Demi and Ashton– What a Shame by IZZY

We welcome freelancer ‘IZZY’ and thank her for sending in her thoughts on Demi and Ashton.  Check out Elizabeth Searle on GIRL HELD IN HOME on KFAI radio…Thanks to LITOTES for this: “Cain is leaving politics; he wants to spend more time with his extramarital affairs…”

Demi and Ashton – What A Shame!  by Izzy

It finally happened, and what a shame to see another couple hit the buffers due to infidelity. Poor Demi! It should have been obvious that things were taking a nose-dive for a while. Kutcher, who seems to manage to escape the label ‘disgraced’, was a free agent when he chose to love and honor ‘till death us do part’. People point to the age gap between them but they were both mature adults.  Kutcher, even at 27. simply could not manage to stay faithful to his loving wife and partner.

Despite appearing close in personal snaps and Tweets, they had something of an air of desperation about them for me. Demi displays immaturity herself in these attention-seeking moves, keen to flaunt her intimacy with her husband. The solid marriages tend to be quiet, respectful and private affairs, not something that both participants feel the need to ram down strangers’ throats, in an effort to convince themselves as much as others about the ‘strength of their relationship’.

Desperate Demi

Rather than acting like a man and owning up to his dissatisfaction at home Kutcher has taken the coward’s way out, allowing Demi’s doubts to fester and grow. While she was looking up romantic late ski deals, he was off with his friends in another city hanging out in bars and picking up girls about the age of his step-daughter.

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‘OOPS’-Gate: The Republican Follies of 2011

Check out Elizabeth Searle‘s GIRL HELD IN HOME in the Portland Press Herald…And thanks to blog fave Lupins for these BADReporter Cain cartoons…

OOPS-Gate: The Republican Follies of 2011 by Elizabeth Searle

Was that a Saturday Night Live Skit– or was that the real Rick Perry flailing and then failing to remember the third major government agency he would cut as (as he will surely never now be) president?

In a week of ever-multiplying Sexual Harrassment accusations against Herman Cain, Republicans who can count higher than three are running out of options.  Is Newt next?  As a lifelong Democrat, I have seen my share of ‘weak fields’ and so-called ‘Seven Dwarfs.’  But those are truly drarfed by the Republican Follies of 2011.

Blog wise man Ol’ Bill sees the field as representing the ‘rot from within‘ of the GOP– but cautions: Don’t forget the forerunner of Perry’s over hyped memory lapse: the 14 long seconds of underhyped silence from AZ’s esteemed Governor in her  campaign debate which hardly caused a ripple in her negatives and subsequent habit vote victory.

Author Kevin St. Jarre puts it this way: Perry is so bad, he leaves SNL nothing left for parody. I’m neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but I’m left wondering…when they canvas the entire country for Republicans willing to run for president, these are the best they can come up with? Perry and Cain? Clowns.

WDYT?  Will Newt Gingrich be the next unlikely darling of the flailing GOP?  Or will they resign themselves and take their Mitt Medicine?

(photos: thedailybeast.com, fitnews.com)

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On the Kardashians, Magic and Fiction (For Real) by Tanya Eby

Check out Elizabeth Searle’s GIRL HELD IN HOME in BOOKLIST and Robin Antelek.  Plus Elizabeth & Caitlin in IMAGINE mag.

TANYA EBY is the author of three comedic novels “Blunder Woman”, “Easy Does It”, and “Pepper Wellington and the Case of the Missing Sausage”. She is the narrator of over fifty NY Times Bestselling novels and is a professor of writing at Kendall College of Art and Design. She is wonderfully awkward and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband and two quirky children. Visit her at http://www.tanyaeby.com .  This post originally appeared there on Tonya’s own blog.

On the Kardashians, Magic, and Fiction. (For Real) by Tanya Eby

I do not want to write about this. I don’t! I swear to you! But…I. Can’t. Stop. Myself.

Why? Why do I insist on writing about the Kardashians? And her broken marriage?

Bear with me. (Or is it ‘bare’ with me. No. Can’t be that. We don’t want to be naked together). Bear with me. I have a point to make. And it’s a point, actually, about fiction and magic.

Magic doesn’t exist. I’m sorry. It doesn’t. But we WANT it to. And there are magicians out there who are terrific and making us see things we want to see. They’re illusionists. We watch them knowing they’re playing tricks on us, but we go into it willingly because if an illusionist is good, really good, then they make us BELIEVE that magic is actually possible, even if we know deep down it’s not. The trick isn’t about seeing birds appear or disappear. The trick is making us believe the impossible is possible.

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