So, yeah. Casablanca is right out of the running for Most Romantic Movie Ever. (Using of course, the highly idiosyncratic, but obviously correct, Andrea criteria.) In fact, watching it now, middle-aged and wiser-to-the-ways-of-the-heart Andrea (as opposed to even crazier and more dysfunctional teenaged Andrea) has been quite won over to Mr Barma's position. Namely that Ilse is just a cheating, needy whore who fucks over two guys (one of whom is both a righteous hero and a man who would obviously do anything for her) right good. But we aren't supposed to notice that, 'cause she looks like Ingrid Bergman. Also, that when Rick sends her off with her husband at the end of the movie, it's less a grand romantic sacrifice--which is how I remembered it--than a sign of Rick's having been somehow ennobled by Victor's good example to finally do a good, decent, right thing. Plus, he's probably figured out that if he goes off with Ilse, she's gonna cheat on him too, later if not sooner.
Also? Oh my goodness, the hoyay in this film. Most of the male characters have, at the least, a crush on Rick. I mean, think about it. Why for example, does *Sam* run off to North Africa with Rick? He wasn't working for him in Paris. He was just an employee in the bar Rick hung out in. Okay, so the Nazis were occupying Paris and, I dunno, I have no idea how they felt towards black American piano players, so maybe getting out of Dodge was advisable, but unless there's something the movie ain't tellin' us, Sam could just go back home to Chicago or New Orleans or wherever. (I, of course, like to think there is something the movie ain't telling us and that Sam shot a man just to see him die, so therefore he can't go back to America either, and it's this plus the man-love that makes him pack up his suitcase and go with Rick. But, then, I make up fictional life stories for my fellow bus passengers, so you know how I am.)
Now, none of this is intended as a dis at Casablanca which is a very entertaining movie, full of classic dialogue. It's not, however, the big touching romance it is reputed to be. I cannot even endorse Mr Barma's opinion that the true romance in this movie is Sascha's love for Yvonne. Mr Barma maintains that the fact that Sascha remains devoted to Yvonne despite the fact that she's screwing Rick and throwing herself at random Germans is proof of true love. I maintain that it's more likely proof he has deep psychological issues and only goes for chicks who repeatedly reject him.
So then, in other classic movie news, Mr Barma and I watched Dark Passage. Because obviously it was Bogart night in Shangri-Lowell. OMG. What a fucked up film. I must say, I was disappointed in the ending/climax because I was expecting some major out-of-left-field plot twist and...no. The identity of the real killer was pretty anticlimactic. But Lauren Bacall (Irene) as prisoner-groupie (who knew they had those way back in the 40s?), the totally emasculated Bob who's engaged to a woman he hates but who still keeps courting Irene and dropping by to *not* have sex (since she can easily hide Vincent/Humphrey Bogart in her bedroom because "Bob won't look in there!"), the weird lonely cab driver who reads people's faces and, apparently, hooks them up with discredited and unlicensed plastic surgeons...it goes on. Totally weirdness.
The whole plastic surgery thing put me in mind of Minority Report and Tom Cruise's blackmarket eyeball replacement by the shady doc. I was wondering if that was in fact a homage to Dark Passage, but Mr Indemnity tells me that the practicing-medicine-without-a-license surgeon cosmetically operating on a fugitive in skeezy conditions is a whole trope and is in a lot of movies, so perhaps not.
But my favorite, favorite part of Dark Passage? That as Vincent wakes up from his surgery and notices his jacket (!) is now off, the doc tells him that oh, yeah, he had to remove it so he could borrow some skin from Vincent's armpit. Okay, if you don't know enough to plan ahead and put your patient in a johnny *before* the operation starts, the board of registration probably should have pulled your license, y'know? Love it!
xoxo
Friday, January 30, 2009
maximum WTF
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I have movie reviews to write and great classics of American film to dissect, but before I have the time and the energy to do that, I must first register a big ol' WTF? with you all.
Did you see the news item that the woman who had the (fertility treatment-caused) octuplets in Cali has six older children? Excuse me? Let's leave aside the biomedical ethics of the type of fertility treatments that cause/allow women to basically have litters, which of course mean the babies cannot go anywhere near term, and thus have a huge risk of all the many horrible and the many, many less-horrible problems that severe prematurity can bring, plus the costs thereof even if the babies turn out healthy. Let's just discuss a world, or rather, a country in which it's apparently okay to waste our healthcare dollars on expensive treatments to allow people who already have six kids to have more. If you're having trouble getting knocked up with baby #7, maybe that's god's, or the universe's, way of telling you it's time to stop fucking breeding, 'k?
Every single MD involved in that woman's conception needs to have their license revoked. That's all I am saying.
Oh, it makes me so mad. Gah.
xoxo
Did you see the news item that the woman who had the (fertility treatment-caused) octuplets in Cali has six older children? Excuse me? Let's leave aside the biomedical ethics of the type of fertility treatments that cause/allow women to basically have litters, which of course mean the babies cannot go anywhere near term, and thus have a huge risk of all the many horrible and the many, many less-horrible problems that severe prematurity can bring, plus the costs thereof even if the babies turn out healthy. Let's just discuss a world, or rather, a country in which it's apparently okay to waste our healthcare dollars on expensive treatments to allow people who already have six kids to have more. If you're having trouble getting knocked up with baby #7, maybe that's god's, or the universe's, way of telling you it's time to stop fucking breeding, 'k?
Every single MD involved in that woman's conception needs to have their license revoked. That's all I am saying.
Oh, it makes me so mad. Gah.
xoxo
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
"bulging brides"
This is, apparently, some kind of reality TV show that I personally had never heard of until I came across shocked and disgusted mention of in someone else's blog. Here's the premise: the bride buys an expensive dress that is too small for her and a team of nutritionists, trainers, coaches, whatev, spend six weeks putting her through hell so she can go from like a size six to a size two and fit into it. Because, obviously, being as tiny as possible on Your Big Day is the most important thing in the universe.
Can I take a time out here to observe I don't understand the whole Your Big Day phenomenon anyway? Spending tens of thousands of dollars that could actually be an awesome down payment on a nice house or condo on some fugly white dress, some soon-to-be dead flowers, and a party for a bunch of people, only some of whom you actually like but all of whom you hope will write you checks big enough to make inviting them worthwhile, is an exercise in stupidity. But then again, I got married five months pregnant wearing...wait for it...wait for it...sweatpants (ha!) by a justice of the peace within spitting distance of the Seabrook nuclear reactor, so WTF do I know? (It's okay, you can take the time here to hum the banjo music from Deliverance and think, hmm, I just cannot imagine why *that* marriage didn't last.) But, anyway, the idea of a wedding being the most important day in a woman's life and therefore she needs to look and be treated like a princess may--may--just have made a tiny bit of sense back in the day when that was the crowning achievement of a girl's life and marriage was forever, but nowadays when women have careers and the chances of your marriage lasting hover around 50-50, it's (and I'll use again the only word applicable) stupid. But it only seems to be increasing.
Tangent over. Anyway, the blog entry I read about this show was particularly horrified that one of the trainers was yelling at the woman during her workout that the workout was an "infidelity inhibitor." Um, yeah. Okay. Perhaps for her, because after you spend 45 minutes on the elliptical machine you probably ain't gonna go right out and pick up random guys to bang. A person's gotta conserve *some* energy for wedding planning. But I don't think they meant it that way, y'know?
Do these people learn nothing from the tabloids? If there's one thing the whole Jennifer/Brad/Angelina debacle taught us all, it's that no matter how conventionally hot looking you are, it won't necessarily keep your husband's dick in his pants. C'mon now.
xoxo
Can I take a time out here to observe I don't understand the whole Your Big Day phenomenon anyway? Spending tens of thousands of dollars that could actually be an awesome down payment on a nice house or condo on some fugly white dress, some soon-to-be dead flowers, and a party for a bunch of people, only some of whom you actually like but all of whom you hope will write you checks big enough to make inviting them worthwhile, is an exercise in stupidity. But then again, I got married five months pregnant wearing...wait for it...wait for it...sweatpants (ha!) by a justice of the peace within spitting distance of the Seabrook nuclear reactor, so WTF do I know? (It's okay, you can take the time here to hum the banjo music from Deliverance and think, hmm, I just cannot imagine why *that* marriage didn't last.) But, anyway, the idea of a wedding being the most important day in a woman's life and therefore she needs to look and be treated like a princess may--may--just have made a tiny bit of sense back in the day when that was the crowning achievement of a girl's life and marriage was forever, but nowadays when women have careers and the chances of your marriage lasting hover around 50-50, it's (and I'll use again the only word applicable) stupid. But it only seems to be increasing.
Tangent over. Anyway, the blog entry I read about this show was particularly horrified that one of the trainers was yelling at the woman during her workout that the workout was an "infidelity inhibitor." Um, yeah. Okay. Perhaps for her, because after you spend 45 minutes on the elliptical machine you probably ain't gonna go right out and pick up random guys to bang. A person's gotta conserve *some* energy for wedding planning. But I don't think they meant it that way, y'know?
Do these people learn nothing from the tabloids? If there's one thing the whole Jennifer/Brad/Angelina debacle taught us all, it's that no matter how conventionally hot looking you are, it won't necessarily keep your husband's dick in his pants. C'mon now.
xoxo
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
sexist joke about aging
In lieu of actual content today, let me pass along a joke one of my co-workers emailed me this morning. I thought it was relatively clever for an email joke.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN
Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa , half discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally beautiful!
Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe , well developed and open to trade, especially for someone with cash.
Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain , very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.
Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece , gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.
Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain, with a glorious and all conquering past.
Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel, has been through war and doesn't make the same mistakes twice,takes care of business.
Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada, self-preserving but open to meeting new people.
After 70, she becomes like Tibet, wildly beautiful, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages...only those with an adventurous spirit and a thirst for spiritual knowledge visit there.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF A MAN
Between 1 and 80, a man is like Illinois, ruled by nuts....
xoxo
THE GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN
Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa , half discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally beautiful!
Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe , well developed and open to trade, especially for someone with cash.
Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain , very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.
Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece , gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.
Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain, with a glorious and all conquering past.
Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel, has been through war and doesn't make the same mistakes twice,takes care of business.
Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada, self-preserving but open to meeting new people.
After 70, she becomes like Tibet, wildly beautiful, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages...only those with an adventurous spirit and a thirst for spiritual knowledge visit there.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF A MAN
Between 1 and 80, a man is like Illinois, ruled by nuts....
xoxo
Monday, January 26, 2009
holy crap! marcy!
So, yesterday when Mr Indemnity and I were leaving the bar where I had that very ill-advised pumpkin martini, I picked up the last copy of stuff@night that was lying on the table in the foyer. Now, as careful readers of this blog will already know, I never actually go out and when I do, it's not to the kind of hip, young, and/or swanky places featured in glossy bi-weekly magazines, but of the multitudes of free reading material available for perusing on the T or looking at in my office between patients, stuff@night is one of my faves. I stuck it in my bag yesterday and then didn't think much of it.
Today, however, while I was flatironing my hair before coming to work (see: tragic tragic dry ends), I took it out and started flipping through it. It was the Boston Bodies issue, about working out and so forth. Most of it was taken up with their feature on "the best bodies in Boston." And there, on page 32, was my acupuncturist Marcy. (Sans shirt but with nothing untoward uncovered, of course.) I was like, OMG! I know her! On the one hand, this is very cool, and I guess I'm not totally surprised. She's sort of extroverted. On the other hand, unexpectedly coming across a photo of one of your healthcare providers wearing nothing but yoga bottoms is something that doesn't exactly happen every day.
I'd recommend you all go out and look at this yourselves, so the image of my wicked in-shape acupuncturist will be affixed in your mind every time I talk about her, but the reason, apparently, there was only one copy of this left in that bar, is that it's the Jan 13-26th issue, and probably today they've all been replaced everywhere with the next issue. Day late and a dollar short as usual.
xoxo
Addendum! No, wait, it's online: http://stuffatnight.com/photos/features/category8042/picture227537.aspx
Today, however, while I was flatironing my hair before coming to work (see: tragic tragic dry ends), I took it out and started flipping through it. It was the Boston Bodies issue, about working out and so forth. Most of it was taken up with their feature on "the best bodies in Boston." And there, on page 32, was my acupuncturist Marcy. (Sans shirt but with nothing untoward uncovered, of course.) I was like, OMG! I know her! On the one hand, this is very cool, and I guess I'm not totally surprised. She's sort of extroverted. On the other hand, unexpectedly coming across a photo of one of your healthcare providers wearing nothing but yoga bottoms is something that doesn't exactly happen every day.
I'd recommend you all go out and look at this yourselves, so the image of my wicked in-shape acupuncturist will be affixed in your mind every time I talk about her, but the reason, apparently, there was only one copy of this left in that bar, is that it's the Jan 13-26th issue, and probably today they've all been replaced everywhere with the next issue. Day late and a dollar short as usual.
xoxo
Addendum! No, wait, it's online: http://stuffatnight.com/photos/features/category8042/picture227537.aspx
Sunday, January 25, 2009
hair thoughts
I'm going to lead you through the stream-of-consciousness that led me to this post. C'mon now. It's Sunday and it's 9 degrees. What the hell else you got better to do than read this crap? (Yeah, I know, anything.)
Be that as it may. While soaking in my tub, I was thinking about romantic movies, still and/or again. I was thinking about Almost Famous, which like The Apartment is one of my favorite movies, and which contains a very sweet love story, but which I wouldn't consider a romantic movie per se. So then I started thinking about Kate Hudson and how cute and charming and luminous she is in that film and how in all her recent publicity for the horrific Bride Wars piece of shit, she looks so hard and unattractive. There's a woman who has aged very badly over the past ten years, and that surprises me, since "cute" usually ages pretty well.
So then, I started thinking of examples of that, and of course Drew Barrymore came to mind. I know amongst my friends and blog readers Drew has her detractors, but to me, she was cute 20 years ago, she was cute 10 years ago, she's cute now, and I'm sure she'll still be cute in another 10 years. And thinking of her detractors, I thought of our Mr Indemnity making sport (along with much of the rest of the interwebs) of her Golden Globe hairdo. Which, if you haven't seen it, was an interpretation of 1960's style big hair. A very messy interpretation, which led to lots of joking about Ms Barrymore looking like she had sex in the limo on the way over. If so in reality, good for her! Having sex in even the most spacious of limos whilst wearing a formal gown seems daunting to me (though I guess a couple of generations of prom goers now will have proven me wrong on that) but maybe she just gave her guy a little head, and he was responsible for messing up her hair. If so in reality, again, good for her! But even if that hairdo was intentional, not accidental, I still gotta give her props for ambition, if not execution.
*Because*, I was thinking, hair this decade has been hella boring. We went from big hair in the 60s to flat hair in the 70s to uber-big hair in the 80s to uber-flat hair in the 90s and then...this decade? Just neutral and blah. The only exciting thing that happened was the chunky, multi-colored highlight trend of 2001-2004ish, which while distressing to people who like a more natural look, suited me just fine. I had them on and off and I looked good. But fashion is fickle and since then, nothing much. There was that brief bob trend in 2007 with everyone and their sister copying Mrs Cruise, including me (involuntarily, I might add) but otherwise it's been long to medium hair with long layers, a totally unobjectionable haircut--no one's gonna look back at pictures from 2008 twenty years from now and cringe, unlike say 1988--but enough's enough. Snoozefest. Oh, they try to push the pixie cut, but face it, unless you are very skinny and frail like Mrs Beckham or Mia Farrow before her, or so very very beautiful that hair is actually a distraction from your flawless face, like Halle Berry, it's usually a big mistake, and that leaves out the vast majority of us.
So here's the thing. I need to buck up and go to the cunty hairdresser soon, because my ends are tragic. I'm thinking of, as I've said, springing for professional coloring, and I need at least a trim to fix those tragic dried out ends. But honestly? I'm gonna end up with long layers and a variation of the non-exciting single process color I have now, and what the hell fun is that?
Please invent some wacky hair trend I can follow. Thx.
xoxo
Be that as it may. While soaking in my tub, I was thinking about romantic movies, still and/or again. I was thinking about Almost Famous, which like The Apartment is one of my favorite movies, and which contains a very sweet love story, but which I wouldn't consider a romantic movie per se. So then I started thinking about Kate Hudson and how cute and charming and luminous she is in that film and how in all her recent publicity for the horrific Bride Wars piece of shit, she looks so hard and unattractive. There's a woman who has aged very badly over the past ten years, and that surprises me, since "cute" usually ages pretty well.
So then, I started thinking of examples of that, and of course Drew Barrymore came to mind. I know amongst my friends and blog readers Drew has her detractors, but to me, she was cute 20 years ago, she was cute 10 years ago, she's cute now, and I'm sure she'll still be cute in another 10 years. And thinking of her detractors, I thought of our Mr Indemnity making sport (along with much of the rest of the interwebs) of her Golden Globe hairdo. Which, if you haven't seen it, was an interpretation of 1960's style big hair. A very messy interpretation, which led to lots of joking about Ms Barrymore looking like she had sex in the limo on the way over. If so in reality, good for her! Having sex in even the most spacious of limos whilst wearing a formal gown seems daunting to me (though I guess a couple of generations of prom goers now will have proven me wrong on that) but maybe she just gave her guy a little head, and he was responsible for messing up her hair. If so in reality, again, good for her! But even if that hairdo was intentional, not accidental, I still gotta give her props for ambition, if not execution.
*Because*, I was thinking, hair this decade has been hella boring. We went from big hair in the 60s to flat hair in the 70s to uber-big hair in the 80s to uber-flat hair in the 90s and then...this decade? Just neutral and blah. The only exciting thing that happened was the chunky, multi-colored highlight trend of 2001-2004ish, which while distressing to people who like a more natural look, suited me just fine. I had them on and off and I looked good. But fashion is fickle and since then, nothing much. There was that brief bob trend in 2007 with everyone and their sister copying Mrs Cruise, including me (involuntarily, I might add) but otherwise it's been long to medium hair with long layers, a totally unobjectionable haircut--no one's gonna look back at pictures from 2008 twenty years from now and cringe, unlike say 1988--but enough's enough. Snoozefest. Oh, they try to push the pixie cut, but face it, unless you are very skinny and frail like Mrs Beckham or Mia Farrow before her, or so very very beautiful that hair is actually a distraction from your flawless face, like Halle Berry, it's usually a big mistake, and that leaves out the vast majority of us.
So here's the thing. I need to buck up and go to the cunty hairdresser soon, because my ends are tragic. I'm thinking of, as I've said, springing for professional coloring, and I need at least a trim to fix those tragic dried out ends. But honestly? I'm gonna end up with long layers and a variation of the non-exciting single process color I have now, and what the hell fun is that?
Please invent some wacky hair trend I can follow. Thx.
xoxo
more bad writing
On this morning's news, in a story about a Suffolk University student injured by falling ice, we hear "despite her countless stitches..." Um, no. I'm fairly sure her ER doc not only counted how many stitches s/he put in, s/he documented them too.
Idiots.
xoxo
Idiots.
xoxo
Saturday, January 24, 2009
the gift of sensible shoes
Okay, read this (and if you're really ambitious, some or all of the 14 pages of comments) and get back to me:
http://jezebel.com/5046087/when-the-nice-guy-down-the-street-makes-you-uncomfortable
I'm really of two minds. On one hand, as a woman, absolutely I know the creepy/leering/overly familiar guy who makes you feel uncomfortable and like you wanna take a bath after any interaction. On the other hand, my boundaries on this are apparently more fluid than a lot of other women's. I get the idea that some would be upset by three Home Depot employees converging on them in the electrical aisle proffering help just because they're wearing perfume/showing a tiny bit of cleavage/lacking a Y chromosome. Me, as is well documented here, I take it as my rightful payback for putting up with the past 35 years of PMS and the pain of childbirth, and milk it for all it's worth. Similarly, I never mind a non-skeevy compliment on my appearance. If the guy behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts wants to tell me I've got the most beautiful eyes, or a possibly gay/possibly flirtatious Boston cop wants to put his hand on my arm and tell me my jacket is fabulous, I am gonna crack up laughing and say "thank you", not get offended, not be creeped out, and certainly not feel like OMG, they're probably going to leave their worksite, follow me down the street, and rape me.
Which brings me to this, a quote from one of those many pages of comments:
In "The Gift of Fear" De Becker puts it well. He says ask a male friend when the last time they feared for their lives and usually they have to think a bit. Ask a woman and they'll say, 'do you mean this month or this week?'.
Really? Really??!?? Wow. I hope this is authorial hyperbole, because if you don't actually live in, say, a war zone, going through your days frequently in fear for your life is a little...much...and I hate to think of how and why these women are actually being conditioned to feel that way.
xoxo
http://jezebel.com/5046087/when-the-nice-guy-down-the-street-makes-you-uncomfortable
I'm really of two minds. On one hand, as a woman, absolutely I know the creepy/leering/overly familiar guy who makes you feel uncomfortable and like you wanna take a bath after any interaction. On the other hand, my boundaries on this are apparently more fluid than a lot of other women's. I get the idea that some would be upset by three Home Depot employees converging on them in the electrical aisle proffering help just because they're wearing perfume/showing a tiny bit of cleavage/lacking a Y chromosome. Me, as is well documented here, I take it as my rightful payback for putting up with the past 35 years of PMS and the pain of childbirth, and milk it for all it's worth. Similarly, I never mind a non-skeevy compliment on my appearance. If the guy behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts wants to tell me I've got the most beautiful eyes, or a possibly gay/possibly flirtatious Boston cop wants to put his hand on my arm and tell me my jacket is fabulous, I am gonna crack up laughing and say "thank you", not get offended, not be creeped out, and certainly not feel like OMG, they're probably going to leave their worksite, follow me down the street, and rape me.
Which brings me to this, a quote from one of those many pages of comments:
In "The Gift of Fear" De Becker puts it well. He says ask a male friend when the last time they feared for their lives and usually they have to think a bit. Ask a woman and they'll say, 'do you mean this month or this week?'.
Really? Really??!?? Wow. I hope this is authorial hyperbole, because if you don't actually live in, say, a war zone, going through your days frequently in fear for your life is a little...much...and I hate to think of how and why these women are actually being conditioned to feel that way.
xoxo
Friday, January 23, 2009
isn't it romantic?
So, yeah, I'm having a tough, tough time naming the most romantic movie ever. Why? First of all, kids, "the best movie with a romance in it" and "the most romantic movie" are not the same thing at all. At all. In those lists that Mr Indemnity linked to in comment, there are movies that I love, that have a love story contained therein, but which are not at all romantic. See, for example, The Apartment. One of my favorite films, containing a very sweet love story between Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, very funny, very sad, bitingly satirical, but romantic? Nah.
Similarly, just having a great couple in it, does not a romantic movie make. I'm sure most of you know my favorite filmatic couple, my model for the perfect relationship. But as much as I would strive to emulate Mr and Mrs Charles (minus, y'know, the future cirrhosis of the liver) and the concept of a married couple actually liking, as well as loving, each other and having fun, their movies do not contain even the barest whiff of romance.
I guess it comes down to one's definition of romance and what pushes your particular buttons in this department. I find it much easier for me to illustrate my own with literary examples, not movies. And that makes it harder, because your (by which I mean "my") blog audience members have at least seen many of the same movies you have, but the chances of them having read the same books is doubtful. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on.
Perhaps the most romantic *anything* that's touched me is the "Dianora" subplot of Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. This is a fantasy novel (shut up) about a nation, Tigana, that's been wiped off the face of the earth by its conqueror. Dianora is a Tiganese woman who becomes a concubine to the ruler who destroyed her country, without him knowing her true identity. She's a mole, dedicated to getting revenge on him, wreaking havoc on him, hopefully at some point killing him, except...over time, and I mean years, as she comes to know him, she falls more and more in love with him, becomes more and more devoted. She is incredibly conflicted and in pain, torn between her feelings for him as a person and her feelings about the horrible things he did to her people, until she is finally forced to make a horrendous choice. I cried my friggin eyes out, lemme tell you. So romantic, so tragic.
Second up: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. I read this book oh so many years ago, probably late 80s. It's a historical novel about Llewelyn of Wales and his wife Joanna, who is the illegitimate daughter of King John of England, so all real, historical personages and events. Joanna is tormented and torn between her great love for and her duty towards her husband (who she didn't really want to marry at all but has over time gained her devotion and loyalty) and her love for and gratitude towards her father (who was nothing but loving and kind towards her, even though, as a bastard he didn't even need to acknowledge she existed) when they become sworn enemies. I remembered that part of the plot, and remembered finding it extremely sad and extremely romantic when I read it, but what I didn't remember until I looked at the amazon reviews/summary of it last night was that the other part of the plot was that she commits adultery and her husband's love for her is so great that he ultimately forgives her (not, one would think, a common reaction amongst the nobility of the 13th century but apparently part of the historical record.) So I'm sure that impressed me as incredibly romantic too when I first read the book.
So! Let's psychoanalyze what Andrea thinks about romance and love, shall we. First of all, obviously? Love hurts! Secondly--and I think this is why I have a hard time finding movie examples--true love grows slowly, slowly over time, even when you might not really want it to. (Most of what is passed off as "love" in the movies is infatuation and/or great chemistry, neither of which are bad things, but which are not love and are therefore to me not true romance. It's easier to portray love growing over time in a 500 page book than it is a two hour movie.) Thirdly, real love has a devotional quality to it. Fourthly, it is terribly terribly romantic to love someone enough that you can forgive them anything and that you can love them despite the bad things that they may have done. Finally, a difficult choice, made for the benefit of your beloved, against all your personal needs and wants, is perhaps the most romantic thing of all. Love means sacrifice. (Yeah, I know, I'll go set up a paypal account right now, so's it'll be easy for you all to contribute to my therapy fund, kthxbye.)
I'm trying to think of a movie where all or even most of these conditions are met and I'm not doing too well. It's been years and years and years since I watched Casablanca, and I dimly think it might meet some of my tropes, but honestly I dunno. I do know, going by my list, the real romance in An Affair to Remember is between Ken and Terry, not Nicky and Terry.
xoxo
Similarly, just having a great couple in it, does not a romantic movie make. I'm sure most of you know my favorite filmatic couple, my model for the perfect relationship. But as much as I would strive to emulate Mr and Mrs Charles (minus, y'know, the future cirrhosis of the liver) and the concept of a married couple actually liking, as well as loving, each other and having fun, their movies do not contain even the barest whiff of romance.
I guess it comes down to one's definition of romance and what pushes your particular buttons in this department. I find it much easier for me to illustrate my own with literary examples, not movies. And that makes it harder, because your (by which I mean "my") blog audience members have at least seen many of the same movies you have, but the chances of them having read the same books is doubtful. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on.
Perhaps the most romantic *anything* that's touched me is the "Dianora" subplot of Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. This is a fantasy novel (shut up) about a nation, Tigana, that's been wiped off the face of the earth by its conqueror. Dianora is a Tiganese woman who becomes a concubine to the ruler who destroyed her country, without him knowing her true identity. She's a mole, dedicated to getting revenge on him, wreaking havoc on him, hopefully at some point killing him, except...over time, and I mean years, as she comes to know him, she falls more and more in love with him, becomes more and more devoted. She is incredibly conflicted and in pain, torn between her feelings for him as a person and her feelings about the horrible things he did to her people, until she is finally forced to make a horrendous choice. I cried my friggin eyes out, lemme tell you. So romantic, so tragic.
Second up: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. I read this book oh so many years ago, probably late 80s. It's a historical novel about Llewelyn of Wales and his wife Joanna, who is the illegitimate daughter of King John of England, so all real, historical personages and events. Joanna is tormented and torn between her great love for and her duty towards her husband (who she didn't really want to marry at all but has over time gained her devotion and loyalty) and her love for and gratitude towards her father (who was nothing but loving and kind towards her, even though, as a bastard he didn't even need to acknowledge she existed) when they become sworn enemies. I remembered that part of the plot, and remembered finding it extremely sad and extremely romantic when I read it, but what I didn't remember until I looked at the amazon reviews/summary of it last night was that the other part of the plot was that she commits adultery and her husband's love for her is so great that he ultimately forgives her (not, one would think, a common reaction amongst the nobility of the 13th century but apparently part of the historical record.) So I'm sure that impressed me as incredibly romantic too when I first read the book.
So! Let's psychoanalyze what Andrea thinks about romance and love, shall we. First of all, obviously? Love hurts! Secondly--and I think this is why I have a hard time finding movie examples--true love grows slowly, slowly over time, even when you might not really want it to. (Most of what is passed off as "love" in the movies is infatuation and/or great chemistry, neither of which are bad things, but which are not love and are therefore to me not true romance. It's easier to portray love growing over time in a 500 page book than it is a two hour movie.) Thirdly, real love has a devotional quality to it. Fourthly, it is terribly terribly romantic to love someone enough that you can forgive them anything and that you can love them despite the bad things that they may have done. Finally, a difficult choice, made for the benefit of your beloved, against all your personal needs and wants, is perhaps the most romantic thing of all. Love means sacrifice. (Yeah, I know, I'll go set up a paypal account right now, so's it'll be easy for you all to contribute to my therapy fund, kthxbye.)
I'm trying to think of a movie where all or even most of these conditions are met and I'm not doing too well. It's been years and years and years since I watched Casablanca, and I dimly think it might meet some of my tropes, but honestly I dunno. I do know, going by my list, the real romance in An Affair to Remember is between Ken and Terry, not Nicky and Terry.
xoxo
Thursday, January 22, 2009
an affair to remember
Another old movie that I hadn't seen before, but thought I should. Maybe I should have thought again. Let's enumerate my problems with this film, shall we?
First of all, I'm not sure why we the audience are supposed to be rooting for Terry and Nicky to get together, considering they're an unfaithful couple of cheating cheaters. But I guess it's okay to dump your SO for someone you meet on a cruise if you're Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. And your lurrrvvvvve is pure. I'm especially confused about why it's okay for Deborah Kerr to behave in this manner, since the guy she is unfaithful to, then dumps, is portrayed as kind, loving, generous, and hard-working, so loving and generous, that even after she dumps him, he wants nothing but the best for her, and continues to be supportive and generous and kind to her after she's had her Big Accident. Meanwhile Cary Grant's good points are that he's handsome and funny (i.e. that he's Cary Grant) and, oh, that he loves his grandmother. Other than that he's a spoiled wastrel useless playboy.
I'm wondering if there's a 50-years-ago societal thing playing in here that bypasses me: i.e. that we're supposed to be rooting for Cary Grant because he asks Deborah Kerr to marry him w/o apparently despoiling her, while meanwhile, she's been the mistress of the other (kind, loving, generous) guy for 4 years and that a wedding ring and pure (if basically adulterous) lurrrvvvvve trumps any kind of sordid love that has premarital boinking involved.
Also, I have a hard time conceiving of why these two men are so fascinated by Deborah Kerr anyway. Her character is basically insipid and personality-free, and the way she is costumed in this--the little Peter Pan collars buttoned up to her neck, the short curly matronly hairdo, the coral lipstick--makes her look fairly dumpy and not the beautiful woman I'm sure she was/was supposed to be. Maybe 1957 was just a really bad year for fashion, or maybe she's supposed to look uber-prim to show she really is a Good Catholic Girl despite her foray into being a kept woman.
Finally, the whole crux of the plot, that she prefers to let Cary Grant think she's jilted him rather than let him know she's been in a horrible accident and may not walk again, makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. Who the fuck would *do* that?
Okay, so, thumbs down. I didn't hate it as much as Gigi, but why anyone would think this was the most romantic movie ever, I dunno.
xoxo
First of all, I'm not sure why we the audience are supposed to be rooting for Terry and Nicky to get together, considering they're an unfaithful couple of cheating cheaters. But I guess it's okay to dump your SO for someone you meet on a cruise if you're Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. And your lurrrvvvvve is pure. I'm especially confused about why it's okay for Deborah Kerr to behave in this manner, since the guy she is unfaithful to, then dumps, is portrayed as kind, loving, generous, and hard-working, so loving and generous, that even after she dumps him, he wants nothing but the best for her, and continues to be supportive and generous and kind to her after she's had her Big Accident. Meanwhile Cary Grant's good points are that he's handsome and funny (i.e. that he's Cary Grant) and, oh, that he loves his grandmother. Other than that he's a spoiled wastrel useless playboy.
I'm wondering if there's a 50-years-ago societal thing playing in here that bypasses me: i.e. that we're supposed to be rooting for Cary Grant because he asks Deborah Kerr to marry him w/o apparently despoiling her, while meanwhile, she's been the mistress of the other (kind, loving, generous) guy for 4 years and that a wedding ring and pure (if basically adulterous) lurrrvvvvve trumps any kind of sordid love that has premarital boinking involved.
Also, I have a hard time conceiving of why these two men are so fascinated by Deborah Kerr anyway. Her character is basically insipid and personality-free, and the way she is costumed in this--the little Peter Pan collars buttoned up to her neck, the short curly matronly hairdo, the coral lipstick--makes her look fairly dumpy and not the beautiful woman I'm sure she was/was supposed to be. Maybe 1957 was just a really bad year for fashion, or maybe she's supposed to look uber-prim to show she really is a Good Catholic Girl despite her foray into being a kept woman.
Finally, the whole crux of the plot, that she prefers to let Cary Grant think she's jilted him rather than let him know she's been in a horrible accident and may not walk again, makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. Who the fuck would *do* that?
Okay, so, thumbs down. I didn't hate it as much as Gigi, but why anyone would think this was the most romantic movie ever, I dunno.
xoxo
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
so very very pretty, except not
I haven't worn anything but jeans or sweat pants or the close equivalent thereof for a good month, always paired of course with the boots or shoes suitable for slogging through half-frozen slush puddles or clambering over snow banks and usually paired with the ever-so-figure-flattering down jacket. Accessorized with the hat hair, the winter fat (or, as we like to call it, "insulation"), and for three solid weeks now, bloating on top of that. And despite the constant presence of the sensible shoes, I nevertheless manage to soak my feet and/or the bottoms of my pants every freaking day, which just adds to the whole look. To say I feel as unattractive as I possibly could would probably be an understatement.
Now this is a longstanding mid-January problem, except I guess those years that are unseasonably non-snowy and warm, lending me the occasional respite from wearing eight layers of unattractive, completely unfeminine clothing. I remember when I had my old blog, one of my very first posts in it almost exactly 4 years ago addressed the exact same feeling. I remember this because I remember that Mr Barma (in his previous life and alias) took the time to write me a long email encouraging me to exercise outdoors, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it was, because the sunshine, fresh air, and movement would be beneficial to my January mood. He may have even advised me on what kind of long underwear to wear, but I may have just hallucinated that.
Well, today, feeling as ugly as I could possibly feel, and irritated from my errands not going smoothly, I forced myself to walk for almost an hour in the brightly sunny, 20 degree cold. I am not feeling any prettier or less irritated, but I'm sure all the healthy exercise I get is one reason my HDL is 76, baby. So there is that.
And I'm sure spring will be here in like 3 1/2 months. And I'll be able to wear sandals and a dress in only another 4.
xoxo
Now this is a longstanding mid-January problem, except I guess those years that are unseasonably non-snowy and warm, lending me the occasional respite from wearing eight layers of unattractive, completely unfeminine clothing. I remember when I had my old blog, one of my very first posts in it almost exactly 4 years ago addressed the exact same feeling. I remember this because I remember that Mr Barma (in his previous life and alias) took the time to write me a long email encouraging me to exercise outdoors, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it was, because the sunshine, fresh air, and movement would be beneficial to my January mood. He may have even advised me on what kind of long underwear to wear, but I may have just hallucinated that.
Well, today, feeling as ugly as I could possibly feel, and irritated from my errands not going smoothly, I forced myself to walk for almost an hour in the brightly sunny, 20 degree cold. I am not feeling any prettier or less irritated, but I'm sure all the healthy exercise I get is one reason my HDL is 76, baby. So there is that.
And I'm sure spring will be here in like 3 1/2 months. And I'll be able to wear sandals and a dress in only another 4.
xoxo
state of the nation
First of all, if someone says to you, "Are you ever going to go to the bank for me?" isn't that a.) whining and b.) nagging, and don't you think that simply saying, instead, "Could you please go to the bank for me today?" would be a much more pleasant and effective way to get your ultimate goal accomplished? I mean, unless your ultimate goal is to annoy me in which case, nevermind.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about some stuff. Unfortunately, I missed most of the inauguration hoopla yesterday, having a very hectic day which included work in the morning, an important meeting at my house (and frantic prep before the meeting) in the afternoon, and acupuncture in the evening, and travel between all those venues. But, like everyone else, I've got thoughts. To put in context what I'm going to ultimately get to, I'ma gonna tell you another seemingly pointless anecdote. Here goes!
After D's initial hospitalization, when he was 17-18, and after he had completely washed out on "partial hospitalization", the powers-that-be realized that they weren't gonna get the boy to sit in 6 hours of group therapy 5 days a week and the only way they were gonna make sure he was having an eye kept on him and getting therapized was to send someone to the house. Thus for a period of two or three months they set us up with "family stabilization." In practice, this meant that one afternoon a week a little tag team of two social worker/therapists came to the house. One was a sweet just-out-of-school little thing, I swear to god some kind of Mormon or born-again, fairly glowing with girl-next-door wholesomeness and earnestness. The other was an older, more experienced, very butch lesbian. It was like some kind of cliched buddy cop movie where they put two exact opposites together and somehow it works. In any case, they were both very nice women. They came to our house and spent a couple hours a week playing little games and doing little exercises with us, and it was all very benign and very useless.
But what I remember was one day we played this trivial pursuit sort of game, except the questions were all about you and what you thought and felt. (Do you *see* what I went through for my kid? Am I a good mother or what? And, also? Where do they get these things? There's got to be some kind of website like therapytoysRus.com or something.) D got a question where he had to name someone he admired, and he said P Diddy, and his reason was that he was someone who did a lot of different things (performing, producing, CEO of various businesses) and had made a lot of money with his brains and hard work and ability to order people around and get them to do what he wanted. (The surprising thing to me about that is that D, even before he got sick, was never the kind of person who had, shall we say, a lot of drive, but I guess we do admire people who possess qualities that we do not.)
Okay, so. File that piece of information aside for a moment, and let's talk about an article that was in the Sunday Globe a couple weeks ago. It was talking about people my son's generation and how there in a way was no internal barrier that most of them had to overcome to conceive of a black president. The article's hypothesis (and I think a study it was taken from) was that these young people had spent their formative years watching a media in which there was a black president on "24" and Morgan Freeman played the POTUS in the movies and, hell, Will Smith saved the Earth, if not the universe, in a new movie every year, and subconsciously they absolutely did not look at Obama and think "a president doesn't look like that" or "a leader doesn't look like that" or "a hero doesn't look like that." They looked at him as a candidate they liked (or didn't like!), not first and foremost as the black candidate. (And I'll say, personally, that I noticed that in D before I ever read any commentary about it.) The article posited that this was a double-edged sword: while it's good of course that there's no bias against, the media also influenced these kids to underestimate the amount of bias and prejudice *does* still exist. So, back to my anecdote! It's not just fictional characters influencing this. My son didn't look at P Diddy as "black guy who made good through brains and ambition and leadership ability." He just looked at him as "self-made man." He's got no conception that a black guy shouldn't be a business mogul, that it's anything to be remarked upon.
And I think that really is a generational shift. People my age (or at least me) think, "yeah, it's about time there's a black guy running things" or in the case of Hillary, "it's about time there's a woman in power," but these kids just assume why wouldn't there be? I understand the article's point about the negative, but I can't help but see it as healthy. To just blithely assume that anyone, no matter their race or ethnicity or sex, can reach any position, do any job, they're qualified for *of course*, that's good for this country. That's good for this world. It may be simplistic, but it makes me happy to see that change between my generation and my kid's.
I'd love to write more and tell more anecdotes, but someone's got to get to the bank. That deposit ain't gonna make itself, y'know.
xoxo
Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about some stuff. Unfortunately, I missed most of the inauguration hoopla yesterday, having a very hectic day which included work in the morning, an important meeting at my house (and frantic prep before the meeting) in the afternoon, and acupuncture in the evening, and travel between all those venues. But, like everyone else, I've got thoughts. To put in context what I'm going to ultimately get to, I'ma gonna tell you another seemingly pointless anecdote. Here goes!
After D's initial hospitalization, when he was 17-18, and after he had completely washed out on "partial hospitalization", the powers-that-be realized that they weren't gonna get the boy to sit in 6 hours of group therapy 5 days a week and the only way they were gonna make sure he was having an eye kept on him and getting therapized was to send someone to the house. Thus for a period of two or three months they set us up with "family stabilization." In practice, this meant that one afternoon a week a little tag team of two social worker/therapists came to the house. One was a sweet just-out-of-school little thing, I swear to god some kind of Mormon or born-again, fairly glowing with girl-next-door wholesomeness and earnestness. The other was an older, more experienced, very butch lesbian. It was like some kind of cliched buddy cop movie where they put two exact opposites together and somehow it works. In any case, they were both very nice women. They came to our house and spent a couple hours a week playing little games and doing little exercises with us, and it was all very benign and very useless.
But what I remember was one day we played this trivial pursuit sort of game, except the questions were all about you and what you thought and felt. (Do you *see* what I went through for my kid? Am I a good mother or what? And, also? Where do they get these things? There's got to be some kind of website like therapytoysRus.com or something.) D got a question where he had to name someone he admired, and he said P Diddy, and his reason was that he was someone who did a lot of different things (performing, producing, CEO of various businesses) and had made a lot of money with his brains and hard work and ability to order people around and get them to do what he wanted. (The surprising thing to me about that is that D, even before he got sick, was never the kind of person who had, shall we say, a lot of drive, but I guess we do admire people who possess qualities that we do not.)
Okay, so. File that piece of information aside for a moment, and let's talk about an article that was in the Sunday Globe a couple weeks ago. It was talking about people my son's generation and how there in a way was no internal barrier that most of them had to overcome to conceive of a black president. The article's hypothesis (and I think a study it was taken from) was that these young people had spent their formative years watching a media in which there was a black president on "24" and Morgan Freeman played the POTUS in the movies and, hell, Will Smith saved the Earth, if not the universe, in a new movie every year, and subconsciously they absolutely did not look at Obama and think "a president doesn't look like that" or "a leader doesn't look like that" or "a hero doesn't look like that." They looked at him as a candidate they liked (or didn't like!), not first and foremost as the black candidate. (And I'll say, personally, that I noticed that in D before I ever read any commentary about it.) The article posited that this was a double-edged sword: while it's good of course that there's no bias against, the media also influenced these kids to underestimate the amount of bias and prejudice *does* still exist. So, back to my anecdote! It's not just fictional characters influencing this. My son didn't look at P Diddy as "black guy who made good through brains and ambition and leadership ability." He just looked at him as "self-made man." He's got no conception that a black guy shouldn't be a business mogul, that it's anything to be remarked upon.
And I think that really is a generational shift. People my age (or at least me) think, "yeah, it's about time there's a black guy running things" or in the case of Hillary, "it's about time there's a woman in power," but these kids just assume why wouldn't there be? I understand the article's point about the negative, but I can't help but see it as healthy. To just blithely assume that anyone, no matter their race or ethnicity or sex, can reach any position, do any job, they're qualified for *of course*, that's good for this country. That's good for this world. It may be simplistic, but it makes me happy to see that change between my generation and my kid's.
I'd love to write more and tell more anecdotes, but someone's got to get to the bank. That deposit ain't gonna make itself, y'know.
xoxo
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
speaking of that fat-free bullshit
Can I just say, I got my lab results from Monday's appointment today and my HDL is...wait for it...76!!, my total cholesterol is 197, and my ratio is 2.6, baby. Oh, and my triglycerides are 65. I go through a quart of light cream in a little over a week, use nothing but whole milk, probably eat my body weight in cheese in a year, and had red meat 3 times just this week. In other words, the American Heart Association can suck it. Fat is not bad for you.
Oh, and you'll all be happy to know, my hormone tests do not show that I am teetering on the brink of menopause, so this perimenopausal crap will probably continue on for another five years. Yay! Mood swings!
xoxo
Oh, and you'll all be happy to know, my hormone tests do not show that I am teetering on the brink of menopause, so this perimenopausal crap will probably continue on for another five years. Yay! Mood swings!
xoxo
oh, and another thing
Remember a few months ago I told you I had a Greek salad for lunch that had--though it didn't seem possible--TOO MUCH feta on it?
Well, this morning I decided to try a new product they had over at the caf, namely Starbucks cocoa, and--though it doesn't seem possible--it was TOO CHOCOLATEY. Even making it in the largest size coffee cup they have and cutting it with some milk, it was just too too. I only drank about a third of it and tossed the rest. I am not pleased.
xoxo
Well, this morning I decided to try a new product they had over at the caf, namely Starbucks cocoa, and--though it doesn't seem possible--it was TOO CHOCOLATEY. Even making it in the largest size coffee cup they have and cutting it with some milk, it was just too too. I only drank about a third of it and tossed the rest. I am not pleased.
xoxo
mini-rant
Nope, it's not actually a rant. I'm not even gonna tag it, so there. I just want to express my disgruntlement about the Forbes study of the "most educated small towns in America" being reported all over the media as the "smartest towns." Those two things are not equivalent. At all. End of story.
But, Andrea, you say, you're only defensive about such things because you aren't very educated, yet you like to consider yourself smart. Or, y'know, smaht. Well, you'd be right there. But if I wasn't smart, would I know that? Ahahaha.
Okay. I've got work to do!
xoxo
But, Andrea, you say, you're only defensive about such things because you aren't very educated, yet you like to consider yourself smart. Or, y'know, smaht. Well, you'd be right there. But if I wasn't smart, would I know that? Ahahaha.
Okay. I've got work to do!
xoxo
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
stimulus
I'll be the first person to admit I know nothing about economics and I am constitutionally unable to learn. For example, my ex whatever-he-was-to-me tried patiently for years to explain the stock market to me and my understanding is still, shall we say, vague and clouded. But I do understand some simple, common sense principles, like buying something on sale with a credit card that you carry a balance on and thinking you've gotten a bargain is as stoopid as hitting yourself in the face with a brick. It is with this sad level of understanding that I approach the idea of economic stimulus.
I just read a maddening (to me) internet exchange. It started out as "how are you cutting back in these difficult economic times?" A number of people said they weren't eating out at all anymore. Someone sensibly suggested that this was actually bad for one's local economy, since many, many people depend on their jobs in the restaurant industry. This caused some of the non-restaurant goers to get snippy.
Someone suggested that no one should waste their money on things like mani/pedis in this economy. I thought, but didn't bother to post, that there are a huge number of people who also depend on their jobs in the salon/spa industry. (I'll admit I am conflicted and/or hypocritical on this matter. When I went back to school and became [once again] poor, the first thing I gave up was professional hair coloring and waxing, and I *certainly* don't pay for massages these day when I can get the most awesome ones in trade from M2. But having some friends who make all, or the predominant amount of, their incomes in spas and who are quite worried about possible drop in said incomes, I truly hope not everyone is like me. In fact, I'm almost thinking it's my duty as a patriotic American to go back to the professional hair coloring now that I'm not poor any more.)
Someone brought up that the media was whipping us all up into a frenzy so everyone was afraid to spend money and this was in fact horrible for the economy. Someone else (from Michigan) said they thought that spending money was not an economic stimulus and the only thing that was going to work was creating jobs. To which I thought, jobs doing what? I mean, I understand the public works projects ala the New Deal, but beyond that? Jobs involve making things, selling things, and/or providing services that *other people want, or have, to spend money on.* If no one is buying what you're making, selling, or providing, no jobs. Am I totally wrong here? Isn't that, like, the main principle behind an economy?
And, again, people getting snippy and defensive about not *having* any money to spend on anything. Fine. If you can't pay your bills, or can just barely pay your bills, then no one is suggesting you wrack (rack? help me here) up more credit card debt getting your eyebrows done or going out for Chinese food. But this is what I think. If you do have, say, $40 in disposable income a week, $40 that doesn't need to be spent on bills, and you aren't in debt, the responsible thing to do, for yourself and for your neighbors and country is this: put $15 into your savings and take the other $25 and spend it, preferably on something that's gonna give work to someone in your community, not a factory worker in China. Pizza, microbrews, and pedicures all qualify. As does a chair massage.
I have spoken.
xoxo
I just read a maddening (to me) internet exchange. It started out as "how are you cutting back in these difficult economic times?" A number of people said they weren't eating out at all anymore. Someone sensibly suggested that this was actually bad for one's local economy, since many, many people depend on their jobs in the restaurant industry. This caused some of the non-restaurant goers to get snippy.
Someone suggested that no one should waste their money on things like mani/pedis in this economy. I thought, but didn't bother to post, that there are a huge number of people who also depend on their jobs in the salon/spa industry. (I'll admit I am conflicted and/or hypocritical on this matter. When I went back to school and became [once again] poor, the first thing I gave up was professional hair coloring and waxing, and I *certainly* don't pay for massages these day when I can get the most awesome ones in trade from M2. But having some friends who make all, or the predominant amount of, their incomes in spas and who are quite worried about possible drop in said incomes, I truly hope not everyone is like me. In fact, I'm almost thinking it's my duty as a patriotic American to go back to the professional hair coloring now that I'm not poor any more.)
Someone brought up that the media was whipping us all up into a frenzy so everyone was afraid to spend money and this was in fact horrible for the economy. Someone else (from Michigan) said they thought that spending money was not an economic stimulus and the only thing that was going to work was creating jobs. To which I thought, jobs doing what? I mean, I understand the public works projects ala the New Deal, but beyond that? Jobs involve making things, selling things, and/or providing services that *other people want, or have, to spend money on.* If no one is buying what you're making, selling, or providing, no jobs. Am I totally wrong here? Isn't that, like, the main principle behind an economy?
And, again, people getting snippy and defensive about not *having* any money to spend on anything. Fine. If you can't pay your bills, or can just barely pay your bills, then no one is suggesting you wrack (rack? help me here) up more credit card debt getting your eyebrows done or going out for Chinese food. But this is what I think. If you do have, say, $40 in disposable income a week, $40 that doesn't need to be spent on bills, and you aren't in debt, the responsible thing to do, for yourself and for your neighbors and country is this: put $15 into your savings and take the other $25 and spend it, preferably on something that's gonna give work to someone in your community, not a factory worker in China. Pizza, microbrews, and pedicures all qualify. As does a chair massage.
I have spoken.
xoxo
Monday, January 12, 2009
life is...
just one big non sequitor.
1.) Ad on Rate My Space, for some fly-by-night school teaching home staging:
"Earn up to $31.45 per hour." Because $31.50 is completely out of the question.
2.) Conversation overheard in the cafeteria line earlier this afternoon.
Cashier, quizzically, trying to determine what to charge the customer: "What is that?"
Gastricly-abused hospital employee: "I dunno. I just eat it. I have no idea what you people call it."
3.) My doctor, handing me my "poop kit":
"Make sure you put your name on that. You'd be surprised how many we get back unlabeled!"
4.) Comment on Rate My Space:
"Add an orchid or other such contemporary plant." Because no one ever heard of orchids before 2006. I think they were only invented some time around the turn of the century.
xoxo
1.) Ad on Rate My Space, for some fly-by-night school teaching home staging:
"Earn up to $31.45 per hour." Because $31.50 is completely out of the question.
2.) Conversation overheard in the cafeteria line earlier this afternoon.
Cashier, quizzically, trying to determine what to charge the customer: "What is that?"
Gastricly-abused hospital employee: "I dunno. I just eat it. I have no idea what you people call it."
3.) My doctor, handing me my "poop kit":
"Make sure you put your name on that. You'd be surprised how many we get back unlabeled!"
4.) Comment on Rate My Space:
"Add an orchid or other such contemporary plant." Because no one ever heard of orchids before 2006. I think they were only invented some time around the turn of the century.
xoxo
Sunday, January 11, 2009
epic fail
On some show D likes (Attack of the Show, maybe?) they do an epic fail--imagine a deep voice and echoey sound effects--segment where they run a video clip of someone's, well, epic fail. I have no filmatic evidence of my own, but trust me, today seems like a string of them.
I told you I braved the Shaws yesterday, despite the fact that every other moron on the North Shore was buying spring water and Twinkies in case the four inches of snow we were getting was going to trap them in their homes for a week or three. I bought some chuck for beef stew. I didn't buy carrots or potatoes. Well, I had one sprouting russet at home and absolutely nothing orange other than tangerines. Moron. Not that the stew turned out horrible per se, but it's supposed to have carrots. Also? I was gonna try making it in the crockpot I got for my b-day, that I have used *once* in the past eight weeks. But since I was out shoveling before I actually had coffee today, I didn't get around to starting the stew till after 2 pm, not enough time for slow-cooking. (Yeah, that last sentence makes no logical sense, but just believe me when I tell you that my coffee and my stew had something to do with each other.) So that's a big ol' fail.
Next? I have my physical tomorrow. I haven't had one since...the summer of 2005? Oh, I had a mammogram somewhere around January 2007, and my pap smear last summer, so I have had *some* preventative health care. And besides, my boss, the pediatric neurologist, hasn't had a physical for about five years because "every time you go in there, they find something wrong with you, or wanna do some tests." So I figure I'm ahead of the game. But when I went to the doc's to have my rash looked at in November, apparently my file was flagged all over the place and they did not let me leave without booking. Well, I don't really care, except for having to fast (so that, once again, people are gonna make me do stuff before I've had coffee). But I'm thinking, yeah, I should, y'know, shave and landscape, moisturize, pumice my feet, maybe even take off the remains of the toenail polish that's been on for two months and redo it. Dr B hasn't seen me in a johnny for 3 1/2 years...shouldn't I make an effort? Ahahaha. Well, it's 6:30 pm, I haven't embarked on this SWAT grooming effort yet, and giving myself a pedicure would involve taking off my socks and it's cold. You see where this is going. Fail.
I did get through one of my DVDs. How very sad it is when that's your not-fail, huh?
xoxo
I told you I braved the Shaws yesterday, despite the fact that every other moron on the North Shore was buying spring water and Twinkies in case the four inches of snow we were getting was going to trap them in their homes for a week or three. I bought some chuck for beef stew. I didn't buy carrots or potatoes. Well, I had one sprouting russet at home and absolutely nothing orange other than tangerines. Moron. Not that the stew turned out horrible per se, but it's supposed to have carrots. Also? I was gonna try making it in the crockpot I got for my b-day, that I have used *once* in the past eight weeks. But since I was out shoveling before I actually had coffee today, I didn't get around to starting the stew till after 2 pm, not enough time for slow-cooking. (Yeah, that last sentence makes no logical sense, but just believe me when I tell you that my coffee and my stew had something to do with each other.) So that's a big ol' fail.
Next? I have my physical tomorrow. I haven't had one since...the summer of 2005? Oh, I had a mammogram somewhere around January 2007, and my pap smear last summer, so I have had *some* preventative health care. And besides, my boss, the pediatric neurologist, hasn't had a physical for about five years because "every time you go in there, they find something wrong with you, or wanna do some tests." So I figure I'm ahead of the game. But when I went to the doc's to have my rash looked at in November, apparently my file was flagged all over the place and they did not let me leave without booking. Well, I don't really care, except for having to fast (so that, once again, people are gonna make me do stuff before I've had coffee). But I'm thinking, yeah, I should, y'know, shave and landscape, moisturize, pumice my feet, maybe even take off the remains of the toenail polish that's been on for two months and redo it. Dr B hasn't seen me in a johnny for 3 1/2 years...shouldn't I make an effort? Ahahaha. Well, it's 6:30 pm, I haven't embarked on this SWAT grooming effort yet, and giving myself a pedicure would involve taking off my socks and it's cold. You see where this is going. Fail.
I did get through one of my DVDs. How very sad it is when that's your not-fail, huh?
xoxo
Saturday, January 10, 2009
insert cop-out misc title here
Look how good I'm being, starting the new blogging year out with more posts than there have been days so far. Yes, I know that's counting posts about cats in costumes and organ repossession, but still. Cut me a break.
I just told you all about how I've got actual new books unread and a little pile of three Netflix envelopes and yet tonight, in between baking, I've been reading the interwebs again. As I said to my boss recently, I don't know how anyone could possibly ever be bored anymore, now that they've invented youtube. C'mon now. But, no, I was using my brain in a slightly--okay, very slightly--more taxing manner than looking at funny cat videos requires. (Just slightly, 'cause you know I worked all day, then went grocery shopping with the rest of the mental people who freak out at the s-word and need to buy twelve 2 liters of Coke and a pot roast in case it's the blizzard of '78 all over again. My brain is demanding I put a cool cloth on it.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah. What I Read Tonight.
First, in a customer review of a design book I bought off Amazon--shut up, I will too read that, it'll have lots and lots of pictures, yo--the concept of "no-brow" (as opposed to high- or low-brow) design exemplified by your Ikea, Target, Pottery Barn merchandise, and coined by someone in the New York Times at some point. The principle being, I guess, that today everyone can have stuff in their house that's been designed by actual big name designers and/or very close knockoffs of the same, and you don't even need to try, you just need to go to the mall. Where it's all carefully merchandised for you, so you don't even need to try even less: just buy what they tell you goes together. So even if you have no taste and no sense of style at all, your home won't be a tack-fest. I'm sure the NYT was disapproving of this. Me, well, you know, the parts of my home that are at least semi-redecorated tend to look like a Pottery Barn and a Pier 1 met at an orgy, mated, and produced offspring with birth defects, so I don't mock being able to buy cute stuff at Tarzhay. Well, except for that Audrey Hepburn poster that every teenaged girl in America is required by law to place in her bedroom. Other than that, I'm down with the no-brow.
It's like back in the late 80s, early 90s, before Express turned into a teenage store, I bought 90% of my work clothes and 80% of my non-work clothes there, and so did an awful lot of other young to middle-aged women. This was exemplified by the day that a woman and her mom brought the woman's baby into my office for an appointment, and all three of us, me, the mother, and the grandmother, were wearing the same cotton mock-neck Express shirt, albeit in three different colors. My point being, if you bought something there, it was reasonably priced, not too shoddily made, and at least moderately fashionable and on trend. And you had a perfectly nice, good-looking garment that you were guaranteed to run into someone else you knew wearing. Just like now your neighbors have that same Ikea dining set or Target drapes you do. It's not unique, but does that make it *bad* for the average person? No. Get off your high horse, NYT.
So, what else did I read on the interwebs tonight? An actual article from the NYT (that Mr Indemnity didn't send me, shock! awe!). This one had nothing to do with design at all. It was by a woman who claims to have little to no sex drive and thinks sex is no fun at all and never really has for more than very brief periods of time. (She also has a husband she claims to love dearly, so I would ask you where the fairness in life is, but we've already established there is none. It's a cold, random universe of suckitude.) Anyway, I find this fascinating, at least as fascinating as acupuncture, lolcats, or Rate My Space.
What would my life be like if I'd never found sex any fun at all? I'd probably have won a Nobel Prize by now. Like in physics or biochemistry. Something really impressive, I mean, no wussy-ass Peace prize. The portion of my brain that I now allot to "sunset over the mountain foothills in spring" would have to be reallocated to something else, right?
Oh, who are we kidding? It'd have just been taken over by more cat video.
xoxo
I just told you all about how I've got actual new books unread and a little pile of three Netflix envelopes and yet tonight, in between baking, I've been reading the interwebs again. As I said to my boss recently, I don't know how anyone could possibly ever be bored anymore, now that they've invented youtube. C'mon now. But, no, I was using my brain in a slightly--okay, very slightly--more taxing manner than looking at funny cat videos requires. (Just slightly, 'cause you know I worked all day, then went grocery shopping with the rest of the mental people who freak out at the s-word and need to buy twelve 2 liters of Coke and a pot roast in case it's the blizzard of '78 all over again. My brain is demanding I put a cool cloth on it.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah. What I Read Tonight.
First, in a customer review of a design book I bought off Amazon--shut up, I will too read that, it'll have lots and lots of pictures, yo--the concept of "no-brow" (as opposed to high- or low-brow) design exemplified by your Ikea, Target, Pottery Barn merchandise, and coined by someone in the New York Times at some point. The principle being, I guess, that today everyone can have stuff in their house that's been designed by actual big name designers and/or very close knockoffs of the same, and you don't even need to try, you just need to go to the mall. Where it's all carefully merchandised for you, so you don't even need to try even less: just buy what they tell you goes together. So even if you have no taste and no sense of style at all, your home won't be a tack-fest. I'm sure the NYT was disapproving of this. Me, well, you know, the parts of my home that are at least semi-redecorated tend to look like a Pottery Barn and a Pier 1 met at an orgy, mated, and produced offspring with birth defects, so I don't mock being able to buy cute stuff at Tarzhay. Well, except for that Audrey Hepburn poster that every teenaged girl in America is required by law to place in her bedroom. Other than that, I'm down with the no-brow.
It's like back in the late 80s, early 90s, before Express turned into a teenage store, I bought 90% of my work clothes and 80% of my non-work clothes there, and so did an awful lot of other young to middle-aged women. This was exemplified by the day that a woman and her mom brought the woman's baby into my office for an appointment, and all three of us, me, the mother, and the grandmother, were wearing the same cotton mock-neck Express shirt, albeit in three different colors. My point being, if you bought something there, it was reasonably priced, not too shoddily made, and at least moderately fashionable and on trend. And you had a perfectly nice, good-looking garment that you were guaranteed to run into someone else you knew wearing. Just like now your neighbors have that same Ikea dining set or Target drapes you do. It's not unique, but does that make it *bad* for the average person? No. Get off your high horse, NYT.
So, what else did I read on the interwebs tonight? An actual article from the NYT (that Mr Indemnity didn't send me, shock! awe!). This one had nothing to do with design at all. It was by a woman who claims to have little to no sex drive and thinks sex is no fun at all and never really has for more than very brief periods of time. (She also has a husband she claims to love dearly, so I would ask you where the fairness in life is, but we've already established there is none. It's a cold, random universe of suckitude.) Anyway, I find this fascinating, at least as fascinating as acupuncture, lolcats, or Rate My Space.
What would my life be like if I'd never found sex any fun at all? I'd probably have won a Nobel Prize by now. Like in physics or biochemistry. Something really impressive, I mean, no wussy-ass Peace prize. The portion of my brain that I now allot to "sunset over the mountain foothills in spring" would have to be reallocated to something else, right?
Oh, who are we kidding? It'd have just been taken over by more cat video.
xoxo
Friday, January 9, 2009
because apparently I was asleep in 2007 and missed this
Please click the link (even though I warned you about that kind of behavior!) and see all the pictures, but, for now, a preview:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/animal-abuse/japans-hello-kitty-cat-humiliation-system-282872.php
more marital advice!
None of which includes "don't donate organs you'll want back later," btw.
So, yeah. I'm clicking on links again. I keep telling you people this is always a mistake, yet I insist on repeating the behavior. Monkeys with electrodes on their shaved little heads learn quicker than I. Today's web article is thirteen ways to keep your husband happy. The author's claim to fame is that she's an etiquette expert. That probably qualifies her to tell me which fork to use for the fish course, but I'm not sure it makes her more in tune with pleasing a man than me. (Shut up.) Anyway, let's review her advice, shall we?
Number one--and let me interrupt myself immediately to laugh hysterically about how randomly these tips are arranged--number one: clean your hair out of the shower. Okay. First of all, I did not realize that hair in the shower drain was a pressing problem in most marriages. I have never heard anyone of my acquaintance who has even had one single argument about this. Maybe it's one of those deeply personal problems that people hide from their friends. I dunno. Secondly? Is there anyone alive, with long hair, and over the age of ten, who doesn't know to clean their own hair out of the tub when they're done? I compulsively do it in hotel rooms, for god's sake, because I don't want to squick the chambermaid.
Number two: be understanding of his work schedule. I can't really make fun of this one, except to point out that see what I mean? It seems to be of a whole nother seriousness level than tip number one.
Number three, and I quote: let him play with his friends. I'm not sure who should be more insulted by this one, the man who is being infantalized into someone who needs permission from mommy to "play" with his friends, or the woman who apparently needs to be told it's okay if her husband spends time with people other than her, because obviously all women are clingy neurotic harpies.
Number four: don't let yourself go. The author takes pains to inform us that doesn't mean you need to stay thin or keep your hair long. But apparently you're supposed to keep showering, no longer how long you've been married. Just remember, though. Clean your damn hair out of the drain when you are through.
Number five: buy your own razor. I have no words.
Number six: compliment him, generously and often. Good advice. But we'll come back to it at the end.
Number seven: don't hide the credit card bills. I'd love to be able to say WTF?, if I didn't actually hear women I know talking about how they lie to their husbands about how much something costs or that they've bought something. So I guess some people *are* living 2009 like it's a bad episode of I Love Lucy. Dear god.
Number eight: practice random acts of kindness towards your husband. Also good advice. We'll come back to this as well.
Number nine: don't talk bad about his parents or siblings. Can't really make fun of this either.
Number ten: treat him like you did when you first started dating. The author specifies that that means you should say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me." Really? I thought it meant waxing places you'd really rather not and wearing your good underwear. But then, I'm pretty polite in general.
Number eleven: continue to hide your bodily functions from him. Oh, please. If you're too squeamish to even blow your nose in front of your own spouse, whole other realms of experience are closed to you. And what's gonna happen if you have a baby and your husband wants to be in the delivery room? He's in for quite the shock if he's never even seen you floss, never mind pee.
Number twelve: go on a date with him and do something he likes. The author specifies that perhaps you should go to an action movie instead of a chick flick and that you should have a couple glasses of wine beforehand to make the chase scenes bearable. Oh, the sexism, it burns. Where is this world where *no* women like, y'know, sports or video games or Home Depot (heh) and *no* men like musicals or wine tastings or the mall? And where is this world where people marry other people with whom they have no freaking common interests? Sigh.
And lucky number thirteen: never go to bed angry. The author specifies this is because if your husband can't cuddle you, he won't be able to sleep, and he'll be cranky the next day. Ooookay. How about not going to bed angry so your resentments don't fester and create even more problems? Oh, I guess that's not important. Silly me.
Then, to go back to the two pieces of advice in this pile of nonsense that actually might have some actual merit? Roundly ripped apart by the readers in comment! Apparently you shouldn't have to show appreciation to your husband and you shouldn't do nice things for him because that'll, I dunno, spoil him or something. Bitterness is not just for the already divorced people, I guess.
Salut!
xoxo
So, yeah. I'm clicking on links again. I keep telling you people this is always a mistake, yet I insist on repeating the behavior. Monkeys with electrodes on their shaved little heads learn quicker than I. Today's web article is thirteen ways to keep your husband happy. The author's claim to fame is that she's an etiquette expert. That probably qualifies her to tell me which fork to use for the fish course, but I'm not sure it makes her more in tune with pleasing a man than me. (Shut up.) Anyway, let's review her advice, shall we?
Number one--and let me interrupt myself immediately to laugh hysterically about how randomly these tips are arranged--number one: clean your hair out of the shower. Okay. First of all, I did not realize that hair in the shower drain was a pressing problem in most marriages. I have never heard anyone of my acquaintance who has even had one single argument about this. Maybe it's one of those deeply personal problems that people hide from their friends. I dunno. Secondly? Is there anyone alive, with long hair, and over the age of ten, who doesn't know to clean their own hair out of the tub when they're done? I compulsively do it in hotel rooms, for god's sake, because I don't want to squick the chambermaid.
Number two: be understanding of his work schedule. I can't really make fun of this one, except to point out that see what I mean? It seems to be of a whole nother seriousness level than tip number one.
Number three, and I quote: let him play with his friends. I'm not sure who should be more insulted by this one, the man who is being infantalized into someone who needs permission from mommy to "play" with his friends, or the woman who apparently needs to be told it's okay if her husband spends time with people other than her, because obviously all women are clingy neurotic harpies.
Number four: don't let yourself go. The author takes pains to inform us that doesn't mean you need to stay thin or keep your hair long. But apparently you're supposed to keep showering, no longer how long you've been married. Just remember, though. Clean your damn hair out of the drain when you are through.
Number five: buy your own razor. I have no words.
Number six: compliment him, generously and often. Good advice. But we'll come back to it at the end.
Number seven: don't hide the credit card bills. I'd love to be able to say WTF?, if I didn't actually hear women I know talking about how they lie to their husbands about how much something costs or that they've bought something. So I guess some people *are* living 2009 like it's a bad episode of I Love Lucy. Dear god.
Number eight: practice random acts of kindness towards your husband. Also good advice. We'll come back to this as well.
Number nine: don't talk bad about his parents or siblings. Can't really make fun of this either.
Number ten: treat him like you did when you first started dating. The author specifies that that means you should say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me." Really? I thought it meant waxing places you'd really rather not and wearing your good underwear. But then, I'm pretty polite in general.
Number eleven: continue to hide your bodily functions from him. Oh, please. If you're too squeamish to even blow your nose in front of your own spouse, whole other realms of experience are closed to you. And what's gonna happen if you have a baby and your husband wants to be in the delivery room? He's in for quite the shock if he's never even seen you floss, never mind pee.
Number twelve: go on a date with him and do something he likes. The author specifies that perhaps you should go to an action movie instead of a chick flick and that you should have a couple glasses of wine beforehand to make the chase scenes bearable. Oh, the sexism, it burns. Where is this world where *no* women like, y'know, sports or video games or Home Depot (heh) and *no* men like musicals or wine tastings or the mall? And where is this world where people marry other people with whom they have no freaking common interests? Sigh.
And lucky number thirteen: never go to bed angry. The author specifies this is because if your husband can't cuddle you, he won't be able to sleep, and he'll be cranky the next day. Ooookay. How about not going to bed angry so your resentments don't fester and create even more problems? Oh, I guess that's not important. Silly me.
Then, to go back to the two pieces of advice in this pile of nonsense that actually might have some actual merit? Roundly ripped apart by the readers in comment! Apparently you shouldn't have to show appreciation to your husband and you shouldn't do nice things for him because that'll, I dunno, spoil him or something. Bitterness is not just for the already divorced people, I guess.
Salut!
xoxo
catching up on the reviews
1.) Slumdog Millionaire. Saw this in the theater last weekend and quite enjoyed it. I will agree it had very conventional storytelling, but that's as it should be, because it's a fairytale, or if you prefer, a myth (of the Joseph Campbell variety). There's a reason people have been telling that kind of story for a few millennium: they're deeply satisfying.
2.) Movies I've rented recently that everyone else saw years ago, but I never had: The Full Monty, I [heart] Huckabees, Splendor in the Grass. I loved The Full Monty, which I guess is to be expected considering how much Britcom I enjoy. There's something about how England is almost, but not quite, America that fascinates me: the little subtle differences in how people live there compared to here, I mean. I enjoyed Huckabees for its weirdness, but I have a question. Was Jude Law specifically and purposefully fake-tanned orange in that movie for his character, or was that supposed to look good? I'm thinking the former. Also, Lily Tomlin's skin looked awesome in that movie, all glowy and fresh for a woman her age. I'm thinking in a few short years I'm hiring someone to follow me around and light me correctly so I can look like that. Finally, Splendor. Is it just me or in that scene where Bud is confessing his torment to his MD, how he doesn't trust himself to date Deanie anymore because all he can think about is having sex with her and they can't, and how his father has counseled him to find himself a slut and he doesn't want to, and how he can't sleep or eat or whatever because of his hormonal upheaval--is it just me who's yelling at the TV, "just tell the poor kid it's okay to jerk off, will ya?!!?" Okay, just me then. But I'm still thinking that whole starcrossed love thing and the girl ending up in the sanitarium could have been avoided with the right medical advice. Geez.
3.) A couple books about gynecology. Okay, I won't review them. But can I just say about "Could It Be... Perimenopause?" that the pulp style cover with the distraught and shocked looking comic book woman is a work of genius. Too, too funny. Edited to add: See?
I have a bunch of books various people gave me for Christmas as well as one or two I bought before Christmas myself that I swear I will get to soon, and more stuff from Netflix to get to as well. Stay tuned.
xoxo
2.) Movies I've rented recently that everyone else saw years ago, but I never had: The Full Monty, I [heart] Huckabees, Splendor in the Grass. I loved The Full Monty, which I guess is to be expected considering how much Britcom I enjoy. There's something about how England is almost, but not quite, America that fascinates me: the little subtle differences in how people live there compared to here, I mean. I enjoyed Huckabees for its weirdness, but I have a question. Was Jude Law specifically and purposefully fake-tanned orange in that movie for his character, or was that supposed to look good? I'm thinking the former. Also, Lily Tomlin's skin looked awesome in that movie, all glowy and fresh for a woman her age. I'm thinking in a few short years I'm hiring someone to follow me around and light me correctly so I can look like that. Finally, Splendor. Is it just me or in that scene where Bud is confessing his torment to his MD, how he doesn't trust himself to date Deanie anymore because all he can think about is having sex with her and they can't, and how his father has counseled him to find himself a slut and he doesn't want to, and how he can't sleep or eat or whatever because of his hormonal upheaval--is it just me who's yelling at the TV, "just tell the poor kid it's okay to jerk off, will ya?!!?" Okay, just me then. But I'm still thinking that whole starcrossed love thing and the girl ending up in the sanitarium could have been avoided with the right medical advice. Geez.
3.) A couple books about gynecology. Okay, I won't review them. But can I just say about "Could It Be... Perimenopause?" that the pulp style cover with the distraught and shocked looking comic book woman is a work of genius. Too, too funny. Edited to add: See?
I have a bunch of books various people gave me for Christmas as well as one or two I bought before Christmas myself that I swear I will get to soon, and more stuff from Netflix to get to as well. Stay tuned.
xoxo
Thursday, January 8, 2009
more thoughts on organ donation
The more I ponder it, the more it occurs to me that giving your spouse a kidney is the ultimate marital bargaining chip.
"Why do I always have to be the one to do the dishes?"
"God. I gave you my kidney, what more do you want from me?"
"I'm not really in the mood tonight, honey."
"I wasn't really in the mood to undergo major surgery and give up one of my vital organs, but I did it, didn't I?"
"Do we *have* to invite your mom for a whole two weeks at Christmas?"
"If it weren't for my sainted mother giving birth to me, I do believe you'd be on dialysis right now. Think about that."
I mean, it probably wouldn't win you every argument, but you'd never be without a comeback line.
xoxo
"Why do I always have to be the one to do the dishes?"
"God. I gave you my kidney, what more do you want from me?"
"I'm not really in the mood tonight, honey."
"I wasn't really in the mood to undergo major surgery and give up one of my vital organs, but I did it, didn't I?"
"Do we *have* to invite your mom for a whole two weeks at Christmas?"
"If it weren't for my sainted mother giving birth to me, I do believe you'd be on dialysis right now. Think about that."
I mean, it probably wouldn't win you every argument, but you'd never be without a comeback line.
xoxo
from the "people behaving badly" files
Did you see this little news item? A doctor from Long Island, enmeshed in a messy divorce, is demanding recompense for the kidney he gave his wife back in 2001. Since he doesn't actually expect the organ *back*, he wants $1.5 million instead.
If I were his ex, I'd buy a kidney on the black market for 75 thou (kidnap victims in Mexico are cheap, yo) and have it delivered to his house in a cooler. Kinda like how UPS brought me my Christmas meat!
No, you know the sad thing here? They've got three children, 8, 11, and 14. Do you think those kids aren't gonna have issues from dad suing mom for donated body parts?
Jesus wept.
xoxo
If I were his ex, I'd buy a kidney on the black market for 75 thou (kidnap victims in Mexico are cheap, yo) and have it delivered to his house in a cooler. Kinda like how UPS brought me my Christmas meat!
No, you know the sad thing here? They've got three children, 8, 11, and 14. Do you think those kids aren't gonna have issues from dad suing mom for donated body parts?
Jesus wept.
xoxo
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
the plum blossom
If it's Tuesday, it must be acupuncture! Because Marcy has done so well with moderating, if not curing, my crazee, today we worked on a couple of my less pressing problems: trying to get my (look away, male readers) menstrual cycle back on track, (resume reading, dudes) and working on my right ankle that I sprained crossing Comm Ave a few months ago which is still stiff and sometimes swollen.
We did the regular part of our session where Marcy puts the needles in and then goes away for a bit, leaving me to relax with the heat lamp on my feet and the massage therapy music on the CD player. I was kind of dozing in and out, and then I felt a whoosh, and my whole body, especially my arms and legs, felt very very heavy, like I had a whole bunch of covers over me weighing me down. It was really cool. I never had that happen before. I'm sure my chi was doing something interesting.
Then Marcy came back, took the needles out, and showed me the thing she wanted to try on my ankle: the plum blossom. Okay. Picture a very small circular mallet with little spikes on the inside of it.
No, wait, don't picture that. I'm describing it very badly. I found it online. Voila! Or, y'know, wallah! Whichever you prefer.
We did the regular part of our session where Marcy puts the needles in and then goes away for a bit, leaving me to relax with the heat lamp on my feet and the massage therapy music on the CD player. I was kind of dozing in and out, and then I felt a whoosh, and my whole body, especially my arms and legs, felt very very heavy, like I had a whole bunch of covers over me weighing me down. It was really cool. I never had that happen before. I'm sure my chi was doing something interesting.
Then Marcy came back, took the needles out, and showed me the thing she wanted to try on my ankle: the plum blossom. Okay. Picture a very small circular mallet with little spikes on the inside of it.
No, wait, don't picture that. I'm describing it very badly. I found it online. Voila! Or, y'know, wallah! Whichever you prefer.
So Marcy told me that basically she was going to meat-tenderize my bad ankle with this device, the principle being to get blood flow going into the tissue, especially the ligaments which, as you know, are pretty nonvascular tissue, thus the long healing time for ligament or tendon injuries. Okay, so basically this plum blossom stuff is the Chinese medicine equivalent of cross fiber friction in therapeutic massage or tissue stripping in MFR. Kinda ouchy but it gets the blood flowing into where you want it. She told me it might hurt and it might bleed. I wouldn't say it hurt hurt: it felt very similar to getting a tattoo, just the weird feeling of being pricked repeatedly. But it did break the skin a tiny bit.
We'll see if it actually does anything beneficial for my ankle, but it was just kind of awesomely fascinating. (I asked Marcy if anyone ever kicked her when she was doing it, and she said yes!)
xoxo
Monday, January 5, 2009
and in happier news...
A new year, a new Possibly Irish Danny sighting!
D had a doctor's appointment this morning, from which we took the Prison Bus home. And who should be waiting to board with us at the depot but our boy! I can only wish I had been privy to this entire cell conversation, because it was a good one. Something about some blond girl who offered him a ride in her car, then wanted him to go back to her place. Then something about her giving him something, or putting something in his pocket (it was unclear), and telling him not to look at it until he was out of her car. And it was a $20 bill. Excuse me, what? Did this hussy have our boy confused with a man-whore? I personally did not have him pegged as anyone's idea of a gigolo, but hey. Kids these days. I dunno.
One thing I do know. This--this--is the kind of behavior that can only lead to swabbing. Don't accept rides from sketchy women, Possibly Irish Danny. Just say no. You'll thank me in the end.
xoxo
D had a doctor's appointment this morning, from which we took the Prison Bus home. And who should be waiting to board with us at the depot but our boy! I can only wish I had been privy to this entire cell conversation, because it was a good one. Something about some blond girl who offered him a ride in her car, then wanted him to go back to her place. Then something about her giving him something, or putting something in his pocket (it was unclear), and telling him not to look at it until he was out of her car. And it was a $20 bill. Excuse me, what? Did this hussy have our boy confused with a man-whore? I personally did not have him pegged as anyone's idea of a gigolo, but hey. Kids these days. I dunno.
One thing I do know. This--this--is the kind of behavior that can only lead to swabbing. Don't accept rides from sketchy women, Possibly Irish Danny. Just say no. You'll thank me in the end.
xoxo
bad news
I was all set to write about something else, but then I just got a really upsetting phone call. So I need to rant.
D's fabulous, fabulous case manager, (Cougar) L called to let us know that, because of state budget cuts, she and 7 or 8 other caseworkers in her office have lost their jobs. Plus 8 in the Wakefield office, 9 in Lawrence...and those are only the ones she's connected to. You can imagine it's the same all across the state. I was like, "but how can they get rid of their best employee?" And I had L almost crying as I told her how much I appreciate everything she's ever done for us and how I know D would have ended up back in the hospital had she not been the one to set up all his services and advocate for him.
And she said how proud she is of him and what a good kid he is and how happy she is that he has me. She started almost crying again as she described some of her clients who have *nobody*, no one to help them but her, and how she's afraid this wave of cutbacks is going to lead to deaths. And it will. Deaths, more people living on the streets, more people ending up in prison when their crime is being schizophrenic or bipolar. Nobody cares. Nobody fucking cares about poor, chronically mentally ill people. You don't see any telethons, or fucking [insert a color here] bracelets or ribbons, or celebrities begging for your money to cure psychotic disorders. It's not a cute disease and nobody likes to think about the fact that someone in their family might end up like that smelly guy eating out of the trash and talking to the voices in his head.
I'm so bitter.
Please, you all. Write to our new president and ask him to remember some of our most vulnerable citizens in these hard times. Please. For me.
xoxo
D's fabulous, fabulous case manager, (Cougar) L called to let us know that, because of state budget cuts, she and 7 or 8 other caseworkers in her office have lost their jobs. Plus 8 in the Wakefield office, 9 in Lawrence...and those are only the ones she's connected to. You can imagine it's the same all across the state. I was like, "but how can they get rid of their best employee?" And I had L almost crying as I told her how much I appreciate everything she's ever done for us and how I know D would have ended up back in the hospital had she not been the one to set up all his services and advocate for him.
And she said how proud she is of him and what a good kid he is and how happy she is that he has me. She started almost crying again as she described some of her clients who have *nobody*, no one to help them but her, and how she's afraid this wave of cutbacks is going to lead to deaths. And it will. Deaths, more people living on the streets, more people ending up in prison when their crime is being schizophrenic or bipolar. Nobody cares. Nobody fucking cares about poor, chronically mentally ill people. You don't see any telethons, or fucking [insert a color here] bracelets or ribbons, or celebrities begging for your money to cure psychotic disorders. It's not a cute disease and nobody likes to think about the fact that someone in their family might end up like that smelly guy eating out of the trash and talking to the voices in his head.
I'm so bitter.
Please, you all. Write to our new president and ask him to remember some of our most vulnerable citizens in these hard times. Please. For me.
xoxo
Sunday, January 4, 2009
unwise decisions
Have you ever made one?
Nah, I'm not talking about the neglect to measure the doorway and then they can't get your new sofa through level unwise decision, nor the take the rent money to Foxwoods level unwise decision, and definitely not the take back your ex who is certain to once again step on your heart with metaphorical steel-toed boots because no one understaaaannnndds you like they do (or because they have a big penis or a fabulous rack or [insert gender appropriate body part of your choice]) level of unwise decision. No. I'm talking about staying up till 2 am watching Good Will Hunting with your spawn, despite the fact that a.) you know you have to get up fairly early the next day and b.) you've seen that movie several times already and c.) you hate Robin Williams with the burning hatred of a thousand suns, except when he's the genie's voice in Aladdin and d.) it's on basic cable so all the swear words are dubbed with ridiculous euphemisms and every 6 minutes there are 5 minutes of commercials. That level of stoopid decision.
I'm hoping my coffee kicks in soon. The next time I feel this groggy at 9 am on a Sunday morning, I want it to be because I stayed up too late drinking champagne or having carnal knowledge of a handsome gentleman. Preferably both.
As I always say, happy Sunday, lovely blog readers!
xoxo
Nah, I'm not talking about the neglect to measure the doorway and then they can't get your new sofa through level unwise decision, nor the take the rent money to Foxwoods level unwise decision, and definitely not the take back your ex who is certain to once again step on your heart with metaphorical steel-toed boots because no one understaaaannnndds you like they do (or because they have a big penis or a fabulous rack or [insert gender appropriate body part of your choice]) level of unwise decision. No. I'm talking about staying up till 2 am watching Good Will Hunting with your spawn, despite the fact that a.) you know you have to get up fairly early the next day and b.) you've seen that movie several times already and c.) you hate Robin Williams with the burning hatred of a thousand suns, except when he's the genie's voice in Aladdin and d.) it's on basic cable so all the swear words are dubbed with ridiculous euphemisms and every 6 minutes there are 5 minutes of commercials. That level of stoopid decision.
I'm hoping my coffee kicks in soon. The next time I feel this groggy at 9 am on a Sunday morning, I want it to be because I stayed up too late drinking champagne or having carnal knowledge of a handsome gentleman. Preferably both.
As I always say, happy Sunday, lovely blog readers!
xoxo
Saturday, January 3, 2009
and get off my lawn, you damn kids!
I had another one of those interesting generational gap conversations the other day. I visited the lovely and charming L and her handsome and charming man S over New Year's. Now, to give you the context of this conversation, you need to know that this fall, S was invited to play in a (and excuse me if I get the terminology wrong here) senior's baseball tournament in Arizona.
As an aside (I know! there's always an aside), L tells me about these accomplishments of S's and I think I get way more excited about them than she does. S pitches in a tournament in Arizona because Bill Lee has to drop out! S's regular baseball team that he plays with every summer wins the state championship for their division! A story S published before L knew him won a freakin' Pushcart Prize. I am apparently so much more incredibly impressed by these things than L is, it kind of cracks me up. I'm not sure if it's just because things like baseball and writing are so much more important to me than they are to L (we all know how I feel about baseball and writing, right, kids?) or if it's because L, bless her, is just so completely not a competitive person, that *winning* doesn't give her the same sense of thrill it does me. Not to suggest that she isn't proud of him, just that winning doesn't seem to dazzle her as it does me.
Anyway. As you can see, S is a man of many and varied talents--you should see him grab a check!--but he is also very kind and generous (you should see him grab a check!) and he *very* nicely volunteered to take me to Riverside on my way home the other night, to cut a leg off my journey. And in the car, our conversation turned to tech gadgets. Specifically, at first, GPS, because while S is a man of many talents (writing, pitching, getting the bill before anyone else can), he doesn't have a stellar sense of direction, and L had been a wee bit concerned that he'd drop me at Riverside and not be able to find his way home. But to get to the point here, then we started talking about iPods.
S said that when he was out playing in Arizona, the majority of the guys he was playing with were mid-30s. S is in his early 50s, so these guys were, he considered, a generation younger than he. And what astounded him was that a huge number of them were out on the field with their earbuds in, playing their own little soundtrack to the game, and it didn't distract them. They still were totally focused on where the ball was in play, etc. S said he's not capable of that sort of multitasking, and frankly, he doesn't want to be.
I dunno. I am capable of a certain amount multitasking, but yeah, I do think there's a generational difference there. I'd love to see some PET scans on this.
xoxo
As an aside (I know! there's always an aside), L tells me about these accomplishments of S's and I think I get way more excited about them than she does. S pitches in a tournament in Arizona because Bill Lee has to drop out! S's regular baseball team that he plays with every summer wins the state championship for their division! A story S published before L knew him won a freakin' Pushcart Prize. I am apparently so much more incredibly impressed by these things than L is, it kind of cracks me up. I'm not sure if it's just because things like baseball and writing are so much more important to me than they are to L (we all know how I feel about baseball and writing, right, kids?) or if it's because L, bless her, is just so completely not a competitive person, that *winning* doesn't give her the same sense of thrill it does me. Not to suggest that she isn't proud of him, just that winning doesn't seem to dazzle her as it does me.
Anyway. As you can see, S is a man of many and varied talents--you should see him grab a check!--but he is also very kind and generous (you should see him grab a check!) and he *very* nicely volunteered to take me to Riverside on my way home the other night, to cut a leg off my journey. And in the car, our conversation turned to tech gadgets. Specifically, at first, GPS, because while S is a man of many talents (writing, pitching, getting the bill before anyone else can), he doesn't have a stellar sense of direction, and L had been a wee bit concerned that he'd drop me at Riverside and not be able to find his way home. But to get to the point here, then we started talking about iPods.
S said that when he was out playing in Arizona, the majority of the guys he was playing with were mid-30s. S is in his early 50s, so these guys were, he considered, a generation younger than he. And what astounded him was that a huge number of them were out on the field with their earbuds in, playing their own little soundtrack to the game, and it didn't distract them. They still were totally focused on where the ball was in play, etc. S said he's not capable of that sort of multitasking, and frankly, he doesn't want to be.
I dunno. I am capable of a certain amount multitasking, but yeah, I do think there's a generational difference there. I'd love to see some PET scans on this.
xoxo
Friday, January 2, 2009
where'd the po' people go?
Hey, kids! How's 2009 treating you so far?
I have a question to start the new year. I don't intentionally watch much TV these days. I watch some HGTV, I watch whatever MTV or VH1 crap or cable news that D's watching when I happen to be in the same room (ditto for whatever game show or sitcom my dad's watching), and I watch the good cable drama series on DVD. And, of course, I watch baseball. That's pretty much it. But because I read EW, and I read the newspaper, and I occasionally read TWoP, I think I have some at least vague knowledge of what's being shown on the television these days.
So it occurred to me today that I don't think there are, at this point, any TV shows about poor or lower middle class people. This is different. When I was a kid, many of your most popular TV comedies were about poor people. Sanford and Son, Good Times, All in the Family...in the 70s, there were all kinds of people without money, living in crappy houses and apartments, all over the TV. They balanced out all the shows about the upper middle class or rich people. Then maybe they sort of went away in the early-mid 80s, the Dallas, Dynasty, Cosby show, Miami Vice years, and then we had Roseanne and Married With Children as sort of a backlash. "Don't forget not everyone has a beautiful house and designer clothes" slap upside the head, kinda.
[As an aside, there were poor people on TV even before the 70s, right? Look at the Honeymooners. I boggle at that show when I see it these days. That apartment they lived in is jaw-droppingly horrible, yet it was totally unremarked upon in the show. Of course, what strains my suspension of disbelief is that Alice and Trixie don't have jobs, because in the sociocultural milieu I grew up in, they'd have been working in a factory or waitressing or cleaning, gladly, so their families could have at least *slightly* better things than what they had. Though--and here we're back on the reminiscence train, alas--I had one little friend when I was in early elementary school whose family's apartment was Honeymooners level bad, dark, furnished with found-in-the-trash level sofas and TV-tray tables, and smelling of dirty ashtrays and the hotdogs, mac n' cheese, and Zarex those kids lived on. And her dad, though a drinker (like mine!), was gainfully employed (like mine!), as was her mom (like mine!)--she was a lunch lady at our school--so looking back I don't see why her family was so much poorer than we were. I guess I should subpoena their tax returns from 1971, ahahaha, so I can figure this out.]
Anyway! Back to our thread. So, I'm thinking, and I can't think of any shows for the past fifteen years or so where there are poor or lower middle class people as main characters without it being *the point* of the show. I mean, something like The Wire, the point of that show is, "look here, there's this underclass of people in the American inner city who are as varied as the comfortably middle class you-n-I are, but who don't have the chances you and I have", not in a preachy way, but it is part of the point of the drama. You aren't going to have a comedy today where the characters live in a building that looks like it should be condemned or where they're one or two paychecks away from eviction or foreclosure. Everyone on TV lives in The Hills, has a rich brother they can move in with when divorce impoverishes them, or is a doctor/lawyer/improbably well-paid coffee shop waitress.
Why is this? Is it gonna change now that so many more people *are* one paycheck away from eviction or foreclosure, or are we going to cling even more to a fantasy TV world where everyone has nice cars, beautiful houses, and expensive clothes? Where'd the poor people go and are they gonna stay away?
xoxo
I have a question to start the new year. I don't intentionally watch much TV these days. I watch some HGTV, I watch whatever MTV or VH1 crap or cable news that D's watching when I happen to be in the same room (ditto for whatever game show or sitcom my dad's watching), and I watch the good cable drama series on DVD. And, of course, I watch baseball. That's pretty much it. But because I read EW, and I read the newspaper, and I occasionally read TWoP, I think I have some at least vague knowledge of what's being shown on the television these days.
So it occurred to me today that I don't think there are, at this point, any TV shows about poor or lower middle class people. This is different. When I was a kid, many of your most popular TV comedies were about poor people. Sanford and Son, Good Times, All in the Family...in the 70s, there were all kinds of people without money, living in crappy houses and apartments, all over the TV. They balanced out all the shows about the upper middle class or rich people. Then maybe they sort of went away in the early-mid 80s, the Dallas, Dynasty, Cosby show, Miami Vice years, and then we had Roseanne and Married With Children as sort of a backlash. "Don't forget not everyone has a beautiful house and designer clothes" slap upside the head, kinda.
[As an aside, there were poor people on TV even before the 70s, right? Look at the Honeymooners. I boggle at that show when I see it these days. That apartment they lived in is jaw-droppingly horrible, yet it was totally unremarked upon in the show. Of course, what strains my suspension of disbelief is that Alice and Trixie don't have jobs, because in the sociocultural milieu I grew up in, they'd have been working in a factory or waitressing or cleaning, gladly, so their families could have at least *slightly* better things than what they had. Though--and here we're back on the reminiscence train, alas--I had one little friend when I was in early elementary school whose family's apartment was Honeymooners level bad, dark, furnished with found-in-the-trash level sofas and TV-tray tables, and smelling of dirty ashtrays and the hotdogs, mac n' cheese, and Zarex those kids lived on. And her dad, though a drinker (like mine!), was gainfully employed (like mine!), as was her mom (like mine!)--she was a lunch lady at our school--so looking back I don't see why her family was so much poorer than we were. I guess I should subpoena their tax returns from 1971, ahahaha, so I can figure this out.]
Anyway! Back to our thread. So, I'm thinking, and I can't think of any shows for the past fifteen years or so where there are poor or lower middle class people as main characters without it being *the point* of the show. I mean, something like The Wire, the point of that show is, "look here, there's this underclass of people in the American inner city who are as varied as the comfortably middle class you-n-I are, but who don't have the chances you and I have", not in a preachy way, but it is part of the point of the drama. You aren't going to have a comedy today where the characters live in a building that looks like it should be condemned or where they're one or two paychecks away from eviction or foreclosure. Everyone on TV lives in The Hills, has a rich brother they can move in with when divorce impoverishes them, or is a doctor/lawyer/improbably well-paid coffee shop waitress.
Why is this? Is it gonna change now that so many more people *are* one paycheck away from eviction or foreclosure, or are we going to cling even more to a fantasy TV world where everyone has nice cars, beautiful houses, and expensive clothes? Where'd the poor people go and are they gonna stay away?
xoxo
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