ms. malaprop – Page 4 – Wrekehavoc.com

Category: ms. malaprop

Charlie Sheen and My Grandmother

Posted on March 4, 2011March 3, 2011 by wrekehavoc

Dear, dear Charlie Sheen. Watching you implode before the public eye like a supernova hellbent on destroying itself and anything in its path has been riveting, I admit. To be sure, I don’t think I can keep track of the various news stories that have splashed across the screen in the past few weeks. Something about prostitutes, drugs, alcohol, allegedly threatening violence to various ex-wives, having your children removed from your care, stopping production of your sitcom… all you’re missing is a link somehow to the middle east and you’ll hit some sort of perfect storm of newsworthiness.

And your words, your nonsensical, inflammatory language. It has been captured by numerous television and radio outlets, all falling over themselves to have you on in order to boost their ratings. People love to watch a car crash, and you, my friend, are an explosion tantamount to a fiery Indy 500 moment coupled with an atomic bomb. Several web developers have created sites which do different things with your random quotables, all in the name of grabbing their 15 minutes on your back.
It all has made me think of my grandmother.

I never really knew my grandmother, you should understand; she died when I was 11. My direct memories of her involved brief Sunday night phone calls where we talked about Lawrence Welk, trips to Nathan’s for hotdog lunches, and a painting of a rose she made for me which I treasure to this day. I never went inside her Long Island apartment; it was part of a residence filled with the newly-liberated, completely unsupported mentally ill of 1970s New York, intermingled with a lot of elderly people. It was far too scary a place for me, a little girl. I often wonder what it must have been like for her.

My grandmother was, in the parlance of the day, manic-depressive. She endured shock treatments throughout her life as well as many other treatments probably unfathomable to people nowadays. There were points in my father’s and my aunt’s lives where they were sent off to live with aunts and cousins while my grandmother was getting help. How frightened she must have been, and what was worse — the illness or the cure? Back then, mental illness was not only unacceptable, it was stigmatized. You were somehow a defective specimen of humanity. Dignity never entered into the picture.

But my gram attempted a life of dignity in between these times. It couldn’t have been easy, losing her husband pretty early on in all of this. And sure, there was the day when she went out and, apropos of nothing, put money down on a house. I don’t ever remember her babysitting my brothers and me the way my other grandparents did. My gram was not a regular fixture physically near me; she was like a star I wished upon, but not for myself: for her.

And as I watch Charlie Sheen catastrophically exploding through the cosmos, I’m wishing on him. I’m hoping someone out there will stop him on this path toward self-destruction. I pray that someone is helping him to harness that light for something better, stronger, and more positive for himself and for his family.

Blazes are not always glorious in my book.

Originally published at Smartly.Com

i know

Posted on February 3, 2011February 2, 2011 by wrekehavoc

the truth is, i don’t.

one of my old friends used to contend that the ultimate unknowable was fire. i don’t know whether he was wasted when he would wax poetically for hours on the topic — i never really understood half of what he rabbitted on about — but as i get older, i tend to disagree with his assessment. frankly, i think the ultimate unknowable is what’s in other people’s minds.

i’m a girl who appreciates resolution, yet there are many questions in life which will never have answers. it’s like those movies that end on an unfinished note: sure, they’re deep. but i hate them, just the same. no one is ever obligated to explain anything to me, i’m aware, but so many things puzzle me incessantly. i probably missed my calling as a journalist; i always want to ask tough questions, but in real life, you’re simply not allowed to do so unless it’s with someone with whom you’re very close. and even then, sometimes not.

so tonight, i was just thinking about some of the mysteries i will never understand: why this friend stopped talking to me, why that perfect couple divorced, and so on. there are more global questions that stymie me as well about people whom i don’t even know, celebrities even. maybe i wouldn’t like the answers if i knew them, but i prefer the awful truth to psychic tumbleweeds.

until then, i’ll just live in suspended belief.

welcome to the jungle

Posted on January 6, 2011January 6, 2011 by wrekehavoc

dear playdate/person who’ll be here for the next two hours which will seem like an eternity,

evidentally, you never received my first letter to a playdate. if you had, you’d know about my expectations and rules for having a safe, fun, and happy time in my home. if you can, review those rules. but if not, i will be glad to share a few quick pointers here.

please put down that giant branch. while i’ve been known to wing it when it comes to attempting minor medical treatments, i’m not really confident about my abilities in the area of emergency DIY eye surgery.

bless you for taking your shoes off before coming in. you didn’t listen to me as i shrieked about not going in our neighbor’s yard; you ran through it, anyway. besides the fact that good neighbors tend to not run through each other’s yards, i should point out that that particular neighbor’s lawn is a veritable minefield, as it appears he permits his dog to poop all over his lawn (as well as other lawns from time to time.) therefore, who knows what dreams may come/what delights may attach themselves to the bottom of your shoes. and i would prefer to not have such substances on my hall floor.

why certainly you can have a snack… oh, you don’t like peanut butter cookies? how about…oh, you don’t like freshly-baked butterscotch oatmeal cookies either? how about cheesey crackers? no? hmmm… no, we’re not having chocolate now… no, i just baked that cake for after dinner. if you would like to join us for dinner, you may have some afterwards… oh, you don’t like what i’m making for dinner? here, take this phone number. call it. see whether mcdonalds delivers to seven year olds.

great — you’ll eat graham crackers. i’m surprised you ate half of the box on your own, but i guess you are one hungry fellow. please don’t play your kill the graham crackers game in my house. you may have nannies who willingly clean up all the crushed crumbs that trail in your wake, but around here, i am the nanny. no one pays me to clean up after you.

is it really necessary to invoke a holy war over whether pokemon or bakugan is superior? both consist of cheap, plastic crap from china and cards, all promoted by half-hour-long commercials posing as cartoon shows. and the whole point of either? machines of some ilk basically fight each other. if you really want to see some serious fighting, you ought to hit up someone’s house around holiday time. now there’s some really awesome battles. watch two siblings fighting over some long-forgotten feud. take a ringside seat while uncle joe and auntie mo talk about fidelity issues. maybe you could give extra points for people who are artificially medicated or take away points from people with certain baggage.

then again, you don’t get to a lot of these topics until later on in family life education, so just take my word for it — if i see plastic and cards flying around in a tantrum, you will really see some excitement around here.

no, the pinball machine still hasn’t been fixed. yes, i know — it wasn’t fixed when you were here before the holidays, either. no, i don’t know when i am getting it fixed. how are you at fixing pinball machines?

my son is banned from the wii for the next week. since you asked, he was banned because he continued to not listen when he was completely sucked into the game. it won’t be forever. you know, we have all sorts of board games. and he did want to go play outside, which you refused. so sorry if my house is the vortex of boredom.

how nice of you to mention that your neighbor will be home from his vacation on saturday and that you’d rather be playing with him. i know it makes my son sad to hear that; clearly, you haven’t yet developed the empathy gene to make you think how it would feel to be the recipient of such news. but i will be glad to see you happy with your neighbor friend.

for you see, there is another playmate in the wings who follows about 85% of my aforementioned rules. i’m thinking 85% is a damn good number.

have a nice day,

wreke

all mixed up

Posted on December 20, 2010December 20, 2010 by wrekehavoc

dear black and decker,

i don’t usually find myself writing to large corporations, much less large corporations that generally don’t produce things which i use. while i have been known to pick up power tools for my BS for holidays when he places them on his wishlist; and while there are times when i am tempted to locate a power tool and run screaming down the street, i am probably not part of your target demographic, being a stay-at-home-mom who tends to leave most home improvement projects to the experts (or to my husband if i am quite certain that he will not be ripping an entire wall out in the process. which did occur once, i would add. but i digress.)

recently, my husband generously purchased a black and decker hand mixer for me for the holidays. the wonderful machine is a powerpro 250 watt mixer, a cute little number with additional wisks for beating eggs and even a little scraper attachment that supposedly scrapes the bowl as you go along. now, i know what you’re thinking: why on EARTH would you ask for a small appliance for the holidays when you could be angling for some serious bling?

in short, i love to bake. and while my kitchenaid mixer is my go-to appliance for probably 80 percent of my baking needs, there are times when you just don’t feel like lugging out the giant behemoth just to mix up the instant chocolate pudding. and once upon a time, i had a hand mixer. yep. got it when i got married over two decades ago. it was my friend and happy little mixing companion. it survived a lot of things — and if you only understood my inability to cook well, you’d understand how that mixer could be termed a survivor. however, there was one thing it could not survive.

that would be my son, jools.

once day, jools was helping me mix up some brownies, my most favorite food on the planet. and, if i do say so myself, i make some pretty awesome brownies. if i could only figure out a way to make them actually good-for-you, i would make a mint. sadly, no rationalization of how butter, eggs, sugar, chocolate, flour, salt and vanilla can be made to be thought of as anything but yummy. but that’s ok. anyway, the boy and i were mixing up some brownies when the boy did the unthinkable — and with lightning speed, i would add. my three-year-old chef-in-training stuck a spoon into the whirring blades.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTT! there it was.

fortunately, no people were hurt in the process (though the moment is seared unto the boy’s memory. to this very day, he recalls the incident. the day the mixer died.)

so i have been waiting for over four years to one day have a mixer. i ended up with an immersion blender one year, hoping that would do the trick. sure, it was useful for a lot of things (such as mixing up instant pudding), but it just didn’t do what a little hand mixer could do, gently combining ingredients, then raising the speed level to add some air. it had one speed, and that was that.

then, my BS went and bought me the aforementioned black and decker hand mixer for chanukah.

it is truly a lovely machine, with additional wisks for beating eggs and even an attachment which allegedly will help scrape the bowl as i’m mixing — how cool is that? (did i mention that already? sorry. i just am too excited.) i couldn’t wait to try it out, but it took me a week or two to get a moment to bake something.

so i just had the chance to wash up the beaters, plug it in, and give it a whirl: it was time to break out some pumpkin and make some yummy pumpkin chocolate chip bread. i started out with sugar and butter in the bowl. it was creaming time. i turned on the beaters onto the slowest speed.

WHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sugar and butter pieces flew all over my kitchen. (i may still find pieces of butter in 2011.) wow. if that’s the slowest speed, what speeds come next, i wondered. i checked them out, each level even speedier than the next. add the power boost, and you’ve got a tool that probably has more power in it than my entire kitchen appliance collection combined.

black and decker, power is fantastic i suspect when you’re building something manly-man-like. like, say, a building. but you need to remember that baking sometimes is the art of the gentle. flour simply doesn’t fight too hard; and eggs just aren’t that tough. i fear this mixer was built for the likes of tim “the toolman” taylor.

please consult an actual baker when you develop these sort of tools. i barely clean my kitchen as it is.

yours,

wreke

pet peeve: telemarketers!

Posted on November 30, 2010November 30, 2010 by wrekehavoc

ah, the last day of pet peeve postings for NaBloPoMo! and it’s all about… wait a second. the phone is ringing and i have to check caller ID…

OMG! they call. day and night. night and day. those unknown caller folks on my caller ID. those people with 1-800 or 1-866, or somesuch number i don’t recognize. it’s the folks who want to sell me something. or it’s the folks who want me to donate something. or maybe they want to sell me something i can donate — who knows? but it makes me crazy!

ah, the delightful world of telemarketing. generally speaking, these omniscient phoners usually butcher my name. i love when the company’s caller refers to me by my husband’s name. better yet, i love when they call my husband by MY last name. it’s so very, very personal, these telemarketers. they really want to act like they’re my neighbors, my friends, my family. and yet none of these groups ever calls me up and asks for MONEY. i don’t know about anyone else’s family, but this doesn’t really happen a lot around here. mercifully.

and it’s always at the worst possible time. when my kids were small, it always happened just as a cranky baby fell asleep for a fought-off nap. or maybe it happens just as we sit down to dinner. or when i’m in the bathroom and expecting a call from someone important and so i hear the ring and feel like i need to magically get to the phone. and then, so sad, it’s not that person but rather a person i don’t know who doesn’t know me who may be calling me from the other side of the world for all i know. and they want my money.

caller ID has made my life SO MUCH better. i mean, we put our number on the DO NOT CALL list and yet we get calls. so at least now, i can screen my calls. i giggle when their robocaller starts talking to my answering machine. i wonder if they’ll make a date for lunch. exchange circuitry. who knows!

but that’s in my happier moments. there was a time when my very young kids wanted to talk on the phone. oh, they so wanted phones, especially jools. we even bought him toy phones, he loved them so much. so when a telemarketer called, i was sorely tempted to put the baby on the phone. go ahead — call me if you dare — but i’ve got a toddler, and i’m not afraid to deploy him!

i feel badly for people who work as telemarketers. they must know what a nuisance they are, and yet that’s the job they must do. you really must have a backbone of iron to take on a job like that.

but i’m tough right back, though i never get nasty. i simply don’t even answer the phone.

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thanks for joining me for a month of pet peeves. if you’ve got more peeves you want to share, feel free to let me know your thoughts. and next month, i will try to think happier, peppier thoughts. but here’s hoping you were more amused and less annoyed by my monthly rant. be well, don’t cut me in line, don’t let your dog crap on my lawn, and we’ll get along just fine.

pet peeve: people who don’t clean up after Fido

Posted on November 29, 2010November 14, 2010 by wrekehavoc

while you’re curbing your enthusiasm, please also curb your dog.

although i am a cat person, i do, in fact, enjoy spending time with dogs as well. unfortunately, due to my allergy status (read: i am allergic to dander, dust, trees, flowers, mold, feta cheese, and, well, i’m lying about the feta cheese. i just think it smells awful, kind of like barf.) i am unable to have a cat or a dog as a pet. this means that i get to enjoy being a pet-parent vicariously, thanks to the many dogs in my neighborhood. (and hey- here’s a shoutout to our faves: Henry, George, Razz, Dexter, Samson, Bailey, and of course, jools’ favorite dog on the planet whom he’d probably marry if it were allowed, Beatrix (AKA Bebe) the pitbull. ) we love our neighborhood dogs, who prowl down our street, leashed and with owners attached, carrying the ubiquitous plastic baggy for the dog doo.

unfortunately, there are clearly others walking other dogs on my street and in my neighborhood who seem to think that the world is their dog’s toilet. there are days when i seriously contemplate putting up a fence in my yard, if only to keep dogs from pooping on my lawn. BC thinks she knows who is responsible for the poop, but if you don’t see it happening live, up close, and (yecch) personal, then you really can’t go pointing fingers at people.

i know some people just let their pup run freely in their own backyard and sometimes just let nature take it’s course. i still remember my friend jen’s beloved cocker spaniel lollipop. lollipop was a very pretty, friendly dog who often left presents around the yard. still, it was in her yard mostly and not mine, so i was always careful not to step in any landmines while playing. i remember one time my mom reading lolli the riot act, as the dog had somehow crossed the street and had decided to relieve herself in our yard, something which didn’t go over well with my mom. of course, my mom talked to dogs like she talked to people: lolli, go HOME! she firmly told the dog. lolli just stood there with her puddle brown eyes, probably wondering whether my mom was going to come over and pet her or feed her or SOMETHING. but that was one of the few times i ever remembered dear lolli, may she rest in peace, doing something like that in my yard. she mostly kept things local, if you know what i mean.

in short: if you own a dog, you sign up for a lot of things. one very major one is picking up what comes out of Fido’s backside (unless you want his poop to return to the earth in your own yard. that’s clearly your right.) if you can’t do it, hire someone else — or better yet, get Fido into a home that really is committed to him and his world.

and please: stay the hell out of my yard.

pet peeve: kids who call adults by their first names

Posted on November 26, 2010November 13, 2010 by wrekehavoc

you can thank my mom for this one. well, mom and my old friend jen.

awhile back, my beloved pal jen pointed out how bent she gets when she hears kids calling adults by their first name. she will actually correct friends of her children if they call her by her first name. it’s a respect thing, and she feels that it is part of what feeds into the whole entitlement society that we’ve somehow grown.

i couldn’t agree more.

i don’t know whether it’s a southern thing or just something that happens now, but my kids call people they know well, like our neighbors, for example, mr. joe or ms. laurie. adults they don’t know well are mr. smith and ms. jones. authority figures end up here as well — their teachers are obviously known by their last names. and for my very close friends, like the aforementioned jen — well, she’s aunt jen to my kids. i truly don’t appreciate it when other people’s kids call me by my first name; historically, i have let it slide because my name is complicated to begin with (i kept my name when i married, so kids get confused and call me mrs. mykidslastname, which i also let go. i even prefer that to just my first name.)

when i was growing up, i think my mom would have bodyslammed me if i had had the temerity to call any adult by his or her first name. to this very day i call jen’s mom mrs. lastname for fear that she might wash my mouth out with soap. (you see, jen’s mom and my mom apparently went to the same mom school. this we’ve known for over 40 years now.) another one of my old friends’ moms told me to call her by her first name. i have known this woman now also for about 40 years, and i must say it doesn’t fall trippingly off my tongue. but as she wants me to call her by her first name, i will try my best.

yes, old habits die hard — which is why i hope i’m getting my kids into really good habits now so that they’ll remember them always.

pet peeve: people who aren’t thankful on thanksgiving

Posted on November 25, 2010November 25, 2010 by wrekehavoc

no, really. thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL1Nu3qZLdg

sure, i picked the leitmotif of pet peeves this month. but that doesn’t conceal the fact that i am very, very grateful for a lot of things. i could list them for days and years. i’ll just list a few off the top of my pointed head.

1) thank you, BC: for being an awesome daughter who somehow gets me in a way that no one else does. you forgive me when i probably deserve a tween shriek thrown at me. you are one of the two greatest gifts i have ever been given, and i never forget that.

2) thank you, jools: for being an incredible son who picks and chooses the strangest moments to change from a delightful little boy into a wizened old man and provide me with a perspective that i sorely need to hear and grasp. you are one of the two greatest gifts i have ever been given, and i don’t ever forget that.

3) thank you, BS: my eternal partner in crime, the statler to my waldorf. you put up with me no matter what. you like me in spite of me being me. you make me laugh. you are always my personal bulldog. and you’ve got the most beautiful eyes i have ever seen. i am so lucky that mark wintle dumped a beer on you and therefore brought you into my life for keeps.

4) thank you mom and dad and aunt barbara: you have always been in my corner, and you have taught me the power of unconditional love. i’ll never be able to tell you fully how much you mean to me, but somehow you always know what i mean when words fail me.

5) thank you to my brothers, who never treated me like a girl but who always treated me as someone who needed to learn to be as tough as nails. i learned so much from both of you; and while i know i continue to get on your nerves in a huge way, i do it because i love you. (you’re welcome.)

6) thanks to my mother-in-law, my dearly-missed father-in-law, and all my husband’s family for treating me like one of your own. i know i’m a little bit odd in comparison to you all, but you’ve always welcomed me with open arms from the word go.

7) thank you to my friends, who seem to like me still. i treasure you.

8 ) thank you to america for taking my great grandparents in. my family has always been fiercely proud of our nation.

9) thank you to the Beatles for making the best music ever.

and last for today, but not least:

10) thank you, gutenberg, for inventing the printing press. for i do so love to read.

happy thanksgiving, everyone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUhRY5ah8YE

pet peeve: american actors attempting british accents

Posted on November 22, 2010November 8, 2010 by wrekehavoc

yes, virginia. there are american actors who succeed at using the queen’s english. but for every one, there are oodles of others…

UK actors, like EastEnders’ Michelle Ryan, have a tough time getting the american accent to work. apparently, though, plenty of US actors are pretty pathetic at verbally crossing the pond. my beloved dick dan dyke’s accent is so awful in mary poppins that the term van dyke accent has actually emerged as an insult to those attempting an east end accent. demi moore’s accent in flawless simply isn’t. and i’m not sure what sort of accent misha barton is channelling in st. trinians.

empire magazine did an article on the worst british accents in film. see if you agree.

pet peeve: people who don’t know the difference between there, their, they’re

Posted on November 16, 2010October 31, 2010 by wrekehavoc

vive la différence.

i cannot possibly imagine what some people were doing during their school years, but they’re butchering the english language here, there, and everywhere. and one of the top grammatical offenders appears to be the usage of there, their, and they’re. it’s not difficult, people, like it’s and its is.

there usually involves a place. and when it doesn’t involve a place, it is introducing a clause or a sentence (i.e., there is an awesome place where people actually know how to speak using grammatically-correct terms.) and of course, there is sometimes used by the folksy or southern people out there: them there eyes comes to mind.

their is the possessive form of they. and that’s IT. their house, their lawn, their dog who bites you when you visit. it all belongs to them. get used to it, get over it, and you’ll be ok.

they’re is a contraction — see the little line thing between the y and the r? it means there’s at least one letter missing. and that letter, in this case, is an a. breaking it all down — it means they are. so every time you are tempted to use that one, break it up in the sentence and see whether it works. they are is a place that i can go when i feel low? (nope. use there.) they are house, they are lawn, they are dog who bites you when you visit… (nope. now, how stupid does that sound? think about it.)

so get it straight, or the people with poetic license(s) will gang together and they’ll come to take you away to a dictionaryfest, where you’ll be force-fed contractions and grammar until your prepositions start contracting.

you’re welcome.