Ink-Stained Wretch

what a difference a word makes.

2010-11-04T10:35:00.000-05:00

Linus: [to Sally as she walks away with everyone else] Hey, aren't you going to stay to greet the Great Pumpkin? Huh? It won't be long now. If the Great Pumpkin comes, I'll still put in a good word for you!

[realizes what he just said]

Linus: Good grief! I said "if"! I meant, "when" he comes!

[calmly]
Linus: I'm doomed. One little slip like that could cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by. Oh, Great Pumpkin, where are you?

There are multiple reasons this is on my mind, and the recently passed holiday is the least of them. The primary one is that I keep going back to something that appeared in my inbox recently. Usually when someone is having a tough time, you say something like "I'm here if you need me." This person said something to the effect of "I'm here when you need me," and it made all the difference in the world. "If" is conditional, transient. "When" is "I'm not going anywhere." It's more of a statement of faith, as Linus shows. Right now, that means a helluva lot.

memories of you

2010-07-20T17:45:00.000-05:00

Memories of You -- Ol Blue Eyes

This post has been rolling around in my head for weeks. I decided it finally needed to see the light of day, even if I can't clearly articulate what it is I'm trying to say.

Facebook has been a tremendous tool for getting back in touch with childhood pals, I'll give it that. What I haven't been prepared for is the way people remember me.

I get friend requests every now and then, and I always accept them and say what is the truth, that I never send them (well, almost never, unless it was someone I knew extremely well) because I never know if people remember me. I'm not trying to be modest, I'm being honest -- I really don't know, nearly 30 years later, what the people I knew in high school (or younger) remember of me.

To the gentleman who told me he wished he'd been kinder to me (you know who you are), you had and have nothing to worry about. I do have to say that one knocked me off my feet, though. As far as acts of kindness go, it wipes away whatever slights you perceive having made toward me. (I don't remember any, really. But that was a beautiful thing to say.)

But it's all the people who say things like "Of course I remember you! You were always so nice!" or "your smile is still as contagious as ever!" or whatnot who get me thinking. And mostly what I think is: Does life eff with people's basic personalities? Because of what I remember of myself in high school, cheerful doesn't really come to mind. ;-) And I certainly don't remember being overly kind or whatever. I remember being depressed as hell, largely, and having just a few close friends.

Was I really nice and generous and all that then? Am I now? Have the nastier parts of my post-high school life intervened to screw it up? I don't know. I know it's been forever, IF ever, since I've been able to see myself the way others see me. (Two therapists -- one current, one former -- and a friend both brought that up in the past week.) I don't think I am a particularly spectacular person. I just try to do the best I can with what I have and hope it's right.

Someone who lived just that way and who I loved a bunch died last week, and that's got me thinking too, and remembering. I don't know if he knew how much he meant to me and what an impact he had on me growing up. I have no idea if I succeeded in communicating that when I saw him last. But that I remember him unfailingly treating me as well as his own kids says something both about his character and about the way life ought to be lived.

I love you, Mr. P. And as for my childhood pals -- I don't know if I am, or ever was, the person you're remembering me as. But thanks for remembering good things.

Waking skies
At sunrise,
every sunset, too,
Seems to be
bringing me
memories of you.

Here and there,
everywhere,
scenes that we once knew.
And they all
just recall
Memories of you.

How I wish I could forget
those happy yesteryears
That have left a rosary of tears.

Your face beams
in my dreams
spite of all I do.
Everything seems to bring
memories of you.
Those memories of you.

sheeple.

2010-06-01T12:00:00.001-05:00

Edited 6/3/10 to add link to article

Or, Man's inhumanity toward man, part 2.

When it's online I will come back and post a link, because it's well worth a read. But I just finished editing an update to the famous Stanley Milgram experiments.

Twenty-first century style, some idiot turned electrocuting people into a reality show.

Now, of course, just as in Milgram's original experiment, no one actually got shocked. It was all just some really good acting, but it made for some distressing insight into human behavior. The original subjects got paid; the "reality show" contestants got whatever the hell it is people who want to go on reality shows get, I guess -- well-fed egos, maybe.

Nevertheless, in both cases, about two thirds of the people administering the "shocks" kept going -- up to delivering what would have been fatal levels -- just because an "authority figure" told them to do it.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I have been thinking a lot lately about compassion, and who has it, and who doesn't. It would be nice to think it exists, even if only in smidgen format, in all people. But history has showed us otherwise. Hell, so has Milgram. When only 30 percent of folks will call a halt to hurting -- or KILLING! -- someone despite being told to keep going, mankind is in sad shape.

What brought it up for me today was this:

former restaurant critic on food stamps

I have been on both sides of this particular aisle. It's much uglier on the receiving end, I assure you.

Many years ago, I worked at my parish's food pantry. There was one mother of 7 who visited frequently. She always said how awful it made her feel, and I always told her, as I was packing bags for her, that there was no need to feel awful, that that's why we were there and it was OK and that everybody needs a little extra help now and then.

You know what? It's a LOT easier to say that and believe it when you go home to a fridge stocked full of food you both want to eat and were able to buy yourself.

I suspect a number of journalists who found themselves victims of the industry implosion over the last few years also found themselves in this guy's shoes. I did, for a time. It was the most humiliating experience of my life. I used to walk to the church a few blocks away that had free meals a couple of times a week, hide as much as I could (ball cap, hoodie, etc), keep my head down and pray no one would recognize me. The people who were dishing up dinner couldn't have been kinder, and I'm sure they would have told me what I told that mom -- there's no reason to be ashamed, etc. But there is still shame involved.

Is it put on us by ourselves or others? A little of both, I think. I don't have an answer for how to handle it. The standard "put yourself in the other person's shoes" not only goes just so far, but can lead to pity, and I, for one, am not interested in that, no matter the problem. I don't need you to feel sorry for me. I'm not sure I need you to tell me it's OK when I'm not in a position to hear and believe that. This guy is more fortunate than most; his background helped prepare him some.

I dunno. I don't have an answer, as I said. If I make you think after I make you feel, I'm content to leave it at that.

this is what i'm talkin' 'bout.

2010-05-16T20:56:00.000-05:00

I mean, really. It's bad enough when regular people (who you can have some hope of educating/shaming/etc) say crap like this, but medical folks??

Read the post, but especially the comments on the post.

Prophetic

Hey guys: There's a difference between a little dark humor to get you through the horrors of your day and openly mocking people who haven't had your good fortune and aren't equipped to slag you in return.

BTW: My history is significant for one of the same things (which apparently makes me mentally challenged) and I don't have a bowl haircut.

As one of my early writing coaches liked to say, "Gross generalizations are generally gross." Let's try not to make them, shall we? The world would be a much kinder place.

man's inhumanity toward man....

2010-05-16T16:35:00.001-05:00

Today I went to an exhibit on race, sponsored in large part by Mayo Clinic. With 33,000 employees in a town of 90,000 or so, they have a bit of pull and a lot of cash, and they're very good at philanthropic things.

You would think, with people coming here from all over the world for treatment, that Rochester would be a pretty diverse place. You would be incorrect. The signs as you drive into downtown saying "we are striving for a more inclusive community" are kind of a hint of that. The reality is, for every Arabian sheik who brings his retinue here once a week every year for checkups and drops $8 mil while he's here, there are a dozen farmers five minutes outside the city limits. When's the last time you saw a farmer of color? :-\

Some years ago, in a very segregated city of moderate size, I had a good friend who happened to be black. It was horrifying to do something as tame as browse a store in the mall and watch him get followed while I was free to roam where I pleased. On a lesser scale, it's kind of like what I felt like at the Bullseye when people assumed I was a slackjawed idiot for having to work as a cashier. My only regret is that before I quit, I didn't go off on one of them and say, "listen, you pretentious sack of shit, I have a master's degree and am NOT an 8th grade dropout, so stop making assumptions."

And that's what it comes down to. The most heartbreaking part of this exhibit -- and there were many -- was the one that gave voice to the children. Some wrote down and put in a notebook their experiences of being discriminated against. One little girl, who listed herself as "8 but almost 9" said that she didn't *not* want to be Hindu, but that she wished people were nicer to her, because even if she were black or white or Asian, it shouldn't matter, right? One of the high school girls on a videotape, who identified as Native American, black and white said people would stare at her and then outright ask "what ARE you?" She said she finally started responding, "human."

We all know about slavery in America (or we think we do). We all know about the civil rights marchers (or think we do). But to see and hear the experiences of people who have lived some of these things is humbling and thought-provoking. One older white gentleman said he didn't realize until he watched the videos of the civil rights marches and paid attention to the people lining the streets, throwing rocks and hurling profanities, that that was the history of HIS people, and that horrified him into doing something. And so it should.

Anyone who knows me at all well knows I am a glass-half-empty person. My life experiences to date have brought me to that point. But sometimes things happen that remind me and my closet optimist, who lives inside my head and who I let stick a toe out every now and then before shutting him back up for another year or two ;-), that no matter how bad I think my life is or has been, somebody else's is or has been worse.

Yeah, people can fucking suck. There ain't no two ways about that. Seeing a pair of actual shackles an actual slave was locked up in is a vivid reminder. Often we aren't very nice to each other, and often it's for arbitrary reasons that we aren't.

I long ago gave up trying to save the world. But it's entirely possible to make a dent in my -- or YOUR -- little part of it. Life, to me, isn't about expensive "toys" (good thing, since I have none and likely won't ever) and that sort of thing -- it's about integrity and about being able to say, when it's all over, that I did what I could. I don't need to be famous, or rich. I just want to be able to say that I did what I could while I was taking up space and oxygen here to improve things a little. I hope I can.

Edited to add: While the topic here was race, there are other sorts of discrimination people won't talk about, either. I can't believe I neglected a couple rather obviously close to me. It can be summed up as: medication-related weight gain.

I am not the world's tiniest girl, but the addition to my regimen of a med known for packing on the pounds has caused me to become that much less tiny. It sucks. But you know what? I wasn't *always* a cow. I may not have always been society's definition of "thin," but I wasn't always Gigantor, either. So how about not looking at me and assuming I'm this size because I don't exercise (I walk most places I go, now that I live somewhere that's feasible) and eat terribly (since I order the groceries for the whole house, I bring in almost nothing but chicken, pork, fresh fruits and vegetables and hugely limit the processed stuff).

The other form of discrimination I face is going to be another blog post before May, which is Mental Health Month, is out.

Race exhibit

at the age at which Mozart was dead already.

2010-04-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

I promised this to someone on my birthday, but was out of town on the day and didn't have the book with me. So here you go, Carrie. Credit Ellen Goodman, April 1977.
==============

Let others freak out at turning 30 or 40. Let others greet their new decades with $12-an-ounce moisturizing cream and anxiety attacks. Not me. I'm no more mesmerized when the zeroes click into place in my life than when the speedometer turns over a new 10,000-mile mark.

But this odd-numbered birthday is different. This one has been lurking around, waiting to ambush my mind. You see, at the age I'm about to be, Mozart was dead already.

Now why, you ask, would someone whose musical career ended in the college chorus line of Guys and Dolls be worrying about Mozart?

Because Mozart has always been a convenient symbolic figure in my life. Someone to make me feel totally inadequate. Someone not to be able to live up to. Someone to make me miserable. Nice healthy things like that. I mean, if you want to feel like a wipeout, there is always the specter of old Wolfgang inking in the G clefs.

Remember when you were 5 and thrilled at being able to tie your shoelaces? Mozart was composing minuets. Remember when you were 30 and still hadn't "found yourself"? Mozart had finished The Marriage of Figaro. Need I go on?

Of course, Wolfgang isn't the only such handy source of low self-esteem and discontent. In the third grade there was always one kid who was on the gold book when you were on the green. There was one guy in college who had his first play produced on Broadway while you were completing your language requirement.

I had two friends publishing novels in New York the year that I was writing obituaries in Detroit.

I suspect that most of us were geared at a young age to all those grades and annual reports. There wasn't any such thing as an overachiever back then. He was just someone ahead of us. Someone to chase.

Now, however, it strikes me that there may be some advantage in arriving at the age at which Mozart was dead already. You don't have Wolfgang to kick yourself around with anymore. It occurs to you that you are far too old to be precocious, and you'll never be a Young Achiever. You'll never again be able to write Don Giovanni at 31.

Instead of whipping yourself to mush after the goals of others, you begin slowly to reset those goals. All this is called learning to live with yourself.

You stop living for Who's Who or the obituary column. You begin to give up the notion of living for the record, for others, or for the fleeting immortality of card catalogues and Chamber of Commerce plaques. As one friend put it: "If I'm not going to be Shakespeare, I might as well enjoy life."

At the age at which Mozart was dead already, you begin to gain what some people call perspective and others call "losing the old drive" and others call mellowness. For a day or so you might be repulsively philosophical. You might ruminate on the fact that the earth will be cold in a billion years or so, that most people's life's work is their life, and that there's not a whole lot of point in just making points.

The next trick, I suppose, is to learn to accept your limitations without trapping yourself in them and to find some of the important lines: the line between eternal dissatisfaction and smugness, the line between anxiety and boredom, the line between being driven and being immobilized. The line that we describe as a balanced life.

As for me, I may get there yet. I have at least finally realized one truth that comes with the candles: I'd rather be alive than be Mozart.

wond'ring aloud...

2010-04-21T14:53:00.000-05:00

wond'ring aloud
How we feel today...
will the years treat us well...

Gotta love Jethro Tull.

Hit one of those milestone birthdays last week. Birthdays always make me reflective, but the ending in -5 and -0 ones much more so. One of the things I've been wondering about is just how much wiser I am, really.

For some reason, I've been thinking about Chris Farley. Maybe my subconscious unearthed something while I was in Milwaukee last week. Chris Farley was an alum not only of my alma mater, but of my specific place within it. He died in my first semester there and it was a huge deal. (Also a little weird to be seeing my dean interviewed on CNN, but that's neither here nor there.)

Marquette has gone through a lot in the last 13 years. Buildings have come and gone. Al McGuire (peace be upon him) died. The board of directors was mocked nationwide for trying to change the school nickname to "The Gold." Hegarty's, a 77-year-old campus institution -- and where my friend Mike took me for lunch to try to get me to talk about my feelings after my dad died -- is closing. It's all minutiae that adds up to a life. And as far as I can tell, I'm thinking about Chris Farley because he didn't care, and I wonder why he had that figured out at 33 and I still don't.

It sounds petty, but remember the SNL skit where he was auditioning for the Chippendales? That, friends, took brass ones. Niecy Nash getting out there every week on Dancing with the Stars and shaking her self-admitted large self for the entire country to see? She's doing it, and she's doing it with a "F, yeah" attitude. Meanwhile, I refuse to go out in public in anything sleeveless, because god forbid anyone stare at my fat and flabby upper arms. Like the rest of me isn't fat and flabby either? And more important, like I should care?

How does one arrive at the point of that sort of self-acceptance? I feel kind of ridiculous for being this old and not having achieved it yet. Perhaps that's a hint to get the hell outta the Caribou across the street from St. Marys. It kills me that physicians all tend to hit the genetic lottery as well as the IQ-points one. Really -- looks or brains -- should be one to a person. ;-)

and it's only the giving that makes us what we are...

"an elegant deception"

2010-04-12T02:04:00.000-05:00

I spent Sunday afternoon not in the park with George, but at a play with a couple of people.

The play, "John Gabriel Borkman," was the 2nd to last one Henrik Ibsen wrote before being thoroughly debilitated by a stroke. You wonder if he saw it coming.

Despite having been written in the 1890s, there was a lot of it that was still perfectly topical. One part of the second act, however, particularly spoke to me. (The theater did its own adaptation, and I had to find this online from another source, so it's not exact, but you get the idea. Borkman is a disgraced financier ala Bernie Madoff and Foldal is a mousy little writer friend of his.)

BORKMAN. [Restlessly.] Yes, time flies: the years slip away; life---- Ah, no--I dare not think of it! [Looking at him.] Do you know what I sometimes feel like?

FOLDAL. What?

BORKMAN. I feel like a Napoleon who has been maimed in his first battle.

FOLDAL. [Placing his hand upon his portfolio.] I have that feeling too.

BORKMAN. Oh, well, that is on a smaller scale, of course.

FOLDAL. [Quietly.] My little world of poetry is very precious to me, John Gabriel.

BORKMAN. [Vehemently.] Yes, but think of me, who could have created millions! All the mines I should have controlled! New veins innumerable! And the water-falls! And the quarries! And the trade routes, and the steamship-lines all the wide world over! I would have organised it all--I alone!

FOLDAL. Yes, I know, I know. There was nothing in the world you would have shrunk from.

BORKMAN. [Clenching his hands together.] And now I have to sit here, like a wounded eagle, and look on while others pass me in the race, and take everything away from me, piece by piece!

FOLDAL. That is my fate too.

...

BORKMAN. [Interrupting.] Well, well--let us say no more of these stupid old stories. After all, neither of us got into the Cabinet, neither he nor I.

FOLDAL. But he rose high in the world.

BORKMAN. And I fell into the abyss.

FOLDAL. Oh, it's a terrible tragedy----

BORKMAN. [Nodding to him.] Almost as terrible as yours, I fancy, when I come to think of it.

FOLDAL. [Naively.] Yes, at least as terrible.

BORKMAN. [Laughing quietly.] But looked at from another point of view, it is really a sort of comedy as well.

...

(following a discussion on the merits of women or whether they're all evil. Foldal comes to their defense, as a whole.)

BORKMAN. [Moving impatiently on the sofa.] Oh, do spare me that poetical nonsense.

FOLDAL. [Looks at him, deeply wounded.] Do you call my holiest faith poetical nonsense?

BORKMAN. [Harshly.] Yes I do! That is what has always prevented you from getting on in the world. If you would get all that out of your head, I could still help you on in life--help you to rise.

FOLDAL. [Boiling inwardly.] Oh, you can't do that.

BORKMAN. I can when once I come into power again.

FOLDAL. That won't be for many a day.

BORKMAN. [Vehemently.] Perhaps you think that day will never come? Answer me!

FOLDAL. I don't know what to answer.

BORKMAN. [Rising, cold and dignified, and waving his hand towards the door.] Then I no longer have any use for you.

FOLDAL. [Starting up.] No use----!

BORKMAN. Since you do not believe that the tide will turn for me----

FOLDAL. How can I believe in the teeth of all reason? You would have to be legally rehabilitated----

BORKMAN. Go on! go on!

FOLDAL. It's true I never passed my examination; but I have read enough law to know that----

BORKMAN. [Quickly.] It is impossible, you mean?

FOLDAL. There is no precedent for such a thing.

BORKMAN. Exceptional men are above precedents.

FOLDAL. The law knows nothing of such distinctions.

BORKMAN. [Harshly and decisively.] You are no poet, Vilhelm.

FOLDAL. [Unconsciously folding his hands.] Do you say that in sober earnest?

BORKMAN. [Dismissing the subject, without answering.] We are only wasting each other's time. You had better not come here again.

FOLDAL. Then you really want me to leave you?

BORKMAN. [Without looking at him.] I have no longer any use for you.

FOLDAL. [Softly, taking his portfolio.] No, no, no; I daresay not.

BORKMAN. Here you have been lying to me all the time.

FOLDAL. [Shaking his head.] Never lying, John Gabriel.

BORKMAN. Have you not sat here feeding me with hope, and trust, and confidence--that was all a lie?

FOLDAL. It wasn't a lie so long as you believed in my vocation. So long as you believed in me, I believed in you.

BORKMAN. Then we have been all the time deceiving each other. And perhaps deceiving ourselves--both of us.

FOLDAL. But isn't that just the essence of friendship, John Gabriel?

BORKMAN. [Smiling bitterly.] Yes, you are right there. Friendship means--deception. I have learnt that once before.

FOLDAL. [Looking at him.] I have no poetic vocation! And you could actually say it to me so bluntly.

BORKMAN. [In a gentler tone.] Well, you know, I don't pretend to know much about these matters.

FOLDAL. Perhaps you know more than you think.

BORKMAN. I?

FOLDAL. [Softly.] Yes, you. For I myself have had my doubts, now and then, I may tell you. The horrible doubt that I may have bungled my life for the sake of a delusion.

BORKMAN. If you have no faith in yourself, you are on the downward path indeed.

Borkman was a flaming narcissist and clearly mad, but at least he believed in himself. I, on the other hand, am feeling really Foldal-like these days. Chalk it up to impending milestone birthday melancholy, I guess. There's more behind me than ahead at this point and I don't have a tremendous amount to show for it.

I swear: Next time I step foot in a theater, it's going to be for something light and fluffy. And if it's not, they're going to sell something stronger than coffee at intermission. ;-)

don't tell me you love me...

2010-04-02T13:07:00.000-05:00

(cue Night Ranger song here)

It's been an ... interesting ... month. It's probably unwise to put the majority of the details out here, but here's the part that's bothering me.

I got back this morning from driving a friend to the airport (90 minutes each way, with my usual detour for getting lost on the way back). Picked him up at 7:30, got home about 11:30. One of the other residents -- who's been here about a month, maybe a bit less -- was taking her laundry down the stair as I was coming up. She said, with what seemed to be to be sincerity, "Oh, I'm so glad you're back!"

Taken aback a bit, I tried to keep it light and said "oh! Well, it's nice to be missed."

Whereupon she replied, "Well, of course! You're important to me."

And all I could think was, 1) You barely know me, 2) You know me in only a VERY specific context, 3) Pleeeeease don't pull out that particular gun on me. It makes me nervous.

Kurt Vonnegut (peace be upon him) said once that he never included anything even remotely resembling a love story in his books because once you do that, it's all over. The sky could be black with flying saucers and World War III could be imminent, as far as your plotline goes, and nobody would give a shit -- they'd just want to know about the love story. And once somebody says "I love you," what can you do, really, but say "I love you too"? He felt it was like holding the other person hostage.

There are a number of people I feel deep affection, and even love, for -- but it is often hard for me to say so aloud, perhaps because it makes me so nervous having someone say it to me. It makes me *especially* panicky when it's said to me from someone who uses it casually. To me, it's not a casual word, and definitely not a casual emotion, and while I'm grateful to have people who care about me, nothing in my life to date has proved to me that anything like love at first sight exists. (Affection at first sight can happen now and then -- not all that often, but it's lovely when it does.)99.9% of the time, though, love is not something that can be honestly proclaimed when you've barely met someone. It takes time to build a relationship to the point where you can use the word genuinely. Please don't make me all anxious by throwing it around lightly. I get anxious easily enough as it is. :-)

a PSA for the HSP among us.

2010-02-23T22:59:00.000-06:00

Well, there's this -- note that on the self-test, I checked all but 2. (Over 14 = "off the charts.)

The Highly Sensitive Person

And then there's my Enneagram result. You can take those tests any number of places; I like Similar Minds. As I've known for years, I am an utterly rabid 5. Here, from the Enneagram Institute, is but a taste:

Fives are alert, insightful, and curious. They are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. Independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. They become detached, yet high-strung and intense. They typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation. At their Best: visionary pioneers, often ahead of their time, and able to see the world in an entirely new way.

* Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable
* Basic Desire: To be capable and competent

Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.

Examples: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Georgia O'Keefe, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Lily Tomlin, Gary Larson, Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, James Joyce, Björk, Susan Sontag, Emily Dickinson, Agatha Christie, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jane Goodall, Glenn Gould, John Cage, Bobby Fischer, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Trent Reznor, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Jodie Foster, and "Fox Mulder" (X Files).

Behind Fives’ relentless pursuit of knowledge are deep insecurities about their ability to function successfully in the world. Fives feel that they do not have an ability to do things as well as others. But rather than engage directly with activities that might bolster their confidence, Fives “take a step back” into their minds where they feel more capable. Their belief is that from the safety of their minds they will eventually figure out how to do things — and one day rejoin the world.

Call this a plea for understanding. 'Cause that's what it is.

a place for your stuff.

2010-02-21T23:38:00.000-06:00

One of the few benefits of being unattached and broke is that trading residences, one for another, is relatively easy. At least it is if you're willing to part with your stuff.

My dad was a HUGE George Carlin fan. We talked about going to his show when he came through St. Louis, it came and went without us making it, and I still regret that. But in addition to the famous "7 words you can't say on television" (which routine, let it be noted, he first performed in Milwaukee, at the epic 11-day drunkathon that is Summerfest), George in his later years worked up an entire routine about having a place for your stuff.

Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!

Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's NO ROOM for your stuff on it. Somebody else's shit is on the dresser.

Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? God! And you say, "Get that shit offa there and let me put my stuff down!"

Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation. And you gotta take some of your stuff with you. Gotta take about two big suitcases full of stuff, when you go on vacation. You gotta take a smaller version of your house. It's the second version of your stuff. And you're gonna fly all the way to Honolulu. Gonna go across the continent, across half an ocean to Honolulu. You get down to the hotel room in Honolulu and you open up your suitcase and you put away all your stuff. "Here's a place here, put a little bit of stuff there, put some stuff here, put some stuff--you put your stuff there, I'll put some stuff--here's another place for stuff, look at this, I'll put some stuff here..." And even though you're far away from home, you start to get used to it, you start to feel okay, because after all, you do have some of your stuff with you. That's when your friend calls up from Maui, and says, "Hey, why don'tchya come over to Maui for the weekend and spend a couple of nights over here."

Oh, no! Now what do I pack? Right, you've gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The third version of your house. Just enough stuff to take to Maui for a coupla days. You get over to Maui--I mean you're really getting extended now, when you think about it. You got stuff ALL the way back on the mainland, you got stuff on another island, you got stuff on this island. I mean, supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain. You get over to your friend's house on Maui and he gives you a little place to sleep, a little bed right next to his windowsill or something. You put some of your stuff up there. You put your stuff up there. You got your Visine, you got your nail clippers, and you put everything up. It takes about an hour and a half, but after a while you finally feel okay, say, "All right, I got my nail clippers, I must be okay." That's when your friend says, "Aaaaay, I think tonight we'll go over the other side of the island, visit a pal of mine and maybe stay over."

Aww, no. NOW what do you pack? Right--you gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The fourth version of your house. Only the stuff you know you're gonna need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, smokes, rubber and change. Well, only the stuff you HOPE you're gonna need.

I have moved 4 times in the past 4 years. Each time I have gotten rid of more and more "stuff." Because really? That's all it is. The amount of "stuff" you actually need is pretty tiny, as Carlin points out.

I have hauled endless bags of clothes to Savers and Goodwill. I have sold or donated the larger part of a formerly significant bear collection. I am a familiar face at the library (where you get to take stuff BACK, so it doesn't clutter up YOUR space) and at the Paperback Book Palace (where they pay me for a particular sort of stuff that I can trade in). Really, I'm down to a few important-to-me books, a bed, a computer, an absolutely minimal amount of furniture, my Watergate "co-conspirator" autographs, and about a million pictures of the kid. (What's more important than that? :-)

The rest of it? It's just "stuff." I'm not even that big of an eco-freak treehugger, either. I'm just tired of lugging around "stuff." As Kaufman and Hart so pithily noted, you can't take it with you, anyway.

Bode Miller's dad

2010-02-21T23:07:00.000-06:00

I haven't watched too much of the Olympics, because honestly? Despite where I live, winter sports pretty much just don't do it for me. However, in the process of unpacking tonight and getting stuff arranged in the new digs, I happened to catch the last little bit of whatever ski race Bode Miller won gold in.

You may or may not recall that Bode's shooting his mouth off prior to the last Olympics got him in a fair bit of trouble. On that basis alone, I feel a kinship. ;-) And while I'm always happy to see someone finally fulfill a dream -- particularly one that's been deferred largely through their own fault (hmmm, I know a bit about that one too), I really couldn't care less about skiing. What got me in the little snippet I happened to look up at the TV and see was Dad's reaction to seeing his boy pull it off: He grinned from ear to ear and then buried his face in his hands and lost it.

I feel ya, Mr. Miller.

It undoubtedly will come as a surprise to some that I have enough of a heart to be driven to tears. ;-) But I actually burst into heaving, messy, noisy, shoulder-shaking sobs in the middle of a frickin' BAR when I got to see, up close and personal, my boy do what he loves and what he does best and succeed beyond all imagining. It is a truly indescribable experience. It was really cool to see someone else get to have it.

As for the athletes -- I am the least patriotic person you will ever meet, but at the medal ceremonies, I always imagine what it must be like to be in their shoes. The whole "wave it high, wave it proud, I did it for America" thing affects me not a whit, but I do spend the whole time wondering how it must feel to stand there and think to yourself, "Damn. I. DID. IT." And then do they immediately wonder, "OK, now what?" Because the only thing that keeps me going most days is knowing that, while I've achieved pretty much what I wanted to in life, I haven't achieved it to the degree I want to. When you have no farther up the ladder to go, where do you go?

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?
--Langston Hughes

childhood's end

2010-02-07T15:57:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year for that most commercial of fake holidays, you know, and the indoctrination starts early.

While the cheap boxes of chocolate and the soon-to-expire fleurs are flying out of the Bullseye, it's the kids' Valentines that get me. Puppies and kitties are still popular designs, of course, and these days most of the cards come with candy attached, instead of the kid having to find some tape and do it him- or herself. But it's certainly brought back memories....

....like making a "mailbox" out of a shoebox and decorating it with construction paper hearts and a generous amount of Elmer's Glue (which, back in the day, decidedly did NOT come in glitter varieties -- had to do that yourself too) ....

.... or taking class time to actually make Valentines (for the longest time, I held on to the one Terry Anderson made me in 5th grade that said "To a nice gril") ....

.... or sitting at the dining room table, going through the school directory, making sure you didn't miss anybody in your class.

I don't recall any meltdowns because someone got left out, but it was probably me and I'm probably repressing it, if there were any. ;-) I do vividly remember missing the entirety of my 1st grade Christmas party because I had to go to the nurse's office and take my stupid antiseizure meds, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway. All this longwindedness about a stupid fake holiday was meant to lead into other things we could do as kids that have long been forgotten. Here's one: Do you remember how to skip? No? Could you jump rope if your life depended on it? No? Me neither, to both of those. Yet I was pretty good at both of them when I was 5 (too, too many decades ago).

What other skills did you used to have that you can't imagine anymore?

maybe there is hope?

2010-01-24T00:37:00.000-06:00

I dunno. I'm not the world's most optimistic soul. (You can stop guffawing now.) But I do have a particular talent for perseveration, as a shrink once said, trying to see if I really was as smart as I think I am. (I defined it to his liking, so I guess I won that round. I didn't get a 700-and-something on my GRE verbal for nothing.) And I've observed some things lately that have made me wonder if mankind, or at least the American version thereof, actually might be capable of -- oh dear -- evolving.

I mean yeah, there are still the Pat Robertsons of the world, but I suspect Pat is in love with himself and his ability to stir the shit. Among the great unwashed, it's been interesting lately to discover what's become acceptable.

There's not much point about talking about "back in the day," because it's so far back for me that it's incomprehensible to most now. (Seriously -- if I tell you that I didn't know the F-bomb existed, much less what it meant, till I was 12, could you extrapolate that to a 12-year-old in 2010 and not die laughing?) But my generation got farked in a whole lot of ways -- and the sociologists FINALLY are giving us some data to prove that to the haters -- and one of them was in our inability to stand up for who and what we are from a young age. These days, those around LGBT kids who come out in their teens often don't bat an eye. It's just not a huge deal. "Back in the day" (late '70s and forward some), it was a *tremendously* huge deal, to the point that many of us didn't come forward till adulthood, and then with trepidation.

So it's been interesting to me to see the 7-year-old boy who came through my line at the Bullseye with his mom, handed me two cheap-ass, made-in-China, Disney princess figurines (Cinderella and another one, I forget who), and excitedly said, "THESE are MINE!" Mom didn't blink. Nor did the mom of the young male teen tonight who handed me a "My First Salon" (as in beauty, not literary, although I'd be tickled to see an Algonquin Round Table playset) and said he didn't mind that the package was open, he'd take it anyway. And of course, neither of those things means those boys are budding 'mos, but my larger point is that those kids didn't have parents flipping out that they weren't buying war toys or Hot Wheels instead.

*My* mother once informed me, while watching a St. Patrick's Day parade in which a LGBT group was participating, that she would be "mortified" -- her exact word, which I have never forgotten -- if one of her children turned out to be gay.

It might be a generational thing, or we might actually have come a long way, baby. But props to all the parents who let their kids be who they are rather than who the parents want them to be.

And perhaps things really can change: Tonight the one person who has been uniformly awful, mean, snippy, hateful, etc toward me since the day I started -- smiled at me and genuinely apologized for all the times she'd been awful, mean, snippy and hateful toward me. Wonders actually may never cease. ;-)

"I still have Santa's phone number. Capisce?"

2009-12-24T14:31:00.000-06:00

And that, friends, is the best threat to a screaming toddler I have heard not just this holiday season, but for all time. Those of you with young children, feel free to steal it. I'm sure the frazzled mom who uttered it won't mind. ;-)

Random Tales from the Bullseye, Part 2:

-- Once, my freshman year of college, I wrote a check (remember those?) for 48 cents. The 21st-century version? Somebody ran through a debit card for 52 cents.

-- Dozens of inches of snow on the ground. Freezing rain. Miserably cold temps. And yet? There are bikinis on sale. In December. In the Upper Midwest, which means, inevitably, that you can buy one in a camouflage pattern. I *LOVE* this place! ;-)

-- Why people insist on asking me for fashion advice (stop laughing), I do not know. I have had a multitude of people ask me if I thought this top goes with those pants or whatever. I offer an opinion, but this is my disclaimer: If you (or your kid) ends up looking stupid, I'm not to blame, as I am strictly a Tshirts and jeans kind of girl.

-- Yesterday, as I was bagging somebody's stuff, I felt this insistent little tap in the general vicinity of my posterior. Annoyed, I turned around to find Miss Cindy Lou Who -- who was no more than 2 -- and wanted to know if she could have an empty crate (which formerly contained clementines). She was just tickled pink when I handed it to her and announced proudly to one and all, "I got a box!"

You gotta wonder where the creativity and sense of wonder goes as you age.

-- Then there was the "hey buddy! Nice to meet you!" I overheard while doing something else. I glanced over to find a 6-year-old (at best) boy greeting a newborn. THAT caused an outright guffaw.

-- Dept. of "I'd Rather Not Know": -- the chick who bought 25 boxes of candy canes ... and a pair of socks.

And then there have been the people who get that it's not all about buying stuff. Like the disabled gentleman who was out shopping not only for himself, but his neighbor (and paying for her, too). I said it was nice of him to go shopping for two (especially because a wheelchair's gotta be tough to navigate in this weather), and he said, "well, she can't get out. She's 97."

Then there was the woman who said she was buying bakery items because she'd been so busy working she hadn't had time to do it herself, and she didn't know if her kids were going to come anyway. Her husband dumped her after 30 years, remarried as fast as he could, and convinced their adult kids that she was the problem. So none of them came for Thanksgiving, either.

"How sad!" I said.

"It will be what it will be," she said. "God didn't promise me that my kids would love me, but he did tell me I have to love them."

Amen, peace out, and Merry Christmas.

influences and advice and stuff

2009-12-01T21:10:00.000-06:00

Or, "I miss you, Joe McGuff."

I have an ancient, yellowed Guindon cartoon that says "Nostalgia is only bad if it causes you to go back through life." But remembering the little things that ended up being turning points isn't so bad.

I have been writing since I could hold a pencil. In first grade, I wrote a story centered around some blob figure my sister cut out of green construction paper. I'm sure it has been lost to the sands of time now, though I did know where it was for many years. It centered on a family named the Burstein-Applebees (Kansas Citians of a certain vintage, and particularly those familiar with Metcalf South Mall in that same vintage, should be grinning right about now. B-A was a record store on the mall's lower level). Other than that, basically all I remember is that Mr. and Mrs. Burstein-Applebee were getting a divorce. I think that was probably a wish I didn't know how to articulate otherwise, even at that age, but we won't go there.

In second grade, for some reason, there were a few days I was well enough to go to school, but not to go outside for recess. So I stayed in and wrote "books." Illustrated 'em myself, too, stapled them together and scrawled "BESTSELLER!" across the top in big red letters.

But fourth grade ... Fourth grade is when my dad took me to my first Royals game. He had gotten tickets through work, and my brother had something else going on, and my mom wasn't interested. I remember not caring much that I was last choice.

The Royals beat the A's, who in the mid-'70s were a helluva team -- Gene Tenace, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers -- wow. They won a pile of World Series and were the Royals' biggest rivals, next to the Yankees. But that night, John Mayberry hit one into the fountains, the Royals won 5-3, and when my dad said "so what'd you think?," I said, "when can we come back?"

Next morning, he handed me the sports page. I looked at it and had one of my first Eureka! moments: I could go to baseball games and GET PAID TO WRITE ABOUT THEM. That pretty much solidified my career choice.

In 9th grade social studies, we had to do a unit on careers. Part of it involved interviewing someone in your chosen field and then giving a report to the class. I chose Joe McGuff, who was sports editor of the Kansas City Star.

At the time, he must have been in his 50s, and he was remarkably patient with dumb-kid questions. And he also gave me some of the best advice I've ever gotten: Read everything you can. It'll all come in handy at some point.

A couple of years later, I read an interview with Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury. He said the trick to his success was to know just enough about a topic to make it look like he knew a lot, and that this trick not only got him through college and cocktail parties, but writing a daily strip.

I bring all this up because I've been doing a lot of auto-related writing lately. Do I know diddly about cars? Well, I know how to stick the key in the ignition and turn it. That's pretty much the sum total of my knowledge. And yet, the people I talk to for these stories, and then the people who read them, are all utterly convinced I am a car fanatic. It's kind of amusing. :-) All I can say is, god bless the Internet, and thank you, Joe McGuff. You taught me a lot, not only by reading and absorbing your stuff, but by suggesting learning both happens outside of school and should be continuous.

no one here gets out alive....

2009-11-30T21:49:00.000-06:00

Or, life and death and the ever-increasing awareness of mortality in between.

Today is the birthday of one of my nieces. It is always a day of much reflection for me (whether you know it or not, Miss C), for reasons I'm not willing to get into publicly. Ask if you wanna know.

Late last night, I learned of the death of someone I admired and who had provided me much-needed help (of various sorts) and encouragement at a time in my life where I really, really needed some extra TLC and a *whole* lot more belief in my basic worth as a human being. That he survived some really horrible crap that life threw at him in the last several years was inspiring in itself. I always knew him to be kind and generous with whatever resources he had to offer that he thought you needed. Those who disagreed -- publicly, doing much damage -- surely contributed to the stress that eventually killed him via a heart attack at a relatively young age.

Same thing happened a few years ago to someone else in the same profession who always went above and beyond for me, although I just heard from him the other day and he sounds upbeat and well. It's a risk you know is out there when you become a professional caregiver, I guess. And although the ones I've known decided to do what they do for a living partly to heal themselves, they also all genuinely have been compassionate people who wanted to help others through painful times and get to reasonably OK ones. Takes one to know one, etc.

I'm at that particular life stage where I'm thinking about this stuff a lot, anyway, wondering what dreams may come when I shuffle off this mortal coil. Sometimes I miss being 22 and thinking I'm invincible and that I have all the time in the world. Enjoy it while you can, birthday girl.

A cornucopia of thanks

2009-11-26T17:02:00.001-06:00

A cornucopia is a horn-shaped basket filled with food such as fresh corn and wild ucopias. -- fakeAPstylebook

Inspired by an old (in terms of decades known -- we're not really OLD, yet, Suz, right??) friend, herewith, my list of things to be thankful for in 2009.

In no particular order, I am thankful that:

Very soon, I am going to get to hug my beautiful, wonderful, 20-something boy for the first time since he was 5 days old, and that he was raised lovingly and brilliantly well, as I wish I could have done for him.
The wonders of technology have helped me to reconnect with old friends -- even if they live on the other side of the world now -- and make new ones. I had a chance to go home this summer and do some catching up, and it's the first time in years that I actually felt like it was "home" again and I had some roots there. Even if some of my favorite people were Indian Creeps. (NALLWOOD KNIGHTS, BABY!)
I have a roof over my head and utilities that aren't constantly in danger of getting shut off, and that as much as we can annoy each other, Vic comes through for me every time. And that Rich puts up with me, although I know he'd rather not.
The cat-in-law tolerates the occasional hug and smooch without complaining too much that I'm ruffling her Supreme Feline Dignity. In return, I let her wake me up meowing at obscene hours. I think it's fair.
The kitties at the shelter are much more snuggly than the cat-in-law and love the hugs and smooches and petting. Happiness is a warm fur-baby, of whatever species.
I once again am getting a chance, if only part-time, to do what I love best, and that the person paying me to do so (in both money and compliments) has gone from total stranger to friend in the space of a month. You rock, Ry.
You too, John, but I've had a lot more years to tell you that. Doesn't make it any less true, though. Thank you for giving me a chance when no one else believed in me, for always offering to bail me out when it seems like I could use it, for understanding the days when I am nonfunctional, and for your infinite patience with same. If you gotta be crazy, it's nice to have a shrink for a boss. ;-) Thanks for getting it.
You too, Gregory. It is a rare thing in life to meet someone and know the second your eyes meet that you are not only going to get along famously well, but end up as very good friends for a very long time to come. You have done my heart, soul and brain so much good over the years, whether by making me laugh, snarking with me over ANTM, or being tenderhearted enough to cry with me and not worry what it looked like. As humanoids go, you are one of the finest.
As much as I complain about it, I have a reason to leave the house and something to do with most of my days for at least a few hours a day. You have no idea how depressing it gets to face endless days of nothingness.
The Viqueens are the ones having to put up with Benedict Brett's ego. (Yeah, I don't CARE that you're 9-1 and he's on fire. We'll see how you all feel once the annual retirement drama begins in the offseason.)
Even though my first bunch of students at Marquette, who were mostly 18 then, are mostly turning 30 in 2010, I'm still around to hear from them (and students from later years) reasonably often. I'm especially grateful that many of them have written *me* recommendation letters for jobs -- it's a good feeling to know you've made a difference. It's an even better feeling when I think back to 4 years ago around this time and how close to the edge my continued survival was.
Which makes me thankful for Dr. Hake and Dr. Fenske and everyone who did what they had to do to pull me through a critical illness -- including not telling me what my actual odds of survival were. (I found that by reading my chart, like an idiot.) Scary stuff. And although I still have my share of "why bother" days, all in all, I'm glad to be around still.
I've gotten to travel some, and live in different places, and be exposed to different cultures and ways of doing things, whether those different cultures were as far as Germany or as near as northwest Wisconsin. (Trust me -- it's a lifestyle all its own there.)
I have not only gotten to meet Jake and Peg Leinenkugel, who are lovely people and very committed to their community, but that I still regularly get to drink their tremendously tasty brewskis on a regular basis.
Even though it cost me a fortune and has done me absolutely no good in the well-paid job arena, I have two diplomas that I'm really damn proud of, from two really good schools that I worked really hard at. (Well, sorta, at the 2nd. I'm thankful that I was Dr. Thorn's golden child and could get away with whatever I wanted, including doing very little to actually earn my RAship. ;-)
The friends I made there (hi, Nic and Marie and Mike, especially!) have been with me ever since. And the friends I made in greater Milwaukee, my adopted hometown, know me better than almost anyone and still like me, even if I met them at work (deadlines make me cranky).
Even though it's freakin' cold and we haven't seen the sun in a million or two years, when you open the door leading out onto the deck, you can get lungsful of that yummy wood fire scent.
I have had the opportunity to fulfill my dreams and meet my heroes. Not many folks can say one or the other, much less both.

There's undoubtedly more, but it's a start. Happy Thanksgiving!

Tales from the Bullseye

2009-11-24T01:12:00.001-06:00

Random weirdness that I jot down to comment on when I have the time:

-- If you've never seen me before in your life, you're younger than me, and you don't have the personality that will allow you to get away with that sort of affectation, you had best not be calling me "dear."

-- Corollary to the above: If you've never seen me before in your life, and you insist on calling me by name, repeatedly, just because you can read my nametag, you are a guaranteed annoyance.

-- Corollary to the corollary: The military guys are always just polite as hell, and don't even make me feel old when they call me "ma'am." THAT is more acceptable than "dear," or than plays on my name that amuse you because you clearly believe I haven't heard them all eight hundred and forty-two billion trillion times before.

-- People who come through the "10 items or less" lane with 72 items should be summarily executed. It's no more fun on the other side of the register, particularly because you get to look out onto a sea of irked people.

-- Apparently every pregnant woman in the greater Rochester area shops at Target North. Why they are all also buying KY and condoms I am not altogether sure. It may have something to do with the fact that they all seem to have a passel of kids already.

-- Dude: I closed last night too, but you don't hear *me* telling people to "have a good night" for the entire *day* when I come in at 9 the next morning. Fewer drugs, more sleep: It's a good thing.

-- Packages of undies that announce in bold caps that they are "WEDGIE FREE!": Too much information? Discuss.

-- Exactly what kind of person finds it amusing to buy a Halloween costume for his or her dog? How is that not animal cruelty? Inquiring minds want to know.

War is war, and hell is hell....

2009-11-24T00:38:00.000-06:00

Forward, he cried from the rear,
And the front rank died.
And the general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side. -- Pink Floyd, "Us and Them"

Not sure if it's the weather, the time of year, or the PMS, but damn, I've been in a mood the last few days.

The Great Bullseye requires us to make conversation with the customers (oh, excuse me, "guests") whether we really feel like it or not. It probably goes without saying to anyone who knows me that I generally fall on the "not" side -- I suck at chit-chat in the best of circumstances. But, you do what you gotta do.

Tonight an elderly gentleman came through my line. He was wearing a Korean War Veterans jacket. I figured, what the hell, it's a point of entry for chitchat -- I comment on the right-thinking Americans who come in wearing Packers gear, might as well chat up an old guy about how my dad fought in Korea too.

The man's face instantly lit up, and he became very animated as he started telling me about his particular role. He was clearly very proud of his history. As he was leaving, he thanked me and told me to thank my dad for his service.

And I lost it.

I have missed him every freaking day of my life for the last 10 years, but at this point, it's usually just the anniversaries that get me. I thought these random breakdowns were long gone.

About 3 "guests" later, an older woman came through. Our point of chit-chat was my having to be at work well before dawn the day after Thanksgiving. I said I had never been much of a shopper and didn't understand people who would willingly get up at obscene hours to go spend money on mostly useless stuff. (One thing I have learned this past year and some is that "it's just stuff," but that's another post.)

She launched into a tale of how her mother's family all live in Kentucky, and she and her husband made the trip there every year for Thanksgiving, and she took "the girls," of whom she was the oldest, out at 4 a.m. on Black Friday. They (willingly!!) got up at 2:30 a.m., and even when the rest of them wanted to quit and go home and get some sleep, she pulled rank and kept them going, and it was always so much fun.

Except that this year, they can't make the trip because her husband's been unemployed for a long time, and she isn't really sure what they'll do. They've never made their own turkey, etc, and they don't have any family nearby, so there wouldn't be anyone to share it with anyway. She was just heartbroken about it. I felt like hell for dredging that up for her.

Early in my reporting career, I was struggling with a feature on an inspiring (here we go again) old lady. She was in her 70s, had built her own house, ran a greenhouse business, etc. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to get across what I found so remarkable about her.

So I emailed my favorite feature writer at the Milwaukee paper. One thing nobody ever catches onto about journos is that we're really all terrible introverts. I tell people all the time, and it's true, that I can chat up anyone for a story, but if you insist I go to a party, I'm headed directly for the nearest corner, and I ain't moving. I've gotten really good at pretending -- so good that I routinely fool people. (My 3rd night at Target, which had been a particularly awful one, someone asked me how it had gone. I said, "terrible." She said, "It'll get better. You're personable, and that's half the battle." All I could think was, "Honey, if you only knew.")

Anyway, the point of that was to say that we're all also terribly insecure, and you can get us to do damn near anything by appealing to our extreme need for positive reinforcement. I emailed this guy and said "Look, I've been a fan for years, I love you to pieces, I study your stuff for tips, but tell me: How do you do it?"

He said, "Every human being has a story. I could interview you for 5 minutes and write yours. Your job is to figure out this woman's story and tell it."

It turned out very well (both the story and the advice, which I continue to use). But that's really what it boils down to: Everybody has a story. I have run into a number of crushing ones in the last week or so (more to come on that). It makes me sad as hell. But sometimes all you have to do to make someone's day a little brighter is let them tell their story, and receive it graciously.

And I still miss the hell out of my dad, and it kills me to think of all that he's missed in my life in the last 10 years. So the reminiscing is bittersweet, as is the imagining, via that elderly vet, of what he might be like if he were still around. But at least I still have part of his story to hang onto.

PS: The quote from the header:

Hawkeye: War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
Father Mulcahy: How do you figure, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander. -- MASH

And a little note from Bing and Rosie:
it's not my watch you're holding, it's my heart...

photographs and memories and influences and stuff

2009-11-11T14:15:00.000-06:00

The sun is shining and it's disgustingly warm for November here (50s!), but it's managing to be sort of a melancholy day anyway. And when I get melancholy, it's because I've gotten to thinking about something ... which led me to something else ... which led me to something else ... which required me to find a way to tie it all up together.

Monday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The summer between 7th and 8th grade, we made a trip to visit my brother, who was stationed there with the Army. The two things I most vividly remember? Street-vendor currywurst (YUM, and impossible to replicate at home, although we tried -- Das Bierhaus in Menomonie, WI does a FINE job of it, though) and Checkpoint Charlie. West Berlin was soooo pretty -- huge, tree-lined boulevards, clean, full of life. But at Checkpoint Charlie, you could climb up a few stairs and look over the wall into East Berlin. It was hard to believe the two were even in the same country, much less the same city. East Berlin looked like it must have right after World War II. They didn't appear to have bothered to do any reconstruction.

Between that, and the ACHTUNG! signs telling you what country's "zone" you were in (and the penalties for not following the rules), and seeing the rows of small white crosses marking the spots where folks who tried to get over the Wall were shot dead by snipers in the towers that were all around -- well, it made a helluvan impression on a 13-year-old.

So, happy Veterans Day, Jeff, and Dad (Korea, 3 tours in Nam), and Uncle Joe and Uncle Bob and all the rest of you, and thanks for keeping this country from ending up like that.

Speaking of Veterans Day, Nov. 11 also is Kurt Vonnegut's birthday. Anyone who has known me for more than 2 seconds knows how I feel about K. He left a great legacy, but he was agitating to the end, and I miss his unique take on things and his willingness to speak out against injustice. I just miss him, period. And yes, I did actually meet him once, briefly, at a lecture at Washington University in St. Louis. I can't begin to claim to know him except through his writings and works, but I still miss him, if that makes sense. (And he also was a vet, but I won't bore you with the bio you can read for yourself in multiple places. :-)

Yesterday I ran across a collection of stories by Frederick Barthelme, long one of my favorite writers. I picked it up and read a couple at random and realized why he's always spoken to me: it's the details. If there's one thing I do well, it's observe--I see things other people gloss over completely or just dismiss as mundane and unimportant. Rick is proof that the quotidian can be as compelling as the grandest fantasy. When you weave a lot of small, seemingly insignificant details together, you get one big, telling picture -- but I hadn't realized till last night just how much my style owes to him. Kids are sponges, I guess, and I first ran across him in early high school.

And one thing I suck at? Endings. :-)

i suppose it had to happen.

2009-11-02T08:58:00.000-06:00

-- Someone I know came through my line at Target the other day. At least she already knew I was working there, so it was only mildly humiliating.

-- Yesterday, two harried parents of a fussy toddler came through. Kid's name? Miley.

You know what? Miley isn't even the *original* Miley's real name. (Well, she had it legally changed so now it is, but it's not what was on her original birth certificate.) When that 2-year-old girl is a crabby 80-year-old in the nursing home, how's "Miley" gonna go over? Because Ms. Cyrus's 15 minutes are due to be up any second now, much less in 70-plus years.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for eons with girls' names. (Target story #3: Guy looks at my nametag, which has my nickname on it, and says "Is your name Candace?" I say yes. He grimaces and says, "So is my mom's.")

Seriously, folks. I can't complain about creative and unusual names :-), but I'll crab nonstop about trendy ones. Kids have significantly longer lifespans (hopefully) than dogs. If you wouldn't stick your pet with it, why would you do it to your kid?

Bulls....eye.

2009-10-26T01:20:00.000-05:00

aka "the Target dog."

Two-year global economic disaster? Check. Completely useless degrees in a rapidly dying field? Check. And that brings folks like me to working at places like Target.

It could be worse, yes: I could have had to resort to the Purveyor of All Evil. Target at least has a bit of a social conscience. (Heads-up, shoppers -- you get a 5-cent discount per reusable bag. Bring your own or buy one there.) But damn, I need a real job soon, because being perky for hours on end is going to send me into a complete nervous breakdown sooner rather than later. I can only be un-cranky for so long. ;-)

So far the most interesting things I've had to ring up are, uh, prophylactics and undies. You know, that is just more than I want to know about people. Then you get that horrible "oh god, my parents have sex" thing goin' on (but with images of the other people) in your brain and ... well ... just ... EWWWW. And the undies ... Men's come in packages, at least, and they're really plain. And you can't tell much from them aside from what his waist size is. OTOH, the size 30 bra for an adult woman -- again, TMI.

When they aren't screaming, the kids are a hoot. I asked one little boy what he was going to be for Halloween. He said, "um ... something." (No decision yet. Halloween's Saturday. Ten bucks says Mom's going to be back Saturday afternoon cruising the picked-over costumes.) One pushed all his family's items up toward the scanner when the conveyor belt decided not to work. I thanked him for being a good helper and he was still beaming when they left. And the toddler who maintained eye contact and just smiled from ear to ear every time I looked at her made my night.

I still maintain that a monkey could run the register -- they've come quite a long way from my days at McDonald's in the '80s. And at least I don't have to wear some stupid/ugly/garish uniform and I look good in red. ;-) I just gotta figure out how to work around this inability to be my usual curmudgeonly self. Maybe I should try to make up for it by being extra-curmudgeonly on my days off. ;-)

In the meantime, I'm filing these characters away with the likes of Dan-Rather-hair-Richard-Nixon-face, who I was stuck on a dead airplane with on the way to Connecticut for my niece's baptism. Never did make it. But the asshole gate attendant who looked at the line of people trying to find different flights and said to his pal, "Are these real people, or are they non-revs?" is going in the book, too. (Non-revs = non-revenue = folks who work for the airline or have family/friends who do and thus fly free or close to it. In other words, when he took advantage of that benefit for himself -- HE WAS A NON-REV! I love the terminally clueless. They make good copy.)

ways to tell you're old

2009-10-09T16:58:00.000-05:00

You see a teen or 20-something out walking around in public in an outfit you totally would have worn, without question, in your teens or 20s -- and you think to yourself -- "OMG! How can they leave the house like that? Do they not KNOW how stupid they look?"
The authority figures in your life -- bosses, doctors, whatever -- suddenly all are younger than you. By decades, in a number of instances. Or, suddenly, to a significant group of people, YOU are the authority figure (i.e., really old fart).
You would rather stay in and have a civilized glass of wine and a small, sedate dinner party with your nearest and dearest than go out with a huge group of people -- many of whom you only marginally know -- get blitzed on cheap beer, and snarf greasy pizza at 3 a.m.
You have high school friends who are grandparents already.

It totally has been one of those days. Anybody want to add to the list??

and today's word from Unity is....

2009-10-03T22:07:00.000-05:00

"WHY?"

One of my junior-year-of-college roommates was a counselor at a summer camp for diabetic kids. She came home at the end of it with little things she'd made for all of us in their arts and crafts sessions. She said that she had taken a lot of time thinking of things that would be totally appropriate for each of us.

I have no idea all these years later what anybody else's was. But mine was a nicely sanded wood block. On it, in bright yellow paint and lovely calligraphy, was painted the word: WHY?

23 years later, it's still as accurate a one-word description of my essence as any.

This isn't the place to divulge the sordid details -- you don't want to hear it; I don't want to tell it; that's what shrinks are for and I utilize them as needed. But Thursday was 1 year unemployed, the rejections keep rolling in, and it absolutely does eff with your head eventually whether you want it to or not.

Cleaning stuff up and out today, I ran across a folder full of emails from readers. These were my two favorites:

I have laughed at so many of your articles and always thought I should write and tell you how much I enjoy reading them. There is nothing funnier than real life and I laughed so hard reading about your experience in a snowshoe race! I've never tried it for all the reasons you gave in your story so I just want to congratulate you for trying and sharing your funny experiences! Keep up the good writing!

I just wanted to write and let you know that I always check the paper and read your articles first! You have a wonderful talent for writing that seems to be down to earth and enjoyable to read! Thank you!

I went to a networking dinner the other night, and when the woman who invited me -- who I'd done a story about -- mentioned that I was the one who had written the story, I got a completely spontaneous round of applause from the rest of the room.

WHY, with a stack full of stuff like that, and recommendations from DAs and circuit court judges and former students and department chairs and bosses and stuff, WHY the hell am I stuck in neutral? One can only blame the economy for so much. One can only blame the death of the newspaper business for so much. I have GOT to have some transferable skills. Why isn't anyone seeing them?

Oh, and just in case you enjoy irony as much as I do: I got a form rejection via email the other day. It was for a copyediting job.

They spelled my name wrong.

The ability to write and properly punctuate standard English is rolling steadily downhill. SOMEBODY has got to need someone who does it well.

And if I sound self-pitying -- well, maybe some. But it's getting harder and harder to try to be positive and resilient and all that good stuff when all there ever is is more of the same bad stuff instead.

I'm trying, I'm trying .... but there really is only so much rejection a girl can take.

Ray Lamontagne -- Be Here Now

RL video

true dat.

2009-10-02T16:27:00.000-05:00

and yes....

2009-09-20T22:01:00.000-05:00

...I've already repeatedly been called Eeyore. ;-) And to you I say....

Count von Count and dentition

2009-09-20T19:59:00.002-05:00

Just in case you're wondering: Losing teeth is not as fun at 44 as it is at 6.

For one thing, it's vastly more expensive. For another, by adulthood most people find it considerably less enjoyable to end up minus body parts, no matter how problematic and malformed they may be.

I don't need another self-esteem hit. But I have one. Because really? Opening your mouth to find a gaping black hole is creepy and depressing. And yeah, while for the first time in literally decades I have a cosmetically reasonable smile, it's going to take a little getting used to the idea that I most closely now resemble Count von Count. ;-)

Don't get me wrong -- I have HATED my teeth forever. It's nice to feel like it's not the first thing everyone stares at when they see me. I always tried to smile in spite of it, but that never stopped the self-consciousness. It's just weird, OK? It's weird to look in the mirror and see "normal," but it's just as weird to be able to pop "normal" in and out and look like a friggin' vampire bat.

Oh, BTW: Now that I have my 2 front teeth (front 4, actually) in time for Christmas, I'm getting my biggest wish of all time, ever, and it doesn't get any better than that! (More on that closer to the date of occurrence. :-)

----------------
Now playing: Duncan Sheik - Time and Good Fortune
via FoxyTunes

Un. Freaking. Believable.

2009-09-15T09:58:00.002-05:00

Herewith, an email I just received. Names have been redacted to protect the guilty.
=====

Dear ,

As you can imagine, in this difficult economy, hundreds of individuals have applied for our job at [name of organization]. It has been both exhilarating and sad – exhilarating to see how much talent there is in our community and beyond; sad to know how many individuals are seeking employment.

I am sorry that there is not a match between your background and our needs at this time. Thank you for your interest in our mission and in our organization.

Most importantly, the greatest need is to build our membership – media, politicians, and various partners measure our effectiveness based on whether [target group] support the organization. In addition to knowing you are a vital part of supporting our mission, you will receive our international newsletter, access to crisis call listeners and to the invitation-only [name of mailing list], a prescription drug savings plan, and other benefits. You can sign up at [identifying link].

Yes, that's right -- now that we've told you you're not worth hiring, could you give us some money?

This, friends, redefines the word shameless.

cue Dave Matthews

2009-09-06T13:00:00.006-05:00

...so much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to sa-aaay....

Open up my head and let me out...

Random miscellany (is that redundant?):

-- Seen on an anti-gay-marriage bumper sticker: "One man, one women."

This is where it pays to be literate. Unless this person really meant that he or she thinks polygamy is just dandy but civil unions are not. I suppose anything's possible.

-- The truth as only a reporter can tell it, courtesy of Ryan Pagelow. Go subscribe to Pressed. It's truer and (dishearteningly) funnier than most of what's on the "comics" pages these days.

- A plug and a plea for help with my other blog, Write Up Your Alley. Anybody knows someone willing to barter for website services, give me a holler, please. TypePad was kind enough to give laid-off journos 2 free years of hosting, but I don't find their platform terribly intuitive. Plus, my design skills suck.

-- Open question for discussion: Better to keep your mouth shut and suffer mightily because of it, or say something and risk being steamrollered/judged/etc?

All of these things, all of these things, they are such reveries....

Don't listen to me, it's my imagination...

(And, for the hearing-impaired, text below):
========

Duncan Sheik, "Such Reveries"

you and I in the room with the balcony
you lie on the bed while I stare at the sea
I stare at the sea
on such reveries

and we're riding the ponies in Mexico.
the moonlight leaps through the palm tree groves
oh, wouldn't you know?
we're in Mexico

yes all of these things, all of these things
they are such reveries, ohh
all of these things, all of these things
they are such reveries

the oceans waves loomed as large as could be
they threw us below but you held onto me
yeah, you held onto me
oh such reveries

'cause you are my treasure, a love that astounds
the end of my searches, my looking around
no more looking around
a love that astounds.

yes all of these things, all of these things
they are such reveries, ohh
all of these things, all of these things
they are such reveries

but don't listen to me,
it's my imagination
I don't even know you
it never happened
just dreams in slow motion
they never happened
all that I told you
it never happened ever

'cause all of these things, all of these things
they are just reveries, ohh
all of these things, all of these things
they are just reveries
yes all of these things, all of these things
they are just reveries, ohh
all of these things, all of these things
they are just reveries

so many visions still to see
and many travails before I may sleep
but then when I sleep
oh such reveries

Dave Matthews Band, "So Much To Say":

And my hell is the closet I'm stuck inside
Can't see the light
And my heaven is a nice house in the sky
Got central heating and I'm alright
Yeah yeah yeah can't see the light
Keep it locked up inside don't talk about it
Talk about the weather
Yeah yeah yeah can't see the light
Open up my head and let me out little baby
Here we have been standing for a long long time
Treading trodden trails for a long long time

I find sometimes it's easy to be myself
Sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else

I see you young and soft little baby
Little feet little hands little feet little hands little baby
A year of crying and the words creep up inside
Creep into mind yeah
So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say
So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say
Here we have been standing for a long long time
Treading trodden trails for a long long time

I find sometimes it's easy to be myself
Sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else

So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say
So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say
So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say
So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say

Open up my head and let me out little baby

just shoot me...

2009-09-01T10:03:00.002-05:00

As my brother used to say when he couldn't quite wrap his tongue around the actual Spanish: "OUCHIE WOW-WOW."

Up and at 'em early this morning to visit with a woman who runs a moving service for the elderly. Great idea, much needed, she's very dynamic and great to talk to, but hanging out in a "senior living residence"? Yeeeeeah, not so fun.

Some years ago, I did a day-in-the-life story of a parish director (layman who does all the administrative tasks, freeing the priest for sacramental stuff only). Our last stop for the day was a nursing home, where he held a brief Communion service.

Maybe there were 15 people there. Most were in wheelchairs; some were on oxygen; some were drooling on themselves, and even though he was standing right in front of them and practically yelling to ensure they could hear him, several fell asleep.

When we got back to the car, he turned to me and said, "And THAT is why I always know where my son keeps his gun."

Amen.

Since Oregon requires you to have a physician certify that you are terminally ill and have 6 months or less to live, somebody just buy me a one-way ticket to Switzerland when it looks like I might start heading down that path. (They're not so picky.) I can't stand the thought of having struggled so hard to make something of my life and myself only to revert at the end of it to toddler status. If my mind is mush, I'm not that interested in keeping my body running...I have no desire to pay for the privilege of being stuck in an old people ghetto. (Even though most of those apartments are more modern, not to mention larger, than most of the ones I've ever lived in.)

Ugh.

best laid schemes of mice and women...

2009-08-24T11:27:00.002-05:00

....gang aft agley when you go to bed without writing them down first. ;-)

Well, hello, poor little neglected blog. I've thought of so much to write about over the past few weeks, but usually as I'm about to doze off. I repeat it to myself a few times and figure I'll remember in the morning, and I never do, of course.

Now that it's daylight, I actually do have something to write about....later. :-) This really is an excuse to start typing in the hope that it will activate whatever brain cells it needs to so that I can stop staring at a blank Word doc and write a story instead.

Mom and Twain

2009-08-06T10:29:00.002-05:00

Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.
— Mark Twain

My mother was, and is, the queen of "safe places." The constant refrain "But I put it in a safe place!" got to be a running joke in our house. It also meant that whatever couldn't be found probably was lost and gone forever.

Mom also was really good about dropping things down the drain (jewelry, especially rings) or throwing them away (somehow, believe it or not, partial dentures win this category hands down). If you can take it out and wrap it in a Kleenex, and it costs a ton of money, you can rest assured that you will be assigned to dig through the trash several hours later, hunting for it.

Occasionally, however -- and this one took, oh, 30 years to sink in -- Mom had a point. Every time she spent another fortune at the dentist, she would come home with the plaintive admonition to "take care of your teeth!"

Yeah. Well. That presumes you have 1) dental insurance, once you're off the parental units' plan or 2) a job that pays you enough to self-fund the work.

In a word (OK, 2 words): UFF DA.

I'm thinking more about the pain than the money at the mo, but the cost wouldn't be nearly as much if there weren't so damn much wrong due to lack of ability to pay for care.

So yeah -- prevention is definitely a plan. But so is decent insurance, for *everyone.* Are you listening, Washington?

passing notes

2009-07-26T06:12:00.002-05:00

Yesterday on Facebook I got a message from a high school pal. In the course of catching each other up, he mentioned that he still had some of the notes we'd passed in senior English.

This got me to wondering: Do kids today still pass notes? Because from about 6th grade forward, I tended to get in a ridiculous amount of trouble for it. ;-) Maybe today they sneak-text, I dunno. But 26 years from now, who's going to be able to pull up a really funny text message?

Sometimes "progress" ... isn't really.

life's little absurdities

2009-07-17T17:38:00.002-05:00

Loved 'em then, love 'em now, but the Thompson Twins: 3-piece band, one guy, one black chick, one blonde chick, none of them with the actual last name of Thompson. How uber-ironic we tried to be in those days. ;-)

Anyway, a comment made to me earlier today made me dig this up:

No Peace for the Wicked

There's a scandal in the city, lots of rumors flying round
I gave them all my money, what I lost they found
Sometimes I think they're madder than hatters having tea
Setting up the situation to destroy the scenery

(chorus)
(There's no peace) No peace for the wicked
We're dancing till we drop
(There's no rest) No rest for the wicked
And we're all too scared to stop

Oh can't you see the trouble?
It causes me much pain
Cause I don't understand
Why should I stand out in the rain?
Sometimes I think they're madder than hatters having tea
Setting up the situation to destroy the scenery

(REPEAT CHORUS x 2)

Satellites spin through the air, suffragettes are everywhere
When the headlines hit the streets they're gonna knock you off your feet
Satellites spin through the air, acrobats of atmosphere
Maybe love will disappear
I wonder if you really care

There's two people on the wire
Making fun of what you said
Say you're looking for affection
Won't you look at me instead?

No peace for the wicked
We're dancing till we drop
No rest for the wicked
And we're all too scared to stop

I've heard the phrase both as "no rest for the wicked" and "no rest for the weary," but the latter -- while it certainly makes more sense to me -- appears not to be the original.

Moving on:

Stopped at Papa Murphy's (a take-and-bake pizza joint, for those unfamiliar) to grab some dinner. Big sign on the window: "WE ACCEPT FOOD STAMP BENEFITS."

Yeeeah. You can't buy toilet paper with food stamps, but they'll let you have all the high-calorie food you like -- and then give a bunch of social scientists zillions in grant money to figure out why poor people invariably are fat. Go figure.

trying to get back in the groove

2009-07-17T09:15:00.002-05:00

Oy. Busy few weeks. After an immediate-family reunion in KC, I trotted off to Milwaukee for a couple days last week to attend "job camp." It was held at a casino. About 1000 people came. One of them was the former mayor of South Milwaukee. Times are tough all over. ;-)

It was an interesting day, though, and I learned a lot of things. Such as:

-- Aggro people suck.

-- I appear to be a magnet for the perpetually perky and chatty. Why it is they decide to plop down next to me and start invading my privacy is beyond me.

-- Getting resume advice from a zit-faced 25-year-old is a little surreal.

-- While condom machines in bathrooms are so common as to go unnoticed anymore, the bathroom I went to at the casino was the first one I've ever seen a sharps (biohazard needles) container in. Didn't exactly inspire confidence in the clientele...

--- ... average age, 80. Watch them bitching about how little money they have while pumping coins into dollar slots. The poker room and off-track betting rooms were filled as well.

-- Candidate for unluckiest employee ever: male, late 50s, electrical engineering and MBA degrees, has been laid off 5 times in the last few years and his most recent boss was a former Chilean merchant marine. WOWZA did he have some horror stories.

-- "185" jokes, courtesy of ComedySportz:

185 accountants walk into a bar. Bartender says, "sorry, we don't serve accountants here." 185 accountants got so depressed, they jumped off a ledger.

185 couches walk into a bar in Davenport. Bartender says, "sorry, we don't serve couches here." 185 couches say "well, OK, we'll go sit in divan."

185 jars of mayonnaise walk into a bar. Bartender says, "sorry, we don't serve jars of mayonnaise here." Jars of mayonnaise say "Hell, man, what's your problem?"

I had a bunch of others written down and now can't make out what they meant. That'll teach me to wait this long to post again. :-)

hero worship vs. celebrity worship

2009-06-25T21:47:00.003-05:00

Let's note from the start that I plan completely to avoid any religious discussion in this post and am using the word "worship" to mean "extreme interest, adulation, etc."

The media frenzy over Michael Jackson is bugging me. I am a member of the original MTV generation, as in, I remember when it debuted and when it still actually played music videos. I was in high school when the frenzy over "Thriller" and all that was going on. I was a sophomore in college when he set his hair on fire shooting a Pepsi commercial. I mean, let's face it, the dude had been weird for a solid 25 years. Whatever you may think of his music -- and I can take or leave it, honestly -- he's going to be remembered more for the weirdness than the tunes. Which is sad.

The last .... whatever you call this outpouring of what, grief? from people who never laid eyes on the famous person -- that I remember being this bad was over Princess Diana. Didn't understand that one either. Definitely didn't understand why Mother Teresa, who died around the same time, and who devoted her life to society's outcasts, didn't get 1/10th the press of a pretty young thing in need of significant amounts of therapy. But I digress.

I wanted to reach through the screen this afternoon and kiss the guy who directed a MJ documentary. He told Keith Olbermann that he really didn't get celebrity worship and didn't believe in it. Me either. Is it the fantasy aspect? Am I just too practical? Because really, I would trade one abnormally attractive person without two brain cells to rub together for 100 bridge trolls with brains and a sense of humor. (It could be my self-concept that's coloring that, I suppose, and Bob DeFeo, if you're out there somewhere reading this, I have never forgotten what you said about me in 10th grade biology, you son of a bitch. But that's a whole other post.) I appreciate reality, and not "reality." The vacuous and juvenile sorts who end up on shows like The Bachelor (BARF) aren't real; nor are they interesting. Attention whores? You bet. Insecure? Absolutely. But not interesting.

So what exactly fascinates people about them, then? I wouldn't be famous for all the tea in China. People have told me for decades that I need to "tell my story." I have responded for decades that I will never write an autobiography because 1, nobody gives a shit, and 2, I am so uninterested in spilling my guts to the planet that my interest is clear off the negative end of the scale. There are people I will tell one-on-one, if the situation -- mine or theirs -- warrants it. Otherwise, therapists exist for a reason. I don't need to write a book to unburden myself and I don't want the attention that comes with it. My fantasies involve things like getting a job that makes me enough money to pay all my bills in full every month. I don't understand the sorts who need to be the center of 6 billion people's attention.

Hero worship, OTOH, is entirely different. Celebrities get worshipped for being attractive and only occasionally for being talented. Heroes are something else again. Heroes DESERVE adulation. Funnily enough, though, they'll usually shy from it.

The definition of "heroes" varies for everyone, I guess, but my heroes are people who live their lives with integrity, stand up for what they believe in, no matter how unpopular they might become for it, and treat ALL people with the respect they earn simply by virtue of being human. All people, from the richest person in the world to the starving leper in a gutter in India, automatically earn basic dignity. Some earn more through good words and deeds; some earn less through bad ones. But some of it is a simple birthright. And most of the time, you never hear about the real heroes. I suppose they have the satisfaction of knowing their lives have been well lived. What do you suppose the people who are worshipped for their looks or their money or their talent do when whatever makes them special disappears? It's got to leave a huge void.

I dunno. I don't get the whole celebrity thing. I don't know how "entertainment" reporters are able to sleep at night (I'm lookin' at YOU, employees of TMZ and Entertainment Tonight and the like). I don't know why something like the death of someone who sang a few songs -- which is a talent zillions of people have, you know -- overshadows "minor details" (sarcasm alert) like genocide and bombing innocent people to death and the inability of the richest country in the world to ensure that every one of its citizens can afford good health care. In a nutshell -- WTF, world?

Duncan Sheik, Earthbound Starlight

What are you looking at, what do you see?
Is it the truth or a strange fantasy?
Whenever you're watching
You're changing the scene
Time is a place, this place is a song
Where mothers are distant and fathers are gone
He too may be watching but he's not letting on

Can't dry your eyes
Or say it's alright
Even though he might
And she can't kiss your cheek
As the days become weeks
No rewind
No repeats
Days, nights, wrongs, rights, earthbound starlight

Hey, are you listening?
What is the sound of things that you lose that you never have found?
You're finding the way
Or turning around
Dancer with destiny
Tempter of fate
The life that you lived is only a taste
Sometimes the sweetest is the time that you waste

I won't dry your eyes
Or say it's alright
'Cause sometimes that's the lie
Even if she kissed your cheek
Still the days become weeks
No rewind
No repeats
Steal your heart
Life is hard
Never easy, believe me

Need no more questions
Maybes are mights
Darkness descends, run out of light
When you go blind
You get second sight
The deeper you dive
The greater the heights

So don't dry your eyes
Or say it's alright
Life is hard
It's a fight
Even if she kissed your cheek
Still the days become weeks
No rewind
No repeats
As the days become weeks
No remind
No repeats
Days, nights, wrongs, rights, earthbound starlight

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Now playing: Duncan Sheik - Earthbound Starlight
via FoxyTunes

lessons learned, and learned, and learned...till next time....

2009-06-23T20:41:00.000-05:00

Periodically, I get really hard on myself for being what I consider a pretty significant failure. At the very least, at 44, I am nowhere near where I assumed I'd be when I was 18-22. (I know, I know, who is, right?)

I look at high school friends who became doctors and lawyers and investment bankers. I look at college friends who have won Pulitzers or now work for national media outlets like ESPN (true in both cases). I look at my buddy Gregory (hi Mr. G, I know you read this :-), who decided what he wanted to do in high school and went straight through and did it, "it" involving the also-lengthy process of earning a doctorate -- I assure you, grad school is no picnic -- so that he could share his wonderfully compassionate and loving self with people in desperate need of same. And then I look at myself, and I feel like shit, because WOWZA did my life ever take some serious detours. Some of them have turned out to be wonderful and some have turned out to be disastrous, but in the end, I'm still at least a decade behind my peers, and I feel it acutely. But then I get reminded that you never really know what other people are contending with, no matter how good it looks for them on the outside.

There was this guy in high school who had friggin' EVERYTHING. He was totally gorgeous (and in fact made a fortune modeling while still in his teens), popular, etc, and the best part was that he not only didn't treat the outcasts like me like shit but had a genuine smile and kind word for all. I mean, I not only wasn't in his league, I wasn't even on the same planet. Most guys (and definitely most girls!) who had all that didn't know the people like me existed, or managed to stare right through me, if they saw me at all. But Bryan was always really nice to me.

Today I found out a bit of what became of him. The looks disappeared, I hear, which, you know, they generally do that. It's just a matter of earlier or later. The much, much sadder part was that he wound up doing prison time for aggravated assault, along with other stuff.

Whoda guessed? Not me. So I looked up the online court records. At one point he was found incompetent to stand trial, which means a bunch of shrinks found credible evidence of serious mental illness. He eventually took a deal that involved him pleading guilty to assorted charges.

A couple of years ago, someone else in kind of the same position -- cute, exceptionally kind, seemed to have it all -- also ended up in some seriously hot water. Difference is that this was someone I had been very close to for years. It blew me away to find out what had allegedly happened; to find out that his perfect life of overachievement actually wasn't all that perfect. His case *did* go to trial, and thankfully, he was acquitted on all counts and is rebuilding his life and his reputation. But to be slapped in the face with the reality that, even through all the problems he tried to help me with, he had his own, was difficult.

I skipped all my high school reunions for one reason or another. (The only valid excuse was for the 5th-year one, when I was 9 months pregnant and living in another state :-). At the 10-year, I had a crappy job and no degree as yet and couldn't face showing up and seeing how well everyone else was doing, looking at endless pictures of happy families, etc. At the 15-year, I was so disgusted with the way I look that I couldn't bear to show up and face what I was sure would be pointing and laughing behind my back. At the 20-year, I finally had a respectable job and education and was starting to make something of my life, but decided it was kind of pointless by then, as I hadn't been to any of the others.

By the 25th, we were all on Facebook and there was no reason to have an actual reunion. ;-) And guess what I found out? Most of us have a few (or many multiples of a few) extra pounds. Many of the guys I last saw with thick heads of hair no longer have same. Almost all of us have had some sort of trauma -- bad relationships, ugly divorces, kids with critical health issues, trouble with aging parents, etc etc etc. In other words -- even the people who looked like they were on an arrow-straight trajectory for perfect lives? They missed.

I long ago lost count of all the times I've been told how futile it is to compare myself to others. I wonder when I'll learn.

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Now playing: The Beat - The Limits We Set
via FoxyTunes

life, death, and perspective.

2009-06-23T12:35:00.002-05:00

So I spent 2 hours in the "community psychiatry and psychology" clinic at Mayo this morning for an intake appointment. I mentioned to Dr. Doogie that it would just be easier, even though I love my pdoc in Eau Claire, not to have to drive 2 hours to see him, so he gave me a referral.

Turns out that Dr. Doogie, being new, didn't know that this particular clinic only does "short-term" care. Which means I spent all that time filling out forms and retelling my history (which they had, via electronic medical records, since my pdoc in EC is Mayo-affiliated) just to be told, "yeah, well, we'll refer you to the resident outpatient clinic. They'll call you sometime. Oh, and you want a therapist? Great. Here's a bunch of them -- OUTSIDE MAYO." (Because, you know, who needs continuity of care or anything? Wouldn't it make sense to keep all the medical types in the same system?)

"Resident outpatient clinic" doesn't mean it's for folks who live in Rochester, it means it's staffed by 3rd-year psych residents. They leave. Every year. So, no continuity of care there either.

So, already peeved, I head off to another Clinic building (essentially in Siberia, from the one I was leaving -- quite a hike) to get my blood thinner level checked. After another 20-minute-past-the-appointment-time wait, I get called back, walk in, and see the damn CoaguChek. They run on the same principle as diabetic glucose meters. They also are proven to be wildly inaccurate on people with APS (my clotting disorder).

I mention that to the nurse. She, nor any of her nurse buddies, had ever heard that. My INR came back at 1.5, which basically means I am no more anticoagulated than someone who doesn't take Coumadin.

Nurse Karen calls Dr. Doogie, who says it's OK with him if I go down to the lab for a blood draw for comparison. So now I'm waiting for the results of that.

Cranky and starving, I stop by the vending machines near the lab (healthy snacks only, natch) for a small bag of trail mix. Mayo being a place that sees a lot of really, really sick and elderly people, there are places to sit where you wouldn't find them elsewhere. I plopped down on a nice padded bench right by the machines to have my snack.

As I'm sitting there, eating and stewing about my wasted morning, medical professionals who really ought to know more than their patients, etc, 3 little boys, clearly brothers, come barreling around the corner. The two older ones -- 6 and 8, maybe -- start wrestling. The little one, who was 2 at the most, walks straight up to me, wordlessly, and sticks his hand out and waits.

Well! How does one refuse a cute little kid? I shook out a little of the trail mix into my hand. He picked out a raisin and went merrily on his way, without a word, leaving his brothers in his dust.

That worked temporarily, but by the time I was halfway to the parking garage I was annoyed again. There's a piano in the lobby of the Gonda Building, which is pretty much the point of entry for anywhere else in the Mayo complex (it's all connected by indoor subways). I looked at the scene unfolding there and started grumbling about cliches, because it really did look like one -- the beautiful, young blonde maiden, fashionably dressed, with her teacher, the old maid with the ponytail and the way-oversized glasses, accompanying her.

Then, she opened her mouth.

The first thing she tried was kind of operatic, and while she had the voice for it, she abandoned it pretty quickly after noticing what her audience had become -- largely old people, but some in really bad shape -- wheelchairs, oxygen, prostheses, whatever. She started in on some oldies but goodies and I watched as the old folks, especially, started singing along. Her first one was "Someone To Watch Over Me," which is particularly poignant, given the setting. When she started into "I'll Be Seeing You" and the woman in the wheelchair by the piano got this dreamy look in her eyes and started to sing along, I left -- because I'll be damned if I'm going to bust out sobbing in the middle of the frigging Gonda Building.

That's the thing about Mayo: you get people from all over the world, different cultures, languages, and life stages coming through its doors. In about half an hour today I ran the gamut from toddler to young adult to aged -- and no matter what had brought them there, they all taught me a little something about life, and sharing. And perspective.

Ol' Blue Eyes

I'll be seeing you
In all the old, familiar places;
That this heart of mine embraces;
All day through.

In that small cafe;
The park across the way;
The children's carousel;
The chestnut tree;
The wishing well.

I'll be seeing you;
In every lovely summer's day;
And everything that's bright and gay;
I'll always think of you that way;
I'll find you in the morning sun;
And when the night is new;
I'll be looking at the moon;
But I'll be seeing you.

preserve your memories....

2009-06-15T13:29:00.003-05:00

...they're all that's left you.

"old friends"

I have been having absolutely hideous attacks of severe melancholia lately. I suppose it's all to be expected for my life stage and such, but that doesn't make it easier to take. I blame Facebook. ;-)

Seriously, reconnecting with folks who, for the most part, I've not seen since high school in 1980-something has been wonderful, but saddish. Nobody gets out of life unscathed, of course, but I do wish it were possible to get through it without getting overly battered, bruised and otherwise wounded.

I started thinking last night about all the "me's" that have been "me" in my lifetime. I can sort of vaguely recall being a bouncy, fearless little kid. Then I hit 12-13 and it all went to hell.

So here's what I've come up with, more or less in order:

-- happy me
-- brutal teenage depression/angst me
-- wild child me ('swhat happens when a repressed Catholic girl raised on guilt gets away from home for the first time ;-)
-- Lost-and-drifting me
-- Motivated to finally finish school and get a job doing what I'd always wanted me
-- Academic achiever me (bolstered by the ed psych who finally believed me and apologized for all the other educators who hadn't from ages 5-31)
-- Starting off 10 years behind but at least I have a decent job finally me (aka professional me)
-- Onward and upward me (with interruptions for serious illness, both physical and emotional)
-- Older, wiser, sadder me having to figure out all over again what's next and what matters

What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil....?

For the record, here's the lyrics to the song:

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old friends
Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city
Sifting through trees
Settles like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear...

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you

horror movie ideas

2009-06-15T13:17:00.002-05:00

If there are any aspiring scriptwriters out there, I grant you permission to freely steal these ideas. :-)

Every time I go through an automatic car wash, I sit there and think what a terrific scene that would be in a horror movie: Some nubile young wench trapped in her car, unable to stop the onslaught of the approaching robots who dump so much soap on the car she can't see out the windshield ... those funky things that look giant vertical blinds attacking ... a blood-curdling scream, and then the car is rinsed to reveal .... ??

Yeah, I'm weird. So sue me. :-p

Today I had an experience that convinced me once and for all to create another horror movie (or scene within), one I live all too often: Some poor schlub (has to be middle-aged or elderly, because young adults still have functioning, non-overloaded brain cells) drives into a multi-level parking garage, doomed to drive in endless half-circles, looking for the exit. Kind of like the Eagles' "Hotel California" set to film -- "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

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Now playing: Elliott Smith - Let's Get Lost
via FoxyTunes

seen and heard

2009-06-10T22:27:00.002-05:00

-- A friend and I have a hobby (compulsion? fetish?) that involves trading instances we spot of truly bizarre names. It generally also involves a discussion of what that person's parents were thinking/toking/snorting/drinking/etc to come up with said name.

Today I met a very nice woman whose first name is -- I kid you not -- Lo Jean. Pronounced like it looks, spelled just that way.

Perhaps I have spent too much of my adult life in or near da hood, but the first thing I thought of was "lo jack" -- those homing devices to keep said hoodrats from stealing your ride. (I once chased one across 3 lanes of traffic on 12th and State, the heart of cracktown in downtown Milwaukee, for a car that totally wasn't worth saving, but that's a story for another time.)

-- Lo Jean is a nurse for a very nice doctor who is, I believe, roughly 11 years old. Things like this always get me because, for such a long time, people always thought I was older than I was. (My late BIL's best friend tried to pick me up at BIL and sis's wedding reception -- at which I was 13 -- because he thought I was 19, but that too is a story for another time.)

Then for a while, people always thought I was younger than I was. One of my fondest memories is of a convenience store clerk carding me at age 36 and then going on and on about how there is NO. WAY. I really could have been 36. (Alas, those days are gone, perhaps until I start coloring my hair again, anyway.)

And now, irretrievably middle-aged, I look at the young pups like this resident, who I'm guessing (realistically now) probably isn't 30 yet ... and DAMN I feel old. Also a little depressed because he's already achieved a helluva lot more than I ever will, but that is an old whine NOT for another time. (I need to get over it already.)

-- While I was waiting for Dr. Doogie, I had nothing better to do than read the posters on the wall. One of them was provided courtesy of the "Barbara Woodward Lips Patient Education Foundation."

I suspect Ms. Lips or her parents or husband or whoever shaved some syllables off that name (I'm lookin' at YOU, Bernie MiklaszEWSKI of the Post-Dispatch), but how much worse could the original have been? You gotta hope she came into it as an adult, because kids would be absolutely horrible with that and scar her for life.

-- Wigger overheard this afternoon while I was attempting to eat lunch:

"Yeah, that's my word for the day, reh-TEE-cent. I gotta use it in a sentence."

Wigger 2: "reh-TEE-cent? What the hell is that?"

Wigger 1: "I dunno, man. I think it means, like, hesitant."

Why yes, he DID mean "reticent." Which native English speakers with two brain cells to rub together pronounce "REH-tih-cent."

BTW, for those on the East Coast, wiggers are a variant of guidos, but without the 14 layers of orange spray tan and the 4 popped collars.

-- Sign outside Great Harvest Bread Co: "Every day is a challah day here!" :-) (I had to close on a nice bit of intelligent wordplay. :-)

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Now playing: Ingrid Michaelson - The Chain [Live from Webster Hall]
via FoxyTunes

random thoughts from a cluttered mind....

2009-06-01T22:21:00.003-05:00

-- I've been thinking about names lately, particularly as they relate to assumptions that turn out to be false.

1) I recently met someone who has the most Irish name in the world and yet clearly is Laotian or Thai. To see her nameplate on the door and then see her walk out of her office was a surprise. :-)

2) I once had a student named Bradley Richter. One would expect, especially having been in Milwaukee, a nice, blue-eyed, blond-haired German boy. As I was looking over my class list before the first day, I wondered if he were related to another former student of mine with the same last name (who was indeed blond, blue-eyed, etc).

Bradley Richter turned out to be an absolutely flamboyantly gay Asian nerdboy.

Life is like a box of chocolates, as Forrest's mama said: Never know what you're gonna get. Good to keep that in mind.

-- Is there a group of people on this earth who have bigger egos than MDs with Napoleon complexes?

I gotta cut this guy some slack, because for one, he saw me for free, and for two, when I told him I had the one clotting disorder no one's ever heard of and gave him the name, he said, "Really? Everybody's heard of that!" Which, I assure you, is news to me and my fellow APSers. But boy, give a short guy (I am 5'4" and he was shorter than me) an advanced education and you have the perfect recipe for smug.

-- Weirdness: A freight train -- not an El or a light rail car, but a freight train -- running on tracks that cut across a major downtown artery.

-- Tics, verbal or written: Every frigging time I edit one, I remember an associate pastor we had at St. Blaise (which no longer exists, sadly). Fr. Rich was an OK homilist, but by the time you'd heard a few, you could write them because they were so formulaic. I will never forget the line that signaled his impending conclusion: "Maybe that's the challenge for us today."

I deal with one writer who quotes the same effing Leonard Cohen line every effing chance she gets, and am tempted to send her a "best of" CD so she has exposure to more of his stuff. I have one who ends every other sentence with a question mark instead of a period. And I'm on an apparently futile mission to end the world of the construction "it was, well, irrelevant." UGH.

I wonder how people get on these kicks. I just haven't figured out a way to get them off them.

-- I wonder too, as long as I'm ranting about language, how people who haven't heard English before and don't understand it think it sounds. I mean, face it, German is an ugly language to hear and a difficult one to write, since they're prone to stringing 5 nouns together to make one word. But in the "broke and uninsured" medical clinic the Mayo Clinic runs, and where I was tonight, Spanish was pedestrian. Hmong I'm used to, living where I do. And then there were two African folks whose language I could not begin to figure out. But it sounded really weird to my foreign ears. (I dug the Eddie Murphy, "Coming to America" dress of the guy, though -- complete with cream-colored, faux-alligator shoes. Stylin'. :-)

Lest anyone jump my shit for being un-PC, all I'm saying is that's one interesting waiting room to be stuck in for 2 to 4 hours every few weeks.

-- And, to complete the language-bitching trifecta on an amusing-slash-kinda-depressing note, herewith the note at the top of my patient information leaflet for one of my meds:

Take one tablet on the first day and take one and one-half tablets on the second day alternating in this mannor

Mayo Clinic, folks. Let's give 'em a hand for demonstrating that English is irretrievably in the toilet (or at least proofreading is).
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Now playing: Billy Bragg - At My Window Sad and Lonely
via FoxyTunes

Marian the Librarian would be appalled.

2009-05-28T22:51:00.005-05:00

It's a long lost cause I can never win
For the civilized world accepts as unforgivable sin
Any talking out loud with any librarian
Such as Marian.....Madam Librarian.

Marian, Librarian

Does anyone under the age of 40 know how to behave in a library anymore?

My students at Marquette never had any trouble, but that's because Marquette attracts nerds. :-) Pass the library at 2 a.m. and not only would lights be blazing, you could see students inside bent over books. Plus, by the time you get to that level, theoretically, anyway, you're civilized.

I actually was run out of the Rochester public library this afternoon earlier than I'd planned because of a group of about 10 teens who were laughing uproariously, talking and yelling loudly, dropping F-bombs left and right, and chasing slightly younger kids around. The RPL is a good size, at least, and there are places for grownups on the second floor, but I wasn't interested in any of the stuff up there (aside from the peace and quiet). Not only did I leave without getting what I wanted, I was so rattled I brought home another copy of a book I'd already checked out.

I miss things like basic courtesy. I wish they'd make a comeback.

"Minnesota nice"

2009-05-27T16:18:00.003-05:00

There are those who will tell you this is just another term for passive aggression, and that it relates to people who are smiling, helpful and pleasant to your face but talk trash about you behind your back. But, to me, anyway, it does seem there is a higher percentage of happy, friendly people here. (Maybe the lye used to cure the lutefisk has preserved their good mood -- that or the 10-month-winter brainfreeze. :-D)

I mention this because I heart Hy-Vee. I mean, after 2.5 years in exile, it's HEAVEN to be near a grocery store that actually sells fresh sushi. (I never could find it, on a menu or anywhere else, in CF. They'll happily eat roadkill, though.) And you gotta love a grocery store that has dieticians on staff that regular folks can make appointments with without having to go through doctors and insurance companies and stuff. But every single time I'm cruising the aisles and a worker is putting stuff on shelves or walking past me or whatever, rather than ignore me, they ALWAYS smile and greet me and ask if I need any help. And yes, that's part of their job -- but I've had jobs where that was expected, and I faked the hell out of it. I can tell from genuine. LOL

The other reason I heart Hy-Vee? Their express lanes. The signs above which say "12 items or FEWER."

A grammatically correct food mecca: I ask you: Does it get any better than this? :-)

One last Hy-Vee story: The little kid one aisle over from where I was, singing his own, made-up tune as loud as he could: "I love candy, I love candy, we love candy" etc, ad infinitum. So yeah, he was in the candy aisle, but hey, you gotta take your smiles where you can get them. :-)

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Now playing: Melody Gardot - My One And Only Thrill
via FoxyTunes

just a reminder

2009-05-21T17:48:00.000-05:00

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be: am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince."
- T.S. Eliot

Being Armus

2009-05-21T13:58:00.003-05:00

Just like Rick Reilly, I'm plagiarizing myself. Unlike Rick Reilly, I don't have a million-dollar contract with ESPN. That makes it not as bad, right? :-)

I wrote this on a mental health forum a few years ago, and I think it stands as a really good description of what life in the abyss is like. I'm bringing it up because I got some sad news about an old friend, and for those of you who don't understand how anyone could off themselves, maybe this will help.

I hope you are at peace, Clay, and were able to leave this world with the knowledge that you deserved better.
==================

Does anybody remember the Star Trek: Next Gen episode where the black goo-creature murders Yar and (temporarily) eats Riker? I have it on VHS, because it has a lot of meaning for me. The black goo is named Armus (who stood down a 4-person away team AND Picard with no weapon -- not very well armed ), and he had abandonment and rage issues. I can't decide whether the special effects or the grade-school psychology were cheesier in that episode, but nevertheless, at the moment, I'm Armus, if only because I'm black goo.

Maybe it's because the cat has been pooping all over everything I own lately, but I feel like a worthless piece of doody lately. The black goo is choking me. It sits in the corner of my stomach, this little black ball, till something sets it off and it explodes and starts traveling up from my stomach to my throat, trying to choke me. I see and feel nothing but black goo. I think I must be the most evil person ever, everything is black and dark and enveloping. There is no good to me, there is no light, there is blackness and despair and hopelessness and evil.

I can't sleep. I didn't get one lick of sleep last night, was up and down every half hour, went to bed at midnight and said to heck with it around 6 this morning. I drank a pile of caffeine and plowed my way through my freelance project, because I need the cash bigtime, but I felt like a fraud the whole time, like I really don't know what I'm doing, I don't know anything, I'm just a worthless piece of good-for-nothing crap. Everything is black. I've spent the last hour in bed, trying to fall asleep, and all I can do is rock back and forth and think about how rotten I am. I'm almost afraid to fall asleep; I don't know what it will bring. I DO know it won't bring rest and relaxation.

I had no idea that at this point I could fall back into the abyss so suddenly and deeply, but here I am. When I was in the hospital for so long, by the time I finally got conscious enough to know what was going on, the Sago mine disaster was going on. Daytime TV is gross, so I kept CNN on all the time, and of course it was all death and destruction, all the time. Right now I feel like those miners: I can't breathe, and I'm trapped. It's dark, and I'm running out of air, and I don't even have the energy to leave a note, like some of them did -- I'm too busy trying not to choke to death on black goo.

Can somebody tell me how I got here? I'm not sure I know. I suspect I will read this over in the morning and realize I briefly lost touch with reality -- I don't feel real right now. I feel like Armus. He was all alone on Vagra 2. They left him there, with his rage and his obvious issues. Troi said she pitied him, and he got ticked off. I understand. I don't want pity. I want relief. I can't cry. I can't breathe. I can't find any light. I can't stand myself; I feel like every cell that makes up "me" has something rotten in its core and I'm just an evil piece of crap.

I can't stand being mentally ill. I hate being this debilitated. I hate being sent into a tailspin by the dumbest d*mn things. I hate not being able to function like a normal human being, even when I'm expected to. I REALLY hate that people don't understand me! At all! Ever! (Well, except for other people in the same boat.) I KNOW I'm a PITA to live with. Being crazy makes everybody around you crazy. I just wish, when I got "crazy," that there was something to get me out of it, instead of having to slog through it.

Screw it. I'm going to go take a couple of Xanax and put on my relaxation CD. Maybe some nice New Age music will convince me I'm not Armus. But right now I think I could climb out of my skin with no problem whatsoever. One of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, once wrote a short story about people having evolved out of bodies. They kept the really good-looking ones in warehouses, and rented them out for parades and special occasions, but otherwise they went around the rest of the time without bodies. I want to do that.

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Now playing: Iron & Wine - No Moon
via FoxyTunes

too much truth...

2009-05-21T01:15:00.002-05:00

...both in the accuracy of what's being asked of the guy and that if you appeal to a journo's ego -- we all have one, even though we're generally flaming introverts -- requests like this can work. ;-)

Credit Ryan Pagelow, and go subscribe to Pressed.

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Now playing: Eric Hutchinson - Food Chain
via FoxyTunes

reasons for living never come cheap....

2009-05-15T04:16:00.002-05:00

Everyone's looking, everyone hides
Everyone's telling everyone lies
We're changing the subject, we're turning away
Away from the heart of it all

You say you are happy
Do you think this is fun?
Well it's only a firefly to the light of the sun
You say this is living, you feel so alive
Well you know everything dies

(chorus)
Even my wonder, even my fear
Only amount to a couple of tears
There is a rhythm, it's near and it's far
It flows through the heart of us

Welcome to another day
It don't seem that different 'cause nothing has changed
I try to remember, try to remember
When we weren't just running in place
Reasons for living, never come cheap
But even your best ones can put me to sleep
What I am saying or trying to say
Is that there must be a better way

(Chorus)

It's already in you, it's already there
You may disagree, but I don't really care
Did you ever find out, did you ever find out
What's at the heart of us?
Did you ever find out
Did you ever find out what's at the heart?

Tell me all your wildest dreams
You don't really care, you don't know what they mean
Raiding the closets, with skeleton keys
You know it's easier than you think

(Chorus)

Your reasons for living are all very fine,
But they're leaving me cold 'cause they're not really mine
Did you ever find out, did you ever find out
What's at the heart of us.

I don't know
I don't know
--Duncan Sheik, "Reasons for Living"

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Someone asked me recently what my dreams were. After taking some time to think about it, I realized I don't have any. The ones I *did* have I either reached or surrendered, and I never came up with anything to replace them. It is very uncomfortable being adrift at a point of life where most people are firmly anchored instead.

I just woke up from the world's most transparent dream (kind of what inspired this). I left my wallet -- a very cute red leather affair with a kitty on one side and a martini on the other :-) -- at the library. (If you know what a reader I am, you'll know how appropriate this is, LOL.) They called after me to let me know, so I went back to the desk to grab it and was told that I couldn't have it -- they had to hold a series of meetings, etc to determine whether they'd give it back to me. There was this one really nasty chick I went back and forth with, and finally she hauled me off in a back room and told me how for the last year I'd been cold and uncaring toward her. She didn't much like it when I pointed out she'd been the same way to me.

Eventually, her bosses forced her to give me my wallet (aka my identity) back, but she was awful about it.

Did I mention this was a very transparent dream? ;-)

Ugh. Much more I want to add, but can't put it into coherent thought right now. Also not sure I want the entire planet reading about it. Back to bed for now, to sleep -- perchance to dream.

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Now playing: Duncan Sheik - Reasons for Living
via FoxyTunes

plus ca change....

2009-05-09T16:03:00.003-05:00

....plus ca meme chose.

Nallwood Junior High School yearbook, 1978-79 (8th grade).

And I quote:

Candy,

I'm really glad I got to know you. You're a real fun person. Take a little advice: Don't express your opinion to Dr. Brown {principal} if it could hurt you. OK? Take care. Good luck.

Love,
Julie Hagel

Julie, hon, if you happen across this -- I'm still an opinionated bitch who stands up for justice where it isn't being served. Dr. Brown was the least of it. I grew up to routinely piss off an archbishop. :-D

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Now playing: Beastie Boys - Song for the Man
via FoxyTunes

gotta love it...

2009-05-08T15:29:00.002-05:00

5 days removed from the northwest Wisconsin home of Leinenkugel's, what do I see driving down the main drag through a southeast Minnesota town?

A Leinenkugel's truck in front of a bar.

You CAN go home again. Sorta. Maybe. :-D

ok it's alright with me...

2009-05-02T22:54:00.002-05:00

...some things are just meant to be
It never comes easily
And when it does, I'm already gone.

Eric Hutchinson video

So. At some point early-ish (I hope -- we'll see if I sleep through the alarm ;-), the computer is coming apart and getting tossed in the car with the rest of my stuff, and off I'll be on my next adventure.

Farewell, Chippewa Valley. In junior high, we had this stupid saying, "it's been real, and it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun." I bring it up because it applies. My two-and-a-half years here have been ... interesting? Yes. Real? More than I'd like. Fun? Here and there. I'm glad I took the chance, because it helped me define what I *don't* want, but overall? I ain't gonna let the proverbial door hit me in the ass on my way out.

I *will* miss living two blocks from Olsen's Ice Cream. I'll WAY miss living 3/4 of a block up the street from the Leinenkugel brewery -- not just because of the free samples :-), but the people there are pretty awesome. Peg and Jake Leinenkugel in particular always were exceptionally kind and gracious toward me.

I'll miss what passes for a "zoo" in Irvine Park. I'll miss that every single high school kid Gordy Schafer hires to work at his grocery store is polite, smiles, and genuinely is happy to engage you in conversation beyond "paper or plastic?" (It's the adult cashiers who are surly.) Hell, I'll even miss that special aroma of cow poop. (Live in the country long enough and it grows on you, believe it or not.)

I already have been missing the folks on the school board and my friends at city hall.

What *won't* I miss? The provincialism. The complete absence of anything resembling diversity, whether in culture, attitudes, or people. The fact that although, as people got to know me and my work and I became a more familiar presence around town, my not having had 5 generations of my family established here and a street named after Great-Grandpa, the former mayor, hurt me. I never really fit in because of it. Nor did I really fit in at a workplace where 3/4 of the people on staff had grown up here and had already had a decade or two on the job. I suppose it's that perpetual fish-out-of-water feeling I had here that I'll be happiest to shed.

All in all? I guess I'd call it a wash.

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Now playing: Supertramp - Goodbye Stranger
via FoxyTunes

this is just...evil.

2009-05-01T14:17:00.002-05:00

Not 30 seconds after hitting "publish" on my last post and going to check for recent updates on my blogroll, I found this.

The "haul you off into a spare office, read a prepared statement, then escort you out the door" model sucked, I can attest -- but this is just ... wrong. On many, many levels. My consolation is that karma is a bitch.

Baltimore Sun cans 4 journos in middle of assignment

did i miss something?

2009-05-01T14:06:00.006-05:00

Is it "Syndicated Cartoonists Gripe About the Death of Newspapers Week" and I just didn't hear about it? Not that I mind or anything -- whatever helps the cause. If it can make me chuckle in the process, so much the better.

BTW, the unofficial motto of my high school paper was "All The News We Could Find." :-D Whoda guessed way back then that even the venerable New York Times would be in deep financial trouble? And the Baltimore Sun -- which has broken its share of stories and won its share of Pulitzers -- just canned 61 people, including 15 editors. It is ugly times in the biz. :-\

true dat.

2009-04-29T09:32:00.003-05:00

seen and heard

2009-04-28T13:55:00.002-05:00

randomness....

Seen, in the CD section of Borders, where they break down the music they sell into categories and put big signs over the bins: "Comedy/Wedding Music."

Seen, in the Water Street laundromat parking lot: Some poor fool who had to use clear packing tape to put his front license plate back together, all because the 3 random letters that follow the 3 random numbers (Wisconsin plates are always 123-ABC) said "MEH." Really -- pay the extra $25/year for a personalized one if you really need a license plate that says "MEH."

Heard, at Eau Claire's sole authentic Mexican restaurant, where the food isn't microwaved and the service doesn't suck: Two college wrestlers chatting. I couldn't tell if it was a date -- one of them was either really manic or really nervous -- he wouldn't shut up. And because of that, I got to hear him expound on all sorts of topics. But my favorite was about how this morning, he'd gotten an email from the athletic director, and "there was a word in it I've never seen before. I didn't know athletic directors knew big words."

After he then took a phone call a few minutes later and had to look at the menu to tell someone where to join them, because "I don't know the name of this place," I pretty much gave up. Oh, but not before he described the person who would be joining them as a "nontraditional student -- you know, he's 25 or 26."

Best part (so far) of aging? Being able to slyly smile to myself and think, "My dear, your turn will come." And when it does, I'll graduate from sly smile to full-out belly laugh. ;-)
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Now playing: Joshua Radin - One of Those Days
via FoxyTunes

can we stop slagging bipolar people, please?

2009-04-25T17:48:00.003-05:00

Or, "things that make ya go ARGH, part 2."

I wrote a column about this once. My editor spiked it. This is my revenge.

I happened to be doing my morning rounds at the courthouse one day at the same time a competitor was there doing the same thing. Without naming names or gender, let's just say this person is a well-known doofus, and not all that well respected.

Under discussion was the case of a 19-year-old girl. I don't remember what she'd done on that particular occasion, but I remember covering her sentencing on a variety of charges. At 19, this girl had racked up 27 -- that's TWENTY-SEVEN -- felony charges, been married and divorced, and had a kid whose father also was in prison.

The doofus mentioned above, who was snarking about this with one of the court clerks, laughed it off by saying "yeah, she's bipolar or something," in a tone of voice that suggested "woo-woo, batshit-crazy!"

Sometimes I say something, sometimes I don't. I wasn't in the mood to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person that day, so I didn't. But I did write a column about it. Which got spiked. Because, although it would have reached about 30,000 subscribers and untold numbers of others via the Web, and thus been a tremendous public service, it made my editor nervous.

Example 2: A youngster of my acquaintance recently posted a Facebook status about moving somewhere "bipolar people actually take their meds."

You gotta pick your battles with the under-25s. Right now I don't have time to battle *anyone,* as I try to wrap up an interstate move. But I'm thinking about what I'm going to say later. There's still hope for the kids. It's the people who are older than me (cf. Doofus) who are beyond reach.

Did you ever see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"? It was a midnight movie staple when I was in college, to the point that we went every week and soon had it all memorized. At one point, the narrator says about the main characters' predicament: "It was to be....."

(dramatic pause requiring audience interaction, which consists of shouting "A PICNIC?!"

Narrator: "NO picnic."

Folks? Mental illness is no picnic, no matter what flavor you might be subject to. I get bitchy about bipolar because it's an issue for me. There are plenty of other places to educate yourself on the wide bipolar spectrum, so I'm not going to do it here (I encourage you to visit Psych Central for lots of good information, however). What I *will* do is tell you that it is TREMENDOUSLY uncomfortable to feel your moods switch on a dime -- used to be a matter of hours for me, today it happened in a matter of minutes. It's horrible wondering what the medication that they really don't know jack about yet is doing to your brain, and how addled you might end up down the road because of it. It's even worse when the shit doesn't work right, or at all, or causes side effects that suck worse than the original problem (thanks for the diabetes, Seroquel! Thanks for the bone marrow failure, Lamictal!). I am here to tell you that being a prisoner of your own brain effing sucks. Pure and simple. A little compassion is in order -- not snark.

There is, of course, a website devoted to the other thing I hear a lot of: But You Don't Look Sick. It's true -- all my limbs and organs are intact (for now) and more or less functioning appropriately. But you can't LOOK at someone and tell they have an autoimmune disease, or are painfully aware that their thought processes are woefully disordered and yet are unable to stop the thoughts. (I find myself in that position now and then. If I actually told someone the thought that was on "infinite loop" in my head awhile back, I probably still wouldn't be out of the ha-ha house. And I *knew* it was twisted and disordered and plain old batshit-crazy. But knowing that didn't make the thought stop, or completely convince me that it would be a really bad idea to go through with it. For what it's worth, I didn't. But to know you're f'd up and yet just have to wait it out till it ends on its own is disconcerting, to say the least.)

To look at me, though, you wouldn't know this. I get told a lot I'm considered "high functioning" -- you know, like all crazy people need to be wild-eyed homeless alcoholic freaks. One way or another, my mental health always gets in the way of whatever job I have, but I'm able to hold them for respectable amounts of time. I bathe on a regular basis and only a few pair of my socks and undies have holes. ;-) But because I'm not walking down the street glassy-eyed, pushing a shopping cart and jabbering to myself doesn't mean there isn't something going on sometimes. I wish more people understood that.

As always, Kurt said it best.

From "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," where the main character tosses a life of wealth and privilege to live among and help the poor however he can. In this case, he's helped deliver a set of twins:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

Amen.
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Now playing: Johnny Ferreira - Dig That Crazy Chick
via FoxyTunes

things that make ya go ARGH.

2009-04-25T17:36:00.002-05:00

Or at least things that make ME go ARGH.

-- Awful song lyrics.

Putting aside AC/DC (great music for beating the crap out of inanimate objects when you're pissed, frighteningly antisocial lyrics), there is one that has always bugged me.

From "Save a Prayer," off the Duran Duran album "Rio":

"Some people call it a one-night stand, but we can call it paradise."

ARGHARGHARGHARGHARGH.

Look: I know that in 1984 or so when that came out, they were all horny 23-year-old boys. (Which is redundant, but you know what I mean.) In 1984 I was 19 -- nowhere near the old fart of 2009 -- and even *then* it offended the shit out of me. And before you go telling me about how it doesn't matter, to me, it matters. Nobody really grasps that I have more affection for language than for most humans and critters. (Not that there aren't plenty of absolutely lovely specimens of either group). But since I knew what a book was, I was a fan, and once I learned how to hold a pencil and make comprehensible marks on paper -- well, I've been in love ever since. Many is the time that I read a phrase, or a sentence, or a paragraph in a book and say "DAMN, I wish I'd written that!" And so with lyrics, too. To me the music has always been just a backdrop for the poetry.

So yeah, I get irked when language is abused, whether out of snark or ignorance. (Let's not get me started on the horrendous decline of people's ability to write standard English.....) Seeing words misused or abused is damn near the same as seeing those things happen to a human or critter I care about.

Anyway, the point of this blustery blather was to open a discussion on least-favorite song lyrics. So go to it. :-)

Another thing that makes me go ARGH is to come in a future post, as it deserves its own....

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Now playing: The English Beat - The Limits We Set
via FoxyTunes

whoda guessed?

2009-04-25T11:48:00.003-05:00

So today was the semi-annual household hazardous waste disposal day at the fairgrounds. I got there about 9:45 (started at 9) and the line was already ridiculous.

While it's a lovely service to have, it could have been better directed -- none of the volunteers seemed to know what the others were doing.

On the way out, though, I ran into (not literally :-) the police chief, who was out there being a sport and directing traffic. Wayne Nehring may well be the world's nicest human being. He has none of the 'tude one usually finds in cops and was always very friendly and helpful when I needed to work with him on a story. Plus, he'd sit and chat with me for a bit about whatever anytime I had to go do the routine cops check when my officemate was off.

Anyway, seeing him made me realize there are things I'm actually going to miss about this place. Like the non-surly cashiers at the grocery store. (Especially impressive because they're almost all teenage kids, and are unfailingly smiling and polite. It's the *adult* cashiers who are surly.) Other things too, but I'm trying not to think about it.

Who knew?

love it...

2009-04-23T17:38:00.003-05:00

"Regular people" make a doctor's appointment or go to urgent care. "Celebrities" check themselves into the hospital.

Gotta be nice to have unlimited funds.
========
LOS ANGELES – "Tonight" show host Jay Leno has taken ill and the taping of Thursday night's show has been canceled.

His spokesman, Dick Guttman, says Leno left his office at NBC's Burbank studios about midday, and checked himself into a hospital for observation. Guttman characterized his ailment as "mild."

Guests on the show were expected to be Ryan Reynolds, Jules Sylvester and swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Instead, NBC will air a rerun.

beyond even comically absurd.

2009-04-22T12:37:00.002-05:00

So yeah, the Suburban Journals are crap. And with all the people they've laid off recently, they're likely to have become even worse (I haven't seen one personally in years, though). But THIS -- this is offensive on so many levels.

Reporter who took a bullet on the job gets canned

I know "loyalty" hasn't existed anywhere in the business world for decades, but damn.

Speaking of, the other beyond-absurd story to come out of the newspaper biz the last couple days -- guy who won a Pulitzer this week had been laid off awhile back.

When even the (allegedly) most prestigious award in the field can't save you,.....

Sigh.

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Now playing: David Bowie - Fame
via FoxyTunes

if they don't kill you from salmonella first.

2009-04-22T00:58:00.000-05:00

pistachios and blood sugar

and so begins another trip around the sun.

2009-04-16T22:18:00.000-05:00

Naturally, being both irretrievably middle-aged and a former member of the dead-tree media, I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for online, and god knows where my book that contains the column is. But as I began a new year today, I thought a lot about Ellen Goodman.

In her first book, many moons ago, she had an essay called "At The Age At Which Mozart Was Dead Already." (That would be 35, btw. She had just passed a birthday herself when the column was written.)

It began with a marvelous anecdote that has always stuck with me, about a conversation with her uncle during a quiet moment at his 40th wedding anniversary party. She asked him how the hell he'd stuck it out for 40 years. He said that every morning, he woke up, looked in the mirror, and said to himself "Fred? You're no bargain."

It went on from there to talk about how she was writing obituaries in Detroit when her college friends (one of whom is Carrie Rickey, the real-life basis for the "Sex and the City" Carrie) were having their first novels published; how somehow she never managed to live up to what she thought she should have achieved at any given point. Then one day she ran into a friend on the street, someone who appeared to have finally achieved peace with himself. When she asked how, he said that he turned 30 and realized he was too old to be a wunderkind, and that instead of comparing himself to Wolfie inking in the G-clefs at age 4, and realizing he would never be Shakespeare, he decided to just be what he was.

Last line: "I'd rather be alive than be Mozart."

Let me just say that this resonates tremendously with me, and you can ask for a reason if you want it.

Some days I feel every inch my age. I hate the physical breakdown that accompanies it. But I've grown rather fond of the wisdom. And all in all -- I'd rather be alive than be Mozart.
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Now playing: Frank Sinatra - Young at Heart
via FoxyTunes

file under: "that ain't right."

2009-04-15T05:03:00.003-05:00

Tad Beutin and (especially) Joe Knitter are stand-up guys. Jay ADMITTED he said what is being claimed that he said. And all he gets is 90 days without pay?

Sorry. Like the guy, or what I thought I knew of him (which, since this whole thing surprised me, evidently was incorrect). But his authority, credibility, etc are shot, the city looks bad, and he really needed to lose his job.

On a personal note, I'm very happy to be out of the biz when I read about meetings that go until 1 a.m. ;-) I have covered more than my fair share (hellooooo, South Milwaukee school board!). I hope the JS at least pays OT....

====
South Milwaukee - The city's all-white Police and Fire Commission decided Wednesday to suspend Fire Chief Jay Behling 90 days without pay for using the N-word five times in front of employees of the all-white Fire Department.

The unanimous vote came shortly before 1 a.m., after 90 minutes of closed-door deliberations.

The deliberations followed four hours of witness testimony and comments by attorneys that began at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Behling, a 31-year member of the Fire Department who has been chief since December 2003, showed no emotion after the decision was announced and refused to comment afterward.

The firefighters union had asked that Behling be fired or demoted. Union president Glen McCoy, a lieutenant with the department, said the union would accept the decision but was disappointed.

"It hasn't fixed anything. We still have that shadow over our heads," he said, adding: "I think we have a lot of healing that we have to do."

During Tuesday night's hearing, an attorney for the firefighters union called nine witnesses to testify about the slurs and their potential impact on the department.

Behling attended the hearing with his lawyer but did not testify, and no witnesses were called on his behalf.

In urging the commission to remove Behling, union attorney John Kiel said: "His comments reflect on the entire community, they reflect on the entire Fire Department. They establish a culture that you cannot tolerate."

Behling's lawyer, Robert Mihelich, called Behling's slurs egregious and said Behling was ashamed. But he contended the union did not show that the epithets had harmed Fire Department morale, confidence about Behling in the community or relations with other emergency agencies.

"They have utterly failed to prove their case," Mihelich said, before the commission went into closed session.

Behling made the slurs about African-Americans at the firehouse on three days in February. The firefighters union confronted him about the statements March 1. The next day, the union filed a complaint with the city, which led Mayor Thomas Zepecki to suspend Behling for three days without pay.

On March 20, the union filed another complaint, this time with the Police and Fire Commission, asking that Behling be fired or demoted.

During the hearing Tuesday night at City Hall, three firefighters, who are members of the union, and a captain, who is not, testified about Behling's use of the N-word on Feb. 16, 20 and 23. Behling used the word in reference to a variety of African-Americans, according to the testimony: former Milwaukee Area Technical College President Darnell Cole, shortly after his firing; women at MATC's downtown Milwaukee campus; and people who come to Behling's church to receive food given to the poor.

All three firefighters testified that they were shocked and offended by Behling's slurs, saying they had never heard him use the word before.

One of them, Tad Beutin, said Behling told him "out of the blue" during a conversation: "These (N-word) keep coming to my church trying to get a free meal."

Beutin and the captain, Joseph Knitter, who is second-in-command of the department, also testified that they worried that Behling, given his use of the slurs, could not fairly enforce the city's anti-harassment policy.

Knitter said Behling had referred to female African-Americans at MATC's downtown campus as "(N-word) broads."

Two African-Americans were among more than 75 people who attended the hearing. Both testified for the union.

South Milwaukee resident Michael Knox testified about a recent fire near his home and what he had heard about Behling's slurs.

"What if this was my house?" Knox said he thought at the time. "My thing was, would I get that same level of protection or service?"

Knox had said in an interview before the hearing that Behling should be fired. "If they don't relieve this man of his position . . . that's just condoning it," he said.

The other African-American who testified, Milwaukee firefighters union President Bobbie Webber, said supervisors in the Milwaukee Fire Department who have made racist statements have been fired.

Roughly half the audience showed support for Behling by wearing stickers that said, "We support Jay." One of them, South Milwaukee resident Tara Withington, said before the hearing that she has known Behling for 25 years and he should remain as chief.

"He made a mistake. He owned up to it. He accepted his suspension. He apologized," she said.

In an interview Monday, Mihelich had accused the union of having "an ax to grind" in seeking to have Behling fired or demoted. He said the union wants the chief out because of a dispute it has with the city over staffing.

The union's lawyer, Kiel, denied the accusation. He said the union filed the charges with the Police and Fire Commission because the city did no investigation of Behling's slurs before the three-day suspension was issued.

In the formal charges, the union contends that the city has lost confidence in Behling and that he will be unable to "effectively represent" the Fire Department in dealings with other emergency services agencies in surrounding communities.

reality check.

2009-04-14T18:40:00.002-05:00

My preferred grocery store is kitty-corner across the parking lot from the free clinic where I spend the better part of every Tuesday lately (or so it seems. Wait was down a bit tonight, though -- 2.5 hours -- usually 3+).

I have a cold. Will it kill me? Not a chance. Does it make me feel like crap? You betcha. How such tiny little viruses can cause such misery is beyond me. So the whole time I was sitting for 2.5 hours in the clinic, waiting for my 3 minutes with the dr. and my 30-second needle stick and for frickin ever for my meds, I was sitting there saying to myself, "This sucks. I'm freezing, I'm exhausted, I want to go home and go to bed, and I have to sit and sit and sit here."

Finally sprung, I trotted over to Gordy's for a few things. On my way in, there were 2 women in wheelchairs, waiting on the local paratransit van. The driver was unloading another passenger. Apparently he was taking too long for one woman, who started hurling curses at him -- loudly. I thought, "Lady, I pay taxes in this town so YOU can get around FREE anywhere in this county. Quit bitching."

Speck? Meet plank.

I have gotten over the humiliation of having to spend my Tuesday nights with felons and homeless people and the like (not that I think I'm better than they are, just that I never expected to find myself in the position of needing good medical care and essentially being reduced to beggar level). I appreciate the hell out of the fact that every last person involved with this clinic, from receptionists to physicians and everyone in-between, is a volunteer, and that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts and concern for their fellow man. I'm glad it exists as a safety net for those of us who need it. But man, when you're already not feeling well, and you can't just walk into the nearest 24-hr Walgreens, hand over an insurance card and the scripts and have them in 10 minutes so you can go home and go back to bed, you really realize what you're missing.

I think I've said this before, but LORDY this country needs health care reform. Now, please.
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Now playing: Beastie Boys - Sneakin' Out the Hospital
via FoxyTunes

RIP, Bird.

2009-04-13T22:08:00.002-05:00

This guy was one of the great characters ever in a sport full of great characters. (Funnily enough, the weirdos are usually pitchers.) He was a lot of fun to watch, and the news makes me miss the pre-zillion-dollar-whiner days.

Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych

applause, applause.

2009-04-11T13:50:00.002-05:00

April 16th is my birthday too, but I'm not willing to share it with this overrated piece of junk! (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Charlie Chaplin can stay, however. :-D)

Don't get me wrong, E.B. White was a fabulous writer, but it's only because of his reputation that this survives to torment generations of students.

50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

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Now playing: Joshua Radin - One of Those Days
via FoxyTunes

things that shouldn't pair up.

2009-04-06T15:17:00.002-05:00

Top of my list? College kids during times of stress (midterms, finals) and all-you-can-eat buffets.

Having been there, done that, and gotten both the T-shirt and the stomachache, my old-fart self now understands how the adult patrons at Village Pizza in Columbia, Mo. must have felt the time about 8 of us descended on the place and attempted to eat it out of business -- and then amused our very punchy, mostly-sleepless selves by singing old TV show theme songs at the top of our lungs. Badly.

Went to the Chinese buffet in town here with a friend for lunch today. Seated directly in front of me were 2 girls, 2 boys, none of them over 20, I'd guess. The one guy concentrated on stuffing his face. The other concentrated on being as loud and obnoxious as humanly possible. The girls giggled increasingly hysterically the louder and more obnoxious he got, which, of course, egged him on. The funny thing is, he wasn't even remotely funny. And I decided I'd never complain about a restaurant full of toddlers again. At least they have a valid excuse for being loud and obnoxious.

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Now playing: Elliott Smith - Somebody That I Used to Know
via FoxyTunes

classic commercials

2009-04-04T21:58:00.002-05:00

I had to explain to a non-American, non-native English speaker the other day what I meant by ascribing something to "Mother Nature." As I recall, I was using it in the context of the atrocity of snow in April, but then it got me to thinking about that stupid commercial from the '70s: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." I wonder what it says that I remember the tagline and not the product--but through the glories of YouTube, let's revisit Chiffon margarine, shall we?

Chiffon ad

Other faves:

Hey Mikey! He likes it!

This one, I'm afraid, is rather un-PC these days, but for me it conjures memories of Royals games on KMBZ and whatever their TV station was (it's the song that matters, not the bear):

From the land of sky blue waters

The flavor says butter

Feel free to add to the list!

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Now playing: Supertramp - Gone Hollywood
via FoxyTunes

for your viewing pleasure...

2009-04-04T21:54:00.002-05:00

...and that of other, increasingly blind fools like me, I found a template even I can read. :-D

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Now playing: 'Til Tuesday - Everything's Different Now
via FoxyTunes

don't fix me 'cause i'm broken...

2009-04-04T21:09:00.003-05:00

....i was that way from the start.

Rocco Deluca -- "The Gift"

I don't want to be
Political energy
A constant apology
Or an instrument of hurt
A hammer coming down
To pound and pound and pound
The door to your closet
Is greedy with love

Here's my gift to you
Accept it, accept it
That's all you have to do
Accept it, accept it

Confused, the twilight sings
It looks like diamond rings
The jewels that this hour brings
Throw shadows in the park
Don't wanna waste your time
Or take what isn't mine
Don't fix me cuz i'm broken
I was that way from the start

Here's my gift to you
Accept it, accept it
That's all you have to do
Accept it

Here's my gift to you
Accept it, accept it
That's all you have to do
Accept it, accept it

this and that.....

-- I stopped off for lunch today at a little place I've always wanted to try. It was suitably quaint, and the food was surprisingly good, but I noticed a stack of business cards at the register when I was paying and it caught my attention:

EQUINE DENTISTRY

Who knew?

I had heard, long ago, about doggy orthodontia, and I once had a friend whose cat had his own cardiologist. But damn -- talk about niche jobs. ;-)

Which is exactly what I was talking about with my BIL earlier today. We both agreed that we never expected our skills to become obsolete in our lifetimes, then tried to figure out what else we'd be good for besides saying "Ya want fries with that?" And then I came home to a letter from the state dept. of vocational rehabilitation, which helps the disabled of all stripes find gainful employment. They'll pay for retraining, buy you office equipment if it's determined you'd do better working from home, remodel your house for office needs, if necessary, advocate for you with employers, etc.

Sounds great? Sure. Except that I applied in July, was told in Feb. that I was #2,511 on the waiting list, and now, suddenly, am off it -- right as I am in the middle of prepping for a move out of state.

Of course, it's the weekend, so I have to wait (not my strong suit) to find out if the offer is transferable, and how long a waiting list I'd face, again, if yes.

Wouldn't it be lovely if, once I made a decision about what to do next with my life, it actually stayed made? I certainly think so.

One other weird thing -- my caseworker would be the wife of a guy I worked with at the L-T. When we originally met over the summer, she didn't let on to that -- very professional, no "Oh, do you know my husband?" or anything, which was kind of her, I thought, considering what I was there for. And I know it's all confidential, blah blah blah. But it's still a little trippy.

-- Dept. of Unfortunately Named Companies: ASGROW soybeans (say it out loud)

I do love me some edamame, but not if I'm going to have to think of it forevermore as coming from a company called "Ass-Grow." I don't need any help in that area, tyvm. ;-)

(Passed a sign in a field on the way home, if you're wondering how this came up. The lunatic was just driving by, however, and not on the grass. Or soybeans.)

----------------
Now playing: Rocco Deluca - Gift
via FoxyTunes

what's smart about this?

2009-04-02T22:29:00.002-05:00

Behold the "smart car."

What, exactly, is "smart" about driving something the size of a large-ish box from U-Haul, in which you will be vaporized if you get hit?

Also, given the physical size of the American public these days, is it really "smart" to expect whole bunches of people are going to be able to fit into one of these things?

I saw one of these things today, and aside from being able to squeak into a tight parking space, I see no value. "Cheap" only equals "good" if you live long enough to finish making the payments.

Uff da.

so long, Springfield.

2009-04-01T16:49:00.002-05:00

After a 72-year run, on radio starting in 1937 and then TV in 1952, CBS has axed Guiding Light.

The death of soap operas has been predicted for a long time, because the audience is aging and the kids aren't replacing them. So this probably will not be the first one to tank. But it's sad anyway.

My best friend's mom got me hooked on soaps in 5th grade when we used to go to her house for lunch. They were the first people I knew with a VCR, and she taped Luke and Laura's wedding for us on General Hospital. My sophomore year of college, I made sure not to schedule any classes after 2 pm so that I could be home for GH, take notes, and post daily updates on my dorm room door to fill in those who weren't as obsessed. ;-)

The next year, I moved into a house with 1 TV and 4 CBS-watching roommates, and thus became a GL fan by default. That show and I have been through a lot together. But, eventually, my own life became soap opera enough for me, and I stopped watching somewhere in the mid-'90s, maybe. Apparently a bunch of other people did too.

Here's the notice from CBS:

CBS's "GUIDING LIGHT" TO BROADCAST ITS FINAL EPISODE ON FRIDAY, SEPT. 18

CBS's daytime drama GUIDING LIGHT will broadcast its final episode on Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. At the time of its final broadcast, the series will have spanned 72 years and more than 15,700 episodes on television and radio.

Created by Irna Phillips, the show debuted on NBC radio on January 25, 1937 as the 15-minute radio serial "The Guiding Light." It made the switch to 15-minute episodes on CBS Television on June 30, 1952, although it continued to air concurrently on radio with the actors playing parts on both shows until 1956, when the radio show ended. In 1967, the series first started being broadcast in color, and a year later, the show expanded from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. In November 1977, the show expanded to a full hour. The series is credited by The Guinness Book of World Records as "The Longest-Running Television Drama."

"GUIDING LIGHT has achieved a piece of television history that will never be matched; it has crossed mediums, adapted its stories to decades of social change and woven its way through generations of audiences like no other," said Nancy Tellem, President, CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group. "This daytime icon will always be an indelible part of CBS's history, with a legacy of innovation and reputation for quality and excellence at every step of the way. While its presence will be missed, its contributions will always be celebrated and never be forgotten."

"No show in daytime or prime time, or anytime, has touched so many millions of viewers across so many years as GUIDING LIGHT," said Barbara Bloom, Senior Vice President, Daytime Programs, CBS. "We thank the cast, crew and producers – past and present – who delivered this entertainment institution, the beloved characters and the time-honored stories to our audience every day for seven decades. It's been a privilege to work with such an extraordinarily talented group of people."

The radio show's original storyline centered on a minister named Rev. John Ruthledge, and all the people of a fictional suburb in Chicago called Five Points. Today's show takes place in the fictional town of Springfield, and revolves around the Spaulding, Lewis and Cooper families. Throughout its historic tenure on the Network, GUIDING LIGHT has been the recipient of 69 Daytime Emmy Awards, including three for Outstanding Daytime Drama Series.

The show has broken ground with stories such as cancer, teen pregnancy, sexual harassment, alcoholism, abuse, AIDS and post-partum depression and, in 2008, premiered a brand-new daytime production model, featuring permanent sets inside its New York City studio and approximately 20% of the production shot in exterior scenes in the town of Peapack, N.J. In addition, directing and editing were changed to be done digitally and almost simultaneously, giving the sets a more realistic feeling and eliminating the need for production suites.

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Now playing: Duncan Sheik - Memento
via FoxyTunes

worth 1,000 words and all that.

2009-03-31T10:05:00.002-05:00

Credit David Horsey of SeattlePI.com

the perils of aging.

2009-03-29T19:09:00.000-05:00

-- Music you formerly thought kicked ass, you now find unbearable to listen to. (I'm lookin' at YOU, Pearl Jam, post-"Ten," which is still pretty good.) I dug out "Yield" the other day and I couldn't get through it, when I used to love it.

Happens with books, too -- I thought "Fear of Flying" was the greatest thing I'd ever read when I was 19. Ten years later, I couldn't get through the first chapter.

-- Even if your near vision was really all you had going for you most of your life, at 40-ahem it, too, disappears. I friggin' hate that I have to either slide my glasses (first pair, 3rd grade) halfway down my nose, or put them on top of my head, to be able to read tiny print now.

But the amusing thing here is that on my way home from Menomonie today, I passed a Burger King on the other side of the highway. Apparently they have something now called a "burger shot," which I assume is a White Castle clone (dunno, try to avoid BK).

Yet, when I glanced at the sign, what I saw was "Try a Burger Snot."

Appropriately gross? Perhaps. It just sucks that right as I get my head more or less together, my body goes to hell! Would have been nice to have at least a year where they were both in decent shape at the same time.

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Now playing: everett smithson band - everything is Broken
via FoxyTunes

:-)))

2009-03-23T14:47:00.004-05:00

There's nothing like the smell, look and feel of a vintage book that you have remembered for decades with fondness, then run across again.

These two, plus the Color Kittens and The Story of Zachary Zween, I read till the covers fell off. Anybody else remember them?

I'm waiting for Miss Suzy to arrive, and then I'll have all of them back in my hot little hands again. I wonder what kids of today will remember when they're 40-something. Can you really get attached to a website and remember it forever? :-\

who needs Roget when you have college kids?

2009-03-21T15:14:00.002-05:00

Spending the day cleaning up and out. Found my scrapbook from my freshman/sophomore year of college at Mizzou (1983-84).

First entry: A piece of notebook paper. On it, my Linguistics 20 notes for the day (DAMN, that professor was a bitch, too, and she'd never seen my name before. The last one I can see. How is it that you get to be like 65 and don't know how to pronounce "Candace"? Or get a Ph.D, for that matter?)

Anyway. Whatever the point of the exercise was I no longer have any idea, but herewith, I provide you with about 20 college kids' contributions to "synonyms for inebriated":

Drunk
Plastered
Bombed
Blottoed
Wasted
Trashed
Blitzed
Schnockered
Blasted
Blown away
Sloshed
F'd up
Gone
High
Feeling good
Shite-faced
Juiced
Stoned
FUBAR
Skids
Obliterated
Tipsy
Happy
Intoxicated
Fuddled
Skiffy
Oiled
Tight
Sozzled
Screwed
Blind drunk
Soaked
Boozed
Liquored up
Tanked
Tossed
Soused
Buzzed
Plowed
Knocked off your ass
On Cloud 88
Nametagged
Totaled
Annihilated
Stupid
Under the table
Paralytic
Pissed
Ripped
Polluted
Slammed
Faced
Lambasted
Three sheets to the wind
Cooked
Zombied
Messed up
Mummified
Smashed
Pickled
Canned
Loaded
Fried
On the bottle
Soaring
Flying
Fixed
Discombobulated
Rocked
Bonkers
Looped
Goofed up
Gassed

Hey, Mom and Dad! Your tuition dollars at work.

not too many surprises here....

2009-03-21T13:18:00.002-05:00

but one of them broke my heart. (Hint in my "now playing" tag.)

Next they'll tell me Johnny Rotten loves puppies and kittens and unicorns and rainbows.

Republican celebs

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Now playing: The Ramones - Cretin Hop
via FoxyTunes

candy's ode to spring:

2009-03-20T20:45:00.003-05:00

I'm sure Byron, Shelley and Keats would approve.

Photos to come of "the first day of spring." But while my camera battery charges, I have to sneak in Dorothy Parker's "A Pig's-Eye View of Literature" to get it out of my head:

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.

worth a thousand words and all that.

2009-03-20T16:39:00.003-05:00

Sadness. :~(

Credit to boston.com for this photo of a newspaper box graveyard.

ya never know, i guess.

2009-03-20T14:07:00.002-05:00

I would not have expected this from this guy. I did a story on him when he was first appointed and all the people I interviewed just gushed about how wonderful he was and how good for the city he'd be, etc. The interactions I had with him in the time I was there were always professional and pleasant.

The closest this place gets to "diversity" is a former city councilman who's part Native American, btw.

South Milwaukee fire chief

it's not just bankers.

2009-03-19T19:16:00.002-05:00

Greed is everywhere.

Newspapers dying left and right, tens of thousands of journalists out of jobs -- including 100+ at the JS -- and check out the nerve of this guy.

======

Journal CEO's compensation increases
By Paul Gores of the Journal Sentinel

Mar. 19, 2009 6:54 p.m. | Total compensation increased almost 22% last year for Journal Communications Inc. chairman and chief executive Steven J. Smith, according to a regulatory filing by the company Thursday.

Smith earned no bonus, but his salary rose 3.7% to $798,077. He received stock awards worth $1,672 and option awards valued at $397,003, a proxy statement for the Milwaukee-based media company and publisher of the Journal Sentinel said. The biggest change in compensation was in the value of Smith's retirement benefits, which grew to $233,110, compared with $74,782 in 2007. He received other compensation last year worth $16,095.

Journal Communications posted a $224.4 million loss in 2008, largely due to $228.7 million in non-cash charges in the fourth quarter as the company wrote down the value of goodwill and some of its television and radio licenses. The company's newspaper, radio and TV operations also saw declines in revenue because of the recession and the ongoing migration of ads to the Internet. Its stock price fell 72.6% during 2008.
===

I know nobody ever said life was fair, but c'mon!!

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Now playing: Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen
via FoxyTunes

bad move, Nick.

2009-03-19T16:15:00.001-05:00

A guy who plays for a team whose fans are called Cheeseheads really ought to watch his mouth around reporters. ;-)

Packers linebacker Nick Barnett signed autographs, and tasted a smoked gouda fresh from a judging table.

"Tastes like cheese," he said. "I don't know the difference."

easy, cheesy, beautiful

Dr. Bob

2009-03-19T15:56:00.002-05:00

Behold Dr. Bob (looking more serious than I've ever seen him before). Dr. Bob got his nickname off the side of a Milwaukee County bus, honest to god: There was a side panel advertising the original Bob Newhart show (the one where he was a psychologist), and it said something like "Tune in to Dr. Bob!" and there you are.

Anyway. Dr. Bob is on my mind because of the one thing he taught me that has always stuck with me. (Sorry, pally, it wasn't SAS -- Sue Nord did all my homework. ;-) No, Dr. Bob taught me to ask a question when considering reported research and whatnot. That question is: "So what?"

That's a journo for ya, boiling it down to the absolute essence. No muss, no fuss, just "So what?"

I'm training for a part-time, online-only, copyediting position with a publisher of, among other things, social sciences journals. Today's assignment quoted someone saying "So what?," but in about 30 words instead of two. Simple = good, people. :-) And if you can answer "so what?" as simply as possible, your readers will be better served as well. I'm just sayin'. ;-)

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Now playing: Mel Tormé - (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66
via FoxyTunes

RIP, Bruce.

2009-03-14T10:41:00.002-05:00

One of the most interesting people I've ever met. We should all be so lucky to live this long and this well.

Bruce the gardener

Robert Bruce Attridge, age 96, passed away March 11, 2009, in Wauwatosa. Preceded in death by loving wife, Barbara. Loving father of Judith, Alice, Margaret, and Rob. Grandfather to 8 and great-grandfather to 12. Bruce was an ardent hunter, fisherman and gardener. Private Services will be held.

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Now playing: Duncan Sheik - Hymn
via FoxyTunes

"Sicko"

2009-03-13T21:29:00.002-05:00

I am not a big cryer. Horribly sensitive, yes, but I don't cry a whole lot. Maybe it stems from the time I was 7 and my sister took me to see Snoopy, Come Home. She swears I bawled my eyes out the whole time because I thought Snoopy was going to live with Lila and not go back to Charlie Brown. (I don't remember that, by the way.) I don't even think I cried at Old Yeller.

Periodically, though, something will get to me. Even though it was more or less fiction, I found myself wiping away tears at the end of "Rudy." The final episode of "Frasier," where he decides to leave Seattle for a job and then ends up following his heart instead, has me sobbing every time, though that's largely because at one point he quotes part of a Tennyson poem that has always cut straight to my core. (Alfie knew something about grief and depression, I assure you.)

I just finished watching Michael Moore's "Sicko." It came out a couple years ago, I know -- that's my typical timetable for catching movies. And yeah, I know Michael Moore skews things, etc. It's kind of the nature of the beast: You can't really piece together endless hours of footage into a coherent story unless you purposely choose the story you want to tell. But man -- to see how people with chronic health issues get treated elsewhere (he went to Canada, France and Britain) -- and then when he took the 9/11 workers to Gitmo and they got phenomenal treatment, for free -- it hit home. I run up a LOT of medical bills. I am one hundred and thirty-two percent uninsurable, in the American system, because I have eleventy-billion pre-existing conditions. And yet, in the rest of the civilized world, I wouldn't have to worry about any of it. And yeah, this weighs on me a lot, especially as I've now been without insurance for several months and I am tired of burdening the free clinic in town, which is always filled to overflowing every time I'm there (which lately has been weekly).

The other thing that made me cry is that during the end credits, when he was running the "thanks to" part, he thanked Kurt Vonnegut "for everything." Kurt's anniversary is coming up fast here. I miss the hell out of him too.

'k, all done -- no more tears/whining, time for a jaunt to Gordy's for some ice cream, I think. ;-)

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Now playing: Track 2
via FoxyTunes

love it...

2009-03-12T18:44:00.003-05:00

Glad I didn't spend $36K/yr (tuition only; room/board/books not included) to go here -- because way back in 1997 when I got in, I had planned my concentration to be in new media.

12 years later, looks like they haven't gotten around to figuring that out yet. ;-)

dinosaurs at the CSJ

crazy Wisconsinites...

2009-03-11T17:40:00.003-05:00

Granted, it's usually 20-something males who are guilty of this, so draw your own conclusions. But here's what I want to know: What is to be gained by wearing SHORTS in single-digit temps? Nine friggin' degrees and some maroon was out walking around in shorts. He didn't appear to be coming from the gym.

I made the mistake of not putting on a hat on for my quick trek to the pharmacy, and I'm *still* frozen! Shorts when it's 45 or so? Sure (if the sun's out). Shorts when it's NINE? Sorry -- guess I don't have the brainfreeze the natives do. ;-)

vanity plate of the year (so far).

2009-03-10T20:38:00.002-05:00

Passed it on my way home from what has become my usual Tuesday ritual, 4 hours at the free clinic sitting around waiting for stuff that takes 10 minutes. Between that and the farkin' SNOW (aren't we DONE with that yet?!), I found it rather resonant for me.

2 syllables, read it out loud:

YNER.

I hate this time of year. Yesterday it was 46. Today it's snowing. Tomorrow it's going to be a high of 15. Enough, please.

Hmm, what else can I rant about, now that I'm going? :-D

Oh, there's good ol' Wisconsin screwing over single, childless adults again -- the state ins. program was supposed to be open to us April 1, and now it's July 1. I'm eligible for COBRA under Barry O's stimulus bill, since I got laid off after 9-1. The govt. will pay 65% -- yay! It's not retroactive -- boo! So I'm still farked when it comes to getting anyone to cover pre-existing conditions, of which I have zillions.

I had a retired lawyer finagle ways to get me on patient assistance programs for some of my meds, so we'll see how he does. Based on tax returns (this year's or last), I won't qualify -- but neither of them is an accurate depiction of my current financial status.

Recent events have led me to the realization that I am over journalism. Sucks, kinda, being that A) now I have to decide again what I want to be when I grow up; B) I jumped through a billion hoops and went into a lot of debt for my degrees; C) it's all I've wanted to do since I was 9, and I didn't even make it an entire decade before burning out. It's hard to sit by and watch the industry implode, partly because I believe in it still -- I'm just too tired and my passion for it has been too crushed to be the one doing it anymore.
----------------
Now playing: Beck - Qué Onda Guero
via FoxyTunes

to seek out new life and new civilizations.

2009-03-04T18:57:00.002-06:00

Or lack thereof, as the case may be.

I spent a couple of days this week in the booming metropolis of Fergus Falls, MN. I'll post a link to my photos once they're uploaded, but there were plenty of amusing things on the way that I can share now:

-- Sauk Centre, the boyhood home of Sinclair Lewis

-- Freeport, "the city with a smile," where they have a giant smileyface painted on their water tower. On purpose.

-- The Lake Wobegon Trail. Not being a Scandinavian, Minnesotan Lutheran, I freakin' HATE that show. It annoys me. So I didn't stop. ;-)

-- A Kraft cheese plant (which should be heresy -- only GOOD cheese comes from Wisconsin, even when it's a Minnesota-based company that owns Kraft ;-).

-- The World's Largest Otter and Big Ole, which I'm not going to spoil just yet because I have pictures that deserve snarky commentary. ;-) In the meantime, I'm going to go indulge in a little self-loathing for watching America's Next Top Model. (It's so I have something to talk about with people who are as snarky as I am, honest. Call it research. :-D)

surreality.

2009-02-28T16:44:00.002-06:00

Had to deal with the (insert string of expletives here) cable company this morning. As have most other American-owned multinational corporations, they've outsourced their call center to India.

I give the gentleman my last name and spell it for him. This guy in a THICK Indian accent says, "That's a Polish name, right?" I laughed and said yes.

He said, "My grandfather's name was Michalski."

(Cue the "It's a Small World" music.)

I've spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what a part-Polish Indian guy might look like! :-)

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Now playing: Beck - Orphans
via FoxyTunes

that's about what I got, too.

2009-02-27T23:34:00.001-06:00

cognitive dissonance.

2009-02-26T15:19:00.002-06:00

How horrible it must be, in this day of Twitter and live-blogging and whatnot, to cover your own funeral in real time instead of getting a day to think about it.

And how horrible it must be to come to work one day and find out not just *your* job, but the whole damn staff's jobs, are going to disappear -- ::POOF!:: -- in 24 hours.

RIP, Rocky Mountain News.

A couple notes from their Twitter feed:

# Boehne: "We are deeply sorry." Reporter says in background, "Pay my mortgage." (about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck)

# One reporter joked quietly about throwing a shoe at Scripps execs.

That's how you tell they're good journos -- they maintain that black sense of humor at all costs. ;-)

amen.

2009-02-25T18:16:00.002-06:00

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Now playing: David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes [Single Version]
via FoxyTunes

more (mostly health-related) randomness.

2009-02-24T20:40:00.004-06:00

-- Medical office waiting rooms are among the best places in the world to get sick.

-- Second to that is being exposed to someone who deals with the public on a fairly intimate basis and decides to come to work hacking and sniffling. (I'm looking at YOU, Ms. Haircutter!)

-- Why must people insist there's a difference between "tenacious" and "stubborn"? It annoys people no matter what you call it.

-- Why is it that physicians almost universally have won the genetic lottery as well? Isn't it enough they got all the brains?

-- Four words: HEALTH. CARE. REFORM. NOW. Try getting timely access to rather important care when you have no insurance. I've been walking around for the last week with an INR (blood thinner level) of NINE, which is "your blood has the consistency of water and can't be stopped if you cut yourself or fall, causing internal injuries, so just don't get out of bed."

I found this out on Thursday and was told to stop taking the med and come back today to get retested. (The free clinic is only open on Tuesday nights.)

But, there's no way to process it onsite, so they won't have results probably before Thursday again. And while uber-thin blood is a bad idea, do you really want someone who's had 4 clots to be off meds for a week? At this point, I'm guessing my level will come back too low.

I suppose I should be grateful I have the opportunity to have this checked at all, and I am. But DAMN it was a lot easier when I could go to a clinic open 8-5 and have them call me an hour later with results and dosage adjustments.

Hasn't been a good medical day. Pissed off my therapist, too. ;-)

-- What do you imagine the parents who named their son "Keno" must have been like?

Honestly: Keno?!

Maybe he was conceived in Vegas, who knows. But that's a helluva thing to saddle a kid with forever.

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Now playing: Colbie Caillat - Realize
via FoxyTunes

you people have NOOOOO idea what you're missing.

2009-02-23T21:17:00.002-06:00

Being Friends with a Cyborg Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

Friend #1: My friend told me that in Wisconsin they deep-fry cheese curds.
Friend #2: What's "cheese curds"?
Friend #3: Kurds are a perennially oppressed ethnic minority group found in parts of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.

--East Village (from overheardinnewyork.com)

Here's an explanation, because people who don't know what they are always flip out over the name, and a picture.

explanation

randomness.

2009-02-18T15:28:00.002-06:00

--Had to go to the clinic last night for labs. I took off my sweatshirt (never fear, this far north you learn how to layer), but that still left heavy jeans, wallet and keys in the pockets, it was nighttime, and I'd just finished a large glass of tea.

So why did THEIR scale put me at 8 lbs. LIGHTER than mine did this morning, pre-shower, pre-food, etc?

Don't get me wrong, I'll take it -- but once again, you get what you pay for, and I only paid $10 for that scale at Walgreens.

(As long as we're on the subject, an update on the $4 haircut I complained about a month or so ago: It's grown out both rapidly and badly and already needs to be cut again. Blah.)

--Who wants the challenge of helping me write a 140-character resume to put up on Twitter? One of the tweeters I follow is soliciting them from displaced journos (as a public service, I suppose).

--Icicles are scary-looking. (I'm staring at dozens of them hanging from the roof of the house next door.)

(When I was a little kid, btw, I used to think it was "next-STORE neighbor" instead of "next-door." Then again, my sister Terese convinced me that the first line of the national anthem was "Jose, can you see..." and that there truly was some guy named Jose sitting at the top of a flagpole somewhere, singing it 24/7. She also told me that when it thunders, Harold the Angel -- who likes to bowl, but sucks at it -- had just rolled another gutterball in heaven. Oh, and let's not forget the "Grand Cannon," which I had pictured as some gargantuan Civil War weapon instead of a gargantuan geologic formation.

I grew up to become a professional skeptic. Imagine. :-D)

--I'm avoiding doing things that will actually net me money. Can you tell? :-)

sign of the times.

2009-02-18T12:39:00.001-06:00

The Wisconsin Newspaper Association has listed industry help-wanted ads on its website for approximately forever. They're updated weekly.

Except, for the last 2 weeks -- there haven't been ANY. Zip, zero, nada.

Sadness. :-\

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Now playing: Louis Prima - I Love You Truely
via FoxyTunes

trying to buy it.

2009-02-11T21:35:00.002-06:00

Gabe Dixon Band, "All Will Be Well"

GDB live
=======
The new day dawns,
And I am practicing my purpose once again.
It is fresh and it is fruitful if I win but if I lose,
Oooooo I don’t know.
I will be tired but I will turn and I will go,
Only guessing til I get there then I’ll know,
Oh oh oh I will know.

All the children walking home past the factories
Could see the light that’s shining in my window as I write this song to you.
All the cars running fast along the interstate
Can feel the love that radiates
Illuminating what I know is true,
All will be well.
Even after all the promises you’ve broken to yourself,
All will be well.
You can ask me how but only time will tell.

The winter’s cold,
But the snow still lightly settles on the trees.
And a mess is still a moment I can seize until I know,
That all will be well.
Even though sometimes this is hard to tell,
And the fight is just as frustrating as hell
All will be well.

All the children walking home past the factories,
Could see the light that’s shining in my window as I write this song to you.
All the cars running fast along the interstate
Can feel the love that radiates
Illuminating what I know is true
All will be well.
Even after all the promises you’ve broken to yourself
All will be well.
You can ask me how but only time will tell.

Keep it up and don’t give up
And chase your dreams and you will find
All in time.

All the children walking home past the factories
Could see the light that’s shining in my window as I write this song to you.
All the cars running fast along the interstate
Can feel the love that radiates
Illuminating what I know is true,
All will be well.
Even after all the promises you’ve broken to yourself,
All will be well.
You can ask me how but only time will tell.

All will be well.
Even after all the promises you’ve broken to yourself,
All will be well.
You can ask me how but only time will tell.

You can ask me how but only time will tell.

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Now playing: The Gabe Dixon Band - All Will Be Well
via FoxyTunes

inquiring minds want to know:

2009-02-10T15:55:00.002-06:00

Who needs to watch ESPN so desperately that they'll put a flat-panel plasma TV in the john?

Just sayin'.

(It was at a restaurant with a healthy bar, but still.)

Ink-Stained Wretch

what a difference a word makes.

memories of you

sheeple.

this is what i'm talkin' 'bout.

man's inhumanity toward man....

at the age at which Mozart was dead already.

wond'ring aloud...

"an elegant deception"

don't tell me you love me...

a PSA for the HSP among us.

a place for your stuff.

Bode Miller's dad

childhood's end

maybe there *is* hope?

"I still have Santa's phone number. Capisce?"

influences and advice and stuff

no one here gets out alive....

A cornucopia of thanks

Tales from the Bullseye

War is war, and hell is hell....

photographs and memories and influences and stuff

i suppose it had to happen.

Bulls....eye.

ways to tell you're old

and today's word from Unity is....

true dat.

and yes....

Count von Count and dentition

Un. Freaking. Believable.

cue Dave Matthews

just shoot me...

best laid schemes of mice and women...

Mom and Twain

passing notes

life's little absurdities

trying to get back in the groove

hero worship vs. celebrity worship

lessons learned, and learned, and learned...till next time....

life, death, and perspective.

preserve your memories....

horror movie ideas

seen and heard

random thoughts from a cluttered mind....

Marian the Librarian would be appalled.

"Minnesota nice"

just a reminder

Being Armus

too much truth...

reasons for living never come cheap....

plus ca change....

gotta love it...

ok it's alright with me...

this is just...evil.

did i miss something?

true dat.

seen and heard

can we stop slagging bipolar people, please?

things that make ya go ARGH.

whoda guessed?

love it...

beyond even comically absurd.

if they don't kill you from salmonella first.

and so begins another trip around the sun.

file under: "that ain't right."

reality check.

RIP, Bird.

applause, applause.

things that shouldn't pair up.

classic commercials

for your viewing pleasure...

don't fix me 'cause i'm broken...

what's smart about this?

so long, Springfield.

worth 1,000 words and all that.

the perils of aging.

:-)))

who needs Roget when you have college kids?

not too many surprises here....

candy's ode to spring:

maybe there is hope?