INDEPENDENTLY MOUTHING OFF

Nudge is taking exception with me because I've forced her to hold onto her "P's & Q's" when it's her thoughts about current events.


"Lin, it's time to do more than spin your wheels," she argues. "When you were in college, and afterwards as a teacher, you expected to deal with

CURRENT EVENTS. Just because you have all these books out, and all the ones in the sub pipeline, you've decided to ignore

"MOUTHING OFF? Not going to happen. Either you get off your pseudo banality, or I am going to crank out more story ideas while you're sleeping, and then where will we all be?"

So forgive me for giving in to Nudge, but I need my sleep.

Welcome to Installment One in Nudge and Me Mouthing off about current events.

Excuse a second while I scratch an annoying itch Nudge sent my way to convince me sleep is not ALL she'll interfere with if I don't give in.

Where to begin? There is just soooo much insanity in the current world, I think I need a dart board I can Velcro topics to and then let my dubious

eagle eyes and equally dubious archer's mastery have at it.

Kardashians...are these people real?

72 days is all a marriage that cost boo-cooo bucks on lasts?

I seem to recall, back during the Dream Team Trial of Mr. Speedy...how many remember the low-speed chase of one OJ Simpson?...and the Kardashian name surfaced as one of those lawyers.

That's not the Kardashian insanity we are getting now. The mom, whatsername...you know married to the

Jenner guy who looks like he's had a WHOLE ocean-full of BAD plastic surgery...reminds of another mom.

A lot of you won't remember Zsa Zsa, Magda, and Eva Gabor's mother.

Or Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister Junie's mother, but Mama Kardashian-Jenner reminds me so much of them.

I mean seriously, the recent newly-wed and now offically divorcing..is it Kim Kardashian's?...first claim to fame came when the X-rated video of her doing the rumpy-pumpy found its way onto the internet for sale. The outrage Mrs. Divorce Him barely before the ink is dry, Kardashian-Jenner, expressed at that time just never seemed to ring true.

As the mother, Mrs. Kardashian-Jenner, now allegedly the manager of her over-the-top glory seeking, money obsessed offspring, is there no shame? professed anger over someone invading her daughter's privacy. Is money, notoriety, fame more important than decency anhd respect for one's

moral compass? And privacy? Having reality shows affords you PRIVACY? How, where, when?

Okay I get the concept of striking while the fire is hot.

Judge Judy says beauty is fleeting, dumb is forever...looks will fade, or stretch to the point of characateurishness, so might as well cushion the personal bank vaults before gravity, over inflated plastic surgery, and age pull everything down.

Boobs DO head southward and nipples end up kissing kneecaps. BUT life is supposed to be about learning how to LOVE and care for ALL of God's children...not just a few avaricious selves.

I've given this a lot of thought...Realty TV has dummied us down, and urged people to commit acts that are so outrageous, in any other time, they'd be

tarred and feathered at the least.

Yet today, it has become the norm. Have we become Sodom and Gomorrah?


I hear the still snide comments about Anjelina Joile and Brad Pitt. They've been together longer now than his marriage to Jennifer Aniston...And on that topic I say...You cannot steal another's husband or wife because they won't be looking outside the marriage if the marriage is fulfilling.

Admittedly I do not know MANY that have stood the test of time and are married to only one person for the entirety of their lives.

My parents remained married...(I remember the 25th wedding anniversary us, their kids, threw in their honor...) but in their case they probably both would have been happier if they'd cut their losses very early and moved on. I know we kids would have been. Constantly fighting parents does not a happy home make. In their era divorce was frowned on both socially, and within the accordance of their religions.


I know many are upset with the Jolie-Pitts for having children out of wedlock, but they both seem to enjoy being family and are pictured with them a lot of the time. More importantly, the children seem happy.


I want to praise Gabrielle Giffords...a modern day role model of true heroics. Many of the current politicians have no idea what hardship is about. She also does not have first hand experience of the difficulties so many of us have in trying to find two pennies to rub together when the cupboard is bare...

but she knows a deeper battle...one that required her to come back from the brink of death with grace, dignity, courage, and tolerance. Thankyou Congresswoman Gifford for reminding us about true heroics. May I grow up to be HALF the woman you are?

And finally, Nudge and I want to thank Muse It Up Publishing. This new...only a little over a year old...publishers,

Lea Schizas and Litsa Kamateros repeatedly show those of us lucky enough to belong to Muse, how honorable a publishing house can be.

My daughter and

I have had experience with the opposite. I did a tour through the Preditors & Editors website checking out publishing houses. There are a LOT of bad places out there.

Muse just recently brought together

40 plus authors in Montreal to celebrate the magic this publishing house possesses and the great respect Lea and Litsa have for their authors, editors and cover artists. How incredible it is to have not one single doubt about your publisher's integrity. Since I have been with Muse at it's beginning, no one has seen this more clearly than me.


So for my parting words I want to thank Lea, Litsa,

Delilah, our head CA and her coterie of artists, as well as the editors who take our

raw gems and polish until we have
 
diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, opals, pearls, and jade,  no longer in the rough.

That's this taste MOUTHING OFF by Nudge and me. I'm turning a page on my notebook now to take notes for the next journey into Lin and  Nudge Give Modern Nutsiness a verbal What For. Hope you'll join us and see what stirs us to rant on about.

PRIVACY...MODESTY...REALITY TV

Mark Burnette...public enemy number one.

Everywhere I look I am being bombarded by the less than moral conduct of the likes of the Kardashians, Snookie and her band of dubious representatives of New Jersey's finest, the Real Wives of every city imaginable where over-idulgence, snobbery, and catfighting gives you a star on the Walk of Fame.

Please explain to me how it is a good thing to create media darlings out of girls in their teens pregnant and letting it all out for the world to see?

Bad behavior has been around since mankind stopped long enough to create more than a nomadic lifestyle...and let's face it, nomads weren't exactly roll models for our young to emulate either...back stabbing for the best hunk of mutton or leg of dinosaur...okay before you rail on me for that, I KNOW mankind and T-Rex didn't really walk together...unless they did. With all the human skeletons being unearthed dating much further back than Science professed possible, who am I to say with any assurity, mankind and our gigantic reptillian fore-creatures did not exist at the same time?

For now, though, we will assume they didn't...still caveosapien hunted so it's likely, given the basics of the battle between the strong and weak for dominance, bullying was ingrained in their DNA.

The premise, though, behind becoming "civil" is we learn better ways to be "creatures"...in this case homosapiens.

In the downspiraling economy we have today, how rude is it to boast quite happily about the extravanace of the kinds of weddings thrown by the likes of the Karadashians...people who parlayed their star into fame with x-rated videos...mysteriously ESCAPING onto the world scene.

Does anyone REALLY care that Gene Simmons after how many years with Shannon Tweed...(How old are their children/)...used their decision to wed as a ratings booster for their reality show? It didn't seem to bother either of them they'd maintained their unmarried state before. But then, they didn't need something to make sure their reality show was picked up for another season.

Whine, whine, whine. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, NYC, New Jersey and God knows how many other places. You married rich men who have a long history of being less than committed to the sanctity of their previous wives, but when your tenure is growing long in the tooth and the mogul begins looking elsewhere you act like it's a big surprise. It was okay when you were the one he was cheating with. Not once did you give the wife being dishonored in the media and everywhere else a single thought but you want the world to wail and call foul when it is your turn?

Leopards do not change their spots, and cheating men, their spots go as deep as their helmeted little head down below.

That little brain is the real core of these men and short of exercising Loreena Bobbit's solution, it's going to lead him to younger, more supple conquests until he's found his permanent home in places like Forest Lawn Cemetary.

Mark Burnett...you brought us the SURVIVOR soap opera and hawked it as REALITY TV. Stranded in some remote place on this planet you have to survive with the camera rolling. I wonder how many REAL people stranded over the centuries wish they'd had a crew of camera people to document their fall into animalism...and hand them a tid bit or two when they could not face the idea of raw rattler one more time.

Mr. Burnett...

IF reality TV is so wonderful, how come you haven't put your own life with current wife Roma Downey on TV for the world to gawk at?

Sir, you have dummied down the people living in this 21st century, and for that, you should be public enemy number one.

I for one refuse to watch the junk on TV because watching a bunch of ill-mannered twenty-somethings get roaringly drunk then having fist fights one moment and hawking new lines of perfumes the next is just TOO MUCH scripted reality for me.

IS WASHINGTON...

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