Book It!

Anyone remember those prizes back in the day for reading books in school? I always participated in the Book It! reading incentives, and I always got that personal pan pizza coupon for meeting all my reading goals. Oh yeah. Later it was the Ozzy Reading Club, where the winners got to go to a Kane County Cougars game. I came back with three teeny tiny bats that were PERSONALLY signed by Ozzy. For me, getting these prizes was a given, because even when I was a little kid I LOVED reading. A story my mom always told me was about when it was just the two of us living in our apartment in Texas. By then, my dad had left, and my mom was going to school and working two jobs at the same time to support us. She would crawl home, dead exhausted, and little Mingo would be there with a stack of books, waiting for her to read them aloud. And even though she was about to fall over and pass out, she read me the entire stack of books without fail. She encouraged my love of reading, and to this day I'll grab a book and read it for hours at a time until I'm finished with it. Which actually is a mistake, because then I'm sad I no longer have a book to read... Anyhoo, here's a list of authors I got completely infatuated with at one time or another.

Author #1: Diana Gabaldon
  
My mom was again the one to introduce me to her books, and I instantly fell in love with them. In particular I fell in love with her Outlander series, which focuses on the romance between Claire and Jamie. Claire is a married woman living in Scotland in 1946 when she walks through a cleft of standing stones. She ends up being transported back in time to 1743, where she is almost immediately accosted by her husband's six times great grandfather, a captain in the English army. In order to escape him, she ends up fleeing with a group of Scottish clansmen, and is eventually forced to marry one to protect her from being hanged by the English as a spy. In the course of the first book, she continually tries to escape back to her husband from both the English soldiers and the Scottish clan she has taken refuge with, while falling in love with the young clansman she was forced to marry, Jamie. The series goes on for seven volumes so far, and I'm itching to get my hands on the next one, which probably won't be released for another three years or so. Dammit.

Author #2: J.K. Rowling

Ok, we all love Harry Potter. Or anyway, a LOT of us do. I've heard a lot of people tell their Harry Potter stories lately, so I'll share mine! I actually didn't get into the Harry Potter craze until after the third book had already been released. My mom (again!) brought me the first book and told me that her best friend's daughters absolutely LOVED the books, and that she had found the first one while out grocery shopping and thought I might like to read it. I gave it a shot, and I HATED it. I guess what happened to a lot of other people happened to me. I read the first chapter, got INCREDIBLY bored, and lost interest in it for awhile. It wasn't until much later that I got really bored and restless, and for lack of anything better to read laying about the house, I reluctantly picked it up again. After I continued reading it however, I got completely hooked. I leapt onto the Harry Potter bandwagon, and obsessively pored over every single book. When the movies came out I was actually disappointed though. I tend to be one of those people that never think the movies are as good as the books, and Harry Potter was no exception. I hated the first movie, and didn't really grow to accept them until the third movie came out. After that, I loved them again. But who wouldn't, since Harry has grown so much with them over the years? 

By the way when I found this yummy pic of Daniel Radcliff I also found an extremely, um, COZY picture of Harry and Draco together. Enjoying their bromance.



Author #3: Sidney Sheldon

 

I started reading his books sometime in middle school. At the time, my reading was going unchecked, and whatever dramas or trashy romance novels my mom had on hand, I read. I came across one of his books at one time or another, and became instantly hooked on them. They had the lure of the forbidden. In Mingo's little sixth grade mind, these books were taboo, because they were completely graphic material. They had sex, intrigue, murder, and my innocent brain couldn't process them fast enough. I started trolling thrift stores because I quickly learned that not only were they easier to find there, but then I could buy them for fifty cents and take them home with me forever. I amassed quite the collection by the time I was done: I bought and read every single book he ever wrote. I'm pretty sure I didn't miss any.

Author #4: Stephen King

 

Ugh I freakin HATE clowns!! Even the picture Of Stephen King is freaking me out! But again, I read a ton of Stephen King when I was in middle school. I had a few favorites that I could read over and over again because they didn't freak me out too badly, like The Stand and Dolores Claiborne and Misery. But mostly, they scared the bejeezus outta me. I actually cried when I read Pet Sematary, and I could never completely get through the book It, either. Because I hate clowns. Have I mentioned that?? The book Needful Things also scared the crap out of me. There was just something about all the people in that small town, trading their souls for material things they thought they needed or were important...really really creepy stuff. And yet I kept reading them. *Laying on little couch* "What does this say about me, doctor?" *Doctor purses his fingertips together and then proceeds to stroke his tiny beard intelligently* "Well, Mingo, I believe you are a glutton for punishment. We'll talk about this more at length next week."

Author #5: Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

 

Ok, this is another author I got infatuated with because it was forbidden. I absolutely LOVE trashy romance novels, or book porn, as my sister's boyfriend likes to refer to them. Loudly. In bookstores. When there are several people walking nearby, in listening reach. While I'm holding several. ANYHOO, this book called The Flame and the Flower was the one that began my craze. This is the exact covercopy I found floating around the house, and by the end mine was more moth-eaten and roughly handled than the one in the picture. To this day I read these, since there are tons of them floating around, and since I can't bring myself to bring more than 2 or 3 up to the counter where the smug cashier is waiting to ring up my book porn, having heard Ivan blurt that phrase out to the entire establishment.

I continue to read random authors, but these are ones I always seem to come back to. There were tons of other series I read back in the day; I read the Goosebumps books like everybody else, and I had a serious attachment to Sweet Valley High books too. My lil sister Julie is like me in that she's been a reader for a long time. But where I was reading Danielle Steel and the occasional Anne Rice vampire novel when I was her age, she reads Nicholas Sparks. I can't do that. I HATE that crap. Angry people, love interest, dramatic resolution, DEATH. Sucks, man!

Back in the Day Buffet

Today's a short one. I'm sickly and tired, and I soooo want to take an entire bottle of Nyquil and sleep for 85 bajillion hours straight. After reading my friend noxy's posts the last couple days, I feel inspired to write about songs that I loved back in the day when I was a little kid in Texas. Little Mingo almost always listened to whatever mom listened to. I therefore grew up loving a lot of seventies music, and this has given me a deep seated love for the Bee Gees in particular. Some of my best memories were of me and my mom, driving along country back roads, the windows UP because damn, Texas weather is HOT and no one went without air conditioning. Music would be blasting, and me and my mom would be singing along to Brown Eyed Girl and All My Ex's Live in Texas. However, my love for music has always been wide and varied, and thinking back, these are a few songs I ALWAYS rocked out to.

Deee Lite's Groove is in the Heart was an annoying, psychotic song, and I absolutely loved it. I remember watching the music video in our apartment, dancing along and singing my little heart out. I KNOW i watched it all the time, any time I could find it on TV, so I must have driven my poor mom insane. Ha. Payback for all the John Denver I was subjected to: "Thank God I'm a country boy!"

Another song I listened to was Cher's "The Shoop Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)."

I watched the movie Mermaids, and the only thing I liked about the movie was this song. Actually, the movie began my deep loathing of all things Cher. I freakin HATED Cher in that movie, I thought she was the worst mom in creation. She was a freakin slut bucket, always beginning and ending "relationships" with countless men, and forcing her kids to move every time her lousy love life tanked. Bitch. AND THEN she flirts with the guy her fragile and impressionable teenage daughter is in love with and actually KISSES him. Mother of the Year for that one. But I'm getting sidetracked by my disgust. Anyhoo, I loved the song, and even at one point was planning to sing it onstage with a few girls in high school. We were going to perform in our annual talent show, which in retrospect I'm glad didn't happen. Our high school was brutal back in the day, we would probably have gotten jeered off the stage.

As a Tejana, I listened to TONS of Selena. Everyone did. In fact, speaking of talent shows, I remember one in maybe first or second grade where 85 thousand girls all sang a Selena song. There was a guy performing too, but I'm fairly positive he sang and danced that one song in the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey. I'm pretty sure he had maracas and everything. But anyhoo, it seemed like the entire world was immersed in Selena's songs. I loved so many of them and listened to them over and over that I actually still remember almost all of them. I have too many favorites, but I KNOW I listened to this one constantly.

I always thought Selena's "No Me Queda Mas" was beautiful. I was a little girl who didn't understand spanish, and yet this song always gave me chills. It was like I could hear the pain and yearning come through her voice when she sang. I still remember when I found out she had died. My aunt had come to pick me up from grade school when she told me. I remember feeling incredibly devastated, as though I had personally lost someone close to me. I had listened to her music so long it had become a part of me, and I cried when I realized the person behind it was gone. For ages afterward I wasn't able to see the Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez. Actually, I hated J-Lo cause I felt she wasn't good enough to play Selena. In J-Lo's defense, I would have hated anyone who had taken the role. I finally saw the entire movie through not too long ago, and being the incredibly over emotional person I am, I teared up at the end when she dies and they go through clips of the actual news footage, with fans crying and her songs playing. I still don't quite understand the emotional pull behind it. I think it's a regional thing. In the area I lived in, EVERYONE was a Selena fan. A lot of less well off people found her an inspiration, because she had been living proof that a poor Latina girl could make it out on top. 

So these are some of the songs I loved back in the day. I have a cousin who loved her gangsta rap, so I actually liked some Tupac, and for a while there, my most listened to CD was Pulse. The CD itself didn't even come out until 2001, but it had a lot of songs on it I listened to back in the day, for example Bizarre Inc's I'm Gonna Get You and Rhythm Is A Dancer by Snap! Ohhh yeah. That's the stuff. Hostess. =) 

Inappropriate Movies for Young Children

Last Saturday was my sister Julie's 14th birthday. My brother David was INSISTING that he light the candle on her birthday cake. After he rudely blew out the candle on a birthday cake that didn't belong to him, he also decided to stomp off with the matches in hand, and inadvertently set them down on a living room couch. I later found them and, reminding him that there is a dog in the house that has consumed TWO cell phones, I picked them up and violently shook them in his face. Unaffected by my scolding, he and my other family members started talking about a movie we saw back in the day when we lived in Texas. In this movie, the main heroine consumes matches and burns to death. Dead. BURNS to death. Now, realistically speaking, I don't think someone can BURN to death in this manner. I'm pretty sure the person would be horrifically poisoned, but would probably not spontaneously combust. I'm thinking there was some artistic license taken with this plot line. But I digress. I'm fairly positive the burning in this movie was meant to be interpreted that the heroine's passion for her deceased lover burned so strongly that, in her consumption of these matches, she burst into flame. I saw this movie ages ago, and why did this explanation not occur to me before? Oh that's right, because I saw this movie before I moved to Illinois from Texas, probably somewhere in the second grade. This got me thinking, was this movie appropriate for a young child like me? What other movies was I subjected to? I thought hard, and these two movies came to mind.

The first is the movie I was just talking about, a foreign film with English subtitles called, "Like Water for Chocolate."

 

This movie is...just...awful for small children. It actually SAYS there, on the cover, "the passionate tale of forbidden love." FORBIDDEN, people! Anyhoo, here's the plot: the main heroine, a girl named Tita, falls in love with this dude named Pedro. The feeling is mutual, and Pedro goes to Tita's mom, Mama Elena, to ask for her hand in marriage. She refuses, saying that even though Pedro and Tita love each other, since Tita is her youngest daughter, she can never marry and must take care of Mama Elena until the day she dies. Ok, depressing much? Anyhoo, Mama Elena says that although Tita isn't available, her older, graceless, GASSY sister Rosaura is. Pedro decides to marry Rosaura to "stay close to Tita." Ummm ok first of all What. The. JUNK. I remember being pissed off about this even when I was little. This spineless a-hole marries her SISTER in order to STAY CLOSE to the woman he actually loves?? Excuse me??? Ok I remember watching Cinderella when I was little, and nowhere in the Disney animation did they have the prince giving up on his quest to find the woman who fit the glass slipper. He knew she was one of a kind, and no other woman could literally fill her shoes, and he wasn't all, "oh well I guess it's gonna be pretty hard to find this chick, eh whatev I'll just randomly marry whoever else cause it's easier." NO he did NOT!! Little Mingo was so angry about this, she instantly hated the movie. Why didn't Pedro just sneak away with Tita in the middle of the night?? Steal her away?? Douche. So, to continue, Pedro marries Rosaura, and Tita's mom forces her to do all kinds of evil bidding. She's forced to make Pedro and Rosaura's freakin WEDDING DINNER, and live under the same roof with them while they start a freakin family. Disgusting. The whole time, Tita and Pedro have stolen moments together (little Mingo also disapproved of adultery, by the way) until Mama Elena suspects and sends the little family to Texas. On the way, Rosaura's baby dies, and Tita blames Mama Elena. They get into a fight and Mama Elena slaps Tita and has her institutionalized. The doctor watching over Tita falls in love with her and nurses her back to sanity, and Tita plans to marry him, despite still being in love with Pedro. Pedro and Co. come back, and Pedro takes Tita's virginity. Ashamed that she isn't untouched any longer, she breaks off her engagement to the doctor. SO, Pedro has effectively not only made sure he will break Tita's heart by marrying her sister, he ALSO makes sure that she can never marry anyone else, either. Selfish bastard. Anyhoo, lots of other things happen. Tita's other sister, Gertrude, gets kidnapped by rebels of the Mexican Revolution, and she marries one and heads a rebel movement. Mama Elena gets attacked by rebels and dies, and then haunts Pedro and Tita because of their inappropriate relationship. She attacks Pedro and he's severely burned. Eventually Rosaura dies, TWENTY FREAKIN YEARS LATER, and Pedro and Tita finally are allowed to be together. Then, just when they're about to be intimate, guilt-free, Pedro has a heart attack and freakin DIES. Tita commits suicide by eating matches, and sets everything ablaze when she bursts into flames. The End. Happy story for an eight year old, eh?

The second movie I LOVED when I was a kid. It was called "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." It was a musical starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds, and it was awesome. 

 

Dolly Parton is Mona,this madam of a well known brothel in, you guessed it, Texas. She has a romantic relationship with Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd, Burt Reynolds, and everything is idyllic until Dom Deluise, who plays Melvin P. Thorpe, TV Watchdog extraordinaire, shows up and ruins everything. He is after the Chickenhouse, and shocks the small town with his undercover investigations (all in song, of course). Imagine if you will, Little Mingo singing along to family friendly tunes like "Sneakin' Around," "Little Bitty Pissant Country Place," and "Texas Has A Whorehouse In It." It was magical I tell ya. Anyhoo, because the Watchdog wants to have the Chicken Ranch closed down, the sheriff asks Mona to close the ranch on the biggest night of the year for them, the night of the big annual football game. The winner of the game gets the Ranch's hospitality, and it's an age-old tradition handed down generation to generation. The Sheriff is sure that Melvin P. Thorpe will target this monumental event. Mona goes against the Sheriff's wishes and has the party for the football team anyway, and Melvin P. Thorpe and his camera crews burst in on the celebrations, literally exposing the illegal prostitution going on. Local citizens are outraged, and the Sheriff is unable to save Mona's ranch. They shut her down, and all the girls sing a lovely song entitled "Hard Candy Christmas" in which they outline their plans for the future, away from prostitution. Then Mona sings "I Will Always Love You" to the Sheriff, and he literally sweeps her off her feet and marries her, making an honest woman out of her. Sigh. Happy ending. I always LOVED that movie. There was one scene in which the prostitutes all walk down the stairs together, singing and doing a sexy dance, and I ALWAYS sang that song! (I can't quite remember if I did the accompanying dance as well.) Hee.

The point of this post was not to comment on whether or not I liked the movies, but to say that I probably shouldn't have seen the movies at all! I mean, eight year old Mingo didn't need to see Pedro and Tita's forbidden passionate trysts or the Chicken Ranch girls' boobies flying everywhere! But see them I did. And I'm a better person for it. Probably.

It's On Like Donkey Kong

Ok. So I'm currently waging a war with two separate but equally evil entities. These massive corporations are currently giving me the WORST headaches ever, and so I feel compelled to besmirch their good names. Ha.

SO, evil entity numero uno: Zales. Now, I happen to work in jewelry, so I am painfully aware of the level of customer service that crazy people require. Not one day passes that I'm forced to be super sweetly nice to a bitching customer. Most of the time I can handle it well enough, you just gotta go with the flow most of the time. No probs. I am here to serve you, oh Liege. Oh, your diamond has gone missing, you say? The biggest one in your ring? Well now, look at these plier marks on the gold...Oh, you want it replaced for free? SURE, no problem! In fact you know what, let me connect you with the diamond mine I have shoved up my ass. Wait, I may possibly not say exactly that last part. But the other stuff is fairly spot on, we are forced to comply with a myriad of ridiculous requests. Because of this, when I visit a fellow jeweler I tend to be slightly critical of the customer service provided. Recently, I visited a Zales store in the Fox Valley Mall because I was on a quest for a birthday present for myself. I found this ring I liked, sooo gorgeous, for $399. Here it is.

Now, I'm no idiot. I know these people can further discount if you push for it. So I asked if the "gentleman" I was speaking with could lower the price at all. His response was a flat out NO. I was surprised because this dude was being incredibly cold and rude towards me, but I tried again. I asked, do you have an sales coming up? Again, I was met with a brusque NO. I said, I've purchased from here before, and they've been able to help out with the price before. To which he responded, "well it looks like you had a salesperson who made a mistake then." At this point I was just irritated, because it was obvious that this guy thought I was a young person who wasn't a serious shopper, and so he felt he could be dismissive of me and I would leave and not waste his time any further. So I left, resolving to come back and speak with a more helpful associate. I call the next morning for the ring, and looked it up online with the sku number a woman gave me. I was hella shocked to discover that the ring I was looking at the night before was actually priced at freakin $1400!! It was glaringly obvious at that point that the ring had been misplaced, and that the rude sales guy from the night before (the manager of the store, by the way) was obviously trying to get rid of me so that he wouldn't be forced to sell me the ring at the price he had to quote me! Oh but that was a BIG mistake on his part. I am super reasonable, and if he had picked up that ring at first and said, oh wow this has actually been put in the wrong place, it's actually priced much higher, I would have let it go. Mistakes happen. But his "human error," as he henceforth referred to it, was a slimy, underhanded deception. He deliberately let me think the ring was the lower price, knowing full well it was actually much more expensive, because he was positive I couldn't buy it anyway. And to be rude and dismissive to me on top of it? And insult my intelligence? Nope, sorry bald dude, it ain't gonna happen. After a VERY heated discussion with him, I used the number he provided me to attempt to contact his district manager. It of course did not connect me. I went through a long, arduous process to speak with a customer representative to file my complaint, and got a case number. Because now, it's ON. He's going to be forced to give me that ring at the $399 price he told me it was. I'm not one to back down from a fight, and this guy will soon find out exactly how tenacious I can be... I will be calling daily until I get the price I'm seeking. I'll have to post updates when I get my final result!

Whew. One down. Ok, evil entity number two: T-Mobile. Those fargin bastages have screwed me over WAY too many times!! I discovered on this month's bill that the family plan I am on is being charged twice for the single internet plan my phone needs. I go to the store to look into it. Apparently, when I upgraded on my dad's line (mine was not eligible at the time) they put the 4G network on his line instead of mine. Ok, got that. I called to switch it to my line. What they did instead was ADD it to my line, so there are two separate charges on two separate lines for one internet service! My dad has an old school flip phone, definitely not 4G capable, and so there's no way he could be using it! Both the customer service chick AND her supervisor that I spoke with said not only will they not reverse the charges for this, but that I will probably have to continue paying for both throughout the course of my two year contract. But wait, they have options! Ok, option #1: I can cancel mine, and only my dad's phone will have internet. Utterly useless. Option #2: I can split the cost on both plans, and have limited internet on both. Not exactly what you'd want for your expensive 4G phone, since you'd have to count the minutes you spent online. Option #3: I can buy a new phone outright on his plan, and they can then cancel the required internet service. No word on what to do with the additional phone. AND option #4: I can cancel the service and pay a $200 fee. By the end of this VERY frustrating conversation, the supervisor said, "Ma'am, be advised that I have given you your options and that I cannot cancel the internet plan or absolve the fee." To which I replied, "Ma'am, please be advised that you are a stupid bitch," before hanging up on her. Veeeery angry, I was. On top of it all, I'm still going to have to choose a damn option and call them back. I HATE THEM. Evil bastages.

SO! These are the current battles I face! One I went into head on, and the other I got roped into. I wonder if either will pay to correct the high blood pressure they're causing... No? Eh. Didn't think so.

Hola all!

Ok y'all. This be my first blog. And that wasn't meant to come off all pirate-y and all, but hey sometimes that happens, and one just needs to drag their peg leg outta the sand and move on with life. As you may have noticed ALREADY, I am what I like to refer to myself as delightfully random. Sometimes I don't make a whole lot of sense, my brain seems to have moved on to something else before my mouth (or fingers, in this case) can catch up to work together simultaneously. Sometimes my brain is also late. It happens. But here I go getting ahead or behind of myself.

My name is Sara, but for my online blogging purposes I shall henceforth refer to myself as mingo. Mingo happens to be an abbreviation of my first EVER email addy, pinkflamingo5017. I chose this name back in the day because of an obsession I used to have with buttons. Not the kind of buttons that hold clothes closed, the buttons that proclaim witty and/or ridiculous pictures or phrases that somehow let the outside world know exactly what kind of person you ARE. Back in the day in high school, these buttons were awesome. I had 85 thousand different buttons attached to my backpack. (I have a very slight tendency to over exaggerate numbers. For some reason, it always seems to be a variation on the number 85 in particular. No one, least of all me, knows why this is.) Anyhoo, one of my most favoritest buttons was bright green, with a pink flamingo on it. It proclaimed, "I am the pink flamingo on the great lawn of life." And I saw this button and was like, holy toledo that's freakin awesome. That is ME. So here I am today, still the mingo.

I'm unsure why I decided to begin this blog. A friend of mine is very computer-oriented, and she suggested I begin one to honor the national? blog every day for a month thingeemajigger. In technical terms. Ironically enough, I started the blog too late to coincide with that. I had been thinking, what is the point of a blog that no one will read? And she said, well it'll be more like an online diary then, and you can do it for yourself. So here I am. I'm thinking I'll like this, I've always liked writing, so getting my jumbled thoughts out in a semi-cohesive manner will be productive, I think. Which leads to the invention of my blog name. My life is a freakin zoo. I have a crazy family, who have herd-like tendencies. They are a pack. A pride. (You now have learned that I have no idea how to properly use animal metaphors.) Anyway, I needed a phrase that described the chaoticness of my mind and the world around me. Aaaaand I like alliteration. And so mingo's mangled menagerie was born.

I think this is a good beginning. It semi-explains my purpose and how I came to be here, and I suppose future posts will expand on that. For now, I am done. Adios, all!