memories, musings

Repost: Ghosts of writings past… and so-called fake news

I am reposting this article from January 24, 2017 as I reflect on some changes that may be coming about soon. Ever since I moved this blog from Blogger, my “income” from writing, such as it was, has dried up. I don’t mind so much, since I never wrote for the money, anyway. It’s just something I’ve always been compelled to do. But, you know, no good deed goes unpunished. I just think this is an interesting look back, so I am sharing it again, as/is.

For about eleven years, I wrote articles for a variety of online publishers.  I was like a lot of people, making a few extra bucks writing about what I know or about subjects that captured my interest.  I sold a number of articles and, for awhile, writing served as a steady source of pocket money.  Then all the content mills dried up.  Now I only write on my own blogs and make whatever Google pays me every few months after I earn over $100 in ad revenue.

Every once in awhile, I find old articles I’ve written on the Internet.  They are always credited to “contributor”.  It’s weird, too, because they always have a copyright sign next to them, even though I’m the one who wrote them.  Some of the articles that turn up include my own stories.  I’ll give you an example of what I mean. 

Many years ago, I remember reading an article about a celebrity who engaged in a practice commonly referred to as “chew and spit”.  I want to say it was Glen Campbell, but I can’t be certain, since I’m pretty sure I read the article in the 80s.  Anyway, I absolutely do remember that in the article, “chew and spit” was referred to as oral expulsion syndrome (OES).  Both terms refer to the practice of chewing up food and spitting it out rather than swallowing it.  
In the 80s, I was fascinated by the idea of chewing and spitting food.  In those days, I flirted a bit with eating disorders myself and was always looking for tricks to shed pounds while indulging.  Eventually, I mostly grew out of my obsession and completely forgot about OES, having never tried it myself.  

Then, maybe six or seven years ago, I was a featured health and wellness writer on a Web site.  I had to write three articles a week and was trying to come up with an original topic.  That obscure memory of OES suddenly popped into my head.  I scoured the Internet for articles about it and came up with only a few very obscure references.  Jackpot!

So I started writing my article, aided by the fact that I’d recently read Dolly Parton’s 1994 book My Life and Other Unfinished Business after a trip to a thrift shop.  That was during a time when Bill and I were broke and I was getting a lot of reading material at used book stores.  I’m sure at the time I read Dolly Parton’s book, it was long off the best seller list and most people’s radar.  But then, I was also writing book reviews on a site where I could even make money if I reviewed old books, as long as the review drew readers.

In her 1994 memoirs, Dolly had included a passage about dieting.  One of the techniques Dolly suggested was the practice of chewing and spitting, though she didn’t refer to it as such.  So I wrote my very anecdotal piece and quoted direct passages from Dolly’s book in which she recommended chewing and spitting.  I found information as to why this technique might be more harmful than she let on.  I added links from reputable health related Web sites.  Voila!  A new resource was born to be used and abused by the masses! Below is a passage from the article I wrote for Associated Content about ten years ago. My original text from that article is in bold.

Those of us who have been around awhile know that Dolly Parton used to be significantly heavier than she is today. Indeed, in the 1980 film 9 to 5, she was downright plump. But several years after she made that film, she lost a dramatic amount of weight and now sports a thin body to go with her famously large bosom. Parton doesn’t share too much specific information about how she lost the weight, other than a passage she writes on page 255 of her autobiography:

One other hint I’d like to pass on has to do with chewing. Our taste buds are only in our mouths, after all, and we don’t really taste the food when we swallow it. You can get a lot of the satisfaction from the taste of things you love by just chew, chew, chew, chew, Chattanooga chew-chewing and then not swallowing. “Wait a minute,” you’re thinking. “If I don’t swallow, won’t I have to spit the food out?” You’re right. “That’s disgusting,” you say. That may be, but what’s more disgusting? Spitting out food or being a lardass?

As Dolly Parton puts it, “If you’re going to lose weight, you’re going to have to eat less food” (254). According to her book, Parton believes that heavy people are heavy because they eat a lot and, while she agrees that exercise is important, Parton seems to think that the real trick to weight loss is to not eat much. But even as she encourages eating sparingly, she admits that eating is pleasurable.

After she passes along her tip about chewing up food and spitting it out, she adds:

I’m not suggesting for a moment that you spit up food. That’s very dangerous, but it doesn’t hurt to spit it out. I know for a fact that many stars and models chew and spit. The first time somebody told me that, I was so shocked I dropped a whole Styrofoam cup of chewed doughnuts.

I’m pretty sure I sold that article to the publisher for a paltry sum.  Then, a few years later, the publisher went under.  But that article and others I’ve written are still out there, attributed to “contributor”.  What’s even funnier is that I’ve found that article referenced in other places, or hacked up by people who are claiming it as their own.  In fairness to the person whose article I just linked, I suppose it’s possible that she also read Dolly Parton’s book and decided to write about chewing and spitting, too.  It just seems eerily reminiscent of what I had written several years before.  Besides that, Dolly’s book was twenty years old by the time this person wrote about OES.  

I guess it doesn’t bother me to much to know that a lot of my work is out there and I’m no longer credited.  I think I’m more amused than anything else, especially since that article I wrote about OES was hatched from a very old memory and obscure details.  This is not to say that what I wrote wasn’t factual.  I did do as much research as I could for the original article.  I would not have published it if all the information I had found were anecdotes or blog entries about chewing and spitting.  It’s just that my article wasn’t exactly peer reviewed or vetted by experts.  And now I see that information is being disseminated by others.  Maybe I’m partially to blame for “fake news”.

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mental health, movies, musings

Shut up before we really give you something to cry about!

For years, I’ve heard people mention the campy 1968 sci-fi flick, Barbarella. Jane Fonda was the star of that movie, which I finally watched last night. It was another cheap download from iTunes. I’d never seen it, but heard references to it. I decided last night, I’d find out what the hubbub was all about. I watched it and found it rather hilariously weird. I wished I had some pot. I think marijuana would have made watching it even more bizarre.

I was born in 1972, so the first movie I ever saw starring Jane Fonda was 9 to 5. I actually saw that one in the movie theater when I was about eight years old. I saw it countless times on HBO when I was growing up, and later bought a download of it, because I love watching movies from the 80s… especially when I’m bored or stressed out. The last few weeks have been boring and stressful.

This is a WEIRD film.

To be honest, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the plot for Barbarella. It reminded me a lot of some of the soft porn flicks that used to be aired on The Movie Channel during the late 80s and early 90s. The Movie Channel was a lot more liberal about what they aired than HBO was, and in those days, there weren’t multiple cable movie channels like there are now. In a way, I’m kind of glad I was a kid in those days, when things were simpler. I’m glad my childhood was pretty normal and free range, and I got to do a lot of things that young people today can’t do… things I think are pretty essential to becoming a functioning adult, like going to the store by myself at a young age.

Today’s youngsters have an especially raw deal. This past year has really sucked. It’s sucked for everyone, but it’s sucked worse for some people than others. My year hasn’t been that bad compared to some people’s years. But, for sure, I am glad I’m not a teenager these days. So many of the things that make life worth living aren’t allowed right now. And when you’re a teenager, things probably seem a lot more important than they really are. All of the stuff that makes being a teen fun are on hold. Or they have to be done while masked and socially distanced.

Even those who are lucky enough to be able to have team sports sometimes have to contend with assholes who ruin the fun. Case in point, this jackass announcer who uttered racist and derogatory comments because some of the players at a high school game decided to kneel when “The Star Spangled Banner” was played. When the announcer, name of Matt Rowan, was rightfully called out for his disgraceful comments caught on a hot mike, he blamed it on a sugar spike caused by his Type 1 diabetes. I feel sorry for the youngsters who had to hear that. It was totally uncalled for, especially at a high school game.

Friday, I watched Pretty in Pink, which was released when I was in the 8th grade. Just a few months after it came out, I entered my freshman year of high school, which was kind of a mind blower. Back then, there was no Internet, but we had some really cool music and interesting fashions. It was just before everything went online– kind of the fetal phase of the Internet. I had a nerdy friend at that time who ran up huge phone bills using her modem to chat with guys in Ohio, even though we lived in Virginia. She posted on bulletin boards and developed this whole social life that was so mysterious to me. And look at us now. Where would we be without the Internet? Hard to tell…

In some ways, the Internet made things better. I can keep in touch with some old friends who are still fun to be friends with. On the other hand, some people you’d rather not be in touch with anymore and being online makes it easy for them to find you. And thanks to the Internet, people can still kind of function, which can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Some people are thriving. I would be fine with distance working or learning. Others need to be in an office with others… or working in groups. They hate being stuck at home and aren’t as productive there. And some people, who ordinarily would never be home because of work and are enjoying the family time they’re getting, would rather things not go back to “normal”.

I don’t know when we’ll get the vaccine. Germany has been very slow rolling it out, and I doubt we’d be able to get it here anyway, until more citizens have gotten it. The U.S. military has also been really slow with roll out… and I heard some gossip indicating that some powers that be are not being fair about its distribution. If we were in Hawaii, Japan, or Korea we’d probably be inoculated by now. I don’t necessarily look forward to getting the shot(s) or their potential side effects, but I do look forward to ditching this lifestyle. Everything is so gloomy. Good thing we have guys like Randy Rainbow to make us smile…

Too right, as the Aussies say.

But it’s hard to keep smiling, especially when you’re subscribed to periodicals like The Atlantic and they keep posting depressing articles with even more depressing headlines. Twice, I’ve seen them post an article about mourning our “normal” lives and accepting that things will basically suck from now on. There are endless articles about how awful everything is. As a matter of fact, here’s a list of fifteen of the articles featured on their Facebook page right now:

  • Modern Life Has Made It Easier For Serial Killers to Thrive
  • Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
  • The Relentlessness of Black Grief
  • High School Wasn’t Supposed to Be Like This
  • 3 Miles from Martha’s Vineyard is an Island Full of Bombs
  • People Are Keeping Their Vaccines Secret
  • Renting is Terrible. Owning is Worse.
  • Texas’s Disaster is Over. The Fallout is Just Beginning.
  • When Postpartum Depression Doesn’t Go Away
  • Giraffes Edge Closer to Extinction
  • The Republican Party Isn’t Going Anywhere
  • The Pandemic Has Given Women a New Kind of Rage
  • Why Do So Many Men Watch Lesbian Porn?
  • Cone Snails are Liars and Murderers
  • We Have To Grieve Our Last Good Days

These articles have been run over the past couple of days. I feel like I need to take a prophylactic antidepressant before I look at their Facebook page. There have been a few that weren’t depressing, but on the whole, it seems like The Atlantic is in a depression and wants to share the wealth. Add in the headlines from other papers, and it does seem like spring is going to be bleak, even though it’s traditionally when things come back to life. I hope I’m wrong. I hope the vaccine works to slow the spread of the disease. The latest South Park, which hilariously shows elderly people living it up while the rest of us hide away at home, shows how weird things are… I’d almost feel like I’m Barbarella myself, minus Jane Fonda’s smokin’ hot body circa 1968 and the sexual pleasure machine.

I got bored the other day and ended up on a porn site. It was an interesting place… it included videos that were homemade as well as a few that were cheesy professional ones. I get a kick out of some kinds of porn. It’s definitely not a genre for the high minded. Sometimes people upload clips from kinky mainstream TV shows and movies. I clicked on one that was in a foreign language… and I realized that I understood some of what was being said. It turned out someone had uploaded a clip from an Armenian soap opera or movie. The environment was weirdly familiar, too. I was hoping we could have visited Armenia by now, but the pandemic messed up those plans.

I ended up watching the whole clip from the Armenian show. I had a good laugh and was pleasantly surprised, because it was relatively well done compared to what was available when I lived there in the 90s. There was really nothing particularly pornographic about the clip. I mean, it was totally PG mainstream, something you might see on prime time television. I could post it here and not be embarrassed or ashamed. I just thought it was funny that I randomly clicked on a video on a porn site that happened to be from Armenia. I doubt the same could be said for the German clips that get uploaded.

I don’t usually watch whole porn clips, because I find them way too cringey. Some of it is just too raw for me. I don’t like looking at nudity or violence. I don’t like bad acting. Watching people having sex is boring– especially when it’s porn sex, which has no element of reality to it whatsoever. I’d rather read something fascinating and a little kinky rather than watch it. But when you’ve been alone for weeks, sometimes you get desperate for entertainment. I think the Sims should make an R or even X rated version of the game for old people like me.

My parents had this album on 8 Track. That’s how old and obscure it is. I uploaded it a few years ago, since I don’t think anyone else had at the time. Glen Campbell was very accomplished on the bagpipes. He should have made more music on them.

At least there’s music… like this gorgeous bagpipe arrangement played by the late Glen Campbell (incidentally, a distant cousin of Bill’s). I suspect I’ll be listening to a lot of music today, as I pass the historically dullest day of the week… Sunday. In Germany, Sunday is even duller, since everything is closed. But everything is closed anyway, so it’s like everyday is Sunday. Actually, that’s not quite true. The grocery stores, flower shops, hair salons, and book shops are open. I think you can buy garden supplies. And maybe in two weeks, more stuff will open up.

Anyway… just a few more days until Bill comes home. Until then, I’ll keep watching old movies, the odd porn clips, and listening to obscure music. Maybe I’ll come up with something interesting to write about. Maybe I’ll even resort to writing fiction. Perhaps now is the time to start a fiction blog, now that the stalker has finally fucked off. Or… put it this way… I no longer care what she reads. Legal remedy is complete… for now.

Gentle Bill turned me on to The Bloodhound Gang.

Perhaps there really is something to that old saying, “Shut up before we really give you something to cry about.” I used to hear that a lot when I was growing up. And I often ended up crying, anyway, either because my feelings were hurt or my ass was sore and smarting from a “spanking” (which was more like an enraged beating). I don’t cry much anymore, though. Don’t have the hormones or the tear ducts anymore. LOL… funny enough, I wouldn’t mind getting a spanking today. As long as it was Bill who delivered it. He’s gentle and I’m bored and frustrated… and a trifle kinky. But not kinky enough to cry while I give someone a lapdance. And the world heaves a collective sigh of relief…

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