Cinderella's Diary

I miss my stepmother. What a thing to say
but it's true. The prince is so boring: four hours to dress and then the cheering throngs.Again. The page who holds the door is cute enough to eat. Where is he once Mr. Charming kisses my forehead goodnight?

Every morning I gaze out a casement window
at the hunters, dark men with blood on their boots who joke and mount, their black trousersstraining, rough beards, callused hands, selfish, abrupt ...

Oh, dear diary—I am lost in ever after:
Those insufferable birds, someone in every room with a lute, the queen calling me to look at another painting of her son, this time holding the transparent slipper I wish
I'd never seen.

"Cinderella's Diary" by Ron Koertge

The Virginia State Flag

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You folks from Virginia don't need to thank me. I'm just doin' my job.

Comfort And Aid For Those That Comfort And Aid

One of my personal heroes is Dr. Gary Sweeten. As a Christian and a Psychologist he has tremendous insight into helping pastors build strong Christian lives. In fact this is his life’s work as the director of Life Ways Ministries.

He made some comments in his blog this past year about the breakdown a minister can go through when no one is ministering to him.

We consider the pastor of a church to have a gravy job. You go to work on Sunday morning and speak for 90 minutes. Perhaps there is some weekly service you are required to lead. You have to smile and make nice and hope the church board provides enough for you and your family to live on.



However according to Dr. Sweeten, there is a lot more that Protestant ministers have on their plate than these sweet aspects and it is driving many of them to find comfort in hidden vices and many others are calling it quits and leaving their profession. From a reading of the news the outlook in the Catholic community appears just as bleak.




In yesterday’s news we learned about the hidden life of Evangelist, Ted Haggard. Reverend Haggard serves as the head pastor at a 14,000 member charismatic church in Colorado called New Life Church. He was elected to be head of the National Evangelistic Association. A male prostitute in the Colorado area claims that Reverend Haggard has been paying him for homosexual acts over the past 3 years.

Yesterday Reverend Haggard denied that claim. As Dr. Sweeten said in the blog I referred to, “He doth protest too much.”

Today when taped phone messages became public Reverend Haggard amended his denial to say that all he did was pay the prostitute for an innocent massage. Oh yeah, this reverend and father of five admitted that he bought illegal methamphetamine to share with the gay masseuse. So much for his credibility. The good reverend has quit his gig with the National Evangelistic Association. He has stepped aside as head pastor while his churches governing board investigates.


When I was a very young guy I was involved with a Christian group that was lead by a very charming middle aged man. He was married and the father of three. He was a seemingly devoted Christian and worked as a city engineer. He lost his position as leader in a church due to what he said was a difference in interpretation of the Bible. That should have raised a red flag, but I was a young and naive kid at the time.

To make a long story short, the light shone on a secret life that he thought he could keep hidden. He was having sex with a lady that was staying in his home and he was physically abusing his wife and children. The man needed help, but based on what he perceived as his position as leader there was no one to help him to come to grips with his spiritual and psychological needs. This is that same position in which Reverend Haggard finds himself.

We have seen this sort of thing in the news before from other well known Christians. These events are probably repeated on a daily basis by “professional” Christians in bedroom communities throughout the USA.

The men (and women) that serve us in the capacity of minister need someone to help and share their burden and give them the encouragement. They need to be provided with the tools to cope to continue in their work In fact isn’t this something that we all need?

It would seem to me that people in positions of counselling emotional and spiritual advice would do well to have some sort of professional guidance on a regular basis. Most professionals in other fields have mandatory continuing education and peer review which keeps them not only on par with their contemporaries, but gives them a scorecard of how they compare. It is doubtful that most churches have these business standards in place. I am of the opinion that pastors need to have someone to open up to and help them with resolving their inner conflicts. At the very least they would have an unbiased sounding board to provide them with reponse. And if it is found that their inner life has become totally polarized the response may be for them to find another line of work or at least take a sabbatical to evaluate their life. We see news articles like Reverend Haggard too often. This creates an embarrassment for his family, his church and the entire Christian community. If the cause of a man's problem could be diagnosed and dealt with before it comes down to bringing shame upon his family and all that associated with him we would be so much the better.

Dung - Dung - Dung - Dung

excreted by the Associated Press©

Meadow muffins. Guano. Feces. Doody. Caca. The words for poop are endless, but the Miami Metrozoo has another term to add to the list: educational.





Now on display is a 5,000-square-foot exhibit on excrement titled "The Scoop on Poop," which invites visitors to explore the science of scat. The exhibit is filled with photos of animals in some of their most indelicate moments. Stool sample models abound: haylike football-sized balls (elephant), kidney-bean-looking pellets (porcupine) and coallike lumps coated with fur (black bear).



Beyond the "ick" factor, however, zoo officials and the exhibit's creators say there is a lot of information being imparted. Visitors can smell the stench of flowers that mimic dung to attract flies for pollination. Videos include one of a hippo spreading its droppings around to mark its territory.

Simple games include "Who Dung It?"

"We didn't want this to be a gross exhibit for shock value," said Chad Peeling, who helped create the display. "Our goal with the exhibit was to make people think, kids especially, about the science in all aspects in life and this thing that adults don't like to talk about."

Miami is the exhibit's second stop after opening at a Virginia museum in May. Created by Clyde Peeling's Reptiland _ whose namesake is Chad Peeling's father _ in Allenwood, Pa., it is based on a 2001 book of the same name. After the exhibit closes at the Metrozoo in January, it will make stops in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Redding, Calif.



The exhibit is not the first to feature feces, however. An exhibit called "All the Poop" toured Japan in 2001 and another in England showcased scat samples.

On a recent afternoon one woman cheered "go, go, go" as two children raced model dung beetles at a station in the Miami exhibit. Students on a class trip posed in a cutout of a person sitting in an outhouse. Others examined slides of parasites found in dung using a microscope, while classmates weighed themselves on a scale designed to tell them how long it takes an elephant to poop their weight.

"I don't think it's that disgusting," said Bruno Cazarini, 13, of the exhibit's topic. "I think plenty of people get the wrong impression."

Cazarini, who was visiting the zoo with a school group, said he knew about dung beetles, some of which burrow inside dung to eat and rest. But he did not know about its uses as a type of waterproof plaster for the homes of Masai people in East Africa, which he learned from information at the exhibit.

Adults have had fun with material, too. Some volunteers and zoo employees have started wearing plastic poop pins that look like the real thing. Zoo personnel have also brought out a bowl of chocolate- covered candy, inviting visitors to take one if they dare.

Elephant keepers, meanwhile, were charged with weighing the amount of elephant poop one of the zoo's Asian male elephants, Dahlip, produces in a 24-hour period. The total: 540 pounds. Meanwhile, a commercial for the exhibit, which will begin running shortly, has already shown up on YouTube. (I'll sure be on the lookout for that!)

One couple, who are zoo donors, even called to offer to loan the zoo a scat sample of their own. The pair has a lump of excrement from 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat enclosed in a glass globe, which the zoo plans to put on exhibit within a few weeks.

The Demise Of An Entire Species

The original version of the plastic flamingo may be singing its swan song after inspiring countless pranks - and being alternately celebrated as a tribute to one of nature's most graceful creatures and derided as the epitome of American pop culture kitsch.

Union Products Inc. stopped producing flamingos and other lawn ornaments at its Leominster factory in June, and is going out of business Wednesday - a victim of rising expenses for plastic resin and electricity, as well as financing problems.

The small privately held firm has been in talks with a pair of rival lawn ornament makers interested in buying the molds and resuming production of the flamingos, designed in 1957 by local son Don Featherstone.

"We think the flamingo will go on," Keith Marshall, Union Products' chief financial officer, said at the company's aging brick factory, where just a few years ago more than 100 employees churned out flamingos by the millions.

Featherstone, who wrote a 1999 book about his creation called "Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass," studied art before Union Products hired him in 1956 to expand a line of lawn ornaments that consisted of two-dimensional renderings of animals. Featherstone sculpted his 3-D flamingos from clay, working from photos of the birds in National Geographic.

The ornaments hit the market in the late 1950s when the color pink was in vogue, and America's exploding population of suburbanites sought to add flair to their lawns, said Kevin McCarthy, a retired University of Florida professor and author of several books on Florida's history and culture.

But the birds also came to symbolize bad taste. They became the namesake of the 1972 John Waters film "Pink Flamingos," an epic to excess that celebrated a wide range of perversions. Some residential developments even banned flamingo ornaments.

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The True Story Of Chik Picker

This is a collaberative tale written by the good members of the FDP

The story you are about to hear is true. The names were changed to protect the innocent.

Once upon a time there was a chick named Chik Picker sitting at her house in the middle of a piney wood in a little town called Toad Suck. She was sitting in front of her PC feeling kind of bored so she thought she'd start a story. All she had been teaching the little children of Toad Suck lately was story writing and she was sort of in the mood to see if her friends wanted to have some fun and see what kind of story they could write together.

Well all of the sudden in came Pyne E. Wood. Well Pyne E. sat down and after several Oktoberfest beers and... and.. and....said, "My what big toads you have in this town."

Our hero, Pyne E. , lights a cigarette, looks up with steely eyes and says...while pointing directly at our intrepid author (Chikpicker)

"How much for one them toads? Can I get it flame broiled - or do you just eat 'em raw down here"?

Since we have so many toads here, Pyne E...you can have one for free,but if you want the legs cut off and fried it will cost you $12.95 at any fish house in town.

The toad said, "I'm NOT for sale!"

Just than a grasshopper stood up and said i can sell you a cricket cheap. keep him as a pet or eat em i don't care.

"Toads and crickets aren't my bag Sunshine" said Pyne E. "Tell me where I can get a cheesecoke and maybe I won't kill ya when the deal goes down."









The only place I know that you can get a good Cheesecoke in town would be that new Dole-a-bucks Psychodelicatessin they just put in next to the highway...its a chain now,you know, replied the toad.

"Oh great, drum circles" Pyne E. thought and says,"I'm not as think as y'all drunk I am. Honest."

"Wart else is new?" said the toad.

"I yam what I yam and I yam not under the affluence of incohol." Pyne E. said as he lumbered toward his bike, dodging a few of the valuable young nemotoads. Just as he fired up the machine ....And took off toward the local "Dol-a-bucks" for that hot bubbley "CheeseCoke" to wet his whistle.

And someone shouted,"Mr. Wood, If'n yer goin'down t'the Dol-a-Bucks, don't miss the all-you-kin-lick Psychedelic Toad Bar..."

To which, Pyne E. replied, "I'm not allowed to go back in there because once upon a time, a toad kissed a princess and then the princess cried ....KISS ME TOADIE!!!!! *reeling in a drunk stuper* She turned in to a 300lb. guy named Earl. Yeah that's the reason, I think. Heck I don't remember."

Just then, Powdered Toast Man burst onto the scene and...(Powdered Toast Man?..thats kinda crummy isn't it) and sprinkled all the guys that play pink guitars with fairy toast dust. And after that they were again allowed into the local Dol-a-bucks to lick the psychodelic froggys and drink unlimited cheesecoke for only $8.99.

But the fairy toad dust made the people who play pink guitars angry. And they picked up their pink guitars and loudly played a C chord and launched into Stairway to Heaven. Infuriating Earl who was still love struck from the kiss and ran up and grabbed a pink guitar and sang in a voice hoarse from drinking too hot cheese cokes, "Froggin went a courtin"

When suddenly...An evil man with a red guitar appeared in a cloud of smoke. His presence was like rain on a picnic. In a loud, thunderous voice, he said......"Has anyone seen my pink tutu?"

For just a moment, all the toads stopped and stared in dazed disbelief that this evil man with the red guitar...didn't have any pants on and was really looking for his pink tutu..just then the evil man with the red guitar looked up and saw Willie Nelson's tour bus pull into the parking lot. Willie,....Who was actually wearing a pink tutu. But he was wearing cheap blu-blocker sunglasses and the tutu looked white to him.

The evil man with the red pointy guitar stroked his evil goatee with his long evil fingers and said, "Gee,Willie sure is pretty in that white tutu...wonder if he has a rollin' paper or another tutu. "We'd make a lovely duo."




Through squinty eyes, Pyne E. watched this odd scene unfold before him and yelled, "Get the rope!"


Just then Willie and the Evil one launch into an impromptu version of the Pirates of Pezance on banjo and accordion after sampling some of Willie's "Private Reserve" and a band of gremlins joined in, all wearing pink tutus, until the evil man with the red guitar said, "I'll never smoke weed with Willie again".

"Pour, oh, pour the pirate sherry,
Fill, O fill the pirate glass!
And, to make us more than merry,
Let the pirate bumper pass!

For today our pirate 'prentice
Rises from indenture freed;
Strong his arm, and keen his scent is
He’s a pirate now indeed!" ...sang the thououghly stoned pair.

With a wild flourish, the evil man brandished his pointy red guitar and let loose with a Gdim7th over a 5th of Gin7th.

Weedley, weedley, weedley, weedley...





All the sudden the Toad Suck police showed up and witnessed the goings on and they said "...arrrgh ya bunch of landlubbers. None of the likes of ya are fit to wear a tutu. You call yourselves Toad Sucking Pirates."





So the Toad Suck Police all in blue tutu's joined in for it was "donut :30" and we all know at donut :30 anything goes...except for them darn pointy red gee-tars!

"Lock that man up", barked the Sergeant. The young officer stuffed the last of the maple bar into his mouth with his fat, sticky fingers, and reached for his handcuffs.


To his surprise ...the guy with the pointy guitar quickly plugged in his DistortoShreddomatic pedal and rolled all his amp knobs to 11 with the heel of his hand and let loose a blur of 80's style shredding, which made the ugliest old pirate pull out his shiv and make threatening noises and says "ef, i ear one you buggers play "Satisfaction" 'll slice you up faster than you can say, 5 strings, 2 fingers and 1 f hole.


"F hole?!", the evil man shrieked. "I've got yer f hole right here!!"
Everyone stopped and stared as the evil man gestured at his pointy red guitar. Sure snough, his guitar had an f hole - two of them, in fact.

To prove his point, now that the crowd stood stunned and speechless, Mr. Evil slowly turned with a wicked grin and rolled up his guitar volume knob and faced his mighty amp.

"Hee hee hee!" He said, evilly. "This wall of feedback will knock them out long enough for me to escape. I saw it in a Star Trek episode".

The feedback roared as the bystanders grabbed their ears and crumpled to the ground, writhing in pain.
BANG!

A single shot from the Police Sergeant's service revolver rang out and put an end to the terror being inflicted upon the kind people of Toad Suck.

And everyone except the guy that died lived happily ever after. Except one of them wasn't quite dead. Until Shadoe grabed the sarge's gun and made sure.


Someone yelled look out Shadoe has something in her hands. But all were releived to see it was only a gun and not a gardening tool.

"Do what you have to, Shadoe," said the Sarge, as he sucked contentedly on a toad.
Shadoe put down the gun and got busy with the most deadly weapon at her disposal... The dreaded weed whacker.
And in come BJD with a force of toad suckers.

"Where is she, where is she?...oh there you are." "Kiss me and you'll see what pleasure I will bring Mon!"

Chik Picker bought a bag of popcorn and a coke and kicked back on a park bench to watch the fun. She though, "It looks like it's gonna be a showdown at the toad suck corral.

Willie backed away, looking pale at the sight of the weed whacker! You see Willie really likes his weed. I mean, he really likes it.

Just then, tires were heard crunching up the dirt road (they're all dirt in Arkansas, right?)

It was an old Plymouth, with a busted out rear window and a shadowy (Shadoey?) figure inside wearing a trench coat. His fedora was pulled down low to hide a black eye.

He got out with a limp and a groan, surveying the scene with a street-wise glare. He lit a fresh Chesterfield King and exhaled before saying, "The name's Dick Gumshoe. You might remember me from the Dime Store Detective thread a while back. I'm still looking for that dame Shadoe!"

Pointing to the still-hungry Pyne E., the Toad said, "There she is!"

And then Gruveking showed up and yelled, "Shoot him!"

Gruveking thought, "Who knew this place even @#$% existed??" Then without another word, GK swung 'round with his beat-up, full-o-mojo, stench of a thousand gigs, P bass and laid down the deepest, fattest groove imaginable.

Meanwhile the glow from Chik Pickers LCD softly illuminates her face, as she leans back thinking about a time gone by, a time much simpler, a time before pointy guitars existed...in the before time...before...she knew she was gonna have to bail Shadoe outa jail after this...a time when toads could suck in peace, a time when a man in a pink tutu actually looked out of place.

Shadoe used her one phone call to tell Chik Picker to take her time. She was having more fun than she ever could have imagined

So after the phone call, Chik Picker decided she'd hop on Willie's bus just to have a look and low and behold it was her good buddy friend from Nashville "Mr. Busdriver".

And all the toads were dancing to the rhythm of the music. They were having a toadown!

Willie turned to Chik Picker, winked and said, "Thanks for the tale."

Chik Picker turned to Willie and said, "Gee,Willie no problem...have a cheesecoke."

Some gang! An Indian ranch hand, a drunken gunfighter, a sex maniac, and an uncle!

"Chik Picker, get me out of here!" Shadoe had convinced the Chief of the Toadsuck Police to give her one more phone call since she had such a great wireless rate.

"Guess it's time to go get Shadoe outa the pokey" ,thought our heroine.

"Willie...think you can give me a lift to the gray bar hotel?"

And off they went in a blaze of glory....with checkbook in hand...

"Yeah, it's all over in Dodge,Tombstone, Cheyenne and Deadwood too. All gone. All dead and gone. Why, the last time I came through Tombstone, the big excitement there was about the new rollerskate rink that they had laid out over the OK Corral." says Willie while braiding his hair with some pink hemp bows.

..Shadoe and Chik Picker headed out to the west coast to try to stir up some trouble. And, man, did they ever.

The first thing they ran into on Venice Beach was the most amazing studly California toad.

"Wart are you two doing here?" he said.

"Some gang! An Indian ranch hand, a drunken gunfighter, a sex maniac, and an uncle!", said Lance (who? wait...back up a sec. Which one is Shadoe? Now back to the story...)

"Dudettes, it's me...I'm, like, Cali-toad-alicious...you two hotties can call me Stu", the toad said in his stoned-surfer-boy accent.


Then along came Deputy Greene and said "Alright, who shot the sherrif?"

Shadoe and Chik Picker ran for the fence while the deputy whipped out his Big Green Egg and made smokey toad stew out of Stu the toad...which, on the surface, sounded pretty good. But the side-effects of Smokey Toad Stew were more than Chik Picker and Shadoe had bargained for.

When they came out of their haze in yet ANOTHER jail, the deputy gave them a little insight on how they had angered the other women in town because all the men knew what the color of their eye's were.
To that the girls exclaimed, "How is that OUR fault"!!"

"I'm sorry, did you girls say something?" asked the sherriff.

Excuse me!..up here!..I'm talking to you! said Chik Picker..How did this land us in jail??"

"I'm sorry young lady but we were protecting you from the town drunk, Gruveking." said the apologetic sheriff. "Once he has a few in him, there's no telling what he'll do."


"Oh,yea...I met him back in Toad Suck""Trust me his bark is way worse than his bite and we ain't a skeerd of him...he's really harmless" said Chik Picker.

"You're free to go girls but if you're looking for Pyne E., there's a guy named "Reubens" in the 4th aisle of the old movie theatre. He might know where he is. Reubens is the one with the box of popcorn on his lap" said the sheriff.

"Ewww!" ,said the girls as they left....

And again, the girls exclaimed "Ewwww!".

Wary of the ever-smelly Gruveking, and the not-to-be trusted Pyne E., our heroines wound their way through the crud-encrusted streets. Finally, they reached their destination - The place they had been searching for so long The Fountain of Not-quite-Youth, where they drank and imbibed and made merry and collected all the coins from the bottom of the fountain...

"We're rich!" "We're rich!" chorused the girls, as they shovelled up the coins."Las Vegas here we come"!! exclaimed the pair as they headed down the road toward sin city. I mean where else can you go with all that loose change.

"What are we going to do when we get to Sin City?" asked one of the girls. "Go see Sigmund and Freud!" exclaimed the dumb one.

"You mean Sigfried and Roy.." the smart one corrected.

"Right.. Sorry.. Fruedian Slip..."

"Uh oh, we're out of gas" said Shadoe as the car bucked to a stop. "It sure is dark out here" Chik Picker said with a tremble in her voice.

As the girls looked around they noticed a small, dimly lit shack about 500 feet from where they stood.

"I guess we'll have to ask for help from whoever lives there" said Shadoe as they turned and wondered what kind of mess they had gotten themselves into.

Feels kinda "Texas Chainsaw Massicare" to which Shadoe say, "Let's use the cell to call Gruveking...he'd come get us in a rainstorm...

"...crud, no service out here. Now WHAT! Shadoe", says Chik Picker.

And all of a southern a strange sound comes rolling across the desert night blackness.

The deep, rumbling sound enveloped the car as Shadoe and Chik Picker stared at each other with wide-eyed terror. Their look of panic turned to comforted grins as they realized that the strange sound was none other than the booty-shaking thunder of Gruveking's bass. Their hero had come.

"See...i told you he'd come get us in the middle of the desert"...exclaimed Chik Picker.

Shadoe, knowing better exclaimed, "Who's that imposter? But what, or who, is causing the booty-shaking thunder?

"I don't know" said Chik Picker. "Looks like a kangaroo to me!"

"Kangaroo?!?", exclaimed a confused Shadoe, "I can see the resemblance, but we're in Nevada!

"Well", replied Chikpicker, "at least it's carrying some refreshments. See that keg hanging from it's neck?".

"That's no keg", snorted Shadoe. "That's a big old.."Accordion!"

"...Aaaghhh!!!", screamed Chikpicker". "The very tool of the devil!!!"

"No worries", said Shadoe, coolly. "I just happen to have the very thing that can netralize that accordion. Check out this. A Banjo with a pick up on it!! Everyone knows thats the most hidious sound ever.


So Shadoe plugs into her battery powered banjo amp and starts to play....But Shadoe doesn't even know how to hold a banjo, much less play one. The sound emitted called forth that Devil that went down to Georgia that Charlie Daniels sang about. And the devil knew that the kangaroo with the acordion was like acid to his skin. As soon as he saw the beast he went back to where he came from.




Just then the kangaroo hopped off from the sounds of Shadoe on her banjo.





"Shadoe,you saved us" exclaimed Chik Picker.

Just then from out of nowhere as if an angel had been summoned, a hot young guy driving a wreaker drove up and said "Can I help you ladies?"...

The pair looked at each other with a cheshire grin and said in unison "you bet you can"(hehe)

And then.....Pyne E. pulled his banjo out from under the seat of the truck and said, "Care for a duel?"



Que: Dueling Banjos
And they lived happily forever after or at least for about 45 minutes.