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Just Jac
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Advice and Wisdom for my daughters and granddaughters
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I recently read a book called "Kiss My Tiara -- Ruling the World as a Smart Mouth Goddess." Just before that, I read
"Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood," and before that, it was "The Red Tent." Put all of those together and it got me
to thinking about the kind of advice I want my daughters and granddaughters (when I get them) remember me giving them.
Some of it is just smart mouth goddess advice. Some is practical advice. All of it is heartfelt.
MAKE WAVES! This is maybe the most important piece
of advice I have to offer. Make noise. Complain. Bitch out loud. Raise hell. Be a pain in the ass. Stand your ground. Never
let someone say about you, "I'm not sure how she feels." Let people know.
Way too often in our society, women (OK, people in general, but this advice is
for women so let's stick with that) don't speak up. We bite our tongues. We swallow our words of anger or frustration. Stop
it! And while we're on the subject, love people out loud!
Whatever you do -- don't calm down. Right now, everywhere you go, you'll get
subtle and not so subtle messages to calm down. I'm not saying that relaxation can't be blissful from time to time, but most
of the "calm down" marketing and products are directed to women. When we get upset or angry or frustrated, we're supposed
to light candles and play restful music and meditate while taking a bubble bath. We're supposed to get quiet and get centered.
For centuries, women have been told to be quiet and think happy thoughts and take various forms of tranquilizers. Long ago,
when women got hysterical about thier lives, they were counseled to get hysterectomies. That seems barbaric, but the overall
message is the same. Do whatever it takes to make you shut up and accept your life. If you're upset about something or someone,
chances are there's a good reason. Blow out the candles, turn off the soft music, throw out the prozac, and take some action.
That will make you happier and healthier than any narcotic or bubble bath.
Mistressbate. For sure, it releases more tension than twenty dollar aromatherapy
candles AND it subverts the patriarchy.
And while we're on the subject of mistressbating, let's think of an even better
phrase. Ask any guy for a euphemism for masterbating and you'll get at least 20 of them -- jerking off, spanking the monkey,
glad-handing with mr. happy, choking the chicken, boxing goofy til he pukes, polishing the knob, stroking the salami, doing
the one-handed tango. The list goes on and on. Ask a woman the same question, and there will be silence. And probably embarrassment
because its something women seldom discuss at all. So what do you think? Pushing the button? Making love alone? Switch on
the electric boyfriend? Self-servicing? Letting my fingers do the walking? Petting the kitty? How about visiting Disneyland?
Having a calgon moment? Gettin happy with myself? Engaging in a hot button issue? Having sex with someone I love? Here's
my favorite: Voting Republican. Why? Come on -- who is more self-serving? Voting Republican and jerking off really are very
similar. So every time to go to a store and purchase a vibrator, be sure to announce very loudly, "I'm getting ready to vote
republican!"
Shape history. Not your thighs.
Forget about catching a husband. Catch a life instead.
If you want to sneak out of the house at night, you must first figure out which of the floor boards will scream like traitors
and which ones can keep a secret. It's a pretty good idea to learn that about friends, too.
God is Santa Claus for adults.
Take a few lovers. Travel the world. And don't take any crap.
When you're starting to get serious about a future with a man, ask yourself,
"Is this the man I want my children to spend every other weekend with?"
Fuck em if they can't take a joke.
Pudding is instant. Real love and intimacy takes a lot of time.
Boys don't tease you because they like you. They tease you because they're assholes.
Abuse of any kind is not an acceptable expression of love.
Beauty and the Beast is a great fairy tale, but that's all it is. It is not true
that your love and devotion will transform a monster into a prince. A relationship is not a reformatory.
Things you can learn from men (you might have to think about these a little,
but if you do, you'll see I'm right. of course.) -- Men don't carry everything they might need sometime everywhere they go.
Men don't apologize to inanimate objects. Men don't go to psychics for career advice. Men don't wear shoes they can't walk
in. Men use dressing rooms for trying on clothes, not for thinking about plastic surgery or suicide. If men want chocolate,
they don't eat rice cakes instead.
Learn your Bible and your Bible stories. The Bible has 6 admonishments to homosexuals
and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. This doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more
supervision.
Do one thing that scares you every day.
Love out loud. Laugh out loud. Live out loud.
"Do what you will wish you had done when you are old."
Everybody's heard this sage advice. Since I first heard it when I was still quite
young myself, there aren't just a whole lot of things that I flat-out have NOT done. Pretty much everything that came up required
a choice, and I knew right off the bat, with very little pondering, what I would wish I had done. I'd wish I had done it all,
and therefore I did it.
It goes beyond just the doing or not doing, though. If you decide in favor of
doing and it turns out to be good, do a lot of it. You never know how short the supply might be. Some things in life are just
so sweet -- and sweet is really not strong enough -- I mean, so soothing and delivious that sometimes the memory of them is
all you need to get by. You can just close your eyes and put youself there in an instant. Your mouth waters, your eyes tear
up, your heart beats fast, and its hard to catch your breath.
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Being in love is better than being in jail, being in bankruptcy court, being in a dentist's
chair, being in line at the airport, or being in the unemployment office,
but not if he doesn't love you back.
**********
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone is saying, "I love you." When someone
is saying "I love you," he always ought to give a lot of details: Like -- why does he love you. How much does he love you.
When and where did he first begin to love you. Favorable comparisons with all the other women he ever loved are also welcome.
And even though he insists it would take forever to count the ways in which he loves you, let him start counting.
**********
It is better to have loved and lost than to have loved and gained 15 pounds.
**********
Time, space eternity, and change:
Time is what he's never on.
Space is what he takes up too much of.
Eternity is how long we could live together & he'd never
change.
**********
What to Eat Before and After an Assignation
Well, "before" is a no-brainer; you can't eat a damn thing. If you do, your stomach will
pooch out like you're twelve months pregnant, and it will ruin the lines of your trashy lingerie. And this is truly tragic.
I don't think there's been any lingerie ever designed that will camouflage an engorged belly. A smock is all I can think of
that would successfully conceal that you have eaten Chicago. Damn hard to look sexy in a smock.
You can get flat on your back as soon as possible -- that helps. Your stomach always looks
better if you're flat on your back. Of course, if it's so early in a relationship that reclining hasn't been considered, the
this might appear unseemly. Location can also be a problem. I've found there are hardly any good places to lie down at the
movies.
Of course, as long as you're fully clothed, you can hid a lot -- even if you just sit with
your purse in your lap. If your companion becomes unexpectedly amorous soon after a large meal, stall him. Delay any activity
that would necessitate the removal of any of your clothing until digestion has been completed. If you know in advance that
this is to be his lucky night, then by all means, postpone dinner.
After the fact, anything is the limit. You can eat as much as you want of whatever you want.
Even if he's still around, postfrolic, you can put on a big garment and look cute while you clean out the refrigerator with
your own face. The very best eating, however, is to be enjoyed solo. Send him home, lock all the doors, pile up in the bed
with a good movie, and have yourself a private smorgasboard. Two words: Hea Ven.
**********
Do Not Go To Casinos
I complained one time that I was probably the only person on the planet who had not been
to a casino and so James and I struck out for Mississippi to try our luck. I don't know what his expectations were for the
evening. The only casinos I ever saw were in movies, so my hopes were high. I expected that everyone would be beautifully
dressed and well mannered, sun-kissed and sophisticated. It certainly never occurred to me to question whether our fellow
patrons would have teeth.
I now realize that I have always taken teeth for granted in my everyday life. Most everyone
I encounter in my appointed rounds has a full set of them. So accustomed have I become to people having teeth, and plenty
of them, it comes as a shock to me whenever I find myself in the presence of an individual over the age of eight who is without
them.
The crowds parted wherever we walked, as if we were visiting royalty. There must have been
a large, perhaps national, convention in town, of men with no chins and women with fat arms. There were two prevailing shirt
styles for the men: (1) the nasty tank top, cot low enough on all sides to reveal an overabundance of body (especially back)
hair, and stretched over the mandatory beer gut so tightly, they looked like huge hairy sacks of flour, and (2) the cowboy-stud
shirt that belonged to one's little brother -- so small that only the bottom two snaps can be fastened, and the hairy beer
but protrudes from the gaps.
Take my advice. Don't go.
WEARIN' A BOW
When I was little, Miss Norris was our school librarian and she what was probably very long very thick hair. I'm just
guessing, though, because she ALWAYS wore it up, usually in a then-popular style called a double bubble. And in the middle
of the two buns, she wore a bow. She was just going about her business at school one day and a little girl stopped her and
asked her, "Miss Norris, do you know that you have a bow in your hair?" And she looked down at her and replied, "Well, of
course I do, dear." "You sure don't act like it," the little girl replied. So Miss Norris had to ask, "How should
one act when one has a bow in her hair?" And the little girl earnestly explained, "Oh! You stand a little straighter and hold
your head just so and, every now and then, you reach back and give it a little pat, because it's special. And if
somebody put a bow in your hair, then that means that YOU ARE SPECIAL." Thinking of this story always makes me teary-eyed
because no one has put a bow in my hair in so VERY long. But the real point of the story is knowing that we can all put a
bow in our own hair and know how special we are. And by the way, a tiara works the same way!
IN MY OBITUARY IN THE NEWSPAPER -- Be sure you put the following: In lieu of wasting your hard-earned
money of flowers, the family is accepting cash or check (with proper ID) donations.
Love gone bad is at least interesting, if only in a macabre sort of way. It’s
surely not boring. Love gone blah is simply death – slow, torturous, and ultimately longer-for death. When you’re
mired in a lifeless, life-stifling, life-smothering relationship, you start to take it for granted. Life sucks, always did,
always will, and so you’re just hunkered down, enduring this relationship. As far as I know, nobody is handing
out prizes for endurance of life its ownself. In my experience, if you ignore your life, it will pretty much ignore you right
back. I reckon the universe figures why should it bother sending you anything else if you haven’t got any more gumption
than that.
Prizes are handed out in a continuous stream, however, to folks committed to living. When you
finally wake up and look around, you realize that your life has been so bad for so long, it’s no longer even painful
to you. And when you get yourself up on your hind legs and take action, you’ll not only wonder how you stood
your misery for so long, but you will ask that all-important question: WHY?
Why did you bear that burden for so long when apparently you were wearing the Ruby Slippers the whole
time? It doesn’t really matter too much why – as long as you start clicking those heels together and devote a
fair amount of time each day to grinning and looking around you and appreciating.
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Make visible what, without you, might never have
been seen.
**********
My friend works
in a building with its own employee dining room. She's had her share of ups and downs with men and one of the ladies who works
in the dining room has been there long enough to read the faces of the folks she serves. My friend came in one day and the
lady took one look at her and said, "Git another one."
My friend was confused since
she had not yet spoken a word. "What?"
The lady laid her hand on
my friend's arm, looked her squarely in the eye, and said, "You don't have to say a word. It's a man. I know it is. Git another
one. This one don't do right. Git another one."
As my Daddy used to say whenever
he thought too much of aq fuss was being made over something lost or broken, "They makin them thangs ever' day."
So dispense with all the
weeping and wailing over losing a guy. They're making men every day. Just get another one.
**********
What to Eat When Tragedy Strikes
All tragedy is relative, of course. It could be anything from a car or plumbing failure
to the death of the only person in the world who has ever been able to give you a really great haircut. If you're upset about
something -- it's a tragedy. A tragedy demands food, and lots of it.
I try to include items from all four major food groups -- sweet salty, fried, and au gratin.
Balance is very important.
You'll also want to have friends on hand for the tragedy-thwarting feast. Under no circumstances,
however, should you invite any of the jerks who refuse to acknowledge the depths of your misery. They can stay home and fill
up on water for all we care.
Chocolate is the main staple of sedative food -- the undisputed queen of all the comfort
foods. I know this in my deepest heart. I frankly don't undertand how people who are genuinely allergic to chocolate manage
to put one foot in front of the other, day after day; I'd have to throw myself in front of a bus. I thrive on chocolate. My
system requires an abundance of it every day, just to function normally.
Don't settle for less than you deserve.
And don't ever believe you don't deserve it all. But maybe your job isn't all that terrible. Your marriage is not really hideous;
its just sort of beige. Flat, dull, lifeless - these are not good adjectives when they refer to your hair; they are
infinitely worse if they apply to your life. If you are stuck, sweating, on a sandbar in the river of your life, you've got
to find a way back into those swift, effervescent currents of joy that are your birthright.
GROWING OLDER
AND WISER
Back when I was a mere Cute Girl,
I thought a man was the answer to everything. I thought I had to have one, THE one, Mr. Right, before I could even begin to
live. I had to have a date, then I had to have a boyfriend, then I had to have a husband. Nothing would do wil I got Mr. Right.
Then, there came a time of being not so much disillusioned as just really pissed off big time. During this time, I still thought
a man was the answer to everything. On now, everything that was WRONG was because of a man. I thought he was the bringer of
all things bad in my life and I was so mad about it that perhaps for a time I believed all men were the bringers of ALL things
bad.
Now that I am within easy spittin
distance of -- well, somewhere between 50 and death -- I can see that there's nothing wrong with men in general -- even specifically.
Most of them are just fine. Really. And while I don't want them to be the sole reason for living, I don't want to run them
all off with a stick either. I hope I have learned a few things about choice-making. I will share some of my hard-learned
lessons with you as well as some of my cunning solutions to relationship proglems.
Life is in a constant state of
flux, that's for sure. One day you're a Cute Girl shyly shopping for your first real plug-in vibrator, and before you know
it, your kids are nearly grown, your mother comes over a lot and you wlak through the kitchen one day and there she sits with
your vibrator, working on the crick in her neck.
Life isn't over. Really. Your'e
just gonna have to make a few adjustments. And your criteria for making decisions will change, I hope.
For example, Mary Alice is probably
all of 23 and she'd been married almost a year when I met her. In describing her like-new husband, she used these words: "He
is so fine." Well, I just about fell on the floor howling, "He is so fine?" This is a reason to go to the sock-hop
with a guy. If he's "so fine" all the other girls will be wild with jealousy. If he's not also so bad, even your mother will
be tickled because he is "so fine." I didn't even know people still said "so fine." Back when I was in junior high school,
shortly after the earth cooled, we even rhymed it; he would have been "fine as wine." Not that any of us had ever had
any wine, fine or otherwise, in order to make such an analogy. If we had, we would have known how terribly many variations
and gradations of quality that term would imply. When I was in high school, people were "so fine," with no rhyme. Being "so
fine," however, is no reason at all to haul off and marry somebody. Even if it happened to be ME who was so fine. Naturally,
I am, but unless you and see and appreciate some of my other many fine qualities, turst me, you won't be very happy
married to me for very long. "So fine" just isn't enough to sustain a relationship through anmything past the first date.
So my friends and I rolled around for abut an hour, shrieking about Mary Alice's like-new husband being so fine. We got off
on tangents about our own ex-husbands and ex=boyfriends, about whom all of us might have used the words "so fine" at some
early point. "Yeah, he came home last night singing 'Rebel Rebel' at the top of his lungs -- again, with some stranger's panties
on his head -- again, drunker than even he's ever been -- again. Couldn't even get the door open. I heard him scratching around
with his key and I went on down there, and of course I let him in -- again -- because he's so fine! I'm working three jobs
now, on account of he's not even working one, but I don't mind, because he's so fine!"
"So fine" just doesn't carry
the weight it once did with me, I guess. I can tell the difference between Mr. Right and Mr. Right now. And this is my point.
I think I've learned a thing or two in my journey. And if you're still reading, then you know that you're going to read
a lot more of my advice to you.
Can a man be your friend and nothing more? Yes, of course! A
guy friend can and will serve in many capacities and meet many of our needs – all but one, truth be told. Guy friends
can be talked to, they can be danced with, they can often fix things, and they are more than welcome to pay for things. But
we do not have sex with them except on very rare occasions that most often involve dim lighting and too much alcohol. A wise
person once said, “Never fuck your friends,” and I’m sure they meant that literally and figuratively.
Words to live by.
Romance is a wide-spread, regularly occuring illusion/delusion that strikes females almost
exclusively and causes them to imagine that males can be somehow transmogrified into something Other Than Men – in spite
of the fact that everybody know you can’t make nothing but a man out of ‘em. There is no data on how “romance"
manifests itself in men because there are no documented cases on file.
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Dating Age -- Here's the deal. People in their teens should date other people in their teens. People
in their twenties and thirties should date each other, as should people in their forties and fifties. The only acceptable
exception to this precept would be if we happen to be the younger woman. Actually, anything we
do, anyone we want to date, is fine. We're only interested in passing judment on the behaivor of others. This is
because we are so good at it, and we always want to excel.
Something true about men:
NO compliment is too outrageous for a
man to believe. It does not matter what the truth is or how far away from anything
like the truth what you say to him is. If you say something favorable to him about himself, you can rest assured that he will
believe it. He will believe it with all his heart and mind and soul. You don’t even have to pretent to be sincere about
it. He can be standing there, beer gut hanging to his knees and most of its hairy mass protruding way out from under a too
small t-shirt that says, “A Little Poontang Never Hurt Anybody,” camouflage pants held up with hunter-orange suspenders,
and a hat with fake turds on it. And you can look at him with dead-eyes and say, “Oh. Nice outfit,” and he will
just wag all over like a big ole dog. Men have no shame. None. The gene is missing from the entire
pool. And you can go to just about any swimming pool or beach anywhere any hot summer day and see proof positive.
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Don't be afraid to need people. We all need to feel needed. It is much harder to ask for help than it is to give
it. But if you want to make a friend, don't offer your help. Ask for theirs. That's how friendships are formed.
Chocolate Makes My Clothes Shrink.
Is the world a different place now that your place in it is different?
When you're young, you can't wait to get married. Notice I said "get" married -- no mention of "being" married. That's
because you can look at gorgeous magazines and try on amazing dresses, attend other people's weddings and see close up and
personal what it is like to GET married. Nothing on this earth can prepare you for the reality of being married. You won't
listen to anybody who's done it. Don't feel bad: None of us would listen either. However, once you have been married, if you
ever do decide to get married again, it will be a whole different deal. You will know that all that money can be better spent
on just about anything -- a lifetime supply of chewing gum or a house of something -- than a wedding. A wedding the -- well,
mayube not THE -- but certainly one of the stupidest financial decisions a woman ever makes in her life. I don't know of even
one single woman -- certainly not one who is single again -- who is glad she spent a bazillion dollars on her wedding. Everybody
now wishes she had even half that money for plastic surgery or something else that might bring long-lasting pleasure.
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