view most emailed

news sites like CNN rock. one cool item is the "view most emailed option" if you email a story to someone.

so while i am emailing the most emailed story of the day, i learn that Phish is breaking up. the breakup is the second most emailed story. loved phish, but when i listened to them and saw them in concert, they were called the grateful dead. ;-)

so what was the most emailed story of the day?
Spanky the clown arrested on porn charges.

Wish I could have written THIS headline. now first, let me tell you why this pisses me off. i sat in front of this fucker with my then 2-year-old daughter when we saw the circus. we were down on the floor before the show started and the clowns were running around. i remember him clearly. and whether or not i am a parent, child porn is just wrong. the timing is pretty fucked up too as the ringling folks just had a death of someone who comes off as the polar opposite of spanky. she leaves behind a husband and two kids. too bad she did not fall on top of spanky, breaking her fall and killing this clown.

rant aside, this story is almost a gift as it applies to sheer comment potential. SPANKY the clown? somewhere in here there is also a priest comparison of some sort. but that would just get my irish up again, so i'll pass.

Chief among them

Is it me, or is that not a wicked good name for a greatest hits album? Dunno if it is a reflection of my ADD or simply my eclectic musical taste, but I make a lot of mixes and that sticks out as a great name for one. Been making mixes for so long, when I started out, they were called mix tapes.

sigh.

now my psychiatrist would tell you my above penchant for copyright infringement is a reflection of my musical taste. if i sound pissed that he does not think i have add, but rather an anxiety disorder, i'm not. he still writes the scrip. and said scrip certainly kicks the shit out of my anxiety. but my attention span is simply horrible.

my coworkers ask me if i am making rounds each day. i wind up essentially doing laps around the office. sometimes for very good reasons. other times, not so much. this is just one example, but also a segue into my next thought.

i'm still sober. wheee! realized it's been 2.5 years now. and i know i am better off for it and i know i have a better life for it. but the only thing shorter than my attention span is my patience. so when things flare up on me--emotionally speaking, that ointment i procured took care of the nasty little rash--i get all freaked out and a brief flash of chucking it all and diving off the wagon flits into, and out of, my brain.

not that tv is a good example of anything, but a Soprano's character was sober and jumped back off. all the obvious caveats aside, it just reminded me that if i am not vigiliant, i will fail and start drinking again.

and no matter how bad things might seem, i just need to hold onto the safety bar holding me in the car on this life roller coaster. if i hold on until the bottom of the hill, i'll be fine. i just always need to trick myself into waiting longer than i think i can for the emotions to subside so i can gain some clarity and think things through.

that said, i define faith as knowing that, should i let go of the safety bar—unable to hold on any longer—my HP will help me, keep me safe and take care of me. this help can come in the form of other people. i am blessed by the friends, family and colleagues i have come to know. and i pray for patience, humility and focus every single day.

emotions are not facts, yet they are one of my biggest challenges in life. out of all of the roadblocks i must navigate, emotions are chief among them.

doctor's office

What is it about going to the doctor? Particularly if it is a specialist, people's if/then statements kick into overdrive and hushed tones using subtle code are used--"he is going to a psychologist to work through things."

It actually humors me more than anything else. But it is not limited to folks "on the outside." Even in the lobbies of my then psychologist, my now psychiatrist and our now fertility doctor, people shoot fertive glances and are afraid to make eye contact. It's not like we're buying porn, or going to confession, we're getting help!

These stereotypes impact the patients. I am not crazy nor are we barren, but in both cases, a push in the right direction was needed. In the case of "project make another baby," we will be using the good old turkey baster method next time around. Health insurance does not cover this and, once again, my assumption is we would be talking about a bill in the thousands, or high hundreds at best.

We're not. phew.

But I will say that when the doctor pulled out the visual aid to show us what was going on, I felt like I was in the scene in Raising Arizona when Holly Hunter is crying her eyes out, the doctor is showing them her anatomy and Nick Cage's voiceover is saying "her womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase."

It's not.

So if you have a pain, go to the doctor and if you need a specialist, be glad. You are getting the best possible care for whatever it is that ails you. And it does not mean you will be the subject of a medical research project and a story on the evening news. But for kicks, point at people in the waiting room. It will really fuck with them.

world gone mad

good weekend. productive anyways. visited a friend on friday to see he has made some good progress with a recent injury that will set him back a few months. saturday was a lot of errands and chores, but it was all done as a family and culminated with steaks on the grill and ultimately a smoke on the front porch. sunday brought church and some yardwork before sunday dinner, an italian feast. home for a run with time to kiss daughter goodnight. and here we are.

but that's my little, happy sphere. elsewhere there are real problems and people dying over them. angry segue. holy shit, my wife's brother in law is a 24-karat jackass. a chauvinist at best. but he takes good care of his kids, so what do you do? i come to learn today that he had NO clue about the beheading. wtf? do i chalk this up to him having NO clue about current events or being beyond self-centered? both i fear.

angrier segue. FUCK CICADAS. and by CICADAS, I mean the jackskulled fucksocket simpleton lemmings spread throughout the tristate that can be manipulated so easily by the media. and by CICADAS, I also mean the fucking industry that has sprung up to capitalize on the media's need for a story and the public getting hooked like a fucking fish.

i lived through it 17 years ago. and while my memory is certainly a bit foggy due to age, booze/drugs and my own tendency to revise bad past and repress, er, smooth it over to make it nice...i do not recall the world ending or the sky falling. yet everyone is freaking out. its one of the plagues really. we're all sinners anyway, God's letting us have it. or not.

relax people, we have much more serious shit to deal with here other than a lot of bugs crawling around for a few weeks. but i do enjoy seeing all of the "mummy sticks" around town. everyone is wrapping their baby trees and bushes in preparation for the fleecing the bugs are supposed to give trees and bushes. so someone is cleaning the fuck up on selling miles of netting, cheescloth, and anything else that works to cover their trees. the end result is some lame modern art. note to self: call friend at museum and harass her about wrapping the whole contemporary art center in cicada netting. make the building noteworthy art once again. the building gets more ink than the exhibits inside it. oy.

cooking with gas

blogger is not fucking around with their new design. and as demonstrated by this well overstated blog design, they also give us plenty of toys to play with. they waited just long enough for me to take my work blog over to typepad. and now i wanna come back. sigh.

happy mother's birthday

celebrating mother's day and wife's birthday today. the presents were well-received as was the pancake breakfast. daughter and i gave her some quiet time by heading outside to the "big trampoline" and are now gearing up for a day of chores and mom-time.

realized that while jumping on the trampoline with daughter that my arm feels as normal as the doctor's said it would post-surgery #2. this does not suck. they gave me a clean bill of health this week and i do not need to return. one more reason to celebrate today.

we're taking my mom with us to the inlaws for a mother's day cookout. should be fun.

new blogger in town

blogger threatens there will be a new and improved blogger unveiled on sunday. should be fun to see. maybe they will even offer rss?

:-)

per the post below

by the post below, i just think the media spin people's stories to make them more sensational than they are impressive. i do not doubt people come to america with a few bucks in their pockets and the clothes on their backs, but i would also assume they might know someone over here or have a plan for once they get here. it's not like they walk onto a bus one day and then decide to stay on it and wind up in the U.S. sigh. i need to get a life and take my wellbutrin.

one reason i feel the need to clarify the note below...awhile back i ranted on marge schott - prior to her giving $100 million to charity. i realized i was one of maybe two people willing to remember her bad behavior since she a) died and b) gave a truckload of cash to charity.

a lot of people did not want to taint their memories of baseball (iggy, this is NOT directed at you :-) and merely said she was a product of her generation. others said she was a women and had she been a man it would not have been a big deal.

so that leaves her off the hook? these comments from some non-iggy folks just pissed me off all the more. i'm a product of my generation and i do not go suing wendy's because i was multitasking in the car and spilled coffee on my crank. i'm a product of my generation and i do not go suing KFC/pepsi cause i think i can claim this chicken is actually a rat/soda contains said rat. i'm not suing mcdonald's cause my fat ass cannot get into the car to go to the courthouse to submit my other two lawsuits cause i super-sized it.

you get the idea. and that's just fat, er, fast food.

i will not even try and claim that marge is not a good person for leaving all of her coins to charity. but when people try and ignore other things to merely have a neater/nicer picture of someone --- fuck that.

so my millionare friend below still gets props, but puh-lease. they do not need to be positioned as going from 1 penny to 1 million to be considered a success.

did i mention i need to take my wellbutrin?

puh-lease

was reading a local business paper and it referenced someone as coming to America with $75 to their name and now they are a millionaire.

not to steal any thunder from this person's sticktuitiveness, hard work ethic and all, but puh-lease. with just the shirt on my back and the sweat on my brow...blah blah blah.

when you hear stories like that these days, they simply sound contrived. does this mean i am jaded or the media need to get a wee bit more creative?

well, well, well

turns out ALL of my content is still up via the handy archives to the left. this is helpful for me as i sift through and read pieces i like and other pieces that help me out in the head.

i will say i am one moody bitch.

so don't waste your time tripping through the archives (circa 2002). i'll pull together some kind of best of post with links to all of it. the ultimate self-back pat. but what the hell, this IS a blog. as i often say to a friend of mine, blogs come in second only to mirrors as top vanity tools.

in summary: I rock. long live blog. you look thin in a blog. you have friends in a blog. and after the friends finale, that's saying a lot.

rant segue: FUCK Friends. they jumped the shark moons ago. sadly, the only sitcom that went out before it started to suck technically was Family Ties. or at least I thought this when they went off the air. in hindsight, Family Ties sucks balls after the likes of MASH, Seinfeld and Cheers. But in comparison to these sitcoms, there is no comparison.

NBC is using the whip on the Friends gravy train horse until the fucker collapses in a heap. the price for a :30 second spot rivals the Super Bowl commercials. yet they already predict the finale will have like half as many viewers as when MASH went off the air. there is a whole other post about our changing media habits to explain this, but in the meantime i will just assert that MASH shits higher quality tv than Friends can even aspire to.

the whole finale buildup has been one big general foods international coffee pussy rub (read JEAN LUC). i feel like i should have on a pink cashmere sweater every time i see the pablum ads for it.

thankfully i will miss it completely. i will be at a church retreat meeting. so i can high road the shit out of you on this and keep my argument clean and simple.

Friends sucks. I will not watch it's final episode. but it reminds me of an interesting pheomenon i fall into. not everything, but somethings get popular in a way that i wind up disliking whatever it is because of the fan worship bullshit that follows it.

case in point: UK basketball. talented kids. college basketball is a sport that actually keeps my attention and is a real game (note: pro sports salary rant seed planted HERE). the fucking fans make me want to pave over the whole state. i was seriously waiting for the kid growing up with the Wildcats tatoo on their forehead from the overzealous parent that wanted to give the team that extra edge this season.

anyway, what the fuck was i talking about? oh yeah, fans of Friends make me loathe the show. used to watch it. used to enjoy it. the female characters took turns being hot. Chandler was funny until his one joke finally got old. or at least his one mode of delivery. and after all of this sunk in, the finale fuck fest kicked in and was salt in the wound of an exhausted TV viewer.

sigh.

it all falls away

today was a good day. i had focus. i can chalk this up to writing. when i am writing something i am into, everything else can fall away. i can miss lunch and not even know it.

in a rare case of convergence, i wrote a story for a client that could have just as easily been posted to my work blog. walked right away from that conflict o' interest though. an ex-coworker just got canned from her new job. she sent ME an email asking me for some input on a document she created. her IT and legal folks gave her walking papers to HR.

now, her employer is certifiably whacked out. this is a known fact on the street (read: in the industry. i live in cincinnati and am most certainly NOT street). but it occurs to me that if i ever want to leave my current place of work, i will need to change my very bad work habits. my employer is very informal. at least, there are a lot of things about my current employer's work environment that are informal. and besides, this was just the right thing to do.

when i get into writing zones like this, i think about my ADD. in a recent "med check" with my psychiatrist, he shared with me that he does not think i have ADD. i am touchy about this as ADD is misdiagnosed. Even less is known about adult ADD so odds are good it is also misdiagnosed. and a ton of people think i am full of shit when i tell them i have ADD. but reading some articles about adult ADD have literally helped give me some of my identity. i was in those articles.

the psych looks at it this way. i was not responding to the ADD-only meds, but rather the anti-depressants. anxiety disorder can manifest itself in symptoms similar to ADD. he has never seen anyone with ADD respond to the meds I am responding to.

well, i knew he did not think i had ADD and pushed him to this statement. but in the end we agreed that regardless of what we call it, the meds he is giving me help.

at the very least it pisses me off as now i have to study up on anxiety disorders and i hate reading non-fiction. :-) but honestly, knowing i had ADD helped me out in many ways. it helped me explain a lot of shit in my life. and by this i do not mean write things off in my life to ADD or to use it as a badge, crutch, excuse etc.

but the writing zones like i describe above when i can tune everything else out and really focus, are not a given with me. and i wish it were a switch i could turn on and off.

when bad things happen to good people

just read the book. someone gave it to me after my accident—over a year ago. it really helped me out.

and now i wish i could snap my fingers so that two other people in my life also read it.

wife is really letting our lack of pregnancy wear on her. we've been at it at least two years now and no dice. we have daughter, but want more. daughter took us about two months to start. so we were cocky and just assumed number two would also come quickly. well, we've done a lot of tests and are just about through our last hope before hitting the fertility specialist. sigh. its easier for me to not let it bother me. it's not my body telling us we are not pregnant.

the book would help out in that this is simply nature. it is not God's will or some kind of punishment. it's just a really bad occurence of nature.

same goes for the accident a friend was just in. he broke his hip and his elbow. he's in a lot of pain and relying on more people than he is used to just to go to the bathroom. i know he is frustrated and he has about 6 weeks ahead of him before he can really put weight on his right leg.

i realized a few months ago i was not forgiving myself for the accident i was in. three people died. three coworkers of mine. this book helped me realize that not only was it an accident, it was an act of nature. a terrible one. but God had nothing to do with it. he had everything to do with the swarm of people that brought me safely through it. from the state trooper talking to me to my family, friends and coworkers.

its a good book. short and helpful. if you believe in God i think you might get a lot out of it. if you do not, that's cool too. i do not plan to wear my religion on my sleeve here, but before a few months ago...i was not wearing my religion at all.

i have faith in God. but i realized i was not following God. and for me, i need to do this.

i write this blog for a lot of reasons. i think you'll still enjoy the content if you liked my other blogs. but the above is important to me and you should know about it.

peace

Here we go again

came back here after a looong respite. at least a year. had to change the name. i am no longer all that lost. still fucked up. but sober and moving down a good, solid path. so i swiped the name of the in between blog i created when i left here.