Saturday, July 04, 2009

TWO COMMERCIALS I LOATHE, HATE, AND DESPISE... Making It with a Burger  A woman makes love to her hamburger--oh why be timid about it?--she is having oral sex with her burger. Her tongue shoots out a couple of times curled at the end, like a snake's as she licks, and finally takes a bite of the burger (oh, that must smart) held tightly in her hands.  aaargh! Cats In Bondage Two cats are bound in leather harnesses to hold them erect on their hind paws as they claw at one another.I wanted to believe the graphics were digital, but,. if so, why were the cats bound up? Sick, sick, sick! I have no idea what these two wretched messages are selling. That's because after seeing both one time, I literally close my eyes after the "pull up" once they are aired again, so as not to have them etched on my frontal lobes. At the old Ted Bates ad agency in New York, Rosser Reeves called odious graphics or sometimes even well done dramatic or beautiful graphics, "vampire video," meaning of course that the visuals were obscuring the ad message.     7:53:14 PM    comment []

Friday, June 19, 2009

Let's say your CEO--yes, the big guy,--drops by your humble cubicle every so often just to see how you are doing. What is it that makes him pause at your door? Passing by, he has, perhaps, noted that it is chatter-free. There's only busy you in there, silently working at your computer, your cell phone out of sight. Soon, he is telling you things about how the business is going, who is on his shit list, who is about to be promoted, who is about to be canned.  He also listens to your opinions on all kinds of matters. Before long he is your confidant. The knives are always out for highly placed men and women who haven't anyone they can trust in the executive suite so they choose, as their repository, a nobody like you, in whom they can see promise. KEEP HIS SECRETS. One day you'll  find yourself in a small, windowless office, but an office nonetheless, and you will discover that you have a much-sought after mentor, and you are on your way. This will work if you are not sleeping with your powerful new friend. 9:04:00 AM    comment []

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

HEAD TO THE MEN'S DEPARTMENT     Old or young, if you hands are arthritic to the point that buttoning is a problem, then buy your crisp cotton shirts in the men's department. The button holes are always slightly more generous and easier to manage. Same things goes for other button up items such as blazers, sweaters, coats.       Years ago, manufactuers and designers decided that women were more delicate and preferred what one might call fussier clothing. Women delicate? One company sold an anti perspirant with the slogan, "Strong enough for a man, gentle enough for a woman." What a joke. A woman deals with all kinds of things that are not at all gentle, for instance, pushing a baby's gigantic head out of her body, I can't go on it's all so ludicrous, this positioning of women as delicate little creatures to this very day.     12:58:12 PM    comment []

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Found the "man of your dreams?"  Dream on.                                                  --Daley 7:17:00 AM    comment []

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

When you see The Man you want, hunt him to the ground.                                            --M.E. Daley 2:19:30 PM    comment []

No good deed goes unpunished.                                --Anon                      10:04:34 AM    comment []

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Beware, when the Lord lets loose a thinker upon the planet.                                                    --Anon 6:35:01 PM    comment []

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

I'm reading Helen Gurley Brown's bio, a well written and straightforward piece of work by Scanlon. Thousands of years ago, Helen and I worked for Stauffer Reducing and traveled the country taking "after" photos of ex-fatties. I stayed down in the bar of the hotel at night drinking and playing poker with the boys and thinking I was a hotshot, while Helen was up in her room all alone, working on a portable typewriter and writing "Sex and the Single Girl." well into the night. During this period of flushing out women who had reduced with Stauffer, Helen, on vacation, sent me the following postcard from Hawaii:  It read: "I had to get down to get laid."   3:53:41 PM    comment []

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

"The next person to use the words, "kick back" to describe relaxing, dies" 12:23:47 PM    comment []

Don't try this at home. 10:06:40 AM    comment []

Friday, May 22, 2009

Deathbed remark... "I always knew men were mortal, but I never thought it applied to me."  --William Saroyan 8:53:04 AM    comment []

Saturday, May 16, 2009

These days, people are psychologically armed to the teeth. Be kind to them and to yourself. 6:20:36 PM    comment []

THE WATERFIGHT      We were in the bed of Daryl’s ratty pick up laying waste to the Southern Comfort.  We eased our backs against his big metal toolbox while almost a whole bottle of SC went down our throats like warm honey.       Daryl needed to get me drunk so he could indulge his perversions on my inert body, which is usually taut with hostility toward him.   I needed to get him drunk so he would fall asleep.  Show me a human being who is without needs and I’ll show you a body in a piney box.      Unmet needs are the reason I was swigging SC on a hot summer day with a man I loathe and despise. One of my needs is not to confront my needs, if you get the drift.  SC helps me deny that I am in denial.      Daryl took a big mouthful and the walnut lodged in his stringy throat went up and down like a yoyo.      The man had stretched out his legs all the way to the tailgate.  His ravaged jeans were worn thin as Kleenex ©, and his bare toes looked like pink worms.  His yellowed toenails were so long they curled under like those of the old ladies at the Home where I freelance when the felons who run it can flush me out.         They knew I was subversive, but hired me anyway, when desperate.  They knew I told my ladies to spit out the Haldol after the pill passer left.    Hotshot doctors and their familiars will tell you that they can spot an Alz by his gait.  Oh really, Doctor dear?   Did they walk funny before they took the Haldol?  What that drug does to a person is beyond disgust. A Haldol victim can’t tell where he ends and the world begins so he walks on eggs, careful to tippy toe around, and it’s called the typical Alz walk by fat old doctors who walk like ducks to leave more room for their enlarged prostates.      Daryl, envisioning a hard-on in his future, suggested we cool off in the house.  This meant going to his quarters in a basement that was not just cool,  but damp as death.  His accoutrements amounted to a weary futon, rigged up shower, and porta-potty.   There were a few books stacked on planks supported by bricks, I’ll give him that.  A tattered red velvet curtain Daryl had salvaged from our decaying movie house, separated his quarters from the washer and dryer and some desultory garden equipment.  Oh yes, I’d been there before, and drunk before, too, but would never forget his décor.       We staggered in, and I went into a fake swoon on the futon, but choked out, “No sex. No sex. Your aura is muddy.”        The next thing I knew I was hit in the face with a vicious stream of water from the garden hose.  “When I said ‘cool off’ I meant cool off,” Daryl bellowed, cackling as he ran from me.         I am stronger than Daryl--drunk or sober--from hoisting the old ladies, so I grabbed him and stuffed his scrawny body in the toploader, carefully winding his legs around the agitator blades, like a rug, so it wouldn’t go off balance. I turned on the cold water, dribbled in a little detergent, and turned the dial to “regular wash.”          When he got out of the hospital, Daryl walked with only a slight limp that the doctor said would no doubt always be with him.  And the left side of his head was disturbingly flat from where they put in the steel plate.           When Daryl asked me to marry him I said o.k. .                2:52:43 PM    comment []

M.E. Daley                                                           SLUDGE     He oozed into my life like sludge.  Slipping under the door…sliding over the windowsill.  I couldn’t rid myself of his loathsome presence.  Hot soap and water, gallons of pure bleach, wire kitchen scrapers. Nothing worked.  He oozed back.    Metaphorically speaking, to be sure.  Actually, he was a rather stocky, but nice looking man who lived in my apartment house and meant me no harm except to appear with alarming regularity at my door, clutching a handful of weary  flowers, proffering a box of candy, and wanting to take me out for coffee. But when I sent him back to his own apartment, a day or two later he would re-appear on my doorstep.  He was like that end-of- winter-sludge that accumulates on the walkways and in the streets and up against the curbs because it could never be removed entirely until the ice thawed. So I nicknamed him “Sludge” and when I called him that to his face he laughed. I liked his laugh and grew to look forward to his drop by’s.  Inevitably, I took him in. We became lovers, and it ended up with him dragging me like a steamer trunk around the Mideast. He had his reasons for going there and they sounded sane enough so I went along on his accursed jaunt. I thought of it as penance for being mean to him in the beginning Sludge, a compulsive reader of books, had decided that he wanted to be a much sought after linguist, specializing in Muslim which, he assured me was soon to be Numero Uno on the planet. And that he would get it right because he would learn it at the source and that is why we were on his hateful safari.To ease my boredom, I went naked under my chador. Little did he notice my small rebellion. Once when we were walking down a street and he wasn’t         looking, I lifted the heavy garment and flashed my crotch.  An old man with a long beard and the headgear of a eunuch ran off wailing and rending his garments. Those were my best days, my memorable days when, with a quick show of genitalia I was able to terrorize an arrogant old fart in some testosterone-ridden corner of the earth. . So while Sludge sat, cross-legged on a frayed mat, day after day, and tried to learn an archaic, convoluted language from a local, I sat comatose in a dark corner. When tea was served I was remembered and given a glass. It was always cold. The old men held a cube of sugar between their front teeth and sucked the tea through it.  The young ones stirred in the dissolved sugar and sipped it. I got no sugar.  I had ceased to exist. ***      I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “I’m not about to read one more novel about the abused women of the Middle East. Life is hard enough here in Scranton.”      Well into my usual five pages of yet another hopeless meander-- soon to be rejected by a faceless child from Smith--I heaved it atop   the clutter on my desk. Which is a half circle of walnut with a caramel colored leather top that you will never see while I am still generating paper.  It was once a round partner’s desk that could be easily divided.  My husband decided that seeing me face to face every day for hours was not conducive, and left it at that. Conducive to what? Who knows?  It was his habit to leave words wafting in the air.        I had stopped working on the beginning of a good woman’s misery and eventual salvation to go pee.  My husband, who has taken to calling me The Urinator,  remarked that my prose should flow as easily.       In my latest regrettable piece of shit, I was modeling “Sludge” after my husband who was the physical opposite of what the name suggests.      My real-life Sludge was fair skinned, blonde, and with the watchful all-seeing blue eyes of a Swedish sea captain. Or that picture of Jesus on the wall. He was so tall my head barely reached his chest, which, I am sorry to report, was ever so slightly concave. I thought he had brought it on himself hunched over books day and night. I nicknamed him Sludge when it came to me that he moved only when driven.  He never exercised. Never went to a gym, wouldn’t even walk the dog who sat at his feet—ever hopeful—while he read.  The dog never gave up his dream of a walk with Sludge until the day he died. Unfortunately, when Sludge located his leash and bent over him to let him know his big day had come, the dog was stone cold. Like so many of us, he died, still longing for a bit of attention.  Poor forlorn dog.  “Attention must be paid.” Isn’t that something that life, sooner or later, teaches us?  Here’s a thought: in my new immortal work, this could be the lesson “Sludge” learns.  It could be the whole plot!  But what did I know about needing attention? I was one of those people who didn’t give a damn.  I lived inside my own mind, and rarely ventured out, happy with the knowledge that I had a man other women wanted. Once I was published, Sludge would snap out of his vegetative state and start paying the attention I don’t want or need, and that was when I would really ignore his ass. When he asked, “What’s for dinner?” I would be pulling on my black wool beret and walking toward the front door. I’d fuss with my hair a bit in the hall mirror as I answered, “I don’t know, you tell me.” And out the door I’d go, shot from guns. Men expect women to be always available-- like their mothers--in the kitchen, cooking, doing the wash, plumping pillows, even to the very end when a husband would insist on an open casket.  But the nasty little trick here is that if you are available, you are a bag of stale Fritos.      I was still trying to think of a subplot for my novel about a girl who brought cruel men in cruel countries to their knees out of sheer fright after viewing a swatch of pubic hair on a mons veneris, and veiled women dripping around in sheets from head to toe, when it occurred to me that all men fear women. And that men act it out in certain arid, dusty countries, by keeping their women in houses behind ten-foot concrete walls that face the street. They keep them busy cooking and sweeping out the sand that blows back in their faces. Like men everywhere, they fear women because they possess the one thing that men want most in this world, and that’s a sweet, velvety orifice; after a few juicy plunges of his engorged organ into this willing, comforting darkness, a man can banish his demons until the next time.   Of course, the feeling doesn’t last forever. But he can do it as often as he wants if he can hold onto the woman for his personal use.  Even in a shack made of old railroad ties and torn down billboards a rusted-out man with a nearby and compliant vagina can be a man of consequence. So he hides her like gold poached from another’s claim, but he still fears his woman for he fears her loss, and that’s the power she has over him and I’ll be damned if oppressed women know it. It’s Lysistrata time, girls!   Cast off those shrouds!  Rise up!      Ah, but that’s not the novel I wanted to write. I wanted to become famous as an intellectual and perhaps slightly twisted novelist, one who airs previously unthought of thoughts and makes unexpected connections, and sets them down on paper like Michel Houellebecq, over in France.  Or just be able to deliver a straight message like Simone de Beauvoir, or hit spiritual heights with a book about God, or, in the end, if my small talent failed me, settle for a boy meets girl novel, heavily laced with sex.       I could never write a novel because I could never get past the first five or ten pages. When I had an idea I wanted to get it down on paper fast and I’d go like hellfire on the computer until I hit the wall.  What exactly was the plot? Where were the words that were swirling around in my head a minute ago? I drew a blank. One day, after hitting the wall again, I decided to send a literary magazine nine on ten pages of something or other as if it were a sample of a larger piece of work. They actually bought it “as is”. I got a modest check and a letter complimenting me on my style, and on the restraint I had shown by not tying everything up with a ribbon, and leaving something to the reader’s imagination.  They wanted to see more stories like it. So I sent more truncated novels and they bought them, all but one where I tried to resolve matters.  The day came when I realized that short stories were my métier, and I couldn’t get past the wall because I had already said what I had to say. And listen to this—the editor said I had a nice following and that they would arrange for a collection to be published. I hadn’t exactly arrived, but I was en route as a writer of short stories.      In the early days, Sludge read the magazine stories with some interest. Put another way, he didn’t set it aside “for later,” and even smiled occasionally as he read my words. When the book came out, he asked for one of my copies and kept it in his desk.       Hundreds of years later, we pushed the two sides of our round partner’s desk back together again. I asked him why we had separated them in the first place and he said that he wasted too much time watching me mouth the words I was writing, and that I was still doing it, but he was used to my little tics.          12:29:28 PM    comment []

AGING UNGRACEFULLY   When the guy at the market check stand said, "Thank you, Young Lady," I replied, "You're welcome, Old Man."   No matter whether he's young or old, my answer to the above epithet is always the same. Reactions vary, going from stunned silence to apologetic gibberish.  I hate myself for it, but when I'm in a bitchy mood, (which I always am when shopping for groceries) I'll add, "If I'm an honorary Young Lady, then you are an honorary Old Man."  And stalk off, ignoring the tittering line of shoppers.   I understand that any man calling a woman of seventy-eight, a "Young Woman" is only trying to be friendly and, in his way, thinking to give her a compliment. As it turns out, though, it is an insult.   Obviously I am not a young lady, and I deeply resent being called one, as if still being young was, to the minds of women, the Holy Grail.  Plus it calls unneeded attention to my decaying self.   My husband caught hell from a waitress when he called her "Dearie."  That's nothing compared to an old dame being referred to as "young" in front of a host of giggling people.   You know you are old when people--men and women--start patting you on the shoulder, like Old Dog Tray.  This happens to me all the time now, and sometimes they come up behind me to pat ever-so-gently as if I might crumble to dust before their very eyes.  Which startles me, given that I don't like to be touched from behind by someone I can't see.  Do you?   At the country swap meet I attend almost every Sunday, which involves a couple of miles of walking around and fingering detritus, shards and road kill, a woman I know came up to me and said, "I see you're out." As if I had been confined somewhere.  Then she gave me the obligatory pat on the shoulder and said, "Good for you."    I like to drive fast mainly to get my errands out of the way before I collapse. But I can be going 75 in the slow lane, and will be tailgated by men and young girls.  That's because they see my little white head bobbing at the wheel and, by God, they will not follow an old lady driver, and they want me out of the way, if not off the planet entirely.   A couple of years ago, when still half full of beans, I would let the tailgater pass and then get behind him or her and tailgate them mercilessly.  But today I am older and wiser and know there are more cops in our area, and that I could kill or be killed.  But it took three-quarters of a century to figure that out.   But then, again, I was in my Sixties before it occurred that I should part my hair with the fine end of the comb.               10:12:32 AM    comment []

Thursday, May 14, 2009

HEY, LOOK WHAT WE DID! I can't believe we want to reveal even more of our infamy to the world. What kind of a mea culpa is this? Grown men decided to produce evidence of our unaccptable, brutish, and not to be tolerated behavior for all eyes to see. Polished criminals would not have taken the pictures in the first place. But since we have them, we Liberals are, of course, screaming for admission of guilt. We must get his matter off our chests by symbolic washing of the hands. Nuts to that. Didn't your mother ever tell you not to "Hang your dirty linen in public." Or was that advice too old hat for the guys who run this country, both Left and Right. Those who have an itch to come out of the closet and acknowledge the brutishness of some men via a gallery of gruesome pictures, should not be appeased, and  should hold their fire until the investigations are public, and then if we must, release the pictures simultaneously with whatever punishments are meted out.  It would help if people who see the horrid pictures can also see the consequences in our court of law. Both at the same time. Dick Cheney crawled out of his spider hole, pink cheeked and vibrating with old, limp, ammo to announce that torture brings results. "The end does not justify the means," still holds true in a democracy, Mr. Cheney.     10:34:54 AM    comment []

THE COOL COUNTESS OF PARMA   During the delivery of her third child, the Countess opened invitations to the season’s  charity balls. As the head of her  new baby emerged, she told her secretary, sitting nearby, which ones to accept and which to gently decline. . 10:21:03 AM    comment []

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

AOL Please post what I uploaded at one O'clock  today. Thanks. 4:55:09 PM    comment []

THE COOL COUNTESS OF PARMA                         Near death, the Countess was heard to whisper, “Trippy.” 1:48:45 PM    comment []

Friday, May 08, 2009

THE COOL COUNTESS OF PARMA     As she lay dying, the Countess plucked her nose hairs. 2:02:50 PM    comment []

Thursday, May 07, 2009

AMERICA. DISMANTLED You've got to hand it to him. In a mere 8 years, he took apart, -- brick by brick-- the most successful  democracy in the world.      Did he have a motive or a plan? I don't think so. He was more like the "child who wandered aimlessly into a giant's house one day"  " There were baubles to play with and money to count.  His  name was renowned with fame.The fame part was the best part. He loved the ceremonies and the costumes, and the big blue plane that was his alone, and always waiting for him. But, as he methodically leveled the giant's house, he missed his naps and early bedtimes and became cross and angry. Never mind. His legacy lives on. 3:18:27 PM    comment []

Twits & Tweeters 9:18:35 AM    comment []

Monday, May 04, 2009

CONVERSATION AT A BAR... fIRST gIRL: "How's the new guy?" SECOND GIRL; "He lacks content." 9:06:18 AM    comment []

Monday, April 27, 2009

"Shoot low, they're riding Shetlands!" 9:45:43 AM    comment []

Friday, April 17, 2009

Malibufats...I love that pic of you. You look like a grown man...Got off death bed to post this for you....Can't compute...can't compute...Loud whirring sound.....Pull back for long shot...    . 12:29:01 PM    comment []

Do not think, do not say. do not write what anyone else could think, say or write and, thus, create out of yourself the most irreplaceable of beings.                                                 --whoknows? 12:21:06 PM    comment []

Friday, April 10, 2009

BIGSHOT BRAIN My life is over Brain knows this But won't tell Heart Can you imagine the Scene if that simpering, Sodden organ found out Brain Knew it all along But elected not to Tell Heart scary stuff That mass of tightly woven Fat worms, Knows it is ugly But looks are not Everything So Brain, the best of too many Failed experiments cluttering up the place Is still the "go to" guy.                 # --M.E. Daley, Author of "Attack of the Movie Stars"                     9:54:22 AM    comment []

Thursday, March 19, 2009

"The man I loved never loved me, and the man who loved me, I never loved. So I introduced them." 7:09:46 PM    comment []

"I divide my time between myself and myself." 2:51:17 PM    comment []

QUESTION FOR REINCARNATIONISTS: If you can't remember what you did two seconds ago, how can you remember your past lives? 2:29:15 PM    comment []

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

We are all doomed to be saved. 9:49:52 AM    comment []