Okay, this I gotta share—NPR reports on the contents of Sarah Palin’s self-justifying/aggrandizing “memoir”, Going Rogue.
It’s just, it’s just…what’s the word? Fulsome? Nauseating? Shallow?
I won’t help her financial condition by actually buying this sad thing; but I’ll probably read a library copy.
Of course the library loan lays an obligation on me to not rip the tome into bits, or chuck it in the garbage bin.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Honoring the fallen
It’s a sad irony that Major Nidal Hassan should go postal at the soldier readiness center at Fort Hood, Tex., and murder 13 and wound 29 more just a few days before Veterans Day.
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines signed up for the risks involved in combat and combat support: separation from loved ones; sand and rocks (or tropical jungles); the constant adrenaline surge that comes from being on the alert 24/7; fake food; rudimentary sanitary facilities; exotic insects, arachnids and reptiles. And of course, snipers, suicide bombers and IEDs.
(That’s why they call it going into harm’s way, and these men and women, from all backgrounds, go in harm’s way because that’s their job.)
They did not sign up for one of their own strapping on two unregistered (non-military) handguns and opening fire on them (they were unarmed) on an Army post as they were preparing to deploy to hostile territory.
That President Obama had to go to the memorial service for the 13 less than two weeks after honoring 18 soldiers killed in Afghanistan at Dover AFB (a Commander-in-Chief duty that was declined by Obama's predecessor—the CiC who started these wars in 2003 and shortly thereafter declared "Mission Accomplished!") says to me that it’s all starting to look like hostile territory.
We’re hearing a lot of stuff about Hassan—that he’s had leanings toward radical Islamist fervor, that he showed signs of instability and activities that someone should have noticed and acted upon (well, apparently people did notice, but action was not taken), that he did not want to deploy to Afghanistan (which would have been the first in-country experience of his Army career), that he objected to Muslims going to areas where they might be obliged to kill other Muslims.
Well, those last two just set my teeth on edge.
When you take the king’s shilling you don’t have the right to choose your deployment; you go where they send you and do the job you’re trained to do. My war was Vietnam, and let me just say that a vast percentage of grunts over there—if offered a choice—would never have landed at Ton Su Nhut, much less spent 13 months in country. But there they were, picking leeches off their limbs, running LRRPs and taking mortar rounds from the VC over there and guff from people over here.
That, of course, was a draftee military and this is volunteer. But all the more reason to do your duty as laid out for you by the chain of command. You volunteered, for God’s sake, you had a pretty good notion that the job was dangerous when you took it.
It saddens me deeply that 13 soldiers who should at least have lived until deployment were mowed down in the madness of the readiness center last Thursday.
I have a friend, a bell ringer in the UK. Sunday her troupe rang muffled bells (some centuries old) for Remembrance Sunday. And today she’ll ring again for the Armistice Day commemoration. I hope her band will include the dead of Fort Hood in their thoughts.
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines signed up for the risks involved in combat and combat support: separation from loved ones; sand and rocks (or tropical jungles); the constant adrenaline surge that comes from being on the alert 24/7; fake food; rudimentary sanitary facilities; exotic insects, arachnids and reptiles. And of course, snipers, suicide bombers and IEDs.
(That’s why they call it going into harm’s way, and these men and women, from all backgrounds, go in harm’s way because that’s their job.)
They did not sign up for one of their own strapping on two unregistered (non-military) handguns and opening fire on them (they were unarmed) on an Army post as they were preparing to deploy to hostile territory.
That President Obama had to go to the memorial service for the 13 less than two weeks after honoring 18 soldiers killed in Afghanistan at Dover AFB (a Commander-in-Chief duty that was declined by Obama's predecessor—the CiC who started these wars in 2003 and shortly thereafter declared "Mission Accomplished!") says to me that it’s all starting to look like hostile territory.
We’re hearing a lot of stuff about Hassan—that he’s had leanings toward radical Islamist fervor, that he showed signs of instability and activities that someone should have noticed and acted upon (well, apparently people did notice, but action was not taken), that he did not want to deploy to Afghanistan (which would have been the first in-country experience of his Army career), that he objected to Muslims going to areas where they might be obliged to kill other Muslims.
Well, those last two just set my teeth on edge.
When you take the king’s shilling you don’t have the right to choose your deployment; you go where they send you and do the job you’re trained to do. My war was Vietnam, and let me just say that a vast percentage of grunts over there—if offered a choice—would never have landed at Ton Su Nhut, much less spent 13 months in country. But there they were, picking leeches off their limbs, running LRRPs and taking mortar rounds from the VC over there and guff from people over here.
That, of course, was a draftee military and this is volunteer. But all the more reason to do your duty as laid out for you by the chain of command. You volunteered, for God’s sake, you had a pretty good notion that the job was dangerous when you took it.
It saddens me deeply that 13 soldiers who should at least have lived until deployment were mowed down in the madness of the readiness center last Thursday.
I have a friend, a bell ringer in the UK. Sunday her troupe rang muffled bells (some centuries old) for Remembrance Sunday. And today she’ll ring again for the Armistice Day commemoration. I hope her band will include the dead of Fort Hood in their thoughts.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Cold war crackups
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Followed shortly afterward by the collapse of Communism in Europe (except for Yugoslavia and Albania, which both took time to rot from the inside, but made up for that by unleashing just about every form of civil warfare, up to and including genocide).
It’s interesting that news stories talk about the generational gap—Germans in their 20s and 30s are pretty blasé about the significance of the event. They have nothing to compare a united and prosperous Germany with.
Their elders—who lived in the German Democratic Republic—on the other hand are grateful for being out from under the Stasi and the Communist economy. They’re really appreciative of the prosperous Germany (whose prosperity is for once not built on armaments and plans for invading their neighbors).
Listening to NPR I flashed back to my mother; she died 11 years before the wall’s collapse. She had lived through the 20s and the aftermath of World War I as a child, and as a young adult she worked at Lockheed during World War II.
Me, I never knew anything but a divided Germany. So I thought it interesting when Mom said (more than once) that if we ever let the two Germanys unite, we’d just be faced with yet another war.
Mom, not what I would call inclined towards paranoia and certainly leaning more towards the logical, nonetheless had a primal, gut-emotional response to that possibility.
It’s been 20 years now, and the united Germany shows no signs of overrunning Poland or invading Belgium. They’re doing perfectly fine through carving out economic rather than geographic lebensraum. But that’s capitalism and de facto fine.
I wonder what Mom would say about that?
It’s interesting that news stories talk about the generational gap—Germans in their 20s and 30s are pretty blasé about the significance of the event. They have nothing to compare a united and prosperous Germany with.
Their elders—who lived in the German Democratic Republic—on the other hand are grateful for being out from under the Stasi and the Communist economy. They’re really appreciative of the prosperous Germany (whose prosperity is for once not built on armaments and plans for invading their neighbors).
Listening to NPR I flashed back to my mother; she died 11 years before the wall’s collapse. She had lived through the 20s and the aftermath of World War I as a child, and as a young adult she worked at Lockheed during World War II.
Me, I never knew anything but a divided Germany. So I thought it interesting when Mom said (more than once) that if we ever let the two Germanys unite, we’d just be faced with yet another war.
Mom, not what I would call inclined towards paranoia and certainly leaning more towards the logical, nonetheless had a primal, gut-emotional response to that possibility.
It’s been 20 years now, and the united Germany shows no signs of overrunning Poland or invading Belgium. They’re doing perfectly fine through carving out economic rather than geographic lebensraum. But that’s capitalism and de facto fine.
I wonder what Mom would say about that?
Monday, November 9, 2009
'Tis the season, apparently
’Kay, I don’t want to sound like Ms. Cranky-Person, but what is it with stores putting up their Christmas displays & decorations on the day after Halloween?
(& I’m not going to call them “holiday decorations” because I don’t see any Hanukkah- or Kwanzaa-themed stuff.)
Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? Used to be you had Halloween, with witches, ghosts & jack o’lanterns; then Thanksgiving, with turkeys, Pilgrims & harvest-home decorations.
THEN there was Christmas, red-&-green things, conifers, sparkly lights & snowflakes.
But yesterday when I went to Target to see if they had fountain pen cartridges (they didn’t even have fountain pens) I walked into a Christmas wonderland—red & silver ornament things hanging from the ceiling & a huge fake-Christmas tree section.
& this morning I went to the Tully’s coffee shop on Main Street in Bellevue, only to be slapped in the face with all-out Christmas: plastic greenery, strings of fairy lights & Christmas cups for your coffee.
IHOP has been advertising holiday hotcakes (maybe they’re waffles—I really don’t pay attention) for a couple of weeks—so before Halloween.
I shudder to think what Wal-Mart looks like.
Dunno if this is the inevitable onslaught of commercialism, or just retailers reacting to the second selling season in a recession. Whatever—it’s really an affront.
(& I’m not going to call them “holiday decorations” because I don’t see any Hanukkah- or Kwanzaa-themed stuff.)
Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? Used to be you had Halloween, with witches, ghosts & jack o’lanterns; then Thanksgiving, with turkeys, Pilgrims & harvest-home decorations.
THEN there was Christmas, red-&-green things, conifers, sparkly lights & snowflakes.
But yesterday when I went to Target to see if they had fountain pen cartridges (they didn’t even have fountain pens) I walked into a Christmas wonderland—red & silver ornament things hanging from the ceiling & a huge fake-Christmas tree section.
& this morning I went to the Tully’s coffee shop on Main Street in Bellevue, only to be slapped in the face with all-out Christmas: plastic greenery, strings of fairy lights & Christmas cups for your coffee.
IHOP has been advertising holiday hotcakes (maybe they’re waffles—I really don’t pay attention) for a couple of weeks—so before Halloween.
I shudder to think what Wal-Mart looks like.
Dunno if this is the inevitable onslaught of commercialism, or just retailers reacting to the second selling season in a recession. Whatever—it’s really an affront.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Quackers for Sesame Street
In honor of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, I give you my all-time favorite music number from the show: “Put Down the Duckie”.
(It seems you’ve got to put down the duckie if you want to play the saxophone.)
There’s something about Gordon Jackson and Jean Marsh in their “Upstairs Downstairs” personas singing “You got to leave the duck alone.”
Or Ladysmith Black Mambazo lending their distinctive harmony to the line.
Or Itzhak Perlman plucking Yehudi Menuhin’s Strad like a banjo.
Turns out that Jeremy Irons does a crackin’ Charleston move.
For those of you who favor the other duck song, I offer “Rubber Duckie”.
Frankly I think it doesn’t hold a patch on “Put Down the Duckie”, but de gustibus non est disputandum.
At any rate, this is an anniversary worth celebrating.
(It seems you’ve got to put down the duckie if you want to play the saxophone.)
There’s something about Gordon Jackson and Jean Marsh in their “Upstairs Downstairs” personas singing “You got to leave the duck alone.”
Or Ladysmith Black Mambazo lending their distinctive harmony to the line.
Or Itzhak Perlman plucking Yehudi Menuhin’s Strad like a banjo.
Turns out that Jeremy Irons does a crackin’ Charleston move.
For those of you who favor the other duck song, I offer “Rubber Duckie”.
Frankly I think it doesn’t hold a patch on “Put Down the Duckie”, but de gustibus non est disputandum.
At any rate, this is an anniversary worth celebrating.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Remember, remember
Today is Guy Fawkes Day in the UK. It’s not a holiday in the sense that you get out of school or off work; but tonight across the realm there will be fireworks and bonfires lit (along with suitable amounts of drinking) to celebrate the exposure and foiling of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament and King James I on this date in 1605.
Guy Fawkes wasn’t the leader of the plot, but he was the one charged with its execution (so to speak). Having been a mercenary fighting for the Catholic League and the Spaniards against the Protestant Dutch, he presumably had the experience necessary to handle barrels of gunpowder and set the charges.
He did, but the plot was revealed via a letter warning a Catholic Member of Parliament to stay away on the 5th. One thing led to another, the gunpowder was discovered (“Oi, mate—did you order 30 barrels of black powder and all this firewood and coal?”), Fawkes was apprehended and duly tortured to reveal the names of co-conspirators. (Unsuccessfully—as “interrogators” in our current foreign wars have learned, torture isn’t a good means of acquiring reliable information.)
Eventually there was a trial, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Fawkes cheated the hangman, though: he jumped from the gallows and broke his neck.
I’m guessing the executioners went ahead with the drawing and quartering, however.
Since the 18th Century, effigies of Fawkes, “guys”, have been burnt in bonfires with much gaiety on this night.
Now, while I think it’s a good thing indeed to foil mass murder plots (even when the prospective victims are politicians), there’s something about continuing this tradition of dissing Catholics down into the 21st Century that just creeps me out.
It’s not that I was baptized in the Roman Church, it’s this holdover from the time when where you worshiped defined your entire existence for good or ill. I mean—that’s so 19th Century. (Okay, people over here were certain that JFK would be taking all his marching orders from the Pope; but we got over that.)
But the Brits are stuck in this time warped mentality in which Catholics = Satan-worshiping-overthrowers-of-civilization.
Just last year, there was major hoopla over one of Her Majesty’s grandsons being affianced to a Canadian commoner…Catholic. Under the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, no one can be in line for the British throne if s/he is or marries a Catholic.
(You can marry/be a militant Muslim, a Moonie, a Wiccan, a foot-washin’ Baptist or a Baha’i and ascend to the throne. But Catholic? Fuggedaboutit.)
So Autumn Kelly, who married Peter Phillips last year, converted from Catholicism to save her husband from having to give up his place in line to the throne.
There was talk, right up to two months before the nuptials, of Phillips renouncing his place in the royal succession, but in the end his situation was deemed more important than her faith, and she caved.
(BTW—he’s 11th in line to the throne. The royal yacht would have to go down with most of his close relatives on it to make him any sort of a contender. That just boggles my mind. I have as much chance at winning the Powerball as he does of becoming King Peter.)
And it’s not like the Royals are the same old Bastions of Propriety and Examples to the Nation they’ve been ever since Victoria and Albert. Phillips and Kelly sold the “rights” to their wedding for £500K to Hello! magazine. (If you don’t know the rag, it makes People magazine look like the New Yorker.) By all accounts Her Majesty was Not Amused.
Evidently they needed the cash to pay for the nuptials, even though the service was held at Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, and I’m sure the Queen hardly charged them more than £25 for it.
(She might have wanted more for the reception, held at Frogmore House in the Castle grounds. At least some kind of damage deposit. But still.)
This whole aversion to Catholicism is related to the monarch being the head of the Church of England, which emerged from Henry VIII having the hots for Anne Boleyn (and the possibility of producing a son who wouldn't die in infancy) and needing a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which Pope Clement VII refused to give him. For centuries after Henry declared the papacy irrelevant, all non-CoE followers were required to support the established church with their taxes. So if you were a Methodist, you were voluntarily giving money to your chapel and involuntarily giving money to the Anglicans.
That’s one of the reasons why our Founding Fathers slipped that separation of church and state clause in the First Amendment. That established church thing just rankled. (A lot of the provisions in the Constitution were reactions to British governing practices.)
There’s been talk, post-Phillips, of finally getting around to repealing the Catholic part of the Act of Settlement, seeing as to how the Catholic Church and its followers aren’t the danger they were in the 16th and 17th centuries. Really, the Pope, the Cardinals and the Bishops have too much on their plates to consider invading Britain in the name of the True Church. The cover-ups and payoffs for pedophile priests in the US alone would keep the entire Jesuit order occupied in civil litigation until 2050. And after that the Church couldn't afford an invasion.
However, even if the Act is repealed or amended, I won’t hold out hope that the latent anti-Catholic animosity that underlies Guy Fawkes Day will disappear. I think that’s bred in the bone.
Guy Fawkes wasn’t the leader of the plot, but he was the one charged with its execution (so to speak). Having been a mercenary fighting for the Catholic League and the Spaniards against the Protestant Dutch, he presumably had the experience necessary to handle barrels of gunpowder and set the charges.
He did, but the plot was revealed via a letter warning a Catholic Member of Parliament to stay away on the 5th. One thing led to another, the gunpowder was discovered (“Oi, mate—did you order 30 barrels of black powder and all this firewood and coal?”), Fawkes was apprehended and duly tortured to reveal the names of co-conspirators. (Unsuccessfully—as “interrogators” in our current foreign wars have learned, torture isn’t a good means of acquiring reliable information.)
Eventually there was a trial, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Fawkes cheated the hangman, though: he jumped from the gallows and broke his neck.
I’m guessing the executioners went ahead with the drawing and quartering, however.
Since the 18th Century, effigies of Fawkes, “guys”, have been burnt in bonfires with much gaiety on this night.
Now, while I think it’s a good thing indeed to foil mass murder plots (even when the prospective victims are politicians), there’s something about continuing this tradition of dissing Catholics down into the 21st Century that just creeps me out.
It’s not that I was baptized in the Roman Church, it’s this holdover from the time when where you worshiped defined your entire existence for good or ill. I mean—that’s so 19th Century. (Okay, people over here were certain that JFK would be taking all his marching orders from the Pope; but we got over that.)
But the Brits are stuck in this time warped mentality in which Catholics = Satan-worshiping-overthrowers-of-civilization.
Just last year, there was major hoopla over one of Her Majesty’s grandsons being affianced to a Canadian commoner…Catholic. Under the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, no one can be in line for the British throne if s/he is or marries a Catholic.
(You can marry/be a militant Muslim, a Moonie, a Wiccan, a foot-washin’ Baptist or a Baha’i and ascend to the throne. But Catholic? Fuggedaboutit.)
So Autumn Kelly, who married Peter Phillips last year, converted from Catholicism to save her husband from having to give up his place in line to the throne.
There was talk, right up to two months before the nuptials, of Phillips renouncing his place in the royal succession, but in the end his situation was deemed more important than her faith, and she caved.
(BTW—he’s 11th in line to the throne. The royal yacht would have to go down with most of his close relatives on it to make him any sort of a contender. That just boggles my mind. I have as much chance at winning the Powerball as he does of becoming King Peter.)
And it’s not like the Royals are the same old Bastions of Propriety and Examples to the Nation they’ve been ever since Victoria and Albert. Phillips and Kelly sold the “rights” to their wedding for £500K to Hello! magazine. (If you don’t know the rag, it makes People magazine look like the New Yorker.) By all accounts Her Majesty was Not Amused.
Evidently they needed the cash to pay for the nuptials, even though the service was held at Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, and I’m sure the Queen hardly charged them more than £25 for it.
(She might have wanted more for the reception, held at Frogmore House in the Castle grounds. At least some kind of damage deposit. But still.)
This whole aversion to Catholicism is related to the monarch being the head of the Church of England, which emerged from Henry VIII having the hots for Anne Boleyn (and the possibility of producing a son who wouldn't die in infancy) and needing a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which Pope Clement VII refused to give him. For centuries after Henry declared the papacy irrelevant, all non-CoE followers were required to support the established church with their taxes. So if you were a Methodist, you were voluntarily giving money to your chapel and involuntarily giving money to the Anglicans.
That’s one of the reasons why our Founding Fathers slipped that separation of church and state clause in the First Amendment. That established church thing just rankled. (A lot of the provisions in the Constitution were reactions to British governing practices.)
There’s been talk, post-Phillips, of finally getting around to repealing the Catholic part of the Act of Settlement, seeing as to how the Catholic Church and its followers aren’t the danger they were in the 16th and 17th centuries. Really, the Pope, the Cardinals and the Bishops have too much on their plates to consider invading Britain in the name of the True Church. The cover-ups and payoffs for pedophile priests in the US alone would keep the entire Jesuit order occupied in civil litigation until 2050. And after that the Church couldn't afford an invasion.
However, even if the Act is repealed or amended, I won’t hold out hope that the latent anti-Catholic animosity that underlies Guy Fawkes Day will disappear. I think that’s bred in the bone.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Bailed-out British banks
Interesting news out of Mother England: Her Majesty’s Government, which bailed out several very large & very failing banks in the past year, are now instructing those institutions to start breaking up & selling their component parts in the interests of smaller companies & greater competition.
You may recall that the spectacular failures of the Royal Bank of Scotland & HBOS prompted something unheard-of in the corporate world: apologies from their CEOs in Parliament. With a suitable complement of crocodile tears (& no relinquishing of compensation).
So it’s interesting that HMG are playing hardball with the banks—seeing as to how they (on behalf of the British taxpayer) hold major stakes in the companies—wielding their shareholder power to give them what-for.
The deal apparently is: you want state aid? Start trimming the organization.&—get this—beginning with bonuses: no one at RBS or Lloyds earning more than £39K ($65K) in 2009 will be getting a bonus.
& no swapping assets among the Old Boys’ Network: only companies new to the financial industry will be allowed to buy. One of the interested parties is that wild man, Richard Branson. I’d like to see what he does with a bank, because I purely admire how he runs an airline. (If he buys NatWest I’ll have skin in the game, as I still have an account there.)
It’ll be interesting to see if our own Administration & Congress conjure up the cojones to start handing out machetes to Bank of America, Citigroup & Wells Fargo. That would help end the “too big to fail” argument for throwing billions of our money at these fools.
You may recall that the spectacular failures of the Royal Bank of Scotland & HBOS prompted something unheard-of in the corporate world: apologies from their CEOs in Parliament. With a suitable complement of crocodile tears (& no relinquishing of compensation).
So it’s interesting that HMG are playing hardball with the banks—seeing as to how they (on behalf of the British taxpayer) hold major stakes in the companies—wielding their shareholder power to give them what-for.
The deal apparently is: you want state aid? Start trimming the organization.&—get this—beginning with bonuses: no one at RBS or Lloyds earning more than £39K ($65K) in 2009 will be getting a bonus.
& no swapping assets among the Old Boys’ Network: only companies new to the financial industry will be allowed to buy. One of the interested parties is that wild man, Richard Branson. I’d like to see what he does with a bank, because I purely admire how he runs an airline. (If he buys NatWest I’ll have skin in the game, as I still have an account there.)
It’ll be interesting to see if our own Administration & Congress conjure up the cojones to start handing out machetes to Bank of America, Citigroup & Wells Fargo. That would help end the “too big to fail” argument for throwing billions of our money at these fools.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Taking my medicine
The flu is cutting a swathe through my workplace, so I got the seasonal vaccination last Friday.
(I’d tried getting it at work, but apparently the company ran out of the vaccine and suspended the free shot program. Turns out that my doctor’s office was also out, as well as local drugstores whose web sites advertised they had it. I finally found it at a Safeway, where I was the only person under the age of senility getting it.)
However, for the first time since I started getting the vaccination every flu season for the past 15 years (except one year in the UK when I couldn't get it, whereupon I was flattened for four weeks, not a word of lie), it seems I’ve reacted to the vaccine, and I’ve started showing symptoms of sore throat and incipient joint aches.
It might be defective serum (wouldn’t be surprised that this shouldn't be any different from everything else in this state), or possibly the fact that in the past couple of weeks—even taking sleep meds—I’ve averaged about five hours of sleep per night, and I’m just plain beat to hell.
The sore throat started coming on this morning—slowly, which makes me hope this won’t be a really terrible bout. (When I start getting The Throat in a matter of minutes I know I’m in for a long, hard slog.) As soon as I got home I took a hit of Nurofen Cold & Flu, a magic tablet found in the UK that works better than anything else I’ve ever found at treating symptoms.
(You can only get it in blister packs of max 24 tabs, so I hoard my stash for times like this. Whenever I go back I go from chemist to chemist buying up packets, because they won’t sell you more than one. Not because, as in the US, you might be running a meth lab, but because you might use them to commit suicide. Let me just say: give me a few days of the flu and death would be a relief.)
I actually got the shot this year because if I was going to get sick I wanted it to be now and not later in the month, when I’m on vacation.
Mission accomplished, damn it.
(I’d tried getting it at work, but apparently the company ran out of the vaccine and suspended the free shot program. Turns out that my doctor’s office was also out, as well as local drugstores whose web sites advertised they had it. I finally found it at a Safeway, where I was the only person under the age of senility getting it.)
However, for the first time since I started getting the vaccination every flu season for the past 15 years (except one year in the UK when I couldn't get it, whereupon I was flattened for four weeks, not a word of lie), it seems I’ve reacted to the vaccine, and I’ve started showing symptoms of sore throat and incipient joint aches.
It might be defective serum (wouldn’t be surprised that this shouldn't be any different from everything else in this state), or possibly the fact that in the past couple of weeks—even taking sleep meds—I’ve averaged about five hours of sleep per night, and I’m just plain beat to hell.
The sore throat started coming on this morning—slowly, which makes me hope this won’t be a really terrible bout. (When I start getting The Throat in a matter of minutes I know I’m in for a long, hard slog.) As soon as I got home I took a hit of Nurofen Cold & Flu, a magic tablet found in the UK that works better than anything else I’ve ever found at treating symptoms.
(You can only get it in blister packs of max 24 tabs, so I hoard my stash for times like this. Whenever I go back I go from chemist to chemist buying up packets, because they won’t sell you more than one. Not because, as in the US, you might be running a meth lab, but because you might use them to commit suicide. Let me just say: give me a few days of the flu and death would be a relief.)
I actually got the shot this year because if I was going to get sick I wanted it to be now and not later in the month, when I’m on vacation.
Mission accomplished, damn it.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Working wounded
As a public service I offer this guide to determining if your workplace is dysfunctional.
Well, not sure if it’s an unadulterated public service—might be depressing to diagnose your employer as truly toxic if you can’t do anything about it. Lord knows my own department fits most of these symptoms & more.
For example, this list doesn’t include the guiding principle by which we exist: “strategy” will change course at least monthly, & you’re expected to reconfigure all your work accordingly.
Or: those who succeed are those who can deliver BS with the highest volume & greatest arrogance. No need to even be consistent.
Or: 93% of meetings make you feel as though you fell into Chien Andalou.
Well—here’s hoping your office scores lower than mine.
Well, not sure if it’s an unadulterated public service—might be depressing to diagnose your employer as truly toxic if you can’t do anything about it. Lord knows my own department fits most of these symptoms & more.
For example, this list doesn’t include the guiding principle by which we exist: “strategy” will change course at least monthly, & you’re expected to reconfigure all your work accordingly.
Or: those who succeed are those who can deliver BS with the highest volume & greatest arrogance. No need to even be consistent.
Or: 93% of meetings make you feel as though you fell into Chien Andalou.
Well—here’s hoping your office scores lower than mine.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Trick or terror?
The Washington Post has asked the masters of human fear (writers specializing in horror and suspense) to name their favorite tales of terror.
I’m not someone who goes out of her way to read horror or the like. And I definitely don’t ever watch the stuff. (My sister once had The Haunting, adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House [a pick by one of the writers], on TV late one night. It scared the liver out of me, but made me too afraid to leave the living room and go through the dark house alone to get to my bedroom, so I had to stay until it was over because she wouldn’t go up with me. The toad.)
Okay, I did go to see Alien. But it was on a date and the guy I was with, a writer/producer manqué (this being Hollywood), had been up the night before working on a script and drinking Bordeaux. As the suspense mounted (and Ridley Scott definitely knows his onions on that count), I realized 1)why I don’t like scary movies (I get really wrapped up in the illusion, become one of the characters and they’re too dumb to come in out of the rain, much less stay away from monsters; so I know they're going to get me killed); and 2)that alien was going to jump off the screen straight at me and this fool was too hungover to provide any assistance.
I told him that later and his response was, "You're right."
However, I digress.
With the above disclaimer, let me just say that the scariest story I’ve ever read was “The Beast with Five Fingers”, by W.F. Harvey (never saw the flick). That sucker kept me awake for a week after I finished it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a horror story since.
So, this being Samhain/All Hallows—what’s your pick for the story that scared the daylights out of you?
I’m not someone who goes out of her way to read horror or the like. And I definitely don’t ever watch the stuff. (My sister once had The Haunting, adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House [a pick by one of the writers], on TV late one night. It scared the liver out of me, but made me too afraid to leave the living room and go through the dark house alone to get to my bedroom, so I had to stay until it was over because she wouldn’t go up with me. The toad.)
Okay, I did go to see Alien. But it was on a date and the guy I was with, a writer/producer manqué (this being Hollywood), had been up the night before working on a script and drinking Bordeaux. As the suspense mounted (and Ridley Scott definitely knows his onions on that count), I realized 1)why I don’t like scary movies (I get really wrapped up in the illusion, become one of the characters and they’re too dumb to come in out of the rain, much less stay away from monsters; so I know they're going to get me killed); and 2)that alien was going to jump off the screen straight at me and this fool was too hungover to provide any assistance.
I told him that later and his response was, "You're right."
However, I digress.
With the above disclaimer, let me just say that the scariest story I’ve ever read was “The Beast with Five Fingers”, by W.F. Harvey (never saw the flick). That sucker kept me awake for a week after I finished it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a horror story since.
So, this being Samhain/All Hallows—what’s your pick for the story that scared the daylights out of you?
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