Aneta Cruz's Blog, page 3

The Descendants

I know I may be a little too late with this news, but I needed sufficient time to process it.
So, that jerk Kanye West and that what-is-she-famous-for-again? Kim Kardashian had a baby. Not that I care. I only prayed that Taylor Swift waited around in the delivery room, and then, as the doctor passed the baby to Kanye, Taylor jumped up, grabbed it out of his hands, and said, “Yo, imma letchoo hold yo baby in a minute, but I just wan’ e’r’body in hee to know that Beyonce had one o’the best deliveries of all time.”
Fine, fine, enough with the jokes. Let’s be serious for a moment and ask ourselves, “Why do Kanye and Kim hate their daughter?” I mean, the girl is just a few days old and already, she is the target of numerous jokes because of her name. Honestly, do these two not know that they are serving her on a silver platter at a comedy buffet? And anyone is welcome to pick up a fork a take a stab. This girl is going to have a tough time growing up. Not only will she have to deal with the fact that her dad is a condescending, microphone-grabbing, award-air-time-stealing,  nobody-cares- what-he’s-babbling-about idiot and her mom is just another reality TV nobody, but she’ll have to deal with kids throwing things like maps, compass, and other navigational tools at her head. Trust me. I know. I’ve been working with children for over a decade, and I'm sad to say that they get worse every year. So why, as a parent, would anyone contribute to humiliating, bullying, and scarring their own child for life? Or at least till the time when the kids get to take a stand, give their parents a you’re a douche bag look, then file in the line to change their name.

But! Kanye and Kim are not the only ones who joined the march against providing their child with a somewhat normal childhood. I think it must be a celebrity complex. You know, something they can’t pop a pill for. That need to be in the spotlight, to be noticed, talked about. The need to constantly keep up with and then out-do other celebrity Jonses. Receiving positive attention wears off quickly; even the regular Joes know that. You know, you get an award, diploma, promotion, whatever. You celebrate by going to dinner or having a party, but that’s it. It’s over. After that you’re just you again.

Being just YOU is a celebrity death sentence. And that is why the constant drama. They’ve figured out a long time ago that negative attention is way better than positive attention or, heaven forbid, even no attention, and that is why they pass it on to their kids. It's the only certainty that someone will talk about them even after they’re long gone. People will be able to say, “Oh, you’re North West? Yeah, I remember when your dad snatched Taylor Swift’s microphone while she was getting an award and said that Beyonce’s song was better. What a jerk!”
Now, I’m no shrink, but I think that the celebrities’ decision to give their children the most odd and abnormal names is a cry for help. So let’s help these folks! How? Laughter…it’s the best medicine.

Erykah Badu & Andre 3000– son, Seven Sirius (there’s only one, siriously)
Beyonce & Jay Z– daughter, Blue Ivy(Green Ivy was already taken…by a plant!)
Christie Brinkley & Peter Cook– daughter, Sailor Lee (they wanted a yacht instead)
Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon– son, Moroccan Scott (neither Moroccan, nor Scottish)– daugther, Monroe (neither the President, nor Marilyn)
Bob Geldof & Paula Yates– daughters: Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom, Little Pixie (just kidding; they’re not daughters, they’re fairies)
Rachel Griffiths & Andrew Taylor– son, Banjo (c’mon; not even guitars want to claim a relation)                                                             Lance Henriksen & Mary Jane Henriksen– daughter, Alcamy (as in Alchemy, as in witchcraft, as in “aren’t you glad you weren’t born between 1480-1750?”)
Barbara Hershey & David Carradine– son, Free (wake up! kids are anything but)
Kate Hudson & Chris Robinson– son, Ryder (closet admirers of David Hasselhoff’s Knight Rider)
Kate Hudson & Matt Bellamy– son, Bingham (named after uncle Bada and aunt Black Forest)                                                   Michael Hutchence (RIP) & Paula Yates– daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily (apparently these two thought flowers grow in the sky)
Penn Jillette & Emily Jillette– daughter, Moxie CrimeFigther (Superhero Sprite)
Simon LeBon & Yasmin Parvaneh– daughters: Amber Rose Tamara, Saffron Sahara, Tallulah Pine (I’m sorry; are we naming kids after bath salts now?)
Jamie Oliver & Jools Oliver– daughters: Poppy Honey (from the Naked Chef’s own spice cabinet) and Daisy Boo (apparently some fascination with flowers and Halloween)
Ving Rhames & Deborah Reed– daughter, Reignbeau (spelling error: Rainbow)– son, Freedom (named after George Michael’s hit)
Shannyn Sossamon & Dallas Clayton– son, Audio Science (no comment, just sorry)
Sylvester Stallone & Sasha Czak– daughter, Sage Moonblood (to ward off any more vampire books/movies)– son, Seargeoh (really the gardener Sergio’s son)
And I could go on and on. But I won’t because I just received news that Drake Bell decided to name his firstborn Taco; Hale Berry’s children will be called Blue, Black, and Rasp; Orlando Bloom’s promising to name his kids after flowers to make it count; 50 Cent will have twins called Quarters; and M&M’s, I mean Eminem’s kids are going to be Good & Plenty.

Book Review of Shelly's Play With Me

Please go to your right and click on Book Review under Pages to read my review of Piper Shelly's novella, Play With Me.


You can leave a comment here or at the bottom of the Book Reivews page. Happy summer reading!

There's a Gator Under My Daughter's Bed

When I was a child, I hated my mother’s bragging about me. Not that she did it often, but when she did, I would always drop my gaze to the ground and feel my cheeks flush. I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal getting straight As and numerous awards. It all just seemed to come so easily, and I never really had a difficult time at school. What I dreaded the most were the adults’ questions that followed immediately after they’d heard my mom’s bragging. They’d always ask me silly, tricky questions I had to answer in order to prove that I really did earn my marks and prizes. It was uncomfortable and pathetic. I shouldn’t have had to prove anything to anyone. And that is why I swore I would never do anything even remotely similar to my kids.
I broke that oath.
Like any proud parent, I love to brag about my children’s achievements. It is indeed selfish, and I know it. But it, to some extent, proves that I’ve done something right. :o)Today, I just must brag about my daughter, Viktoria. You know the saying, The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Well, this apple seems to only have fallen right by the trunk. Viktoria brought home her collection of creative writing from school, and after I’d read through it, there was only one thing I could say: This girl has a gift! She is funny and her imagination is untainted.
Here’s one of her short stories.
 Alligator Under My BedbyViktoria Cruz

You probably wouldn’t believe this, but I have an alligator under my bed. I have some big difficulties in the morning and when I want to play in my room. When I get up in the morning and step on the floor, the gator lashes out at my foot, but he always misses because I quickly pull it back. I have to literally jump out of bed to get to my closet. When I put on my clothes, the gator is always staring at me like he wants to eat me. Sometimes when I take a little snack to my room, he thinks I’m trying to lure him out. I can’t even watch TV because he ate the remote. I hate this alligator! He’s always making trouble for me. Every time I leave the room, he either rips up my clothes or bed sheets or tears the heads off my dolls. There is nothing worse he could do. Well, except eat me.
 How about them apples?

A Headscratcher

Ohmygosh! I have a headscratcher. Okay, so this is what just happened. After we completed my son’s soccer sign up, my husband asked me to drive him—he hates driving, so I’m often his personal chauffer, except for when we go on a date, during which he drives me around like Miss Daisy and does the whole opening-the-doors-gentleman-kind-of-thing and about which my daughter says that it’s soooo stupid because we’ve been married for soooo many years already, why do we have to go on a date?—but I’m totally off track now, so let me get back and focus.
Anyway, I drove him to his favorite tool store: Harbor Freight. You cannot truly comprehend how happy he gets in this store until you’ve seen one of those Geico commercials in which one guy says, “How happy are folks who save money by switching to Geico?” and the other guy replies, “Happier than a Pillsbury Doughboy going to a baking convention,” for example. There are many commercials, but all of them basically show extremely happy people/things. The only time I’ve seen my husband happier than this was when, after much nagging on his part, I went to a swap-meet with him. In case you were wondering, yes, he is a HOARDER!

Okay, so the kids, he, and I got to the tool store in which every single product had been made in China and reeked of led. Fine, I don’t know if led has an odor, but the store does. It was so strong that my nose felt like it was being drilled into by an invisible piercing tool that multiplied my nostrils by a hundred and the mixed smell of sulfate, cheap paint, and sweaty armpits had a party in them. I had to get out of there. I told my husband that the kids and I would wait outside in the car to which he graciously agreed, surely not because he was concerned about my oncoming headache but because he would have the freedom to hang around the isles and make sweet love to each and every tool without my nasty glares.
While I was breathing in the stench-free but hot (it was 100F yet again today) evening air, my daughter started whining from the back seat, “Close the windows! Look at those people, what if they steal us?” (My daughter has a serious anxiety about being abducted. Damn you, media!)“Who? Them?” I shouted back at her as I pointed out three hippie-looking women in their fifties. “Stop yelling,” my daughter said, “they’ll hear us!”But hear us they wouldn’t. I noticed that instead of laughter, awkward noises were coming out of their mouths and they were signing to one another. “How ingenious!” I told my daughter. “Their house must be so nice and quiet. And they can talk to each other from across the street! We could never do that without shouting.”So we watched the women’s conversation as they walked a little ways from our car toward a street lamp. Then, something unimaginable happened. They lifted the metal box into which the lamp was fastened, slid it upward, and pulled somethingout. They opened the something, giggled for a bit; then I saw a piece of paper fluttering in one of the women’s hands as she examined it closely. Then, they packed everything up and hid that something back in its secret spot. They passed by our car, and my kids and I sat in a stupefying silence, worried they would hear us and know that we’ve been watching them this whole time.
As my husband was still inside the tool store, my kids and I had quite a lot of time to brainstorm about what the something could have been. I, of course, immediately thought that we’d just witnessed a drug exchange and that a drug dealer would soon jump out of the bushes, collect whatever was inside that something, and murderlize us for having witnessed everything. My daughter, who always suspects the worst case scenario, I’m sure thought of something similar. But my son, the innocent, gullible, and often naïve boy, wanted to go and see what treasure was hiding under the metal box. At last, my hoarder came out of the store. Why not have him go and check? We pulled up next to the lamp; he slid up the metal box, pulled out the something, and jumped into the car with it. “Don’t take it,” I said, “just see what it is.”“Well, it’s this,” he said.It was a small box, the size of a compact. As he slowly opened it, I was bracing myself for the worst—syringes, bloody needles, heroin…and now it had my dear hoarder’s fingerprints all over it! But instead, there were nick-knacks there: a small golden hook, an eagle rub-on tattoo, a blue heart-shaped hair clip, a rubber band, and a note inside a plastic Ziploc baggy. “What does this mean?” I wondered. “Oh, I know,” my husband said. “It’s one of those National Geography things.”“What?”“You know; it’s like a national scavenger hunt. You can order it online, and they’ll send you a kit and tell you where the clues are and where to go next.”

Oh, bless my dear hoarder’s heart. His mind is so creative.Suddenly, a feeling of guilt overcame me. If this, in fact, was a “scavenger hunt” it was an effort of deaf/dumb ladies who would never get a chance to scream at me for uncovering their secret. They could flip me off—that sort of sign language is pretty universal, I think. “Put it back,” I said. “We’re so mean, digging into things that are not ours.” Ironically, I always teach my kids: If it’s not yours, don’t touch it.“At least put something in,” my husband replied.“Like what? You’re gonna screw up their game.”“Nah, they’ll like it.” He looked around the car, grabbed a small heart-shaped rock (he collects those for me—read my short story “Husband (a Wife’s Tale)”), a very small pencil from IKEA, which we’d visited not too long ago, and a penny, because apparently everything at IKEA is worth just that. He closed the small box, put it back in its no-longer-so-secret place, and we drove off. Halfway home, my son announces from the backseat, “We never got to read the note. Turn around!”
I didn’t. Now we have something left for our imaginations, don’t you think? Aren’t the best stories told through omissions? But even as I’m writing this, my children are begging me to return tomorrow and read the note. We are indeed a curious family.  What would you do?

Forward into the Past

I’m finally free from any school obligations (well, except for the graduation ceremony). Several days ago, I sent out my thesis manuscript, The Guardian, for binding and now I found that at the end of the road, where I’d expected a block wall that would obstruct my creativity for a while, is a golden gate, to which I have the key, instead. I unlocked it while writing the Aesthetic Statement which accompanies my thesis. And where did it lead me, you ask? Back into my childhood.
 

I grew up on fire-breathing dragons, damsels in distress, shadowy figures lurking in the dark forest, witches brewing potions, and blood-curdling monsters slaughtered by valiant knights, to name the very few. In my Aesthetic Statement called “Examining Monstrosity” I ponder over my attachment to monsters about which I write in The Guardian. And having to examine my past and my inspiration to write in the first place made me realize something very important. I MUST share the stories on which I grew up, stories that taught me moral lessons, helped me understand cultures, explore people's identities, how and why we view the Otherness we consider to be monstrous, and most importantly, they helped me understand myself.


And so I’m taking on a summer project. I’ve decided to retell my favorite childhood fairy tales (and, mind you, these are no tales about Snow White or Red Riding Hood; these are much darker and grimmer but beautiful) in a collection that has no title as of yet. I’m doing this not only because of my love for storytelling, but because we are raising a generation of wussies, who will grow up with anything that starts with the letter i (phone, pad, pod, etc.) attached to their umbilical cord.

Today’s stories are geared toward socially diverse issues which, granted, help children understand the world around them in a very gentle and informative way. But where is the true, suck-it-up-and-face-your-fear kind of bravery in any of them? Today's stories are just all too real. What happened to the mystery, magic—thank goodness for J. K. Rowling, the Otherness? 


I think it's time to move forward into the past. It's time to lower the bucket into the bottomless well of old stories and pull out the tales that stretch our children’s imaginations, ignite their hearts with passion, spark their minds with curiosity, and make them utter, “What if…?”


If you have an idea for the title of my collection of fairy tales, you are more than welcome to share. I’m all ears. :o)
And if you have a fairy tale to share, do not hesitate to do so!

Smart Pajamas for Stupid

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. Besides finishing my manuscript and the aesthetic statement for my MFA Thesis (close to 200 pages), I have no legitimate excuses. I also haven’t had a conundrum that would totally and completely outrage me. Finally, after two weekends of eating dirt and horse shit—I’m not kidding—I found something even more offensive this morning when I was getting ready for work.
First things first: As some of you may know, the famous and sometimes infamous Coachella Fests, the two three-day-weekend-Woodstock-wannabe-concerts, are held right behind my backyard. This year, the [insert sarcastic tone here] brilliant Golden Voice Production that organizes the events decided it would be fun to spread horse manure mixed with sand behind my wall, I guess to make a nice and fluffy cushion for the festers who would be bused into the venue. Now, the Coachella Fest has been an annual gig since 1999, so you would think that the Golden Voice boys would have figured by now how quickly our desert sun dries up the earth if it is not watered properly, right? Wrong. By the time the buses arrived, the horse crap had completely dried up and stinky clouds of what I can only label as mummified horse turd particlesmade their way into my yard, home, mouth, and lungs. Not only was my furniture covered with a thick layer of filth, but my dog, Poe, decided not come out of the house. And that’s a big one because he eats his own poop, for crying out loud! Bus stirs up mummified horse turd particles.
This weekend is reserved for Stagecoach. But by now, my husband befriended a water truck driver who gladly wets the premises in the vicinity of our backyard wall. As you can clearly see, the rule It’s not what you know but who you knowapplies even when shit is at stake. But, this is not what horrified me to my very core. As an avid reader, writer, and storyteller, I was outraged this morning because of the following commercial. 
Watch it here and weep.

What is happening to our children, parents, society? When have parents become so selfish and lazy that they can’t spend the miserable ten minutes it takes to read/tell their children a bedtime story? I get it. We live in the age of information, and technology has become the staple of our livelihoods. But when technology decides to invade my children’s right to the most magnificent invention of all times—a book made of paper and ink; an invention that possesses magic, limitless potential by letting the children’s imaginations grow and stretch like the Universe itself, we are at war. Yes, you heard me. I declare war on all electronically linked pajamas (even though my children love pajamas), with their dots, binary codes, bar codes, hieroglyphs, DNA sequences, and whatever else stupid humans will try to weave into their fabric. Pajamas should be the one cozy outfit children wear when they cuddle up with their parents, not an electronic device, and listen to a story from the voice of their guardian, not some damn robot-voice of an application on a phone or a pad on which they can’t even physically turn the pages. So I’m sad and disappointed.
The only way we can win the book vs. electronic device war while we gradually advance in our technological age is if we save the nostalgia about our childhood and cherish the values of bedtime stories told in the traditional way. 

What Is Easter, Eggsactly?

As many of you, I, too, am preparing for tomorrow’s Easter. I have vases of fresh flowers on every table; there are rabbits, jars of jelly beans, chocolate carrots, and painted eggs decorating my home. It looks and feels very Springy. Now, I’ve never been raised to be a religious person and so when I see this kind of décor intertwined with crosses and crucifixes at some of my Christian friends’ homes, I think to myself: What does Jesus have to do with Easter? There’s a good rule of thumb—if you don’t know something—ask. And ask I did. Why, Easter celebrates the resurrection of Christ! they said. So the rabbit represents his hopping out of the grave … and the eggs? Is that what he ate when he hopped out? And why are they painted? They didn’t know. Another good rule of thumb: if you doubt the answer you get, do your own research. And research I did.
Easter is a Pagan festival, not celebrated on a Sunday, but on the Spring Equinox when the Sun (not the son) overcomes the powers of darkness (longer nights) and is “resurrected” or “reborn” in the constellation of the Southern Cross (and voila, we have longer days). This “resurrection” myth goes way back before our buddy Jesus. All the way back to the ancient civilization of Sumer, where the Sumerians celebrated Goddess Inanna who had been resurrected from the Underworld; the same Goddess was later renamed Ishtar by the Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. And more resurrection stories, all based on the very same premise, follow, such as the Egyptian one about Horus, then we have Mithras, and how about Dionysus? And then Jesus. All reborn/ resurrected during the Spring Equinox.

The bunny—a leftover pagan tradition from the festival of Eostre, where the great northern Goddess whose symbol was a hare was celebrated. Painted eggs—jeez, they go all the way back to Sumer and Egypt and other ancient civilizations where they were presented to Gods as a gift.Hot cross buns, anyone? They go way back to ancient Israel where they were baked as a sweet bread to be presented to an idol.
So, this was just a very brief Easter Origins 101. If you’d like to learn more, and believe me—there is so much more to learn, you should do your own little research. You may be intrigued.
Now, you may know that my country, the Czech Republic, has always been desired (which is a fancy word for “occupied) by many nations; therefore, the influences for the Easter holiday are as colorful as can get. Let me tell you a little bit about what we do.
First: We don’t go to the mall to take pictures with the Easter Bunny. We eat him.


Then we paint eggs, but not with the artificial dye that gets all over your fingers and you can’t get it off for days, so you walk around looking like you’ve just stuck your hand up rainbow’s ass. We get together and do the most intricate designs that take skill, patience, and steady hands.

We also bake a cake in the shape of a lamb—white or chocolate, which is the most delicious cake I’ve ever had. And trust me when I say that because I know cake.



And then we get the crap beaten out of us. Well, the girls do. Boys come knocking on our doors with a long stick; they have to sing to us, then they spank us, and then we tie a ribbon around their stick and give them painted eggs. Whoever collects the most ribbons is the obvious macho man. The spanking is supposed to bring women good health for the upcoming year, but the way I see it, this last tradition is very suggestive of men’s aggressive sexual cravings—what, with flaunting their sticks and hitting women? Hello!We live in the age of feminism and gender equality! Enough is enough! I wonder what idiot came up with this tradition. What sort of egotistical maniac woke up one day, farted, wiped the drool off his chin, and said: “Aah, I think I’m gonna make a stick and beat the crap out of women with it and tell them it’s healthy for them. Oh, and I’m gonna have them put a ribbon around the stick, so everybody can see how many women I got. And then I’m gonna ask them to make me some hard-boiled eggs ‘cause I’m gonna be pretty hungry after beating the crap out of them.”   
Pick a Stick
Yeah, I really want to find out whose idea this was, then resurrect him from the grave and kick his ass!
Happy Easter, everyone!
Nacho Libre.Easter Scene.

Book Review of Town Red

I just reviewed Town Red by Jennifer Moss. Go to the Book Reviews section of my Pages, check it out, and pass it on!

You are welcome to comment below or at the bottom of the Book Reviews Page.I love hearing from you!

Throw Away Your Television

I was flicking through channels last night and got fed up with my TV. Out of hundreds of channels Time Warner Cable offers us, 90% are reality show—which I loathe so don't get me started on those, and the rest is sheer crap. As I cursed incessantly at the liar box, squeezing the remote with all my might, and debated whether I should just cut the cable and thereby all the crap that was showing, I came across Guinness World Records Gone Wild on TruTV. Now, I usually skip anything that has “gone wild” in its title, having no interest in seeing girls acting like morons, criminals acting like morons, politicians acting like morons…you get my drift. “But this has Guinness World Records in the title,” I thought, “this should be good.” So I waited for the commercial to finish its advertisement for some medication that had more side effects than symptoms it would treat, and watched the show.
It was pathetic, but for some reason I was mesmerized by, you've guessed it, the morons on TV. Why would anyone want to set a world record in such useless things as crushing watermelons with thighs, or shoving whole hamburgers in the mouth, or running through panes of glass, or even blowing a marshmallow out of the nose just so another person can catch it in the mouth (boogers and all). How are normal, non-moron people supposed to have any drive and ambition to set a record in something meaningful if the expectations are so low?
Okay, so let’s expand on the above mentioned record attempts.
 A creature with a man’s body and a beautiful woman’s face attempted to crush watermelons with her thighs.  Record to break? 8 crushed watermelons. After crushing the first one, the creature’s thighs became slippery from all the juice, so the rest of the watermelons just popped up and rolled away. This was a FAIL.

A man who looked like he’d just swallowed a barrel attempted to break a record of 3 whole hamburgers being shoved in his mouth. He took 4, squashed them into one flat circle (I would have immediately disqualified him as this seemed like cheating) and started stuffing. Now the catch was this: the hamburgers needed to come out of the mouth in the exact same shape they’d entered. How do you think this fatty ended up? Yup, another FAIL. When he took the burgers out of his mouth, he laid out a disgusting mush of saliva covered bread and half chewed patties.

    A guy, who was very obviously just a show-off trying to land some air time for his fifteen minutes of lame, got dressed in a protective gear and attempted to break the record of shattering 18 glass panes by running through them. He managed to demolish 19, BUT the rules were to break one pane at a time. Unfortunately, he smashed two at once, so he only tied the record. And then he had the nerve to say, “It’s alright. My next record will be shattering all 19 at once.” He must have hit his head really hard despite wearing a helmet. FAIL!

And finally, the marshmallow blower. A guy has a best friend and a girlfriend. The latter two spend a LOT of time together. When the guy asks what they are doing, the blond (why do they always have to be blond?) girlfriend comes up with the dumbest story, “He’s blowing marshmallows, and I’m catching them in my mouth.” I bet that’s not all she was catching in her mouth! Hey! Watch your dirty mind! I was merely suggesting that she was catching his boogers, too. Okay, so the guy puts a mini marshmallow in his nostril, blows it into the air, and the girl catches it in her mouth. The record to break was a little over 16 feet and these two broke it. 17 feet and some inches. I guess that time spent together paid off. Now they are officially in the Guinness Book of World Records for breaking the dumbest record ever!

And the moral of today's blog is:Throw Away Your Television



TGIF, peeps!

Book Review of Twin Flames

I just reviewed Debbie Christiana's novel, Twin Flames. Go to the Book Reviews section of my Pages, check it out, and pass it on!

Happy Friday, everyone!