GO PINCH THE BUTT OF A YOUNG BOY'S TUSHIE!

I wrote this little ditty as a joke some time ago to cheer up a friend. I find that I needed it myself the last few days.

Having just lost my little bird, Petey, who was with me nearly 40 years, I came to realize that I am closer to living this little limerick I wrote than I had realized. When you lose a pet that you've had for longer than some people have been alive you start thinking strange things I guess. But true to my nature, I'll be a DIVA 'til the end!

We'll sail away to foreign shores,
drink martinis, eat some s'mores,
When we're old and feeling pushy,
we'll pinch the butts of young boys tooshies!

Bang our canes on the top of the bar,
Demand more booze, because we are
Two old broads with heat and steam,
who won't grow old because we're mean!

If any of you are feeling less than DIVA tonight, I hope this little poem will bring you some cheer.

Copyright 2008 by PopArtDiva.com

Sometimes You Just Don't Feel the DIVA

I haven't been feeling real DIVA this week. I lost my wonderful little bird, Peter Pan, my little cockatiel. I've had him for over 35 years and he was a huge part of most of my adult life.

He was a typical male, demanding, kind of grumpy (especially as he got older), and he loved to bite until he drew blood. I got him as a mate for my first cockatiel, Tinkerbell, and these two birds were just great entertainment as well as loving pets.

A lot of people don't like birds as pets. They don't understand how amazing these little creatures truly are. Tinkerbell was a DIVA of a bird. She loved to land on the dinner table and partake of people food and I had to constantly keep her out of things that would do her harm. Petey loved butter - I had to keep my butter in a butter dish with a lid!

When they were learning to mate it was a hilarious adventure - they would go through their entire mating ritual, finally get down to business and then - bang! - they would fall off the perch!

Once Petey caught his tail on fire! He was sitting on a lamp for warmth, his tail feathers touching the light bulb. I looked over and there was smoke coming up from his tail! No harm done, I grabbed him off the lamp and made sure he was all right. I've laughed over this for decades.

Poor Peter Pan lived in a world of women. He was the king of my house, according to his beliefs. He ruled his kingdom well. From my first dog, Gypsy, who would herd him and Tinkerbell around the floor, then Shadow, my female cockapoo I had for 17 years, right down to Pixel, my present dog, a Yorkipoo who had great respect for Peter Pan! He ruled the roost, that little gray bird and I will miss him terribly.

Peter Pan, go be with your mate Tinkerbell. Fly free and be happy. Your were my tiny little king and I love you.

GLORIOUS, GLAMOROUS OSCAR SWAG!?

Even Mona Gets Swag!

It's Spring so it must be time for the Academy Awards. Yup, sure enough Sunday is the big day. Red Carpets get rolled out, limos get a spit polish and a tune-up, bars get stocked with Crystal and Dom, and the Fashion Police ready their poison pens.

It's a time of nerves, noshing, nastiness and narcissism. The celebs have spent months hunting for their pro bono* designer gowns, tuxes, jewels and accessories, hours in the make-up chair and weeks writing and rewriting the obligatory "it's an honor just to be nominated" sound bytes.

For some it will be a night of celebration and victory, others will go home without the man of the evening - Oscar. But no one will go home empty handed thanks to swag. Don't know about swag? Oh my, let me tell you about swag!

At every "A" list, "B" list and even "C" list party in La La Land on Sunday night there will be lovely, elegantly designed gift bags and baskets filled to overflowing with free goodies from every posh retailer, manufacturer and business looking to get their "stuff" seen on, near, around or under a famous face. Everything from jewel encrusted smart phones and crystal encased make-up to wine, whoopie (in the form of free hotel rooms) and song (specially packaged cds and dvds).

If it can be dressed up and shoved in a bag, basket, box or container it can become swag. And the marketers and promoters have taken this public relations maneuver to new heights. Every year these goodies become more and more expensive and more and more decadent. Some of these bag's values have reached six figures. Yup, One little bag can contain more dollar value than most Americans earn in a year.

Don't believe me? Read some of what's been included in an Oscar Swag Bag! Sort of makes you feel "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" has added meaning at Oscar time, huh? (And we're not even going into the posh, romanesque decadence of the parties and food being served up to those lucky stars and starlets!)

But fear not my intrepid but swagless Divas! There really is nothing free in this world. Those poor beleaguered famous folk must now pony up cash in the form of income tax on their goodie bags! Leave it to Uncle Sam's accountant to leave no stone unturned in the quest for tax dollars.

So, while you're sitting on your dog-hair covered couch, in your coffee stained jammies, eating popcorn out of a microwave bag and sipping your diet soda, you can watch the Awards ceremony with a little less envy and a lot less worry over a possible audit!

The Bling is Dead! Long Live the Tax Free Swag!

* Pro Bono translates into "for the public good". Whether or not free designer garb for movie stars could really be considered "for the public good" is debatable, but "gratis" and "free" just didn't sound as snooty, teehee :).

An Affair to Remember - Half a Century of Hankies

I am having a day off, enjoying a martini and watching "An Affair to Remember" with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr for probably the 50th time. This movie always reminds me of my mother. It was one of her favorite movies and we would often watch it together - crying into hankies Mom had embroidered with little flower buds and initials. It was a favorite ritual of ours.

To this day this movie makes me cry but now it's because I miss my Mom's company as I watch it. I absolutely love the theme song, whenever I hear it I think of my mother and our love of old romantic movies. It's a DIVA day of tear jerkers and martinis - we all need one every once in a while.

It's hard for me to believe that movie is fifty years old. It's hard for me to believe my Mom's been gone for 16 years. Mom, this day, this martini and this song is for you - I love you and miss you. You taught me how to be a DIVA.

Take a little trip down Chick Flick lane while you enjoy my favorite part of the movie - the grandmother playing the theme song on the piano for Nikki and Terry.

NEED A GAZILLION DOLLARS?

HERE'S SOME $$$$$ - BECAUSE EVERY DIVA NEEDS A LITTLE FUN MONEY!
(Left click to bring up the Full Size images, then Right Click and Save As. Print on white paper only.
Images copyright 2007 by PopArtDiva.Com. These images are for your personal use only. No permission is given to post them to any website, blog or use for any commercial purpose. How to License an image from PopArtDiva.com)

If you didn't get any bling as a present for Valentine's Day you need to go out and get some for yourself! Here's a little extra cash for your dreams of Champagne and Caviar or Martinis and Monolos!

Keep this in your designer purse to make you feel rich and rolling in DIVA dollars! Imagine yourself giving away a few million, flying off to Paris for brunch, lounging on your own private tropical beach! Visualization is a powerful tool!

Happy imaginary spending, saving and giving! Spend a few minutes today being grateful for your DIVA life!

Looking for some inspirational art to motivate your DIVA mojo? Check out these inspiring works of art from PopArtDiva.com.

VALENTINE'S DAY - Is Cupid the Gangsta of Love?

IF YOU REALLY LOVE ME - From my Pop Culture Art at my website. Available as archival prints and giclees on canvas in various sizes

Valentine's Day. The day of romance that will live in infamy. This is the day the merchandisers have made unholy. It is the day they have exploited to sell product. It is the day of libidinous lovers and trembling twosomes. It is also the day that can make you feel unloved, unwanted and undesired if you are not half of a couple.

Starting in grade school we have been conditioned to measure how loved we are by how many valentines we got in our pretty little red and white shoe boxes that we decorated up with construction paper hearts and fat little angels bearing bows and arrows. Heaven forbid if you were not "popular", if you were weird looking, fat, or different. Your little box would be sadly empty, echoing with the evidence of your lack of friends, your unlovable personality. Those empty boxes would leave scars that were reopened every 14th of February for many lonely souls. Those chubby little cupids floating into our lives on the day of St. Valentine weren't our friends, they were the gangsters of love! Shooting arrows into our self esteem they left us with our hopes of undying devotion bleeding on the pavement!

In today's world Valentine's day is a looming calendar event where women fret if they do not have a date, men cringe as they attempt to match the proper gift to the level of the relationship, candy stores celebrate in advance the swelling of their cash registers and restaurants scurry to festoon their decor with the traditional hearts and flowers of romantic love. The card racks in every drugstore and stationary store become drenched in red and pink, candies are dipped in red, pink and white and the world gets painted with the colors of love. Oh, sweet mystery of life you make me want to gag.

Enough already! Somebody ground that flying little fat toddler of fertility! Spare me the images of lovers entwined, candles aglow and pretentious proposals of matrimony! Hand me some blinders to block the glare of all the shades of red that assault my eyes! Give me a freaking break from the barrage of reminders screaming at me that yet another year has come and I am a woman alone!

Because I don't care anymore. I no longer feel the need to be "half of a whole". I am whole within myself. I am not a lesser woman because I don't "have" a man. I am single by choice, not by default. I do not wish to define myself as the mate of someone. I am someone in my own right. So, get off my back, quit trying to find me a man and stop trying to fix me. There's nothing wrong with me. I am fine. I am complete. I am happy. I love who I am. I am loved!

You know, I think I'll send myself some candy and a Valentine!

(P.S. Celebrate your own wonderful self on Valentine's Day with my newest martini from The Martini Diva - The Chocolate Covered Strawberry Martini and stop by my Pop Culture Blog for my thoughts on those little candy hearts with sayings on them!)

Women and Sex in the Workplace - Yesterday vs. Today

AMERICAN DIVA GOTHIC.
This piece is available as an archival print or a giclee on canvas at my website and it will soon be available on a number of other products like tees, cups, aprons, cards and more at the PopArtDiva Boutique opening fully in March.

Every day in current news is some story about a woman suing someone for sexual harassment. For me reading these stories is both good and bad. Good because I am happy to see women standing up for themselves and getting some justice, bad because I'm a little jealous of modern women's abilities and resources for standing up for themselves.

I experienced sexual harassment on a daily basis at almost every job I had when I was young. I was subjected to this form of indignity almost daily and had to put up with it or lose my job. It might have been as innocent as a little pat on the arm, a sexually charged joke or comment, or as overt as the boss using his power to attempt to threaten job loss if you didn't "go on a business trip" with him.

I quit many jobs because of sexual intimidation of one form or another. In those days we didn't really know we had the option of filing a lawsuit, even when we did we knew it was a losing battle!* We either put up with the disrespect and torment to whatever degree we could or we found a new job to put an end to it. Often the new job would end up being just as bad or worse and off we went to another round of interviews during our lunch hours.

In the eighties, when sexual harassment finally came under the spotlight, we were still subjected to lower salaries, less chance for advancement and the "glass ceiling". When I was promoted to a management position at my last corporate job, I asked for the same salary as other department heads. I was told, in so many words, that because I was a "single woman" and did not have a "family to support" that this would not be possible. Though I was as qualified and was doing the same job, I never came near the pay scale of males in the same position. Nor was I ever going to rise beyond a lower level managerial position - no matter what title they gave it. There wasn't one single, high level female at that company. Is it any wonder I quit corporate America in the early 1980s and became self-employed?

Even self-employment was no guarantee of equality or freedom from discrimination. I often lost job bids to male counterparts. I could not charge the same rate as a male doing the same work. As an artist today I still deal with this issue in the pricing of my work and it's sale.**

As stupid as it would seem in this day and age, corporate America will still allow and even condone disrespect and disparagement of women by their male employees. It may have gone undergroung but the "boys club" is still alive and well and "smoking cigars" in the boardrooms and cubicles of America, and the women are still "making the coffee" and manning the keyboards.

So don't think it's a Brave New World out there, ladies. It's still a man's world in too many ways. Women still suffer from discrimination in hundreds of small ways from lower salaries to less opportunity for advancement to being treated with less respect.

We may have come a long way, baby, but we still have a long way to go. As DIVAS we should always keep that in mind and work towards our true equality.


*Just because a law is passed doesn't mean the courts and the juries will back it up! If society as a whole is still in the dark ages, no law will bring that society forward into the light! See links below.

The Chronology of Sexual Harassment Law

The Chronology of Sexual Harassment Lawsuits (scroll to bottom of article)

**Art, the "X" factor - Prices for art, male versus female

Tramp, Trollop, Strumpet, Floozy, Tart, Jezebel, Hussy, Harlot, Wench, Chippie, Vamp!

This piece is available as an archival print or a giclee on canvas at my website and it will soon be available on a number of other products like tees, cups, aprons, cards and more at the PopArtDiva Boutique which will open fully in March.


PORTRAIT OF A SOILED DOVE
Confessions of a Past Life Madam

A friend and I were enjoying some of my Perfect Cherry Martinis the other day and we got off on the subject of "women of ill repute". Don't ask me how the conversation got around to that subject, we were, after all, well into our third martini at the time.

We were attempting to come up with all the vintage words for "shady ladies" and ended up with this list:

Tramp, Trollop, Stumpet, Floozy, Tart, Jezebel, Hussy, Harlot, Wench, Chippie, Vamp, and Concubine as well as the terms of "soiled dove", "woman of ill repute", "fallen woman" and "shady ladies".

We were laughing and pointing at each other as we called them out. It was totally goofy and totally fun and we were laughing like a couple of mad women at the archaic terms. I suppose we would not place ourselves in any of those categories and, therefore, it was hilarious to fling them at each other.

Afterwards I got to thinking (yes, I know, thinking always gets me into trouble), but I thought, I like those words. They carry a kind of romance that is absent in our current vernacular, they have a touch of understanding and humor - maybe because of the eras they come from.

In times past there were only so many jobs a woman could take if she had no husband, family or community to support her. Her choices were pretty much limited to being a teacher, a cook, a seamstress, running a boarding house, taking in laundry or become a "fallen woman". If you had no education or money most of those jobs were out of your reach. If you didn't want to starve there was often only one choice. (Read "Soiled Dove Plea"). In today's world we are not so limited, but it is only recent history where that change has occurred.

Had I been born 100 or so years earlier my life would have been a whole different story! If I had the kind of temperament I have in this century I doubt, very sincerely, if I would have become a farmer's wife, a seamstress or a teacher. I cannot see myself plowing a field, I hate to sew and a school room full of kids is not my idea of a great job. Plus, my personality does not lend itself to being good wife material!

I am convinced I would have eventually become a Madam in some Honky Tonk in one of the "big cities". I like business, I'm pretty sociable, I like to have a drink now and then, I like flashy clothes, I like to paint my face and I like gambling towns. That pretty much points to career in a past life as the proprietor of a house of ill repute. Of course, being the control freak that I am I would have to be the Madam. I am not one to "work in the field", I'm better at giving orders and letting others do the menial tasks!

Picture me in a lavender satin dress, petticoats so large I knock the whiskey glasses off the tables, lots of ostrich feathers, a good amount of rouge (that's blush to you young 'uns out thar!), my hair dyed an electric shade of pinkish red, big bosoms proudly heaving in my d'ecolletage, enjoying a "snort" while my "girls" earn their keep upstairs adding more silver dollars to my coffers!

Madam Diva welcomes you to her establishment, The Fabulous Fallen Females of Fable Falls are here to entertain you! Put yer pistols behind the bar, grab yer girl and commence to pokin!

You'll have to put your dollar on the dresser, Dearie, before they drop their drawers!