thanks for executing the prisoner and disposing of the remains while i squealed and fidgeted and generally freaked out in the dining room.
and especially for not making fun of me for it.
Filed under: alec baldwin, betting, cheese, movies | Tags: bets, hunt for red october, mamma mia, march madness, sunny d
i’d be totally frenched. see, i hate theatre. well, not theatre, musicals. and not just in theatres. in the movies, too. although i know that the venues in which movies are played are called theatres as well. and the soundtracks. everything. EVERYTHING about it.
even my generational imperative for love of nostalgia, real, manufactured and otherwise, has begun to fail the wizard of oz, grease and the sound of music. those are the musicals i grew up on and so loved as part of my childhood. at some point in the last ten years, i realized i may love them for what they meant to me at 6, 4, 8, i don’t actually like them. i don’t want to see them. ever. again.
i was chuffed to play jan in PS 21s magnificent stage production of grease. i LOVED, LOVED LOVED the Sound of Music Tour i went on during my first european backpacking tour. it was spectacular. you get to see all of salzburg- an astoundingly beautiful and friendly city, but you also go into the alps, have lunch in the village of st. gilgen, which contains the church from the movie, motzart’s familial roots and a mountain lake of the most incredible blue I have ever seen. on the way back, you can even give an alpine slide a shot. you sing the songs on the bus- ineveitably filled with australian, american, canadian and japanese tourists. everyone knows how absurd the experience is-
oh, to experience the sublime while being completely aware of it…
For numerous reasons over numerous years, I have often stopped and thought:
“whoa. i’m an adult.”
Clearly anyone meeting me would wonder what it is causing me to wonder. I’ve got a serious job and a serious title, have been taking care of myself since I was 15 (and had the honors of watching out for a few others over the years), pay my bills, wear suits to work….
here are the things I have taken care of- planning and execution, without consulting a single other human being for advice:
Read in this week’s The Week:
A Tasmanian man has avoided jail after being caught with hard-core octopus pornography.
Rodney McLagan, 48, had a collection of some 31,000 images and video clips, most of which depicted humans engaging in sex acts with snakes, tigers, and octopi. The judge suspended his sentence, citing a psychologist’s finding that McLagan suffers from clinically low self-esteem and that “you are particularly self-conscious about your teeth.”
So many questions, none of which I really want answered:
What is the attraction? Is the slimy, fleshy consistency of octopi (precisely why I can’t eat them) and ew, I’m already making this worse than it is.
The suckers? (stop it, now).
The blurb mentions hard-core octopus porn. Does that mean there is soft-core octopus porn? Doesn’t the fact that you’re looking at invertebrate smut qualify you as hard-core, just, right there?
Is hard-core snake and tiger porn so mundane it barely merits mention? Those seem inherently more newsworthy, if only because these animals can actually kill you? Maybe they went with the octopus angle to catch the halo effect of shark week buzz?
and the obligatory (bad) teeth joke:
Does this mean that millions of Englishmen are hiding illustrated Jules Verne novels under their mattresses?
ba-dum-dum!
Postscript:
I cannot wait to see how many new hits this blog gets from people searching for “invertebrate smut.”
So juicy.
Filed under: CFIDS, exhaustion, friends, futility, health, law&order, pain, travel, truth, webmd | Tags: CFIDS, CFS, fatigue, golden girls
The Meriam Webster Dictionary defines the term “social disease” as the following:
Main Entry: social disease
Function: noun
Date: 1891
1: venereal disease.
I’d like to respectfully submit a second meaning:
2:any disease or condition that significantly impacts ones social life, friendships, relationships, and general interaction with society…
I was recently diagnosed with CFIDS or Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I have seen doctor after doctor after doctor. I take medication for anxiety disorder and an inability to manufacture enough GABA (the stuff your brain makes that allows you to physically relax) and have for more than ten years. These are realities I’ve come to deal with and are, for me, not terribly debilitating. Sure, I don’t sleep well, but I’m I don’t have agoraphobia or claustrophobia or any other phobia that keeps me from fully enjoying my life- having several large circles of friends, enjoying the blessing of living in NYC and all that it brings, traveling the world over for business and pleasure, finding absolute nirvana being a stranger in a strange land.
I have been sick and tired over the years, suffering bouts of exhaustion and increased pain that left me cranky, sleepless and with an intense desire to hibernate. Some attributed this to a latent depression or the aftermath of being hit by a van whilst crossing the street almost 20 years ago. The accident did a good bit of damage to my body, the effects of which are felt more intensely and impact my life more acutely at times. Spoken or not, most people assume the former, not having been in my life for the accident and all that followed.
By people, I mean my friends and acquaintances.
I’m not going to lie. I found this to be frustrating. I have seen internists, orthopedists, physiatrists, therapists (physical and emotional), psychiatrists, neurologists, accupuncturists, every kind of “-ist” one can think of. I’m very proactive about my health. I don’t despair. I have rare moments of sadness over the some of the tougher aspects of my childhood/ young adulthood. I always pull through and I’m always OK.
The last six months, however, have been out of control. I was out of work for months, for what I thought was some crazy-mutant evil sinus infection. I’ve had surgery, taken steroids, exhausted supplies of anti-biotics, changed my diet, everything. I just couldn’t get better. And I didn’t know what to do. Staying home all the time because I was too tired or dizzy or fuzzy to go out didn’t leave me with much to talk about other than what was wrong with me. Naturally, this affected my relationships with people. I mean, how many times can a person listen to someone complain about the awful smell or electric mucus or fatigue or headaches, or whatever. It’s a drag.
You see, just because you’re anxious or tired doesn’t mean you’re depressed. And even if one IS depressed, it doesn’t mean you’re not physically ill. My affect has always been positive, regardless of my circumstances, and I’ve yet to meet any one of the “ists” that felt differently.
just a little shout out for espn360.com.
with all the storms and freaky weather, cable here in NYC has been spotty at best- pixelated, intermittent, especially on HD channels.
they had the spain- italy quarter final streaming online for free.
thank you sports gods for saving me from missing even a second of the game.
oh, and vaya espana!!! ole ole ole ole… ole… ole…
Sunny d came to spend the evening with me, which is always a pleasant treat. Not just because she’s one of the nicest, most amazing people on earth, but also because there has never been a better TV partner, nor, I suspect, will there be. Ever.
One of our most favoritest things to watch and discuss is LOST, which is not easy from across state lines. So, when I see her, we catch up on all of our outstanding theories, questions, issues, discussions, etc. We had many, many after last weeks season finale, but we returned to one item that has been nagging at me for weeks.
John Locke was born to a red-headed 16 year old girl named Emily (by a man “twice her age”) in 1956. Because of her age and her mother’s strictness, John’s placed in foster care.
Ben Linus is born prematurely while his parents are hiking in the woods outside Portland. It’s the early sixties, she’s in her early to mid-twenties, with red and was named… Emily. She died giving birth to Ben on the side of the highway.
I find that to be a little too much of a coincidence. Perhaps the reason Richard doesn’t take over leadership when Ben is banished is because he’s not part of the family. We have no evidence that Swoosie Kurtz (adult Emily, who helps con Locke into giving real Sawyer/Locke’s dad his kidney) is the same woman- she could be anyone. Locke would certainly not know her since he’s never seen her and we all know Sawyer is not above lying.
Ben and Locke’s possible relation caused me to notice their ages relative to one another and that they both have blue eyes.
That got me thinking. Other people with bright blue eyes? Christian Shephard, and his daughter Claire Littleton. Not with blue eyes, bright or otherwise? Jack Shephard. So I went back and looked up Margo, Jack’s mom. Guess what? Those blue eyes again.
Filed under: caste system, germany, hubris, lies!, truth | Tags: hillary, obama, politics
With all that’s been happening lately with the DNC, the delegates, the debates, the endless op-eds and platitudes, I wanted to bring up something of which, apparently, many of my peers are unaware.
4 amendments and 50 years separate the right for women’s suffrage and that of all men, regardless of race, to vote.
The fourteenth amendment was ratified by congress on 3rd February, 1870.
The nineteenth amendment was ratified by congress on 18th August, 1920.
One reads:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation
the other:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In between those two came the amendment to allow direct election of two senators from each state, unapportioned federal taxes on income (non-discriminatory), and prohibition.
Filed under: customer service, fashion, horror, inanity, law&order, psa, shopping
SNL last night was amazing- finally someone calls out the press for lobbing softballs to Barack and his decidedly humorless persona. I have been worshipping Tina Fey for years, but last night’s Weekend Update was the jewel in the crown.
stop being fooled, people. Obama’s “change we can believe in” is rhetoric, too. Who do Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kaiser Permanente, “christian” conservatives and Antonin Scalia all fear more?
Ask yourself that question, and ask yourself what it will mean.
Hillary 08.
