There’s a song called “Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend” by a group called “Mr. T Experience.” I find both names to be pretty humorous. The thing about humor, though, is it is funnier when “it” is true. The fact is, Hitler did have a girlfriend.

       Hitler’s girlfriend was pretty cute.

It just goes to show, no matter what a despicable (or mullet-laden) human being you are, there is someone out there for everybody.

Young Love

This all brings me to today’s headline:

Texas man calls 911, says he’s eating girlfriend

Now, I am sure it comes as no surprise that if something like this were to happen, it would happen in Texas. I couldn’t help but read more. The girlfriend was a very pretty, 21-year-old Anglo woman. The “man” that ate her was this guy:

Dreamboat!

I wasn’t exactly shocked by the news story. What I was shocked by was that the guy was black. Most of the black guys I know won’t even eat out their girlfriend, let alone eat them!

I know, that was in poor taste.

 Speaking of poor taste…

Sooo asking for it.

I must add- that couple is from Texas, too.

This all should make all of you single people out there feel pretty good about yourselves right about now.

Seriously.

Somewhere in the woods near the magical city of Buffalo, New York a unicorn deer was discovered.

“I just wish somebody would shoot it so we’d know what that was,” Ebeling said.

Similar to the chupacabra, no one is exactly sure what “it” is; but, people do know they want to kill it. I’ve always found it fascinating that when people don’t know what something is, their first impulse is to kill it.

Other Subjects of the “Kill It” Phenomena

My holiday wish this year is for that unicorn deer to live (and for those Mexicans, too.)

Happy Holidays,

Danu

Ever have the feeling there’s a rat inside your face trying to claw it’s way out though your nose and eyes? I have, and it’s not as pleasant as it may sound. The feeling I am referring to is just one symptom of the common cold. There is not much else I detest more in this world than being sick.

This is what I feel like right now.

The thing is, there is nothing or no one I can blame. I work in several venues, around older people and younger people, I go to the gym (where I know people don’t wipe down their machines after using them.) I could pick up this incurable demon anywhere. From everything I have read on the subject, I’ve deduced that between 1/2 and 3/4s of people infected with cold viruses don’t show any symptoms! Since they don’t know they are capable of spreading the cold they’re carrying, they don’t take any special precautions. If the people at the gym are any realistic sampling, most people don’t even wash their hands after using the toilet.

Butt, it looks clean…

There are over 200 strains of the “cold” and there’s probably not going to be a vaccine any time soon. The things that don’t cause a cold are things like cold weather, wet feet, etc. The main correlation between cold weather and colds is dry air. Cold air ouside holds less humidity, as does the hot air from heaters inside your house. This dries out your mucous membranes which makes them more susceptible to infection. Also, keeping windows and doors tightly shut recirculates contaminated air making people more likely to breathe in contaminants.

My gift…

To you.

Now, contamination occurs from hand to hand (or phones, doorknobs, handshakes), then to his/her own eyes and nose (self-inoculation) or by droplets sprayed into the air from sneezing (which are inhaled by another person.) Viral infections can remain viable on hard surfaces up to forty-eight hours.

Just when you thought cards were safe…

This situation can be worsened still by living or working in close quarters, sharing drinks and lip balm, sharing common space and touching the same surfaces. People living in dorms are just asking for it.

Let me count the ways to infect you…

The main ways to avoid catching a cold are the following:

1. WASH YOUR HANDS! - Wash them every chance you get; it will hurt nothing and help everything (and everyone) around you. Also, for “washing” to actually be useful, you must vigorously rub your hands together. Those people that wet their hands on the way out of the bathroom make me laugh. Also, long nails are much more likely to carry germs so watch out for people with “falsies!” Liquid soap is definitely preferable to bar soap. Oh, and it doesn’t matter if it’s cold water- which surprised me- it’s just the vigorous rubbing! Now, who doesn’t like vigorous rubbing?

Just like the doctors on TV!

2. DON’T TOUCH YOUR FACE! - Every time you touch your eyes or nose or mouth, you’re potentially sticking other people’s nasties into your temple.

3. DON’T SNEEZE OR COUGH INTO YOUR HANDS! - I know this might sound weird; but, I sneeze into my shirt.

The Polite Society

I’m not a snotty sneezer, so that isnot a problem for me. I do, however have the peace of mind knowing my hands are not contaminated- just my cleavage… watch out boys! Girl cooties! Another option is aiming for your armpit. Whose in your armpit, hmmm?

4. DRINK WATER (or non-caffeinated drinks) CONSTANTLY! - Being dried out makes you much more susceptible to getting sick and caffeine dries you out -for reals!

5. EAT CABBAGE FAMILY MEMBERS! - Not people with the last name Cabbage, but items like Broccoli, cauliflower, mustard greens, kale, Brussels sprouts (I don’t like them either.) Add onions, garlic, citrus, berries, tomatoes, peppers, whole grains and seafood and you’re sure to ward off the cold better than those around you.

Eat me!

6. RELAX! - Stress will definitely lower your immune system, (you’re twice as likely to get sick when you’re stressed) so take a break (but not a smoke break because that damages the cilia in your nose and lungs which are the first line of defense against infection.) Yoga, deep breathing, T’ai chi, regular exercise, music, even bubble baths might be the thing that keeps you from getting sick.

Treat yourself well and BE well…and quit getting me sick! I have three jobs to go to!!!

Over the years, my family has grown up, matured, gotten smarter collectively. My sister has been a great role-model throughout my life. She, being the eldest of my siblings has had to figure a lot out on her own and I, luckily, get to learn from those discoveries.

One thing my family never passed down was financial wisdom, which seems weird considering both of my Grandfathers were accountants. But, nonetheless, some of us had to learn things the hard way. Recently, my sister has taken some classes in money management. I found out when we went to have lunch together and she paid in cash. It was odd seeing her, or anybody for that matter, actually use the stuff. She is the one that really got me to understand the best thing to spend at Christmas is time, not money.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of using credit cards but even using my debit card was a denial of the process of handing over physical dollars to someone for each expenditure I made. When Christmas rolled around, I, like most of America, spent beyond my means. Then, my family made a pact. We drew names and were only allowed to buy one gift under $50 for our recipient. The idea was to make a wish list and that way everyone would end up getting one thing they actually wanted or needed.

So, no more of this…

This year, instead of drawing names at Thanksgiving, we did an online drawing. This website-

Elfster.com is making our gift exchange even more simplistic than before. This year I vowed not to step foot inside of a mall, AND I vowed not to spend more money than I planned to. In fact, I did some research of the items I was planning on buying and went to the ATM and withdrew only enough money to buy the items I planned to.

 

So easy a dog can do it!

It’s the first year I didn’t walk out with presents for myself, (which is actually a present in itself.) On top of the bad financial genes, we also inherited a clutter gene.

 

Come On-a My House

So, my mom has requested that we only get her consumable items: food, wine, bath goods; stuff she can use and enjoy and that won’t add to the clutter issue. So far, this system has worked out really well for all of us.

Here is a cool source for unusual gifts that are all under $77 and here’s another called Perpetual Kid that I love.

Limbs are yummy!

I highly recommend setting up an Amazon.com wishlist. Even if people that are shopping for you don’t dig online shopping, they can still get an idea of your preferences and find similar items at local shops.

Oh, and that reminds me- I know you can save a few bucks here and there by making your purchases at Mal-Wart and the like,

Always.

but I urge you to revive your local economy and try to find gifts at locally-owned businesses.

This man will thank you for it!

Happy Holidays to you and yours,

Danu

My most recent fascination has become pet wigs:

Kitty wigs are real.

How people ever got those cats to not take those wigs off is a mystery to me. I do have a guess, though…sedatives. Cats have enough hair (just ask my sofas.) Why would someone think they needed more of it? These cats are just going to create unrealistic expectations of the standards of beauty that cats are already challenged to live up to.

Oh the pressure!

Dogs, too.

Next thing you know, these cats will end up just like all the Hollywood Teens whose lives were spoiled by the high-pressure lifestyle of being in the public eye.

Downward Spiral

Oh, who cares- we all know what happens to all of them in the end, anyway.

“Babies taste better.”

If my car were KITT (which it is sooo not), it would be crying right now and cursing the name, “Ricardo.” “Ricardo” is the name of the man who unloaded a porcelain sink and bathtub on the highway I was driving to work on the other day. I know he didn’t do it on purpose; but, do you know how much damage driving over a sink will do to your car? A lot. I thought it was funny when my co-worker asked me if the sink came off of a big trailer driven by a Mexican guy. Had he met Ricardo? Not exactly– but lots of people have met many like him.

This is not just a Mexican phenomenon.

Having driven over the sink rendered my car undriveable which forced me to pull over in the emergency lane. Upon exiting my car, I had the pleasure of meeting Ricardo for the first time (unlike the rest of the world who had apparently already made his acquaintance.) I approached him as semis were whizzing by and the first words out of his mouth were, “They fell off another truck that drove off.” Then the Chola Abogada within me was waiting to burst out. “Why you lying!?” is what I wanted to say but instead, asked, “Did your vehicle get damaged?” He replied, “No.” So, I’m thinking, and I ask him, “Then why did you pull over?” Do you know what he said? If you’ve met him before, you probably do. But, if not, I’ll tell you. He said he pulled over to go get that other person’s stuff out of the four-lane 70mph highway. I’m soooo sure.Is there a Patron Saint of Road Debris Collection? If not, there should be; because this guy would have had to do a lot of praying to get that bathtub out of the highway without dying. And to do so knowing that it wasn’t his booty would make him a saint.

No need to handle litter and debris with our sturdy Trash Pick-Up Stick! With this handy tool there’s no repetitive bending and stretching, it speeds up your cleanup process and safely picks up litter and debris and reaches into difficult places like four-lane highways and dragon’s mouths! If only…

So, I go to my cell phone to call the non-emergency line to alert them about the hazards in the road and when I turn around and see a cop. Never before have I been so happy to see a police man.

Okay, well, maybe once…(but I don’t think he was a real cop.) Ahem.

Anyway, they assisted me in escorting Ricardo and me off the highway into a hotel parking lot where they (there were now three cops on motorcycles) waited with me for the tow truck to arrive. The police were trying to convince me I just had a flat tire and I wanted to say, “Why you lying!?” because I knew it was much, much worse than that. (Always get a second opinion.) The police were nice, though; they didn’t give me a hard time about my expired inspection sticker or my unloading the contraband from my trunk before my car was hauled off.

My inclination is to always go into situations knowing you catch more flies with honey- except, apparently, when it comes to insurance agencies. I called Ricardo’s company minutes after the accident. The person assigned to my claim, Marcos, was out of the office, days later he calls to tell me the driver wasn’t the owner of the vehicle and there might be a third party insurance company that may take liability, that he’d get back to me. blah, blah, blah. A week and several messages left later, I finally get him on the phone and call him out like some scrub that never returned my phone calls; well, because that’s exactly what he was. The entire thing was resolved within hours after I called him out on his poor performance.On the up side, I’ve been driving a rental car that is a change of pace from my normal, conservative car. The guy at Enterprise showed me my options and I said, “I want the clown car.”

Freak-Mobile

I have to say, other than the loads of blind spots the car has, I am really enjoying it- even the color! Orange is a very controversial color for vehicles (I have been informed.) Most people I know aren’t so hip to it but it’s grown on me.I still can’t help but get a little anxious when I cross that same stretch of road on my commute everyday. So, my driving habits have changed pretty dramatically. Now, I am officially an old woman- or, I at least drive like one.

Me

The thing is, I couldn’t justify paying $30 a day for the rental car company’s insurance. Now, I have something in common with Ricardo. Stop crying KITT; it’s going to be okay…eventually.

There’s a saying,”Nothing in life is free,” and I’m saying, “nothing exemplifies that more than a trip to the circus.” It all started when my co-worker’s girlfriend asked me to go with her to the Shriner Circus for free. Of course, I said yes; I even offered to drive. I rolled up to her house wearing my “normal clown attire”- funny hat, striped socks, clown nose - nothing overboard by any means. It wasn’t like I was wearing clown shoes.

So, we were pumped- we could almost feel the sugar that was about to be running through our veins. We were giddy thinking about the man that gets shot out of a cannon and how cool it would be to be a cannon-man’s groupies. Awesome, riiight?

My friend had received a stack of free tickets at work. Her mission was to give away the fourteen free children’s tickets to families. So, we are in the never-ending parking line and I am leaning out the window of my car asking, “Do you have any children?” when I realize I must seem like a weird pedophile or black-market merchant and that it’d be better to wait until we were out of the car.

To my amazement, everybody already had free passes. I started to smell a scam, or animal poop, I couldn’t tell which, yet. We got up to the ticket booth and my friend had failed to read the passes- you had to purchase one full-priced adult ticket to get an adult in for free. The tickets were only $14, though- not nearly as expensive as other circuses- and I was all dressed up so we gave them our money.

Inside was amazing. Not the circus, but the demographic- there were maybe three Anglo families in the whole place; the rest were “my people!” It was like a secret society– WAIT, it was a secret society. There were colorful lighted images being projected on the ceiling in a hypnotic swirling motion. I look more closely and realize they are the symbols for the Freemasons and the Shriners.

Suddenly I was afraid–VERY afraid. Was this just a huge machine to brainwash and recruit future generations of Latinos to their groups? It sure seemed like it. Adding to my nervousness were all the children walking up to me and saying, “hello!” I was like, “why are they all talking to me?” and then my friend reminded me that I was dressed like a clown. Oh, yeah…

Speaking of clowns, they all had names like Touchy and Feely and Spanky and Splatter and Jizzy- I’m not even making this up. No wonder we grow up to fear clowns…

I guess it comes as no surprise to anyone but me that at every turn was a money-making opportunity- for the circus, not me. Parking - $5, Sneaky Admission - $14, Hot Dog - $5, Drink - $5, Cotton Candy - $3, Light Sabers - $?, Coloring Books - $?, Pony Rides - $?, Elephant Rides - $?, My Shame - Priceless. And, most of the families there had a least five kids in tow. Those Shriners are a smart lot.

My theory that this was all some “master plan” was re-enforced by the programming of the show. Since when are there Flamenco dancers at the circus? Since when is the emcee a Latino transvestite? And to top it all off they closed the show with a touching tribute to America in which they played Neil Diamond’s “They’re coming to America- today!” Have truer words ever been sung at a circus? I think not.

If you love your children- or yourself, for that matter- avoid the chance of brain-washing (or worse, molestation by Jizzy) at events like the Shriner Circus. Instead, get out your striped socks, put on a funny hat and make your own circus right in your own backyard.

Your kids will thank you for it.

Mical’s wild hair (in his last blog, which you should read) has become the thorn in my side. I think about Austin’s changes every day; but, not until Mical (unknowingly, I’m sure,) posted a picture of someone I know in his blog did it really get me thinking.

Austin is an ever-growing popular town. I moved here during the Summer Olympics of 1984. Watching those games on a tiny TV, in a living room with no furniture was liberating and foreshadowed the lessons I would learn from the city of Austin that, frankly, I don’t think I could have ever learned from Brownsville, Texas. There’s a song by Erykah Badu- a fellow Texan- that reminds me of these simpler, younger times, called, “Puff”- “Back in the day when things were cool all we needed was bop ba ba ba ba ba da.”

The contrast of being the darkest person in my neighborhood in Austin, as opposed to the lightest in my neighborhood in Brownsville, would prove to be enlightening. The comparison of what I might have been, maturing in Brownsville, as opposed to growing up in Austin, from age 7 on, is as stark a contrast as what Austin was as to what it has become.

I remember when we could watch the fireworks in Zilker Park from my bedroom window. Now there is a large development of apartments that stretches above all the tree-tops in the way.

I remember when you could stay in a cheap motel on South Congress where the full-sized fridge would be full of beer from the couple before you and you wouldn’t be surprised to find a dead body under your mattress. Now there’s this stylish new-school renovation.

The picture of the man that Mical posted was this guy

that used to hang out on Sixth Street and frequented an all-ages club I used to go to called “Black Cat,”- which has since burned down. He was homeless, I’m pretty sure, and made jewelry to sell Downtown and, one night, gave me a necklace made with a shark’s tooth. He just wanted me to have it. I haven’t thought about that guy in forever until I saw that picture on Mical’s blog.

I remember going to “Raves” in the woods or at Chuck E. Cheese or at the Peter Pan Putt Putt Golf place. There are no “Raves” anymore…it’s even difficult to find a glowstick. And, I remember going to see Nirvana at Liberty Lunch- now there are just high-rise office buildings there instead. And, somewhere along the way, people quit dancing at concerts. You can barely get them to bob their heads. I’m thinking all the people that have moved here in the last decade are too cool to dance.
Like the Goodie Mob says, “People don’t dance no mo’- all they do is diss.”

And I can’t even tell you how many works of art- intricate, colorful murals that have been around since I was a kid- that have been painted over in the name of gentrification- not painted over with different murals, just sad, beige walls. It seriously breaks my heart. At least a small portion of the famed artist, Daniel Johnston’s history, still remains here.

I had a conversation with one of my neighbors yesterday who also has lived in Austin for the last twenty years and he, too, has noticed a change- not with just the landscape but with an over-all attitude that has prevailed in the last several years. You know what his theory was? That people have become less considerate since Bush has been in the White House. Now, I don’t have any scientific correlations; but the truth is, he’s right. I have noticed it, too.

I love quotes:

As Dylan Thomas put it…
“We who are young are old. It is the oldest cry.
Age sours before youth’s tasted in the mouth
And any sweetness that it has
Is sucked away.”

Charlie Louvin:
“I want to die young,
At a very old age.”

Joe Jackson:
“We are young but getting old before our time
We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind
Don’t you wonder what we’ll find
Steppin’ out tonight?”

And Harvey Milk:
“Let’s stop being dicks, at least for a little bit. Say, now through the New Year.”

I know it’s idealistic, but what if we could stop being dicks for a little bit? What if we let each other get in front of us in traffic, or actually waved when someone did let us in or what if we smiled at people walking by or held the elevator or just gave thanks a little more often? What if we gave that thanks out loud every chance we got?

Maybe the world would be a little more like the ’90’s…

Next week I’ll tell you about my visit to the “Mexican Circus” sponsored by the Shriners and Freemasons!

Always,
Danu

Halloween fell on a Wednesday this year and like a lot of other couples all over the world, I had the age-old debate of whether I should go out that night without my boyfriend (who, unlike me, had to be at work early the next morning) or not to go out. You know what I say to that? Sure, go out… but be careful!

The nice thing about going out with your significant other is that you can look out for each other and, maybe, even have a safe ride home. Well, that night I had neither of those things. I did, though, know where the party was. And there’s nothing this girl loves more than a house party with good music.

Now, I have heard urban myths about people putting razor blades in apples; but, frankly, that really just seems very unlikely.

Plus, all it would do is slice your mouth open. That kind of thing heals. Poison, on the other hand, seems much scarier.

The only candy at this party was Tootsie Rolls (which are lower in fat than other chocolate candies) located in the original bag inside the freezer. So, I ate two. Two Tootsie Rolls that I came to find out had been tampered with- not with poison, exactly, but with hallucinogens.

Like the jingle says…”Whatever it is I think I see…becomes a Tootsie Roll to me.”

At least there weren’t babies inside!

Moral of the story? Get to know your host. Ask questions. Don’t eat things that can be unwrapped and re-wrapped with no indication of such. Some urban myths are based in truth. And go out and go home WITH your boyfriend.

On another note, I came across this- which cannot be real but is nonetheless sickly amusing.

I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween.
Stay tuned for my next adventure!

Always,
Danu