Paranormal Activities

So I attended a sort of “séance” last night that blew me away. It was pretty intense and there were quite a bit of things that went on that were kind of unsettling. It was not the weird, we-are-all-in-the-dark-and-the-table-levitates kind of séance, it was more of an updated version, where the medium is facing the gallery and delivers messages from heaven. I am kind of a skeptic but I have to admit, the guy was pretty good. So listen in on Monday night at 10:00 and hear us discuss this very unusual event on Chick Chatter. And if you are a skeptic and can help disavow this information, well, call in. I would love to hear a logical explanation for the things I am about to divulge.

Wild Things

With the release of the movie “Where the Wild Things Are” I can’t help but think of the book “Why the Wild Things Are”, a book by Gail Melson that discusses just why a relationship with animals is such an important part of the lives of children.

Children learn to be compassionate with animals, they learn to be sympathetic and nurturing, but only in the right environment. Children should be encouraged to love the wild things as much as we ask them to love companion animals, or even ourselves for that matter. In 1933 the National PTA Congress said that children trained to respect animals will grow up to be better adults (paraphrasing).So it’s important and incumbent upon parents to teach their kids to be gentle, kind and respectful of all animals. They should teach them the Golden Rule, as we understand it by our Golden Retriever…who loves everyone and treats everyone with respect and courtesy.

How simple a concept…the Golden Rule, yet so hard to follow.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson, by Michelle Rivera
I have always loved Michael Jackson. His music meant the world to me.
As a battered wife living overseas, I was miserable, and it was Michael Jackson’s music that helped me survive that awful time. I danced wildly and with abandon to his music every day resulting in a weight loss of 80 pounds. I used to think, “I wonder if that little black kid from Gary Indiana knows that there is a terribly unhappy military housewife living far from home and family who is depending on him to get her through yet another day.” If we had had the internet back in the late seventies, I would have found a way to send him a message to let him know. It’s ironic how he always said that his fans helped him get through the difficult times in his life. When news of his death reached me, I was heartbroken. I was hoping that he would schedule a concert tour here in the states when he returned from his Euro tour. But that hope was dashed and now he is gone forever.
When I tried to explain my adoration of Michael Jackson to my kids and grandkids, they looked at me like I was crazy. They never knew the adorable little Michael of The Jackson Five, they didn’t grow up with his amazing roster of hit after hit after hit. They never danced to Thriller or Billie Jean and they never heard the heartbreaking song he sang to a rat named Ben. I recently listened to a live version of Ben, Michael singing his heart out to a live audience and recorded on a “hits” album. The song is so beautiful and he sings it with such veracity that it brings tears to my eyes. Their frame of reference of Michael Jackson was the “Wacko Jacko” we saw in the papers. They only knew him as a possible pedophile, and they thought I had lost my mind grieving for such a nut case.
But I didn’t care, I still loved him and missed him and I devoured every piece of literature I could get my hands on about Michael. I watched his funeral and cried the entire time. I felt like I lost a beloved family member because indeed, he was about my age and we had grown up together. Him in infamy, me quietly loving his every note.

Alien

Alien
By Michelle A. Rivera
I am an alien
An outsider in an unfamiliar world
But I am not alone
And sometimes
We find one another
And when we meet
Oh, such Joy
Such symmetry
“Are we the only ones?” we ask
But no, there are many more
They’re everywhere, really
Some still waiting for enlightenment,
revelation,
certitude
Arriving not as a thunderclap
But incessant and soft,
A purr
And there will be one more
In the world
Until soon
We will be a greater number
Embracing balance, compassion and peace
As it was in the very beginning
When humans and animals lived together in paradise
And saw that it was good.

Chick Chatter

So my friend Mary Jane and I are going to open a new chapter in our lives. For months, years, really, we have been discussing running away to New York City to become writers and actors. I want to live and work in Manhattan as a writer or editor and she wants to live and work in Manhattan as an actor and we dream about it all the time. But the closest we are getting to this dream is a radio gig.

It’s going to be fun, really. It’s a comedy show about women and for women and of course by women. Us. We have this chemistry between us that is really quite amazing. It’s so phenomenal how we become different people when we are together, and this happens time and again. So we want to share that with all of our new cyber-friends. We will feature all kinds of cool things like new martinis to try, the best chocolate to eat when you’re indulging a craving, how to attract nice friends and repel the losers and animal rights and politics and all kinds of stuff. We’ll be like Cheech and Chong without the pot. And we rarely agree on anything, which makes for a great argumentative time. We are hoping that our callers will take sides and give their opinions as well. That’s what makes the world go ‘round, right?

So that’s the new thing in my life. That’s my new exciting news and I hope it turns out to be a big success and that we get lots of fans. We’ll be on the air this coming Monday at 10:00 pm at www.w4cy.com. Give a listen!

Crazy

It’s my belief that we’re all crazy—Trudy, the bag lady

Still crazy after all these years-Paul Simon

If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane—Jimmy Buffet

I think it’s safe to say that we’re crazy. And I don’t mean in that nutsy, fruity, flaky kind of way. I mean we’re crazy in that dangerous, weirdo, Glady’s grab the gun and hide the cats kind of way. We’re crazy in ways that have not even been discovered yet. They haven’t come up with a name or a diagnosis for the kind of crazy we are. It’s the kind of crazy that involves so many symptoms that they can’t even come up with a prescription drug for it and you know how that works, they stumble across some chemical and because they’ve spent like a zillion dollars on research and killed a bazillion rats they figure they need it to do something so they invent a disease for it. We all know how that works. We’ve seen the adverts. Man, I’m gonna ask my doctor if “we-don’t-have-a-clue-what-this-shit-is-amax” is right for me!

And we’re way too anal about things. We are uptight and bothered and edgy and I don’t mean that in a good way. If we weren’t Americans, we may have a chance at being normal but we are, and that’s our doom. We’re doomed. Americans have the strangest way of being in the world. We’re not like Europeans. They have their own problems but for the most part they aren’t bonkers. Oh sure, there’s a few Germans that really need to go to the Cracker Factory and there’s that one guy out there in Korea who’s a little, oh, demented and murderous and homicidal…so much so that you would think he’s an American living in a foreign land. But no, I’m pretty sure he’s Korean. Anyway, Americans are crazy because we are all suffering from a national schizophrenia. So I guess that’s two symptoms right there, anal and schizo. We’ve got an obsession with obsessions. We seem to have to be preoccupied all the time, and when we aren’t preoccupied, we’re occupied. And it’s not with important stuff either. I swear I heard my son scream the f word last night like he’d mashed his thumb with a hammer and there was blood everywhere but no, nothing like that. Nope, his avatar was under attack and had just been felled in a hail of bullets. How lame is that?

We have chicks on tv telling us to “Have a happy period!” like it was a greeting. Can you imagine the checkout clerk down to the Piggly Wiggly? He’d be this weird old guy with buck teeth and long straggly hair and skin about as yallar as a used cigarette filter and he’s saying “Thanks for shopping today Ma’am and have a happy period!” That’d be some messed up shit that would.

And we’re so schizoid. We don’t know what the hell we want. Take dogs, for example. I mean, I love dogs, right? Everyone loves dogs, they’re man’s best friend and all and that’s cool. But then as soon as your best friend pisses on your couch you’re like “Oh hell no! I need to find a home for this puppy!” Or we say we want to get a dog for protection. So we tie ‘em up in the yard and forget to feed and water ‘em but we expect they’ll be right there on the front lines if a burglar comes in. I’m tellin’ you, if there’s trouble, that dog’s gonna be truckin’ down the road and not looking back. Either that or he’ll ask the burglar to take him too! Hell, he’ll take his chances with a new owner, one that works nights this time. They’d be home during the day, maybe watch some videos together.

It’s like shopping on Canal Street. You pretend the shit is real, they pretend the shit is real, but you know that they know that you know that the shit’s not real. That’s not really a Coach purse you just bought for $20, but hey, what the hell, you pretend it is and they pretend it is and everyone’s happy, right? ‘Cept maybe those fuckers in the sweat shop somewhere just outside of Hong Kong aren’t so happy but hey, even they get paid and don’t have to worry about where their rice will come from for a day or two so everyone wins.

But I am so off point. Like, you know when you drive down a rural road and you see all those cows on the side of the road and you just have to roll down the window and tell them “Moo”? Why do we do that? I mean, in cow language does our saying “Moo” really mean just what we mean to say, which is “hey cow, enjoy it while you can, Buddy, cuz I’m actin’ all like I wanna relate and all but really, we both know that I’m gonna be stuffin’ my face with McShit tonight so rock on!”

And the cows looking back at us saying Man that is one ugly bovine. They kinda lookin’ at eachother saying “Do you know that weirdo? We got three stomachs but he got four faces lookin’ out at us ain’t that some weird stuff right there. Don’t let the bull see that, you know how he gets when he thinks he’s trippin’ on that bad grass again.”

Oh, and we Americans love our horses. We talk about how noble and magnificent they are and how they are so sensitive and oh isn’t it nice how they work with those poor kids and all but then what? We trip ‘em up with piano wire so they go flying all for some cowboy movie that makes that actor look all big and bad and all but you know that´s not real right? That actor had to pay some other dude to get up there in the saddle and take all the risk but who gets the big bucks? Not the dude in the saddle and certainly not the horse. No, it’s the pretty boy that gets the million dollar contract and for what? Just ‘cuz he ended up on some list? We are so ass backward in our thinking.

But it’s all right. We’re gonna be ok because you know what? We may have all these weird symptoms and we may be royally screwed in a lot of ways and we may be schizo and suffer from OCD and ADD and what all ever we have wrong with us but it ok because we’re Americans dammit! And we got a drug for that!

Today’s Prompt: You are in the backyard

I am in my backyard and I notice that the squirrels are waiting for me to leave. I will leave, eventually, but not before I am absolutely sure that they have everything that they need. I toss some peanuts, raw, unsalted, that I purchased at the grocery store. When I bought the bag, the cashier asked me if I was buying them to eat, to cook with, or for squirrels. I told her that they were for the squirrels who live in my backyard. She grinned, and said, “I ask everyone that and I have to say that, like, 99% of the people who buy the raw peanuts buy them for the squirrels!” That is very exciting to me. I am so happy to know that.

I also buy corn for them. Hard corn with kernels that they need to chew really hard on. They don’t seem to like them as much as the peanuts but they eat them just the same. But being that there are Palm trees, there are palm nuts. Nuts that grow like a cluster of grapes on our palm trees and they are there for the taking and I have to wonder if I didn’t give them peanuts and corn that maybe they would thrive very well on the palm nuts. I sometimes wonder if I do a big fat disservice to the wildlife in my backyard by supplying them with all the food they will ever need. I swear you would think I am an Italian Mamala with the way I act about these squirrels and birds. If I were not here to help them, well, they would have to fend for themselves and God forbid if I get hit by a Mack truck, or any other truck for that matter, what would they do? So maybe, just maybe I am not doing the right thing by supplying them with food. But I so enjoy watching the squirrels and the BlueJays and the Cardinals and the Mourning Doves, especially those doves, that I am not above being just a little selfish. But I do know that it is selfish. It is not for them that I purchase and keep these animals in food. I know that. I admit it. It’s not for them. It’s for me.

And I’m ok with that, as long as we know what’s what.