Author Archives: Deborah Stehr

WHY THE F@#K AM I WRITING A NOVEL: PART 2

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Deborah Stehr

Blog 13  Why The F@#k Am I Writing a Novel?

Part 2: Does My Novel Need to Die?

Subtitle of the Subtitle: What to do when your Novel Starts Talking to You

Subtitle of the subtitle of the subtitle: When is it time to go to NA? Novel’s Anonymous?

Subtitle of the subtitle of the subtitle of the subtitle: yes future blogs will be shorter…I got lost in exploring a theme…that perhaps is interesting to others…perhaps not, took a risk,…maybe I’m just psychotic from trying to finish the shitty first draft

Subtitle of the subtitle…etc…HOW TO JUST SAY NO TO WRITING A NOVEL

_____________________________________________________________

As you know from my last elegant post (Why the Fuck Am I Writing a Novel Part 1), I have been writing a novel for a very long time.

To quote myself,

“I’m beginning to think that finishing it [my novel] is not important.

My novel is alive. I think it is more alive than I am, mostly. Certainly she holds my more talented, truthful, playful, conscious, emotional and humorous self. She’s the reason I’m alive. Indubitably she is the vehicle for my being to express and come to terms with life in its many facets, and she is the gloves I don to experience it, doing most of my touching of others through words of many kinds. Raw experience I find mostly difficult in one way or the other, but the soft caress of hands covered by words, softens and makes palatable this human life I have inherited from the cosmos that is my Mother.

I think the way it carries me along in life is very important and that its very existence allows me to exist. I am not alone in this sentiment. The Maya believe that language creates and holds existence. At the heart of their cosmos (in my over-simplified understanding) is basically a tree with layers and levels made of stories. The world is the spiritual realm speaking to us and humans talking back in return, call and response, call and response.”

Despite this I still wake up in the morning screaming, “Oh my god I’m writing a novel!”

And the Mayan tree of life with its big black Jaguar sitting in the top responds, “Congratulations!”

Scribes were holy people in many cultures. When you were finished being a scribe, you were finished being alive—like the U.S. Supreme Court, it was not a job you retired from.

So why the fuck am I writing a novel?

Or more precisely, why exactly am I trying to finish it? Despite everything I just said, I notice that I want to complete it. Which brings up other questions:  Why do I think I can write one to begin with? Why would I want to? It’s a lot of drama. Time alone. Figuring out hair brained plots and then realizing: this isn’t fucking believable, although life itself isn’t fucking believable, but somehow that element doesn’t work on the page. In a novel, it has to seem believable, even if it isn’t. What a strange set of rules. In life we live in the unfathomable all the time without batting an eyelid.

The compulsion speaks, however, is ruling my life. The obsessive thoughts: I’m going to finish it; I’m going to finish it; get out of my way; I’m going to finish it…..says the maniacal voice inside. That’s what writer’s do. If you don’t finish you are finished!

WRITER FRIEND TRIES TO SAVE THE DAY

Another writer friend made a suggestion, even though he hasn’t read any chapters for ten years or longer. That’s because I hardly ever let anyone see the damn thing anymore because “it’s in process,” and hearing feedback on chapters that are not connected to an ending, is useless now and I know it. No writing groups, no editors, comments not welcome unless I blog part of it, or give it to someone to read, or read it at an open-mic.  It’s just me and the novel, Her and me, alone in the world, most of the time. It’s like I know this stage is just about working on it step by step. No glory. It’s not anything anyone else can do for me. Also obsessive. Also compulsive. The isolation. Why?

HOW A NOVEL IS LIKE BEING AROUND YOUR MOTHER

I was that way with my mother too. I didn’t want to share her death with anyone after it happened. Well I wanted to share her death process with other people for a long time, once I realized what was happening, but events conspired differently. I did not get what I wanted or needed and she didn’t either. Why, given my family dynamic, did I ever hope it would be different?

The family and beings and people that I had hoped would be there for both of us in her waning days, did not appear. They did not appear. The people we needed to have, for her sake and mine, were not there. It was our fault and it wasn’t. Neither of us were great shakes at being social and having friends.

We weathered it alone.

Now she’s gone and I’m alone.

I refused to go to grief counseling. I refused to do a funeral (I’m not callous; she abdicated the town she lived in for thirty years and I was afraid to do one there).  I refused to make an announcement or write an obit. Most of the time I wouldn’t talk about it at all. In my defense, I was in shock the subsequent year despite the fact that I had paved the way for her to die in peace, which she did, as far as I could tell.

“We were alone,” says that part of myself, during the most important parts of anything…what could I possible say to the rest of you now? What could I possibly say? Talk about it? Are you insane? What can be said?

Our relationship was ours.

No one else deserves to know. If I want you to know I’ll tell you, but it won’t be a conversation. I am not someone who wants a response. Not when it concerns my mother. I have given that up for sure.

IF I WAS A PSYCHOLOGIST

If I was a psychologist—Oh shit looky there, I am one!—I’d say to myself “wow you are having the same relationship with your novel, perhaps, as you did with your mother-”

And I would say, “THIS IS WHY I DON’T TALK TO MYSELF! I END UP SAYING THIS KIND OF SHIT!”

Okay, fine Dr. Self. What I am saying is that writing my novel, like my mother’s death, is not a group experience with a lot of supportive connections.

Sometimes that’s a bad thing, not having the connections you need to finish a project or get a project published, and I’m beginning to suspect that’s what I’m afraid of…if I finish my novel what if I’m still bad at connecting to the people who would like it and help me publish it?

What if I write a novel and I’m still me at the end of it?

Fuck me.

What if everything really does come down to social connections and politics and, as you might have guessed, my talents don’t lie (or is it lay? LOL) in that particular area?

When they were handing out social graces I was under the bed with my cat reading a novel about a cat who went to Mars on a spaceship. In my defense, I was a child at the time.

Maybe it’s very hard to finish the novel because of my lack of deftness in making the right connections with the right people and maintaining them for longer than it takes me to say “Wednesday.”

The shy little girl who doesn’t know what to say to people still exists and since she’s really a charming, smart, funny little creature—my mom loved her dearly—I’m not going to tell her to leave. She’s the source of my writing, really, the childlike imagination and the desire to trip down the path of the fairy story and see what happens. She’s the writer, really, and telling her to leave would be sacrilege. I would never ever do that.

My shy, little inside girl holds the Novel in her small hands…and that will be true no matter what happens to it or the other things I write. It’s important to protect her, under a more caustic adult person, who does more sensible things like write a humor blog and pretends I’m a Coyote with a doctorate. The doctorate is not pretend. No one could make that shit up.

Back to the Story about the Novel

Anyway the writer friend said, “What is your guiding image or structure for your masterpiece?” He didn’t say ‘masterpiece,’ but I wished he would have because I would have loved the sarcasm.

“Structure?” I screamed. “Image?” I howled. Who fucking needs this crap! All I want to do is finish it…finish it…finish it, finishit, finishit, finishit…it echoed through all the conversations we ever had, past present and future.

“Okay,” he said, “I see you need to gallop furiously towards the end.”

I should be grateful he visited me at all. Visiting me is a little like having a sleep over with a hermit who bites. You come into the sacred cave and there’s no place for company to sit, and the hermit won’t listen to anything the visitor says unless it’s something she came up with. It’s also true that the hermit knows she’s become an image, over time, for the visitor to play with, and so at least half of every conversation they have is the Visitor toying, and playing with his Image of Her, and not the real Coyote-Hermit-Woman (getting all the metaphors at once creates a  confusing goulash of possible meanings). In his defense, he would, and did, point out that there is no reality, only image, which was fortunate for him. It’s always good to have some completely imaginary justification propping up one’s brute existence.

Laughing Coyote argued for reality, which was completely hilarious. The woman with a Ph.D. in phenomenology, which argues that there is only perception, takes the side of Reality. However she would argue, having the other part of her degree in existentialism, that life is about taking a stand and picking a perception and sticking with it. That’s what co-creation of reality means. Committing to a perspective no matter how stupid it is, which guides action without the person becoming a narrow minded zealot.

She won the argument largely because she used fewer words than the Visitor. She could make her point by saying: this is this, while he had to tell three tales full of metaphor, metaphysics, history, culture to make his argument that what we imagine to be is already real. I told him the only way I got a truck is by going and getting it after I’d imagined it.

We were both kind of right.

I say I won the argument because I’m the one writing this history. When he writes his, he can be right.

WHY THE FUCK AM I TRYING TO FINISH A NOVEL?

Anyway back to waking up screaming, “OH MY GOD I’M WRITING A NOVEL!”

What for?

Three-quarters of the way through this mother-fucker I realize, the novel is dead and I’m sort of hanging on for dear life, like a rider out of the saddle on a galloping black horse…if I can just get to the end if I can just get to the end then I will know what to do. It will have finished and I will know what it is and what to do with it. I will know what to do with the fact that the main confrontation between two of the characters rings false and that I think I’ve discovered that I suck at writing real characters and I might not care enough about it to learn how. After all I’m going to die soon, being a human being. Maybe I’d better go with disseminating something I’m already good at: not writing believable characters, more like caricatures and using my vocabulary to be playful. Do I really need to do the thing I thought I wanted to do? Needed to do?

THE DANGERS OF ADDICTION

Maybe I am powerless over my Novel. Maybe I really need to let go. Maybe I need NA: Novels Anonymous.

One for me and one for my novel. Two different support groups. Maybe my Novel needs to let go of me, as much I possibly do of it? Are we in some kind of sick co-dependent relationship?

Is there anyone out there who is a doctor of literature who could diagnose and treat me?

I’m scared. I’m totally scared now. What if these new thoughts are true? What if I’m wasting my time?

But I think I may have reached the end of what I thought it was. Does it now die? Do I throw it away? Do I restructure it in a way that can better support me? What does that mean? I’m on Novel Life Support? Who is the doctor and who is the patient? Or is the Novel on Life-Support and is draining energy out of my being that could better be used elsewhere?

Maybe I just wrote this thing so I could discover what I was good at and what I wanted to write and what I don’t.

STALKING AVALON: THE NOVEL

The Novel rising out of the mists of Avalon. (The novel is called: Stalking Avalon, which, if you’ve read Carlos Castaneda, and know what stalking means, might explain why it’s such a bitch to finish. Avalon is a mythical place in the British Isles. If the Maya are right, and words generate being, the title of the book might be preventing its incarnation. I’m “stalking” an imaginary place, which doubles the trickery involved.

For Castaneda, “stalking” means you do things that look completely ridiculous and unrelated in order to outwit your opponent. (In other words, you can’t let your Novel know you are working on it.) You can’t look like you are hunting. At best you look like a fool who is “not-hunting,” doing exactly what won’t work in order to get the task accomplished, which pretty much sounds like my existential strategic resume. Is it working? Am I actually really accomplishing a lot by my circuitous and often ridiculous way of not-writing, writing, and finishing by not-finishing? And how will I tell if I’m done if I have fooled myself as well, which is sometimes necessary to keep it all a secret?

Maybe I can get my Writer Friend to spy on me and let me know when I’m finished.

POWER IN NAMING

So perhaps I should rename the damn thing: Book That Gets Finished and Published and Makes Great Money.

[My accountant told me to add the last part].

PEOPLE DIE ON MY BIRTHDAY

Let me make my point another way.

People have a habit of dying on my birthday. My grandma died on my birthday when I was fifteen, my mother recently died the day before my birthday (but I still noticed) and this year, our dog died on my birthday (not really my dog, my roommate’s dog, but I knew the dog for four years and loved her).

What the hell? Why does shit die on my birthday?

It’s close to my birthday, which is why I’m saying it.

It could be the old form dies and a new one begins.

Perhaps my Novel should die this year. I could just go ahead and say it did, on my birthday, so I can commemorate it’s not-existing, not that it ever really did. Maybe I should let it die now and not wait for it to die from lack of recognition, being published or lack of being a good novel, after I finish it.

One thing Laughing Coyote knows for sure: Novels, like most stories, are not what they appear to be.

LETTING GO OF A NOVEL CAN BE HEALTHY

Perhaps letting go of my novel can be like letting go of my mom. That Novel has carried me around and maybe I just don’t need Her to do that anymore.

Let me illustrate:

The past 15 years Stalking Avalon has become the raison d’etre for everything.

Who are you?

I’m writing a novel.

Why aren’t you tenured in psychology?

I’m writing a novel.

Why are you a financial disaster waiting for FEMA to get its shit together and pull you out of the Superdome?

I’m writing a novel.

Why aren’t you in a relationship.

I’m writing a novel.

Why don’t you clean your fucking house?

A, in my defense, my house is not that dirty. B) I’m writing a novel.

Why don’t you call me back?

I’m writing a novel

Why do you have adrenal fatigue and cervical vertigo?

The stress of writing a novel when the world does not give a shit because our society could care less about the economic plight of artists and poet-writers.

Why don’t you work full time?

I do. I work part-time full-time like most Americans, but initially it was because….oh you know the reason.

So tell me Laughing Coyote: are you happy or unhappy?

I’m writing a novel. (See it’s my automatic default response to everything. Did you take your vitamins? I’m writing a novel. Good thing I’m not married with kids. Honey what happened to our son? I’m writing a novel)

No seriously Laughing Coyote, are you happy or unhappy? (Apparently now I’m being interviewed by someone. It is interesting what happens in StoryBlog-World).

So are you a happy person or an unhappy person?

What part of the day? Which day?

No, in general.

There is no ‘in general,’ there is only now. (See Friend Who Visited Me When No one Else Dared, I did listen to one thing HE said.)

If you had to characterized yourself in general?

Me or Laughing Coyote?

Whoever…(the person interviewing me is getting exasperated and just wanting to move on)

Oh definitely unhappy. For sure. In general. But that’s only as good as saying that something that doesn’t really exist usually has the following characteristics.

(This is why people have trouble getting to know me. I talk like this most of the time. However, if you are my friend, you do know me, and have survived and perhaps even like my Coyote like, trickster presence. Bluebird, Bear, Shaman Mentor, Monkey Girl, Mary Ingalls (inside joke) and the Writer-Friend/Visitor (who is in dire need of a nickname, in the meantime I will just refer to him as Coleosuarus, which is a bastardized and misspelled name of a New Mexican state Dinosaur…or maybe I should call him Dino…I think that just might work…). Dino is a writer too and he actually finishes things!

So says the interviewer of People who aren’t famous or all that talented but should be Magazine

Why are you, or whoever you think you are, unhappy?

Me: You want me to say it’s because I’m writing a novel. I’ll go you one better, I’d say it’s because I’m a writer.

Correspondent: No, I don’t believe that. I’ve read your work on your blog, heard you at open mic, and seen you when you are writing. I don’t think it’s that.

Me: Okay, I’d say I’m unhappy because I don’t have enough time to write and finish my novel. It’s going to take forever and it’s already taken forever, so I think forever and forever make at least one infinity….

Correspondent: so you are unhappy because you are writing a novel?

Me: What?

Correspondent: you are unhappy because you are writing a novel.

Me: Does sound kind of logical doesn’t it.

Correspondent: What if you didn’t write a novel?

Would I be happy if I didn’t write a novel? Maybe the insistence on doing something is what is actually derailing me. Surely I would have been done by now if I was ever going to be done with it, so what is really going on here?

The other voice says—not the interviewer, the one in my head that talks all the time—but what about finding out what happens?

What happens? Where?

In the novel? What happens? Aren’t you curious?

Yeah, I’d say 15 years’ worth of curious.

And says the Novel…

oh I get it now…the Novel is actually talking to me

The Novel then says this: Aren’t you curious about what might happen to you if you finish me? Maybe I will change your life, if you complete me.

Wow…..

That’s it for now,

The Laughing Coyote

P.S. stay tuned for more developments in the exciting world of would-be novelists! Will she give the novel up? Will she revise? Will she continue along the path she carved out knowing that currently she is mucking through the middle part of the Amazingly Shitty First Draft, which is where most novelists run into a very Road Runner like Instant Hole (which is really more like Instant Swamp) and are never seen again?

Wow this is at least as exciting as the Super Bowl!

next up: Trying to find my Like Button

Categories: Writing Related | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

WHY THE F….! AM I WRITING A NOVEL? Part One

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Deborah Stehr

I have been writing a novel.

Then one day I said to myself,

“WHY THE FUCK AM I WRITING A NOVEL?” I think I actually may have been shouting which is why everyone on the train started, slowly and carefully, to back away and the rate of eye contact dropped to zero.

Who decides these things?

Really, should we citizens be allowed to just wake up one day and say, “I’m going to write a novel.’?” You know like the statement, “I’m going to walk the dog,” or “I’m going to have ham for breakfast,” or “I’m going to set fire to my spouse.”

It’s a little known fact that the statement, I’m going to write a novel,  is an indicator of a stroke, and the person should be rushed to the emergency room, or the nearest mental hospital if brain ischemia won’t really make a difference in your relationship anyway.

Writing a novel is a bit like getting a Ph.D.—you better really want it because by the time you get it, you will not give a shit. Oh this old thing? Why did I think I wanted that? It’s like putting a great rabbit coat down on “layaway,” and then anticipating you are going to want to wear that ridiculous out-of-fashion garment once you finally make the last payment ten years from now. (Or you could wear it to graduation like I did and then give to a homeless person if you want to insult their sense of style).

I realize the word layaway reveals my age, where I was born, where I shopped, and may provide information on economic status, ethnicity and nationality. You could find that out on Facebook too, but this is more fun. Actually you can’t find that out about me on Facebook because I lie day and night on Facebook. I lie in wait to post things that aren’t true like:

I’m in a healthy relationship

I love eating gluten free

And

I’m about to finish my novel.

 

HOW WRITING A NOVEL IS RELATED TO DEATH

It’s a little known fact that novels, ninety percent of them anyway, are not meant to be finished. Perhaps we writers are too Darwinian. If a human is finished, it means she or he is dead, so you see the hazards of finishing some work.

I completed my novel and now it is dead.

This relates to things like aborted fetuses, or miscarried babies, so obviously the “finished” writer is galloping towards a period of grief and meaninglessness, and is full of questions like: what is the meaning of life if we are just here and then, we die? And most books do. They sit around in the author’s house wishing they were in a bookstore, online or otherwise. Or they languish in the bowels of someone’s poorly designed website—have you ever tried to read several pages of pink font on a white background?—hidden from view amongst the plethora of things people think is important to say.

Is that really fair to the novel? To bring it fully into existence just so it can pine about the glories of what it could have been if it had been written by someone famous, or alternatively, written by someone who could write? What we do to our children is disgusting.

Yes, you say to your drooling novel, that only has one leg and is missing a pancreas (because you wouldn’t pay a good editor) and part of an eye, and the left front cerebral cortex only works on alternate Wednesdays, you are my creation! Life is beautiful!

Note: if your novel is making gurgling choking sounds as it tries form some clear words—probably something to the tune of Jesus Christ put me down now!—it’s not a good sign.

Literature is one of those areas of life where you don’t get locked away for saying, “I killed my child.” Maybe it’s because we writer-people understand how you might accidentally finish something off without knowing beforehand what it truly means, and therefore can claim ignorance, or at least lack of pre-meditation. Accidental death in other words. But I didn’t mean to!

But maybe we should jail most people who finish novels. After all suicide is still fairly illegal and assisted suicide is completely so.

FINISHING A NOVEL IS JUST THE EASY WAY OUT

Furthermore, from a philosophical stand point, isn’t the point of life the path? So if you want to live and you want your novel to have hope that it can live, you just keep writing.

Anything else is death. The ultimate all-too-achievable goal, so-I-should-get-some-kind-of-Pulitzer for KEEPING HOPE ALIVE and NEVER FINISHING MY NOVEL.

The blog article will read, “SHE WAS SUCH A GREAT WRITER AND CARED SO DEEPLY FOR HER WORK THAT SHE NEVER COMPLETED ANYTHING!!!! Here are some excerpts from stuff she never finished! Admire the possibilities! Imagine just how good it could have been!” (sounds of orgasms)

What would that award be named? I can see the headline now: Dr. Laughing Coyote has just received The Abeyance Award for Literature, in some circles known as The Purgatory Prize.

DEATH SHOULD NOT BE A GOAL

It’s too easy. It happens to everyone I know, despite their best intentions. Novels should not be forced to croak before their time. Maybe that’s why editing can go on endlessly: it’s a kind of life-support.

Death at the right time can be convenient. But “coming full circle writing a book?” that’s just a euphemism for giving up too soon! I’m an American and I”m afraid of death and know that no one wants to die!

Okay, okay, as a psychologist, I do realize death is a rather handy thing because if you, or your novel, are sick of living, why continue? Anyone who has sampled a few months with a chronic illness knows why suicide should not be illegal, which is a hilarious concept anyway. How exactly do you arrest someone who has killed themselves? How do you punish them? Do you take charge of their body and put it in a box and dig a hole and trap it into the ground with a bunch of witnesses standing around, and then put a large stone over the top so they can’t get out if they happen to wake up and decide they are no longer dead or suicidal?

Take that dead person!

THE GOAL OF THE NOVEL IS TO KEEP WRITING IT

So isn’t the point of writing a novel to just keep writing it? What’s this big dead with ‘finishing?’ I mean you are just going to kill the little motherfucker anyway later and then you’ll have to find something else to do with the long lonely days full of meaningless work, trivial discussions with other humans, better conversations with your pets, moments of deciding whether to trade in your current imaginary girlfriend for a newer model, and trying to figure out your fucking iPhone before they upgrade it in the next 12 minutes.  Why not keep your novel around for periods of insomnia, post break-up existential paralysis, things to do while standing around in the unemployment office, or waiting for a bus that never comes because you live in New Mexico and there is only one bus in the state, and it only comes once a year, so you better make damn sure you know you really want to go to wherever that is because you will be there for the next long excruciating 945 days of the year. Yes I know the year is 365 days. It just feels like more in the neighborhood of 900 to 1000.

Really we should have years that are a 1000 days. When we were done, we’d feel like we’d really accomplished something. Not this awkward 365 and ¼  crap. It doesn’t even round off right. (Wow I redeemed my entire life in that last 6 hours, shew that was close!) That’s why we have to invent a magic day, called February 29, every four years and hope to hell nothing important happens on that day (or if you are nervous about not remembering your anniversary, you could give yourself an automatic out, where only remembering what day you got married every four years would be an accomplishment, not grounds for divorce. Plan ahead is what I say.)

So what was I saying? Oh yes, trying to finish a novel is planned suicide. No wonder all of us aspiring novelists say (usually on February 29th),

“I’m going to write a novel.”

Not, “I’m going to write a novel and finish it!”

That’s tantamount to waking up one day and saying, “One day I’m going to wake up dead.”

WHAT PEOPLE SAY TO ME ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Here is where my psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, editors,  friends (who are mainly volunteers—if your friend is wearing a name tag it’s a dead give away), and complete strangers, who know everything about me because they read my blog…never mind that it’s FICTION! I mean I think I’m a coyote with a doctorate for Christ’s sake, read the fine print.

Anyway here is where other people tell me: you are over-identifying with your novel. You are not your writing.

But Coyote knows better. Having spent years chasing that tale, i have a foolhardy wisdom.

The well intentioned (and probably largely successful and fulfilled) friend-person adds, “The novel is not alive, therefore it can’t die.”

Well, she’s obviously never been to a critique group or seen a fireplace.

“You will die,” says my friend   (Okay good my interlocutor isn’t a total moron) “but your novel will live on. It’s an inanimate object and will not die.”

And this brings me to my next point, other than my human helper has been to biology class and learned something, and that is how infuriating it is that people die, but their things don’t immediately collapse into oblivion along with them. That a Tupperware dish can outlive my mother, for example, is insulting. I look at this plastic thing, which happens to be green with a white lid, that my mother used and think, “You are still here but my mother is dead. What the fuck?”

Okay, so either we should stop dying (which is not a good idea) or we should engineer our shit so when we go, it evaporates. Why should I have this great looking, cut glass, expensive-as-all get-out, eight-inch, tall, pink and white candy dish, and not my mother? How is that fair? It’s the universe’s consolation prize: Oh, okay, well you can’t have your mother, but here’s this cut glass vase and a bunch of her terry cloth towels instead. Do they not understand I can’t have the same argument I had with my mother over and over with a set of yellow terry cloth towels? (I could however probably prevent said towels from voting for Romney).

And if I get mad and storm out in a huff, the graceful painting of the Indian woman near a tee-pee out in the plains does not get that funny compressed look on her face? And if I ignore the Navajo rug, it doesn’t tell me stories about poor abandoned and mistreated children?

Also I would look incredibly stupid buying flowers and groceries for my mother’s tiny rocking chair she had as a child, and arguing with insurance companies and doctors and social workers about the quality of medical care for her twelve-inch ceramic Christmas tree, that had also been her mother’s, and I can’t tell the rings on my fingers, the gold one cut into rosette patterns, the solid silver band I wear outside my grandma’s wedding ring so it won’t fall off my finger, and the solid gold ring with a diamond inset that looks like the Zia tribe’s sacred sign that New Mexico adopted for its state flag, that I have always loved her the most, even when I couldn’t stand her?

And try as hard as I might, I cannot stand in front of my mother’s silver and get it to laugh.

I hate things. I really do.

But words are different. Words are alive because they require the alchemy of consciousness to read them and there is an entire relationship inside the cadre of their structure. They produce reactions, association, open doorways, cut them off, create life, kill things, and like certain seeds in the desert they can lie inert for years until a new interaction with the moisture of the human eye and tongue makes them bloom.

My novel is alive. I think it is more alive than I am, mostly. Certainly she holds my more talented, truthful, playful, conscious, emotional and humorous self. She’s the reason I’m alive. Indubitably she is the vehicle for  my being to express and come to terms with life in its many facets, and she is the gloves I don to experience it, doing most of my touching of others through words of many kinds. Raw experience I find mostly difficult in one way or the other, but the soft caress of hands covered by words, softens and makes palatable this human life I have inherited from the cosmos that is my Mother.

The only thing comparable is having a cat. Capaccino is excellent as well.

Semantically yours,

The Laughing Coyote
chasing-your-tail (1)

Categories: Writing Related | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Laughing Coyote Post Again?

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Deborah Stehr

The short answer is YES!

Laughing Coyote has been noticing an increased interest in her site….THANK YOU FOLKS! Being tracked, excuse me, being FOLLOWED, internet style, is a fun gig.

But LC hasn’t posted anything since 2014! Dear God, Ye Gads…..has something happened? Did Laughing Coyote lose her pen? Did she suddenly notice the world wasn’t that funny after all and start a new blog called EVERYTHING SUCKS? Did she discover she has no talent for cooking and subsequently been spending her time doing a photo shoot for the print journal YUCK?  Is she stuck between the couch cushions waiting for someone to come over and extricate her while she munches on old peanut brittle and popcorn bits? WTF has happened to LC? WILL SHE POST AGAIN?

Well, during the holidays the Laughing Coyote decided to clean her house and had a terrible accident with the vacuum involving one of her appendages, some whiskers, half of one ear, a sandwich, a merry-go-round and her tail, not to mention what was left of her pride. Instead of just focusing on one task at a time, like the Buddists suggest, Laughing Coyote  let herself get distracted by a Looney Tunes marathon that featured the Road Runner, Instant Hole and a bathtub full of water, and well….let’s just say the word “ugly” doesn’t cover it.

Laughing Coyote was finally rescued by a pair of a cats and a bighorn sheep–don’t ask me what any of them were doing in the house, let alone together, or why they would want to rescue a coyote to begin with, but they were compassionate and helpful. LC then spent some valuable time recuperating, which included learning how to type with the other paw, how not to binge watch Roadrunner on Netflix, as well as being forbidden to ever go near a vacuum again.

If you see Laughing Coyote near a vacuum, even if she’s just talking to it, you should report it to anyone close by wearing a uniform. They will know what to do.

Laughing Coyote says SHE WILL BLOG AGAIN and plans to do a set about the dangers of cleaning your own house within the next two weeks or so. Right now she’s doing a full color layout for the glamour print magazine “Tail,” which features talking animals who have been injured during domestic incidents of cleaning, that will function as a warning to others that the fabulous, enticing and often air brushed world of TIDYING UP is not what it looks like from the outside and should definitely be left up to the professionals. LC was offered a tidy sum to do this layout, full on furry style, and thus took a break from trying to be hilarious to do a honest days work instead.  The only caveat was that they shoot her good paw.

oh crap not shoot her good paw….damn this internet machine that can’t read my intentions….

…..photograph her good paw.

Until we meet again,

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Very soon

Under the dust bunnies that have lived here so long they all went out an got an education and started families and applied for favored nation status….

THE LAUGHING COYOTE

Categories: miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

If I Was A Novel This Is What My Editor Would Say

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

     If I was a novel, this is what my editor would say:

Is this the shitty first draft?

Unrealistic character development.

No one says this shit.

Oh come on, is that really believable?

You can’t keep saying the same stuff all the time.

Who just keeps having the same problems over and over with no resolution?

          If I was a book, my editor would say

Is there a plot?

You have a serious problem with point of view.

I’m sorry you just aren’t believable.

No one turns into a lesbian for that reason.

What do you mean you don’t know what happens next?

          If I was a book, my copy editor would say:

Learn to indent for god’s sake. You can’t just be one long paragraph.

People need a segway once in a while Debbie.

Enough adverbs already!

          If I was a story, my writing critique group would say:

No seriously your main character can’t be drunk the whole time and have people like her.

What do you mean there are no other characters?

You know you need to have at least one or two likeable characteristics or people won’t stay involved.

Look, something, anything, needs to happen.

You should let other people talk sometimes.

No one is going to believe you got away with that.

          This is what my development editor would say if I was a novel:

Yes having a plan might help.

Pick a genre. Any genre.

Okay, now you need to decide if this is science fiction or memoir.

No there is no such thing as a fictionalized life.

Um yes, memorialized fiction could be a confusing epitaph on someone’s headstone.

Yes we could say “what a great story that would have been,” instead.

(Note to other people who want to be novels: two much eye rolling means that your editor is really tired of you.)

          This is what my ex would say if I was my memoir:

You need consistency or people won’t believe you are real.

Why did you think that scene was particularly wonderful?

Scenes 2 through 46 are a total waste of time. Yes I know that leaves chapters 1 and 47.

No I’m sorry, it’s not any funnier written down.

I’m so disappointed you don’t die at the end.

          This is what a good friend would say about me if I was a book:

No you don’t look fat.

If they don’t understand, they are stupid.

Oh people don’t know what they like.

Have you considered assisted suicide?

           If I was a detective novel, my critique group would say:

Too much backstory.

          Upon reading me for the first time, the woman I’m dating would say:

Too little backstory.

          If I was the highlights of my life posted on FaceBook, the reviewer would say:

Oh my god. Tell, don’t show. Tell!

         If I was a novel, my publisher would say:

Shitty cover art.

Probably less is more.

Leave your book jacket alone.

I don’t see a target audience.

Have you thought of letting your cats ghost write?

Self-publishing is over-rated.

Who was your fucking editor?

If I was my published novel, my title would be:

Content Not Suitable For Humans.

Categories: Writing Related | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

I Want to Get Paid for Being Afraid

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

I Want to Get Paid for Being Afraid

young-terrified-caucasian-woman-pointing-to-bundle-dynamite-tied-to-her-shirt-collar-being-fired-work-29932633

I want to have a job doing something I am good at. I am good at being afraid. I think I am good enough to get paid for it. I am expert enough at it to be paid for being professionally fearful, not this pissant amateur stuff, like being afraid of the dark and being afraid of ghosts or bumps in the night. Pfft! That shit is easy. Any dork with a nervous system can be afraid of those things, including possible monsters under the bed, or creepy things in the closet. Those take no imagination whatsoever. Everyone knows that monsters hide under the bed and those other things are in the closet because under-the-bed monsters tend to be very large and selfish and also drone on and on about their big monster problems, so you, as a smaller, and probably healthier creepy thing, wouldn’t want to be under the bed with them anyway because who wants to hear about their boring large monster problems?

I’m more creative than that. Way more creative. That’s what I would put on my Fear Resume:

  • FAR MORE AFRAID THAN ANYONE ELSE YOU KNOW
  • AFRAID OF SHIT IT WOULD NEVER OCCUR TO ANYONE ELSE TO BE AFRAID OF
  • Able to multitask and BE AFRAID OF SEVERAL THINGS AT THE SAME TIME. (My personal record, occurring this afternoon, 20 things, and if you give me a minute, I’ll make it 21.)
  • Able to drop everything and BE AFRAID AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE
  • Also ABLE TO BE AFRAID WHILE DOING OTHER THINGS, so the future employer will know that I’m just not sitting around on the couch eating bon-bons being fearful, but that I pretty much can do anything AND BE AFRAID TOO.

So it will be very much like hiring TWO PEOPLE instead of one. You can hire me to wash the dog and worry about having anaphylactic shock from the soap, fleas  from the dog, germs from the dog that carry a special brain disease that only people with blonde hair and blue eyes get, and so that research for the cure is underfunded and what cure their might be is almost totally inaccessible and really expensive; plus, given I don’t get paid enough to even buy 1/8 of the vaccine under development, and since it can only be grown in one strain of African-violets that don’t grow in New Mexico where I live, I can worry about the inaccessibility of obtaining a vaccine that doesn’t really exist yet and that I can’t afford because                      a) I’m a dog washer,  b) I live in New Mexico where wages SUCK, and I can also be afraid that if the pending vaccine  devastates the population of the African violets, it will cheat the world of said African violets, and also kill off a special population of mites that only grow in African violets, that, as it turns out, would be the answer to curing stupidity in humans, so then I might have to also be afraid of the fact that, if I save myself by taking the vaccine, I might have just killed off the human race.

Am I hired yet?

I can be afraid of anything. Give me a minute and I’ll find a reason to be terrified of the color shirt you are wearing. Yes, I am that good.

WHY WE SHOULD PAY PEOPLE TO BE AFRAID

Why, you ask, should we pay people to be afraid? A very good question and right now I won’t be anxious about why you are asking me that, and I won’t worry about feeling invalidated or that I might have just proposed the stupidest thing ever. I figure that if we can pay the guys on Jackass who injure themselves on purpose on video, and hire that rich ignorant bitch Paris Hilton to do commercials, I can get paid for being afraid. Right now I also won’t be concerned about the fact that you are thinking I’m the biggest pussy ever. My usual response to that accusation is: Just because I have a pussy doesn’t mean I am one.

I can also turn the fear off, for a while anyway, which is handy while I’m receiving instructions from the aliens, no ha ha, just kidding, my boss (who I have been assured is not an alien although he kind of has that “look,”—those of you who are familiar with aliens know what I mean­­­) anyway, while receiving instructions from my boss, I can turn the fear off long enough to listen without worrying about if the boss is trying to kill me, or what he really means when he says, “Make sure you get the dogs wet when you are bathing them.” (Yes yes everyone makes foolish mistakes sometimes. You can’t dry clean a dog apparently. Apologies to Mrs. Dunham. Your new dog is being shipped to you on a drone by Amazon. Accessories will have to be dropped on your house separately).

THE INTROVERTED TERRORIST

Okay, so why should I get paid handsomely for becoming a professional Terrorist?

The word terrorist is misunderstood and misused. A terrorist should also include someone who can instill terror in him or herself, thereby obviating the need for extroverted terrorist types to spend time and money trying to make me afraid because I, being a total professional introverted terrorist, have been able to do that for myself. To show you how accomplished I really am and how much you need to hire me: I was afraid of Ebola, George W. Bush and the Tea Party before they even existed. There. That should convince you that out of all the scared people in the world, I am the one worth paying.

I am negotiating with the extroverted terrorists as we speak: they could pay me to automatically be afraid of them at a fraction of the cost it would take them to make me afraid of them. The government should pay me for my public service.

So should you.

I can also teach others to be introverted terrorists. See, mom, that Ph.D. wasn’t for nothing!

I AM BETTER AT BEING AFRAID THAN YOU

So why you should pay me to be afraid? Because I can be afraid of the things you would be afraid of if you could just expand beyond monsters under the bed, creepy things in the closet and death. That one, especially, is so yesterday. Any person with consciousness, skin and an email account can be afraid of death. What you need is someone to be afraid of things you never thought of so you don’t have to do it, and to also take over being afraid of what’s in the closet, under the bed, and in the afterlife (which is a really weird term if you think about it….if you are still alive how the hell is it the afterlife?).

Also the thing about being afraid all the time is that it has a threshold; if you are afraid of something long enough, and think about it all the time and imagine all the possible scenarios, eventually, you get bored and also your nervous system collapses and you couldn’t be afraid of it if you tried. But this is time consuming and dangerous. People can die from being afraid. If you hire me, I’ll save your life.

WHAT MONSTERS SAY ABOUT ME

monster3

Basically I am so afraid I wear the fears out. They get up and go home and complain about me to the other monsters in the closet, “Oh my god, so needy. One or two ‘boos’ or ‘gotcha’s’ or ‘I’m here to kill you and take your soul to hell’ does the trick with most people, and then I go home and watch Ghoul-Flix. Not with her. We scare the crap out of her and she comes back for more. It’s like a nagging bratty spoiled child: what else can I be afraid of? What else can I be afraid of? Huh? Last night I ran out of shit to scare her with!

“She used up fearing having no transportation, being unemployed, having breast cancer with no insurance, having no friends who would help her during the breast cancer treatment, being diagnosed with M.S., (that’s Multiple Sclerosis, not a master’s of science) never having sex again, never having love again, not being able to write because she’s living in a box, with breast cancer, MS, rats, and other dirty people who can’t spell because of the outbreak of texting, and because her computer broke and she couldn’t replace it; going insane, having Ebola, having the Republicans take over the Senate, having the Republicans steal to 2016 election, making Fox News the only news channel in the U.S., having to relocate to Oklahoma; Roe v Wade being reversed, birth control being outlawed, and being made to adopt a baby at age 47 and care for her with no money and being made to shop at Wal-Mart on Black Friday every year until she dies; and after it was said and done, Debbie still said: Okay, what else you got?  I was tempted to say, ‘And you want to be a published successful writer!’ but even I thought that was over the top. I’m a humane monster. If she’s dead, she can’t be afraid anymore and what is the point of that?

“I had to make up some shit about how lint can get stuck in your belly button and cause almost instant ovarian disease in women over forty-five, who are blond, experiencing peri-menopause, who have a history of using nicotine gum to get over smoking, and who teach at UNM, read Nancy Drew as a child and have bad gums.”

“Wow, Gerald (the monster’s name is Gerald), that’s some amazing individualized targeting,” says Gerald’s buddy, whose name is, predictably, “Creepy.”

“I know! Can you believe it? I should get overtime for this shit. I had to get the Gene Identification Team on it,” says Gerald. “You should see her fucking genome.”

“That must be really scary,” says Creepy shuddering.

HOW EMPLOYING ME WILL MAKE YOU RICH                       

money

So, you see basically someone who is willing to be afraid not only of what they are afraid of, but what you are afraid of, can eventually wear out the fear to the point that it doesn’t exist anymore, and yet you didn’t waste any time on it. I did. So basically you compensate me, because I’m way better and more efficient at being afraid than you are, for doing the dirty work and you can get back to being brave, and winning the Nobel Peace prize, or at least conquering level 23 of Candy Crush with a focus not yet seen among human beings.

And I will be able to buy myself dinner and stop eating Ramen noodles, because if there ever was a scary substance, that one is it, just behind pork rinds, and whatever the hell tofu really is. And that seitan shit? That stuff is pure gluten. Seriously. Look it up.

THE U.S. ECONOMY RUNS ON FEAR

700.hq

Seriously, I should also be paid to be afraid because our economy runs on fear. People are afraid they are fat, so they go on diets, buy diet books and diet products to make them thinner. People are afraid they are ugly and unloved, so they buy    make up and cars to compensate. People are afraid of jihadists flying airplanes into more buildings, so we support an economy based on the implements of war. Fear is very profitable to businesses and very expensive for people. So for a very reasonable fee, I can be afraid for you. You can spend the money you would have spent on Prozac and Xanex on me. All the money you would have spent on fear based products, you could have spent on me instead, and I could make all that foolish purchasing on your behalf, thereby saving you money and rescuing our economy at the same time.

If that economic plan doesn’t quite make sense to you, turn on Fox News, and listen to any Republican on T.V. (because they don’t let the smarter ones talk anymore for fear of an outbreak of reasonableness), especially a Tea Partier, or anyone in Congress. After a day of that, you’ll see my reasoning is absolutely spotless and that you should pay me to make all your Fear Purchasing for you, and I’ll throw in actually being afraid for you for a nominal fee and free you up for all that time consuming, heartless capitalism you’ll be employing instead because you’ll no longer be afraid of hell, or instant or time-delayed karma. You can invest freely and suck the world dry.

FEAR: A POLITICAL SOLUTION

images (2)

Politicians instill fear so they can pretend to be the solution, which is the reason why the idiots running Maine, New Jersey, and New York State are quarantining people who have been in West Africa, despite well documented evidence that unless someone has a high fever and is vomiting and shitting uncontrollably all over the place, they are not contagious. The elected officials are doing this to get votes. Here’s how it works.  First, you create more fear by ignoring the facts provided by the CDC and then you take care of the unreasonable fear by implementing strategies to prevent infections that would never have happened to begin with so you can argue that you were “looking out for the people,” and garner votes from the part of the population that doesn’t bother to think past Fox News and CNN, which is mostly everyone. Obviously making the right people afraid is powerful, so let me help you get your favorite politicians elected by me developing all the needed fears and then voting in all the right places, since apparently voter fraud is endemic in this country and I can get out the FEAR VOTE as many times as I want.

PAY ME TO SCARE OTHERS AND PROFIT FROM IT

Photo0160

Since fear is contagious (I have no idea why it’s never been quarantined. I should definitely be locked up) I can help make others afraid and get them to do what you want to do for your business or political aspirations, by simply being afraid in the most professional ways possible. Want some people to be afraid of the sun? Hand it over to me. Not only will I find ways to be afraid of sunlight that no one else ever thought of, I will induce that fear in someone else, so you can sell that new product for skin and also for FEAR that you have now developed because you were smart enough to pay me to be afraid for you and then I gave the fear to other people and now you can sell your new sugar pill to everyone I’ve come in contact with. (Note that I’m hypoglycemic and the placebo won’t work on me).

I blog therefore I can spread Fear like an air-born virus and all without throwing up on someone’s leg. Hire me. I’m better at being afraid than anyone else and I’m very sure that by employing me, you can profit from it.

And I will get to do what I do best: be afraid!  I fucking like it! Who wouldn’t? We all like what we’re good at. 🙂

Fear has turned me into a monster.

And look out: this year for Halloween I will have the scariest costume ever. I’m going as gluten.

images (1)

BOO!

The Laughing Coyote

imagesCAQ9YDJW

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

People with Instructions

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

People should come with instructions.

I find human relationships to be the equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded, upside-down, in a windstorm while listening to jazz. I got a Ph.D. in human relations just so I could figure out intersubjectivity, because I could clearly see that the actual people around me didn’t know shit. Isn’t it ironic that I had to go read books, go to classes, do statistics, and dip into the canon of metaphysical tomes, in order to find out what the villagers thought they were doing in my home town? The fact that I had to consult the non-human in order to understand the human was a further step up the rungs of paradox. As if They’d know. To have to go to a inhuman creature, like God, Kali or Kukulcan, to explain humanity to a human. . . Doesn’t that in itself illuminate a major design flaw in the human experience, without, however really explaining anything?

If you don’t like irony, ask to be reincarnated as a dog.

Therefore I had to develop my own system. I like to think of relationships in terms of food. I find it helps explain things,. I can understand, and explain the mysteries of the universe, but hand me a person and I freeze up. I don’t get it. How do I operate a person?  Like, where’s the gearshift? How do I put her in Park? Is she all-wheel drive, 4-wheel drive, front-wheel drive or no-wheel drive? And where the fuck is reverse?  (No that didn’t happen, no I didn’t say that, no I don’t know what I should understand about you but it is clear that I don’t. Damnit, doesn’t this thing back up?)

 

I still don’t know what a person is for, actually. You know, like vitamin D bumps up your immune system and vitamin B helps run your nervous system and oxytocin makes you feel good and protects your heart. Greens help your bowels. Fish keep your brain from congealing; peppers, garlic and ginger keep candida from setting up a fascist government in your intestines; green tea…I don’t know green tea is for because I hate it. But everyone and their dog is drinking it so I assume it is for something other than following the lemming in front of you in order to be neighborly.

Information like that about people would be helpful.

We could start by publishing general information, or helpful hints, about each person on the planet. Each citizen could then carry the indications around in a little pamphlet or, for those who can’t function for two seconds without some electronic gadget, in a specialized app.

We could begin with general handling instructions. For example, take the hypothetical man Luke:  good for laughs, but do not use while trying to do anything serious.

And Brenda: pessimist, use sparingly and with caution, but don’t leave her out of your life completely or there will be hell to pay.

Jess:  sexual object: use liberally.

And Bobby D., do not leave in car unsupervised or leave out in the sun. Warms your heart, but don’t ask him to be responsible for anything.

Susan: doesn’t warm your heart, but will be responsible for everything if needed.

Isabelle: whatever you do, don’t look her in the eye.

Wendy: under no circumstances add water.

Debbie: good for a few laughs, but if you don’t say something interesting in five minutes, she will cheat on you with her imaginary girlfriend, who lives inside her head in an omnipresent manner reminiscent of god, and later, when asked, Debbie will say that yes she had a fabulous time with you and you will think it’s about you, but it ain’t. In fact, when questioned later by the Tantric Police, you will say you were entirely unaware that you were having a threesome. (Which would explain her strange, hyperbolic breathing pattern while you were discussing the relative merits of not suddenly becoming a Christian just because you are having a baby. You just thought she was very excitable.)

Whoops did I say that out loud? That was definitely some information I had not intended on sharing. It must be the Hypno-Blog Effect, which is related to FaceBook Psychosis, whereupon you think you are safe at home in your own diary, but OMG, you just posted your inside voice on the internet where it will outlive the half-life of plutonium and your children will be able to read it.

Damn that trance-y, tricky social media that convinces even someone like me that the entire world is my private living room. What I intended to say was:

Debbie: use with caution. (If you read further, my pamphlet says: no known uses. Research pending.)

Some human interactions will need something stronger than over-the-counter advice. These interactions would need something more like a prescription:  take two people in the morning and don’t take anymore before 8pm.

Or: only talk to this person using words that begin with “B.”

Peter: user may experience drowsiness when used with heavy machinery.

Renata: DO NOT TAKE WITH MILK

 Dating

Dates should definitely come with indications printed in big red capital letters. For example,

Jose:  goes off at any moment. Only use when wearing protective headgear and goggles. Be ready to prepare shelter and to possibly be sued by anyone in the vicinity.

Lorrielle: Best taken with other people. (For an indication like this, it is best to ask a lot of questions.)

Julieta: Best taken before bed.

 

Nutrition Labels for People

I, personally, would like these “People Labels,” or PaPs (short for People-Apps) to also list nutritive values, and predictions about what would happen if I were to ingest them. . .just to stretch the analogy past recognition.

Tara: Pretty much like drinking 3 Red Bulls.

Jack: Pretty much what would happen if you ate a whole bag of Lay’s Potato chips in one sitting, once or twice a week.

Gwendolyn: Like salad without the dressing.

Yuri: a bag of green M and M’s.

Cheri: Only use with alcohol or tranquilizers.

Garth: similar effect to eating bacon, eggs and steak four times a week for twenty years.

Saskia: perfectly sautéed in butter, ocean-going, tilapia, with fresh organic seasonal garden vegetables, and organic brown rice with fresh side salad, raised in PDX. (Portland Oregon for those of you not from there).

Leigh: so gay s/he’s like eating food that has not been fertilized by the opposite sex; only food produced by budding or parthenogenesis.

My perfect match: she tastes like cappuccino, chocolate, and fine red wine, my favorite sourdough bread from San Francisco and cheese! (Not all at once. She’s like wandering through all your favorite tastes each day.)

(God I love this new PaPs system! I’m happy already!)

Joey: one word: Jello.

 

Using the Food Analogy Intersubjectivity System to Explain Heartbreak and Obsession

Using this paradigm, I find I can explain break-ups with lovers and the aftermath. For me, it’s pretty much like this:

I’m surrounded by cheeses, all kinds of cheese. I’m in a veritable smorgasbord of cheese; Gouda, brie, cheddar, goat, goat brie, pepper jack, Hammermill, oh no wait that’s copy paper…but it should be a cheese. It sounds like one. Anyway, I’m fucking surrounded by all the cheese in the universe and of course I’m wearing blinders, and all I can see is that little cube of inexpensive Swiss that I got at some drunken party somewhere, and that’s what I want and that’s what I had, and no matter what, all I still want is that little square of cheese with the holes in it. Out of all possible cheeses in this megalopolis of dairy products, I just want that one, just that one small piece of cheese, no other will do, not another size, flavor, color taste—not the one that doesn’t say the things I don’t want to hear. No, I want the piece of cheese that only says things I don’t want to hear and, did I mention this detail?, that this one piece of little off-yellow Swiss is so important to me, that if I could just have it nothing else would ever matter again. I would not want anything else, ever because I’d achieved this bit of cheese and I could just die, a happy woman sitting in a mousetrap.

Such is love.

Darling, you are my Swiss.

 

Sincerely,

The Laughing Coyote

imagesCAQ9YDJW

Categories: Dating, Relationships | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Buying Furniture is Not the Same as Going on a Date

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

cartoon_hearts

 

 

 

 

 

Photo0154

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

images

 

I am trying to sell some barely used furniture and apparently I need to quit my full time job in order to have time for answering all the questions that potential customers have, and then have an interval to recuperate from drinking heavily after trying to recover from all that glorious humanity.

I just love it when I spend an hour talking to someone about the finer points of a metal shelf that’s worth about $40 (and I’ll probably get somewhere between $35 and $25 for it), followed by the working out the logistics of my location, now that craigslist now has a DIY map with a shit interface and is always wrong.

I would like to point out to Craigslist that I can’t drag and drop something that is OFF THE MAP! Are they too fucking lazy to find the location themselves? I thought that’s why we have Map Quest to begin with—not so I can guess where I live and spend half an hour trying to drag and drop the pointer, like a drone, on top of unsuspecting addresses who have nothing to do with me or the crime of trying to sell some goddamn furniture without losing my fucking mind—I have Map Quest figure it out SO I DON’T HAVE TO!

Sending someone a map with a circle on it through snail mail would be easier than the dipshit system they have now. Who decided that was a good idea? Don’t these geniuses realize that by now people can’t figure out their own addresses precisely because they’ve been using Google maps for ten years? That’s like asking someone to memorize a phone number or to calculate what 20% off means in real dollars. Thanks Craigslist for rendering Google maps as useful as Esperanto.

And in the middle of this I’m getting wonderful text messages that don’t identify themselves and say things like, “Are you available right now?” which makes me wonder what business I am really in, and could I possible get someone I’m actually dating to text me that message and maybe add an interesting picture that later I can post on Facebook when I want to shame her for mistreating me later in the relationship.

“Am I available now?”

If I text ‘yes’ what will happen? And if money changes hands will I get arrested?

Then there are all the questions about the irredeemably obvious:
How tall is it?
See what I said on Craigslist
How wide is it?
See what I said on Craigslist
How long is it?
See above answer.
What color is it?
See picture on Craigslist.
What does it look like?

[Careful pause.] See above response.

How many shelves does the four-shelf shelf for sale have?

I think maybe my answer to that was obscene. . . interestingly because the buyer was a guy, he showed up and bought it anyway. A woman would have posted outraged and self-righteous hate mail on Facebook and I would have been barred from not only selling furniture, but from the human race, and had my ovaries removed to make sure I didn’t have any children who could observe human behavior and comment with some accuracy about some basic differences between the genders.

Men: Do you still have the item?
Women: Oh that piece is so beautiful. It might fit in my living room.
Men: Can you send me more pics so I can get a better look?
Women: What kind of brown is that brown? Do you know who painted it?
Men: Okay, when can I come and get it?
Women: Let me consult my family and friends to see if I really need such a beautiful shelf after all, although I really like it and it’s unique and it would probably go perfectly in my ___________.
Men: [ACTION. Came and got it and paid full price!]

Because we aren’t talking about a car here. That’s a whole different animal with a lot of working parts that deserves a lot of inquiry. But even with vehicles the conversation is easier.

Me: Nope, not going below 5000.00 for the Honda. I know it’s worth that. Nope sorry. Can’t go lower and look myself in the mirror tomorrow.
Men: Okay. Here you go. [He knows about self-respect.]
Me: Thanks for the five thousand.
Men: You betcha’ [and he drives off in it.]

 

Meanwhile Back in Furniture Hell:

 

Photo0149
Women: I’m not sure that shelf will hold my TV.

Me: It held my mother’s giant, HD TV that was bigger than life itself, that took three people and a crane to move.

Woman: I don’t know. I like it right now. But I might not like it later.

 

I felt a little bit like the Israelis in Palestine and I wondered if I could just hire a drone to drop the fucking shelf on her, but realized I might kill innocent civilians because I’m using the non-map on Craigslist.

with-package

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Feminist Protest

And now because of that statement, I’ll probably get ripped a new one from my female audience because I have failed to love all women at all times everywhere, even though many other people would classify me as a rabid feminist. I just can’t win. I prefer to call myself a ‘rapid feminist,’ and I’m going to leave the meaning of that your imagination and to the comment box (which is conveniently hidden under the “Tags” at the bottom of each blog post. No, I did not put it there. Word Press did. You need Google maps and a flashlight to find it. Brilliant.)

Women tend to interview me about the piece of furniture, as if what they have in their house really fucking matters.

Yes This Really Happened: The Shelf

Photo0148

The following is an excerpt from several days of negotiation about a 4-shelf shelf that was listed on Craigslist with a picture and a very precise description.
Her: Where is it from? Who is the manufacturer?

Me: I don’t know. My brother put the thing together for my mother 7 years ago and it’s been moved 4 times since then. Did I mention it is a metal shelf?

Her: What kind of metal is it? Is it shiny?

Me: Yes, it’s shiny. It’s some kind of composite and appears to be rust proof.

Her: How tall is it?

Me: Well that is posted on the ad. But I’m 5’3” and it’s as tall as I am.

Her: Well I have other shelves too.

Her: Oh I think this shelf would definitely get along with other shelves. It’s shiny and goes with everything.

Her: What kind of condition is it in?

Me: Oh, well, there’s no indication of any psychological problems. Not based on its behavior so far.

Her: What?

Me: [I paused. Shit, I’d gotten sucked in to the whole thing). Perfect. Except for a tiny wobble, but the leg is adjustable. In fact the whole thing is adjustable.

Her: What adjustments do you think I’d need to make?

Me: I don’t know. It would depend on your needs in the moment. (At this point I am not sure if I’m a psychologist or a furniture salesman or a guru. At this point I am also refraining from suggesting a different sort of adjustment which is probably not recommended by the manufacturer.)

Her: I know I like the piece now. . . but do you think it’s the kind of shelf that I’m going to like ten years from now?

Me: [Inside voice: how do you know you are even going to be alive 10 years from now?] Outside voice: Oh, Absolutely. It comes with a 10 year guarantee. I just found the paperwork here in a drawer of another shit piece of furniture I’m trying to get rid of. Either buy it or don’t but can we please get off the fucking phone? I haven’t eaten in three days now and I’m getting woozy.

I actually stopped with “absolutely.” Maybe it isn’t her fault she’s an idiot.

Her: What else can you tell me about the shelf?

What else can I tell you about the shelf? IT’S A SHELF!!!!!

The Analysis

This is apparently is the furniture warehouse equivalent of the query, often used in job interviews and dates: Tell Me About Yourself. (For how these two things are actually not dissimilar see the future, when I write about it.)

I had to stop myself from falling into an insecure doubt, installed by social media, that perhaps I had missed something, and now all material objects come with some kind of autobiography that I should have known by heart by now, or at least be able to read off The Shelf’s twitter feed. Is this what Shelf Life really means?

I took a drink. From a flask marked: I hate selling things to people.

I should only sell things to pets. I’d be a great dog salesman. Want this bit of food that’s been in my car for a week?

Pant pant. Sure.

Sold!

Armed with this bright view of the future, I threw my flask into the yard, and began to practice deep breathing and then began some dialog I know many men have used in their lives: I’m not sure what to say, honey.

I omitted the word honey. Even though we’d been in negotiations for three days, I still didn’t feel that level of intimacy was appropriate, especially since I’m gay. I didn’t want to deal with what she’d say to her husband, and this woman definitely has a husband, otherwise she wouldn’t know how to torture me with questions I don’t know how to answer and make me feel guilty at the same time.

If I’d said that word, she would have said to her husband later: I would have bought that shelf darling, if she hadn’t sexually harassed me. She called me honey. (I can feel the husband’s empathy for me from here).

I would have answered these accusations with the mature and well thought out argument: Well she started it! She emailed me, three times and called me twice before I even knew that someone was interested in my shelf. That’s a lot of pressure. If we’d been dating I’d have folded like a deck of cards under the subtext: I want you I want you I want you. So naturally I called back, and tried to answer all her questions. She made me believe.

The Temptress

pic01_490x550

So then we had the unending discussion of when she would come meet the shelf, make friends, pay me and take it home with her. She changed the times twice. What dedication! With all that attention to detail and biography, I knew she’d come and pick it up. Sold! Whenever I pay that much attention to anything, you can be sure I’m going to marry whatever it is even if it’s bad for me.

So she calls me the next day and says she’s not coming because she’s found someone else. I mean something else, something about someone having some shelves that went along with some other shelves better, and she knew their history and angle of juxtaposition of her pantry to her personality–

What kind of shelf that would be, I am scared to think about…one that probably can’t decide what is best for it and can’t even get out of its box because of all the existential issues involved?

She hoped I hadn’t been inconvenienced.

Jesus Christ in a sidecar.

Irritated I stopped wasting words on her and said, “Fine,” and I hung up before she abused me with any more specious reasoning, obsessions about details, and false promises, leading me to my new rule about dealing with people: asking a lot of questions doesn’t mean shit.

Just buy the goddamn shelf or shut up about it.

There should really be no talking in furniture transaction situations. Grunting and pointing is really all that is needed. Or perhaps some strict rules: Each person is allowed three questions max….It’s a shelf. How many questions can you possible ask about a SHELF?

The Problem with Words

I think most people do not know how to use words, or what they are for and that language is meant to make things better between people and to glean information, not to just be used whenever you fucking feel like it, like the iPhone, internet and Netflix, or asking me a million questions that you should already know the answers to just because you have me on the phone.

Just because some words are there, doesn’t mean you should use them.

This would prevent us from having to pay for the consequences of misusing speech: like not asking questions when we shouldn’t, and not asking enough questions when we should.

How Buying Furniture Is Not Like Dating or Getting Married

Most people spend more time asking about a bit of furniture than they do when deciding to get married. In fact, if people asked as much about fellow humans as they do about things they are about to purchase, they would not even go on dates.

So perhaps the not-asking and not-knowing anything useful about your partner is an evolutionary device, much needed in order to get along with anyone who is also human. Ignorance and delusion promote the survival of the species, (but can’t comment on its quality.) Perhaps if we had to buy our lovers our relationships would be more successful.

Yes honey, I only have three shelves and I’m never going to have four, so either get over it and make a purchase or move on.

Why Buying Each Other Might Be a Good Idea

Buying humans however has a sad history.

Bear in mind I’m trying to insult everyone today. If you feel left out from not having been insulted yet, just hang on.

But let’s not make assumptions: let’s think this through.

Having to buy a human had a certain amount of wisdom (consult human history and stop getting angry at me in the spirit of political ineptness –I mean correctness– that no one takes seriously. Being PC would have worked by now if it was going to, just like the Just Say No movement.)

If we bought our girlfriends and wives we could ask things like:

What are her teeth like? Hips? Will having a kid kill her? How deep? How wide? What color? What does she look like? Will her looks last? Is that a real four- shelf shelf? Would you look at that! Sold!

And for the men (I want to equalize the oppression and objectification here. Every man likes it, even though he says he doesn’t.)

Women can ask: How much will he hold? Is he sturdy? Has he been successful at being a dresser or is there room for improvement? Does he know who he is? Does he take initiative and provide services for which you haven’t thought of yet? Does he fix things (like décor) without being asked? Is he reliable or will he collapse in the next quake, thunderstorm, shopping spree or long drawn out conversation about the relationship? Can he handle the big items he will be asked to be responsible for? Will he protect what we value? Is he versatile? What will he do when the cat jumps on him?

I really think that people would do better to use these questions on dates instead of in my garage in front of my used furniture as if I really care about the crap I am selling. You are not dating or marrying your furniture and if you don’t like it, you can sell it on Craigslist. You cannot do that with people. I’ve checked. I was trying to see if I could sell my brother and get a new one.

Epilogue

I’ve sold about 11 items in the past 2 months. All but two were sold to men. One woman acted like me: saw the chair, wanted the chair, bartered for the chair, got the chair and hauled it off and the chair and her mother are now living happily ever after.

It was all I could do not to ask for her phone number.

Honey.

 

imagesCAQ9YDJW

Categories: Dating | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

WARNING: HAPPINESS COULD BE THE CAUSE OF UNHAPPINESS

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

Last fortnight I decided to be happy. Image

This was despite the advice of our resident psychologist Dr. Crabby Ass, author of part of last fortnight’s blog post: What to Do During an Outbreak of Happiness). (In case the word ‘fortnight’ is a mystery to you, google it!)

I’m a Capricorn. I have a habit of turning things into work, free time into anxiety (or naps), and busyness into resentment, creating a non-stop problem that I then have to move heaven and earth to solve. This is the course of my days, and is royally, well, dumb.

So I did some consulting on the Happiness Issue. Dr. Crabby Ass was out of town, so I had to use other sources.

 

 

 

Image

 

The Board of Capricorns said to me, “We are not good at having fun. We don’t know how.”

However, if it’s one thing Capricorns know how to do, it’s work. So, ergo elipso I can work at learning how to have fun. It can’t be that hard. See I made an error using Latin and Esperanto right there and I’m laughing at it.

Given that I like complicated things that have no end in sight, which might also be called an addiction to the unachievable:  I reaffirmed my decision to be a full participant in the world of joy.

Image

TOO LAZY TO ACTUALLY BE ALIVE LET ALONE BE A CAP

This goal was perfect for me. I’m a Capricorn, or more accurately, a failed Capricorn because I’m lazy ( I should have been born under the sign of the Hammock), but I at least have the God-given sense to be upset about it, and so at least I have achieved a patrician sense of unhappiness which is marked, and some say, incurable. (I also think there should be such a thing as The Lifetime Under-Achievement Awards honoring those of us who failed to do what we could have done if we hadn’t been under the undue influence of the Slug Archetype.) The Capricornian answer to unhappiness would be to work harder at it, but since I’m actually too indolent to be Cap—you can see the inherent conundrum. I am a Capricorn by ironic accident, or perhaps due to too much Fetal Lassitude. (I’m amazed my embryo managed to develop at all). Somehow I must have leaned on the labor lever too soon…and then couldn’t be bothered to lean the other way and delay my birth just for four days, so that I could be an Aquarius instead, an air sign I have much in common with, including the wind used to power this blog.

So, as I went along I detected a possible catch-22 in this Pursuit of Happiness bit. If I turn everything into work and then don’t do the work…..?

CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE HAPPY IF YOU ARE THIS LAZY?

Like unhappiness, I think happiness should just alight on my shoulder and start singing, Image or whatever happiness actually does when it visits—I have no idea—and I walk around dreading being accidentally startled by it and then getting humiliated in front of my friends. This creates a kind of vigilance whereupon one is “on the lookout for happiness,” so one can see it coming. Image It helps to live either in the plains states or the desert where there is the gift of the horizon and a 365 degree view of the interloper. I don’t just want happiness to spring upon me unannounced. I want to be prepared. I want to make it welcome. I want to do the right thing. What if it comes and I’m not ready? Will I have it wait outside until I make up the guest bed, or build a new addition onto my house, or have someone else do it because I am basically inert? (I should really be on a periodic chart somewhere between Argon and Krypton because I make them look positively aerobic, as in the exercise craze of the 80’s, not as in oxidation).

 

(I’m all the way to the right, third row down) Image

Will I be the one to make Happiness stand outside in the cold with an Oscar Meyer snack pack, while I phone my friends and the crisis line because I don’t know what to fucking do now? How rude!

“Jesus Christ,” says the crisis line counselor, “At least give Mr. H a coat and maybe a shot of Grey Goose vodka while he waits.”

Carrying the comparison further, it may be that like an inert gas, my electron shell is more or less full (could have fooled me) and I,  do not need to interact with other elements, Happiness included. So it is possible that I’m actually surrounded by The Big H, yet I really don’t need to interact, creating a whole ‘nother set of conditions that I never thought of before. (It’s my job as a mind, to invent problems that don’t exist). What if I don’t need Happiness to be Happy? 

Does your mind hurt too right now? Laughing Coyote apologizes for your anguish. Maybe you can sue me. 🙂

What’s an element to do? It occurs to me that I, as an inert Capricorn with mind-overidentification, may not really need Happiness to be happy. I mean you don’t hear a lot of complaining coming from the right column of the periodic chart, do you?  Argon isn’t saying, “Shit I wish I was plutonium.” Maybe the idea of happiness is causing unhappiness and we should get rid of the idea altogether.

Apparently inert elements (gases usually, going along with the Aquarius theme) have to be forced to interact with others….so does this mean that for me to experience happiness when I don’t really need to, given my condition, I will have to do so at some kind of gunpoint? Like a particle accelerator? Can you get one of those on the internet? Can Amazon deliver it on one of those new drone helicopter thingys with the dangerous blades?

drone-615x345

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More to the point: Is experiencing happiness at Acclerator Point really happiness? If I force myself to be happy at some kind of gunpoint, am I?

UNFORESEEABLE EFFECTS OF THE HAPPINESS PLAN

Most people in my situation have some sort of Happiness Plan, a bit like the old Soviet 5 year plans, but probably less effective, but we won’t find out for sure until one of us alights upon the little buggar: Happiness, brother of Joy, cousin of contentment, nephew of sloth, in order to implement The Plan. You don’t know what might happen if you got happiness. What if it’s followed by unhappiness? What if there is some kind of causal link? What if Happiness causes unhappiness and here we are, five minutes before the destruction of the rest of the middle class and democratic capitalism (following which we will be too busy surviving to have happiness as a stated goal, so we’ll let Canada, Sweden and India do it instead), but meanwhile we are unwittingly wasting what little window of opportunity we have left by creating unhappiness out of happiness because it’s inevitable?

Wow, what a field of idiots we are. See what happens when you don’t think about these things? Anyone with a horizon and a plan knows better. Of course it’s widely known that unhappiness follows unhappiness as well, so there’s a confounding variable there already. Damn it.

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH HAPPINESS?

download (1)

So what are you going to do with the happiness once you have it? Setting aside the problems of identification (are you happy without knowing it?), what do you do with it? What purpose does it have? People are goal oriented, not enjoyment oriented. Some research shows that Americans from the United States are among the most discontented people in the world, and have been for a while, not just since 2008, and we have the most material wealth on the planet. Instead of kicking back, at some point and saying, “Wow look at all this shit we have, let’s enjoy it,” we fill our leisure time with more work, thereby misunderstanding the “pursuit of happiness,” bit as being all there is. The Declaration of Independence says nothing about “enjoying what you’ve got, you greedy motherfuckers.”

The shock of suddenly being happy, well it can have profound effects. The  problem of not knowing what happiness looks like means that it could be anywhere and everywhere, requiring a mode of vigilance, that I as a profoundly lazy person (Remember the Hammock!!!), cannot reasonably be expected to maintain. It could come from without: is that happiness? Is that happiness? No, that’s a building; no, that’s a wild boar: no, that’s a McDonald’s; no that’s a traffic jam, but wait, I didn’t really want to go to work, so maybe it is. Damn. Everything is context! From one perspective this is the worst fucking thing ever—this pile of cars on I-25 in Northern New Mexico—from another perspective: shit yeah. I can’t possibly go to work now!

Actually we must stop here and observe that the idea of a bona fide traffic jam anywhere in New Mexico, is truly hilarious. Other places have traffic jams. We have slight pauses in traffic flow. Although, since there are no other highways going North-South between Albuquerque and anywhere, if someone loses their shit and turns over, you will be truly not going anywhere for a while, and neither will anyone else because, yes, the NM highway patrol will close the interstate. Yes. You heard me. Elsewhere that would be tantamount to cancelling breathing, but here. . . problem with the road? Ah, fuck it, close it. Maybe we’ll open it later. But since there very little “somewhere to go” here anyway that probably doesn’t matter either ergo “happiness.” There’s nowhere to go and you don’t need to go there anyway, so get that Twix bar out of your glove compartment, sit back with some tunes in your little plastic cylinder called a car, and call it a good time.

HAPPINESS VIGILANCE: IT COULD BE ANYWHERE!!!!!

Happiness Vigilance also requires taking one’s pulse all the time, because in some cases, happiness can just arrive from within. No rhyme. No reason. Just suddenly “poof’ you are happy. It does happen. We aren’t really sure exactly if outer things cause happiness, or if happiness causes the outer things; it’s referred to in the social sciences as the “Chicken and the Happiness” question.

Happy Chicken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DIAGNOSING HAPPINESS: watch closely

Using the Happiness Watch method, a person has to monitor their inner feeling state all the time, in case of an outbreak of joy, contentment, peace, bliss, ecstasy and uncontrollable silliness, who are the isotopes of happiness. It’s a little like the decay of uranium, but without the toxicity and associated incidents of nearly spontaneous death for those of you who need a reference point.

So let me check: Am I feeling happy now? Now? How about now? No, that’s me just digesting a Twix bar. That? no that is genuine prissiness. How about now? Am I feeling happy now? What about now? How about now? Have I got it now?

chasing-your-tail (1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEST REGUARDS,

The Laughing Coyote

 

Categories: The Issue of Happiness | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

WHAT TO DO DURING AN OUTBREAK OF HAPPINESS

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

Image

I woke up today wanting to have a good time. I think they call it “having fun.” I wasn’t sure what to do: I thought it might possibly be related to “enjoyment,” or “the absence of misery,” or “not having to work today, or not until later and then, not that hard.”

I got up before my phone alarm went off. I looked around my house for something fun. I realized, “I don’t know how to have fun,” or “I don’t know what would be fun,” and “my life isn’t set up for fun.”  I concluded, “Shit, even simple pleasure escapes me.”

I tried smiling and my face fell off and I spent a discouraging day on the floor scrabbling around for the pieces, thinking what the fuck was I thinking? See? Just contemplating happiness has made me miserable. And then a question erupted from the relative silence of my bowels: could Happiness be the cause of Unhappiness?

If I hadn’t been thinking about “fun,” none of this bad shit, like trying to find my left cheek here on the floor, and not stepping on my eyes on my way to finding my eyebrows, and trying to put my skin back on my bones in something resembling a façade, and then realizing the mirror makes everything backwards. .  .had I not been “rediscovering joy,” none of this would have ever happened, including the crooked smile on my forehead. No I don’t  want to talk about it, thank you onslaught of new age healers.

Typically I am cowering in some existential corner, trying to survive the onslaught of life. Given the fact that I am set up pretty well in my world right now despite the IRS saying otherwise, this recoiling is somewhat ridiculous. I’ll bet the Syrians and Ukrainians and women who can’t get abortions, aren’t having a good “cower,” why should I? Sure, I am supposed to be grieving my mother’s death, but since no one is keeping an eye on me, I don’t have to unless I want to and right now I’d rather do anything other than feel bad. Even I have limits.

I know how to feel bad. I’m an expert at it. And I’m bored. Boredom, I’m ashamed to say, is my biggest motivator.  Once, in my early twenties, I decided “screw this, I’m going to bed and never getting up again.” Four hours later I was up and around and chatting with my boyfriend on the sidewalk. Giving up was mindbogglingly tedious. I decided that if a major depressive episode couldn’t be more entertaining, than I just wasn’t going to participate. You can only do so much with grey.

Returning to the present, (or some facsimile thereof) I decided, firmly, that I would now attempt happiness. Drum roll please. Or, perhaps more meekly, as I said in a text to a friend, “I am now ready to heroically attempt some ‘non-committal enjoyment’.”

In order to embark upon the pursuit of happiness in a safe and informed manner, I turned to Laughing Coyote Productions resident psychological expert, Dr. Crabby Ass.

He promptly advised against it.

In his article “Doing Psychotherapy with the Impossible,” the renown Dr. Crabby Ass writes, “I’m a trained psychotherapist. I help people with happiness. Not how to get happiness, everyone knows THAT can’t be done, how to stay away from it. In the words of one my clients, ‘I don’t have time for happiness. It gets in the way of worrying, which leads to efficiency and getting things done. If I didn’t worry and have unattainable goals to keep me busy, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.’”

Another friend of mine, who lives in the Northwest was more subtle. She refers to the state of being in which a person feels a profound lack of unhappiness, as “The H word,” out of deference to its often dangerous effects. She wasn’t trying to discourage me, but hinted that the Big H (her other name for it) might be too much to shoot for especially if one is vulnerable to the Big D, depression.

Thus I spent the next few days trying to “Un” the “Unhappy”, as a way to make the endeavor safer for me, the result of which was a non-word that had way to many U’s in it which then suggested other things: UnUnhappy. Thus ended my dream of creating  a safe word for The Big H.

Then Dr. Crabby Ass, with my best interest in mind, emailed me an article he wrote back in April 2014 in Pessimism Today entitled,

WHAT TO DO DURING AN OUTBREAK OF HAPPINESS 

1. Don’t run. It will just chase you.

2. Stand still and make yourself as big as possible. Holding your arms over your head and waving them is known to be effective in some cases. Make Happiness think that you are bigger than it and that you may not be worth the trouble.

3. Don’t panic and run around screaming. Remember Happiness is probably more scared of you than you are of it.

4. Preparation. Think ahead before you leave the house. What might I need to have with me just in case happiness shows up unannounced? Carrying around a copy of Sartre’s “No Exit” is a proven method of fending off unwanted happiness. So is watching You Tube Videos about how Republican congresses in many states are closing down almost all the abortion clinics, thereby saving women (and men) from having to make the most important decision of their lives, and now babies can grow up with I had to have you stapled to their foreheads.

5. Visit your local Planned Parenthood (before it gets completed defunded) and learn about the causes of Happiness and various prophylactic measures that can be taken so that Unwanted Happiness just doesn’t even occur. Yes, you can prevent Joy with a bit of rubber and some water based lube.

6. Should you end up with some Happiness despite these measures, remember to talk to it in low measured tones. You don’t want it to get too excited.

7. Should Happiness come into your life, don’t feed it!

8. In the event you are experiencing uncalled for joy, keep an obnoxious family member or ex on speed dial. They can either talk the Happiness down over the phone, sometimes by merely breathing into it, or they can just show up on your doorstep, bringing with them their usual interpersonal toolkit that always makes you want to drive off the nearest bridge.

9.  If you are close enough to work, this is the one instance where running from Happiness will probably be effective. Practice your wind sprints out in the yard beforehand, just in case.

10. As a preventive measure wear a mask and earplugs, so you don’t accidentally breathe in Happiness Cooties from those ridiculous sanguine yoga people, or hear the unmistakable mantra of the ‘infectious laugh.”

11. Stop reading the Laughing Coyote blog! Duh, that  should have been obvious.

If Happiness continues to attack

12. Laugh in its face. That’ll disarm the smiley little fucker.

13. Carry a weapon. You know, like a pistol, or a semi-automatic. In a holster.  Or around your neck, like a big metal pendant. When you are walking down the street and drinking a shotgun latte at Starbucks. (For the recipe of shotgun latte, post a comment).

Thus, if Happiness shows up, you can shoot it in the face and then claim you felt threatened. Yea Open Carry Laws!

14. Seek help. If you continue to feel assaulted by Happiness, there’s a support group for people like you: Jubiliation Anonymous.

Step 1: We admitted that we are powerless over Happiness and that our lives have become unmanageable.

Step 2:  We came to believe a power greater than ourselves (Re: GUN pointed at my head) could restore us to reality…oops I mean, sanity…..

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our life back over to our Unresolved Suffering and Our Problems as We Understood them…..solutions are for pussies…

14. Or call the hotline: 1-800-WE-WHEEP. (Yes there’s an H in there for obvious, by now, reasons).

 

After all of this decision making and self-exploration and resolution creating and consulting, Laughing Coyote needs a nap.

I will continue to update you on the progress of the UnUnHappy Project….maybe those U’s aren’t so bad after all….

Best regards,

LC

Image

 

Categories: Dr. Crabby Ass Gives Advice, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

How a Party Is Different Than Therapy

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Deborah Stehr

Laughing Coyote aims to be of service to the community by occasionally posting useful existential tips. This post’s “advice about living,” comes to us from Dr. Crabby Ass, Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of WTF.

This week’s public service announcement has to do with parties, and may, or may not, apply more to women, than men. There is a total attempt here at gender bias.

How a Party Is Different Than Therapy

party women

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One:

Party: drink while you are there

Therapy: drinking during the session is usually discouraged.

(In fact the drinking may occur at some point before the session and may be why you are  there)

TherapySmall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two:

Party: talking to people lightly as if nothing matters, especially not the shit that really matters

Therapy: saying all the horrible crap in your life that you can, as thoroughly as you can, so you don’t have to do it while you are at the party

 

Three:

Party: you do not pay anyone there to listen to you

Therapy: if you don’t pay the person, they won’t listen to you

Party: if you are paying the person you are with at the party it’s called prostitution, but don’t think most of us haven’t thought of it

Four:

Party: bitterness, anger and too many details are not attractive.

Therapy: Where’s the drama?

 

Five:

Party: stories about unmitigated unhappiness should be kept to five minutes or less

Therapy: anything less than five minutes is denial.

Six:

Party: if there are more than two people in the room with you it’s probably a party

 Seven:

Party: If you are lying down on the couch, people will think you are too drunk to stand up.

Therapy: If you are laying down on the couch at this point in history, you are paying too much money!

_____________________________

If you have more tips on how a party is different than therapy, feel free to post them herei! Dr. Crabby Ass appreciates the help while the Laughing Coyote is off chasing her tail, hoping that this time, it will  work out.

 

Best regards,

LC

imagesCAQ9YDJW

Categories: Dr. Crabby Ass Gives Advice | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Blog at WordPress.com.

Ben's Bitter Blog

"We make bitter better."

Jaguar House Shamanism: Dreamwork, Ceremony, Storytelling & Consultation

with Dr. Deborah Stehr, House of the 13th Jaguar

Chloe Ann-King

Words by Auckland based community activist and advocate Chloe Ann-King. She isn't sorry about all the swears.

K.E. Wilkinson

This is a hypothetical question...

The Flannel Files

Rae Theodore's BUTCH blog about living in the middle of girl/boy

Aerogramme Writers' Studio

Books and Writing | News and Resources

Jeffrey Levine

poetry, publishing, and mentoring

THE EDITOR'S JOURNAL

Shots From The Heart

Life's journey in words.