2654 Love at first sight?

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Me: To define a career goal is to define your limits.

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When I was younger, I was often asked if I believed in love at first sight. It seemed to be one of those topics that turned up a lot. Either nobody wonders about it any more, or my social circles have changed away from those concerns.

Or maybe everybody else has given up and is afraid to think about it. I don't know.

Oddly, I still want to explore the topic.

I don't believe in love at first sight, but only because of the word "love". Real love grows with time and understanding. I absolutely do believe in a strong reciprocal instant attraction, a "click", a magnetism, a chemical reaction, a lightning bolt. A sudden infatuation. In my experience, it's been a powerful indicator that there's the possibility of something lasting there. It really is at first sight, before even meeting or speaking.

It's when you look up and see someone, and maybe your eyes meet, and you both know instantly that there's some kind of soul connection.

It has happened to me several times, and although some of them didn't work out, most did, and the connection was real. What's really funny is that in most cases, the guy wasn't "my type".

The first: John. I had transferred into a new school in first grade. I was smaller than everyone else, and shy. On the first day, the boy sitting in front of me turned around, circled my wrist with his fingers, and said, "She's tiny!" Our eyes met, and I've been in love with him ever since. Until I moved to Canada at the end of fourth grade, he was my in-school companion and protector. I still think about him. I've tried to find him on the internet, but he has a very common name, and it's next to impossible.

The second: Obie. I lived on a military base during high school. Obie's father transferred in during December of my junior year. Obie was a senior. He had a deep Louisiana bayou accent, and was kind of awkward and funny-looking, and WAY too religious, but the first time our eyes met, we knew we had something special. We were like brother and sister (we argued and fought constantly, but there was deep respect and affection) for the next fifteen years, by phone and letter, until he died in an automobile accident. Thirty-four years gone, and I still love and miss him.

The third: Jay. I walked into a friend's office at The Company, and there was a man sitting, intent, at her computer, and as I walked in he froze, staring at the screen, and said "Oops", and I fell in love. I hadn't even seen his face. All I had was a 3/4 rear view, and I fell in love with a patch of softly curled hair behind his left ear. He was newly married. We were no more than best friends for the next eight years, when his limping marriage finally fell apart. Everyone else knew how we felt about each other before we did.

The fourth: I went to a Mensa gathering near Boston three years ago, looked up, and met the eyes of a guy across the room, and knew. Again, he was not someone I would consciously choose. He was ten years older than I, bald, with the body of a past bodybuilder. Not my type. But he fascinated me. During the weekend I did not attempt to talk with him alone, but every time I looked toward him, he was looking at me, and he did make a point of sitting or standing near me several times, like he was hoping I would say something (shy much?). I was impressed with his contributions to table conversation. When I got home, I looked him up. He's married. I still wonder.

The fifth: The Man. Another Mensa gathering. First sight across a wide round table kicked me in the gut. If I made a list of all I want in a man, The Man would be 180 degrees off on almost every item except the body. I think his body is perfect, but I didn't see that at first, across the table. All the rest is 180 off. (Well, not all, but some things are pretty basic. He says I also diverge wildly from his usual taste in women.) He fascinated me at first sight, and I'm still fascinated.

If nothing else, the example of The Man proves that it's not a shallow "oh, he's perfect" thing, and it's not pheremones. Jay proves it's not the eyes or face. John and Obie show that it's not a sexual attraction. It really does feel like a "Fate" thing. A soul match thing. That doesn't mean happy ever after, but it's a very good start.

Notice that my first two husbands and the other fifty or so guys I've dated or flirted with didn't make the list. I've found that any guy who has to "grow on me" eventually turns into a fungus.
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2653 Half sick

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Education does not produce intelligence;
knowledge does not convey the means to use it intelligently.

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I almost didn't go to the movie last night because all afternoon I felt yucky, and by evening I was sure I had a fever. I took my temperature, and it was 98.6. So I went to the movie.

Today the back of my nose feels dry, and I have a hot spot on a tonsil, but I've had that several times over the past two months and nothing ever came of it, so I went to lunch anyway.

I'm beginning to worry that maybe I'm a flu carrier - I'm fighting off infection constantly without ever getting actively sick - and maybe I'm spreading it everywhere I go. Like Typhoid Mary. Swine Silk? I haven't heard of anyone I've come into contact with getting sick, though.

I heard on the news that a pet cat has been diagnosed with H1N1. Some reporters are getting all excited that maybe this means that the virus is mutating faster than they thought, and therefore the vaccine would be useless. The CDC shrugs it off, on the theory that many diseases are shared with pets, it doesn't require mutation, not a big deal.

I am a bit worried because dogs and cats have a higher body temperature than humans (100.5 to 102.5), and pathogens usually multiply within only a narrow temperature range, and that's why we share few diseases with our pets. It's also why we get fevers and chills - the higher and lower temperatures are designed to make our bodies inhospitable to the pathogens. So the worrisome part is that if the virus is happy with cat temperatures, then if I get it, a fever isn't going to help a whole lot.

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I went to lunch in Pawling today, with an over-50 professional women's Meetup group. There were seven of us. I liked the bunch, even the one women I'd met before, the one who takes over conversations. I don't think she's at all aware she does it.

Like, one woman will be talking about the time she blah blah, and she'll say one word that kicks off a thought in the other woman's head, and the other woman will loudly interrupt the middle of a sentence with, "Oh, yeah, that's like when I blah blah blah", and the first woman never does get to finish her story.

That really bugs me.

I have a way to handle it. I look at the second woman, listen until she seems to be finished, and then with no comment or reaction to her story, as if it had no import, I turn back to the first woman, and prompt her, "You were saying..."

Unfortunately, I seem to be one of the few who even notices. Everyone else usually takes off from the second woman, allowing her to have completely hijacked the topic.

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Some people are upset that some large corporations have received the flu vaccine, while hospitals, clinics, and doctor's offices are still waiting. The way some news outlets are presenting it, they make it sound like the administration is showing favoritism to Wall Street firms, who already got handouts.

Those reports, calculated to fan flames, to discredit others, really piss me off.

First of all, the handouts began during the past administration, remember? This administration has been trying to stem the handout tide. For example, CIT was allowed to go bankrupt (filed last Sunday) after begging in vain for federal assistance for many months.

Second, corporations getting flu vaccines early is nothing new! I don't know when it started, but it's been going on for at least 35 years that I know of. When I worked for The Company, any time the seasonal flu looked like it might be especially widespread or nasty, The Company got the vaccine. Lots of it. Early. And they gave it to anyone who wanted it, not just high risk people.

The reason (sounds like an excuse to me) is that the country is weakened if commerce stops, so it's important to keep the workforce on its feet.

So nobody's showing any more favoritism than has been shown in the past. It's just that it suits people to throw mud this year.

I don't like it when people throw mud. Especially mud that they may have had a hand in creating, or that they ignored until an innocent target came along. We used to call those people bullies.
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2652 Fellini in Woodstock

Friday, November 6, 2009

A lot of people you hire with good paper education
can't actually do the work you hire them for.
They learn while doing the job or they don't learn at all.

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I watched a Frederico Fellini film, "Amarcord" (1974) this evening, with six other people, strangers, in Woodstock, in an ordinary living room, on a huge screen, something like maybe 6' by 12'.

There was no real story, no cohesive plot, no apparent point to be made, but it was good nonetheless. There were glimpses of many lives in a village in Italy over the course of a year, circa 1920s or 30s.

One had the sense that these same stories, the archetypes, had been repeating in different combinations and variations for as long as the village had existed. My comment was that I wished I were an English composition teacher. I would assign each student a character, show them the film, and then ask that they write their character's backstory. The town slut, Volpine(?), would have been an interesting study, for example. Or the leonine school teacher, what is her life like? Or the old count and the ancient countess.

Gee, there were twenty or more movies in this one 2-hour film....

I spent most of the evening with a 70-pound dog in my lap. Which was good, because the host had turned the heat off during the movie because the blower made too much noise, and otherwise I would have frozen. I had a cold draft hitting my right side. There's ice outside tonight. 28 degrees F.
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2651 Numb

Thursday, November 6, 2009

You can chill with the owls at night,
or you can fly with the eagles in the morning,
but likely not both.

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I was driving to a dinner in Southern Columbia County this evening, and changed the radio station, right into the middle of what appeared to be an interview. A guy was saying he had reached into the refrigerator for a beer, and he couldn't tell if the beer was cold or warm. Then he said he was worried and didn't know what to do because he didn't have insurance.

I got all upset for him. If your hands have gone so numb that you can't tell if a can is cold or warm, that's serious! He should see a doctor or go to the hospital immediately, insurance or not.

Then the story continued. It turned out to be insurance against warm beer he was talking about (?!), and it was a Coors commercial. The mountains on Coors cans turn blue when the beer is cold.

Cute. But does anyone really think that's a selling point? Is anyone going to switch beers for that? Yeah, maybe a single can, just to see it change. But if people switch to Coors because they can tell it's cold by the blue mountains, it's not their hands that are numb, it's their HEADS!
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2650 A certain lack of focus

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Science is neither a method nor a body of knowledge.
It is a body of changing, learned opinion, aspiring to be true.
There are certain facts about nature and history;
our grasp of those facts is constantly changing.
-- George Santayana --

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Dinner with Mensans last night. I screwed up figuring my portion of the bill, had to apologize this morning to others who contributed more money to cover the bill, and I feel like an idiot, especially after thinking that my neighbor at dinner was a bit of an idiot.

Because there were six of us, the tip, $23, had automatically been added to the tab, and the woman sitting next to me said, several times, that rather than figure out individual portions of the tip, we should just split it, at $3 each. I pointed out, several times, that 6 times $3 is not $23.

We do have a couple of gossips in the group, who will talk about anyone who isn't there. I often wonder what they say about me. Anyway, (I'll call her Prof) Prof came up. Prof is a thorn in the side to some of the group. They wish she'd go away. They don't know how to deal with her. In the middle of the latest complaints, she walked in. She wasn't on the list of expected attendees. She'd been at the Vassar campus across the street and just decided to drop in.

She has a doctorate in something like biochemistry. She comments knowledgeably on a variety of topics. She's a really nice person, not a nasty bone in her body, relentlessly cheerful and chatty, and wants to do her part for the group. However, she's mentally somewhere off in left field, and she doesn't seem to "get it". Ever.

Prof schedules lectures, and panel discussions, and documentary movie nights, and wonders why nobody from the group goes to them. All the group seems to be interested in is food, games, and field trips, and she doesn't get it. I feel sorry for her, because she keeps on trying.

Anyway, she was talking last night about how she has hit several deer, three I think, in the past three years, and how she's afraid of hitting another. Also about sliding on slick roads, and a few other accidents. (She used to wear very thick glasses, and wears none now after having had laser eye surgery a few years ago. I think she's still half blind and doesn't realize it.) So she "never drives over 45 mph", and always 5-10 mph under the speed limit everywhere.

A few minutes later, she was complaining about tailgaters. People are always climbing on her tail. She hates how their headlights behind her make it even harder to see deer on the side of the road.

She really doesn't get it.

Nobody else paid any attention to her last night. She'd be talking and someone else would interrupt as if she wasn't speaking, start up another topic, and everyone would turn away from her. Since she was next to me and I felt sorry for the way people were treating her, I did pay attention to her. And then something occurred to me. I noticed that she ordered an appetizer without realizing it was not an entree. The deer thing. The getting lost driving. The dividing the tip thing. Some other stuff.

Like when she schedules events in the newsletter or online group, she ALWAYS gets the date wrong (right day of the week but wrong number, or vice-versa), or leaves out something important, like the time, or the location. Always! Every. single. time. without exception.

Others think she's stupidly oblivious. I think she's too smart, and her problem is not stupidity, but a lack of focus leading to obliviousness. She's scattered. Not an ADD-type thing, just no focus. Every thought is a skim across the top, without ripples, without focus.

Her mind works like flat stones skipping across a frozen pond.

I wonder if her near blindness through most of her life contributed? She spend most of the past 50 years with her nose 2 inches from a book page. Can straining to focus in one area contribute to a lack of focus everywhere else?
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2649 Trivial trivia

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Preserve wildlife - pickle a squirrel.

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There is a trivia "contest" on-line at http://www.trivialpursuitexperiment.com/

.

The way it's set up, you identify yourself as male or female, and a tally is kept for one of the two gender-composed teams.

It's kind of fun, but I got a bit annoyed because when you get a question wrong, they don't tell you what the correct answer was, and because a few of the "correct" answers were WRONG!

For example, there was a question about how many different types of twins there are. The choices offered were something like one, two, three, and some large number. "One" is of course obviously wrong. I suspect they wanted "two": identical (one egg, one sperm, then split) and fraternal (two eggs, two sperm). The large number is wrong because although there are many other designations (conjoined, parasitic, mirror, superfecundate, etc) they are all subsets of the basic one/two eggs with split/no split.

I answered "three", because doctors have recently recognized a third rare type - semi-identical (one egg, fertilized by two sperm, then split).

Of course, they declared me wrong.

Hey! Is this a trivia contest or what! I am penalized because I know trivia?
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2648 Foiled again

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Alas poor Kiroy, I knew him backwards.

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I am desperate to wash my hair, and then get to the grocery store, and vote, and a few other things. I planned to shower and wash hair at 12:30. Exactly at 12:30, the phone rang, and it was Butch, my gutter man. He said he'd be here in a half hour to clean the gutters.

It's now 2:40, and he's still up there on the roof, and my hair is not washed. It has never taken him more than an hour to clean the gutters. I don't understand.

Now it's 3:05. He just left. Onward to what's left of my day. Gah!
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2647 The grouch strikes again

Monday, November 2, 2009

The trouble with political jokes is that they get elected.

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Elections tomorrow, and I've been getting a political call per hour today. All taped, so I can't ask questions. I listen for about three seconds and hang up.

Which is probably why I've about hit my limit this evening on "furmiliar". The word is "FAMiliar", folks! Gah!
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2646 HRT Oops

Monday, November 2, 2009

Interviewee I-missed-the-name, in the "Kingston Freeman":
"If prayer is out of the public schools, it is simply because
those in attendance have chosen not to pray.
Individual freedom to pray is still intact.
What is rightfully missing is the authority to force prayer
on those who do not wish to participate."

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If you want a shock, do an internet search on HRT lung cancer.

This is one of my complaints - that everyone wants to blame all lung cancer on smoking, and therefore have no sympathy for suffers. "You did it to yourself". Nope. There are many factors, including pollution, plastics, and now, it turns out, hormones.
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2645 Hallowe'en mask?

Sunday, November 1, 2009

A totalitarian government tolerates free speech only as long
as it does not offend those in power.
A free society tolerates speech even when it offends.

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There are many "IP address hiders" out there. You can go to a website through one of them, like "hidemyass.com" for example, and it will disguise your IP address and physical location so, supposedly, no one knows it was you who visited.

They don't really work. Not as well as they pretend to, anyway. Even though the IP address is different, and maybe they even have a different "came from" city and state, they still let your operating system, browser, support levels, time zone, and other information through. I use four different sniffers, and even if one is fooled, they aren't all fooled. There are plenty of clues, so you can't hide as well as you might want to.

Besides, it ticks me off when someone visits in disguise, even if it is Hallowe'en. I have to wonder why the subterfuge.

If it's that you don't want an employer or the owner of the computer to know you were here, leave a comment, so I know you aren't hiding from ME!

Be honest and open, or stay away, ok?
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2644 Nothing

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Anything that says "healthy" I stay away from.
Giving up butter, for instance, means that
in about two years you will be covered in dandruff.
-- Julia Child --

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Nothing day today. Clear up some of the clutter, clean out the car, hem some clothes, pay some bills. Maybe even catch up on some correspondence.
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2643 Becs' question answered

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Demetri Martin’s fortune cookie:
"When love and skill are combined, expect a masterpiece."

------------------------------

A few posts back (#2629) I offered to answer any question asked. Becs asks, "If you got to give a "Last Lecture" like Randy Pausch, what do you think you would talk about?"

Well, first I had to find out what Randy Pausch's lecture was about. It was easy to find on YouTube. I watched it in bits and pieces over several days. He spoke on childhood dreams and aspirations, and making them happen, how they happened for him. He was lucky - his dreams were within his abilities to make happen.

I don't recall ever having any childhood dreams, other than surviving long enough to get out of the house, so I guess I'd have to talk about something else.

I'd probably pick doing one's own thing.

From birth we are pushed and prodded, led and lectured. We are told we have to do this, adhere to that standard, meet those expectations. We have to wear the right clothes, hold the right beliefs. We finally get out on our own, and we still hear those voices in our heads. Advertising tells us what we want and need to demonstrate "success", otherwise we are less than those who do have these things. Books and neighbors tell us how to raise our children. The work environment pressures us into a mold, to suit the company, not us. Our families and (some) friends demand deference and homage, again to suit themselves, not our needs. And we accept all of it, because we've been taught that all these outside influences, society, knows what's best for us better than we do, and it's important to satisfy those influences in order to be respected.

Uh uh. Bull poopy. It's all brain rot.

We need a healthy dose of skepticism. We need to know that we are important, that our needs are as important as those of anyone else. We need to know that anyone who judges us on our adherence to the standard wisdom is not worth impressing. We have an instinctual sense of what we want and need, and we mostly need the courage to go against society's demands. We need to learn to live our own life, not a life defined by others.

And that's what I'd talk about.
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2642 Doggy hike

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Alimony: Bounty on the mutiny.
-- Salada Tea tag line --

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I went on a doggy hike today. Six people, one dog (not the intended ratio), on the access roads in a large park next to the Stewart Airport. Not a particularly strenuous hike, but up and down a lot of long hills. Lots of hunters. Every time someone shot a gun, the doggy tried to run back to the car.

A comfortable pace for me is about 3 miles per hour. This group does a lot of strenuous hikes, kayaking, skiing, and so on, and they moved a lot faster than is easy for me with my short legs. We were out there 2.5 hours, with no stopping and sitting down, so at their faster pace I figure we had to have done at least 8 miles. Don't know for sure.

Poor Max the doggy picked up a thousand ticks. I guess I'll have to check me tonight.

Then to Panera for lunch. First time ever to Panera Bread. I didn't like it. It's too much like a fast-food joint, but the prices pretend you don't have to clear your own table and scrape your own plates. I got the asiago roast beef sandwich, and the bread was so hard I couldn't bite it. I took it apart and ate the insides separately.
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2641 Karaoke and kisses

Friday, October 30, 2009

Archilochus: The fox knows many things,
but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
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I met The Man for karaoke last night. The evening was a mix of good and bad. He was sweet, and I fell in love again, but we had only five hours. The club wasn't very crowded, but for some reason it was very loud. There were some girls there (in the black and white striped shirt in the video clip) flogging some brand of beer and leaping all over the place, and the world series was on. There were supposedly four waitresses and two bartenders, but we couldn't find the waitress for our section for over three hours. The good part of that was that when The Man asked the bartender if we could please pay our tab, it listed only half our food and about a quarter of our drinks. The Man shrugged and paid it. It didn't seem worth trying to find the waitress to straighten it out, and it really wasn't our fault.

Here's a 1 minute 40 second clip of two of our favorite singers, having some fun. Ignore the sound - it's oddly distorted. Smack in the middle one of the beer girls tried to get me to taste her beer, fully aware I was recording, and then some guy, also fully aware I was recording, stood right in front of me. That's my voice yelling at him to move, damn it! This clip might explain why I enjoy karaoke, even though I don't sing. It can be fun.

[I included both the Blogger and YouTube versions. One or the other might work. I don't know. Blogger seems iffy, and I have it as "private" on YouTube. Please let me know if you can see either, or neither.]


The Man says next time, I have to get up there, lose my virginity, I can do "Wipeout", or "Tequila". Uh, no, I can't.

The Man gave me a birthday card last night, one of those cards that shouts I love you, and when a man picks out a card like that, either it has no meaning whatsoever except that it was on the front of the rack, or it's chock full of meaning. Having been married to a man who'd go with the former (if I got a birthday card at all from Ex#2, it would have been congratulations on your graduation or some other totally inappropriate message - he'd just grab the first pink one with an envelope), I choose to believe the latter of The Man. He'd be fully aware of what he handed me. Since he doesn't have to say or do anything at all....

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I was supposed to go to a talk at the college this evening, but I feel flushed and there's a hot spot in my throat again, so I decided to take it easy. There's a hike tomorrow morning I want to go on.

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It has occurred to me that I no longer have to ask "What's senior?" Restaurants, theaters, stores, the metro, all have different definitions of "senior", and until now I always had to ask. I don't have to any more. I just am.

It also occurred to me that Ex#1 was four years older than I, Ex#2 was six weeks older, Jay was eight years younger, and The Man is fifteen years and six months younger. I can hardly wait for my seventies! At least one thing just keeps getting better....
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2640 Asparagus

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Salada Tea tag line: A man who goes
to the bottom of things
usually winds up on top.

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I still have a few profiles out on dating sites here and there. Because they're old, they don't come to the top of searches, and my profile text flat out says I'm just window shopping and am unlike to respond to overtures, so I get a wink only about every two or three weeks.

Today's was from a guy with the handle "limp44long".

I don't understand why he chose that name. The "44 long" part probably is NOT his pants size, because he's actually on the short side.

I was very tempted to respond to him, to tell him he should change the name. "I don't care how long it is, nobody wants a limp one."

But I don't want to encourage him.

Silence.

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In other news, Roman was at the dinner last night, and sat next to me. He's dating, but still hasn't found a suitable woman. Sitting next to him and talking afterward I was shocked to find that I am still attracted to him.

No! No, no, no! I know too much about his faults - he's an angry man, there's a lot of undefined anger simmering under the surface and it doesn't take much for him to get nasty. No!

I got into my car (left the door open to talk), precisely to avoid a hug. We shook hands on parting.

He has bought a townhouse about a half-hour down the road, and will have a housewarming party in December.
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2639 Used needles

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Alimony: Bounty on the mutiny.
-- Salada Tea tag line --

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Some late-night talk show host got a flu shot on the air last night. I forget who. I just happened to glance up and see it. The host said that the needle looked very small, how come it looks so much smaller than when he was a child? The doctor (who apparently has his own TV show and seemed to be a bit of a nut) responded that it isn't any smaller, it just looks smaller because we're bigger now. The host mentioned that it also seemed to hurt less. The doctor responded with some blather to the effect that it's the same, it's just that we're adults now.

Sorry Mr. Doctor Man, but today's needles really ARE smaller than they used to be, and they really DO hurt a lot less now than when I was a kid.

Needles today are disposable, so they don't need to be as rugged. Way back then, needles were sterilized and used over and over, so it had to be a larger bore because it had to withstand reuse.

Nowadays, they often come filled with the dose, and aren't meant to be used more than once, and even when you fill them yourself (as I did with some of Jay's meds), they are used only once and discarded.

The business end today is much smaller, finer. You can barely see the hole in the end. I can remember as a kid that the end of the needle was cut at a slant and you could clearly see the hole even when you were trying not to look.

Back then, when they were reused, the fine sharp tip of the needle would get burrs on it from being mishandled, especially when somebody was trying to save money by not replacing as often as recommended, and because the tip wasn't kept covered.  The dulled needle HURT!  It actually had to tear through the skin.  Today's needles are always sharp.  They practically go between the cells.

So, stupid doctor man, you are wrong.  I don't know why you would even say something like that.

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Dinner tonight - an Indian restaurant in Rhinebeck.  I don't much care for Indian, but this is a group of people many of whom I haven't seen in a while, and Rhinebeck is convenient. 
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2638 Crickets, truckers, and mixed feelings

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Archilochus: The fox knows many things,
but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

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Movie tonight was "Trucker", at Proctor's Theater in Schenectady. It was pretty good for a movie with very little advertising - much better than the synopsis would lead one to believe.

When I got home, I found Jasper chasing a cricket in the kitchen. He caught it and ate it, and then seemed to blame me for the disappearance of his toy.

Today is my 65th birthday.  Sunday, when I visited Daughter and Hercules, they gave me some birthday presents (no card).  Last night I sent an email to The Man about a radio show, and he replied to the email a few minutes after midnight and wished me a happy birthday.  And .... that's it.  I have received no cards, emails, ecards, or calls since I woke up this morning.  I expected something from Roman, at least, and birthdays are published in the monthly Mensa newsletter.  (Little Sister, if you're reading this, don't feel guilty.  You've got a lot going on right now, and you're not one I would have expected any notice from.  In fact, I'm not sure of your birthday, somewhere near the end of July, right?  And the only reason I remember that is because of that time Mom acquired some ruby jewelry, and she gave it to you, because "rubies are her birthstone."  I was jealous because she never gave me any opals.)  

I'm sad because all the people I have carefully taught over the years to make no fuss over my birthday, have made no fuss over my birthday.  And if anyone does now, too late, I'll be annoyed.

But ... one card in today's mail would have been nice.
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2637 The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of Charades.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Garrison Keillor says he speaks Danish well enough to get into trouble,
but not well enough to get out of it.

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Last Thursday The Man showed me some YouTube clips of a comedian and communicator he finds fascinating - Demetri Martin.  Martin's obvious intelligence probably makes life difficult.  He thinks about and does things that are ... uh ... not normal, like a lot of complicated word-play.   He's OCD-wracked.  For example, he became fascinated with palindromes, and wrote a 224-word palindrome that actually makes sense (well, sort of).  He provides an entertaining glimpse into a very strange mind.

There are several short clips of his standup routines on YouTube, most of very poor recording or editing quality.  The best thing out there is the six-part "If I" program, which is a glimpse into a very strange life.  (If you watch only one of the following videos, go for part 3.)

Here is part 1:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKnzPHtf9u4&feature=player_profilepage#]

An aside - I had to snort at the book he held up.  Jay and I used to amuse ourselves finding the errors in that book.  In about 20-30% of the problems, the answer the book gave was not the only possible answer.  The authors didn't consider other possible solutions, and didn't pose the question in such a way as to eliminate other solutions than the one they saw.  Arrogance.

And part 2, where he climbs into his mind a bit more:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98RECgRc5HA]

Part 3, in the series of rather ordinary photos, did you wonder why the middle guy is identified as Hawaiian?  Wait for it..... It's so bad it's good.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hUHDIOazIU]

Part 4:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzsEtafv-FA]

Part 5:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyfipbbArq0]

Part 6:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjlkfl9i-lA]
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2636 Random thoughts

Monday, October 26, 2009

Comedienne Rhett Butler:  "I apologize for all my shortcomings."

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I had no idea what I had been committed to yesterday.  It turned out to be a friend of Daughter who has discovered that the Native American belief system satisfies and comforts her, and she wants to share it.  So it was four of us neophytes in her family room while she droned on for four hours about creation stories, and white buffalo woman, and rituals, and circles.  It was all very touchy-feely, which is not my cup of tea, but Daughter is still searching for her own path, so I went along with it.  (Twice I had a very difficult battle with sleep, you know, where your eyes start to unfocus and you can't get control back?)

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Driving home I was thinking about religion in general, which led to a general thought I have to think about some more.

It occurred to me that the belief of one person is more likely to lead to truth than the belief of two people. 

What I mean by that is that when a person finds another person who has the same belief as they (on any topic), the two reinforce each other.  Both become less likely to question further, or to examine more closely, or to drop parts of the belief that are not workable.  Further, they will feed each other possibilities that, simply because both accept the possibility, will become part of the belief, resulting in a spiral away from the truth rather than toward it. 

It has me wondering if the current emphasis on teamwork in corporate creative endeavors is a good idea.

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Also while driving home I was listening to the "Tribal Derivations" CD from Beats Antique (you can listen to samples at the link).  The beats, rhythms, are based on the antique Middle Eastern, and many of the instruments are the old old ones, but they've built on the antique base, and there's a new-age speculative flavor.  I had always interpreted the "Beats Antiques" that way - "beats" as the noun, and "antique" as the modifier.

As I was listening to the added bass and keyboard and synthesizer and tuba, I thought, "Yeah, it beats antique."  "Beats" as the verb, "antique" as a noun. 

It cracked me up.  Their name is a pun.  Love it.

A commenter on the Amazon site described this CD as "a hypnotic,opium filled fantasy full of deep smoky images from the past, seeping under the wooden floorboards of a jazz club down a back alley and with the right password, you gain access to its delicious rhythms."  Yeah.  That's IT!

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Back on the "ask me questions" post, Becs had asked, "If you got to give a "Last Lecture" like Randy Pausch, what do you think you would talk about?"  (Should have known Becs would get all literate on me, and make me think!)  Well, I'm not ignoring the question, I have some thoughts, I just first need to find out what Randy Pausch had to say.  I've heard of his "Last Lecture", found it on YouTube, but never got around to watching.  (I understand there's a book, too.)  Anyway, I'll get to it....
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2635 Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

If e-mail had been around before the telephone was invented,

people would have said, "Hey, forget e-mail! With this new telephone invention,

I can actually talk to people!"

-- The Executive Speechwriter Newsletter --

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Last night, Friday, I went to a Hallowe'en Haunted House.  It was cold and pouring rain, and we all stood outside in the rain for a half hour waiting for the last couple to arrive.  Then we got in line, and waited in the rain for another 45 minutes until we could get into the "house" (the website showed a mansion, but it was actually a series of linked shipping containers, decorated to look like an abandoned village).  The entire contents of my purse got soaked.

It was fun, but not the way one would expect.  Like, a zombie would jump out of nowhere and scream into my face, so I screamed right back into his face, then we did the Lucy/Harpo mirror routine, punctuated with synchronized screams.  A madman ran up to me with a chain saw, so I raised my furled umbrella and yelled "en garde!" and cracked him up.

Tonight I went to a movie, French with subtitles, in Valatie, "Priceless".  It was pretty good.  It was about a young woman who lives off rich old men, and a young man, a hotel employee, who falls in love with her when she mistakes him for a wealthy schmuck.  She runs through his savings in a matter of days, then discovers he's not wealthy and dumps him.  He is about to be arrested when he's unable to pay the bills she ran up, and is saved by a wealthy older widow.  He's still besotted with the young woman, and discovers that if he services the older woman, he's able to catch glimpses of the young woman at society affairs.  Of course in the end, the young man and woman ride off (penniless) into the sunset together.  (We figured that would last maybe a week.)

On the way home I stopped at a gas station for a bottle of tea, came down slightly off center on the heel of my right boot, which slipped sideways, and I fell on my hip.  The embarrassing part was not falling - it was that I bounced when I fell.

I'm going to a Native American Spirituality something-or-other tomorrow with Daughter and Hercules, in Ocean, NJ.
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