banging her gavel, screeching at people, and waggling her finger at them. She's feisty and funny as all get-out at times, but I've seen enough snippets of her in action to know I wouldn't ever want to face her in court. I can just imagine how that would go. She'd be screeching, "Button your mouth, ma'am! I'm not interested in hearing what you think! Just tell me exactly what happened." And she'd probably laugh me right out of the courtroom if I tried to explain my trips into fantasy by telling her I'm a writer. But I ask you, don't writers have a certain latitude when it comes to spinning our tales? Hmmmmph.  Not to Judge Judy, because that lady has a built-in Malarkey-o-Meter the size of Montana.

I dunno. There's something about her that rubs me the wrong way. Strident? Oh yeah, but it isn't that. And did I happen to mention she screeches? That's a real nerve-grater, for sure, but it isn't that, either. She's just too darned ... how shall I put this? She's too doggoned judgmental! I mean, who made HER the judge of all she sees? Oh. Yeah. (ahem) Never mind.

Anyway, Judge Judy wrote a book with one of the best titles of all time. It's called, Don't Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It's Raining. Priceless, isn't it? Or maybe worth, say, sixty-four thousand dollars, anyway.

And the sixty-four thousand dollar question for the day is : HOW do we writers make our readers believe we're tinkling rain??? HOW do we make the implausible plausible, the insurmountable surmountable, and the outrageous the norm? To find the answer, let's take a gander at the gurus of garbage, those writers with unsurpassed skills in turning tripe into something that passes for "truth." I have no names for these people, but believe me, their skills are vast. I'm talking about those nameless instigators who post something on the Internet and then sit back with smirks on their faces, while their post turns viral and essentially morphs from fabrication into fact.

WOW.  How can WE harness those skills? I suggest to you ...

Three simple steps:

• Include a smattering of verifiable facts in your writing. It'll demonstrate how smart you are, and establish you as an authority.
• Write with confidence and authority. In fact, if you demonstrate ample confidence and authority, you don't have to concern yourself with facts at all.
• Never be afraid to address hot-button topics. In fact, embrace them, baby. Any segment of society with a strong enough bias about any given topic will gladly believe whatever you tell them, as long as it reinforces the beliefs and hatreds they already harbor. As for facts? Pffffft. Don't need 'em. When readers go all Judge Judy on a topic, they're in danger of developing a serious medical condition known as psychosclerosis. Otherwise known as hardening of the attitude, this is not a fatal condition, but has been known to kill conversations and end relationships. (So, how'd I do with that one? Make your malarkey-o-meter tingle?)

WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!

OK, so we're not really interested in manipulating the minds of our readers, but you gotta admit, it's downright phenomenal how successful others have become at doing just that, thanks to the viral potential of the Internet. For some reason,  people who wouldn't dream of turning to the National Enquirer as a source for the latest news have no problem believing an article they find on Wikipedia or within a zillion-times forwarded email they receive from a friend. (Would you believe a new error-laden fourth grade social studies textbook entitled Our Virginia, Past and Present had to be recalled earlier this year because the writer of said textbook gleaned her erroneous "facts" from the Internet?)

Seems to me, we should all learn, not necessarily to be Judge Judy-ish, but at least to learn to take the things we read with a grain of salt. But oh, what we write, now that's another story. We don't WANT our readers to reach for the salt shaker. We want to spin locations, characters, and stories that are so well-seasoned and believable, no extra salt is ever needed. How can we do that? Let's backtrack to those three steps:

• By all means, weave verifiable facts into your story. Unless you're creating a fantasy world that defies our laws of physics, it's best not to buck science. Two examples where writers tried to do just that: In one book, the good guy electrocuted the bad guy by tossing an old capacitor (that he'd been carrying in his pocket for decades) into the sink while the bad guy was washing his hands. WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! Ain't gonna happen. In the second case, the damsel in distress successfully prevents her pursuers from following her by removing the valve stems from the tires of their car ... and thereby flattening the tires! More WOOP! WOOP! 
• Writing with confidence and authority is always a good bet, even if you have to fake it. (Also known as flying with the eagles when we feel like a chicken on the inside.)
• And finally, the hot-button topics. Well, that's up to you. Some excellent books have been written about some of these topics, and they've been written with great sensitivity and intelligence. And I already know that all of you have sensitivity and intelligence out the wazoo, right? Now, I'm no Judge Judy, but if you DO tackle one of these hot potatoes, please rely on verifiable facts, okay?

After all, too much salt isn't good for anyone.

So, what do you think it takes to make a reader believe what he reads? Have you read anything that dispels that belief by trying to suspend the laws of science? Do tell, do tell.


Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.