Remember back when Chris Brown went to the media as part of his repentance tour following his vicious attack on then-girlfriend Rhianna? The R&B singer proclaimed to anyone who’d listen that he was sorry, and that he knew actions had consequences.

Well, now that some of those consequences might be biting him in the butt — you know, where he keeps his wallet — it seems Brown is singin’ the blues.

This weekend, when fans complained on twitter that they couldn’t find his new album, Brown headed over to the local Walmart to check the situation out for himself. Finding that, sure enough, his CD wasn’t on shelves, Brown vented his frustration — in the form of some very foul language — on twitter… a site on which he’s followed by many young fans whose parents would no doubt frown upon his choice of verbiage.

“I’m tired of this s–t”, he tweeted. “major stores r blackballing my CD. not stockin the shelves ad lying to costumers. What the f–k do I gottta do.”

You mean aside from cleaning up your language and leaning the difference between customers and costumers?

Something tells us that once again, Brown’s PR team is shaking their heads and wondering why they allowed themselves to be tied to this foul-tempered nightmare of a client who obviously needs at least a little bit more proof that actions — and, for that matter, words — have consequences.

Hold up. So now, Rudolph — you know, the infamously-red-nosed reindeer — is either a girl or (gasp!) a eunich?

Seriously?

Well, suddenly that relationship between Rudolph and Hermie the dentist seems a little less… you know, suspicious. 

Apparently, scientists at Edinburgh University have come to the conclusion that Rudolph couldn’t possibly be a male reindeer because only females of the species still have their antlers at Christmas time. “Rudolph clasically is this red-nosed reindeer who is around at Christmas,” says Professor Gerald Lincoln. “We picture him in the snow with his antlers, but if you know anything about nature, you discover things are not quite so straightforward,” concludes Dr. Smarty Pants. 

What strikes me as particularly odd is that the two professors responsible for this ground-breaking “discovery” will actually present their findings during a talk on December 9.

Let me ask you this: How, exactly, have you made the world a better place by taking something as frivolous and innocent as a beloved children’s story and used science to debunk it? How about you spend more time curing cancer or AIDS and less time spouting crap about how “Rudolph could be a castrated male.” I’m pretty sure nobody wants to be thinking about that as the holiday season approaches! I mean, “Rudolph The Castrated Reindeer” doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it!

So forgive us if we ignore you, professors. We will, however, give you this lovely parting gift. Wear it proudly!

It takes a lot to make it into howrudeareyou.com’s hall of shame. Simply flipping off a stranger or allowing your dog to leave little presents on the neighbor’s lawn isn’t nearly enough. But rare is the contender who presents so perfect a trifecta of bad behaviors — public intoxication, child neglect and lewdness on a grand scale — that he or she goes directly to the head of the class.

Ladies and gents, meet hall of shame inductee Claire Irby.

 Ms. Irby – the 3o-year-old descendant of the Guiness brewing dynasty – bypassed her clan’s ale in favor of a whole lot of wine during a flight from India to London. She then proceeded to let a fellow passenger grope her breasts (as his girlfriend slept nearby… classy!), allowed her toddler to dash about the aisles nude from the waist down, threw a soiled diaper and – it probably goes without saying — treated the flight crew like dirt.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Irby doesn’t quite recall the details of what happened. “I do remember pushing the call button a few times,” she reportedly told police after the incident, which landed her in a London courtroom this week.

A stewardess reported that Ms. Irby later stripped down to a G-string in full view of passengers, and one passenger on board the flight testified in court that the defendant — who was traveling with her two-year-old son — had thrown a dirty diaper on the seat behind her, called the flight attendant a “bitch” and then demanded a wet wipe so she could wipe the… er… crap off her hands.

Officers who arrested Irby once the plane arrived at Heathrow described her as being drunk, but the beer queen insists that by the time the jet had touched down, she was “not even tipsy.” In fact, according to her, she was simply suffering from the effects of too much caffeine. 

Ms. Irby, in what might well be the understatement of the year, has admitted that she may not have “behaved like a young lady.” But she has, we’re proud to annouce, acted like a proud-for-all-the-wrong-reasons member of our bad behavior Hall Of Shame! Congrats, Ms. Irby! This round is on us!

How much lower are y’all going to sink?

I ask only so that the rest of us both know what to expect and can guage when you’ve finally hit rock bottom.  More importantly, we’d like to know when to start taking you seriously again as a political party.  Because right now, with the loudest voices of your party shouting about death panels on the radio or calling the President of the United States a liar during a joint session of Congress, the only ones rallying around your causes are Glenn Beck, the birther crowd and Boss Limbaugh. And while I know those folks make a lot of noise, what you need to realize is that theirs is a sound and fury significant of nothing.

For years, your party has played the fear card, and we’ve come to expect as much. But now, those regularly playing that card aren’t doing so with a full deck.  And the hand being dealt is one filled with jokers such as John Boehner, who never met a lie he wouldn’t echo, and Indiana’s Mike Pence, who said of Van Jones — without his tongue planted in his cheek or any indication that he understood the irony of his words — that “his extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in… the public debate.”

This from a party in which members still routinely trot out the repeatedly-disproven claim that President Obama is not an American citizen. Who blasted Obama’s speaking to school children as an attempt at indoctrination before hearing what he had to say, and accused him of changing the message after realizing it was the equivalent of a pep rally. Worse, Republicans are failing basic math.  Again and again, they talk about how they represent “the majority of Americans”, failing to recognize that if those words were true, they wouldn’t have lost the White House and their majority in Congress.

I get what’s going on with Republicans. Really, I do.  They’re scared.  When people who are used to being in charge lose their position of power practically over night — and worse, when the person who takes it away is not “one of them” — it’s downright terrifying.  And when people become afraid, they act out.

They lie to make themselves look better.

They use scare tactics in the hope that others will come running to them for protection from the Big Bad that is threatening to destroy their way of life.

And they get desperate, which is what’s happening now.  The party doesn’t necessarily want to be associated with the Sarah Palin’s and Joe The Plumber’s of the world, but without them, there’s not a lot left.  Rather than become more moderate and thus regain some of the many members of the party who’ve drifted away, they acknowledge that the squeaky wheel does, in fact, gets the grease — which, in this case, is media attention in general and Fox News Channel coverage in particular — and embrace a “go big or go home” approach.

But come on, kids.  This has gone on long enough.  I’d like to make a suggestion: Why not float a balloon that isn’t filled with laughing gas?  Find a moderate Republican you can send out there to make speeches and see if maybe, just maybe, the public responds to someone who doesn’t respond to everything with shouts of, “You say I’m crazy? I got your crazy!”  Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, you can find a way to get back into the game before there’s nobody left willing to shell out money to see you play.

But if not, if you guys want to keep heading down the self-destructive path on which you’ve been traveling since January, never fear… we Democrats will be more than happy to pinch hit for as long as necessary.

Because I don’t want you, my beloved readers, to get Valentine’s Day disease, I present to you… Welcome To VD (The Kitten Clean version, with a link to the original…), a comedy short done by the fantastic Devon Green (best known for her merciless Brenda Dickson parody vids…)

As a bit of a treat for regular readers — as well as to give me some feedback on a project-in-progress — I present a rough, unedited version of my horror novel’s first chapter. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

From the moment she opened her eyes — even before noticing the droplets of blood on the practically-new duvet or what looked like claw marks scarring the bathroom door — Mona Jeffries could sense that something wasn’t right.  Of course, what she didn’t piece together quite as quickly was just how rong things really were.

For a moment, she considered crying out for Mitch, but something told her that it would prove pointless. Maybe it was the fact that a quick she was fairly certain the droplets of blood hadn’t come from her body, or perhaps it was the fact that the hand lying just outside the bathroom door and seemingly detached from its owner looked awfully familiar. She’d always thought that Mitch had oddly striking hands, swearing she could pick them out blindfolded.  Or, it now seemed, unattatched.

Having always been the type of person to over-think a situation, Mona wasn’t surprised to find that while parts of her brain were strongly suggesting she move — and quickly — it was nearly impossible to convince her limbs to cooperate while there was still so much data to be taken in, digested and comprehended.  She suppressed a giggle — no doubt of the maniacal variety — as her brain conjured up an image from a TV show she hadn’t seen since childhood in which a robot insisted that the incoming information didn’t computer.

Lost In Space. That was the show. And what she was seeing most definitely did not compute.  But another memory from that same space saga played in her head as she heard the same robot shouting — could robots shout? — “Danger! Danger Will Robinson!”

Oddly, it was the non-existent voice heard only in her head — as opposed to the very real blood or even the unexpected gurgle-growl coming from somewhere within the room — that finally convinced Mona that it was, indeed, way past time for her to take action.  A moment later, her foot hit the floor, followed in rapid succession by her face as the until-now barely-suppressed fear finally manifested itself physically, at the worst of all possible times, causing her knees to take on a gelatinous state, her equilibrium to become as unreliable as Mitch’s mood and her usually-graceful limbs to stage a coup.

“No pain, no gain,” she thought while struggling to regain control of her body.  Deciding that the disturbing sound, which summoned up an image of a fang-baring cat slurping up something even the least discriminating of cannibals would find distasteful, was too closer for comfort and wondering why she couldn’t remember that sitcom’s theme song for the life of her before coming to the conclusion that sanity might be slipping away from her at an alarming rate, Mona struggled to right herself and get, as whoever the oft-quoted-they say, while the getting was good.

Which it no longer was, as it turned out.  Because just as she’d gotten to her feet and begun moving toward the door, something that was not quite a hand and not quite a paw grabbed her from behind and gave a brisk, brutal tug.  Although she didn’t fall to the floor this time, she couldn’t help being more than a little disturbed by the realization that she could no longer put one foot in front of the other as she was now short one of the necessary items for completing said task.  Mona was frankly amazed at how humorous her mind seemed to find the entire situation, although deep down she realized that there was a distinct possibility that she’d had a full-on mental break.

That was when she tried crying out for Mitch, which, in a way, only further convinced her that insanity had come knock, knock, knockin’ upon her door.  After all, given the disembodied hand lying on the bathroom floor which she’d already mentally identified as belonging to her husband, logic dictated that he was probably in no condition to help.  If alive and well, Mitch surely would’ve come to her aid unbidden (as opposed to unbitten, which seemed unlikely at this point).  Odds were, she was on her own.

Ignoring both that she seemed to have lost a foot and the equally terrifying fact that she had yet to actually feel any pain, Mona limp-lunged for the bedroom door, managing to grasp the handle and use it to steady herself.  For the briefest of moments, she considered turning around to face or at least glimpse her attacker before deciding that some things truly were best left to the imagination.  Despite being a pretty avid fan of both science fiction and horror, she suspected that nothing she’d read or seen could prepare her for whatever might be emerging from beneath the bed or behind the vanity that she’d never liked to begin with.  But the reason she’d always able to laugh at even the most gruesome of images on the screen or the most cringe-worthy of passages in a book was the simplicity with which one could say, aloud or to oneself, “It’s not real” and then, just for emphasis, throw back ones head and laugh at the childish notion that something supernatural or even preternatural had somehow forced its way into the so-natural-as-to-be-bland world in which our daily lives unfolded.

Before Mona could attempt to hobble further away from the bedroom, hoping to at least get far enough away from the unfolding nightmare to at least try and pinch or slap herself into waking up (because hope does, it turns out, spring eternal), something uncomfortably cold and slimy managed to get a firm grip on her.  Looking down, she was surprised to see just how small the appendage was, especially given its apparent strength it exhibited.  A combination of revulsion at the limb’s touch, which felt like a hairy tongue as it wrapped around her remaining ankle, and fear triggered by the realization that she was about to hit the floor yet again, caused bile to rise up in her throat.  As do most people, Mona had a major aversion to vomit, whether her own or someone else’s, and so she tried hard to swallow down the rising tide.  But upon losing her balance and slamming hard onto the quickly-rising floor, the pressure placed upon her stomach forced her to quickly expel not only the air in her lungs but the remnants of last night’s dinner caught in the whoosh of air’s unstoppable path. 

Dragged slowly backward, Mona clawed desperately at the floor, only to find her bitten-to-the-quick nails useless in securing a grip, especially once her hands hit the puddle of her own vomit, not to mention the urine she assumed had come from her terrified bladder.  Worse, when one of those nails her momma had always advised her not to chew finally did catch on a knot in the oak floor, the result was a momentary halt in her backward progress followed by a burst of excruciating pain as the nail remained behind and her journey into terror continued. 

Now, at last, she screamed.  Oddly, she’d felt nothing upon losing an actual limb, but having a single fingernail ripped off unleashed a pain unlike anything she could have imagined.  Or maybe it simply gave her a point upon which to focus the physical and mental agony which had, until that moment, been bottled up inside her.  A conceivable pain around which to wrap her head even as her lower extremeties were encompassed by a million indescribable, unfathomable sensory experiences she had absolutely no capacity for translating into understandable sensory experiences.

Before mercifully losing consciousness for the last time, Mona Jeffries finally turned her head, as best she could, to try and catch a glimpse of her tormentor. What she saw trumped anything she could possibly have imagined and yet paled in comparison to what she heard.  For in that final moment, before being drowned out by a scream worthy of any horror movie heroine, Mona could have sworn that her attacker called her by name.

 

 

 

It was a good news, bad news kinda week in television land. Sure, the longest-running scripted drama in broadcast history bit the dust, but a reality show full of bickering, back-stabbing, blithering idiots got renewed. 

After 72 years on the airwaves, GUIDING LIGHT, which began on radio and will, by the time of its September 18th cancellation, have aired 16,000 episodes, was officially cancelled on April Fool’s Day. CBS is currently searching for a replacement which will no doubt involve a tough-talking judge or yet another talk show hosted by someone of questionable fame and intelligence. 

And LIFE ON MARS — a smart, savvy, well-acted cop drama that made the apparently-fatal flaw of not being a by-the-numbers police procedural (ala CSI, LIE TO ME, THE MENTALIST, et al) was put to death by the network that brings us never-ending cycles of THE BACHELOR.

A few days later, Oxygen proudly renewed the reality series BAD GIRLS CLUB — in which exhibitionistic, attention-starved, morally-challenged young women debase themselves by engaging in profanity-strewn antics that would make Lenny Bruce blush — for a fourth season. 

It is the highest rated show on the female-skewing network which was, incidentally, founded by Oprah Winfrey. How proud she must be of her baby, which this week launched a virtual BAD GIRLS clone, PRETTY WICKED. Make no mistake… the network doesn’t think it’s putting positive images of women out there. In fact, on its homepage they feature a poll asking of the stars “Are these girls pretty or wicked?” The options you can select: A) Change the show to “Pretty Ugly”; or B) They all need personality transplants! 

The ugly truth is that reality shows such as these are cheap to produce, but show almost no creativity (let alone integrity) and are, in fact, downright demeaning. Forget about the old argument that porn is demeaning to women… I have a lot more respect for someone who makes their living having sex than I do for someone who goes on national television and spends weeks exhibiting the kind of behavior featured in the clip below.

 

But networks are a business. They give us what we want to see. If nobody was tuning in, shows such as these would be off the air in less time than it takes a member of the BAD GIRLS CLUB to pull a shank out of her weave.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if it takes you this long to pull into a parking space, perhaps — just perhaps — you should do the rest of us a favor and give up your license. Because frankly, you are an accident waiting to happen. And when it does, we’d just as soon not be the person you wind up crashing into!

watch?v=GtxQpThifcA

Thanks to the guy sitting behind me on the bus today, my kids now know several colorful new words. I didn’t really need to start my day by trying to explain what they meant or why they shouldn’t say them. I didn’t particularly want to hear his nasty talk either.