Cornball

For some stupid reason, this one joke never fails to make me laugh. My girlfriend sent it to me in a mass email ages ago, and somehow it just stuck with me. I hardly ever read mass emails! I was reminded of the following joke in a conversation having to do with what a stickler I am for grammar and pronunciation. Enjoy the most cornball joke ever!!!

Two dogs are sitting in a bar: one is an English sheepdog and the other is a Mexican Chihuahua. They’re having a drink when a gorgeous Collie walks in. The two dogs turn back to each other and continue drinking. Knowing they don’t have a chance with her, they resume conversation with the bartender. The bartender says, “I know her and I can probably score a date with her for one you guys.”

“Oh yeah?” they say.
“Yeah,” says the bartender. “But she likes a clever dog, one who can hold her interest. Tell ya what. Whoever can use these two words most creatively in a sentence gets a chance.”
“What are the words?” the sheepdog asks, tongue out.
“Liver and cheese,” the bartender replies.

The two dogs contemplate for a moment, and then the English sheepdog says, “I like liver and cheese.”
“No dice,” the bartended decides and looks at the Chihuahua.
The Mexican Chihuahua then says, “Liver alone, cheese mine.”

Hilarious!!!! Gets me every time.

Cherchez la Femme

I haven't written any poetry in a while and was looking at some of my abandoned works. I came across this one piece that a friend of mine told me I should post for womankind. This is for you, friend.

Cherchez la Femme

Hiding in the sinews of repressed emotions,
ducking from the pain they bring her,
she blends into the jungle, chameleon-like,
to protect herself from Lust’s bullets and
Ego’s derogatory arrows.

Under the guise of inflated machismo
is the only way she knows how to advance,
to surpass Life’s glass ceiling.
How else can she survive in a sex-crazed world
without numbing her mind to the
prostitution of her womanhood?
Pretending so long to be impassive,
apathetic to her own situation that is being
a woman,
like a pocketbook left on a bus seat,
she has forgotten her Femininity.

How can a woman, one of Creation’s most
complex and powerful beings,
disregard such an innate treasure?
Hmmm…

If man is defined as a human being and
woman simply as female, and whenever she
“behaves” as a human,
she is said to be emulating the male
(as writ by him),
then this male society that has made her
feel inferior from the first dawn has
caused the female to suppress aspects of her
Femininity in all its splendor, making her an
endangered species like the elephant
stripped of its tusks

Neither can survive.

©2005 Vicky Therese Davis

Clash of the Civilizations

A good friend of my mine sent me a link for the televised interview of a very brave and intelligent Arab woman. She spoke at length on the topic of a "primitive" Muslim culture clashing with encroaching westernization. Everyone can stand to watch her interview. I have a lot of respect for this woman. To come out on public tv in the middle east where her beliefs could do her harm in some circles, this woman has balls!


http://www.switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_memritv_popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

Solipsism

While reading my latest literary conquest, The Catastrophist, by Ronan Bennett, I came across a passage that struck me as quite an interesting insight and one that pertained to me and the way I read novels.

"...I stayed in my room and read novels. With one eye I watched the characters rise from the page, with the other I watched my own life. It sounds solipsistic, but reading about imaginary others made me intensely curious about my real self. Before then I had sent few queries in my own direction*. Once I started reading I entered a period of introspection and self-examination; fiction referred to me questions I had not even known how to formulate. It was like being forced to stand naked in front of the mirror in a harsh and unflattering light."

*This one sentence does not pertain to me, as I often question myself and my motives.

I always find it refreshing to find a passage that so eloquently puts in words what I feel and am unable to properly express to others. It has also come across my mind whether or not others read in this fashion, comparing themselves to characters and posing the questions the author has seemingly tried to answer him- or herself. As a very wise woman once said to me (and she knows who she is), "It's easier to look out the window than it is to look in the mirror." This is what books and their authors help me to do: look in the mirror and face the facts about myself, the good and ugly.

The character who wrote this passage is a writer, and he delves into this topic even further:

"I did not like the reflection cast back at me. I saw vanity, arrogance, self-importance, cowardice, I saw the meanness of my own motives. I started writing, I think, because I saw in words a way to cover myself up. In fairness, I did not try to use writing as reinvention, or as an advertisement, a sign behind which I could hide and say I was better than I was. Instead I rendered everything as a kind of sly joke, including the characters in which I breathed. That way I was only one more joke among many, my failings were invisible..."

As a writer, I found this admission so endearing, so brave, that the author of those words has looked that deep inside himself to understand and reveal his intentions, no matter how bad it might sound to the reader. To know oneself so fully is truly a blessing, one that is extremely hard to pull out from the layers of false pretenses we use to fool others.

I have asked the question to myself and other writers: Why do you write? I wonder if any of them know the true reason, and if they do, are they willing to admit it to themselves. I know the reason I write; I just don't know if I'm as brave as Ronan Bennett to admit it to other people!