Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

I Could Die Happy Right Now

This is my destiny. This is why I have watched the Oscars every year.

Let me tell you, afrer that spectacular cock-up I am even better prepared in case I ever present an award. Check the front of the envelope. If it says Best Actress, and you are presenting Best Picture, don't consult with your co-presenter, just call an audible. That's why Ernst and Young and Pratt and Whitney sent representatives.You know who I want to see on the morning shows tomorrow? That accounting firm. Explain yourselves!

And the producer, and Emma Stone - I keep going through the coverage trying to see just exactly when they realize they haven't won. It's pretty clear at some point that they know and they all decide to just soldier on and thank their families anway.

It is a shame the Moonlight crowd didn't get to hear their music played a they walked to the stage.

My borther called and we both agreed that this would have made the best Oscar night party with Aunts Carleen and Nancy. We could just imagine the uproar.

Naughti Gras 2017: Gary Gets Naughti.

A few years back I went to Naughti Gras alone. This year I finally coaxed Gary to join me. I know, I have the only husband alive whi has to be dragged to an erotic art fair.

As it was in the past, my favorite part was the close-up magician, the same one who tricked me the last time. I cannot emphasize this enough: we were surrounded by erotic art and we could not take our eyes off this magician.

There were cards that changed while I was holding them. I know he must have palmed my card and that it was a trick deck and all that, but people, I watched. He told me that he didn't see the reflection of the card in my glasses last time, and that made me determined to trip him up. I watched him hard. As he worked his magic, I stooped down and peered at him from below. And then somehow, coins changed in my hands, Gary's card appeared in his wallet, two separate cards Gary and I signed merged into one double-sided card with both our signatures. He fooled me again and again and again. It was delightful.

This is one playing card:

 And this is his business card:

Zi Teng Wang, [email protected]. Go to him with all your magic and molecular biology needs.

The magic was also a nice distraction from the semi-nudity. Gary was not comfortable. I was fine with the semi-nudity. There was a male pole dancer who was fairly bare-assed: I fully supported that. I thought Gary would have felt the same, but of course, no. He got so self-conscious you would have thought he was the naked one. For example, there was a woman, topless but with taped nipples, who was having her body painted. We watch the Skin Wars body painting competition TV show regularly. I wanted to watch the body painting. Nope. I was hustled away. We went in a small room where there was a woman covered in sushi. Gary loves sushi. Nope. Again, we must leave, no, no sushi, no body art, no no no.

It would seem he doesn't like to stare at women when he's clothed and they aren't. Very conscious of being the creepy old guy. I had some hint of this in the past, for example on cruise ships when we couldn't walk across the pool deck for fear sun bathers would think he was ogling them.

However, there were stilt-walkers and magicians and non-breathing, tiny felt vagina pins to buy:

... and non-judgmental photos of naked women we could enjoy without discomfort. Gary did enjoy himself enough to go back next year and stay long enough to see more of the pageantry.

"Like the burlesque?" I asked, remembering the bare assed male pole dancer who didn't seem to be affronted that I was staring at him while I was clothed and he was not (so so rude).

"Well, maybe if it's dark and there's a bigger crowd I can look at the naked ladies without feeling pervy."

So, that's a plan: next year in Naughti Gras. We're also planning a trip to South Missouri for the Solar eclipse later this year. (Sing with me: we'll take the Honda down to Cape Girardeau to see the total eclipse of the sun.)

 

Guest Post: Cheeto Necklace

Editor's Note: The first thing I sold on Etsy was the necklace made of dollhouse miniature junk food. Someone found it by searching for "Cheeto Necklace."

"A Cheeto necklace," I thought, "That's what I should make. Like the Oreo and apple core necklaces that were all the rage in sixth grade."

So I made a Cheeto necklace, and then I took him with me on the March to Support Planned Parenthood. This is his account of the events of the day.

=======================================================

Hello. I am a Cheeto. My Maker took me to the Support Planned Parenthood march last Saturday.

(That's a bad photo of me. It makes me look puffy.)

I was not the only accessory at the March. There was a woman with a labia hat:

... AND a woman with a labia breastplate:

 

"Look like a Labia!" my Maker demanded, and Labia woman made this face. As we walked away, we heard her explain to her friends that she wanted to look nervous, because "That's where all the nerve endings are."

I really wish I were a Labia Necklace, not a Cheeto Necklace, but this is how my Maker made me.

So, the march path took us from The Grove neighborhood, past the Planned Parenthood offices, then back to the Grove again. Of course, I didn't march, I'm a Cheeto, I just dangled on my cord and observed. There was a lot of chanting about our bodies and our rights and our streets (whose streets?) our streets.

However, when we neared the Planned Parenthood office everyone stopped chanting, including my Maker and her cohort, who was some man with a cane named Gary. The man, that is, I don't know what the cane was named, we didn't talk. The organizers told us we had to be completely silent as we walked past the center, because there were some people there who might want to argue with us.

I tell you, she had those people all wrong. They were SO NICE. They had signs that said "LIFE," and they took videos and photos of us. I felt like a celebrity. Really, they were so sweet. They said they would pray for us, and they asked about our mothers, and said God loved us. Really, really nice people. Even I could feel the love, and I'm a Cheeto. I would have been glad to talk to them instead of the silent treatment, unlike the Maker's Cohort, who seemed disappointed he couldn't wield his cane in self-defense.

On the way back to The Grove, a block before the MetroLink light rail tracks, the gutter got really rough. The Maker concentrated on keeping her footing, but somehow she still tripped and came down hard on the edge of the street.

I flew out of my cord and landed on the grass. I could only lie there helplessly as several people asked if she was okay. She checked to be sure her Ray Bans were okay before she answered, because accessories are people too. I was only slightly hurt.

She looked fine, except for the Ray Ban shaped scrape on her face. Still, she was a little dazed, because she started to just walk away. Luckily, a petite brunette snatched me up off the ground and ran me to my Maker with, "Is this your Cheeto?"

I will never forget the look on Her face. "Oh!" she cried out, "It is My Cheeto! I would be SO SAD if I'd lost that! Thank you!" and she hugged the petite woman. That made me feel special.

Then, of course, we were almost crushed by the MetroLink. We were about twenty people back, waiting at the train crossing. The all-clear bell rang, we all moved forward, then suddenly the twenty people before us reversed course and ran back to where we were, so we had to backpedal too. Turned out there was another train coming the other way. We got through after the next all-clear, but I don't know how they got all 7,000 people through before the next train.

When we returned to The Grove I got even more attention. A professional photographer took my picture, and several people asked if I was a real Cheeto (No, but I was sculpted after a live model) and if I was a statement (Yes, but a subtle one).

It looks now like the Maker will be making me a sibling, with a secure cord that goes through instead of wrapping around. This new one is going to have a face as well, because She says today's political environment doesn't call for subtlety.

Plans

Well, the jewelry mania has died down. I'm only puzzling out jewelry in my head a few minutes a day, so it's time I start leaving the house again. Remember last year when Gary and I spent every Saturday at a different location? Looking at eagles, going down slides, visiting deserted small towns? We need to get back to that. Of course, we were down to the dregs on the list of St. Louis fun. The dregs. The "St. Louis Economy Museum at the Federal Reserve" Dregs.

I anticipate one day a month will be devoted to some type of anti-Trump activism. There's the Tax March, and I imagine there'll be pop-up protests for each new Executive Order. I am ashamed to say we didn't join into the Refugee protest at the St. Louis Lambert "International" Airport, because frankly it's not all that International any more. I think you can fly to Canada and that's it. No one was being denied entry to Saint Louis.

A few minutes each weekend will be spent learning how to drum. Gary has a lot of drumming experience, and I have no sense of rhythm, so I've been wheedling drumming lessons out of Gary. He won't let me use the big drum set yet, so I'm confined to the congas and bongos. I can play a Samba beat very poorly at this point.

I'd rather spent time doing something instead of watching something, unless it's something about an English queen, past or present. In addition to Victoria and The Crown, we went out to watch Hidden Figures and I was overtaken by violent sobs at the end. Everyone sobs at that movie, even little girls who didn't get hustled out of Mission Control by their sexist fathers. And to think I've been indignant all these years that my NASA-contractor father blocked my access by telling me, "They don't let girls into Mission Control" (as he led my brother in) when in reality they didn't let women in anywhere. Well, unless you could do high level math. It did inspire me to replace the motor in the deader of my two Roombas ... but sadly, I did not achieve mission success.

There was also a binge day spent watching Good Girls Revolt on Netflix - another tale of women not being allowed or encouraged at work, while men took the credit. Very thankful I never had to put up with anything that blatant. Thanks women who came first!

Jailbird

Every once in a while I wander about the Internet looking for information about Jerry, my technical father. 

What we know:

• Divorced in 1968
• Worked at NASA during Apollo 13 - April 1970
• Stopped visitation and child support in September 1970
• Did God knows what for the next 15 years
• Moved back in with his mother and worked at some paper in McAlester, Oklahoma as a City editor
• Died in 1986 of either lupus or nephritis or presumably alcoholism 

My brother Dave found him during the city editor phase. Dave and Jerry had conversations that were long on closure and light on facts. The only fact Dave could summon was that Jerry nominated himself for a Pulitzer for some reporting he did about the McAlester prison riot. 

Since there was a prison riot today, it led me to idly Google my way in search of the investigative pieces Jerry did about the 1974 riot. For the first time I actually found something.

I'm not surprised I never found anything before, since I had the year wrong. He worked the riot story in 1984, ten years after the original riot. Actually, as far as I know, there never was a finished riot anniversary story, because he was arrested while investigating it. Arrested for trying to break INTO the prison.

Yes. Breaking IN. A rival newspaper published the story.

So, I can see how this seemed like a good idea at the time. You're doing a story on the tenth anniversary of the country's worst prison riot, and you want to know if overcrowding is still a problem. What is there to do but go there with an ex-guard, that guy's dad, and the dad's GUN, and count the people yourself? 

Eventually the charges were dropped. I don't know if there were any repercussions from the "unprofessional conduct on Lockett's part." (I really liked that little tidbit of color. Unprofessional! That's where I get it.)

He didn't lose his job, in fact, it looks from the story above that his boss had his back. Or, perhaps "There's more to this than there seems to appear on the surface" is editor code for "Drunk."

They gave him a very polite obituary a year later, but you'll notice he wasn't an editor.