We have news, and it could spell the end of this blog.

I know that all of you have read the headline and have ~clutched the pearls~ and then gasped.

I thought we'd finish off the year with some fairly big news in our lives that could spell the end ~gasp~ of DHTISH.

This cannot be, you say to yourself.

But life is like that, no?

And I really, really want to let you in the secret.

Really I do.

I can't tell you how much this is tearing me up.

And it is!

Except I have been sworn to secrecy.

I can tell this - 2012, hopefully, looks to be bringing some sweeping changes to life - all of them really, and I mean really, good for the people and dogs living in the Cookie household.   And if it does, it will simply be divine.  A caprice - an escapade!

And if it does, this blog will be retired.  Don't worry.  Something else will appear.

So here is to you, and to us!  May 2012 gives us - each and everyones us - our hearts desire.  May the new year, bring new vistas, travel and new friends. 

More importantly, may you all have health, wealth and money in the bank!

Well, I think we'll let the dust settle.

I know that you have been wondering where I have been.

Well, I am here to tell you that this past week has been my private roller coaster ride through Hell, compliments to Dell Computing.

I understand that one needs to suffer for their art, but really, I'm paying them, so why am I the one suffering?

It started out with the "FakeRean" trojan, which launched a horrible worm virus.  Let me say this that if get my hands on the developer of this horrible pc virius that I will single handedly wring the life, and after life, out of them.

So I called Dell, because when I bought my latest PC fom them they had this deal that gave me three years of US Based Tecnological Support for $50.  And I hate talking to "These eze J I M M Y, howl may I help you," from Banaglore.

Well the paid support didn't work.  They had a ten minute maximum wait time and each call into them had a wait time of 30 to 60 minutes.  Hell!  I could get the folks in Bangalore faster than the service I was paying!

Not only was I on wait - which just pisses people off - but was I was forced to listen to Dell's hold recording that reminded me that "most issues can be solved by rebooting your computer" or "Visit http://www.dell.com/ for technical support!"  these two messages rotated every 30 seconds. 

Do the ass clowns at Dell not understand that if someone is calling, it may not a be as simple as shutting down and rebooting it?  What kind of fucking asshole leaves that on the hold message.

I'll tell you: the assholes who sell you a premium service package and then don't give a rats ass if you call, but if you, they want you to hang up the phone, that's who.

Reader, I was steaming.

After 30 minutes on hold (for guarenteed 10 minute service) one too many times, I - you will be hard pressed to imagine this, but - I lost it.

What did I do? 

I went postal on their asses, and let's say that I expelled all of the terrible pent up ions in my soul from this whole God damned year.

I acknowledge that it sounds crazy, but everyday for the past week they have been guarenteeing me that everything was back to normal, despite things not working correctly.

Evidently something I said (could have been "lawyer" or "fraud") put the fear of God into their lives and they got on the ball today.

So we are now at a point where where the PC should work flawlessly. 

We'll see.

I'm not holding my breath.

But next machine is a MAC.

Well?

Did you get what you want?  Or... 

...did you get what what you need?

What are you doing Christmas Day?

Delivering Toys and Cigarettes to good little boys and girls?

Merry Christmas to all, an announcement and a warning of sorts

This tree has 75,000 lights on it.  I think it looks a bit bare, you?

I wish to thank all of you who stop, lookand comment at this hodge podge that I call Doing Hard Time in Shaker Heights.  You guys light up my life, but not in a Debbie Boone kinda way.

My announcement is that next week I'll be off line for a couple days.  My computer is infected with the "FakeRean" virius/trojan and its been a real motherfucker to deal with.  The only way to be rid of it is to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows 7.  And loading and reloading EVERYTHING will take a day or two.

My warning is, while I ALWAYS practice safe computing (Keep the AV up to date and running, use SpyBot, keep away from "suspect sites, et. al.) "FakeRean" (Link to trojan definition) got into this computer.  So run your AV program, be careful and I hope you never encounter it.  Those wishing to gloat about their MAC machines, kindly keep your gloating to yourself. I'll come over to the darkside soon enough.

Rocky and Kevin send their "Howl-i-day" wishes, too!

Report of the Middle of The Street Committee, Christmas Week Edition

At the last meeting of the Committee of the Middle of the Street has conducted on December 18, 2011, we stood in the middle of our street and watched the Christina (aka the Filipina Dominatrix) chain smoke clove cigarettes while moving men carted her possessions into a moving van parked on the street.

Just Call Me Judy kicked off the meeting with holiday wishes to all “the puppies” on the block (Our Kevin and Rocky were trying to braid their leashes around my legs) and a “Merry Hanukah” to yours truly, even though the front of house has a HUGE plywood sign that reads N O E L - in the dark, the lights on the letters light up N, O, E, L one at a time and then flash NOEL NOEL NOEL in quick succession like an old ZAYRE sign.

The holiday wishes were accepted, and returned by all.

“Do you think she knows that we are watching her?” asked 60 Something Hippy Connie who was holding the leash to her dog “Spirit”.

“Let’s see; there are ten of us standing in the middle of the street looking and then looking away really quick when she looks this way,” remarked Helicopter Sandy, “so I would say the answer is a big fat ‘YES’.”

“Well, I for one am disappointed that I didn’t see anything perverted come out of that house,” said I Don't Have a Sphincter Audra. “The only thing odd that I saw was something that looked like a lion cage and a two 2X4’s nailed in the middle like a giant “X”.

“That,” said Helicopter Sandy, “was probably her cage for her slaves and a whipping rack.”

That caused Don't Have a Sphincter Audra to snap out of her mopey state. “How do you know that Sandy?”

“I was on the vice detail for ten years. I’ve seen it all.”

We were joined by the Bob Wolf(e)’s and their two Newfoundland’s who were slobbery all over the place.

“Are we talked about…” said Bob Wolf, “…about what we think you’re talking about.” said Bob Wolfe.

“They haven’t sold the house,” said Just Call Me Judy. “The real estate agent said that they have to make” (she arched her eyebrows) “significant repairs.”

“This is what we don’t get,” said Bob Wolf (or was it Wolfe) “She had those two submissives living in there – why wasn’t she putting them to work fixing the place up,” asked Bob Wolf or Wolfe.

Pot Smoking Phil ambled over and with his dog Fester and Phil introduced himself with a loudly announced “HOLA!”

“Mooey, Mooey” added in Just Call Me Judy, proud as punch with herself that she had just added something of worth to the conversation.

“CAR!” called out the Bob Wolf(e)’s and the group parted like the red sea to accommodate a vehicle cutting through the neighborhood.  Then we resumed our confab in the middle of the street.

"Hey Audra,” said Phil, “did you see the dog crate come out? Bet one of these boxes here (nodding in the direction of the movers) is full of the whips and chain mail.”

“Phil, you have a filthy, filthy mind. What would make you think that I would want to see anything like that,” said Audra with an air of urgency.

“But a minute ago,” I started to point out…

“You never mind,” she said to me just as Helicopter Sandy started to laugh. “Haha Audra – got caught with your pants down!”

“Now you never mind. Phil did you ever see anything going on in there?” Audra asked.

“Audra, if you are looking for pointers, you better ask her before they fill up that van and drive away,” I pointed out. "CAR!" ontly this time the car swerved to the side of the street and stopped.

That was when our group was approached by Frigid, of Frigid and Frigeeda, a lesbian couple from Finland that bought a house down the street when they moved to Columbus to continue their studies at Ohio State.

They are not friendly, and they don’t mix well. Frigid was parking their Smart car and walked to where we were standing in the center of the street.

“So what are we doing?” Frigid asked us. “Are we making noises to keep up the people who have to work in the morning? Well?”

“Just talking” we all said in one manner or another.

“About what? What is so special that you must hold this meeting in the mitten (I think she meant ‘middle’) of the street? “

Just Call Me Judy piped up “We were talking about Audra’s CANCER SURGERY, weren’t we Audra.”

“You have this cancer surgery?” asked Ulla somewhat incredulously.

We all know what was coming…

“Oh, yes, I don’t have a sphincter, or a rectum. Had to cut it all away. So now I’m in a new study on colostomy bags…”

“Yes, well, Happy Christmas to you all.” And off she stomped like a German storm trooper. She marched up her steps, into her home and then watched us from a window.

“Good work, Audra,” said Phil.

We all agreed to meet at Phil’s in January for the annual neighborhood White Elephant Christmas Party.

But the Bob Wolf(e)s want to know if Phil was going to invite over Ulla and Marte.

“Yah, Yah!” he said and then start to laugh at how funny he was.

Merry Christmas to all – even Frigid and Frigeeda – and to all a good night.

Making up for not planting flowers every year.

Yesterday I went back home to Marion, Ohio, to visit Mom at the cemetery and also to check up on something that I did up that way that would have her spinning in her grave had I not had her cremated.  So I guess this would have had whirling in a cloud of dust.  You get the idea.

Our family plot at the cemetery back home holds about twenty graves - ours is a small family.  None of my great grandfather's sisters had children that lived to adulthood, and my grandfather's only sibling died of TB before she could start a family of her own.

The earliest grave in that plot belongs to my grandfather's aunt Lottie who died at 18 months of typhoid fever.  Over the years, the small simple marble stone has eroded away to a crumbly placard that toppled over in high winds.  The other two children in the plot are our Aunt Eva's children, a son who died at two and his sister who died at nine, again, both from typhoid fever in the late 1800s.  Their markers, like Lottie's were worn down, but they also carried their surname of "Brown" and this left people confused.   Unless you knew that Uncle William was her second husband, it's like these two children just wandered over from a different section.

And there is just something that speaks to me that says that no children brought into this world should disappear into oblivion, and the dust of history, without there being something left behind to mark that they were here.  No child should be forgotten to the ages.

So to fix this, I took $700 of Mom's legacy and bought all three new tombstones, in granite.  The wording on each marker is exactly as it was on the old markers, but I added the Cookie family surname to each of Aunt Ev's children's markers so the ignorant would know that they belonged to someone in the plot as well.

My mother would, of course think that this was a terrible waste of money, until someone other than me said that it was a touching and loving thing to do.  Mom wasn't one for emotions.  Should would have preferred that the money had been invested at the current rate (practically nonexistent), and then she would have sat in a dark room to save even more money.  But the sad state of those sad markers bothered me, so I did it.

I also gave the cemetery the authority to destroy the old stones.  They were plain markers and none of them had any art work on them.  From my genealogy and history work, I know what happens when people move them - it creates confusion ("Is great great great grandmother Clotilda buried here or in Aunt Betty's back yard back by the Quince bush?") 

Can you imagine what would happen had I taken them - like they suggested and used them in a landscape setting?  Oh, Jeezy Pete!  Every nut job in a one mile radius would start talking about Cookie's Cemetery! And I didn't want someone to steal the stones either.

It was a hard decision, but the right one to make.

My other reason for doing this is that Aunt Ev left everything to my grandfather on the condition that he plant flowers on her grave every year.  We haven't always followed through on that because the squirrels just dig them up.  But I think that tending to these graves has gone long way to right that wrong.

The Kessler Sisters

But what song are they singing?  Seriously.

Stella and Ella send their Zombie Christmas Cheer

Thought for the day

Where is Donna Lethal when you need her?

So my friend ron posts this link to a video on Facebook to a video of a girl and a girl - both wearing hot pink unitards, dancing and frolicking to a Mariah Carey song. Because I have a lot of time on my hand, I follow the link - stranger things have been to entertain me.

So I click on the link, up pops YouTube and the video begins.  Unfortunatly, the climax for me was too soon.  The play bar gets to the yellow marker (YouTube's was of  telling you WE HAVE PLACED AN AD HERE) and while I normally just close it out, this one catches my eye because of the topic, and the bad grammar:

Yes, your eyes are seeing correctly, but for the myopic:

So I went to that site and, in fact, they have (wink, wink) THOUSANDS of Chinese Lady for dating.  It not one - many, many Chinese lady want to date you!  They miss you long time!

What's more - 10,000 Chinese are, according to this ad can be found violating the premise (9th grade English, thank you Barbara Smith, rest in peace) that if you "lay" on the beach you should be arrested.  Whats worse is that they "lay" without love - in fact they are WAITING FOR LOVE while they lay, but you must REGISTER. 

It FREE. 

And that is where I stopped. Unless a Chinese lady is bringing me my order of Mongolian Beef, I don't need her.

Here's the video - I'm not sure how long YouTube cycles its ads through, but at least for now, "it showing that ad!"




And always remember that I love each and ever one of you, long time now!

UPDATE: DRAT!  They have removed the Chinese Lady Ad.  I HATE that when it happens!  (Or maybe they realized it was probably a prositution racket or some such thing.)

If you removed one letter from the title of this movie...

...how would it change the movie?

A death in the Hollywood Royal Family: Judy Lewis

In Secret Cinema, the great Paul Bartel did a black and white short about a woman named Jane who felt like she was the last to know what was going on around her. She felt that people were talking about her behind her back - laughing her mistakes, laughing louder that she had no idea what was really going on.

For the first 20 years of her life, this is what Judy Lewis felt about her life. 

I just read this online...

Judy Lewis has died.

Mom and Dad

See the resemblance?

Lewis was the daughter conceived between Clark Gable and Loretta Young during the filming of the Call of The Wild.

When the annoyingly Catholic Young (who would gain a reputation of being a real pill on numerous Hollywood sets over her hatred of swear words) discovered that she was pregnant with Gable's child, she did what any good Catholic girl would do - she went into hiding.  Off to Europe she went, only to return in time to have her "love child" born in the U.S.

As to keep her career going, she then had friends and orphanages care for her little bouncing reminder of her coitus with Clark Gable until enough time had passed that it was "safe", then magnanimously adopted the orphaned girl as "Judy Young".

Unfortunately, little Judy inherited her father's ears and heavy brow.  While nothing could be done about the brow, Loretta sent the child in for surgery to have her ears pinned back.

As mother and child (or, more accurately, Sinner and Product of the Sin), Young and the child never really bonded, and Young eventually confirmed that she was Judy's mother.  Explaining her decision to give birth, Young reported said: “Wouldn’t you be if you were a movie star and the father of your child was a movie star and you couldn’t have an abortion because it was a mortal sin?”

Sweet, isn't it?

Despite having a Bitch like that for a mother, and by all accounts, Lewis did move on with her life, pursuing acting a continuing on in life with her education.

The thing about family lies is that they have a tendency to come up for air, as Loretta Young discovered.

Safe journey Judy; heaven awaits you, but I wouldn't expect to see your Mum around if I were you.

Royals that should have been

Baroness Rowena D'Smirk