Sparks Ignites

  Six weeks ago, I awoke to find myself stuck to my living room floor covered in pine sap and tinsel.  Two squirrels were giving me the stink eye and clutching their nuts. I felt shock and awe when I realized I’d ripped my neighbors pine tree out of their yard and brought it home to decorate. I’d never sleep walked before, so a major concern was my neighbors would follow the trail of dirt from the hole in their garden to the front door of my house. Several nights later, I was startled awake by the smoke alarm blaring. My head was stuck in a mixing bowl of cookie dough and there was an oven mitt on my foot. Evidently, I was baking cookies in my sleep and a timer was not part of my stupor. With singed eyebrows, I doused the fire and threw out the charcoal briquettes I’d lovingly baked. Over a mug of hot chocolate and sixteen sugar cookies, I put on my Nancy Drew thinking cap and tried to figure out what was happening. My Christmas mojo was in extreme overdrive. “I’m holiday unhi...

  In Hollywood, beauty is not skin deep. It’s lays on the surface where it’s been pulled, tucked, plucked, plumped and botoxed. Adoring fans don’t look at a star and say she has a kind personality. It’s more of, “look at those cheekbones and perky nipples.” Her face is a relief map of silicone and her nipples designer branded. With so many bits of epidermis nipped away each year, celebrity skin has accumulated to the point that a Frankenstein-style entertainer could be pieced together. Celebrities are a commodity so everything about them has value–– from public appearances, autographs, clothes that have touched their bodies to the extra skin they’ve discarded. Instead of disposing the by-product of a new imagined beauty, a corporation, Dermatron, has been born. This company sells the excess skin of the stars to patients in need. “There’s suddenly a huge demand for well-known flesh. We’re going to change the complexion of reconstructive surgery techniques,” advised Aretha Alopecia, ...