Boycott Aaron Carter: Art Thief and Asshole

So, dumpster fire and talentless hack Aaron Carter is ripping off the work of an actual artist to promote his shitty merchandise.

Here is the location of the tweet in case you’d like to respond to Aaron’s entitled temper tantrum. https://t.co/MG78rgCwZr

Here is the article on Forbes where I first learned of this incident. It includes a picture of Jonas’ art.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadjasayej/2020/01/18/berlin-artist-jonas-jdicke-speaks-up-about-aaron-carter-art-fiasco/#6fe442482b6f

I added the following sentiment to my retweet of Aaron’s cosmically shitty response to Jonas Jodicke’s classy request that Aaron stop using his art without his permission.

It's probably too much to ask for @aaroncarter to not behave like a complete trash fire for once in his arrogant, entitled life. Aaron is ripping off @JoJoesArt because he doesn't have an original bone in his entire body. Don't buy his overpriced merch, he doesn't deserve a cent.

I wouldn’t wipe my ass with Aaron’s overpriced clothes. Please share this so everyone knows what a colossal douchebag Aaron the Art Thief is.

Sunday Dinner at the Grover Hotel: Ornery's Easy Cooking Tips: Caramelized Onions

Image by Thanks for your Like • donations welcome from Pixabay

Some of you will probably roll your eyes at this post and say: "well, THAT is not exactly brand new information, Ornery Old Lady."

Well, it is to me. I just learned how to caramelize onions recently. So, for those of you who have not been let in on the secret, it goes like this.

Cut up your onion. Toss it with a little oil and seasoning. I like Kinder's Seasoning blends, but plain salt and pepper will work just fine.

Cook your onion in a skillet on medium-high heat until it starts to soften and brown. I like to use a cast-iron skillet.

For each small to medium-sized onion or half of a large onion, add 1/4 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Cook and stir until the onion becomes caramelized and jammy.

Caramelized onions are super versatile and go well with meats or other vegetables. Put them on burgers, alongside steak, chicken, or pork, or put them in a grilled cheese sandwich for an easy and different flavor. I don't recommend using American cheese for this. I like grilled cheese sandwiches made with American cheese, but the flavor just isn't right for combining with the caramelized onion.

Enjoy!

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Contentious Eggplant

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troublesome eggplant

hard to sketch and hard to grow

pumpkins are not so

~cie~

notes

So, the challenge was to rewrite a Haiku by Shiki using the Shasei style and then turn it into a Tanka. Please click the banner to learn more. If I try to explain, it will only end up becoming convoluted.

I am not sure I succeeded at Shasaei-ing, but I did learn that Shiki was a rebel, and this I succeed at. After re-imagining his Haiku about eggplant and pumpkins, I thought that adding the Ageku stanza would overshadow the perfect brevity (and sharp snarkitude) of the resulting Senryu, so I am leaving it Ageku-less.

Here is the Eggplant Haiku by Shiki.

Sketching from life —

eggplants are harder to do

than pumpkins

© Masaoka Shiki (Tr. Burton Watson)

Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry

This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili

between the beans and the spice

digestive horror

beneath the cover of night

noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.

Fat and Ornery

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

Sly and Snarky

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com

Tanka Splendor: Vernal Equinox

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vernal equinox

fifty-fifth year of my life

will I find some peace

or will the dark curtain fall

as it tends to do in spring?

~cie~

notes

I created the Tanka Splendor badge with a free to use stock image on Pixlr. Please feel free to use it on your own blog. No credit is necessary.

I was not correctly diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder until I was nearly 40 years old. I was diagnosed with "depression and anxiety." I have both of those, but I have bipolar disorder rather than unipolar depression as my son has. My restlessness was sometimes blamed on ADD, which I have as well, but the restlessness becomes magnified in a hypomanic state.

My baseline mood is moderately depressed. Some of my depression is situational. Living in poverty is very stressful. I try to ameliorate the way I feel about it by the fact that I keep trying, but sometimes I feel like all my trying adds up to one big ole heapin' helpin' of horse manure and I become despondent. 

I live with suicide ideation. I think about offing myself a lot. Ideation is not the same as planning. My planning levels tend to be low regardless of how strong the ideation levels are. Generally speaking, I'm probably too much of an asshole to commit suicide because then I wouldn't be able to piss people off by existing in a corporeal fashion in their presence. But sometimes not having to struggle sure sounds like a winner.

I have experienced spring depression almost every year of my life since I hit puberty. My puberty was somewhat precocious and started coming on when I was nine years old. Thinking back on things, the first time I can remember seeing a strong manifestation that could have been identified as bipolar 2 was on my tenth birthday. 

Bipolar 2 can be sneaky since it presents with hypomania rather than full mania. Hypomania is like "mania lite." However, it can be just as destructive. I've learned to recognize the magical thinking that comes with the condition and to try not to act on my impulses during periods of hypomania. By magical thinking, I don't mean believing in fairies or even believing something potentially fatal like thinking I could get up on a roof and float down. Hypomania does not create that sort of delusion. (The delusion that jumping off a roof is a good idea. I like to hope that believing in fairies is not a delusion.) It does create the sort of delusion that I should buy into an MLM program for a thousand dollars and will make a butt-ton of money and be able to live happily ever after. I don't have the focus to be successful at such a thing, even if it is one of the few programs that is legit.

By the way, Watkins is not that sort of program. It is legit, and the "buy-in" for a year is only $30. I'm only saying this because the -666 of you who follow my blogs might be saying "oh, Cie, have you done this again with this Watkins thing?" No, I actually only signed up for Watkins to get discounts on my own merchandise but after reviewing the material felt good about recommending it to others.

I am trying to learn to forgive myself for sometimes really awful and personally destructive past decisions and to stop belittling myself for having a brain that works differently than the brains of the sort of people who tend to be held up as examples. Nobody will ever say: "why can't you be more like that ornery old hag cie? I mean, she's simply all over the place, and she's easily distracted except when she's laser-focused on one of her ruinous plans? Now there's someone you can look up to!"

I will be fifty-five in a month and a day from this writing unless I go tits up in the meantime. I have no hope that "this will be my year" as I always told myself on birthdays in the past and was inevitably disappointed. This will be a year. There will be no significant shifts. I will remain me and the world will wag on.

Carpe Diem New Beginnings: First Snow

Image by JL G from Pixabay

the first snow crept in

one windy October night

teeth biting through bone

~cie~

Carpe Diem New Beginnings: Ornery Senryu: First Sunray

Image Source

first rays of sunshine

after working the night shift

felt like a vampire

~The Ornery Old Night Owl~

Image Copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

Ornery Notes:

I haven't had to work the night shift in close to three years now. But I'm still a night owl!

The night shift was always fine for me until about three or four in the morning. The last three or four hours were horrible.

Visit the Artist

Ghost Town Grover Sez:

"I gotta tell y'all, on Halloween night in Telluride in 1880, I was whoopin' it up with some of the other miners, and when I went out behind the saloon to drain the ole rattlesnake, this pale feller with slick black hair wearin' a fancy cape come floatin' up beside me. I asked him if he wanted to come into the saloon and join me and the fellers fer a swig of Amos Fine's Famous Shine. 

That high-fallutin' feller said in a hoity-toity way that he didn't never drink Shine. Now, maybe he was jest eccentric or somethin', but when Father O'Malley come outta the saloon wearin' his big ole silver cross on a chain, that feller hissed like an angry tomcat, hollered "BLUH!", pulled his cape over his face, and turned tail and run. 

Maybe he'd bin slippin' outta the church after Sunday meetin's without tithin' proper, but there shore was somethin' weird about that fancy-pants stranger, and he shore didn't take a shine to the good Father and his shiny cross.

Visit the Artist

Cactus Clem Sez:

"Well, Grover, I bet y'all didn't know it, but Ornery actually is a vamper. I done heard her tellin' someone all about how she got hammered on cactus juice on Saint Patrick's Day in 1992 an' ended up sleepin' on someone's bathroom floor! She ain't tried to drink the juice from my veins yet, but I'm gonna have to sleep with one eye open on St. Patrick's Day!"

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Further Ornery Notes:

Cactus Clem doesn't have anything to worry about. I really can't drink more than a few sips of beer or wine these days. But if you're feeling daring, you can click the link above and try the drink that the cute little buffalo is serving up!