They Say…

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Professor Taboo

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But they never realized just how fragile life is or how very short it can be.

They say “The hottest love has the coldest end.” Now in my opinion and throughout my 6-decades of life that is painfully closer to the truth.

They say “The eyes are the window to the soul.” Yes. This entire week my eyes have been swollen with tears bearing open my ripped and bleeding soul.

It is sometimes said by them “It’s a broken heart when you’ve lost a soul mate,” but that’s only part of it. I hurt in my whole body, to the marrow.

But enough of what they say.

On Thursday, June 29, 2023, my lovely Hat Burglar boxed up and shipped my fourth or fifth package of what she always called “Surprizzles.” If I made a list for you of everything she has shipped to me from Georgia, USA, I’d have a 3- to 4,000 word post. So suffice it to say that she lives and loves to make people’s lives a little easier and a lot happier. And she is the Queen B at it. She is just as gifted in calming you, making you burst out in laughter, while simultaneously sorting out the berserko chicken-pen with chickens running amok with heads lopped off. She rightly earned the title of “Supreme Chaos Manager.” It is sheer ~~black~~ or white magic, a sight to behold actually, to watch what she can make happen; the consummate Doer! And with that my Doer did and with no delay, my box of Surprizzles was on the way …to my door.

But I want to jump back to and ahead in this story.

In the United States we have a non-existent FTC that is supposed to protect individual American consumers and phone users from insane amounts of telemarketing sales calls, AI spam callers, and other invasive businesses blowing up your phone’s call-log and voicemail capacity. A few wireless carriers offer a very basic spam-protection feature and/or app, but they too are near useless. I hate this infuriating marketing with an intense bitterness and our nation’s defunct economic model these wireless phone-cancers feed off and breed from: Free-enterprise or Hyper-capitalism. My fury is boiling just below atomic eruption when one listen’s to my cell phone voicemail greeting aimed at all telemarketers and AI spam-dialers.

Growling, my attempts to waste as much of their time as they would mine with my 2-3 minute greeting-of-torture, are not as effective as I had hoped for several reasons. One thing that is recognizable in my tone and attitude to this American AI plague is my enormous growing aversion and maddening for all-things-technology and their blatant abuse by sales and marketing departments upon my precious time. I mean, I’m ready to push the red-button labelled “Never Push This Button.”

Unknown to me, my lovely Hat Burglar often called my cell just to listen to my polite rage, or in her message to poke me with the proverbial stick inciting her grumpy grandpa (me) and make me either more grumpy or tolerably grumpy, just for her own amusement and entertainment-fix. Here are a few of her voicemails I will treasure for the rest of my life:

April 8^th, 2023:

May 16^th, 2023:

May 23^rd, 2023 with her son Jay calling me:

June 29^th, 2023 – her latest, and last VM to me:

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

In the late morning of July 2^nd, 2023, between 10:31am CDT, my time, and 1:40pm my time, my Soul Mate and Twin Flame, my Hat Burglar, who I’ve written about so affectionately since May 11^th and she wrote about me/us June 6^th, died suddenly of a severe heart-attack. Her husband tried to revive her several times with CPR, but the attack/seizure was simply too harsh and too swift. She was 47-years young. I don’t want to let her go…

*my all-time favorite pic of my Hat Burglar, aka Jodi*

Her box of Surprizzles arrived, wanted and unwanted, three days later on Wednesday, July 5^th, 2023. It had her typical flashy, Gothic, dark stickers smacked everywhere on the box. One sticker was the Jolly-Roger skull and crossed bones. It said on it in large pirate-script: Poison! I knew inside there were specially baked chocolate-chunk cookies (lots of them!) along with my various surprise items of shock-n-awe and/or uncontrollable laughter. In this reaction Jodi never failed; she was undefeated against me at 8 — 0. But her box sat there in a living room chair all morning, all afternoon, and into the evening. I could not muster the courage to open what should’ve been a sensational Cloud-9, Made-my-day moment… that instead would make all the life-long memories very different than intended.

Around six or seven PM, I don’t remember exactly, with Mom nearby I opened the box. There were eight to ten containers of big cookies, a book she knew I would love reading (she was spot-on, 10x better than Robin Hood’s second arrow through his first arrow), and then the real kicker; another envelope with her handwriting.

Out of all the surprizzles she included in this, her last shipment to me, this one in particular item/envelope evoked the most intense mixed emotions I have experienced in my life to-date. Forgive me, but to fully understand its profound euphoric and devastating impact on me, it requires some past context.

One afternoon in June when I was out running errands she called my cell. I always have the car stereo semi-blasting (not), playing my many favorite songs from several genres. This one time she called me while driving—then I pulled over of course for public safety reasons—and after 3-4 rings and her call almost ready to go to my voicemail greeting, I caught her just in time! However, I had not had a chance to mute/turn-off my loud music. Hence, she immediately heard this song (we both love) blaring on my stereo CD’s. Try to listen to its entirety and lyrics:

My Hat Burglar has or had an exquisite talent for imagining, creating, and manifesting serendipitous, life-long moments and memories for everyone around her, especially those she adored and loved most. For example, my heart-wrenching, gut-punch special envelope with cinematic directorship of exactly how we would part after finally meeting in person after a long, trouble-making, breathtaking weekend with sore face-cheeks from too much smiling, on top of sore ribs from laughing non-stop, she included this:

*Ouch… just ouch. Eery. Are you fucking kidding me!*

“They say crying makes the heart lighter.”

If that is true, then my heart is weightless; it is gone missing… with her. The rest of this earth-shattering, upside down, euphorically crushing, unfair life, for me, will NEVER be the same until my last breath. This painful emptiness, why? How?

— Photos below of Jodi, my Hat Burglar, added July 12, 2023 —

Jodi and Pudge, her youngest son.
Dante, the little Schnauzer, grabs & tries to eat Jodi’s hair!

The Professor Will See You Now…

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Hat Burglar

The continuation of You Sound Fun! — A Prologue, a discovery, a revelation by Hat Burglar, a tale in her words…

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

One of the most difficult parts of being a woman is perception. (Really any human, but I can’t speak to the male experience…) Depending on the viewer, I am a wife, sister, mother, lover, administrator, artist, writer, musician, Appalachian kitchen witch, agnostic, Methodist, businesswoman, benefactor, singer, failure, genius, angel, heretic and… and… and… (yeah, I know.)

Yup. I’m all of that. The best people in our lives see the whole person. They love us for everything we have been and will be. Rarely – all too rarely – we meet someone who intrinsically knows the depths and the heights of ourselves almost immediately, recognizes their kindred soul and latches on like a barnacle to the hull of an ancient wooden ship.

The Professor is one of only two men I have ever met who would cackle wildly to Meredith Brooks’ song and immediately look across the room at me and laugh even louder when I’d scream, “SHUT UP!” Somehow, through abuse, trauma, anxiety, depression, loss, love, pain, triumph and even a little surrender, I’m still me. I genuinely LIKE me. I’m never bored and few around me are either.

However, as I say so often in real life, “We’ve all got our shit.” GenX (and those so adjacent they scraped their nose missing the boat) is in an ice skating death spiral with our parents who won’t die and our children who can’t leave. We caretake, we earn, we work, we give, we worry, we shepherd, we beg, we plan… it’s fucking EXHAUSTING. The reward in the end is maybe getting by… but definitely losing our loved ones to death or adulthood.

When we find each other – those who genuinely vibrate on the same frequency as we do – we have a debt to pay to each other. We’ve been holding this shit in check since our mothers were ordering speed out of the back of Cosmo. We were supposed to be “slackers” and instead ended up with the world on our fucking shoulders.

The positive part is that we gave ourselves permission to love without apology. Bands, fandoms, books, D&D, cars… whatever it is, we’ve found ways to connect with our own kind. It’s said all the time online, “Never apologize for your passion.”

You can’t keep rowing if you don’t have a paddle. For some of us, those rowing the heaviest payload, we need more than one paddle.

I have a husband who is absolute perfection. He is smart, kind, a loving and engaged father, a generous lover and he has unending patience. I also have… a Professor. To me, he is the pressure valve on my life. He’s endlessly fascinated with my weirdness and never gets tired of my nonsense. He adores me as his twin flame and – here’s the shocker! – he loves my husband too, because my husband makes me happy. He balances me in a way I’ve never experienced.

So, I have two paddles and I thank the glorious Universe every day for that. I couldn’t figure out for so long why I was going around in circles. Now I know – I needed both. I won’t apologize for it and I won’t tell you that you need to be what I am either. I’m just telling you… if you need two paddles, there’s no medal for going down with your ship. When the waves take you, there will be no one there to tell you that your morals were stellar.

We don’t know what comes next after we go. This could be all there is, but I can tell you with certainty that I know My People. These two men are My People. These two men would bail me out of jail, kiss me when I’m sad, take care of me when I’m old and hold my hair while I throw up. I’m not dyin’ for anyone, but if I had to go, I’d have two hands to hold onto. That’s the definition of a blessing and they’ll pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.

Love you, kid. 💜

to be continued…

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

You Sound Fun! — A Prologue

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Professor Taboo

If misery loves company, then triumph demands an audience.
— Brian moore, irish novelist

Mr. Moore could not have stated a more apropos truth about human nature, all humans and their self-formulated projections upon others.

Yes, I demand an audience. Nay, I deserve an audience.

I have a glorious story to tell. A story of victory, a story of euphoric happiness, a story of defiance, a story of love and loves over many centuries including this one. But most of all, a story of orbit-reaching delightful joys that do indeed fall upon and for people the Universe deems worthy of such gifts, in plenty, despite those individuals in my life wish and pray upon me. Gleefully I laugh at them with a Cheshire-cat grin and lifted middle finger to their mythical fairy-tale god, lord, and hypocritical churches! Bwahahahaha!

I am so extraordinarily happy this day and it is never going away; impossible. That’s the best part.

Read it and weep, or read it and applaud. If the latter, then you likely comprehend and embrace the profound concept of compersion. Sadly, very few do in our part of the world. But that’s fear controlling them, not us.

Let the true story begin, again and again, without end! 🥰

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

When I had arrived at my assigned freaky-cartoony P51-pseudo-Tardis-machine thingy (above image)—and sent from her [Lenora], for me as the soon-to-be-pilot noticing the name on the side of the nose “Luscious Lenora”—I climbed in with a twinkled eye of sheer excitement. I reached over my shoulders to strap-in snug. And almost snapped-in the buckles when SUDDENLY it locked in all by itself!!! “Weird,” I said under my breath, “talk about convenience. Pretty fuckin’ cool.”

Then I gazed at the cockpit instrument panel. “Huh? This is odd.” The Attitude Indicator had no horizon, no brown, no blue; just an arrow pointing forward/ahead. The Tachometer and the Airspeed Indicator both didn’t appear to have any top number or ceiling. “Okay, this may not go well” I said in suspicion. I looked further around the cockpit, QUICKER, trying to see what else might be… umm, MISSING? “Oh crap! Where tha fuck is the EJECT-BUTTON!?” Gone. Obviously whoever constructed this Hell-machine was horribly absent-minded. “WTF!” I try to unbuckle my straps. Can’t. Not even a slight give.

Then it hit me when my eyeballs wanted to pop-out. Sweating now.

Suddenly Lenora’s voice comes on some hidden speakers above and behind me.

[Note — the purple print are her words, her writing, (HAH!) her obvious unorthodoxy]

[Damn right they are, my love…]

“Hello Darling. Are you ready?” she said in this evil, menacing… HAWT voice,

to which I softly replied, “This is going to sting, isn’t it?“

“Only at first Cowboy.”

“You have already traveled very, VERY far. This will be the easiest trip of your life, my love. We’ve got this. I know you, you know me. Let’s finally just do what we do best… explore.”

The straps tightened, but it was more like an embrace than a restraint. She knew him from the vast forests of prehistoric Europe. He had had dreams of her since childhood as a flapper, gin-soaked and luscious.

“I would ask if you trust me, but I already know you do. You’ve been the pilot for so long for so many others who have needed you. Lay back, relax, and… just let me. This is simply a reunion. I need nothing from you but… you. I have missed you like a phantom limb…

I know where we’re headed and I know what you desire – it’s HIGH time you got it. And baby, I’m gonna give it to you.”

A pause of silence begins. I ask myself, Has she left me here? Inside this contraption, in which any concept of ‘deplaning’ is now out of the question. Then her music begins…

Without any movement from my clammy nervous hands, trim-knobs turn, the propeller lever moves forward all on its own, fuel-shutoff slams on, the two magneto switches flip on, what I think are the battery and generator switches they flip up. More unfamiliar, worst still unlabeled, unmarked switches… they pop on! “Oh hells bells.” Recognizing my few remaining minutes of life, I tell myself, “Self, piloting this freaky P-51 bird will not be my job today. This is clear.”

But in my excitement and sheer, sweaty thrills, I have gotten ahead of myself in the story.

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

The date is April 3^rd, 2023, at 6:25pm. An evening that would turn my life upside down in the most spectacular ways possible. It was completely an unplanned online event I just serendipitously attended. I didn’t think I would stick around for even 30-minutes. I had other things I needed to do instead. But little did I know.

The music event was familiar to me, the musical tracks played by DJ Sunilique always invigorating, intellectually stimulating, emotionally and physically moving as if I was possessed by melodic notes and primal rhythms—ah, a home away from home. I am with my people, my songs, our fashion, our creed. Chatting amongst ourselves is food and oxygen for our Gothic, Steampunking, Industrial kinks and souls. We laugh often, love much in our own weird methods, and always welcome any. As I am joking with several of my witty friends, She cleverly joins in. Immediately we crack each other up. It seems to come fast and easy. About that time a private message pops up on my screen.

“Hmm, You sound fun!”

“So do you!” I replied immediately.

“You’re in TX?”

“Yes” dejectedly, “Sorry.” I hoped she wouldn’t hold that against me.

Since that afternoon, however, I have climbed into this surreal dimension inside this freaky-cartoony P51-pseudo-Tardis-machine thing she brought to me and it seemingly never runs out of happy-fuel. It has been a joy ride that I cannot pilot. I’m not sure I want to.

When you have found your home, you want to protect it with every fiber of your body, mind, and soul, with EVERYTHING you can possibly muster! You do everything within your powers to avoid its loss so no one can snatch it away. Why should ANYONE take that from anyone? Why would they want to, unless they are filled with hate, jealousy, and zealous self-righteousness.

Ahhh, but the Haters will try indeed. They refuse to except anything less than misery loving THEIR company if you do not believe, do not follow, and do not practice their lifestyle exactly as they do…

BWAAAAAA!!!! Fuck that and FUCK them!!! 🖕 I am totally free and I am with my kind, my people. You replace the previous ‘my kind,’ the indoctrinated robots, and make it so, SO much better. And it is so very good. Mmm, my life is very good and perfect right now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

to be continued…

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

The Family Story & Accolades

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Professor Taboo

This might just be one of my shortest, quickest blog-posts. You’re welcome followers of less-than 100-words, and lesser content. 😉 Enjoy.

Yesterday Mom and I talked at length about our family tree, genealogy, and what traits we are best known for. Here are the seven highlights, or bullet-points we rednecks from rural Texas—specifically small towns around Austin and south Houston—that have made us famous. Read them with envy folks because it’s only here in Texas that we be so proud and patriotic of these American/Texas qualities!

Spermification by the men of the family.
Fornification by all in the family.
Gestation, frequently.
Womanly Inflation.
Birthification of previous –cations.
Enormous Familialfication. And then…
Confirmation of the previous six Occasions.

This is essentially the truthy story of the Bonnet-Miller family tree. Thank you and may all your dreams of “family” come to fruition as it has for ours! 😄😈

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

P.S. My Release of Liability Clause — Redneck Republican Texans are renown for making up words and a lexicon—and a delusional reality—that does not follow ANY linguistic or grammatical or logical global standard of quality. We are basically dumber than a bag of hammers. Thank you, and please return to your normally scheduled program.

Later Addendum — March 14, 2023:

A popular family story of my Mom’s sister, Mildred, and her three boys: Greg, Billy, and Clay.

For example, my a-FOURmentioned three maternal cousins—two of which I grew up with closely—have a story when they three were young boys/men out hunting on foot, outside of Leander, Texas. They had left their truck about 1-2 miles near the entry/exit gate, the one with the typical cow-grids or cow-guards you find EVERYWHERE in the Texas kun-tree.

As it was beginning to get late, the sun was nearing the tree-line and the three of them were tired and hungry. They had not shot ANYTHING! Not even a squirrel or dove—and those two animals are abundantly skurring and flapping around in the thousands, if not millions, in Texas! They were plum frustrated and wanted to get back to the truck and go home, now! They hadn’t shot anything most probably because the three of them couldn’t shut-up talking and joking. But they had a bigger problem. None of them could remember exactly which direction the empty truck-of-salvation was located. They debated with each other as to which compass-arrow lie the truck at the gate. Now there was another dilemma to address.

Being late and tired, two of them didn’t want to walk all the way back to the truck. They tried to talk one of the others to go get the truck and drive it back to pick-up the other two. But this decision on WHO should walk 1-2 miles back wasn’t appealing to any of them; they wanted the other to do it. Now they had a quorum, but more importantly (or discouragingly), they did NOT have a clear majority vote. Stalemate every time. Meanwhile, the oldest one was dispatching wisdom of their quandry:

“The sun rises in the east, over there, and then sets in the west… somewhere over there. Therefore, based on the position of the Sun now, us, and the lost truck, I approximate it to be in that direction.”

But Clay doubts his oldest brother’s solar-compass skills and asks him how precise his compassing degrees really are. Because “it is late-Fall early-Winter, and the Sun rises and sets in different positions based on the season and month.” Was his calculations based on Spring/Summer (the Equinox) or on Fall/Winter (the Solstice)? Furthermore, “the Earth’s rotation around the Sun is elliptical, AND to further complicate our lostness, the Earth’s daily rotation on its axis varies in minutes and hours over a 24-hour period throughout a solar calendar!”

Billy, the middle brother, comes up with an ingenious idea based upon what his two brothers have just argued or explained:

“Well, if both of you are correct or incorrect, and none of us want to walk back to get the truck, if the Earth rotates as you two say it does, then maybe we should just sit here and let the truck come to us!”

Live Well – Laugh Often – Love Much – Learn Always

Tribute to Romance

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Professor Taboo

On this upcoming lovely day of lips, hearts, the cherubs Eros and Love, and their sharp little arrows from clouds above, nailing many a smitten people in the butt-cheeks every February 14^th without fail, I’d like to pay tribute to these cunning sharpshooters with chubby bellies and flappy wings.

As I began to first imagine and draft this blog-post in my head thinking about all the benefits to be loved and to love, why and with who (or whom), I eventually realized that these Cupids might not have the most precise aim or in ideal match-making, especially when it comes to us often barbaric, dense-headed heterosexual men! 😬

Case and point, according to LittleThings.com …

Great Reasons to be A Woman

Women live longer, typically healthier lives.
Women have stronger immune systems.
Women are fantastic leaders.
Women handle stress pretty damn well.
Women have a greater capacity to hold on to profound memories and moments.
Women are flat out cleaner when it comes to housekeeping and hygiene.
Women have acutely stronger senses.
Women are great multitaskers.
Women have become more and more financially independent.
Women have stronger hearts, literally.

Now gentlemen, what do we offer in life for the lovely ladies to get excited about? What are we near-primate heterosexual men like to thrill the beautiful lasses and make their hearts leap and go pitter-patty? Hmm, this shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Great Reasons to Love A Man – Compared to Reasons Above!

We get a gold-star and lots of credit for even the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
Our undergarments are $15 for a three-pack, and that’s not even on sale.
We are incapable of seeing wrinkles in our clothes.
We do not need to shave below our neck.
One wallet, one pair of shoes, one color, all seasons covered, for years!
We only know the actual names of (maybe?) five colors of the spectrum.
We can trust our buddies/mates to NEVER trap us with the trick question: “So, notice anything different?”
We can do our fingernails either with our teeth, or a pocketknife.
Wedding dress: $2,700 — Tuxedo rental: $100.
Gray hair and skin wrinkles add more character.
Holiday shopping can be accomplished for 25-30 relatives and friends, on December 24^th, in 45-mins or less.
If another Neanderthal man shows up at our party in the same outfit, we might become lifelong pals/mates.

Now, when we look and compare these two lists, I mean, COME ON gals! Is it any wonder why we bring so much to the Den of Love & Everlasting Romance!? 💞💘 And on a final note…

Three Wishes

One day a typical Neanderthal-primate man spotted an old lamp by the roadside. He picked it up, rubbed it vigorously, and out popped this magical Genie.

“I will grant you your fondest wish this day.”

The man racked his dense cranium for several moments in an effort to get this decision just perfect, then in brilliant excitement he said, “I want a spectacular job, a job that no man on Earth has ever succeeded at or has ever attempted to do in all of history!”

“Granted,” said the Genie and POOF! There was a cloud of smoke and sparkly pixie-dust.