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Originally published at Laota's Gallery Free Downloads and Pagan Poetry. Please leave any comments there. So, getting ready for my mother’s birthday, but I’m not sure what to get her. She loves expensive things and has recently lost a lost of jewelry, (courtesy of her boss’ evil wife) so if I had more money, I’d probably get her a watch or an MP3 player, but it’s hard to scrap cash together these days. But they’ve got these gorgeous discount Rolex watches at www.bestoftime.com that would be perfect. Especially the “Diamonds And Sapphires Jubilee” one, that’s so her. Also, if she saw me wearing the Rubies & Diamonds one, she’d definitely ask where I got it, which is the surest sign of whether or not my mother covets something, and the best gifts are the stuff of longing. My mother loves shiny, sparkly expensive things, don’t know if you can identify. Maybe it’s because, for decades, she had to put up with a husband who didn’t like her having nice things. Maybe it’s because she never really grew up. I don’t know why, I just know that my sister and I love to give the perfect gift, and for a woman who’s mad about jewelry and is chronically late, a fancy Rolex would be just the thing.
 Tags: shopping
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Originally published at Laota's Gallery Free Downloads and Pagan Poetry. Please leave any comments there. As you may have heard, in his pursuit of wildlife journalism, Eli “The Fudge” Talbot, publisher of such magazines as “Beard & Coffee” and “Safe Distance Illustrated” set out spend several weeks communing with nature in the mountains, living only in Whoopi, the legendary “Singing Tree” of the Colorado Rockies. But, due to an unfortunate mojito-related injury, Talbot was instead forced to hand-pick his replacement from a list of the best wildlife journalists of our time, a list that he himself described as being “taller than a sausage.” And of all the potential winners, he picked me, Laota French! A great honor, one that I shall strive to live up to in the coming weeks. If you happen to be in the rockies this spring, you can swing by Whoopi and cheer me on!
Week One
So, a whole week living in Whoopi! It was hard at first, and almost lonely, but now I feel so at ease with nature, so harmonious, and I’ve come to see the birds, squirrels and raccoons as my friends. All the chirping and the chattering — I guess they don’t call her the singing tree for nothing! Oh, what a blessing and a miracle life is! And so many fans have come out to see me, giving me the moral support I need to stay true! Thanks guys!
Week Three
Hi, guys! Sorry I missed a week; it won’t happen again! It’s just become a bit difficult to living in Whoopi ever since my food was stolen by some errant raccoons, and I’ve had to forage from within the tree herself. You wouldn’t believe the things you see when the creatures of the forest no longer notice you. I’d heard stories of curious river rocks, creeping after chipmunks in the crisp morning air, but seeing them with your own eyes, digging holes and jumping off mushrooms, is almost spiritual.
Week Seven
Tired of waking up covered in blood-sucking insects and animal scat, I attempted to make a crude shelter from my own clothing with no success. The lack of food has made me fitful and sick, and in my sleepless nights, I’ve things no human should ever witness. The mind-blowing cruelty of the forest. Once a week, at midnight, the rabbits fight each other for money. It’s disgusting, but I can’t look away. Whoopi also seems disturbed. She’s begun to moan in the wind at night, and I can’t help but sympathize.
Week Twelve
Sometimes in life, we stumble. We fall. It’s what makes us human, but I fear I’ve let you all down. You see, in my desperation for food, I’ve…compromised myself. A raccoon paid me to wash an apple while he watched and jerked off. But I got my cooler back, and was able to salvage some of the non-perishable items. I was so hungry and joyful, I swear, I must’ve hallucinated Whoopi humming a happy tune. Yes, there’s still some optimism left in these old bones yet!
Week Twenty
Where the **** is Talbot? I’ve been in this ****ing tree for five ***-damn months now, and I haven’t seen his *** once. If I ever find that son of a bitch, he better have a big fat ****ing check in his hand or I swear to **** I’ll ****ing kill him! That ***-damn raccoon has been asking about me again. I can’t take much more of this.
Week Twenty-Six
It’s finally happened. Whoopi has begun singing to me. She sings the strangest songs, about love and longing and heartache. And about how the foxes are opening a casino near the river to capitalize on the rabbit fights, which have been drawing in bigger and bigger crowds ever since the champion, Kicksy, won six consecutive fights. Whoopi thinks I could totally hold my own against him, what with my obvious reach-advantage.
But she also thinks that Ricardo’s gonna pop the question, so what does she know? I told her, we’re not serious. Just because I wash apples for him on occasion, doesn’t mean he thinks of me “that way”. Plus, he’s a ****ing raccoon.
Week Thirty-Two
I won! I faced off against Kicksy and I mopped the floor with his fuzzy gray ass! It was touch and go for the first two rounds, but then I remembered that I had thumbs and he didn’t, and the rest was cake! Not all the news is good though. Ricardo spends every night at the casino, and I hardly see him anymore. What if he has a gambling problem? That’d be so bogus. Whoopi thinks he’s making me look like an idiot, and she says all the birds are laughing at me behind me back, but it’s not like he’s cheating or anything. Right? He wouldn’t do that. And besides, we have an open relationship.
Week Thirty-Four
Well, I finally found out what Ricardo was doing at the casino every night. He was trying to win enough money to buy me a ring! We’re getting married this winter, so our babies will be born in the spring. I can’t wait to meet his family! I have so much to plan for and I’ve got so many butterflies in my stomach, but Whoopi’s been my rock. She’s helping me pick the bridesmaids and send the invitations, and we’re having the bachelorette party at the casino. Everybody’s talking about us. I feel like such a rock star! First the prize fight and now this!
Week Thirty-Eight
Well, after nearly ten months, Talbot and his entourage finally arrived this morning. There was cake and champagne, and a big grant from the Tree Milkers of America. I felt lost in the flurry of confetti and flash bulbs, and before I knew it, I was in a limousine, bound for a hotel in Breckenridge. My head was swimming and I was too tired to shower, but we had a good night’s sleep and a big breakfast before setting off for the Colorado Springs Airport. Talbot’s been flirting with me the whole way to New York, and I find I can’t stay mad at him and his luxurious beard. He’s totally getting a hand-jay on the plane.
Week Thirty-Nine
I’ve been attending parties and lectures all week, there’s been talk of a book deal, and the town’s been buzzing about me and Talbot. Sometimes I look at Ricardo’s ring and wonder what might’v been. But then I remember that he’s a ****ing raccoon. I do miss him, though, the way he’d wake me up every morning by getting his little paw caught him my hair. And then I’d try to untangle it, and he’d bite my neck, then I’d throw him against a rock, and we’d both just laugh and laugh….
And Whoopi, the Singing Tree, will always have a special place in my heart. So I try to remember the good times, and not think about how pathetic a bridal shower thrown by a tree would be.
Tags: laota's travel logs
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Originally published at Laota's Gallery Free Downloads and Pagan Poetry. Please leave any comments there. My step-father used to be sick all the time, and would complain about loudly, making it the excuse for everything he did, or didn’t, do. But whenever anyone else was sick or hurt, he’d tell them it was in their head, that they wanted to be sick, because they didn’t want to work, and that’s why he was never sick. He kept that opinion until the day he died, succumbing to mental illness, several strokes, and a collapsed lung. Now, if you’re anything like me, a story like that might make you think, “Good, that’s what he gets.” But then your second thought is, “What kind of an arrogant, uncaring, self-absorbed creep thinks that, just because they’ve tricked themselves into believing something crazy, that they have the right to judge other people by it?”
The answer to that question, of course, is “everyone”. Sure, we’re not all whopping bastards like my step-dad, but we’re all still perfectly capable of deluding ourselves into believing we’re better people than we are, with more positive attributes than we may ever have. Very creative, if I do say so myself, but rather than using these vast powers of imagination for everyone else, the rest of the world can apparently get bent, because we’re even more likely to hold up our delusions about ourselves as the standard by which we coldly judge everyone around us. I’ve known fat people who were told by even fatter people that they’re fat, and that they need to do something about it. My mother’s boss is one of the most childish, lazy, idiotic, moody, misanthropic dicks I’ve ever met, who is thoroughly convinced that he is mature, a people-person, ward-working, nice, and, most importantly, normal. In the majority even, as if that described the majority of people. And he loves to laugh at the people who work for him, for not being more like this ideal of himself he’s so enamored with.
Yes, I know a lot of creeps.
When I was a teenager, I was suicidally depressed. Since I was a bit preoccupied with the roller coaster of my emotional hell, I didn’t care if other people found out I was sad, and, naturally, there were people who immediately looked down on me for being depressed. Most of those people were at least twice my age, and every one of them made a cherished hobby of bitching and blubbering about their lives — their children, their spouses, their jobs, their parents, their finances, their friends, anything they could think of, and would either lose their tempers, or break down in tears, at the drop of a hat. They seemed like basket cases with no emotional control, but they just loved telling me that the only reason I felt depressed was because I wanted to, and that I was just feeling sorry for myself. That I enjoyed it. And that I just needed to think myself happy, like they did! Because everyone has a social responsibility to suck it up. Now listen to them moan about how hard their lives are for four hours and then call it church.
One of these church-goers was my mother, a very mean woman, who told me that it was just a teen phase, she went through the same thing when she was my age, and that she got over it quickly, all by herself, with way more to deal with in her life than I ever had. Like others, she also said I was faking for sympathy, as if that was something available in our house. Or town. She even put me on medication, then for a while afterward reacted to every disagreement we had by asking me if I “took my pill,” and tried to convince me the only reason they weren’t working was because “you have to keep taking them for a long time before you get results.” It was a brand of anti-depressant that later became famous for driving people to suicide.
Many years later, Mom decided that she was suddenly suicidally depressed. Forget all that phase/faking stuff, this was real! She would cry about it to anything that stood still long enough, and whenever she went to me about it, I, like the angel that I am, proceeded to parrot back to her all the cruel, heartless, insensitive, insultingly condescending BS she used on me, in a “What’s irony?” tone that suggested I believed what I was saying. I figured that she was either a). actually depressed and that this was a really evil way to get back at her, or more likely, she was b). faking so everyone would feel sorry for her, and deserved to find out just how kind and sympathetic people are when they hear you’re suicidal.
They just raised me right, didn’t they?
Anyways, I could go on with examples from my own life, as I’m sure you could, too, but it would get really redundant. Also, I’m sure there are some people who have stories that I come off really bad in, so this would be the time to wrap things up. There are very few things you can get done through sheer will-power, but I think one we should all give a spin is doing our very best not to use ourselves as a basis to judge other people by. Just because we think we’re more mature, work harder, have more self-control, do more important things, are more skilled and talented, are nicer, or just plain look better than other people, doesn’t mean it’s true. And even if it was true, it doesn’t mean we’re not arrogant assholes.
And is that really better? Would you rather be the biggest creep on the planet, that no one can stand to be around, because your such a self-important prick who’s completely in love with yourself, and who looks down on everyone else because of some undeserved self-esteem no one knows how the hell you came by, because at least you don’t like Twilight?
Well, maybe that’s not the best example….
Tags: levity, life, misc., rant
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Originally published at Laota's Gallery Free Downloads and Pagan Poetry. Please leave any comments there. So money’s gonna get even tighter from now one, seeing as my sister’s page rank dropped again and it’s narrowed our opportunities even farther for making monety online. And speaking of such, I had a peak at AffiliateButton.com, a blog about making money online, which is something I happen to love. It’s sort of a spare-looking site, but it has lots of information, links to free tools, some free downloads, and plenty of blog posts. Neat site, dude! Tags: business, internet
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What Was
