Godammit, I’m Mad!

I haven’t bought any Play-Doh in years, but I’m very excited about this 50th Anniversary pack, with 50 different colors. Remember how hard it could be to get just the right color?

Actually, I used to be pretty good with Play-doh.  I have told this story before but it’s worth telling again because of the Miracle:

When my son was around two years old, I had to watch the O.J. Simpson trial every day, just like everyone else who had a TV.  While it was on, my son and I worked with Play-Doh on the tray of his high-chair. I remember making a little Marcia Clark figure and a little O.J. too. One day I was just absent-mindedly squishing some Play-Doh when I looked down and to my surprise, this is what I had made:

As you can see, it’s a familiar image! I had to think for a moment to place it, but I know that you will recognize it at once as a portion of The Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh.

This is known as The Play-Doh Miracle, and it will be on file at the Vatican when I am formally declared a Saint.

I don’t think one can underestimate the importance of hair. As I often say aloud while watching TV, “Hair is everything.” When accused of having an unhealthy preoccupation with hair, I’ve been able to fire off myths and folk tales and biblical stories to support my belief in the enduring significance of hair. Rapunzel, Samson, Medusa, Lady Godiva etc. Then there is the fundamentalist covering-up of hair, as in nuns, orthodox Jews, and Muslim women.

Hair matters! Great hair can raise one’s attractiveness quotient just like bad hair can obliterate it. I once had a friend who insisted that I pose for a $15 video tape on sale at a mall, where different hairstyles were superimposed on my head. (Before we all went digital.) In 12 different styles and hair-colors, I am transformed into a secretary, headbanger, elderly lesbian, and so on.

Today, I came across a story about Liz Jones, a women who described her momentous haircut. Liz Jones is thrilled with her new look, while I find the old look a milion times better.

What do you think? Then there is the writer at Jezebel who shows us her haircut a la Liz Jones.

The photo above is followed by a bunch of compliments, because no one had the heart (or nerve) to say, “Oh no, you cut off your beautiful hair!” In my opinion, this is another tragic haircut, turning a lovely vibrant looking woman into a shorn, innocuous Nobody.

One of my favorite scientists, Steven Pinker, is a member of The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ where you can admire his hair and the hair of many colleagues.

Finally, there is the poignant, beautiful and immortal line from Brian Wilson: “Where did your long hair go, where is the girl I used to know?” Caroline, No is #211 on Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest songs of all time, but we all know that it’s really in the top ten.

All day I’ve been thinking about Liz Lou. Maybe it’s because her art involves such a passionate, superhuman commitment in time and labor. My own fits of art are so half-assed and meager.

“Liza Lou has often been trivialised as the “bead lady”. Her art is distinguished by the thousands of tiny threaded and glued beads that cover every millimetre of her life-sized sculptures and environments. There are those who would see Lou’s work as a kind of extreme and cranky craftwork, an obsessional but minor art. Her most famous piece is a full-scale kitchen, whose counters, cupboards, sink, dishes, tap and even the gushing water are all picked out in chains and whorls of beads. There has been a beaded trailer home and a backyard, every blade of grass a spike of beads. Beaded blankets, beaded portraits of all the US presidents, a beaded toilet bowl with beaded stains, beaded saints, a beaded suicide. When can it ever end? It started when she was in college. If Lou could she’d bead the world.”

I would probably spray the world gold, because it takes less effort. Read more about Liza Lou here.

My new tattoo was inspired by this product from an online botanica. My Adopted Son (long story) got the same tattoo, and then we ate dinner at a bowling alley. My husband was displeased that he hadn’t been notified about the tattoo, but I can’t remember every little thing, can I?

It’s not really big, I’m just too stupid to size my pix properly, and I took this one with my cell phone. However, I can lead you to The Voodoo Professor, who is fun to listen to. For more serious Voodoo needs, I suggest going here.

Moss is a design store with a great online shop full of stuff to drool over or laugh at or both. I love this necklace by Katja Prins, called Bound by Blood.  It “represents prayer necklaces from differing religions, and is stained in red to represent the blood that has been shed in the name of religion.” Amen.

What I really want from Moss is this set of exquisite dolls, called “les bebes du monde.” In fact, I need them.  Only three months till my birthday!

I don’t know much about that Eckhart Tolle character beyond the facts that he writes best-sellers, Oprah likes him and his name is funny. But I feel a seething hatred brewing for The Power of Now.

I just landed on a blog called Evolving Beings, which purports to ’share wisdom and spiritual enlightenment.’ I patiently read a long post about someone deciding to rid herself of her jewelry collection. She goes on and on about how your “stuff” is really dead weight, just a product of materialism, not essential to Who You Really Are. So I’m reading and reading and then I get to the part where she takes the jewelry to a pawn shop and sells it for a fraction of what it’s worth.

What the fuck?!

Please join me in thinking, What a crock of shit!  Is selling your jewelry a way to rid yourself of the burden of materialism? And to a pawn shop! A business that profits off the misery of the desperate? Why didn’t this Spirituality Seeker just donate her jewelry to a charity? In my own neighborhood, there are thrift-shops that benefit AIDS, cancer research, drug rehabilitation and homeless shelters.

Godammit, I am enraged by this example of hypocrisy and stupidity. I hereby launch my own movement called The Power of Not Now™ . You heard it here first. You can join up today, or you can wait until I devise its 5 Sacred Tenets. The first will be (duh!) “Why do now what you can put off until later?”

The second will be “Hang on to Your Jewelry!”

Last night, the entire Sister Wolf family got off our asses and went to see the Dresden Dolls perform at the Wiltern. The Sons were intent on standing right by the stage, and did so.

The Husband and I chose to take one of the few tables in the back of the theater, the better to have a drink and sit our two asses back down. It’s not like I can’t stand up for hours and scream my head off if I want to, but last night I didn’t want to, and here’s why:  Because god in his infinite wisdom wanted to let me cast my eyes upon Morrissey, who stood just a few feet away from me!

If you don’t revere Morrissey, it may be due to your lack of cultural literacy, i.e. you haven’t heard his masterpiece, “I Know It’s Over.”  I admit that until I heard it, I just thought of Morrissey as an interesting songwriter with an arresting persona.

Then, I heard Jeff Buckley’s version of I Know It’s Over, and my heart nearly imploded from its beauty and intensity.  It is one of the most exquisitely poetic songs of all time. You can read the lyrics here.

So there was Morrissey, but one can hardly go up to him and bother him when his whole deal is about being alone and asexual. For an asexual man, he is pretty damn unbelievably attractive.

So, shit, I now wish I could have taken a photo or kissed the hem of his robe. But he’ll always be there when I close my eyes.

The Dresden Dolls were terrific, and they basked in the love of their hardcore fans, who tended toward the Disenfranchised…..the strange, the fat, the emaciated, the ambiguously gendered and of course, the Queer. God bless them every one, and Jeff Buckley too, may his soul rest in peace.

I came upon this essay today, and it reminded me to try to remember every so often that I am alive. It describes that shock of existential clarity when you suddenly experience your self in the moment. It’s such a weird epiphany….sometimes exhilarating or sometimes terrifying, in my experience, anyway. It’s the feeling of “Shit! I’m alive! But not forever! How have I forgotten this?!”

Read the essay, it’s short, and read the comments as well. There is something poignant about the discussion, and it’s entertaining in a nice, unpretentious way.

For sheer existential dread, on the same topic, go here. The original essay, “There is a Secret World” has been expanded and is followed by some impassioned manifestos about how to reject any limitations on one’s personal freedom. I think.  Here is a quote from one of them:

Kiss with every tooth in your mouth, fight with your heart on your sleeve and blood in your eyes—it helps, I promise.

If you’re not feeling too jaded, the romanticism will offest the dread.

Long live rebellious spirits everywhere (except Austria, of course)!

But not at my house! I woke up to a wonderful gift from my Webmaster…a 2-CD recording of Prince’s performance at Coachella last week. Not only a high quality recording but a track list and everything.

You know how fussy Prince is about copyright infringement, and I don’t blame him, as long as I can still get what I want. I have loved the Little Prince since the first time I heard “Dirty Mind,” many light-years ago. Once, a Prince video from that era was playing on my sister’s TV, and her teenage son ran from the room, shrieking “That’s gay, that’s gay!” His terror only confirmed the rebellious, uninhibited brilliance that is Prince.

Prince, don’t be mad! Remember how we paid a thousand bucks to see you in Vegas? And you didn’t come over to sit in my lap? Now we’re even!

Anyway, I’m listening to the concert as I write this. His version of “Creep” is beyond amazing. Try to get your own Webmaster to burn you a copy.

Watching Hillary and Obama speak about their religious views at Messiah College was a demoralizing experience for us heathens. It was as if they each wanted to out-Christian the other: each tried to prove their cred by blabbing about the depth of their “faith.”

Where the hell are we, anyway? Isn’t religion supposed to be a personal matter here in America? What a horrible spectacle it was. Hillary even stooped to mention Esther, as a come-on to her “Jewish friends.”

I can’t believe it’s come to this in Democratic politics. I don’t want anyone’s god in the White House but now it seems like we’re going to be voting for whoever can pose most convincingly as god’s BFF.

If that’s not bad enough, Hillary has a new ad that takes advantage of Obama’s so-called gaffe about “bitterness.” She’s like a shark who smells blood. How dare Obama suggest that poverty and unemployment lead to bitterness!

I never liked Randi Rhodes much, but now that she’s lost her job for calling Hillary a “big fucking whore,” I think she’s a paragon of truth and integrity.

Do I sound bitter at all? If you feel bitter too, check out Bitter Voters for Obama.