Sassistas! Our dish on the social soup.

Half a Million

Ever produce half a million of ANYthing? 

Kind of a big deal, right? The Sassistas! think so.

It's been quite a while since we've marked a significant statistical milestone in the sassosphere . . . but yesterday, we passed the milestone of a half a million lifetime views. That's right -- 500,000!

We realize, of course, that many websites and blogs get that many views each day, nevertheless, we think that for two broads who know little about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or what-have-you, we've done pretty well. Our views have come the old-fashioned way -- folks really wanting to read, comment and connect with one another over the long haul. So we are grateful and thank you from the bottom of our smartie-ass hearts.

Question, though: if you could have a half a million of ANYthing outside of half a million bucks, what would it be?

 

Stuffed

When people walk into Flannista's home, they immediately notice art EVERYWHERE. Art on the walls, art leaning against bookshelves, art leaning against tables, art leaning against music speakers -- if there's a space, art is somehow stuffed into it.

So what should we make of the above photo? An image from this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine slideshow of big-game rooms? The woman who bagged all these beasts, now in her 70s, is never identified (to protect her from animal rights activists). When she was first married 50 years ago, she refused to go hunting with her husband, but then kind of took a liking to it. "I don't know if I would go out ever again," she says today.

Duh. Why bother, when there doesn't seem anything left to stuff except Big Foot?

To view all the images in the slideshow, please click here. Then please sass in your two cents on what you think of these big-game rooms. Or think of a caption for the above image. Best caption wins one of Flann's stuffed Goofy toys, pictured below:

 

 

Novel Ingredients

The Sassistas! spent most of Memorial Day weekend reading -- from magazine and newspaper articles to poetry to non-fiction to school texts . . . even a best-selling novel -- Flannista's least-favorite literary genre. Why least favorite?  Perhaps a very short "Inside the List" musing from the April 15, 2012 New York Times Sunday Book Review offers some clues.  It asked, "What are the ingredients of a best-selling novel?"

James W. Hall, a mystery novelist and professor of literature and writing at Florida International University has spent 20 years exploring the question and offers answers in a new book: Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers. Hall looked for the elements that unite a dozen "best sellers on steriods," from Gone With the Wind to The Da Vinci Code. Three of the common features are "maverick heroes, high stakes and hot sex". According to Hall, "These things are the flour and the sugar and the butter. You can combine them in any number of ways, but you won't want to cook without them." At one time Hall had believed that if you wrote cliches, and melodramatic situations, the stories would lie dead on the page. "Instead they were absolutely gripping," he said.

One ingredient not necessary in a best seller is graceful prose. "The novel is a blue-color form, and the language of best sellers reflects that legacy. It has nothing to do with writing."

Sigh.

Do you agree that the novel is a "blue-color form"? Books like Fifty Shades of Grey appear to prove this, but what books like The Help?

What ingredients do you look for in a good novel?

 

Warrior Song

FOR MEMORIAL DAY:

"Metaphorically, veterans should be encouraged to sing. Joseph Henderson once showed me a collection of paintings in this home that were copied from pollen drawings made by a Navajo shaman. He walked me through the story of two brothers who went on a journey to find their father, the Sun. Their father armed them, and they became warriors and fought the wild monsters threatening their tribe. The paintings showed bolts of lightning and vibrant energy coming off the brothers when they returned to their village. The villagers were afraid of them and told them to leave. Sky Women took them in and taught them to sing of their adventures. When they had made up their songs and sang them to the people, the people were no longer afraid.

This book is my song. Each and every one of us veterans must have a song to sing about our war before we can walk back into the community without everyone, including the king, quaking behind the walls. Perhaps it is drawing pictures or reciting poetry about the war. Perhaps it is getting together with a small group and telling stories. Perhaps it is dreaming about it and writing the dreams down and then telling people your dreams. But it isn't enough just to do the art in solitude and sing the song alone. You must sing it to other people. Those who are afraid or uneasy must hear it. They must see the art. They must lose their fear.

When the child asks, 'What is it like to go to war?' to remain silent keeps you from coming home."

-- from What It is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes

 

Let Go

 

Let go of the dead now.
The rope in the water,
the cleat on the cliff,
do them no good anymore.
Let them fall, sink, go away,
become invisible as they tried
so hard to do in their own dying.
We needed to bother them
with what we called help.
We were the needy ones.
The dying do their own work with
tidiness, just the right speed,
sometimes even a little
satisfaction. So quiet down.
Let them go. Practice
your own song. Now.

-- "Letting Go of What Cannot Come Back"

    Bill Holm, from Playing the Black Piano

 

May 2012 Open Mic

 

The sassosphere microphone is open, sistas and mistas.

Please step up and dish whatever you like.

 The Sassistas! sponsor Open Mic the last Friday of every month.

 

Shanthi

We've all had it with politicians in our Nation's Capitol singing the wrong tune about nearly everything, from the economy to foreign policy to human rights . . . so how happy were the Sassistas! to discover Shanthi -- an elephant at the Smithsonian's National Zoo who plays a harmonica with her trunk and appears to love doing it!

What's more, Shanthi plays tunes even when no humans are within view!

The Sassistas! couldn't help but wonder what other instruments zoo animals might be playing when humans weren't around. Think it's party central?  Share a possible scenario.

One last thing -- think any politician would do anything if no humans were within view? Shanthi for President!

 

 

Yo No-No

On Sunday while grocery shopping, Matissta pointed out the above products in the diary section and said to Flannista, "This is just wrong on so many levels, not the least of which is taking a low-fat healthy food and adding junk to it."

We had to investigate.

We went to the YoCrunch website and learned that its purpose is to make snacking fun! "It's easy to say 'yes' to a fun yogurt snack that's topped with Oreo cookie pieces, M&M Chocolate Candies, Nestle Crunch pieces, Reese's Pieces candy or Butterfinger pieces." Duh.

But wait, there's more! Loyal fans of YoCrunch can join the "Crunch Bunch" -- a way "to reward our yogurt-loving, healthy-indulging friends with special offers, events and product news."

We know that you're wondering how there could be EVEN MORE!  But there is! YoCrunch games! Click here to begin playing, "Crunch Up," Topping Tumbler" and "Tap the Top"! What FUN!!!!! Flannista played all yesterday afternoon and even beat 8-year-old Toby in Toledo, Ohio at "Tap the Top"!

All to say, the Sassistas! were wrong about YoCrunch. It's not just a sneaky way to get kids to eat yogurt. It's a brilliant way "to help with math homework," according to this post on the YoCrunch blog. Who knows, perhaps if she ate one or two of these a day Flannista might be able to balance her checkbook!  Yo to that!

What other food-like items could be added to yogurt to make life more fun??!!

 

Their Closed World

In this book, The Savage God (written after the suicide of his friend, poet Sylvia Path), A. Alvarez describes the elusive, mysterious power of suicide as:

. . . a closed world, with its own irresistible logic . . . . It is like the unanswerable logic of a nightmare, or like the science fiction fantasy of being projected suddenly into another dimension: everything makes sense and follows its own strict rules; yet, at the same time, everything is also different, perverted, upside down.

Everything seemed upside down last evening at the funeral home where my friend Ann was grieving the suicide of her most beloved silbing. When she saw Matissta and me, she instantly greeted us, then taking us by the hand, led us to a room that contained nothing but a flat-screen television looping photos of her "normal brother".  "It's an open casket. He's in there," she said as she pointed to another room. "I haven't looked. I want to remember him the way he was the last time I saw him a month ago."

The photos captured moments of happiness frozen in time.  Ann provided steady, yet clipped commentary. "That's him when he guarded Barbara Bush"; "There's President Bush"; "That's him as a kid. Check out the suit. Always so neat."

Ann's family seemed to have congregated inside the funeral chapel and her sister-in-law's at the entrance outside, her beautiful niece nobly flitting between the two groups. No one knew what to say. An old friend from Ann's childhood neighborhood, tears in her eyes, simply said, "I'm so sad." Ann said more than once, "This is so fucked up."

Ann's face was empty, her eyes like a doll long abandoned. Her partner shared with us that Ann's older brother had shown up earlier and said something so cruel to Ann that it took our breath away. Matissta -- normally the epitome of politeness in sensitive situations -- said out loud, "What an asshole!"  His words had been spewn out like a curse and were unbelievably merciless.

Neither Ann's father nor mother was there. Neither would they be attending the funeral today. It seemed that Matissta and I were the only friends -- friends Ann had made as an adult -- who had shown up just for her.

I could not sleep, thinking of my friend and her deep sadness and the sudden and terrible exposure of her family's profound brokenness.

Her world will never be the same. 

 

Dark My Light

 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, 
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; 
I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- 
A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 
I live between the heron and the wren, 
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. 
What's madness but nobility of soul 
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! 
I know the purity of pure despair, 
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. 
That place among the rocks--is it a cave, 
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have. 

A steady storm of correspondences! 
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, 
And in broad day the midnight come again! 
A man goes far to find out what he is-- 
Death of the self in a long, tearless night, 
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. 

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. 
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, 
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? 
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. 
The mind enters itself, and God the mind, 
And one is One, free in the tearing wind. 

-- "In a Dark Time", Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)