Cooper Being Peter Finch in Network

Thought of by many as The Original Occupier, he often recited his famous I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore! protest while standing in the 15 item express check-out line behind some idiot with 45 items.

Tuesday Expert Advice

Dear Cupcake,

This morning, when I was watching the Today Show, I saw an interview with a boy named Colton Burpo who wrote a book titled, Heaven Is For Real, about how he went to heaven.  And it is for real.  And in the interview he regaled everyone with all the incredible details about how he walked around heaven and how he met the lord (I mean hot damn, right?) and how he is going to write another book. And as I listened to him I wondered if you think it would be okay to ask little Colton why, if he spent so much time shufflin' around the pearly gates in his Vans, did he not make a pit stop at the Identity Department in order to figure out what IN THE HELL he did to earn the last name of BURPO or do you think any poking around in this area will result in Saint El Burpito unleashing an army of fiery chariots on me?
---Squinty Eyed with Suspicion in Syracuse

Dear Squinty,
No.
Good luck,
Cupcake

Things That Are Easier Than Trying To Explain How To Get the Television Back On Channel 3 So the Cable Will Start Working Again To Your Aging Parent Over the Phone

1. Assembling a nuclear bomb in the pitch dark

2. Driving your car using only your nose

3. Climbing Mount Everest while carrying all three of the Black Eyed Peas
on your back

4. Getting Kanye West and Jerry Falwell on the same page

5. Winning the Kentucky Derby riding a Cuisinart 

Saturday SlobberLove

There are some faces I never get tired of looking at.  My sister's children possess two of those faces.  They are possibly the only two faces that thrill me with their gorgeousness every single time I see them.

My sister and I used to spend good portions of whole afternoons talking about how it was almost bizarre how cute my nephew was and when my niece was born we would stare at her while she watched Barney and furrow our brows because we simply could not process her cuteness.

It is almost as if they are too cute to comprehend.  This is how we explained it to ourselves.

Looking back, I know now that they were indeed incredibly cute but as they grow into young people who will become adults I see that their faces remind me how far my heart can stretch and how important it is to be kind and that they gracefully carry a certain open awareness that shines such a bright light of hope and strength that it is hard to ever look away.

You Can Call Me Auntie,
Deputy of Doting
Heart Bursting Precinct
Continually Astonished Division

Things I Don't Understand, Items 389 thru 391

389. Why Justin Bieber doesn't pull his pants up
390. Black Friday camp out people
391. When Rachel Ray does that thing where she carries 57 ingredients from the pantry to her cutting board like she's a pack mule who'll be shot if she doesn't do it all in one trip

Cooper Being the Dalai Lama

Here, His Holiness meditates on what he is most grateful for, such as the aromatic behinds of each and every canine that crosses his path---or that doesn't cross his path for that matter.

"You must be the sniff and then you must let the sniff go," he advises, with so much love and wisdom.

Tuesday Expert Advice

Dear Cupcake,

I'm not sure if you can help me because I may not have long to live but I thought I'd write to you just in case you had some key information that might save me and my small family.  What happened was I recently cooked a recipe from a cookbook that has VERY definite sections for each season---Spring.  Summer.  Fall.  Winter.---and I guess I was feeling lawless because the other night I decided screw it and I whipped up a yummy Corn Chowder from the Summer section even though it is Fall thinking no one would ever notice but moments after my husband and I finished our bowls of smoky goodness a rock came hurling through our living room window with a note attached to it that said YOU DIE, SEASON IGNORER! and the next morning when I went to start the car there was an ominous message written in what appeared to be unsalted butter smeared across the windshield that said IF IT'S SUMMER WHY AREN'T YOU WEARING A BATHING SUIT YOU IDIOT? and after that I realized this might be serious and I filed a police report and we have set up a barricade to protect ourselves from the hand grenades but we wanted to know---is there any national protection from this Seasonal Recipe Mafia or should we just consider ourselves goners?
---Petrified and Panting in Puyallup

Dear Panting,
No.
Good luck,
Cupcake

Monday Judgements and Warnings

Just in case you missed the recent addendum to your How To Be a Human Rule Book, here are the What To Never Ever Think or Argue In Defense Of chapter details:

Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker Were a Good Couple

Capeci?
Delilah Don't Be a Dope

Sunday Survey

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS:

An idea flutters around me for a while, for a good solid time, for the time it takes until I can't ignore it and it tells me to write about that time I helped my dad in the hospital.  That time when he was sicker than any person I'd ever seen sick.  He was sicker than I'd thought he deserved.  But the idea tells me to write about that time.  How we both knew, without talking about it, that this was the moment that would change us forever and this was the moment that would forge us together as BRAVE.

This is what the idea does. It sits around like a drooling Labrador.

Go on ahead and write about the way you and Linda used to spend hours taking in your Ditto jeans until they were so tight you doubted you would even be able to step over a small bench on the 9th grade lawn.  Write about that now, regardless.  Regardless of how much you don't want to---especially because of that.  This is the idea's idea of a big joke---

Keeping track of all the stuff I want to say just in case anyone else has ever felt it---this is the idea's gigantic, weird job---filling up notebooks with scribbles like:
CLUTTER KILLS and
Twinkle Toes and Worry Wart and Anxiety Blog and
Don't Do One Thing That Scares You and
Un-Mommy and
What Other People Fight About and
Finding Out Mom Wasn't Crazy But Just Selfish and Lazy and
Oh the Bougainvillea brightens the grimy street gravel and
In the morning the newscasters are dreary serious although their hair is big and real and
That time I saw Ed Begley, Jr. in my rear view mirror screaming at his girlfriend and
I'mNotALoser.com and
How the most nice people are often times the most hateful and
Anger is hurt left unattended and
When In Doubt, Be You and
All these other lives I will never ever know and
The difference between What I Was Thinking and What I Said and
The Big Club of Motherless Children and
They all smoked because they didn't know and
How many others overheard the unhearable and
Those mornings when the light makes things so much more doable and
I AM WORTHY YOU ASSHOLE and
Places Other Than Here and
and, and, and, and, and, and,
and, and, and,

Does that ever happen to you?

Toodles,
Lieutenant Lookaway It Never Stops
Platitude Precinct
Long Winded Division

Saturday SlobberLove

Sometimes on Saturday, we like to spend some tender, philosophical moments staring out the window from our Captain's Perch and think about how fortunate we are that our shrill bark carries as far as it does from up here---on the arm of the couch.  

And we feel a little weak in the haunches, to be honest with you, thinking about how carefree and fanciful our life is now compared to the dangerous dark days of our childhood before we were rescued and we come to believe that, aside from that aging basset hound that gets chauffeured around the neighborhood in a stroller, we think we might just be the luckiest hound in the whole wide world.

Things I Don't Understand, Items 386 thru 388

386. How James Carville and Mary Matlin make their marriage work
387. Babies who seem mean
388. What screening is in place to deem something as "gently used"

Cooper Being Greg Louganis

This photo, taken moments before his perfect, splashless execution of the now famous Nose Diver Twist Around Fifty Times and Look Like An Anvil dive from the roof of a twelve story building into an extra large oval dutch oven, showcases the swimmer's flawless form. 

Things I Like More Than Herman Cain

1. Gingivitis
2. Dolls who come to life and try to kill me with hatchets
3. Being forced to follow the advice of Milli Vanilli's publicist
4. Noxious paint fumes
5. Waking up and realizing I have Keith Richards' complexion

Monday Judgements and Warnings

You might want to keep this on the down low but let me tell it to you straight and letcha know that if you are feeling particularly festive as we embark upon this Season Of Joy and you decide that NOW IS THE TIME to go on and on and on about how the The Bee Gees' Fanny (Be Tender With My Love) is the best song ever written and you decide to sing a little bit of the crescendo that happens at the end and then talk about how it sounds like an opera or something, like Nessun Dorma, the way it hits that flaming rocket note that makes the hair on your arms stand up?  You might think this is a good decision because you're certain the acquaintances you're with will agree with you and swoon along as you weep with joy remembering the sweet shrill timber of Barry Gibb's voice---but you would be wrong in this instance.  You would be terribly wrong.

Whatever,
Sara Singalong
Solo Division
Shut Up, Inc.

Sunday Prayer

Dear God,

I know my prayers are more like wishes but will you try to (and I say this with full knowledge that you are busier than the gatekeeper lady at the Target dressing room) make sure that everyone I love knows I love them and they know that even if I act more like Joseph Stalin than Jonathan Livingston Seagull in my dumbest moments it is just because I am a big ball of struggling lostness trying to see my way nearer to them where I might catch the glow of their glorious shiny sparklyness that is, often times, the only light I use to find my way.

OK thanks for your time then,
Sergeant Sentimental

Saturday SlobberLove

Sometimes on Saturday, after a couple two or five or twelve run ins with that cunning bastard The Vacuum Cleaner---that gladiator beast who knows no mercy---after we've gone to the absolute outer limits of our own unbridled fear and charged that Mighty Devil of a rolling, hissing, lukewarm air blowing death tank on wheels, we usher ourselves into our cozy place and we allow the one in our tribe who possesses the courage to wrestle with that loud crazy killing machine that sucks up everything in its path to wrap us in our favorite cream colored blanket and we reflect on what it is to be a soldier and we know deep in our soul that if we were confronted with danger every day in whatever form (rogue plastic bags, flies in the house, freakish pillows with minds of their own, mastodon buses out to get us) we would rise up again and again and throw ourselves in the fight gladly if it meant keeping our beloved pack mates from one moment of harm and it doesn't even matter to us if they realize this because we know we can do it.  We know we have what it takes.

Yours In Armorless Battle,
Brave Guy Beagle Mix

Things I Don't Understand, Items 383 thru 385

383. Why poop is called "stool"
384. How those shows that have video of people, dogs and babies falling off cliffs, hurtling into brick walls, having the wind knocked out of them and running head first into rakes are supposed to be funny
385. Sean Hannity's water buffalo hairdo

Cooper Being Hal Holbrook in All the President's Men

Here he dispenses invaluable top secret advice regarding following the money, how to handle H.R. Haldeman's spiky hairdo and the overriding importance of making sure there are plenty of shots showcasing Robert Redford's lanky cool walk---all while standing in the humid underground parking garage of a JC Penney.

Monday Judgements and Warnings

I don't want to frighten you too terribly but please be aware that if you peacefully finish your last load of laundry and you are filled with that Happy Fold feeling and you wander upstairs into your bedroom at the exact moment that a bunch of big mouthed Music Man types are performing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" a capella on The Sing-Off you will experience several moments of SHOCK---like, What? Who? How? WHY? and then the reality of the situation will set in and you will become mute and sweaty but in your stupor you will come to understand the true meaning of NO and shortly before you start shaking your head back and forth over and over again until you pass out your last image will be of a dwarfish poofy haired Patti Lupone wannabe getting all cheetah faced while he does a fake drum thing on the top of his right thigh.

I'd wish you luck if I were still alive,
Henrietta Help Me

Sunday Prayer

Oh holy creator of life, supplier to my horn of plenty, giver of grace and yummy stuff I can nibble on when no one is looking:  please oh please I throw myself at your mercy and I beg you to guide me on my journey as I try to understand the lunatics I live with and why they think my glorious barking is unacceptable in every way.  Do they not know it is the way of my people?  Do they not comprehend the danger that transmits from every sound and whisper and honk?  Please dear lord and provider of Pupperoni---show me the way and bestow patience upon me or at least make the crackpots that feed me understand that they can butt out and go on about their business and I, The Loud Hound will take care of the home front because that is what I was born to do glory hallelujah amen.

We Be Woofin',
Emperor Barkohito

Saturday SlobberLove

If I told you how much braver I've gotten since I've been married you wouldn't believe me.

I think I became brave because the part of my own true heart that had my best interests in mind knew that it might be fun for me to not be a shaky, suspicious scardy cat forever and that I shouldn't hole up in my warm, wonderful, predictable, safe, damn fine cave forever. 

Even though I wanted to.  Even though I still long for the comfort of Being All Alone and cozy--- free from some other asshole's input. 

It is as if I pieced my life together against my will in that cave and I made a flimsy colorful mosaic that I knew would withstand the elements and I galumphed out into the open, petrified and full of longing and hope and desperation and practiced charm and I found someone, maybe the ONLY one who I felt kind of but not really sort of safe enough to follow and we took turns blaming each other and railing against all the crap that rose to the surface to be tended to in the presence of what we brewed up together which, on our (many) best days, we would describe as our good and mostly fearless love.

Yours In That Feeling Of Ain't It All a Crap Shoot,
Beulah Barbed Wire

Things I Don't Understand, Items 380 thru 382

380. Water Parks
381. Flamin' Hot Cheetos
382. Any woman who doesn't immediately think CREEPER MAN CREEPAZOID when they hear Herman Cain give his "I only told her she was the same height as my wife---and that was right about up to my chin" explanation.

Cooper Being Edie Sedgwick

"Be a dandy and pass me the eyeliner," he says, before hanging from the rafters in his bright white skintight bell bottoms.

Tuesday Expert Advice

Dear Cupcake,

I am on the precipice of turning FIFTY and it is very important to me to honor and celebrate my aging spirit in ways that reflect grace and poise.  For example, I have been carrying a copy of Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" with me and when I'm on my daily walks I find a little hill to stand atop where I can recite and/or act out passages sending my wisdom out to the universe (I've noticed that sometimes during these spontaneous readings people nearby will speed up their pace quite a bit or they will grab their children and run so I know my heart song is being heard) or I light a candle and sit on my front porch and simply allow myself to feel my approaching official geezerness.  Now I know this is all very positive stuff and things I know you would encourage me to do but I was wondering, besides avoiding wearing pastel colored leotards and pressuring my teenage nephew to listen to Earth Wind and Fire with me what else do you think I should put on my DON'T list as I embark upon my journey toward eyelid droop?
---Worked Up and Wheezing in Whittier

Dear Wheezing,
No.
Good luck,
Cupcake