The New abNormal

Is this question even relevant anymore? If it had to a be a single CD, then I'd just burn my own mix of about 20 songs I love (which honestly varies from day to day), and NO MATTER WHAT THEY WERE, I'd be sure to hate them within the week. And, since this question didn't specify anything about a deserted island (and speaking of which, do we even have those anymore? I kind of thought they were all turned into beach resorts by now.), I'm going to assume I could just have a piano. In which case, if there's a song I get a hankering for (and due to the inexplicable ban on "surplus CDs" do not have), then I'll just learn it and play it. Or play something close to it.

Clearly, I have a problem when it comes to nearly rhetorical questions. Hey, let's talk about our favorite flavors of ice cream!

Okay, okay, yes. I watch TV. But I just saw a clip from one of the shows I watch - "Castle" (mondays on ABC) - and Nathan Fillion is wearing his old gear from Firefly! Yes, indeed, Browncoats, Malcolm Reynolds rides again - suspenders, gun, the whole shebang.

And when their victim of the week is killed in a graveyard with a stake through the heart... yes, he makes a crack about Buffy.

Fun times, man.

A plug I'm happy to pass along - an old friend of mine is putting on a one-woman play about the life and works of Dorothy Parker - "You Might As Well Live" through the month of November.

She's amazingly talented and, let's be honest - Dorothy Parker is pretty much made of awesome. If you're in the area and have the opportunity, go support my friend Ashley in what is certain to be a really exceptional show. The details are here - I sadly can't make it down there, so at least one of you needs to go on my behalf :)

Part of my job involves a lot of conference calls, many of which are attended by many of the high-mucky-mucks in my organization.

Without going into too much detail, a call from my morning included discussion of the H1N1 flu. Two great points which made me nearly fall from my chair in uncontrollable giggles were:

The Safety Concerns involving Hand Sanitizer, and Social Distancing.

Apparently, one of our buildings tried to get their local building maintenance to install a series of bulk hand sanitizer dispensers in the public restrooms, but were denied on the grounds that it presented a fire hazard. Yes, you read that correctly. FIRE. HAZARD. Now, granted, putting it in a more centralized and more easily accessible place is better; and putting it in the bathroom is somewhat redundant in that most people (MOST PEOPLE, I said, I'm a cynic) wash their hands with soap and water and applying hand sanitizer wouldn't be as necessary (the more likely fact being that a lot of people would use hand sanitizer in lieu of washing their hands. Which is just gross. But anyway.)  and besides, just going INTO the bathroom makes you a candidate for using hand sanitizer. So, redundant, sure. But Fire Hazard?

Yes, hand sanitizer contains alcohol and is flammable. But let's be honest - there are a lot of things that can catch fire in a bathroom (including methane, right?) and it doesn't happen so very often. I fail to believe that the introduction of hand sanitizer will exponentially or dramatically increase the chances of huge fireballs.

The hand sanitizer conversation digressed into the overall safety of having hand sanitizer AT ALL - it's toxic and children aren't supposed to ingest it, etc. At this point, I started laughing so hard that I couldn't hear the rest of it.

The next topic I was able to hear involved the current hot-word of "Social Distancing". It's a cool term - in case you haven't heard of it, it just refers to keeping away from undesirable people - - currently used in conjunction with people who are sick. A person's sick? You socially distance yourself from them. "Ohhh, you don't look well. Get away from me!"

In the plus column, it's good to see how seriously my company takes this whole thing, but I'd be happier if they extended their monkeysphere a bit in these conversations.

Bah.

Still, though. Flammable Hand Sanitizer. That is just gonna give me the giggles for a while yet.

In honor of the one year anniversary of starting last year's book, I've posted a small snippet from it, here:

Work has already begun on the sequel.

Sorry; it's been harder to get back into the swing of things than I anticipated.

So let me try and catch up here.

A little over a month ago, Jillie started complaining of low level stomach aches, lethargy and her appetite pretty much vanished. She got pretty skinny over just a few days, was voraciously thirsty, and started using the bathroom a lot. We didn't think TOO much of it, but after a few days of this we all got concerned - including Jillie - so we took her to the doctor.

 

( Read more... )

My family and I used to go camping and hiking. A lot. Well, "a lot" by my current standards. And one of the things I do remember - aside from really not generally enjoying it - was the moments that really felt good about it. It'd usually happen when you cleared a rise and paused to rest. You could often see, in those moments (and usually only then) just how far you'd come. It would also, unfortunately, underscore just how far you'd have left to go, but that's just the pessimist angle.

This year has been chock full of a goodly assortment of ups and downs, but things have a way of balancing out in the end, don't they?

I know I promised more information, but my brain's just too tired to be coherent. Bear with me a bit longer, friends.

I'm going to be talking more in the near future about my newly enhanced views on health care reform, but I'll give you all a little sneak preview.
( adult language! Don't say I didn't warn you. )

So recently there's been a huge furor and hubbub over the President's decision to address a special chat with school age children.

Like, people - even a few I know (if by "know" I mean through Facebook or LJ or something) - have been so angry about this that they've decided to pull their children out of school during the presentation simply on principle, if the schools won't agree to block the presentation. Now, the funny thing is that I wouldn't likely have thought twice about the idea of the President having a little discussion with all the children of the nation - especially since his message is expected to be one of "stay in school, work hard, study hard, grow up to become a functioning and useful part of our wonderful nation". I really wouldn't have given it a second thought.

( Read more... )

has it really been a week since I posted anything? Geez. It's been a busy week.

Sorry for the silence. Believe me, it's not been free of thoughts and ideas, just been too busy to write here. Too busy to write anywhere, in fact. Bear with me.


Back later.

( Random thoughts on my mind. )

I would love to say this came out of my brain, but I gotta give credit where credit is due - in this case, the effervescent Matty Ballgame from the Filmspotting movie review podcast. (and by the way, if you haven't checked them out, I can happily recommend them. I can usually see where they're coming from, even when they're completely wrong.)

In honor of the recently departed John Hughes, they did a countdown of their top 5 (what is with people and top 5 lists? We'll have to have a top 5 reasons why people do top 5 lists, but not today. One joke per day, thank you very much.) John Hughes characters.

Up near the top of Matty's list was Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Matty says he saw the movie as not being about Ferris Bueller at all - after all, one of the elemental characteristics of the central (or pivotal) characters in a book, movie or play is that they, over the course of the production, change.

Ferris doesn't change. He really doesn't. He doesn't really learn a lesson, and really the most that can be said for him is that he learns that his sister can be a lot cooler than she lets on. Besides that, he's pretty much the same characer start to finish.

No, the character who DOES evolve is Cameron. He's the one who confronts the really horrifyingly dark fears surrounding his father, and accepts the mantle of adulthood to a certain degree, with the simple detail of embracing the notion of calling his father by his name - thus addressing him as a peer rather than as a subordinate.

So in light of these two primary factors, Matty draws this stunning conclusion:

Ferris Bueller is Cameron's invisible friend.

Matty, please write that alternate screenplay; I will gladly pay cold hard cash to watch that production.

It's monday. I'm trying to figure out how today has differed from a few hundred other mondays, to no avail. I feel a bit more awake than, well, pretty much all of last week; but I just feel like otherwise this is just like every other week.

No big news to discuss, no new philosophical revelations or deep profound not-so-rhetorical questions. Feeling strangely unmotivated today. And yet with a brain full of ideas.

Pretty sucky dilemna.

So after dealing with work-related chaos for an entire night and then going into work the following day, I discovered a really interesting chemical reaction caused in my brain by dramatic sleep deprivation:

Apparently, I become intensely silly.

On the one hand, I really don't remember a whole lot from yesterday, but the snippets I do remember are kind of embarassing. I got into a soft argument about the relative hootchiness of Cheetara (from Thundercats), which I see as one of the essential apexes of my crazy. I don't think I even had a rational argument, I just was emotionally opposed to thinking of her in that way.

The worst part is that I hosted a couple of work-related conference calls yesterday. Ye Gods. I think it might be a small miracle I'm still here.

Lesson to self: no sleep? No workies. No exceptions.

On the bright side, yesterday seemed to just whiz by, whereas today feels like molasses in slow motion.

1) Can someone tell me why socialized medicine is bad? 
2) Can they do that without being emotionally reactionary?
3) For that matter, why is the ability to form an intelligent argument an almost entirely dead art form?
4) Why did a half dozen undersea cables in the depths of the Pacific ocean take a huge steaming dump on my wednesday?
5) I forgot what I was going to say.
6) I'm hungry.
 

wow. Been at work for a bit over 2 hours, and am feeling every whit as asleep as I did then. Coffee didn't even crack this at all.

The new book is changing shape a little more every day. It's gone from a book that centered around the concept of immortality (without fangs) to being more about death. And yet, I keep having all these ideas for little mood-lifting jokes here and there.  What's all THAT about it? Does it want to be a comedy or a dark action thriller? The character I originally saw as the main character is becoming a secondary character, but there's so much about him that appeals to me as a writer... so maybe this book will be an introduction to him, and I can write more about him later. Still too soon to tell.

I need to get a full synopsis written out for this one. Maybe then I'll have a clearer idea. Been so up to my armpits in a totally different story, it's taking me a bit to find my voice on this one, I guess.

Got one today that actually made me pause. Under the subject "Confused", it says:

"A worth disables the faith."

And that's it. The whole email.

Definitely a far cry from the typical junk mail I get. I realize it doesn't actually MEAN anything....but I find myself wanting it to mean something. Anything.

I wonder, if I ever get some minor degree of fame from publishing or music... will I get weird freaky $h!t like that all the time?

Cos, honestly, that's kind of cool. :)

Honestly, I think I'd already heard all the "Global Warming" jokes this past winter from all the "What Global Warming?" folks. As of yesterday, these same people just didn't seem to find the jokes as funny. So I'll just shelve that for now. We can come back and discuss it again in six months, but for now let's just try and maintain a clear memory of how insanely freaking HOT it has been this week. Do. Not. Want.

I don't even know where to begin commenting on the state of affairs from a national perspective. There's just too much, I wouldn't know which little droplet of concentrated stupid to focus on. CNN is struggling to give it all equal time. Rabbis being led away in handcuffs; President Obama stepping in the middle of a little police action and getting most of it on his shoes; "Birthers" debating aforementioned President's validity in the office to which he was duly and constitutionally elected (and let's be honest here: at least HE was actually Elected, unlike his predecessor. And yes, I went there.); weather craziness (apparently, only Texas is suffering from the heat. Who knew?); the stalled health care reform bill, and on and on.

But then I read about other things. Horrible, small, hidden stories, buried by the nationalized idiocy of corporate media... And now I don't feel like writing today. 

Let me process this and I'll see if I can write about it tomorrow. In my absence, be nice to people. Please.

( I tease because I care. )