FIX YA RIGHT UP, bUDDY.

Blog number 135                                               Nov. 30, 2007

Do you have RLS?  Restless Leg Syndrome?  If so, then take prescription Mirapec and that'll fix you right up.  Practice caution though for, as the commercial tells us...

"Prescription Mirapec may cause you to feel drowsy or fall asleep during normal activity such as driving or to feel faint or dizzy when you stand up.  Call your doctor if you experience these problems."

So taking this drug may cause you to smash head-on into a speeding Mack truck.  That would sure fix that pesky RLS forever, wouldn't it?  And isn't it fortunate that you won't even have to call your doctor.  The ambulance will take you right to him.  All you have to do is lie there bleeding.  With peaceful legs.

Then the commercial goes on to warn, "If you drink alcohol or taking medicine that makes you feel drowsy or if you are experiencing increased gambling or sexual or other intense urges. "

Two things. First, that is not a complete sentence.  I think what they mean is that if you experience these things, you should see the doctor that you should see if you tend to fall asleep at the wheel while taking Mirapec.

And second, and I think this is the more important, what kind of a drug is this if it makes you have intense sexual and gambling urges?  Coke?  Crack?  Meth?  Caffeine?

Then lastly it warns us that "Other side effects include nausea."

Compared with the other side effects, this one is kind of mild.

A HARD RAIN'S GONNA FALL

Blog number 134                                               Nov. 30, 2007

It's raining here in the desert.  Do you know what they call rain here in the desert?  They call it a "weather alert." 

A few months ago they were talking about our drought conditions.  WE LIVE IN THE DESERT!  Drought conditions are the normal phenomena in a desert!  That's why they call it a desert.  Idiots.

ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT

Blog number 133                                               Nov. 26, 2007

There is a television program that is one of my favorites called, "Soup."  What it does is take vignettes from various TV programs and TV news items, and exhibit them.  The host - who is pretty funny, makes comments about what we are about to see and what we have just seen.  It's mostly about TV people.  The only movie people they ever show are the mug shots of them when arrested, or stupid or idiotic things they've said or done while being interviewed.  Elizabeth Taylor I think is senile.  From what I've seen of her.  Reality shows seem to be the mother lode for idiots at their very best.  For instance...

Last night it showed a couple (I don't know who they are) excitedly telling their newly sixteen year old daughter to "Come see what we got you for your birthday!"  When the sixteen year old saw her birthday present - a brand new Lexus, she went ballistic.  "That's not the car I wanted!  What's the matter with you two (obviously her parents)?  And I was supposed to get it at my party.  I'm not going to the party.  You have ruined it.  It's all your fault!"  As she ran up the stairs, she screamed, "My life is ruined!" 

Hah!

In the paper this morn was an item about Stephen King going into a grocery store.  This old woman - King thinks she was about 95, says to him, "I know who you are.You write those stories - those horrible awful horror stories...I don't like that.  I like uplifting stories like that Shawshank Redemption." 

Mister King told her, "I wrote that." 

She said, "No you didn't."

BABIES ARE MORE THAN YOUNG PEOPLE

Blog number 132                                               Nov. 20, 2007

In Safeway, a mother was pushing a cart in which a five year old girl rode.  As they came around a corner, the little girl reached out to me and said, "Wait."

I stopped and she said, "Do you have E.T. go home?"  I said, "I've seen E.T. go home.  Good movie."

She turned to her mother and said, "He has E.T. go home."

Her mother smiled and patted her on the head.  I did the same. 

The little girl must have just seen E.T. that morning at home.  Stopping strangers in order to talk to them about E.T. She reminded me of Tara and her Batman phase.  "Batman, Daddy.  Batman!"
                                                    *******************
Getting out of the car preparing to go into Barnes and Nobles, I heard some screeching from down the street.  When I went into the store I saw a mother, a little girl and a baby boy in a cart.  Guessing that the little boy was the one I heard hollering, I asked the mother what he was yelling about.  She said he had dropped a chicken tender.

I leaned down to the baby and asked him if he had dropped his chicken tender.  his lower lip started trembling and he was about to cry.  I asked him if he wanted me to see if I could find it and, miraculously out of nowhere, I finished with, "and throw it away?"

He brightened up and nodded his head.

I went outside but couldn't find it.  I came back inside and told him I couldn't find it, that maybe a bird had gotten it.  I asked him if that was all right.  He smiled and nodded his head.

Now what gets me is, what was he hollering about?  Did he think the chicken tender was alive and he had left it out there to fend for itself?  Obviously he wasn't upset about getting it back for himself,so what was it that upset him so?  We'll never know, will we?

Babies.  Fun creatures.

NO THANK YOU, I'LL COOK IT. BUT THANK YOU.

Blog number 131                                               Nov. 15, 2007

One night I was working with an Afro-American on an aircraft on the flight-line and he began asking me if two of the men in the shop practiced Jim Crowism.  Had I heard them say anything?  I said, "Naw," because I had never heard anything derogatory about Blacks coming from them.  I never heard them say anything one way or another. But the guy insisted that they were making derogatory remarks about Blacks. 

At the time I thought he was mistaken, but now I think they may have been saying something to him, or acting in some way because he was pretty insistent about it and he wasn't one of those "everybody's a racist" guys. 

He then told me about his being a waiter prior to the Air Force and he told me, "People are really stupid to treat badly anyone who handles their food."  I had never thought of that before, but I immediately understood the idiocy of it. And evidently, from what he discussed, he himself had practiced retribution while working as a waiter.

Thinking on this today, I put it alongside some war stories I have read. 

In WW2, Negroes worked as stewards on ships.  They handled the officer's food.  Now, I know how most officers treat enlisted, and I know how Whites treated Negroes back in the forties.  So, although I have never heard or read of anything pertaining to it, I am convinced that some pretty horrible things were done occasionally to the food served to officers during that war, especially in the navy.

Ironically, in one book I was reading about the Battle of the Bulge, this guy telling the story came across a Negro in his Company.  He had never before seen Negroes on the front line, so he asked him how he came to be there.  The Negro told him that he was being punished in his old company by being sent to the front line with the Whites. 

The guy telling the story thought that a strange take on segregation, for Negroes to be punished by sending them to where Whites who were not being punished were being blown apart hourly.

STOP ACTING LIKE THAT

Blog number 130                                               Nov. 15, 2007

I took some acting classes back in my Joe College days.  I liked 'em.  If I had started earlier and hadn't been so shy, I think I would have enjoyed the stage.

One very important thing brought home to me in acting class was that someone can tell us something - give us information, and we can think we understand how to use that information, but until we have a related experience in which to ensconce the information, it will all go for naught.  

Let me explain.

In an improvisation class, one of the things we were told was to watch when a setup began to veer into an emotional field based upon something in our past, and to go with that emotion because there's where the magic of acting lies. 

If an actor can make the scene seem real, that it is really happening, there is a kind of "losing" of one's self, bringing about a heightening of one's awareness.

The first time I was aware of this phenomena, I was watching Dick Cavet interview Richard Burton.  Dick asked Richard if he would do a few lines from "Camelot," a play that Richard was in at the time. 

Richard started describing how it came to be that he -- as a young lad, had come to pull the sword from the stone.  When he was done with the scene, I realized that I really thought that Richard was describing something that really had happened to him.  And then Dick Cavet said to Richard, "When you were doing that scene, I thought that that had really happened to YOU."

Magic.

In the improvisation class, I was placed in a scene with a young man.  We were supposed to talk about something with a radio.  I forget the setup, but because of what seemed to me to be smart aleck posturing coming from the young man, I began to get very angry with him and I kept trying to pull back from that so that I wouldn't wind up shouting at him. 

What I was unconsciously doing was putting that lad in place of another lad that often treated me in a smart-alecky manner.  I couldn't shake it and had to stop the scene.

After the scene was stopped and we went back to our real selves, I realized that that was what the instructor had been talking about.  I had the opportunity to do acting magic, playing on the emotions raised by the circumstances, but due to my not having any prior experience with a false emotion, I didn't recognize what was happening and missed it.

In another case, I was going to an audition and I asked the drama teacher if she had any advice for me.  She told me, "Give them something."  Yeah, OK.

So I did my audition, read my lines in my voice, using my expressions, and only while walking out of the building did I realize that I should have lisped, pursed my lips, scowled, anything.  I should have given them something. 

I did not know what the drama coach meant when she said to give them something.  I thought I knew, but I didn't.  After I didn't give them anything, after I had that experience, then it was very clear to me exactly what she meant.  But too late, naturally.  Story of my life.

THAT'S A REAL PUZZLE

Blog number 129                                               Nov. 15, 2007

I bought a bunch of 500 piece jigsaw puzzles from a local dollar store for a dollar apiece.  Not a bad price.  The pieces are tiny and very similar to each other, so they make fairly difficult puzzles.  I have fun with them anyhow and it beats paying $20 for a 1000 piece puzzle.  Economy-wise.

Anyhow, the reason I am writing this entry in my blog is because of the previous blog about dollar store toys being deficient in some manner.  This time, one of the puzzles has a border piece missing and an extra middle piece.  It's like a worker decided to take one piece out of one puzzle and replace it with a piece from another puzzle.

The scamp.

TIMES CHANGE, MOSTLY.

Blog number 128                                               Nov. 13, 2007

Monday nights, Jay Leno has a section called, "Headlines" where he shows funny and weird things - malaprops mostly, from various publications around the country.  One Monday he showed toys he had bought at a dollar store.  He said the toys are there usually because something is wrong with them and he showed a toy car that had the windshield on the rear window.

I like to give toys to children I meet, so we - Teresa and I, bought several packages of toy cars called "Turbo Wheels."  Four to a package for one dollar.  Pretty cheap, but I didn't think much about it until I tried one out this morning.  They wouldn't go forward - only backward.  Racing cars that could only back up.  Made in China.  Naturally.

Speaking of which, several years ago I bought a two way hose connection and it leaked.  So I took it back and bought another one.  It leaked too.  So I tried again.  Leaked.  Made in China.  I don't remember how I solved the problem.

Two years ago I bought a water cutoff.  Leaked.  Another one.  Leaked.  Made in China.  I finally solved the problem by buying a plastic one.  Made in the USA

Before the good war, anything made in Japan had the reputation for being crap.  Now made-in-China has that reputation, while Japanese-made usually means quality.

During that war, I remember one Sunday in a comic strip called, "Bringing Up Father", Jiggs (male protagonist) was caught by Maggie (his wife) breaking all the dishes in the house.  When she got on him about it, he pointed out that on the bottom of the dishes it said, "Made In Japan."  This didn't seem odd to me at the time, and evidently it didn't seem odd to the cartoonist.  Because we hated the Japs so badly, you see.  We called them Japs back then.

AND YET ANOTHER MYSTERY UNSOLVED

Blog number 127                                               Nov. 05, 2007

A few weeks ago our cat Zipper came home with a big cut on his flank.  He left again that night and didn't come home that night nor the next day.  Figuring that either the coyotes got him, or whatever had wounded him before had killed him, I started going through his things, throwing out old comforters, etc., and planning on the next day giving his remaining food to the neighbor for her cats.

Late that night I was sitting at my computer - writing or something, when I heard mewing at the back door.  I opened it and Zipper came sauntering in as if he had just gone out for an hour or so.  Looking for his wound, I couldn't find it.  I know it couldn't have healed in that short a time, so now I'm wondering if one of the neighbors took him to a vet who sewed him up and kept him overnight. 

Or something else happened.

ALWAYS PAY YOUR HELP

Blog number 126                                               Nov. 2, 2007

So I'm reading this novel about police chiefs and one of the characters is running for state senator and he talks to his wife about the types of people who support a candidate and why.  Some do it because they like the candidate's ideas, some do it 'cause they like the guy and some do it so's they can get something from the guy if he gets elected.  It is this last guy that I want to talk about.

Back when we owned a rental apartment, we had a tenant that held meetings supporting a marijuana pro-legalization candidate for president.  They passed out leaflets and bumper stickers, talked to people.  I think they really believed they might have a chance.  Their candidate was squeaky clean, young, handsome, an activist for the environment - just perfect for the part.  These people tried for two elections, never won.

A few years later I'm reading about this guy that got this other guy elected as a Democrat to a senate seat.  He expected to get appointed to a juicy post, but the electee stiffed him.  Gave him nothing.  He was pissed.

The first time the senator came up for reelection, this guy decided he would sabotage the election.  What he did was to find a good candidate and a cause that would split the democratic vote, and he came up with the marijuana pro-legalization idea.

So this tenant and her friends, who thought they were going to get marijuana legalized, were actually helping this guy get revenge on a scumbag.  The scumbag lost.  He tried again a coupla years later, and once again the revenger ran a campaign to get a pro-legalization candidate elected, and once again the ex-senator lost.  The guy never tried again.