PunkKittyDiddy

Ghostwriting For Dummies (And I Do Mean For Dummies)

I'm trying to think of additional and innovative and writerly ways to bring home more freelance bacon.  Enough with the trolling of CraigsList in the vain hope that I might stumble across a posting that reads, "Write stuff!  For money!  Lots of it!  Seriously!"  

OK.............maybe I'll continue to keep an eye out for that ad, but in the interim, it's time to get proactive and make my own opportunities!  I'm a smart broad....surely I can identify some unique niches that I might be able to caulk with my verbosity in exchange for a paycheck. 

So I was mulling over potential revenue streams while Fox Soccer Channel's nightly news was on in the background.  In fact, I think Wayne Rooney might have been attempting to speak at a press conference at the time.  Then a flash of inspiration walloped me with more brute force than an illiterate Cockney striker...... 

I should hire myself out to professional athletes who are looking to pen their autobiographies!!!!!  This is cake work!  I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner!  It totally removes the pressure to be brilliant.  All I really need to bring to the table is an elementary-school-level grasp of spelling and grammar, and maybe a taser gun to ward off any amorous Kobe-like advances.  Let's not overlook the drudgery of wading through and extracting the hundreds of thousands of superfluous "ya know?"s and "um"s and "like"s and "man"s and "hell yeah!"s, either.  But from there, it's just a matter of applying a really large font to whatever's left.  Easy peasey! 

To safeguard against the possibility of having to actually exert myself, I should come up with some sort of criteria by which I determine whether or not to take on a client.  Maybe I could enforce some sort of neck circumference standard (whereby the thicker the neck, the more desirable the client).  Unfortunately, Wayne Rooney already cranked out his tome, so there goes that particular walk in the park.  Still, kudos to whichever of my fellow ghostwriting colleagues managed to convince Rooney to fork over some major coin for this opening paragraph (and the remaining five paragraphs that constitute this 23 year old brainiac's life story):

I was nearly called Adrian.  That was what my father wanted.  A bit posh, I suppose, and doesn't quite sound like me.  I wonder if I would have had a different personality if I'd gone through life with a different name?

Join the club, Wayne.  I'm pretty sure if I'd been named Stanley or Eugene, I would be a highly successful accountant by now and would have avoided my current predicament of having to come up with all these fly-by-night, get-rich-quick schemes.........

Oh well.

There's Been A Load of Compromisin' On The Road to My Horizon, But I'm Gonna Be....Heading Back to L.A. Now, Because Knowing These Lyrics By Heart Is Totally Lame.......

  I am embarrassed to report that I now have re-committed to memory the entire lyrics to "Rhinestone Cowboy." 

Looks like it's time to head back home to the big city rat race.  Not doing so with 100% enthusiasm, but I need to get serious about the whole writing career thing.  Penning weird shop signs won't exactly finance a top-notch private school education for wee Z..

Finger Pickin' Good

My stance on this particular issue may very well incite heated debate and controversy within the toddler community, but I have to get this off my chest:  I fervently believe that pretzels, and other assorted foodstuff, have no business being shoved in a nostril, or really in any bodily orifice, except for the mouth.

Z. made it clear that she falls on the other side of the fence on this topic, because yesterday she launched a nice-sized nugget right up her nose.  Fortunately, I am getting the hang of this whole maternal instinct thing: while I didn't actually witness the incident, I had handed her a pretzel (mind you, she has previously had no trouble maneuvering such into her mouth), turned my back for mere seconds, and then looked at her again, at which point her face was contorted into a mask of raging discomfort and confusion.  "Nose!" she protested.  I immediately deduced what had happened to the pretzel.  I'm Sherlockian like that.

OK, maybe this wasn't the most amazing feat of superhuman sleuthing ever performed.  Maybe this was a no-brainer.  Maybe a more experienced parent would have instructed her to NOT put the pretzel up her nose before even handing it over.  Maybe figuring out what happened to the pretzel was even more straightforward than handing Lindsay Lohan a vodka tonic and an eight-ball, turning one's back momentarily, and inherently knowing, seconds later, exactly where those items had disappeared to.

Anyway, I followed a course of action that would have made the incarnation of my former, non-parent self (and any non-parent) shudder in horror.  I had my finger waaaaay up that little nose in an attempt to dislodge the quite visible boulder of dough and salt.  (Did I mention that this was all taking place in a moving vehicle?   I wasn't behind the wheel, at least, but it certainly gave me an idea for a new challenge that could be pitched to the producers of Fear Factor ........)  For whatever reason, Z. didn't want to sit still for this  farce.  Doesn't matter, because I quickly realized that this approach was not likely the most practical course of action anyway, as I was probably just lodging the obstruction further up the nostril. 

We then embarked upon a crash course of how to blow one's nose good and hard, so that everything short of brains comes flying out.  Z. proved to be a most astute pupil, and the bloody morsel was soon launched out of the nostril and into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.  (Actually, it may have landed in grandma's purse, but aren't those little unexpected discoveries just part of the joy of grandparenthood?) 

At any rate:  victory! 

But......must every bite of food now be dispersed with the disclaimer that enjoyment of said food item cannot be guaranteed if ingested through an inappropriate body cavity?  I bet lawyers make really good parents.  They probably think ahead and cover all of this in a boiler-plate waiver which their kids are required to sign before each meal or snack. 

Man, I had no idea that parenting required such an degree of hyper-specificity.........

How To NOT Win A Clio Award

My current sabbatical has somehow imparted in me a growing obsession with weird shop signs. And boy, did I come across a prime specimen the other day. 

In driving from Small Town A, where my mother lives, to Small Town B, where my father lives, we traveled through a number of places that could best be categorized as much, much smaller, or what might even qualify as the smallest "towns" on the face of the earth altogether (if a paltry scattering of a few houses in the middle of nowhere even qualifies as such).

At one point, we drove by a roadside establishment whose business was clearly taxidermical in nature.  Mind you, we were in a moving vehicle while viewing it, but it was still hard to miss the assorted stuffed animals (not the kind that come from Toys R Us) and skeletal remains strewn about.  And I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that the gentleman responsible for performing these amazing feats of taxidermy was the very same individual who spearheaded the marketing campaign for this particular operation.  The building was festooned with a huge sign that boasted:

Brand New Dead Things!

I'm not making that up.

This is exactly why I would never embark upon a drive from Small Town A to Small Town B after dark.  My car would inevitably break down right in front of this shop, and this would prove to be a dead zone not just for raccoons and deer, but also cell phones, and the "Brand New Dead Things" place would be the only place with a light on, so I'd have to go knock on the door to ask for help, and the door would be opened by some innocuous-looking old man or woman who would welcome me in for a cup of tea as they *pretended* to call a tow truck or the police on my behalf, and as we went through that whole charade of waiting for help to arrive, there would be an awkward silence as I looked around the room and took note of the poor, terrified-looking stuffed and mounted animals on display in the drawing room, whose presence would only contribute to the increasing sense of dread and foreboding, and then some headlights would flash through the drawing room curtains, and I'd temporarily let down my guard and, with a sigh of relief, exclaim, "Oh, that must be the cops/tow truck/someone sane!", and my kindly host would suddenly turn creepy and menacing, and say, "No, that's Bubba....", and out from the truck would lumber some deformed, inbred half-ape in garage overalls, and he would have a dead hitchhiker slung over one shoulder, and a pick-ax in his other hand, and.........that would not be good.

Hey, I go to the movies.  I know how it works.  Anyway.....I know I've been fantasizing about small town living, but there are limits.......

Don't Drive Drunk. Don't Drive Sober, Either.

I am dragging my uproariously funny friend P.S. into unwitting guest blogthorship with this entry.  He is one of those classy and self-respecting individuals who sees no need to let it all hang out in a blog.......which leaves his life totally open to being plundered and pillaged for filler anecdotes by opportunistic individuals such as myself.*  Ergo, here is the sad, sad tale of one upstanding citizen's good intentions gone horribly awry.  P.S. recently wrote me with this news:

"I wrecked my truck a few weeks ago. After going out with some friends, I did the right thing and stayed the night at their house, instead of risking a drunken drive home. Because public service messages on TV told me not to. (They've also told me to stop cyberbullying. And so I have.) Of course, on the sober next-morning drive home, someone pulls out in front of me, and I hit him. I'm considering cyberbullying him now."

Sadly, traffic laws are only marginally less draconian than Murphy's Law.  Why is it that so many impatient drivers who are hell-bent on merging will not hesitate to do so even when it places them directly in the path of an oncoming vehicle?  More to the point: why is the law generally on their side in such cases?  Stupidity surely impairs drivers as much as or more so than alcohol consumption, only there don't seem to be any laws against that.  These drivers are the same individuals who make it necessary for hair dryer manufacturers to affix warning labels to their product that read, "Do not use this item while sleeping in a bathtub!"  Worse, you know the next-of-kin of the first moron who actually attempted to use that hair dryer in a bathtub while sleeping got a big fat settlement check.  

Reverse Darwinism sucks festering monkey balls..................     

At any rate, poor P.S. wound up with the blame and a totaled truck.  Though at least he's quite happy with the new car that the insurance check hath wrought.         

* While substituting another person's life experience for my own in this blog is at best morally repugnant, I have nonetheless deftly skirted the issue of plagiarism, because not only am I attributing the above anecdote to the source in question, I'm using his words verbatim, which means all of this can be chalked up to "investigative journalism" instead of "lazy exploitation."   

Not Unlike Chartered Accountants Who Dream of Lion Taming.....

Quote of the Day:

 "It's no use running a pig farm badly for thirty years while saying, "Really I was meant to be a ballet dancer."  By that time, pigs will be your style."

 - Quentin Crisp

When Entering Small-Town Utopia, Check Yer Spellchecker At the Door, Y'all

Z. and I are hanging with my dad in Smalltown, Arizona for the moment.  It's awfully easy to romanticize the notion of small town life....which I'm currently doing.  Gas is $3.85 a gallon here.  We readily found a parking space at Costco on a Saturday.  Stupid, mundane, trivial stuff like that starts to look enticing after nearly a decade spent in L.A. dodging freeway shooters en route to getting bilked big-time while shopping for essential goods and services.  Plus I'm just feeling discouraged at the moment.  Professionally.  Personally.   I'm ripe for seduction, totally primed to trade in my Blackberry for Mayberry.....

 Along those lines, I'm a big fan of mom and pop shops, and those too can be found in abundance here.  Yet it's hard to totally quell my inner big city snob when I behold some of the shop names etched into the woodworked shingles hanging out front. 

I'm sorry, but words are important to me.  Bad flow particularly chaps my hide.  So, yes, I got a little twitchy when I passed by a women's clothing boutique called, "Sassy N' Chic." (Overlooking the obvious grammatical massacre that had unfolded before my eyes, on a more philosophical level: can those two concepts - "sassy" and "chic" - ever really peacefully co-exist?)  A few minutes later, we cruise by a breakfast nook called, "Waffles N' More."  A quick perusal of a local business directory unearths the existence of another restaurant known as an "Eatin' Place."  And worse, these assorted affronts to articulation have been easily eclipsed by the disproportionate level of apostrophe Z's, and Z's in lieu of S's, on display.  Sloppily dispatched Z's are maybe one of my top five pet peeves of all time - I'm not sure where those rogue Z's would fall within the top five, precisely, but probably right beneath "genocide." 

Uh....maybe I couldn't live here after all...... 

If you're hankering for some frozen yogurt around these parts, look no further than a shop called, "Frozen Yogurtz"!  (Unless of course the dreaded slapdash use of "Z" torments you as it does me - in which case you too can sell out and wander into a Cold Stone Creamery solely on principle, because someone at corporate there at least bothered to run their spellcheck prior to naming the business.)  There's a daycare in the area whose business name employs the word, "Kidz," and a host of strip mall establishments with names like, "Joe'z Pizza" and "E-Z Laundry" and whatnot. 

Maybe some of these business owners are well-educated persons who simply don't want to lose business in a town where illiteracy (or at least faux illiteracy) is a big draw? 

Look, I'm not claiming to be some fancy-pants, fast-track, book-learned cosmopolitan messiah or anything, but it's been really difficult not to storm into such establishments, cue Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, and proclaim, "I harken from a land far away....... an advanced civilization teeming with fancy modern technology!  Behold.....the DICTIONARY!"  I would then offer up a shiny unabridged Webster's in much the same manner as Moses has been historically depicted holding those stone tablets, and........OK, maybe I do harbor messiah fantasies....

I know, I know....you can't have it all.  Small town charm and big city sophistication cannot peacefully co-exist within the same zip code any more than "Sassy" n' "Chic" can co-mingle tastefully on a clothing rack. 

Or maybe I'm just some stuck-up city girl who needs to re-evaluate what's really important.  Do I really want to raise a kid who knows how to spell and pronounce the word "cappuccino" by age 3, but who has also ingested enough exhaust fumes to markedly diminish the functions of that portion of the brain responsible for such amazing feats of verbiage?  For this I'm perpetually flat-busted broke, underemployed and stressed out?

It's just that.......Frozen "Yogurtz"?  Seriously?

The not-entirely-internal debate rages on.        

The REAL Reason Why 80s Power Ballads Make You Sick To Your Stomach: You Might Be A SUPERHUMAN GENIUS!

There was this intriguing show on the Science Channel last night called Real Superhumans - it featured people whose senses are far more advanced and attuned to sensory stimuli than average, and whose senses are sometimes intertwined in atypical ways, allowing them to "feel" colors, "see" mathematical algorithms come to life, "taste" music and so on. 

Sure, feeling colors and seeing weird crap is nothing new, at least not for those who've dabbled in hallucinogens.....but the prospect of tasting music raises a lot of interesting questions.  Would that head in the obvious and literal direction?  Would the Rolling Stones taste like brown sugar?  Would the Beatles explode on the tongue in a smorgasbord of strawberry fields, honey pie and savoy truffle, washed down with a hippie hippie shake (a variation of a chocolate shake, but with a strong herbal aftertaste that imparts the ability to see colors, as noted above)?  Would a steady diet of Britney Spears' bubble gum pop indeed prove toxic?  Bad taste would actually be a literal affliction, instead of a matter of opinion.  That kind of blows my mind. 

I've never been able to stomach the musical pablum churned out by the ongoing parade of American Idol winners, whose subsequent debut albums bleed together like an endless loop of call center hold music.  All this time I've suspected I was merely suffering from high standards, but perhaps I'm superhuman and possess mysteriously intertwined aural receptors and taste buds instead?

Highly unlikely, however - perspective eventually rears its sensible head sooner or later. Real Superhumans also featured a gifted painter who was born without eyes, which certainly puts me back into a more mundane context.  I can put on a good show about being a working mum who spins plates like a pro, until you put me in the same room with some tenacious and talented trooper who has had to overcome real obstacles - like, uh, HAVING NO EYES - at which point it becomes obvious that I whine a bit more than my circumstances really warrant.  

I can breastfeed and type simultaneously, however.  That's surely impressive as far as second-rate minor sub-superpowers go.......

Euro 2008 - The Final

Eh.  I should be more jazzed about tomorrow's Germany versus Spain final than I actually am.  

It will provide a good opportunity to dust off my Inigo-Montoya-from-Princess-Bride accent during commentary, at least.

"My name is Fernando Torres.  You scored in my goal.  Prepare to die."

Hmm.  Still not feeling it.  

Euro 2008: Turkey 2 - Germany 3

Damn, I'm glad I was merely an objective (though highly interested) observer here, versus a devout fan of either team......otherwise, I think something important might have ruptured up in my general cranial region.  The drama of this highly anticipated match-up exceeded all expectations, and not in the usual sense, when the satellite feed relaying the game worldwide conked out not once, but twice.......the second time being right after the Germans had scored their third goal with two minutes left in the game.

I'm not claiming to be clairvoyant or anything, but Ugur Boral and Schweinsteiger did score the first goals for their respective teams.  It was clearly written in the stars (using all available hard consonants).

The Guardian's online coverage remains reliably amusing.  Amidst the reports of the global television outages, one reader pondered, "Is this a Shyamalan movie?"

I have to agree with those who are saddened to see underdog Turkey fall by the wayside.  I will now be forced to dig up really flimsy and far-reaching reasons to bring up Ugur Boral's name in future posts.  But don't think I won't give it my best shot.

Stupid German uber-efficiency.