Dandy Szandy, Helter Skelter, Rosemary’s Baby, and Other Items Of Inspiration

Ok. So, if you recall from my earlier posts from yesterday, the last few weeks have been a bit emotionally tumultuous for LeDonna. After a sudden, but much needed move away from her emotionally bloodsucking psychic vampire of a job at Matt’s In The Market, LeDonna ended up with too much time on her hands and no refills on her psychotropics, and plunged head first into yet another dreaded ShameSpiral. {Personally, I’m beginning to believe she quite likes these ShameSpirals she’s always twisting about in, since she seems to travel down them quite frequently. I think they are kind of like an amusement park ride for her, like that Barrel Of Monkeys ride she loved so much at AstroWorld as a young child. It’s the adrenaline. You know how those addictive types are!} In fact, this was not just any old ShameSpiral…this one was supermassive, more like a ShameVortex. (Hey, I like that. Can I get a patent on that?)

So, as I was feeding the flames of the firey inferno of despair in my mind with the DuraFlame Logs of misery via Sylvia Plath, I became completely entranced and intoxicated with the macabre and fiendishly morbid parallels between the suicide deaths of Plath and later Assia Wevill…both poets, both the female companions of Ted Hughes, himself one of the most brilliant poets of his generation. Obviously, Plath was his his wife, and was suffering from her own mental maladies well before her relationship began with Hughes, but arguably it was Hughes infidelity with Wevill that led to the couple’s separation, and ultimately, what pushed Plath over the edge to suicide. But what was even more disturbing was the fact that Wevill ended up taking her own life six years after Sylvia…in the exact same manner, with a gas oven. Creepy, huh? Oh but WAIT, there’s more! Prior to gassing herself to death, Assia Wevill snuffed out the 3-year-old child she shared with Hughes, a little girl they called Shura.

Well, Hughes Shura had a clusterfuck of just royally bad luck snowball of his lying, cheating, devil-worshipping ass. Karma’s a bitch, huh, sucka?! What kind of freakish monster would drive two women beyond the point of madness, to a place where they felt an open gas oven would be the best place to poke their head in to get a breath of fresh air?

I don’t know. He looks pretty creepy to me. I don’t know what they saw in him to begin with, maybe he put a love spell on them with all that black magic he was doing.

So, after spending sufficient time sniffing out the coffers of the Plath tragedy, I decided to further feed my insatiable desire to devour all things aberrant, ghoulish and utterly disturbing by feasting at the Old Country Buffet of internet urban legends and conspiracy theories. Before me was a smorgasborg of saucy soul-sapping tales of Illuminati, covert messages, backwards maskings, Hollywood covens and sacrifices to satan, assasination plots, apocalyptic doomsday prophesies…

Why, why, WHY??? am I so fascinated by what is peculiar, weird, anti-social, and slightly off? Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly have that ultra-femme girly girl in me that loves all things luminous, sparkling and pretty, but there is also this really dark streak in me that is just fantastically entertained by the foul and profane. If given the choice of watching either a story about fluffy bunnies making the cancer kids happy, or picking apart the autopsy details of a murder-suicide…I’ll pick the cadaver, every time.

Except at Easter. Then fluffy bunnies are kewl.

So, for whatever reason, since I’m ruminating on Ted Hughes and the negative consequences resulting from his careless and glib invocations of demons and such (Handy Hint, people…if there is any nugget of advice you can take away from this post today, it should be this…please, please, PLEASE, never just ‘casually’ summon a demon or some other nefarious death force, just because you think it’s ‘fun!’ or ‘exciting!’, or ‘I’m not even sure this bullshit is real!’-because-IT IS. Even if you don’t think you’ve seen something big bad and ugly and all you conjuring has been in vain…trust me people. Folks who tend to go around asking for the presence of evil to show itself, unfortunately, end up getting just what they asked for…and often times it’s not what, when, or where it was expected. )

Ok. Ted Hughes, occult, black magic, bad luck…where do I turn to next for more stories of idiots who sell their souls to the Unfriendly One and lived to tell (or maybe not!)??

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!! JUST JOKING!!! Ok, for real:

I think my abnornal fear of the devil stems from my early childhood. This was one of the first records Mama gave me as a little girl, it was under the Christmas Tree along with The Sesame Street Alphabet Album.

As a sign of my innate musical proclivities, I soon became bored with the banal whimperings of Grover and Big Bird, and knew all my devil-hating inspirational hymns by heart. I yearned for a new sound, something fresh, but with an edge.

I recalled how profoundly The Beatles had affected me as a young child. Did you know this album was dedicated to Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist? He’s on the cover. You know, since I was lonely and ignored most of the time as a kid, it left me all kinds of time for deep thoughts and meditation. I would lay on my belly and spend hours staring and drooling at all the famous faces on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s. One time Mama gave me too much of my asthma syrup, and one night when I was lying in my playpen I started trippin’ balls while listening to A Day In the Life...and I swear, I started having visions of this guy:

That’s Mr. Lavey. His full name is Anton Szandor Lavey, but I like to call him Szandy. At first, I thought he might be my real daddy, since he was real pale and bald, just like me. Plus, he looked really mean and like he didn’t like me too much, probably another characteristic my biological father possessed. I quickly realized that whew, much to my relief, he wasn’t my father…(or…was he??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***** )

Turns out, Dandy Szandy there heads up a special church called The Church Of Satan. It’s a chuch for people who don’t seem to like God, or believe in the Baby Jesus. These are people who feel the traditional Christian philosophy , which consists of boring laws like don’t lie, steal, or kill (YAWN!)which are just a drag! and they want to reserve their God- given hedonistic right to do cool stuff like sacrifice small animals while wearing sassy capes, throw curses on dimwitted idiots who cut them off on the freeway or leave the toilet seat up, be really really mad all the time, just cause they can, and to compulsively ram/rub their genitalia up, on or about anything, and absolutely everything they damn well please.

UP NEXT: The amazing link I discovered (gasps!) between Satan, The Beatles, Aleister Crowley, Charles Manson, Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby, Me, David Hasselhoff, and potted meat products.

***** indicates more information regarding this ridiculous delusion will be provided in the upcoming post.

It’s Been An Interesting Week Here In Loonsville

Look everybody, I finally got a book written about me! It’s about damn time.

Wow. It has been a hell of time for me these past few weeks, and “hell” would be an amusingly appropriate metaphor, as the firey bowels of the netherworld seem to have been the most prevalent topic on my mind. I spent a lot of time this week immersed in subjects of the occult, the bizarre, the strange. I like to feed on news of the paranormal much like a mosquito likes to siphon the putrescent blood of the diseased. I ingest it greedily, then it festers in my brain for a while until it transmutes into a giant tumor of dread and paranoia. This tumor of terror will continue to grow and metastasize rampantly throughout my head, heart, and gut until any prognosis of clear and rational thinking is completely eradicated. This is probably not a good afternoon pastime for someone like myself who is prone to bouts of paranoia and illogical thinking. But since when has that ever stopped me? Sometimes the worse I know something is for my health and sanity, the more likely I am to engorge myself with it.

I think that is called ’self-destructive behavior’. Hmmpf. I may have to look into that one.

Thank God I found myself a new job and I am back in the saddle again. I was off for about 3 weeks after leaving Matt’s. Although it was a good move for me and produced a much needed change in my life, the way it all went down really shoved me right back down into {ANOTHER! YAWN!!!!} massive shame spiral that plummeted me down to depths of darkness I hadn’t seen in at least 2 or 3 days prior to stumbling into this particular spiral. Yeah, I was feeling pretty low.

*Helpful Hint* Really depressed people really probably shouldn’t read Sylvia Plath, or listen to Sylvia Plath reading Sylvia Plath. Yeah. Probably not a good idea.

Oh Sylvia. How I love you. You are the emotionally imbalanced lunachick’s ultimate muse. I’m not sure which is more facinating-the darkly bewitching madness of your writing, or the even crazier truth behind your life. And has anyone ever told you, that the way you read those poems of yours is kinda creepy, too ? I never realized your voice was so…well,haunting. Yeah, it is, really. It really is. I got sucked into watching some clips about you on YouTube and heard the audio of you reciting “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” among others. Really brilliant, I have to hand it to you, but as if you and all your damn insanity and suicide and creepy husband Ted Hughes and all weren’t enough to disturb the bejeezus out of me, the malfeasant sound of your voice as you pound out word after word with such an angry froth…it was just downright diabolical. Don’t do that next time, ok, Sylvia? Try to lighten up a little bit, you’re not the only one who gets bummed out, you know. You don’t have to be such a downer. The way you drone on, it’s enough to make someone stick their head in an oven and turn the gas up, and you don’t want that to happen, do you? No, of course not, because gas is really fucking expensive right now, whether it’s for your car or to light your oven to kill yourself.

Try looking on the bright side once in a while, maybe catch an old episode of the Brady Bunch. Especially the ones where the kids sing “Sunshine Day”.

See! Those crazy Bradys always bring a little sunshine into my day. That is, until I notice how thin, popular and pretty Marcia is…and I’m not! Everybody always pays attention to Marcia, and never to me. Marcia always gets the boys, Marcia always gets good grades, Marcia never ever has a bad hair day, Marcia’s poop smells like Chanel No. 5. FUCK MARCIA! MARCIA! MARCIA! MARCIA!

Wow. Gotta get that neurosis of mine under control…

Hear Sylvia Read ‘Lady Lazarus’…Tell Me This Doesn’t Freak The Fuck Out Of You!

Sylvia Plath Reads Lady Lazarus

YAY ALEX!!!!

Yo GO GUUURL!

I know who really loves me. My boo Alex is more than happy to accompany her fatuous maternal unit to the Wild Waves sooper kewl happy times funtastic waterpark. Yay Alex, you just made my day. Now I can put off all thoughts of suicide until at least after the May 31 Big Splash event, it’s gonna be so much fun, with all the innertubes and my favorite Christian recording artists are performing! Yay! I’m gonna go buy my sunscreen and fake tan-in-a-bottle right now!

But before I go, I just want to give a quick shout out and props to my kick-ass baby girl, who just kicked to the curb her dungnugget of a boyfriend and showing him the importance of treating a young lady with the utmost kindness,love and respect, and never to take her wonderfulness for granted. Hopefully he will recognize now that she is gone that he has lost out on a beautiful, charming, dynamic and funnier than hell sugar cookie of a girl. That’s what you get hosehead! Pay attention next time, if you get to be so lucky.

Yay Alex!!! I am so proud of you! You rock my world. Keep up the good work, sweets, and I’ll see ya at the Hooks Lagoon activity pool!

Nuttier Than A Damn Fruitcake!

That was always one of Mama’s favorite expressions. She used it a lot when referring to crazy people, homosexuals,blacks,christians,me, any of my friends or teachers,neighbors,customers that would come into our store and bounce checks,or Ronald Reagan.

I find that it is so humorously fitting of a metaphor for my entire nutcase life,I’m going to use it as the working title for my upcoming memoir- “Nuttier Than A Damn Fruitcake: Real-Life Revelations of America’s Loopiest Loon, The Lovely LeDonna Lee.” I believe that sharing my stories of failure,lunacy and folly will help other nutjobs realize, “Hey, we really don’t have it so bad after all”.

This is the first step for me on my pathway to riches by way of mentoring others. I should be finished writing my book around the same time I complete my Life Coach certification from that Sally Struthers Correspondence School, so I should be good to go and on my way to spread my good news of hope in the face of inadequacy to the masses. I feel so good about myself.

Lord, Why Am I Such A Damn Slob?

Hey, ya’ll like the latest shot I added to my portfolio? I don’t know, I’m just not as pasty and bloated in this one, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with it. I asked the makeup girl to go a little lighter with the bronzer, but she just kept puffing my face shouting, “Miami! Miami! Miami!” I guess she’s trying to get me ready for all those bikini shoots I have scheduled down in South Beach. Which reminds me, I hope those custom snakeskin thongs I ordered are ready, I sure have been looking forward to them. And man, I think I need to grab some more root touch up while I’m on my frozen burrito/gatorade run to Rite Aid. Didn’t realize I was showing so much gray!

All my life, I have had a bit of a problem in the slob department.  The problem seems to stem from the fact that I am a slob. I have tried many times over the course of my life to rectify and cure myself of this sloppiness, but every time I try to clean up and get myself organized, I just get distracted, bored, or just plain fall asleep.

I can tell it’s starting to grate on my boyfriend’s nerves, he shows it in all these really funny passive aggressive ways, like calling me names under his breath while taking the teetering tower of Diet Coke cans I piled so delicately and skillfully out to recycling (Doode! It’s Modern Art!), cursing as he trips over the 12 pairs of heels strewn about the living room floor (Honey, they’re part of my new workout routine called Hopscotch Hurdles. You’re supposed to jump over them! Now, don’t be a spoilsport, just do it, hop! it’s good for your heart) and tossing the 118 months of back issues of CatFancy I had loving accumulated even though I don’t own a cat out the window in a fit of fury (Hey! I WAS SAVING THOSE FOR A REASON!!!!!). I don’t get what his problem is. It’s not like a months accumulation of Qtips encrusted in earwax is a health concern or anything. Sheesh, lighten up. I try to make the trash can, sometimes, I just miss and forget about them. You’re not perfect either,you know.

I’ve been this way all my life, although I’m not sure why. Maybe it does stem from Mama, she was a bit of a packrat. She used to keep EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING. Instead of buying me toys, she used to give me bags of her old prescription pill bottles and empty Afrin Nose Sprays to play with. Which was kinda fun, all my dollies were so healthy and always had the cleanest nasal passages! I remember one time when I was in high school, my friend Jarrod was over and he started going through this drawer of random shit in our den, and he pulls out this bottle filled with what appeared to be maybe rocks of some form or another, or perhaps some miscellaneous car parts leftover from a tune up, and asks me what exactly they were. Upon closer inspection, I realized that those had been Mama’s leftover teeth from when she had them pulled and gotten her dentures.

Why she was saving them, I could only imagine. Maybe she thought they were heirlooms, and wanted to pass them down to me as part of her legacy. I imagine that’s probably the only thing she’d leave me in her will.

If you were to peer into my room as a little girl, and didn’t know who lived in it, you would most likely have concluded that this was a crawling hole for a schizophrenic rat from the land of H.R. Puffinstuff, or wondered if Sanford and Sons had expanded their business by opening a shop out on Sesame Street. (Did you guys miss that episode?) The floor just always seemed like a logical place to store things. It’s not like I used the floor to actually walk around on or anything, so I needed all my key items piled up close to me where I could reach them without breaking a sweat.

Every year at school, I would start out so resolute, with all my nice new folders and dividers, determined to make this year the best year ever! and transform myself into this UBER-organized autotron, consistently and effortlessly filing every scrap of schoolwork neatly into its rightfully designated place. “I will be organized this year!” I would chant to myself. “I will be successful! I’m going to pay attention and make good grades and be the best little Aldine Senior High School Student, EVER!”

And then, I’d get a crush on some stupid boy who had no idea I existed and would have screamed in terror if he had have known I existed, and daydream about having sex with him all day long, even though I had never had sex or even been kissed, but -I had read a lot about it in Cosmopolitan and those Penthouse Forums my dad used to sell at his grocery store, and so I had a pretty good idea what it was all about. {editor’s note-evil grin right here}Needless to say, although my mind was focused on biology, it wasn’t exactly the type that would get me a passing grade, and I became easily frustrated, and not just sexually….I just started cramming papers wherever, whenever I bothered to even to the work, and by the middle of the semester my locker looked like I must have been studying up hard for Bag Lady 101 or maybe Advanced Theorums In Hoboitry. In fact, my senior year, I was voted Most Likely To Reside Out The Cardboard Recycling by a panel of my teachers and counselors. I love awards, so I was pretty stoked to have been recognized.

But you know, it does get a little old struggling with the same old self-defeating habits, and I guess it would be nice to maybe wake up and not think, “Damn girl, you smell like foot”. I have been trying harder to change lately, but it’s one hell of a process. Every day, I pray soooooo hard, “Pleeeeeeaaase God! Make me a Type A personality. Even just for a day. PLEASE!” And everyday, I’m lucky if I come up a Type B-. It’s just really hard when you have a hard time paying attention, and your mind wanders, and you can’t ever finish what you sta

My First Manic Episode!

AWWWWWWWW!! Just look at the cute little baby nobody cares about! COOCHIE COO!!!

Aaaah, such sweet innocence. Those were the days. Those were the days.

Yes, party peoples, please turn your eyes just slightly above and just over to your left so that you can fix them upon our Exhibit A right here. Yeah, right there. Perfect. If we’re all on the same page here…and I think we all are… I just want to make sure, ok? Just want to ensure we’re all checking out the same babe.

Yeah, that babe. She sure is cute, huh? Well, check it out, because that sweet little package of goo-goo-goo-goodness just happens to be me. Yes, me. See? Told you I was a babe from the day I was born. Now you have the picture as proof.

I was so sweet and tender, Martha Stewart would have paid some serious cizzash money to get her hands on me…for soup. You did know that’s what that big ass kettle she’s stirring in the intro for “From Martha’s Kitchen” is for, right? No, there are no damn potatoes in that thing! Those are babies boiling in there!

My biological mother surely would have sold me to her, because if I remember correctly, Mama told me they paid about $500 in green stamps from the old Piggly Wiggly and a lifetime supply of Pall Mall Lights 100s. I’m sure Martha would have given her a much better deal. Martha would at least throw a nice set of her cookware and some sheets to sweeten things up.

You know, I remember that day this picture was taken. I remember I was all grins right there because I could see somebody headed my way. Hooray! Someone might actually pay attention to me today! I hope they want to stay and play. Or perhaps pick me up and hug me or kiss me. Hugs and kisses sure feel good, I know, because I got one from the neighbor boy next door last week. I don’t know why I always hear mama calling that poor boy a pervert, he always seems real sweet to me. But I guess I have to appreciate whatever stimulation I can get, cause mama is usually to busy with her stories to entertain me.

It looks like she’s got something in her hands. Maybe it’s a present or a toy for me! Yay! Maybe it’s a holiday! At least on holidays Mama and daddy stop and talk to me.

Oh, wait, oops..uh…oh, it’s just mama throwing in my crib some more crossword puzzles and her old Reader’s Digests she’s all done with. She usually does that to make sure I have something to keep me occupied while she’s watching her soaps. Mama takes her stories verrrrrrrrrrrrry seriously, and I had to learn the hard what happens to bad girls who interrupt them.

Like the other day, I wet my diaper right in the middle of AS THE WORLD TURNS. I knew it was really bad timing, but I just couldn’t help it. Well, Mama got really mad at me because she missed the part where Dr. Bob Hughes put Sandy into the Oakdale sanitarium after she got burned by the fire. I’m guessing it was so important to her because Mama spent a little bit of time in the sanitarium herself, but that was before I was born. She probably wanted to see if the place still looked the same.

So, to teach me my lesson that I needed to learn to wait until I saw either the Tidy Bowl Man or Mr. Clean before I could pee (oh, and if I saw the ChuckWagon, I was good ,too),
I had to spend some quiet time alone in Mr. Albert’s sock drawer. It really wasn’t so bad, it was the one with all the dress socks, and those are really nice and smooth, {Editors Note: “Mr. Albert” is Mama’s “pet name” for LeDonna’s daddy. P.S. He’s Chinese!

So yeah, I was pretty cute back then, wasn’t I? Yeah well, that didn’t last long. See, since I was adopted, I wasn’t able to breastfeed, so I had to drink formula from out of a can. The problem was, I guess I had some kind of a “milk allergy”,and my parents had one hell of a hard time finding a formula that I could actually digest. Finally, she decided that she was just going to start making her own formula for me at home for scratch. And wouldn’t you know, it turns out pureed twinkies with some non-dairy creamer and just a touch of Ovaltine was just what the doctor ordered. Never had a problem eating since. One small side effect-I did octuple my birthweight within the first year and looked a little bit like Verne Troyer as The Michelin Man, but hey! I was fed.

One of my mother’s favorite things to do was dress me up. She loved it so much, she made sure I was dressed to the nines each and every day of my infancy. My mother had always been a bit of a fashionista , and she had a keen sense of style she had honed during her formative years at one of Caddo County’s most prestigious orphanages, The Ursaline Orphanage in Shreveport. {Editor’s Note: “Orphanages” are a lot like “Boarding Schools”, just with 2 key points of distinction. #1) all the kids are poor and #2) the children’s parents are most likely dead, and even if they aren’t, they’re not coming back for the kids EVER, in contrast to those parents of boarding school students , who will be happily picking up said child at the end of the academic year while on their way to dumping them off at summer camp.}

Mama always made sure I had lots of clothes, and I had all of the finest leisure suits and patent leather shoes that could be found at Weiner’s and Montgomery Wards. Mama was even so ahead of her time, visionary that she was, she had herself a personal shopper. Ms. Weebos at Sears used to call Mama all the time and let her know when fashion favorites such as my Florida Orange Winnie-the-Pooh polypropylene jumpsuit or sassy Captain Kangaroo/Mr. Green Jeans reversible modacrylic 2-piece pantsuit sets were in stock.

Mama even used to take me shopping at the big Neiman Marcus store down at the Galleria, but she stopped because one time I was being bad and I fell out of her arms while we were riding on the escalator. Lucky for me, daddy was able to swoop down and rescue me after I’d only fallen 4 or 5 steps. I wasn’t heard too badly though, and as the story goes, I was still just a laughin’ and a grinnin’, even as daddy was having kind of a hard time prying my pinky finger out from between the plates at the bottom of the steps. It hurt a little, but it wasn’t too bad. Nothing that a good rubdown with Daddy’s homemade Chinese whiskey medicine wouldn’t heal up real nice.

One of my Mama’s favorite stories to tell me is that she used to love to dress me up like some of her favorite TV stars. Sometimes it would be a leather jacket and sunglasses, and I’d get to be Kojak. Other times, it would be a welvet suit with a ruffled jabot…so I guess I was Yul Brenner doing a guest spot on the Partridge Family? I’m pretty sure I had a Barnaby Jones look too, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was.

My Top 3 guesses as to what I must have been thinking in that picture?
1) I guess I better savor this one last gasp of happiness, cause from here on out, my life sure is gonna SUCK!
2) The man who is holding me claims to be my father, yet suspiciously looks just like the Grinch. What’s up with that?
3) Ok, guys..who put the lampshade on my head? C’mon now…yeah, that’s funny, but c’mon, it itches, couldja get it off? Oh c’mon now! Gosh, you guys suck.. (pout)