Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
seen and heard
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. ;-)
----------------
Now playing: Joshua Radin - One of Those Days
via FoxyTunes
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. ;-)
----------------
Now playing: Joshua Radin - One of Those Days
via FoxyTunes
Saturday, April 25, 2009
can we stop slagging bipolar people, please?
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:
Amen.
----------------
Now playing: Johnny Ferreira - Dig That Crazy Chick
via FoxyTunes
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.
----------------
Now playing: Johnny Ferreira - Dig That Crazy Chick
via FoxyTunes
things that make ya go ARGH.
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....
----------------
Now playing: The English Beat - The Limits We Set
via FoxyTunes
-- 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....
----------------
Now playing: The English Beat - The Limits We Set
via FoxyTunes
whoda guessed?
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?
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?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
love it...
"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.
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.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
beyond even comically absurd.
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.
----------------
Now playing: David Bowie - Fame
via FoxyTunes
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.
----------------
Now playing: David Bowie - Fame
via FoxyTunes
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