It's finally here!!!

Time to get your read on, folks!

“I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames” (my memoir about living and laughing with my two autistic sons) is now available in HARDCOVER and in KINDLE ~ and will be available in bookstores in January.

*Early reviews*

VERDICT: Brash, sarcastic, irreverent, heartfelt, and touching, Decker’s memoir is all this and more. Highly recommended. —Library Journal

“This is not your mother’s autism book! Raw, honest with ‘she said what?!’ laughs on every page.” —Kim Stagliano, author of All I Can Handle: I’m No Mother Teresa

As always, I'm continually working on my documentary about autism, so if you've got some time, I've uploaded some clips of what we've been up to in 2011.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Step Away from the Cliché

Javier Boredom
1212 Superior Lane.
Road to Welleville, USA
RE: Book Pitch

Writers are full of clichés just as old barns are full of bats.
… anything you suspect of being a cliché undoubtedly is one and
had better be removed. ~ Wolcott Gibbs

Dear INSERT AGENT NAME HERE,

Haven’t you had just about enough of manuscript submissions so rife with trite expressions, their heady stench wafts around your inbox long after you’ve hit the delete button?

Writers who employ such pathetic, phoned-it-in-because-I-wanted-to-get-5,000-words-written-today phrases and ideas, which have become the epitome of flotsam bobbing down the proverbial river toward the graveyard of good intentions, will absolutely benefit from my book Step Away from the Cliché.

To transform lackluster seen-it-all-before prose, writers can utilize the handy annotated glossary to look up cliché “keywords” and “phrases” that will turn their customary dreck into dazzling nuggets of literary genius.

Just like Glen Close’s character in Fatal Attraction, sluggish, cliché-ridden prose is hard to ignore. But if writers insist on upping their word count with drivel, at least the drivel should be inspired. Short words are lazy words, let’s be honest. (NOTE: Roget’s Thesaurus is a good companion to my book.)

“Live and learn” could be transformed to “Subsist, observe, and sip a nice cup of coffee while you ponder your lack of alternatives.”

“What goes around comes around,” says your protagonist as he stares (under hooded eyes) at the “villain.” I don’t know about you INSERT AGENT NAME HERE, but when I read lazy dialogue like this, I want to chop the author’s arms off and feed them to my pet iguana. They don’t deserve appendages when they could have written something like this:

“Karma’s a sarcastic bitch and she’s got a wicked backhand.”

At approximately 310,000 words, Step Away from the Cliché is certain to be a must-have for the robust manual-buying body of aspiring writers who lap up every published book on the “art” of writing in the hopes of producing the next vampire tome that has you agents creaming in your Fruit of the Looms.

If you think this book has legs, (and I think we both know it does) you’ll also be interested in my other work in progress - a two part series for screenwriters: Step Away from the Voice Over and Step Away from the Cheesy Flashback and/or Montage.

INSERT AGENT NAME HERE, should you decide to take me on as a client, you’ll be making 15% off me for years to come. I am nothing if not prolific.

Much appreciation in advance for your solicitous (and astute) consideration on this matter,

Javier Boredom

~*~

Confederacy of Dunces

I have a premise. I’ve spent months working on it while riveted to the television and internet, watching the 2012 Presidential campaign develop like an origami snake - one pointed crease and sharp fold at a time.

I’m certainly not the first person to ask themselves what vicious trick Fortuna is playing on us now. It can’t just be me who watches these GOP debates and thinks that scraping the bottom of the Republican barrel doesn’t even come close to describing what we are witnessing as a Nation.

I cringe when I imagine what the world at large thinks of the line-up of Unusual Suspects vying to be President of the United States. It’s that same feeling I had every time George W. Bush came out to the podium to speak during his two terms in office. I wasn’t sure what gaffe he would commit next, how many times in one conversation he’d mispronounce the word ‘nuclear’ and on which foreign land he’d declare war next. I just knew that anything was possible and I spent eight years popping Tums.

He seemed, to me, a shelter puppy who'd suddenly found himself in a new home with lots of carpet to pee on; wide-eyed, shocked to be there, and ready to rip into a juicy bone. Good thing for him he had multiple puppet-masters like Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney - who clearly played the part of middle finger.

I’ve had to break out the chewable antacid pills again as I ponder the current crop of GOP contenders and consider the possibility that one of them could eventually become President of the United States.

Consider Rick Perry: from his disturbing and seemingly drunken, rambling speech in New Hampshire, to his debate performance in Michigan where he drew a blank while trying to name the third federal agency he would abolish if elected president. It was painful to watch. I felt sorry for the guy, but I’m sure pity isn’t the emotion he was going for. Just trying to imagine this guy in talks with foreign officials gives me heart palpitations.

Then there’s Herman Cain; the King of the ridiculous 9-9-9 plan that would assure the top 1% will continue to benefit while the rest of us 99%’ers would be pushed further to the bottom of the pile. Now the former pizza magnate and motivational speaker - who is backed by the strong arm of the Koch brothers and their Americans for Prosperity - is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal. But despite the drip, drip, drip of accusers, Herman continues to operate from atop a pedestal of righteous indignation.

I’m going to skip right over Ron Paul and Rick Santorum because while Ron has that crazy Grandpappy vibe and I sort of enjoy him, Rick is so far to the right he’s almost invisible at this point. There’s no way in Hades either of these guys will get anywhere close to being the nominee and they both know it. It seems they’re just there for the free food in the many media green room pit-stops. Or perhaps they both enjoy hearing themselves speak.

I can think of no other reasonable explanation for them continuing to travel the country, flushing contributor dollars down the toilet by the fist-full. My suggestion to both of them is to throw in the towel and donate the rest of the cash in their coffers to their favorite charities. It would do far more good in the grand scheme of things.

Michelle Bachmann continually rails against entitlements and big government, but she and her family have benefited greatly from land subsidies and federal monies for her business. That is disingenuous at best... insidious at worst. And consider this statement: “Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

I wonder what she’d say to one of her constituents who relies on food stamps as the only thing standing between him and starvation because he was laid off a year ago and cannot find a job in this economy. Ditto the other 13.9 million people like him, all trying to scoop water off the bow of the Titanic with soup spoons.

I further wonder why nobody has the cahones to publicly call her on this statement. At not one of these debates do the moderators seem intent on actually holding these debaters feet to the fire. Repeatedly, the GOP contenders are asked a question and repeatedly they do not answer that question, but circle around to their talking point of the day, which invariably begins with them waxing poetic about feeling our collective pain regarding the economic disaster and massive job loss, and ending with Obama’s failed policies being the cause of it all. No mention, of course, of how that pile of guano ended up on the President’s desk in the first place. Nor have any of them suggested that the GOP stranglehold via their Congressional amigos might have something to do with our inability to rectify the jobs situation.

Why are these debate moderators and media pundits not asking direct questions and demanding they get a direct answers? At this point the word debate has become a joke, along with most of the media coverage - and all one has to do to see that is spend a little time on Twitter, Facebook, and any number of social networking sites and blogs.

The general consensus: there is no debate going on. It’s a recurring sideshow-esque reality show featuring actors with virtually no accountability - and in some cases, no conscience.

But the sideshow continues…

Newt Gingrich and Mitt “Flip Flop” Romney appear to be the least problematic of the bunch, politically speaking, though neither of these men meet with anything other than tepid reactions from possible voters, pundits, and their own GOP party members. Probably because they’ve both been around long enough for everyone to have decided they’re not anyone's first choice. Or even their second one... both in his own way like a document run through the photocopier one too many times; a tired image of what might have been… if only. And there are a lot of “if onlys” for both men.

Which brings me to my premise.

What I’ve outlined above is a collection of undesirable contenders no more able to successfully lead this nation than my albino frog, Humbert Humbert.

We must also take into account all of the forces behind the scenes: the Brothers Koch pulling the purse strings of Herman Cain as well as plunging their grubby paws into any political fight that serves them personally; Grover Norquist holding an entire governing body of lawmakers hostage due to a Tax Reform pledge penned and signed over a decade ago.

For heaven’s sake, Grover. I have a kid who’s gone from diapers to big boy undies and is almost out of elementary school in that amount time. Am I to assume that I shouldn’t adjust the particulars of his daily care and rearing based on the circumstances of today rather than ten years ago when he surfed out of my who-ha on a tidal wave of amniotic fluid and only required a clean nappy and a bottle milk to keep him content?

Cue the gaggle of Grand Ole’ Partiers like Mitch McConnell and his cronies, all bent on seeing our sitting president as a one-termer, and what we have is a recipe for a bilious stew of governmental gridlock; self-sustaining dysfunction with no end in sight.

But perhaps that’s the intent. At least from the perspective of the congressional GOP. Imagine, for a moment, if there was effectively no pesky POTUS to get in the way of the daily Senate and House shenanigans. Imagine a United States where the President was a puppet for Congress; a figurehead bought and paid for to do their bidding. A leader who was just ineffective enough to bow to every demand of whichever party held the most seats in Congress - a group of lawmakers who change the rules when it’s convenient for them; when it’s politically convenient and skirts around silly little issues like simple majority votes cast.

I don’t see anyone in the current line up of Republican contenders who, if President, would have the mettle to effectively do the job, or stones big enough to stand up to Congress when the need arose.

And I suspect that certain members of the House and Senate don’t either. Only to them, that’s a good thing.

Meanwhile, we, the American people are strapped to Fortuna’s wheel and can only hope she does not crush us beneath her spokes.

Man Up! (Ode to Rachel Maddow)

You know you have too much time on your hands when you spend your Friday making a horribly off-key song parody video while sitting in your car waiting for your kids to get out of school. This one was inspired by a wonderfully epicene political wonk and her Thursday segment about the Koch Brothers.

It was a coincidence eerie enough to make me wonder if I needed to update my spyware and my life insurance policy. See, I’d spent the day working on some chapter segments for the sequel to Waiting for Karl Rove - tentatively titled Waiting for a Plot. Yes, Kat Nove and I are hard at work writing book two, and on that very day I’d been writing a scene about the Koch brothers and their involvement in the current 2012 election run-up.

Satire + fiction + a sprinkling of facts (divided by) what might or might not be happening behind closed doors = humorous conspiracy theories that have the ability to saunter a bit too close to reality for my good taste.

You’ll have to wait and read the book to know what I’m talking about.

At any rate, I settled into my comfy recliner and tuned in to hear Rachel Maddow challenge Charles and David Koch to “feel free to man up.”

See, that’s the difference between Rachel and I; why she has a show, while I merely have a tiny little inconsequential blog. She simply, succinctly, sublimely (alliteration, suck it!) told the Bro’s Koch to “feel free to man up” while I’d have told them to “feel free to…” do something that involved a lower orifice accompanied by a few badly-chosen naughty epithets.

Her way was much more effective…

Holy Sh*tballs, Batman! She just told the overlords of the beltway to f-ing MAN UP! Boy, oh boy - I’m one smitten kitten. Ms. Maddow has my full attention. If she shows up for work on Monday with all of her appendages intact, Kat and I should be OK with what’s going into Waiting for a Plot.

Hopefully.

Rachel, this one’s for you. Keep up the good work!

The Not-So-Great Debates: The Politics of Fear and Self-Loathing

Clearly the word "debate" doesn't mean anything anymore.

To actually debate something, it helps to have people who have vast differences of opinions be the ones asking the questions. Also, it helps if those questions are a bit more probing than "wall or no wall".

As it is, all we get from the current crop of GOP presidential "debates" is a look at which might be the lesser of 7 or 8 evils. We’re forced to peruse the political meat on the chopping block and decide which cut is furthest from its expiration date by the heady scent of disingenuous decay wafting through our TV screens. Unfortunately, their collective stench mingles into a festering potage; it’s impossible to determine where one stink ends and another begins.

I suppose I sound jaded; angry even. And I fully cop to being a liberal, but you know what? I would welcome some diversity - would love to see a Republican contender who was close enough to the middle - where I honestly think the majority of Americans hover, politically - to give the Democrats a run for their money. Why? Because a good candidate from each side going up against one another in a fair fight is what this country deserves.

I think we’ve earned it.

We deserve better than a candidate who had a racial epithet painted on a sign outside his family hunting camp.

We deserve better than a candidate who thinks “praying the gay away” is a viable option.

We deserve better than someone who belittles the marriage discussion by using a pathetically moronic metaphor involving a napkin and paper towel.

We deserve a candidate who doesn’t change his or her stance on any given topic with the regularity that they change their undergarments.

We deserve honesty.

We deserve to have a media that doesn’t follow faux candidates around and monitor their every word and self-promotional sound byte.

Instead we get a plate full of crazy with a couple of self-serving teasers à la carte.

As time goes by, it becomes more and more painful to watch these debates and whistle-stop stump speeches, particularly when you consider the reactions from the audience members - a throbbing mass of sign-toting hysteria permeated by fear and loathing.

This kind of vitriol only comes from one of two places: fear and/or ignorance. I choose to believe these people are not all stupid. That wouldn’t be fair. So one can only assume that the candidates, as well as their “followers” are filled with a fear that is so absolute, so ingrained, they can’t see how truly self-centered it is to assume that everyone should think the way they do - that diversity is a bad thing, a blight upon the American existence, rather than what the Founding Fathers actually intended the American melting pot experience be.

Based on some of the things these candidates have said (with a microphone present) it’s not hard to imagine what their inner monologue sounds like:

Those gays want to drag American morality to hell in a frilly hand basket with all that marriage talk and… stuff they do to each other. Insert collective GOP shudder here. What about those horrible, scary, jihadist Muslims - evil, all of them, bent on our imminent destruction. And don’t even get us started on those filthy Mexican immigrants stealing all our jobs. Gays, immigrants, non-Christians, terrorists, liberals, women seeking to decide what they do with their own bodies, union workers, a middle class who insists on fair and balanced taxation - it seems the majority of America is the enemy of the GOP.

The sad truth is, the grubby little not-so-secret psychology from which the wellspring of the New Right Wing originates is an omnipresent blanket of fear that envelops their entire agenda. Consumed with paranoia, intolerance and gluttonous self-indulgence - everything from the Muslim down the street who threatens the very fiber of their way of life, to their fellow (wrong-thinking) American who dares fight for their own nugget of the American dream - every imagined “enemy” endangers their inalienable rights given to them by God; their God.

Any other God need not apply.

It is a group simmering in a belief system that stems from Old Testament rage. One can’t be sure whether we should pity this new breed of Republican or declare the lot of them enemies of the state. It would be easy to feel sorry for them, and even easier to ignore them entirely, if it weren’t so dangerous to do so.

So America is held hostage, rapt attention diverted toward debates that are a cross between a deranged carnival and a fifteen car pile-up where the audience rubbernecks its way past the collective mayhem.

Where are the GOP members who would say, “Sorry, I’m not buying into this nonsense. That’s not what we’re about. That’s not what we stand for.”

That’s the Republican I want running against Obama. I’m just not sure there are any out there anymore.

I find myself thinking about that eternal line from Anne Frank, and the context within which is was written:

It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace & tranquility will return once again.

I am loathe to compare the politics of any party to an ideology that ended, historically, with the deaths of millions of people, but there is something to be said here for the comparison if it is used metaphorically and applied to what we are seeing played out, daily.

If we can all agree on one thing, I would hope that it would be that the politics of fear and loathing have no place in America.

I wonder, though, if we can even agree on that, anymore.

Letter to Rush Limbaugh

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

We’re two humor writers who would greatly appreciate the opinion of a pill-popping, bi-polar, bigoted racist with regard to our book, Waiting for Karl Rove. http://amzn.to/q8INuc

It is presently doing the “behind-the-scenes” rounds all over Washington and New York and we've already managed to piss off Geraldo Rivera and irritate Karl Rove - but that’s another story.

In the book, you make an appearance along with a handful of other powerful Americans - Geraldo, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter and Karl Rove, to name a few. As you can see, you're in pretty shitty company.

We would love to send you an autographed copy so you can introduce our brilliance to your gargantuan (racist, homophobic, Republican) listening audience - or you can buy 300 copies, since you’re rolling in cash. Consider it “supporting the arts.” Probably a tax deduction - check with your accountant. (The one that does your “dirty” set of books.)

We’d be honored to be attacked by you on-air after hearing Molly Ivins say it was ‘akin to being gummed by a newt, but leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle. ’

That sounds like a perfectly interesting, if not slightly sadistic way to spend an afternoon.

Thanks in advance for the time and attention,

Kat Nove
http://katnovian.com

&

Jeni Decker
http://closetspacemusings.blogspot.com

Rick Perry is the Devil

For those who are happy to espouse the blatantly untrue rhetoric that Rick Perry is “The Job-Creation Miracle Worker” perhaps they should dig a little deeper into what kind of supposed “jobs” he’s creating.

Texas leads the nation in minimum wage workers. Thirty-seven percent of the 211,000 jobs Texas added (by Perry) in 2010 were minimum wage or BELOW.

Couple that with the fact that the Texas unemployment rate has steadily increased (from 7.7 to 8.2 percent) during this supposed job creation time, and what you have are lots of jobs for undocumented workers. Approximately 550,000 workers made $7.25 an hour or lower—and that’s more than double the number of Texans making those wages in 2008.

But the bitter irony is that with 100,000 jobs due to be slashed because of his mismanagement of the state budget, we’re now witnessing a candidate whose entire Presidential Premise is false.

Boy howdy, them Texans are enjoying some serious f*cking prosperity, aren’t they?

Yes, Mr. Perry. You’ve shown sublime perspicacity in fucking your state over. At best, you’re disingenuous; at worst—chock full of self-serving malevolence. You may be the king of the Lone Star State, but the majority of your subjects are barely surviving your tenure.

If this Texan takes the White House, Americans should promptly assume the position; bend over your kitchen tables, let the back-door pillaging commence—President Perry (shudder) would happily deliver Americans a collective fisting.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.” ~ The Usual Suspects

Blatant Self-Promotion: Menopause, Slim-Jim's, Hemorrhoids, Zombies, Vampires...

What do the above all have in common? Well, if you're menopausal and happen to eat, say, twelve Slim-Jim's, (in a hormone-induced rage after a sweaty, sleepless night) you'll probably get a case of hemorrhoids.

But, what they have in common here are books. Behold, a cornucopia of schlock delivered with brilliant literary prowess:

Waiting For Karl Rove by Kat Nove & Jeni Decker

Who are we?

Kat Nove is a native Texan who loathes cowboy boots and would rather insert a colony of fire ants into her ear canal than listen to country western music. Her last wish is to have her ashes placed in the gas tank of her ex-husband’s most expensive vehicle. Many Russian porn bots visit her blog at http://katnovian.com/.

Jeni Decker lives on a farm in rural Michigan with her husband, two autistic sons, some chickens, the occasional pig, her dog, and an albino frog named Humbert Humbert. She has two books coming out in the fall of 2011; her memoir I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames http://amzn.to/r63afS and Far From Happy, (PD Publishing).

Kat’s a half-bottle of Stoli away from a twelve-step program and Jeni has suggested that, perhaps, if she doesn’t get out of the house soon, she’ll be spending time in the local pokey for multiple murders. (Don’t judge her.)

See, the thing is, we’re struggling writers and we’ve just self-published a book called Waiting for Karl Rove - an utterly improbably road trip memoir. Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.

We self-published because Big Publishing is at a crossroads right now. (By crossroads, we mean a steaming, hot mess.) There's a reason literary agents are as irritable as Dick Cheney’s bowel after a bucket of greasy chicken. It’s because they constantly see very talented writers passed over for those who have written the newest vampire tome about angst ridden teens, not to mention former Vice-Presidential candidates from Alaska who have little to say but a huge platform from which to spew it.

It’s truly a sad state of affairs, but it is what it is. And here’s what it is: Beelzebub is driving the gravy train called Big Publishing and rather than stoking the engine room with coal, he’s tossing in shelter puppies and the virginity of pre-pubescent girls, lighting a bonfire sans intégrité under all our asses. It’s just easier to give someone like Heidi Montag or that disingenuous James Frey a publishing contract than take a risk on new (risk-taking) authors. (Or authors who might alienate an entire political party).

Until we manage to get Young Republicans and the entire NRA creaming in their skivvies for a signed copy of our latest book, we’re forced to clamor for new and interesting ways to promote (pimp) ourselves. http://amzn.to/ohbBjg

PREDICTION: Waiting For Karl Rove will soon have Rush Limbaugh crapping his pants, Geraldo Rivera shaving his mustache, Jon Stewart begging us to be on The Daily Show, and Karl Rove tapping our phones. http://bit.ly/9lcahB

We’re giving away a couple of copies on Goodreads this month, so be sure to hop on over and enter:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Waiting for Karl Rove

by Kat Nove

Giveaway ends September 01, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

A Fit of Hissy is a mélange of schlock, a cornucopia of wisdom; observational satire, short stories, delectable musings, and the occasional song parody.

A Fit of Hissy is available in Kindle:
http://amzn.to/mRqFAO

It Was a Dark And Stormy Night ~Pill Hill Press

Among the other horror parodies in this book you'll find my Twilight parody, aptly titled Twilight: A Parody

A Dark and Stormy Night Anthology is available in Kindle:
http://amzn.to/p0kLmE

You can pick up the book at Pill Hill Press:
http://bit.ly/bQxfPG

And last, but certainly not least...

Zombies Ain't Funny (the brain-child of Greg Crites at http://veinarmor.com )is an anthology of humorous zombie tales.

Early reviews:

This conversation piece overflows with hilarity, both in the original stories read alone and double the fun in audio with the narrator's unique voice. Highly recommended, and I challenge you to not laugh! ~ Dream Catcher

This is a solid collection of short stories about the always loveable undead. If you like zombie stories, it's worth picking up! ~Mark D. Ellestad

This book is available on Kindle: http://amzn.to/nfgAJb or you can get the paperback and/or audio version at Greg's website: http://bit.ly/p00wR4

And for a treat, you can check out my contribution to the zombie anthology, McGarrigles Bed, Breakfast & Smoking Cure Farm, as read by Greg Crites:




So get on over and buy some books. Those extra-large Pull-Ups (for autistic kids who can't seem to get the concept of shitting on the toilet) aren't buying themselves. Besides, if you're like me and have overdosed on all the recent debt ceiling drama (AKA: WTF is going on in Congress?!?) you could probably use a laugh.

Angst and Autism…

Last night Jake came out of his bedroom sobbing and handed me the above letter...

Let me digress and set this up for you...

This week we all had a great time at the beach, as well as going bowling and to the arcade with his cousin Max, (who is visiting for the summer) but it seems Jake is starting to think about Max returning to Florida when summer vacation comes to a close. He’s also experiencing a surge of hormones mixed with teenage knowledge that has him feeling self-conscious, unhappy and unsure of almost everything he does.

When Max first arrived, Jake quickly realized they didn’t necessarily like to do the same things they did when they were much younger. It also became glaringly apparent that the vast chasm between the neuro-typical boy and the non-neuro-typical boy had become even more vast. Where, when they were five, his cousin just laughed or dealt with all of Jake’s autistic ‘quirks,’ now Max found it harder (and sometimes frustrating) to understand where Jake was coming from. His up and down moods and acting out.

With high-functioning autistic kids, often their behavior manifests itself in what would normally look like rudeness or tantrums. The key is being aware of where these behaviors come from - in Jake’s case, his fears and feelings of being ‘less than’ other kids his age.

Jake has few friends because he has trouble communicating with others. He doesn’t immediately understand how other people think and feel, and often his reactions to them seem impolite or off-putting, even though it comes from a place of not ‘getting’ the other person. Autistic people are often socially inept because they are very literal thinkers. Jake only understands how his mind works and has to be told how others feel - unlike most of us, who can suss out the meaning of an emotion based on body language or facial expressions. In essence, most of us take for granted the things that autistic people have to learn, rather than innately know.

Jake’s sudden morose mood culminated in him writing me a letter to express his feelings. He sat while I read it, waiting patiently so we could then discuss it:

[TRANSLATION of the letter above in case you can’t read his writing]

Dear Mom,

When Max leaves I will be sad
because I will have no friend.
I decided I don’t like my friend
Cody because he thinks of life
with no meaning. I’m also sad
that when you die I don’t
know what to do. I will be very
sad and I just can’t live without
you because I will not have
anyone to love and follow orders
and keep me safe. I’m just
soooo sad right now and I don’t
know what to do. I love
You very much Mom

Love Jake

This is what you’d call a truly heartbreaking parenting moment. What do you say to your fourteen-year-old kid when he tells you he’s afraid of what will happen to him when you die? How do you make it better for him so that he doesn’t spend every day of the rest of his life obsessing about existential things like heaven and hell? Not to mention not-so-existential things like his future well-being…

I got him calmed down by telling him that he was tired from all the activity of the day - doing my best to make light of such a huge topic, so as not to further alarm him - but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, He’s right. He’s worried about the same things I worry about. This kid is just smart enough to understand the frightening aspects of life, but not pragmatic enough to push them to the back of his mind like the rest of us do when we know something is out of our control.

His daily inner monologue is a perfect storm of fear and confusion that ultimately creates a tsunami of angst for someone already suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.

I get choked up thinking about my kids’ futures. It’s my biggest fear as a mother. I think Jake could make it if he could rid himself of his debilitating fears and insecurity. He’s an odd little duck but he might be able to trundle through life, bobbing and weaving much like his mother does on a daily basis.

Jax is another matter, altogether. He’s blissfully unaware of even the existence of social ineptitude. He’s on a stage of his own and we’re all bit players, coming in now and again to offer clothing, shelter and affection. Jax is barely verbal and even though he’s making great strides, at almost ten years old, he doesn’t understand basic concepts and is able to speak, but only enough to get his needs met - and even then, only to those who understand his ‘language.’ He’s unaffected by social mores or his lack of appropriate actions because they do not exist within the context of the production he’s starring in. They don’t exist for him yet, anyway. I almost hope they never do. What you don’t know exists can’t hurt you… as much.

Some days, I think Jaxson is the lucky one. He is able to skip through life without the kind of worries that plague his older brother.

But one day I won’t be here… and neither will the rest of their family. Who will take care of my adult children when they’re unable to take care of themselves? There might come a day when I’d have to realistically consider a group home. Even writing those words make me shudder because calling this a last resort is a vicious understatement.

There isn’t a horror movie in the world that’s as frightening to me as wondering where my children will end up when I am no longer around. I’m certain I’m not alone in this fear because it is something many parents of disabled children have to deal with. But on a personal level, it feels very isolating. It is my cross to bear and it will never go away.

So, tomorrow I will continue to laugh and take everything in stride, shoving the worry into the depths of my mind - that special place I reserve for things that are mostly out of my control. But today I worry…

… and spend a little quality time in the bathroom, longing for the days when a nice bong hit could fix anything.

Thanks for the Sperm!

Well, certainly it starts there, but when it comes to Dads, it doesn’t end there - or it shouldn’t, anyway.

Let me introduce you to my dad: Melvin Decker. He spent most of his life as a mailman (now retired) and has the scars to prove it. I bet you didn’t know that being a postal carrier can be hazardous to your health, but it can. From the little things like paper cuts and dogs chasing you as you try to do your job, to the big things like cancer - which can happen when someone spends the better part of their life with half of their body hanging out of a vehicle in the hot Florida sun. Yeah, Dad’s battle scars took the form of a cancerous growth on the side of his head and eventually he had to have half his ear removed.

All of you people who got your mail delivered in a timely manner can thank him now.

I’m just glad it was removed and he’s in remission, though that heart attack he had last year wasn’t exactly a picnic for him, I’m sure. He’s had his personal crosses to bear and he’s always born them with dignity and his trademark dry sense of humor.

Dad had the distinct pleasure of only siring female children, and I’m pretty sure he’s purchased more than his fair share of tampons. Yes, he’s the type of guy who will go up to the store at night if called upon, and not complain about it.

I also remember him being woken up well after midnight once, and driving me to the beach to fetch a few of my stranded friends. Again, no complaining. (Out loud, anyway.)

I was always bad at math and I remember sitting in the back yard one year, going over my ‘7’ multiplication tables with him. For some reason, I had the hardest time with those damn “sevens” and now they’re the ones I can count off with ease:

7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70...

He also had the horrific task of popping my knee back into place when it dislocated, which happened no less than four times before I had it surgically repaired when I was in seventh grade.

I vividly remember doing an unsuccessful one-handed cartwheel in my neighbor’s front yard and landing wrong. Horribly wrong, in fact. What followed was mind-numbing pain and instant nausea, and a kneecap suddenly located on the left side of my leg; not a position a knee is ever supposed to be in. It doesn’t look pretty and feels even worse.

The pain is unimaginable; the worst pain I’ve ever experienced (no less than four times). This is saying something because I’ve since given birth to two big-headed kids AND have a permanent case of painful hemorrhoids to show for it. Neither were (are) as painful as my knee dislocating.

Wherever he was, Dad would come running, pale faced at the sight of his eldest daughter on the ground with her leg wrenched into a position that no leg is ever supposed to be bent. He’d calmly take my calf in one hand, cup his other hand over the out-of-socket knee and say, “Ready?”

I’d nod, on the verge of puking, and he’d firmly jerk it back into place. I still get sick to my stomach when I think of it and, looking back now, I know that beneath his calm exterior was inner tsunami of emotion he had to keep in check… for me.

The picture below is just one time when either my knee went out or I knocked it in just the right place that it caused me to faint. At the time, we were at Niagara Falls, I believe. I’m lying on a cool rock, recovering.



There are way too many memories I have of my father for me to share in one blog post but, on this special day, I want him to know that I remember them all, and love him dearly.

Not to get too mushy, but to this day, he’s still one of the best men I’ve ever met.

My dad: former pot-smoking hippy, guitar player, avid boater, amateur photographer, Beatles fan, mailman, father of three, husband (twice, God help him!), son, husband, brother, and all around great guy.

Happy Father’s Day Dad. I love you.

Some pics, oldies but goodies:

Me and my sister, Resi



Resi, Dad, Mom & I, circa 1974



Resi, Mom, Dad, and me behind him (with the “haircut that dare not speak its name”) NOTE: My sister could always pull that shit off; I, however, never could.)

Spam I Am

Human junk they say I am.
They do not like me, Spam-I-am.
So what if I don’t know Voltaire?
I don’t think that’s here or there.

I don’t give a tinkers dam,
I’m representin’ Uncle Sam

Have you seen my big ’ole house?
Or my sporty, hunky spouse?

How I hate every lame-stream louse,
Can’t they appreciate my nice blouse?

Did you see my appearance on FOX?
The rest of the media can suck Todd’s co*&!

Only on Fox…Only on Fox…
Not in Wolfe’s house. Not with that mouse. (Rachel Maddow!)

I won’t speak to them here or there.
I won’t speak to them anywhere.
I will not take their oral exams;
gotcha questions from the lame-stream band.

I do not like bagels and lox,
but I will eat them live on FOX.
I do not really trust my spouse,
but I’ll fake it till I hit the White House.

I couldn’t care less if you hate who I am.
Just, please, follow me with your video cams.

A brain! A brain! I’ve got a big brain!
How ‘bout a misquoted quote from Mark Twain?

I know Mark Twain! Wrote a book, didn’t he?
I got it right! Look at me, look at me!

I would not, could not, stop in the Bronx.
I heard “those people” would give me small pox.

What did you say! There in the dark!
That’s no place for my bus to be parked!

I would not, could not, step on the F Train.
Around minorities my interest does wane.
I’m not comfy with disenfranchised peeps,
I do not like mediocrity.

Not in my house. Not in a box.
Not with my spouse. Not even on FOX.
I will not meet them here or there.
I will not meet them anywhere!

Did you ever read Green Eggs and Ham?
Seuss was a fascist, wasn’t he?

Could you, would you, buy MY books?
There’s lotsa big words, just take a look!

You will not like them? So you say.
Try them! Try them! And you may.
Buy them and you may, I say.
Do it for the USA.

The "Blatant Self-Promo Ho's Tour"

AMERICA NEEDS TO EXPLAIN HERSELF.

Premise: Two average Americans cross the country as rapidly as possible because one needs to get back home to her two autistic sons and the other needs to get back to babysitting her grandkids.

Two writers on a mission to discover as many real Americans as possible - average farmers in the Midwest; bar owners in New Orleans; kids whose parents came over illegally years ago and who now serve in the military; elderly native born Americans who only speak Spanish; gay advocates in San Francisco; football fans; opera lovers; rodeo clowns; Muslims; Jews; Atheists; mimes...

America needs to tell us why we're all in this together.

If the “One Nation” bus is still on the road, we’ll catch up to that rolling behemoth and choke down their exhaust fumes as we tail (stalk) the Palins around the country. With a camera in hand. Hopefully we’ll get pics of Todd or Bristol or Sarah filling the gas tank.

In honor of Sarah Palin, we’ve dubbed it the “Blatant Self-Promo Ho's Tour.” Please, won’t you send a poor retail worker and a tired mother of two autistic kids on a whistle-stop tour of America this summer?

Remember, we’ll only get as far as YOUR money takes us.

God bless America!

PS: We’re happy to plaster ourselves AND our bus with YOUR ads, so if you’d like to sponsor us, click on the notSarahPAC picture in the sidebar and head on over to the site!

The Curious Incident of the Stinky Dog, Vomiting Kids and Hemorrhoids in the Night Time

It all started Friday afternoon.

~ Call from Thing Two’s school: “Jeni, I don’t think Thing Two is feeling well. He took himself to the quiet area and is lying under the weighted blanket. He feels warm.”

“I’ll be there right away!”

~ Bring Thing Two home, get a dose of medicine in him, he falls asleep.

SuperMom on the job! Check!

~Midnight, same night. I hear moaning from Thing One’s room. (You know, the kid that WASN’T previously sick.)

Wait for it, wait for it…

Three seconds later, he bolts upright from sleep and projectile vomits all over the carpet, his bed, himself, the wall, and for his grand finale, me. If you’ve never seen projectile vomit, let me tell you, it’s a thing of wonderment. It sprays from its origin with the force of a fireman’s hose taking down a three alarm fire.

I was disgusted and in awe at the same time.

~1a.m.- I stripped down, made Thing One strip down, and began cleaning the carpet. The kid had three brats for dinner with red Gatorade to drink so his room looked like a gory crime scene, complete with chunks of what looked like brain matter IN THE CARPET!

~ Next day: Two sick kids intermittently puking up medicine just as I administered it. (Which is a Catch-22 situation, as any Mom knows. You need to figure out how much they’ve puked up. Do you risk giving them another dose so they don’t wake up with a fever, or do you wait it out? I always opt for not overdosing my kids, but that’s just me. A trip to the ER with a comatose kid doesn’t make my top ten list of things to do on a holiday weekend.)

We all scraped by during the day. Puke basins were placed around the house at targeted locations. I washed three loads of sheets and towels in between scrubbing my hands 5,348 times, always topped off by a generous slathering of antibacterial hand sanitizer.

SuperMom Status: Withering with every hour that passes.

Seventeen Thing Two baths later, after a few hits to my teetering sanity, it was bedtime again. (Thing Two still wears a Pull-up® at nine-years-old. Because of this, the autistic kid who’s not-interested-in-shitting-on-the-toilet must take a bath after every bowel movement in place of wiping his ass. At least hygiene is a priority for him.)

~ 9 p.m. - Sweet, silent bliss. Husband conveniently spent the day outside, then hightailed it to a friend’s house to drink beer and hang out anywhere else, presumably where vomit wasn’t flying around in all directions. (He did take the pukey sheets out on the front lawn and hosed them off before I put them in the washer.)

With two resting kids, I had an episode of House cued up and ready to go when I heard the dog scratching at the door. I got up to let her in and, as soon as she crossed the threshold, I noticed she smelled like she’d just spent a few unseemly hours inside the vagina of a skanky ho who’d recently finished working a double shift.

SuperMom Status: Debilitating depression has set in.

Let me back up and mention that earlier (between puking kids and a particularly nasty Thing Two diarrhea incident ) I spent 30 minutes brushing the dog because she’s in the process of shedding her winter coat. Also, I’d vacuumed the entire house three times because golf-ball-size hunks of fur had taken up residence around the house.

“Out!” I screamed and pointed to the door. My sweet dog hung her head - knowing she’d been a naughty, naughty girl - and went back outside. The stench! It took half a bottle of Lysol to surmount the insurmountable smell of whatever she’d rolled in - and the dog never made it past the mud room.

I grabbed my phone and called The Bread Winner, fully aware he wasn’t going to be amenable to the message I was about to leave. Unfortunately he answered. I hadn’t counted on that. (Leaving testy messages is easier than an actual phone confrontation.)

“Hey hon. Just to let you know, Sugar rolled in something that is abhorrent to my general sense of well-being, so before you can enter the house tonight, I’m gonna need you to give her a bath. I left a towel and some shampoo outside. Also, I taped a note to the front door in case you forget.” (Remember, he’s out having a beer… or twelve.)

MY SILENT BUT DEADLY INNER MONOLOGUE: I’ve also engaged the dead bolt so neither of you will be getting in until the job is done.

Yeah, I’m hardcore. Call me a bitch; whatever. Listen, I’d done multiple loads of laundry, vacuumed more than twice, washed every sheet on every bed in the house and disinfected every flat surface. After all that, I’d taken a bath and was smelling all girly and nice, so there was no way I was going to take my fragrant ass out there and get that stinky crotch smell on me.

I heard a sigh on the end of the line. “Okay, I’ll be home later.” Good answer!

“Okay hon, see you later.”

Click.

~ 11 p.m. - The Breadwinner comes inside, fresh from bathing the dog. She ran past him and proceeded to shake, shimmy and roll her way to getting the carpet nice and wet-dog smelling. Although there was a faint scent of rose emanating from her drenched coat, wet dog is wet dog.

To my credit, I did not yell. Breadwinner HAD bathed the dog and it was my fault I wasn’t specific enough. Next time I will elaborate on the importance of drying the dog thoroughly BEFORE entering the house.

So, now along with the rosy-wet-funk and slightly wet carpet, I had a dog dragging her body over every carpeted surface in the house in order to rid the water from her ears and fur. It sounded like someone was having an epileptic seizure in my living room as she pounded her way to a state of dry-ness that would please her. I noticed, however, that everywhere she dragged and rolled was left matted with fur. No longer were they weightless tumbleweeds, but globs of wet hair; furry landmines all over my living room carpet.

~11:15 - Vacuuming again because my OCD would not allow me to watch TV in peace without my eyes wandering down to the hairy mess on the floor. (Shit, will I ever get to find out what that sexy Gregory House is up to this week?!)

SuperMom Status: Goddamn it!

An hour or so later, everyone had fallen asleep, nestled comfortably between clean sheets. I finally got to watch that episode of House before dragging my weary bones to bed. I was out before I knew -

BLOODY FUCKING HELL! I woke up somewhere around 2 am. I believe my hemorrhoids wanted to have a chat; at least this was the impression I got as my anus throbbed and my stomach, legs, and back dealt with evil tendrils of fire wrapping their way around me from the inside. (Because of my distaste for Karl Rove, I’ve decided to hereinafter refer to them as Rovian tendrils.)

This time, unlike the first time this happened, I knew what I needed and exactly how many steps away it was. I slowly hobbled to the bathroom, found the tube, and took care of business. Still, after five minutes, the evil Rovian tendrils of enmity only minimized to a dull, throbbing animosity.

Step two was in the freezer.

This was not the first time I'd foraged behind the frozen peas and popsicles to grab the lime green screw-on lid attached to a protruding six-inch plastic dowel. Meant to keep a sports cup cool for hours, the frozen phallus jutting from a convenient handle had once spent a memorable night talking the little perpetrators in my poop-chute down from the proverbial ledge.

SuperMom Status: Alive, barely; possibly experiencing SMPTST (SuperMom Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

I shuffled back to my bedroom, dropped my panties, laid down on my side and let the icy phallus get reacquainted with my anus.

For the second time in my life I feel it necessary to note that there was no insertion. Again, I want that on record. Anus-adjacent should paint the picture for you, so we’ll leave it at that.

So… how was your weekend?

Waiting for Karl Rove - NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE

Waiting for Karl Rove is irreverent, politically incorrect satire masquerading as road trip memoir.

Think Thelma and Louise—only Thelma’s menopausal, Louise is an erratic big-mouth with a penchant for discussing her hemorrhoids, and they’re on a road trip to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary.

And now it’s available on Kindle! (*also available in paperback on Amazon.com)

Early praise:

~ Although both authors profess to be left wing liberals (and truly their opinions reflect that) the writing style - snarky, sassy and satirical - is such that even a right wing conservative like myself found humor on every....single....page.

~ "Waiting for Karl Rove" is filth, pure and simple. These two ladies (I use that word loosely, as they are probably loose women judging by this Left-Wing D-Crat LIEberal CRAP) need their mouths washed out with soap and hot sauce.

~ Oh. My. God. This book is NUTS! I've never read anything like it and was laughing out loud by page two… a great way for the authors to self-promote …they do it through the entire book, plugging themselves with all the aplomb of a leaky bathtub drain.

~ ...a psychotic poke at some of the most powerful people in the country. Not to mention poking fun at the publishing and movie industries. Laugh out loud funny. Brilliant, and a must read for all. I'm still laughing.

~ Wow, this book will make Preparation-H sales go up overnight, I'm off to my broker to buy more stock!

Menopause Rhapsody: Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

In my house, when you want to pay tribute to your family matriarch, nothin’ says lovin’ like an off-key song parody of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody - particularly if said matriarch is the butt of the joke.

Okay, so I look like an idiot, I can’t sing, and Freddy Mercury is rolling in his grave. But I had fun making it.

Mom, this one’s for you. Love ya dearly, you madwoman! (You have only your DNA and Dad’s sperm to blame.)

The Exquisite Corpse

I'd like to think that my President would be the bigger man - or woman. I'd like to think that the person holding the highest office in the land wouldn’t think it necessary to release gory death photos, even if said photos are of someone who has proven himself a monster.

So far Barack Obama hasn’t let me down. Sarah Palin, however, is another matter. (And I’m not sure if that matter is made of animal, vegetable or mineral. Probably potato.)

Always ready to fan the flames of reason into a full blown bonfire of insanity, Palin said this on Twitter:

SarahPalinUSA
Show photo as warning to others seeking America's destruction. No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama; it's part of the mission

~ Here’s what a few responded:

TruthOrBetter
@SarahPalinUSA it wasn't a hunting trophy. it was a man with powerful allies that already want to destroy the US - it’s not a bragging tool.

F_r_e_d_o
@SarahPalinUSA You gave George W. Bush all the credit in the world for Bin Laden's death...have him release the pictures.. #goodluckwiththat

Jeeta Gurjeet
@SarahPalinUSA I thought the mission was to capture or kill Osama. Didn't know we were going to make greeting cards.

Sarah - if you’re OK with simply rising to the level of a terrorist, that’s fine. But I'm not. I’d like to think I’d be the better person. Not the person showing the gory photos of my sworn enemy. Clearly that’s not you. You think it’s “part of the mission” to release a photo that will then be Photoshopped with wild abandon; Dead Osama with a thought bubble saying one of a myriad of catchy phrases. Dead Osama holding a dildo, Dead Osama next to the President holding a thumbs up and standing under a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED SIGN, Dead Osama Coffee Cups and t-shirts...

And this WILL happen. Why? Because this is what we have become. (Lest we forget the picture of Obama’s face on a baby monkey recently e-mailed widely by Marilyn Davenport, Tea Party activist and elected member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee.)

This is the face of America. Do you actually think the crazies out there screaming for photos want them because they somehow think Osama is still alive? I don’t. At its core, it's about something much more base. It's rubbernecking as you slowly drive by a bloody seven car pile up, gawking at the gal with the severed head who’s being wrenched out with the jaws of life.

I like how Obama has handled this, but if he bows to the pressure of rabid extremists on either side who, for some reason, simply must see graphic photos of a man shot in the head, I will be disappointed in my President. He knows it isn’t right - I assume that’s why he made the decision. Okay, so the “official” reason is that they are inflammatory and could create retaliatory situations. But I’d bet, in his heart of hearts, he knows it’s wrong. He knows that we're better than that.

I can’t say the same for Sarah Palin. That there are many who would have preferred it if we strapped Osama’s corpse to the grille of a NYC fire truck and took him on a whistle-stop tour around the country… well I think that disturbs me most of all.

I asked someone at the store today how they felt about the Osama pics, and they were apathetic. “I didn’t like the guy. I don’t care if they release them or not.” That, I can live with. But someone who revels in seeing bloody pictures of a monster - doesn’t that kind of make you a monster, yourself?

I think it does.

So that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Don’t agree with me, that’s fine. But save the nasty e-mails for someone who gives a ripe, squirty one. On this, you won’t change my opinion, and I’m certain if you’re that other type, the one I’ve illustrated above, I’m not going to change yours.

But, I'll leave you with this: How about we make a deal NOT to let the terrorists' past bad actions dictate what our future actions will be.

Peace.

(…and sorry for the “downer” blog post, folks. I know you usually expect humor from me, but sometimes, you just have to get shit off your chest, or you’ll find yourself pondering the inhumanity of humanity while dipping into a hopeless state of malaise, with a empty bottle of wine in one hand, and a dull Lady Bic to your carotid.)

You Can’t Have it Both Ways

HEARD IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL A FEW MORNINGS AGO:

JAKE: (14 year old autistic boy) "Mom, if Jaxson doesn't learn to poop on the toilet, he'll NEVER be able to be President of the United States."

After I cleaned the mocha frappe spray from the windshield, I took a moment to ponder just how much damage a 9-year-old, autistic, barely verbal, non-toilet-trained kid could do in the White House. Remembering Dubya Bush, I realized Jax could probably hold his own.

Which brings me to today's topic:

It seems Republicans are happy to take credit for the dead terrorist, but Allah forbid you remind them that our country is circling the drain today mostly due to their last leader’s tenure - or what I like to call “the eight years of breaking wind heard ‘round the world.”

According to them, Osama Bin Laden is dead because someone in the Bush Administration provided a bit of shock and awe in the form of water-boarding. But the ass-raping of America’s economy? Not them, that’s all on Barack.

You can’t have it both ways, people.

Then there’s The Donald. The Trumpster. The Don - otherwise known as the guy who has taken American media-fed politics to the level of theatre of the absurd. With his merkin-topped head and his blathering mouth, Donald Trump, having been given Obama’s long form birth certificate, has decided that’s not enough.

He needs more. Obama’s education records. What’s next. Dental records? Amazom.com account information and his recent purchases? Perhaps the length and girth of the Presidential wee-wee?

Donald, sir - you’re a dick. Well and truly, an ass-hat for the masses. This vid’s for you. Enjoy!



And don’t forget to run (not walk!) over to get your copy of WAITING FOR KARL ROVE at Amazon.com. I promise, it’ll be worth it! (just scroll up to the top of the blog and click on the Waiting for Karl Rove BOOK COVER)

Look who else has a copy:

Suspicious of His Penis

“I’m suspicious of my penis. I don’t trust it,” my fourteen-year-old autistic son, Jake, mumbled from the passenger seat.

Sigh. There are so many things about that statement that trouble me.

Along with toileting issues, “weiner” issues are a recurring theme in my household. Jake’s nine-year-old brother would rather poo in his undies than hover a single butt cheek over the commode. He’ll go in his underwear, thank you very much, then proceed to knead the PlayDough-like load with his hand (through his skivvies). (I’m pretty sure I don’t have to tell you people what kind of smells, as well as hygiene issues arise from this kind of behavior.)

If Jax is my problem pooper, Jake is my problem obsesser. If it can be obsessed about, Jake will obsess about it. (See my blog post:” I’m Going to Heaven, Right? )

Jake’s penis is also a constant source of distress for him. In my upcoming book I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames, I have a chapter called “Tickling the Weiner. ” I discuss how I came to know that Jake found out “tickling his weiner” was normal. The doctor who gave the discussion in health class said so, and all was right with the world (briefly) when Jake got off the bus that day.

Other, more troubling things, were covered in Heath Class this year, but I won’t bore you with all the rape and oral sex talk. (If you’re interested in middle school sex-ed and what it (disturbingly) consists of these days, see my blog post: "Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby")

So, Weiner Tickling, OK. Check. I try not to form a mental image of my fourteen-year-old autistic kid, in his room, doing whatever fourteen-year-old boys do, because if I - blech… Ugh, no thanks.

But these changes in Jake’s body are very disturbing to him, hence the first line of this blog, which he uttered this morning on the way to school. Jake has sensory issues. He doesn’t like the feel of paper in his hands, or the sound a pencil makes when he writes on paper, or the dry sound of someone touching paper. Stop to consider what a fucking ticking-time-bomb this kid has to be on a daily basis, at school.

Paper, pencils, not to mention, he’s very sensitive to sounds, is grossed out when people eat, and gets particularly rattled by certain smells. I imagine the pubescent sights, sounds and smells are unbearable to Jake; kids in the lunchroom eating sloppily with open mouths, loud cafeteria, hallways and (aneurism-inducing) gym class, and the natural funk of five-hundred middle school kids.

Now, add to this, all of these new “feelings” he’s experiencing south of his naval, and you can see how his school day might seem more like being sent to a third world country and expected to immediately assimilate.

I shudder to imagine Jake’s internal monologue. Probably something like, “Help! Me!”

Also, his sensory processing disorder translates these “feelings” that might be considered tingles to the ordinary teenager, into something more closely related to pain. Jake gets one new “twinge” and he’s off on a crying jag - standing, pants around ankles, in the bathroom, with an ice pack or sopping wet washcloth on his private area. These new sensations can freak any teenage boy out, but for an autistic boy who obsesses about everything, it’s more akin to expecting something really painful or freakish to happen any minute - like his penis falling off, or Pop-Rocks® spontaneously shooting out of his “penis hole”. (His phrase, not mine.)

It’s not that he’s actually experiencing pain (I’ve had him checked by a doctor - everything’s working fine), it’s the apprehensive, debilitating “What if?” that plagues him.

God bless this kid. Truly. I’ve got my own hang-ups, but if I had to constantly worry about my vagina falling off, or gummy worms sliding out my who-ha - well, let’s just say I’d be taking copious amounts of prescription drugs.

It’s at moments like these that I truly need people to know how much MORE autistic people have to deal with than the rest of us. How much stronger they have to be than the rest of us. How special they are, compared to the rest of us.

Do me a favor. Today, take the time to tell an autistic family member or friend how inspiring it is that they are able to navigate waters most of us would drown in. Type “autism” into the search engines of Twitter or Facebook, make a new friend, and let them know that they are seen, heard and appreciated; that the extra mile (or fifty) they trudge daily isn’t lost on you.

Or just plain tell them they’re cool. I assure you - the effort won’t go unappreciated.

~*~

The Grateful Undead: They're So Vein

Okay, I guess I’ll (grudgingly) take a minute from pimping WAITING FOR KARL ROVE to do my mom a solid… and perhaps I’m biased because she wrote it (and I’m a character in the book) but I think you should check out The Grateful Undead: They’re So Vein (Black Matrix Publishing).

Mommie Dearest (as she’s known in Waiting for Karl Rove - SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT!! Available now on Amazon.com!! - wow that minute passed fast, huh?) based the main characters on herself, my sister and me, my eighty-something Nanna, and my aunt JoAnn. Yes, she too has committed the ultimate in literary horrors - writing herself (and family) into a work of fiction.

But, I have to ask - what’s funnier than a octogenarian who suddenly finds herself undead, with a vociferous appetite for sex and the lingering mentality of a senior citizen? (Except, perhaps, potty-mouthed fifth-grade cartoon kids a la South Park, and since there’s a Vampire tyke in the story who’s got quite a dirty mouth, she’s covered all the bases.)

A fresh take on the oft-bitten vampire milieu, They're so Vein is a book that illustrates (hysterically) what happens when all (except one) of the estrogen-producing members of one family suddenly find themselves blood-suckers.

The characters are each funnier than the next: Susan is their bitchy leader, who got them all into this undead mess, but couldn’t care less since she’s now wrinkle-free and has perky tits.

Then there’s her sister, JoAnn, who can't quite get on board with the whole "drinking-human-blood-thing." She ends up screwing with the eco-system by feeding on animals and accidentally turning them. PETA would be pissed.

Susan’s eighty-something mother keeps bringing home men half her age, and is having a love affair with her battery-operated sex toy.

And the kids… one daughter who’s happy to play the fanged version of a kick-ass action hero, while the eldest daughter (me!) - the only sane one among them - decides to stay human, thank you very much. (This is true to life. I do NOT want to be a vampire. And I am still wondering how I should feel about her writing a werewolf character as my love interest.)

Anyway…it's all fun and games until the "serious" (old!) vampires come knocking, and expect this motley crew of newly-turned idiots to pay for their every Vampiric transgression. Sex, blood, and heads will roll...I think you’ll find They’re So Vein a funny, enjoyable romp.

(PS: I smell a sequel!)

BOOK TRAILER:




Oh, and while you're over at Amazon.com, don't forget to pick up a copy of Waiting for Karl Rove...do it for the children, people. (My children. You know - the two autistic kids who need new video games, food and, (unfortunately) little Jax still requires pull-ups due to his toileting issues. Those puppies are EXPENSIVE! Ha!)

Both books will make you laugh, and isn't that what we need a bit more of in this world? A little bit-o-funny, yes indeed.

Last Will and Testament

To Whom it May Concern,

If I die or end up in a stupid coma & become a vegetable (I hope yam or tomato because I don't want to be spinach) then my half of the proceeds from sales of Waiting for Karl Rove shall go in a trust fund for Thing One (Jake William Lopez) and Thing Two (Jaxson Walter Lopez) - because I have blatantly exploited them for personal gain, so it would only be fair.

This windfall, however, should be administered by their step-grandfather Bob, because my mother, sister, and husband cannot be trusted with such a chore. Mommie Dearest would drive everyone crazy, husband would buy way too much pay-per-view and beer, and sister would instantly bury herself under a ten-foot high mound of scratch-off lotto tickets.

If something happens to Step-Dad Bob before an anvil falls on my head or I slip in the shower, the above duties will then go (grudgingly) to Resi Decker (sister with lotto fetish) with the IMPLICIT STIPULATION that no lotto tickets, hair color, or chocolate shall be purchased with the proceeds from Waiting for Karl Rove under the guise of “Thing One and Thing Two management”.

If Step-Dad Bob and Resi Decker should succumb to a fishing/hunting/home repair accident, said duties should then fall to my husband - hereinafter called The Bread Winner. Oy, vey… I don’t even want to think about it. (SEE: ABOVE REFERENCE TO PORN AND PAY-PER-VIEW)

If a fishing/hunting accident, terrorist attack, home repair accident should befall Step-Dad Bob AND Resi Decker, AND The Breadwinner, simultaneously, then I REALLY GRUDGINGLY pass the buck to Mommie Dearest and hope like hell she doesn’t drive Thing One and Thing Two batshit crazy while lording over their money. She will...(sigh) but I will have no other options at that point.

If everyone above dies, I guess a stupid meteor hit the earth and it won't matter, anyway. (Which would be a damn shame.)

This official half of a contract between Jeni Decker and Kat Nove* is electronically signed on April 15, 2011 by:

Jennifer L. Lopez (YES, this is my legal name, so stop laughing, NOW!)


*to see her official half, go to katnovian.com

No More Tears from the Clown

Ring the church bells! Sing a chorus of Hallelujah!

Glenn Beck has LEFT THE BUILDING !! (His “imminent departure” not imminent enough for this gal.)

I break here to dab the corner of my eye with an American Flag hankie. I'm feeling a bit verklempt.

No doubt, he’ll pack up his conspiracy chalk board, the mountain of Kleenex hidden under his desk, his teetering sanity, and zip them all up in the suitcase of unmitigated hubris he calls "truth".

Beck often vacillated between describing himself as a “voice of truth” (she coughs into her hand, “Bullshit!”) and “an entertainer” (if sobbing, retching, ranting, conspiring, and whining is considered entertainment) - though this writer would describe him as a “blathering idiot with sociopathic tendencies" who had no place in prime time on a news network (even if it's a Faux News network), to begin with.

But, I’m nobody, (just an average American) so my opinion doesn’t matter.

I will shed no tears for this clown. This is, most certainly, a happy day. Now, if we can just get rid of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Ann Coulter, the world might begin to spin a bit more soundly on its axis.

Here's his 'announcement'. If this video doesn't scare the beejezus out of you (or make you laugh hysterically at the irony), nothing will...





And... here’s a video I did a while back about the absurdity of American ‘politics’ and my personal disenfranchisement. (Glen makes a wacky appearance.)

It’s a fitting tribute to The End of Glenn Beck.

Haiku: Trypdick(s)

birther talk aside
merkin on your head trumps you
disingenuous




pop goes the weasel
Do me baby goes the whore
everything makes noise.



rusty cogs groan, why?
Bleating, attention seeking
absurdist tweets trend

(the making of) Waiting for Karl Rove

Who’d have thought a bunch of crazy e-mails would turn into a book?

Surely not I.

Okay, I lied. It was all a part of my Sixteen Step Master Plan to Take Over the Universe…(along with Kat Nove, my sidekick).

Here we are, about to publish Waiting for Karl Rove (already available on Smashwords and soon to be available on Amazon.com for Kindle) and I decided to take a trip down memory lane and fondly remember how it all started…

(I will say, preparing manuscripts for e-book format is a slow, painful walk through hell and whoever invented the process should get a pick-axe through the temporal lobe. There’s simply got to be an easier, more effective way to get something to print on an e-reader and STILL not screw the formatting six ways from Sunday if you make any of a number of tiny errors. Seriously - Bill Gates, get right on that, will ya?)

The whole thing started when a writer friend told Kat and I we’d be perfect co-writers. So, first we thought about something like “My Day Sucked Bigger Balls Than Yours Because…” and then we’d just compile our saved e-mails and have ourselves a bestseller.

At some point, however, we decided an actual plot might be nice. Sometime later I said, “Hey, what about if we write ourselves into the story - and it’s a road trip book about a menopausal woman and her erratic sidekick who are on a mission to wrestle an apology from Karl Rove by any means necessary?”

Kat sent an e-mail that went something like this:

LMFAO AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

And, we were off...

JENI: Holy *bleep*-a-Doodle!

That's a lot of e-mails. If even a third of them are remotely interesting, we've already written a book. Well, that's assuming anyone else finds us even half as funny as we do each other. But let’s not use any that make me sound stupid... or fat. I want people to think I'm sublimely intelligent and wasting away at 99 pounds--until we end up on David Letterman.

Oh, screw it. We’ll use it all. ;) On to greatness - or infamy, whichever comes first

KAT: Hmmm...I wonder which agent will call me first as I'm being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer.

"Well, Wolfie...may I call you Wolfie? I always knew she was a total nutjob because anyone with access to that many dildos and boob lifters has to have access to guns, right? So the truth is, when she demanded I write Waiting For Karl Rove with her, I was too scared not to. Is Blitzer a Nazi name?"

Then I’ll stop in and see Geraldo…

“Nice to meet you Geraldo. So this is the Fox News Studio? Frankly, I thought it would smell much worse in here. So kind of you to interview me after Jeni Decker's treatment of you in WFKR - which, by the way, was NOT my idea. I can tell you the exact day she snapped if you're interested in the truth. You are? Hmmm...surprising. It was the day she gave Rick Sanchez the Geraldo treatment via song parody. Yeah, it drove her bat-shit crazy. Uh...I can't say batshit on Fox News? You're kidding right? I assumed bat-shit was okay, what with the two most obscene words in the English language having their own show. Snap, Geraldo. I thought you'd get the joke seeing as how Puerto Ricans usually have a better sense of humor than old white people. The two most obscene words are (drum roll) Glenn Beck. Now, let's talk about me.”

Oh, and Jeni - screw Letterman…I'm shooting for The Daily Show. I'd ignore my menopausal tendencies to sit next to short little Jon Stewart and fantasize about his circumcised Jewish penis. I'm certain it must be massive. Har!

JENI: While I, myself, don't care to ponder the length and or girth of Jon Stewart's penis, circumcised or otherwise, I'd be happy to genuflect before his greatness, with you by my side. Are you saving all this, because if you're counting on me to do it, your screwed. It's bad enough I'm having to spell check things before clicking send.

KAT:

TO OUR READERS : Jeni is referring to compiling a book from our unorganized e-mails. Thank you for your attention and for your money.

Kat Nove

JENI: We accept checks, money orders, and the occasional bartering agreement, in the form of sex. ;) Expect to be de-loused prior to engagement, and it's probably advisable to BYOB.

KAT: Do to my current menopausal state, Jeni will be providing the sex, unless your check or money order is taped to Jon Stewart's circumcised penis, in which case I'll suck it right off and deposit it into my bank account.

JENI: Sure, sure. Leave me the dirty work. Ah, well. I suppose it'll be my penance for blatantly riding your pantyhose to literary success. Though that shouldn't surprise you. I have no issue exploiting the two autistic children I squeezed out of my uterus for literary benefit, so why should you be any different?

KAT: You idiot! I'm riding your coattails. And now I'm walking over to the skateboard park to find the skater who said he'd buy a copy of Global Swarming. That *bleep*er better be there with the cash, I need a pack of cigs.

JENI: Well, that's just dandy. Looks like we've got the menopausal leading the morbidly obese. Look out world, here we come.

KAT: Uh, I had to pee before I went to shake down the skater dude and made the mistake of looking at your emails again! Okay, now I'm off to a drug...I mean book deal.

JENI: BTW, Mitch thinks a better title for Engulfed would be: Where's My *Bleep*ing Bliss? Do you think dropping the f-bomb in the title would put agents off?

KAT: I guarantee they would make you change it to Where's My Freaking Bliss? I like your original title better, but that's probably because David Sedaris and I are such good friends. Oh! And when you respond, maybe you should reply using what you're responding to. That way we won't have to try to figure it out later.

JENI: Oh! so already you want me to make your life easier? What's next? Shall I draw you a bath? You're SO going to hate me before this is all over. And, where is the world heading that a writer can't use the word *bleep* at their leisure? I'm not sure I want to be a part of that world... Oh, yeah. How is Mr. Sedaris, anyway? Let him know I'm gunning for him - though I could be persuaded to cease and desist all future writing endeavors if he and Hugh found it in their hearts to adopt me. I think I'd have turned out better, all things considered, if a gay couple had been my parents.

KAT: Draw me a bath? Har! Quit imagining me naked, you pervert. Besides, in my world, bathtubs are not safe for baths. It's showers only, baby. Otherwise something worse than a yeast infection would be crawling up my who-ha.

JENI: I'm sorry, my dear, but being that it's almost 2010 and a free country (at least until the Republicans crawl back into power) I am free to imagine anyone I wish naked. Don't get all excited - there's quite a list in front of you, including but not limited to Rachel Maddow, Andre Braugher, Hugh Laurie, Suzanne Malveaux (CNN) and Newt Gingrich... (that last one, merely as a curiosity under the sneaking suspicion that something's gone horribly awry there, physically, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it...) And, clearly you're under the mistaken assumption that I'm not 'stoo-pid' as Mitch says...

KAT: Seeing Newt Gingrich falls under my 100 million tax free dollars umbrella, wherein for said amount I'll have sex with anyone on the planet of legal age, regardless of gender, religion and/or political party affiliation as long as most of them are gagged with duct tape, hosed down with disinfectant, the lights are off and nobody ever informs me I just *bleep*ed Ann Coulter.

Months later…

KAT: Last night I went to a college production of The Foreigner and laughed my fat ass off, which is a good thing because the cheap-ass seats in that dinky theatre are like sitting on a turned-on chainsaw (and I don't mean a chainsaw that is so aroused by my asshole that it wants to return the favor) I mean a chainsaw that wants to rip out my asshole, make me eat it and then rip it out again. Then I came home to a paranoid Richard who has finally snapped that I'm writing down his every word and sending it to you. He told me to tell you he'd like to apologize for his inappropriate remarks. More later on his idea to start a gang (as in Bloods and Crips) of pink-curler wearing, rubber dishwashing glove prancers.

So, where are we at on the next WFKR chapter? What am I supposed to be writing next? Help me get the order straight. We go to casino and we're wearing our Mardi Gras masks. We start riot and Conga line and run out being chased by security. Right?

JENI: Yes, that's your part. You can end inside wherever we are and do your usual RUN line because mine takes up with us actually running down the street.

KAT: You take it up and we crash a wedding and we're both super drunk.

JENI: Yes, mine takes us running down the street, going into the wedding, and ends with us walking down the strip leaving the bride and groom…then a bunch of shit happens while we're drunk that we don't remember. I thought it might be good for the next book to leave some stuff purposely open so that if we need anything to 'come back to haunt us' we can use that as a tie in. LOL I cover it briefly in the FBI interview - but that part of the document is REDACTED.

KAT: Then I wake up with black Elvis. We do some shit and end up at the fund raiser wearing masks. Did we decide who wears which mask (Palin/Cheney) ? Because whoever is wearing Dick Cheney's needs to be exposing some hellacious cleavage.

JENI: Entirely up to you. You're choice. Do you wanna be the Dick or the Bitch? LOL Take care to time your 'day' so that we end up in the bathroom at 7:02 PM. I figure Karl's speech could be around six or so in the evening.

KAT: How do I need to end that chapter? Being chased out by security again? Or one of us needing to pee and we hide in the men's restroom?

JENI: Mine starts with us sitting on the toilets, Geraldo comes in after that. You have to get us there or at least establish a chase because somehow we heard Rove was heading to the toilet (does he have handlers or security that we could overhear but get the message wrong--go to the wrong bathroom?) and we assumed that's where he was going.

BTW, which hotel is this that we're in the bathroom of? I assume whatever one the speech is in.

KAT: Let's have that scene in the Parisian. Probably some good jokes to be made about Freedom Fries and how ironic it is since Republicans hate the French. And I'll have us leaving in a hurry, but not writing about getting there. I think it's funnier to have us sitting on the toilets.

Oh. My. God! Did you hear that Cheney is in the hospital again? Be just like that *bleep*er to die and *bleep* up our book. Of course if he does kick it, we can substitute all his parts with someone else equally vile.

I'm Going to Heaven, Right?

“I’m going to heaven, right Mom?”

Jake asks me this about 1,593 times a day. Seriously, the kid will be in his room and peek his head out just to ask, then waits for me to respond in the exact same way every time, “Yes, sweetie,” before retreating back to the safety of his Pokemon game.

He asks this question, not because he's busy pondering death, so much as because he's obsessed with being a good person. Also, he hasn't wrapped his head around this whole heaven thing, and probably never will, so he continues to obsess about it...

I don’t think I have to spell it out for you, but I will. The kid is riddled with OCD.

According to the National Association of Mental Health, obsessive compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as hand-washing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these rituals provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety.

This question is like a tic for Jake. He’s completely unable to keep himself from asking, and he needs to hear my answer. It gets so bad, the barrage of The Question(s)! occurs with such urgency and frequency, that while I answer the exact same way every time (Yes, sweetie!), my tone of voice ranges from sweet, to exasperated, to just plain pissed off, depending on the time of day. Well after the sun has set, I sound as if I might be clinically depressed as the onslaught of The Question! ratchets up with frightening exigency.

“I’m going to heaven, right Mom?” Jake yells from the bedroom, threatening to wake his brother while eviscerating the last vestiges of my crumbling sanity. By the end of the night, I want to become an ice cream eating zombie who gets to watch a few episodes of House (I believe I’ve mentioned I have a huge crush on Hugh Laurie) without being interrupted. I do NOT want to be yelling back and forth from the living room and the bedroom… “Yes, sweetie… yes sweetie…YES SWEETIE… YES SWEETIE!”

So, the other day I was in the bathroom straightening my hair and Jake, having had a stressful day, was yelling The Question! to me from the living room, where he sat watching television with his brother, who was settled comfortably within his own tic-like OCD moment - rewinding and replaying a thirty second clip from Robot Chicken he’d somehow taped. I freely cop to the fact that it was not even remotely close to being an age-appropriate clip which contained an expletive and I immediately erased it when he went to bed that night…

“Mom, I’m going to heaven, right?” Jake must have asked more times than even his nine year old just-becoming-verbal brother could bear, because suddenly (and because I was purposely pretending not to hear) Jaxson sighed very dramatically and screamed, “Yes, sweetie!”

Ha! Okay, that was f-ing funny. Jaxson and I understood one another in that moment - the nine year old autistic boy and his overworked mother came together over the sacred bond of complete and utter annoyance.

It was a beautiful thing.

Not so beautiful, however, a few days later when Jake was particularly worked up and spinning like a top because the following day two very big changes would be made to his normal Friday school schedule - changes which involved a field trip to the ice skating rink and an hour after school for some much needed socializing, via the geek-lab.

(TRANSLATION: Computer lab video game night.)

Yes, both would seem to be fun changes, but changes are changes in my boys’ lives - good or bad, they’re not particularly welcome. Because I change my haircolor with about the same regularity as I change my panties, you'd think Jake would be loosening up a bit in this regard. Not so much.

So Jake had been tossing out the question with alarming ferocity and I was answering him like a good mom when Jaxson started to mimic the question, not even realizing he was doing it - his eyes glued to the inappropriate fifteen second clip from MAD which involved Dora the Explorer barfing into her lunch bag before being dismembered. (I’m not sure how he manages to tape episodes of wholly inappropriate shows that come on well past the time he’s in bed, but I spend at least twenty minutes every night erasing them form the DVR.)

“I goin’ heaven, wite Ma?” little Jaxson mumbled four times.

Oh, sweet Jesus, not him, too. I am not sure I’ll be able to handle it if The Question(ing)! metastasizes to the second kid. Maybe I can get the boys to answer one another and I can free myself from the OCD loop altogether.

“I’m going to heaven, right Mom?” Jake will ask.

“Yes, sweetie,” Jaxson will answer, before asking, “I goin’ heaven, wite Ma?”

“Yes, sweetie,” Jake will say, rounding out the circle jerk of dysfunction.

Now that will be a beautiful day...


***



This post is dedicated to my friend Michael Amrien, who has sailed into Plato’s invisible - where every sound tastes like butterscotch, where smells mingle and crescendo to a ballet of wind chimes - where the sun shines with the force of a thousand unblemished truths, and laughter swirls in Technicolor; a place of perpetual early spring. Where the Sisyphean task we call life is no longer in his memory, and for that I am grateful.

I’ll see you when I see you, my friend. Till then, like the song says: …Take it easy.