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The Ongoing Saga of Punkie into the 21st Century

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Sunday, October 31, 2004

Happy Halloween everyone!

Samhain was wonderful.

Last night I got to meet new people, of course, and finally Elspeth and Nybor got to see our house. I have known them since the mid 1980s, I can't remember the first time I met them. I think it was 1984 or so, whenever Evecon 2 was. Long story short, Elspeth is the one who introduced me to Christine. When we got the house, we tried forever to get them to come over, so this felt right. Anyway, we had a good time, and we celebrated our ancestors that have passed, and remembered the good times we had with them.

Nybor and I had an amazing discussion about the universe and toroids; the fact he used to write science fiction "back in the day" shows. Speaking to him about theories and stuff is like opening an old and friendly Asimov or Bradbury novel.

Elspeth fixed my neck.

If I had anything to say about having a bunch of pagans over, versus all our other parties, is that pagans seem to spill a lot. I found more tipped over cups, puddles of apple juice, beer, and sodas than any other party I have ever hosted at my house, and this includes children's birthday parties. I am not upset, really, because nothing got ruined (I thought a rolled up poster I had got soaked, but the drink only soaked the cardboard tube holding it). I don't know what this means, because no one got drunk, so I am meditating on its spiritual significance.

Ohhhmmm...

I managed to retrieve everything off my hard drive, and when I was deleting the last of the remnants of data I had backed up, the drive went "knock knock knock..." Heh. Good timing!

This morning, Elspeth planned the next few months of Haven activities with Christine, I cleaned up a little more, and had some coffee. The rest of today I have planned to just do halloween stuff, like set up all the goody bags, do the front yard, and then I will be handing out candy and glow bracelets to the kids.

Squeeee!

Posted by Punkie @ 11:26 AM EST [Link]


Saturday, October 30, 2004

Today in Samhain

Well, things are better than this morning. Somewhat.

I was right, the parts on my D:\ drive where my important documents were at were uncorrupted. Running the backup manually copied over all the files that hadn't been updated since June, and that was only a few spreadsheets, some notes, and assorted saved e-mail. I am now trying to save all my non-essential items, like some downloaded files I got and saved game files. I think some of those are goners. Also, for some reason, a ton of my desktop icons vanished.

Thisby has stayed under the bed, and been sociable with Christine when I am not at home. So for now, she stays with us. But just in case, does anyone need a small, chubby, loner, crabby female longhaired "Siamese" (looks more Birman, though) that only likes women and is afraid of everything else?

But then, yesterday morning, "someone" didn't take out the trash, and I wanted the huge heaping mound of trash that "someone" didn't take out for weeks to be taken to the curb to be disposed. So I had to drag the heavy and overstuffed "approved" trash container from my backyard to the curb. Most of you in suburban areas know these trash bins; they are large, green, and have huge wheels. Well, one of the wheels fell off the pavement into the grass, upsetting the balance, and twisted to the side, taking my arm, shoulder, and neck with it, kind of like how bullies twist your arm behind your back to push you to the ground. The trash emptied onto the lawn despite my Herculean efforts to prevent that. Luckily, they were all in bags, so I set the can upright, and heaved the trash into the container. I just made it, the truck came within minutes after I put it out to the curb. So I figured the horrible back pain I had suffered at least was worth the effort. It got worse and worse all day.

I had to clean up the downstairs last night for the Samhain gathering, and Thisby's pissing had almost totally ruined the cushions. I used the steam cleaner, Fabreeze, baking soda, carpet cleaner... nothing. All I got was a damp cushion that smelled like sweat, flowers, cheap children's perfume, fabric softener, smoke, all as a subtle frame around the rank dominant odor of cat piss. I burned scented candles, incense, and swore a whole lot. Nothing I did seemed to work, so we're tossing the cover into the washing machine, because the foam doesn't smell, just the fabric. Yes, the washing machine might ruin it. At this point, what more harm can that be?

Then, with all this, my neck stopped working last night. Yes, I had re-injured my old neck injury. I hadn't done that since... 1990? You know, I had forgotten just how heavy my fat head was until I had to move it by hand, and let me tell you, moving the dead weight of your own head is an awkward thing to do when those same muscles that can't hold it up anymore also are 50% of your arm strength. I slept with a heating pad and my head supported by a rolled towel

Oh, there's more! While watching TV, my glasses broke. Yes, while sitting still, the frame went "pinnnnggggg!", shot a tiny screw into my eyes, and released my left lens onto my chest. Turns out the screw holding my glasses together on the left side broke. Shit. And I couldn't fetch for the teeny screw in the bed because it was hard enough to move, much less fetch for a teeny, tiny piece of dull metal in my bed in the dark against dark sheets while your wife is sleeping next to you. At least my lenses are okay. This morning, I used an eyeglass repair kit to put in a temporary screw, but none of them fit. Either they were too short and wide, or too thin or long. I eventually put in a long thin one, so now I have a thin screw popping out of the top of one of temples.

Well, I have to check on the cushion cover now. Hopefully it didn't shrink or still smell like a clog in a kennel's drainage trap.

Happy Samhain, everyone.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:52 PM EST [Link]


Friday, October 29, 2004

In a pissy mood

I am not having a good day.

Because a lot of this journal has been "OMFG my leif suxxorz!!1!!" I will alleviate any stress on my readers by stating beforehand that nothing majorly wrong has happened in my life since my last post. But here's some issues that have pissed me off in the last 24 hours.

CR got detention for being late for school 3 times. It's his fault. But if he's late again, they flunk him for the whole quarter. That's a bit extreme, IMHO. I pity those kids that come from disadvantaged homes who might be late to school more than 3 times in a quarter because mom and dad are fighting, they live in such a poor neighborhood that they have to hide and take alternate routes to avoid gangs, or anything else. Late for school getting detention is a punishment that fits the crime. Flunking a quarter is anal control and pointless. You're going to lose more kids through the cracks that way.

Thisby is close to being ejected from my house. I have lived with this cat for 4 years, and she's still scared all the time, hates me, and that was okay until earlier this year when our bed frame broke. Thisby lived under the bed. So until we could afford a new bed frame, she took up residence in the rec room, where she used the bathroom all over the place down there. She lived in two places down there: the hollowed-out legs of the pool table, and a nest she burrowed into an armchair like some wild animal. Now that we have a bed frame, she's too cozy down in the rec room to move. So last night, I had to get her out of the pool table, seal up the hollow spaces with lots of cardboard and duct tape, and then chase her out of the chair. While I did this, I found she had ben using the sofa as a toilet, and it must have been recently, because this wasn't a problem when I cleaned the rec room two weeks ago. Like a quart of urine was on one of the cushions. I had to user the steam cleaner just to get the liquid out, and tonight, instead of going out with Matt and Anya, I have to stay home and completely clean the rec room again. Living with Thisby has become like living with a wild raccoon, and none of the other cats are even close to this misbehaving. I know, she's brain damaged, scared, comes from an abusive home, and so on, but I have given her 4 years to warm up, and she's still some spook that lurks in the house like a boggart in the woods. I am seriously considering giving her away. She has to go to a home with no other pets, kids, and no men (she hates men, always has, since the former owner's son abused her as a kitten). I never thought I'd eject a cat from my domicile, but if she doesn't shape up, out she goes. I got Cali a good home about 6 years ago, so I might do the same for Thisby. Cali was mom's (my mother-in-law's) cat, who hated everyone else. When mom died, we had to wrangle that psychotic Maine Coon and get her in a carrier. When we got her home, she had never been with other cats (she was removed from her litter before her eyes opened), and all she knew was mom. She didn't understand the other cats who saw her lack of involvement as sheer punishable arrogance, and since Cali had no front claws, she couldn't defend herself as well. She ended up living with Nate's family until she died at the age of 13 (from diabetes). If I can find a home for that crazy cat, I can probably find a home for Thisby.

The second (data) hard drive on my Windows PC is dying. This was a great time to find out that since XP service pack 2, the backup batch scripts stopped working (I knew I should have gone to Perl). Apparently now I can't do an "xcopy" in a batch script without some permission thing or something. The only thing I care about, since I haven't really gotten much writing done, is a copy of my household finances. If they are gone, I will lose a few month's of entries, which will suck pretty hard, but thank God I backed up everything else to a Linux directory, and I haven't updated the masters in a long while. And I have a Knoppix-based recovery tool. And since I wrote to the file just two days ago, I think it's still recoverable normally. The stuff I can't get is actually useless or redundant because of the backups. I just hope all those hard drive utilities to check for errors (which all crashed, BTW), didn't fuck up the drive more. I just need that one file...

My arthritis is really slowing me down. It hurts. Ow.

That's my beef for this morning. Thanks for letting me vent.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:53 AM EST [Link]


Thursday, October 28, 2004

We like dee mooooooooooooooooooon!

... because it is close to uhsss...

So, I originally thought the eclipse would only be viewable on the West coast, but I was corrected a few days ago, by an article that said it would be viewable here as well. I sorta half planned to look at it, but I wasn't serious about it. I saw one in 93.. 94, somewhere around there (when I was living in the projects in Reston), and it was slow, and the moon turned a dark brown, and... well, whoopie. And I have been bummed that every solar eclipse I have "seen" was either clouded out or I wasn't allowed outside at the time because I worked in a mall.

Me = bitter.

So I made some joke about dragons eating the moon (a spoof of the "dragon eating the sun" story from Chinese legends) and bad tidings to anyone who asked, and yesterday, I finally relented, and said, "I'll see the damn eclipse so I can stem the barrage of questions, "Dirrrr... did you see the eclipse?"

Then I forgot about it.

But Rogue called and reminded us at like 10:23. She said she was in an alley (I guess in DC) with some people looking at it. I almost joked, "Don't stare directly at it!" but I have been burned recently about people not taking jokes well, so I just fudged the phrase about the dragon. Rogue laughed that kind of laugh you give when you recognize that a friend made a joke, but didn't quite understand what it meant.

Friend: So I saw this really bad educational film the other day...
Punkie:[quote from Kentucky Fried Movie] How do I use... "Zinc Oxide?"
Friend: [who has never seen Kentucky Fried Movie] Heh. And the actors were so bad...

Anyway, I told her I wasn't really interested, and I don't think she quite understood, like I had somehow made a non sequitur, so she talked about some more, sensed awkwardness, and said she was sorry she called us so late. It was okay, I was distracted because I was watching the new South Park. We love you Rogue! :-D Sorry I was rather distracted...

Anyway, I decided at the commercial break to go outside and look at it. It was almost at totality, but sadly, a thin veil of cirrus clouds started to cover it, and it got lost in a thin film of cloud gauze. It was like I remembered, brown and roundish. Wheee.

Later, I went out around 11pm to let Widget go pee, and the clouds were now completely blocking the sky. I felt bad for those who really wanted to see it, and there were no clouds almost all day. That sucked.

In other news, the new South Park really was offensive, and I am surprised how much they get away with. They sure hate PETA. And the lesson was that sometimes you have to vote between a douche and a crap sandwich. But that was nothing compared to the premiere of "Drawn Together," a spoof on reality TV done with animated characters from several genres. My. God. They are going to get some letters. Stereotypes, overt racism, strong sexual overtones, scat humor, self-injury jabs, several references to child porn, and an erect pig penis are sure to keep the phones ringing at Comedy Central. This is almost as bad as TV Funhouse, which means I liked it, but certain parts were veeeeery uncomfortable. And probably will get the show shuffled off to late night slots to wither and die like "Frank Goes to the Orient," "Exit 57," and "Upright Citizen's Brigade."

Posted by Punkie @ 09:50 AM EST [Link]


Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Your friend being your boss

In case anyone was wondering, I am totally fine from the fender-bender. No long term complications of any kind have appeared. In fact, I got more sleep that night than I had in a while. I didn't get good sleep last night, though, because I ate too much and my stomach hurt. I hate it when I do that, but the Chinese food was so GOOD! Mmm...

So, one of my best friends got promoted to be my boss. I have known Nate since we started at a company back in 1996. We got laid off, and he went to work for some religious company, then he moved away and went to work for a mineral company in Podunk, California. We kept begging him to move back here, but he stayed there and got married instead. A little over a year ago, he got a job at MY company, and moved back. He's the guy who got me over to the sysadmin side of our company.

Now he's going to be my boss.

That's kind of weird, but we talked about it this morning, and we're okay with it. I am a hard worker, so is he, and he's got a lot of great ideas, and I think he'll make a good leader. In fact, I think this will really help me learn as well, which is always good. I trust him, he trusts me, and we're all going to make this work to a mutual advantage in our careers.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:03 PM EST [Link]


Monday, October 25, 2004

BANG!!!! .... owww...

We got into a fender bender today. While waiting at a traffic light, someone rear-ended us. So no one worries, the impact was probably at 5-10mph, and no one was really hurt. The driver of the silver minivan was a nervous man who tried to be cordial, but I was in no mood to return the polite behavior; he had hit us when I was in mid-stretch and yawning, so it messed up my back somewhat. My whole body rang like a bell, and for hours I was vibrating as my back and neck muscles clenched into a steel cocoon of a dull ache. I don't think it was much more than a shock, and I feel fine currently, but there's always that doubt in the back of your head, "Well, I feel fine now... but in 3 days, I might look like Steven Hawking after a BMX rally."

Christine surveyed the damage, and apart from the fact the whole rear bumper needs to be replaced, the car didn't really sustain any more damage than it would hitting a dip in the road too fast. The driver of the van was hesitant to give us his insurance information ("I'll pay it all myself!"), but Christine was insistent, and they guy said he was in between insurance companies (though still covered), and on his way to a new job (he was apparently reading directions when he hit us). This whole thing might have been easier if he was a dick, but he wasn't, and he did a good job frustrating me that I couldn't be mad at him. Christine said if he didn't give us his info, she was going to call the police, but he gave in before she had to act upon that. She's already got the claim into the insurance company.

I swear we're fine.

These situations always make me uncomfortable because I am very wary of lawsuits. Yeah, if the guy did a lot of damage or did a hit-and-run, I would have sued and not looked back, but he stopped and did eventually give us the info we needed. Accidents do not often bring out the best in people, but because I was doing a lot of self-checking to find out what part was pain versus shock, I was very curt when the guy said, "Are you okay?" in a nervous voice. I am on the fence about whether I was rude or not, given the situation.

I hate being rude.

All day I have moved and tested and re-tested all my various joints and muscles, and everything is either fine or was already bad before today's accident anyway.

This reminded me of the several times I have been struck by cars, though.

When I was 14, I was hit and run over by a woman backing out of her driveway. She had high bushes on either side, and neither of us saw each other. I was knocked to the ground, scraped up a little, and received a slight burn where her muffler rested on my face. All her wheels missed me. At that time, I took care of myself, so even though the woman freaked out about it big time, I told her not to call anyone, I was fine, and walked it off.

Later that same year, some bullies were chasing me in a car. Some long Ford LTD or something. Looking back on it, I don't think they really meant to hit me, but they swerved into a driveway to scare me into thinking they were. I dove to get out of the way, and the car struck my ankle as I was driving down into a dip in the neighbor's lawn. They lost control of the car, and drove it over a thick bush which stranded them at a 30 degree angle. Adrenaline got me to stand up and run like crazy before they came unstuck. Last thing I saw was one of them getting out of the car to try and push the car off the bush. For about a year, you could see the wheel marks and a hole where the bush was in the lawn until the owner covered it with mulch. I remained almost totally unhurt, and my ankle didn't even bruise much.

In 1991, while running to catch the bus, I got hit by a car speeding out of a parking lot. This was the worst injury by far, because it hit me with such force, I smacked down on the hood, broke the driver's side windshield, and rolled onto a median. The driver of the car gunned it and ran off, but luckily the bus driver and some passengers got the info off the plates. Long story short; the car was stolen. I was in the hospital for only a day once they determined I was okay. The damage was some severe bruising on my left leg and shoulder. They never caught the guy (they found the car weeks later in Georgia).

In 1994, I was in a mall parking lot when some guy ran into me with a Toyota 280Z. He didn't hit me hard, but he was taking a shortcut between two parked cars and I didn't see him until he tapped me and I lost my balance and fell across the hood. To my surprise, the guy got out of the car and started screaming at me. He was some guy with a thick foreign accent, and the point of his rage seemed to be that I had "ruined his finish." I was so shocked at his response, I screamed back at him. I said some rather racial comments I now regret, but they involved him losing his green card and being packed in a crate to shipped to the country he was probably thrown out of for having sex with certain farm animals. He then said he had a gun. I told him he'd better use it before I got to mine first. To this day, I am shocked at how ballsy that was. I didn't have a gun, and I don't know if he did, either, but when he got into his driver's seat, I was fully prepared to jump him if he pulled out a gun. Instead, he slammed into reverse, closed his car door, and said he was coming back with friends. I never saw him again.

Since then, I have been pretty lucky, considering that in many shopping center parking lots, I see a lot of drivers AND pedestrians who don't look at all where they are going. Many involve cell phones. What gets me is that out of all the teens and adults I see hanging around the shopping centers, it's usually the adults who are the worse. Usually 20 to 30-something divas going around like no one else shares the parking lot with them. And you know when they eventually get hit, they are going to claim, "He came out of NOWHERE, officer!" because everyone looks like they came out of nowhere if you aren't paying attention.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:38 PM EST [Link]


Weekend wrapup - Scary movies, good parties, and goth bellydancing?

This was a pretty good weekend.

It started on Friday, where I got off work, joined a cult, and shaved my head. Okay, no, just kidding. I never got off work.

In honesty, a few hours after work ended we met Anya and Matt at Starbucks in the Dulles Town. The plan was to meet Brad there as well, and then Anya, Christine, and Brad would see "The Grudge," while I would move to Iceland or anywhere else the movie wasn't playing.

I HATE scary movies. I won't even watch "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" because it has stalking scenes in it. It's not the monsters or gore that get me, it is the suspense. I can't even take suspense in non-horror movies, because my life is pretty unpredictable and scary, while the hell would I want to watch it happen to someone else? My parents took me to see, "Apocalypse Now" and "Alien" when I was a kid, and it messed me up good. I recall having many, many sleepless nights, convinced that a facehugger was on my bed, the Alien was lurking in the shadows, or Marlin Brando would star in another film.

AHHHHHH!!!!

So that meant Matt, CR, and I would go see "Team America," which I wasn't exactly stoked about seeing, but I heard it was funny, so I wasn't upset, either. At the last moment, CR decided to see "The Grudge," so I disowned him. No, not really. But I did suspect CR wouldn't sleep for the next few days.

Matt and I got to know each other a little more, which was nice, because he's this very nice, eager guy who is doing a help desk job currently. We traded rants, and then the film started. I didn't go to see "Team America" expecting it to be great, and so I wasn't too disappointed. I have to admit, I laughed out loud at certain places, shook my head in humorous disbelief at others, and had a pretty good time. I can't say the film really had any defining moment, except a pretty odd speech about dicks, pussies, and assholes. Funny soundtrack, too, like "American, Fuck Yeah!" and "Montage" were my favorites. And man, Parker and Stone must really hate Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin. The film never took itself seriously, though, so I didn't, either, and all in all, had a good time.

The other guys who went to see, "The Grudge," though? Had a miserable time. The most heard comment was, "The movie was really scary... I think... it was hard to tell because of the audience." This was opening night, and the audience was FILLED with teens, none of whom would sit still or keep quiet. It was so bad, that Anya complained, and everyone got free movie passes. But enough of the intended effect of the film got through, and scared Christine, Anya, and CR pretty badly, although their complaints towards the audience came in a close second.

Afterwards, Christine, CR, and I took Brad out to a birthday dinner at the Amphoras. The food was good, Brad told us stories about how busy he'd been, and how his roommate was moving out soon, and good riddance to that. Then we all had to go home. Brad's got a Saint Bernard he has to take care of, so he can't be away for very long.

Saturday we got ready for Sean's surprise party. CR did not sleep well, because he thought small kids with cat meows would get him. I slept like a baby, happy and confident in my decision NOT to see "The Grudge" because I knew it would scare me to the point of blithering idiocy. Christ, even the trailers gave me the creeps. And I am also glad I wasn't in the theater full of people who annoyed Brad to the point he had to get angry. Christine was not feeling well because she was being visited by the blood fairy, as my friend Suzi used to put it (and I still have that artwork on my den wall).

Since we had really deep-cleaned our house just last week, there wasn't much else to do but the usual tidying up. I used some of the spare time to assemble our new bed frame that we got in the mail on Friday. Some of you might remember that, in the midst of all of our calamities this year, we lost our bed frame somewhere in early spring. It collapsed, and he have been sleeping on a mattress on the floor now for more than half a year. Well, we got a new one from a builder on eBay, who said they were made from the metal of old railroad ties. I was doubtful because the photograph made it look like a regular bedframe. But when we got it, it was HEAVY! I put it together, and it's pretty sturdy. The top of our former dining room table, which also broke this year, is still serving as a headboard. If anything, we are resourceful.

Sean's party was so hard to plan, and because Sean is one of my many friends who knows what a bad liar I am, I told Christine and Louann to tell me NOTHING about the party, even the actual dates, although I figured it out from various clues that it was this weekend. So I didn't know until the day when it was, who was coming, or what we'd be doing. I only knew it would be at my house so he wouldn't suspect. Sean was blindfolded by his family and led in, although when he came, which was right on time, one a few of the guests were there. Sadly, his 3-year old cannot keep a secret, and his 6-year-old doesn't know how to shut up a 3-year-old effectively, so Sean knew what was going on before he got there.

The party lasted until about 2. Missie stayed the night with us.

Sunday, Christine was in much menstrual pain, and we slept until about 11. Sean came back with Scarlet and Keiran around 1, and helped clean up from the party as well as pick up he stuff. Then his van wouldn't start, so Chance and Louann had come jump start the van. I went back home with them because I was going to help Sean wire his house, but it was hopeless because where his server rack was versus the rest of his computers made it almost impossible to install wiring in in the walls without some major drilling, fishing, and attic crawling. Plus we'd have to work around at least 3 major load-bearing studs, and I didn't want to be responsible for fooling with that. I finally convinced Sean to go to wireless, and so he spent the rest of the time trying to get an 802.1b wireless router to work (a loan from work). By the time we went to get wireless cards, Best Buy was closed. He's getting cards online. So I came home, and watched TV.

As a side note, I was invited to see Goth Bellydancing at the Black Cat with Wednesday, although when I look on their site, I don't see it listed, so I am going to have to verify those dates and the Black Cat. I doubt I can go, anyway, because of it being a weeknight, but I haven't seen the Black Cat since the 1980s (I know, it moved), and I need to start fusing back into the Goth scene again after being away for so long. I won't know anyone, anymore, I am sure. But Count Zero is playing, and man... I like those guys. I didn't know they were still around, I haven't heard their stuff since... like 1998.

Gees, I am old. I saw Robert Smith on TV the other day, and wondered when he got so pudgy and spotted like a middle aged guy, and that's when it hit me I turn 36 next month. Yikes!

Posted by Punkie @ 01:44 AM EST [Link]


Saturday, October 23, 2004

Definitions

Some of the STUPIDEST advice I ever got as a kid was "look it up in the dictionary" when I asked a grown-up how to spell something. I was SURE this was a code for, "I don't know, but won't admit it to a kid." Try looking up "pneumatic" sometime when you are 10. I recall, when I asked an adult what a demigod was, I was "corrected" with "You mean, 'demagogue,' which means someone who becomes a leader by appealing to emotional reactions." No, you twit, I meant demigod! Later, I pointed out to the adult that demigod meant someone who was have god, half mortal, often used in Greek or Roman mythology. "It's pronounced 'demagogue,'" she replied with a patronizing smile, and I nearly lost it.

So a while ago, when I asked someone how to spell "soiree," meaning late social party, I was told by someone, "It's pronounced 'suave,' and it means handsome or sophisticated. You must be thinking of that song, 'Rico, Suave,' aren't you?"

GRRRRR!!!

But of course, all day while cleaning, I was thinking, "Reeeeeeco.... soooiree...."

Posted by Punkie @ 05:39 PM EST [Link]


Friday, October 22, 2004

I am wearing my Doc Martens again.

I wasn't wearing them for the last month because my bootlace snapped, and then when I got a new bootlace, it was too short. Yesterday, I got some bright red ones of the proper length at Five Below, and now I look snazzy with my Doc Martens with bright red bootlaces. Yeah!

If you recall, I started wearing these Docs at the beginning of the year, with the intent on reviewing how long they lasted. I have to confess, a few months ago, I got some really nice comfy Nikes for $25 at a discount store while looking for something else. I wore those to Gencon, because I felt I needed more "running shoe" type of shoes for all the walking. I got a blister anyway, but I think it would have been worse with the Docs. Then I wore them for a month while getting around to getting new boot laces.

Last week, I stubbed my toe twice and dropped something on my foot pretty hard. Luckily the drop didn't hurt as much as it could have, but it reminded me of why I wear steel tips. I knew I should work on getting proper bootlaces. Funny, my feet aren't as big as they were. These Docs feel postively roomy, now, and my laces are tighter than they used to be.

They are holding up, I must say. By now, most shoes have cracked or the sole has worn through. If these last until next year, they cost as much as new shoes I used to get every 6 months, and if they last longer... I'll be a happy guy.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:26 PM EST [Link]


Thursday, October 21, 2004

Herbal rememdies... and loss of a time/space continuum in one's life

After yesterday's entry, Christine called, and said she was coming down with the same head cold that I was. Then she said Sawa had a really bad last two weeks, and she was going to see her. I understood. Then she called later on and said Sawa was coming home with her. We hadn't seen her in a while, so we all spent the rest of the night talking about stuff like herbal remedies (which Sawa had brought with her, since she works at an herbalist's). Sawa medicated us, and I think it worked. I definitely felt better today than the last two days.

Sawa also told me echinacea should not be taken constantly, because it puts your immune system on full alert, and doing that for too long makes it tired. This might explain why I kept getting sick earlier this year; I was taking echinacea daily, but only stopped when I ran out (and could not afford it). Then I got better, which I suspected is what happened, but it's nice to have confirmation. Sawa recommended elderberries as a constant remedy.

Thank you, Sawa! big grin

But now a rant.

My short term memory has really started going bad. It was never good to begin with, but lately I have been having massive trouble remembering names, faces, and events. I have always said the worst comes when either I, or someone else, wants me to remember to do something in xx amount of minutes, like, "In 20 minutes, can you stir the soup?" It also has problems with adding abnormal events to normal tasks, like, "When you get to the register, remember to get a book of stamps." I told myself this several times while in the store today, and even reminded myself while in line, but some 30 seconds after I reminded myself, "Okay, when you hand her the discount card, ask for a book of stamps," I still forgot!!!! God DAMMIT! I did everything to remind myself, I left a note in my wallet, I said to myself about 5 times while in the store, "Don't forget stamps," but I forgot them within 30 seconds!!! What. The. Fuck???? And it's not like something really weird happened to me that would throw off my train of thought. Sometimes, I forget things because something totally weird and slightly shocking happens, and then all mental reminders are thrown away like grains of sand on an anonymous beach. That happens to me a lot, really. It seems more weird shit happens to me when I am alone than I am with someone. But I can't use this excuse this time. I didn't have that long a wait in line, the cashier was someone I knew, and friendly, and 30 seconds before I handed her my card, I reminded myself to get a book of stamps. But Jesus Fucking Christ, I forgot anyway! What happens to that reminder anyway? I want to know what stupid synaptic connections are not meeting. I am so angry, because I feel so out of control and helpless. And I need those stamps! ARGH!!!

In many ways, my brain is like a huge river. Tons and tons of thoughts and observations flow by every second faster than a release valve out of the Hoover Dam. Anything tossed into that river, especially reminders, get swept away in the torrents, only, maybe, to be found downstream, gasping on some sandy shore... long past its appointed stop. I hate that. I hate being absent minded, and as years go by, I get more and moreso every year.

Now I know why Eskimos used to put old people on ice floes. Hell, tell me it's a ride, I'll be too stupid and senile to know better.

I know part of this is tied to the fact I have no internal clock, or any measuring device at all. For starters, I wear a watch 24/7. I have worn one constantly since I was 16 to the point that my skin under the watch hasn't gotten any sun since Reagan was president. The tissue under the watch dips sharply like how a ring does on a finger after a few years. And why? Because I have this horrible sense of disorientation without knowing what time it is. I mean, literally, I wouldn't know if an hour or a few minutes have passed since I started writing this entry. I also have NO judge of distance beyond vague concepts. Like I know it's not a mile between me and my monitor, and it's more than a centimeter, but ask me if I am between 12-18" away from the screen, and without a ruler, I wouldn't know. I have no judge of distance, especially how many feet something is away from me, or how big a room is. And unless you are more than a head's length distance from my own, everyone is the same height to me. My brain gets this spacial freakout when, say, I realize that my wife is actually shorter than I am. It's like the universe warps when someone brings out a ruler, or show me that, yes, indeed, they are shorter than I have by a full 8 inches, or "only 5 minutes have passed." Everyone, in my mind's eye, are the same height as I am, and "Time flies when you are having fun," has never applied to me, because time stretches and expands randomly, no matter what my mood is. I have have had some really great experiences that seemed to last forever, and really bad ones that were over in seconds, even if in reality, they lasted a day or more.

When I was about 8, I was told this whole time/distance problem was part of my dyslexia. The "motor control aphasia." Part of my LD exercises were to toss beanbags into slanted boxes with holes in them. I was told that tossing and catching was easier if I compared them to objects they passed. This is a great trick, but sadly does not work if I cannot see the object (like "touch typing" is nearly impossible for me), or the object has no close objects to measure against, like a ball coming at me from the sky. This also means I am seriously clumsy, and I often misjudge going around corners, for example. I have torn shirts on objects I got too close to, broken watches by smacking them into objects, and my arms and legs are often dotted with cuts and bruises from all the banging into objects I do throughout the day. I long since stopped asking, "Hey, where did I get THAT bruise from?"

It's so frustrating. Sometimes the world is an unfriendly place, obstacle-wise.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:57 PM EST [Link]


Wednesday, October 20, 2004

More Head Cold

I have a nasty head cold, and I stayed home from work sleeping off most of it. I don't think it will get worse, but I worry these days because of my annual antibiotic-cured infection. I have been achy and my nose and throat are sore. Bleah. Thank God I got that echinacea honey.

And thus endeth my almost 4 months without being sick. I had a good streak there for a while. I knew the change of seasons would be difficult. But to counteract some of the seasonal depression I am going to have, I have been investigating getting a light box. Apparently, some insurance companies will cover the cost, at least in part, if a doctor prescribes it. For those who don't know what a Light Box is, it's a huge panel of lights that simulate sunlight. I have been meaning to get one for a while, since when I was growing up, some of my friends had one. One of my friend's bother has one, and it's had a remarkable effect on him. If I can get my insurance to front some of the cost, at least to where it would be under $200 for me, I might go for it.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:45 PM EST [Link]


Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Headache Day Off

I have a bad headache. I thought it was my migraines but I think now I have a sinus infection. I drank some hot liquids, and I have been applying pressure to my face. When I blow my nose, certain colors come out that are rather worrisome, but it could just be allergies.

Since I was in a rotten mood anyway, I decided to assess my finances again. The last time I did bills, I got so depressed, that I haven't paid them for a month, and some of them got rather late. Even with the raise, things are still pretty bad, but thankfully they are currently "post trauma" as opposed to "current fiasco." Last month was bad, mostly due to car taxes. But it marked the first month since March that none of my bills have remained unpaid, praying that I'll have the money next month.

There's an old stereotype about married couples and their bills. When I took over the bills in 1996, I had kind of hoped Christine was spending them on foolish crap because that would have been easy to solve. But she wasn't. A majority of the problems were spending money with no plan, something I started right away, and I still have a spreadsheet that summarizes where all our money went starting from 1998. To this day, Christine still does not spend money on foolish crap. I say this because I know couples who spend money on foolish crap all the time, and when one gets mad about it, they spend MORE on THEIR crap out of spite. Sometimes, I want to dope-slap people who whine about how poor they are, but they just shelled out $379 for the latest video card. Or got a new car. Or have more than 5 credit cards, most maxxed out.

I have four major credit cards, and a few store-brand ones. The major credit cards are American Express, two Visas, and a Mastercard. The Amex I have mainly for the benefits. The low interest rate on our PPH Mortgage alone was worth the $55/year I pay for the card, plus we get discounts and so on. It usually only has a $7.99/mo charge on it for a Credit Reporting service they offer (and it's worth it). One Visa has a low limit for online purchasing, and the other is an "emergency card," which, sadly, is maxxed out because of all the emergencies this year. The Mastercard is our main card which we use for all our normal spending. We do this for the low interest and airline miles. We've had the card for 4 years, and have enough miles to send two people round trip first class to anywhere in the world the airline goes. It's not supposed to have a balance; it's supposed to be paid off every month, but that hasn't happened since people started dying off in Spring.

None of our store cards have balances. I have the Sears one for emergencies like major appliance breakdowns, and the one for the Room Store... well, it came free when we got our living room set. The interest on it is horrible (26.99%), and the only thing I thought I needed it for was a new bed, but the bed frames they had were crap. In fact, the Room Store is only slightly better than Marlo's, which is like Ikea as far as quality, only without the good looks. Today, Christine found a unique deal on eBay where a guy makes bed frames from old railroad ties. So soon, providing his eBay rating is not false (doubtful), we'll have a bed frame again. Stronger than the last, and only $78/incl shipping.

Still, if nothing bad happens, we might be out of debt (except for the house) by mid 2005. There's a chance this might happen even sooner, because last year, we got a lot of taxes back. If that happens again, it might be as early as Spring. One good thing is that for the next few months, providing the weather doesn't suddenly drop to freezing, our electricity bill might come down a few hundred bucks as we stop using the AC, and before we rely on our gas heat (remember when gas was a cheaper alternative?). That's why I am hoping for a mild winter.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:36 PM EST [Link]


Monday, October 18, 2004

The weekend - friends, familes, and films

Some of you may have noted some significant gaps in my blogging. Well, comparatively significant. There are some real doozies I have been working on, mostly related to dealing with inner demons and guilts, but that's actually going well.

This weekend was some more standard cruising along the relatively calm waters of my life recently. The weather has been good, no major calamities, and some huge nagging problems that have been going on in my life and housework have started to ease. I am happy to feel better about everything, because for a while there, I was really being bummed out, and it's being kind.

Friday, we saw Matt and Anya again, where we talked over Chinese Buffet, and then we finished up at Starbucks. We learned more about each other, and found we have similar beliefs in ghosts and stuff. We also are finding out that we have some similar friends from the past, like an artist we knew a while back named Pie. I knew him from FanTek and his art, and Anya knew him from school. We also talked about creepy ex-friends in our lives, the cult of Amway sellers, and then they kicked us out of Starbucks because the one in Fox Mill closes at 9! On a Friday night? Not cool... I think I will have to introduce them to Amphora's in Vienna... (their motto should be, "We are Greek! We stay up ALL night!")

On Saturday, I thought I would have to watch the Heare kids again, but that turned out not to be until 7 or so. So I went to my friend Nate's LAN party, where we played various Gamecube games, and Star Wars: Battlefield. About 12 people were there, some I knew already, but most I didn't. CR was with me, and held his own against other competitors on the Gamecube. I was pretty proud of him.

Then all three of us took care of the Heare kids from about 7 until 11pm. I think I got a small taste of some of the "bad behavior" Sea and Lou had been hinting about all these years, but in all honesty, I didn't see anything that seemed abnormal for a family of 3 kids, all vying for attention. Chance bears the "eldest kid" burden as usual, and flipped out about it for a while. Everyone in my family is an only child: me, CR, and... well, Christine was so far removed from her siblings by age that by the time she was old enough to analyze her situation, they were already living away from home, and many never returned, really. I have an "accessory knowledge" of what it's like to have siblings by growing up with kids who had siblings. And over the years, I have collected bits of wisdom and recollections from older friends about their siblings. The burden of the eldest, the forgotten middle child, and the babied youngest are all tales common to the collected psyche of mankind. Sure, they don't always follow those patterns, but I have read enough about child psychology to know where a lot of problems can lie.

Chance is far different than her siblings in the fact she's very serious and high strung. She is also a bit of a control freak, and that's a bad position to be in when you live with small children or pets. "Why does Scarlet steal my things???" Well, because she's 6. And she likes you, looks up to you, and thinks that things that represent you have power. Also, she likes to annoy you because you pay more attention to her that way. If she truly hated you, she would avoid you, and be very quiet and non-confrontational unless pressured, and then she'd probably be violent. As it stands, she's also competing for love and attention in a family where that sort of thing is divided unequally because when you have both parents working (and one going to college), the family focus goes from "happy-bunny let's try and share" to "who is bleeding the most?" So those who have a flair for the dramatic will win out. Of course, I didn't say all of that to her, because Chance is only 10 and I didn't want to give her any smart-alec ideas, but I ache to heal her misery because she is so like me in many ways that I feel almost obligated to share what I have learned about life with her. I want to say, "Oh, I see what's wrong with your philosophy! No no, wait, I have something that is MUCH better." But that's like telling a depressed person to cheer the hell up. They have to want to improve, and I think Chance is so in the thick of things, she doesn't see the big picture. And again, she's only 10, which I have to remind myself of constantly because if you speak with her, you'd be convinced she was much older. She's still emotionally sorting everything out, and when I remember how I'd take that kind of advice when I was 10, I also know that I would have brushed it aside; I simply did not have the experience. Chance is also a bit of a tomboy, but I say "bit" because even though she fully proclaims her tomboyishness, she still wears feminine clothing, has both ears pierced, and while her hair is short, it is certainly not a boy's cut.

Scarlet is moving along as a middle child, but her odd role is that she's very protective of Keiran. If she's resentful from being the baby to losing that title to her younger brother, she doesn't show it. Yes, she DOES fight with him, but nothing abnormal for someone who just stole your book and called you "poopiehead!" I know when Roy stole the notebook I was taking notes in during the RHCE class in mid-lecture, I almost hit him, too. But if Keiran bangs his head or cries or something, Scarlet suddenly becomes a mother figure, and does her best to cheer him up. I forgot why Keiran burst into tears this one time (being 3, he does this frequently), but Scarlet stopped what she was doing and did a puppet show for him. Also, when she yells at him for something he did, she uses his full legal name, like a mother would. When I first got to know Scarlet, she was 2, and very shy and wouldn't say anything. I felt really badly that she didn't like me right away, but oddly enough, this may have been one of her ploys. Whereas Chance is a bit of a tomboy, Scarlet is just the opposite. She's a princess tea-party kind of girl. She'll happily wear a dress while her older sister will only wear one by force. I think as they grow up with each other, this gap will widen as each stakes their claim as a personalty role against one another for attention. Chance might become a truck driver that wins bar fights, and Scarlet will become Barbie. Okay, maybe not THAT extreme, but I worry about Chance when she hits puberty. Already she's dealing with crushes, and she's going to have to wrestle with her identity of being a girl physically. Scarlet will probably have a lot of boyfriends who will buy her things. But she's not dumb... no no no. I had a small conversation with her where she told me that you could still be angry with someone, and still love them. She even provided examples. Scarlet is becoming very articulate, and I think she may end up in some political role later in life.

Keiran is 3, but very chatty. Not jibber-jabber chatty; for a 3 year old, he has quite a lot to say. He can hold decent conversations with a premise and a conclusion. He's very contrary, however. But at 3, that's not unusual. I think he'll be kind of hyper and gregarious.

If Sean and Lou ever have another child, I think it would be interesting to see how everyone would react. Chance won't be happy, that's for sure. Scarlet may take on a protective role with another sibling below her, but then Keiran and child #4 may fight with each other for both their parents AND Scarlet's attention. The "losing sibling" might then align themselves with Chance, and Chance might finally have an ally, although she might be too grown up to take advantage of that.

I think Sean and Lou have done a good job with them as best they can. You can't be a perfect set of parents, of course, because no one ever is (and those who claim this are probably in denial). They don't spoil them, or play favorites that I can see, and I know they love their kids very very much. I like seeing how their kids are doing because it helps me normalize my opinions and feelings about parenthood and rearing children. I am learning a lot from that family. Books are one thing, but real-world examples are another.

Sunday was the Katsucon Anime Music Video Contest preliminary meeting. Only Keith and Mark showed up (booo to the rest of you!). We discussed what went right and what went wrong. I mentioned stuff I would be doing, and ideas were suggested back and forth. I think it's been decided that we're having a longer show, so we can pack in more clips that the audience wants. I am managing and being Emcee this time around, so expect to see me there.

On a final note, I think a lot of my entries will be spare for a bit while I sort out my new job. In my old job, I had a lot of free time because I did a lot of "program, install, run, wait, compare results" kind of work, and right now I am on a STEEP learning curve, and spending a lot of time learning new things. What made it more complicated is my boss was ... demoted, you might say. He wasn't fired, but he was not allowed to be a manager anymore (apparently, he was on probation, and failed). Now we all report to his former boss, who gave me a ton of new work to sort through. My boss is in some kind of limbo, but I suspect he'll be let go.

Yes, I vied for the position. I couldn't let that chance pass! But it was a long shot, and I didn't quite make it, but I don't think I jeopardized my current situation.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:53 AM EST [Link]


Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Shedding the material shell... or, "NO, MINE MINE!"

Last night I was driven to make cookies. So I did.

I also got a lot of housework done. I stayed ahead of the laundry curve, fixed a Linux box problem, replaced a hard drive, straightened up the laundry room, cleaned the kitchen, and did some general cleaning in my den.

I certainly have a lot of stuff. For the past few years, I have been starting to question why I keep certain things. Take books for instance. I have about a thousand paperbacks, a few hundred hardbacks, and a bunch of gaming stuff. Most are in boxes in a closet. Will I ever need them? Do I need them so badly that I am willing to take up space in closets? For years, I just thought, "Oh, I'll build bookshelves for them later." Why? They do not appreciate in value, and if anything, they are a fire hazard. There are a few I am sure I will need for later reference, or some so good, I know I'll read them again. But if I just keep those, that would only be about a fraction of what I have now. For many years, I was obsessed in keeping my collection of books I had read. Why? As a trophy? Who the hell would I impress? For a while I thought I'd keep them for my son, but he doesn't really get into books, and recently I saw this site where some people were doing this campaign of leaving paperbacks in public places (busses, waiting rooms, etc.) with a sticker that said it was free for circulation, as long as when the reader was finished, they would leave it in some other public place. It was a campaign for literacy or something. It started me thinking that not only am I keeping books for no good reason, but I am preventing anyone else from reading them as well. This didn't sit well with me. I won't be here forever, and when I am gone, most likely my books will get tossed away of I don't get them back out in the public.

Still, that nagging sense of materialism gets to me. "But they are mine!" I protest in my gut. "Mine mine mine mine!" Then my superego goes, "materialism is a path to misery. It is greedy to hold onto these things. Why do you want to keep the books anyway? You don't have to get rid of all of them. Keep the ones you need for reference or for nostalgia, and circulate the rest. And you'll feel good that you did a good deed for someone else." "NOOOOO!!!! MINE MINE MINE MINE!!!!"

[...sigh]

Of course, I know some of my friends are the same way. In fact, most of them are. For instance, my friends Liska and Pocky have HUGE collections of books in shelves that fill basements. I doubt Pocky even has the TIME to read all that shojo gymnast manga, and I doubt he uses them for reference material. At least, I hope not! smile Hee! And I am sure this entry will generate at least one letter from a friend going, "OMG PUNKIE! I'LL TAKE THEM!!!!" and I'll say, "Get help, man."

Posted by Punkie @ 08:26 AM EST [Link]


Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Depression recession?

Something weird is happening. I am not sure what it is.

For the last few days, I haven't felt as stressed out or mopey. It seems something vital in my depression cycle is missing. Like, I can feel the trigger to get depressed, but it never actually happens. There seems to be some kind of support or missing piece being filled in. I don't know if this is some kind of precursor to a psychosis, or a warning, or what. There has always been a kind of "man... not again" feeling in my head, especially for the last few years, but for the last few days, it's like my depression just can't get motivated.

I have no idea why.

I wonder if it's all the tapes?

Posted by Punkie @ 07:30 PM EST [Link]


Weekend wrapup - New work, Renn Fest, and more...

This weekend had some interesting tidbits.

My last day in the Reston office ended short when they almost pushed us out with a large broom. We were supposed to work until 5, but they just started shutting everything down, and people gave up and went home. Christine went out with Gay Friday night, which left me at home to clean up some. My den was looking pretty bad, so I started on that. I got all my computer repairs done, balanced some bills, and then watched some of the Presidential debates.

Man, I wonder if Kerry says in his head, "I can't believe I am losing to this guy!" I don't get much into heavy politics, but man... I wonder about Bush. I can't find much nice to say about him. Kerry is my hamster, and that's all I am going to say about that.

Saturday was more boring errands, although Christine and I went to my new workplace. I go more about it, in all boring detail, in my tech blog. But all my stuff was there, and I didn't care much for my new pod because it leaves my back exposed to a major hallway. But it's only for a few months before we move to our permanent location, anyway.

Sunday, Christine and I went with Matt and Anya to the Renn Fest. Matt and Anya are so fannish, it's not even funny, but they had never been to a fannish event like the Renn Fest or any convention. They had a GREAT time there. Matt is REALLY a nice guy, such a gentleman. Most of the Fest, CR and I wandered around by ourselves. I got to spend some quality time with him, which is always a good thing. In 4 more years, he'll be out on his own. sad He's such a great person, it's amazing I am even related to him.

I didn't meet many people. I met Mike, Liz, John, Doug, Tiger (and Llama), Lori, and ... that's about it. I didn't see Casey, Pie, or a lot of the regulars. They could have been there, but didn't see me. Even my new boss was there, and we missed each other. It was GREAT to see Lori (from the Bee Folks) so busy. I have known her since ... man, since Prune Bran. I got some new Echinacea Honey and picked up a half gallon of Blueberry honey for Cheryl (she's paying us back).

The main reason to go was that it was "Renew Your Vows" weekend. Which we did. It was held in front of the church there, and it was a nice ceremony with some poetry, two musical numbers, and some very nice speech. The PA system was really hard to hear, but luckily, they gave us all handouts to read along. Matt and Anya, Christine and I, and some drunk redneck and his wife were crowded near the back next to a tree. The drunk was constantly making jokes about marriage, escape, and things I am sure he thought was funny. I found it mildly annoying, but I tried not to let it get to me. Poor Anya was right in front of him, though, and caught a lot of comments he meant to say under his breath, had he not leaned forward to Anya's right ear and kept jostling her.

Matt and Anya discovered for this first time, in mild shock, that we not only were in our early and mid 30s, we also had been married for 15 and a half years. They said it wouldn't last 2 years, and maybe for other people they might have been right, but we're still together, and I think more in love than before, which was pretty incoceivable back then. I loved Christine to the point most women would get restraining orders for, but she still loves me, even though I am sure I come off as nerdy-creepy.

Monday was back to work, not a holiday for anyone but CR. Work was erratic, because people were setting up after the move to Sterling. Monday also marked the day everyone else from my old team got laid off sad.

Bummer. I miss you guys.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:14 AM EST [Link]


Friday, October 8, 2004

Punkie's Earlier Years: "The Amazing Me: Side 1" - High school gym, you can never win...

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

This rant to poor Neal was about how ignoring bullies, which is what teachers always told you to do back then, was like pushing a rope. Uphill. Actually, I was trying to appear brave by convincing Neal, and thus, myself, that insults didn't hurt me anymore because they were so common, I could insult myself and it had no effect! "I do it just for fun, ha ha!" This is what I look back on and shake my head at daily. Somewhere in 5th grade, I got this "great idea" that if I insulted myself, and beat the other kids to the punch, it would diffuse them. The worst they could do was agree with me, which isn't conducive to a fight.

Bully: You are a retard!
Punkie: Yes I am! You bet!
Bully: Yeah, well... you agree! Ha ha! Euh... [deflated confusion]

Yeah, it worked as designed, but the psychological damage that took on me was simply appalling. I would actually take insults that had been said to me throughout the day, and "deprogram" them at night, saying, "I am an idiot. I am an idiot." over and over like a mantra. I figured I would become immune to the poison, so to speak. Instead, this re-enforced the insult, until I believed it. Fuck! I am STILL undoing that mistake...

But why mention this in gym? Because I am still convinced to this day that gym is where all the jocks have free reign of terror over their victims. I always said the "Presidential Physical Fitness Test" was a way, on paper, to PROVE you were a failure. "Here's your loser score... geees, Larson. Not even ONE pullup? I mean, you're fat but... damn, that fat kid over there did at least TWO. You're not even trying..." They never knew how hard I tried, even to the point of tears and injury. I just wanted to pass one, just ONE of the dozen or so things you had to pass. I never even got half of any minimum done. And the bullies let me know it. I may never have been graded on the fitness test, but it scored a big fat L on my forehead for 8 years.

We had co-ed flag football? Damn! That must have been frustrating for me... seeing young girls... in their skimpy shorts... but I mention it as "fun" because the girls weren't into playing at all, so apparently this was after I had "made peace with being single for the rest of my life" (although, I do recall having normal "visible" puberty issues until high school). I also notice, for the first time, that girl's gym seems more like busy work. I have always had this theory that gym and recess was a ploy for schools to tire you out, but the girls never seem to be pushed like the guys were. There were always 5-6 girls who would be sitting on the sidelines, not even dressed up. And the whole thing seemed so disorganized, like they just collected girls for 55 minutes, dressed most of them up in gym uniforms, and kind of had them all do the same activity... unless they didn't want to. But anyway, I don't just say this because I think preteens will run into the bushes and shag like burning hot monkey sex, but I describe this incident where a guy tackles a girl with the ball, and when she rolled onto her back, he SPIKED the ball into her stomach. Damn.

And what was the fucking point of jockstraps? We actually had, every day, jockstrap inspection. You had to pull the elastic band from your buttcheek to prove you had one on. And you weren't allowed to wear underwear with it, either. Which they also graded you down for, along with showers and stuff. That disturbed me then, and disturbs me now...

I have to say, though, with the exception of one gym teacher in grammar school, none of the others really treated me poorly. Some were amazed at how bad I was, but they never made fun of me, and if they caught bullies punching me around, or pinning me to the wall, making me say things, the gym teacher would break it up. Sometimes, they even would punish them. "You can't go beatin' up on Larson, he tries, he tries!" I tell on the tape of one incident I said, "Fuck you!" to a kid while I was crying over something (I didn't specify, and I cried a lot in junior high), and didn't get in trouble. He got sent to the office for taunting me, and I was sent to the locker room to "cool off." They even gave me odd jobs to do, like go through athletic stuff to find deflated balls [snicker], take towels down to laundry, sort papers in their office, and stuff like that. They seemed to "know" I was just not cut out for athletics. So, God bless you Mr Wood, Mr. Palmetto, Mrs. Timmerman, Mr. Oliverio, and Mr. Pease. At least you guys weren't against me.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:41 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "The Amazing Me: Side 1" - Me and Mrs. Brown

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Mrs. Brown was my English teacher in 8th grade. She was not a BAD teacher, really, but she had issues. First and foremost, she was a pathological liar. She would be the first of only a few I have ever met in my life. She had the common traits of a pathological liar's stories:

1. Always trying to "one up" you. You had 3 cats growing up? She had 10. And they all did tricks.
2. Speaks of events that happens to her where it would be impossible to know certain points of view. "When my step-sister died alone on the beach, the last thing she thought of was how kind I had been to her, and how unfairly she had treated me."
3. Tells stories where certain facts seem rather implausible and have sweeping patterns, like she had 5 sisters that were all Olympic champions, and 5 brothers were were all famous doctors. Yet, she would never say which ones they were, only, "You have never heard of them young child."
4. In a desperate attempt to bond, claims your culture as her own.

The last one was a really doozy. In my year, she claimed to be Yugoslavian, because we had a kid who had Yugoslavian heritage, Mickey Mastilovic. She insisted on calling him by his given name, which all of us kids heard for the first time, "Pedrag." Mickey's real name is Pedrag??? Yes, it was, as evidenced by someone who got ahold of his computerized class schedule. Mickey was REALLY bothered by this, you could tell. Mrs. Brown went on and on and on about her Yugoslavian heritage, and how she was related to Slavic Kings and so on. Years later, Mickey told us Yugoslavia was a country created in 1945 by socialist Marshall Tito. The communists created a federation of six republics: Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia. I forgot which one Mickey said he was from, but he knew she was totally full of shit the whole time, and that was why he stood her calling him, "Pedrag."

The next year, she claimed she was Swedish. Oh, man, I wish I could have been in for that one.

Her fake martyr-like ways irked me, too. Her husband was apparently this famous and rich doctor who won the Nobel Prize, but she taught out of the goodness of her own heart. She also had this false air of sophistication that even when I was 13, I apparently knew was false. She always acted as if she had "blue blood royal weaknesses," like the inability to smell gum and stay conscious. "I am so allergic to the grape smell," she once said, "that one part per million in the air will cause me to faint. And if that happens, you will be tried for attempted murder." Uh huh.

In the tape, I make comments about things she says, and how she delivers them. "Class, courtesy please...!" she would say... but that never worked, so she ended up having to say, "Shut. UP!" and then she would blame us for making her swear, and that was beneath her (yes, "Shut up" was a swear word where I grew up, along with saying something "sucks"... "fuck" was just out of the realm of our lingo until high school).

But the worst story I heard about her, though, came from someone who had an older brother. It seems that when he found out his little sister had Mrs. Brown, him and some friends decided to follow Mrs. Brown to where she lived. I am not sure why, maybe for future vandalizations, who knows. But they watched her get into her beat-up BMW after school, drive around in circles for a while in front of some expensive condos, and then stop at a small house. It turns out she lived in a small single family home in Falls Church, where she lived alone with sparse furnishings. They found out from neighbors she had been alone for years, at least since the 60s. The girl who told me this joked, "I bet on her birthday, she puts her cat on the kitchen table, puts on a party hat, sticks a single candle in a stale cupcake, and sings, 'Happy Birthday to Me,' until she breaks down sobbing." Now the girl who said this meant this to be cruel, but something snapped in my heart when I heard this, and to this day, I find that to be the saddest image I can muster about anyone. I couldn't hate her anymore, because for the first time, I began to have empathy for those who have unfortunate lives other than my own.

Mrs. Brown was not all bad, either. Really. She introduced a lot of us to dinner theater, and would have 2-3 field trips a year to one. I always had fun at those, and gained half my love for musicals because of that (the other half was Neal himself, who sent me musicals in some of his tapes - Neal later told me he stopped listening to them so much after he learned what type of people were associated with that music type). In this tape entry, I mention "Hello, Dolly" which finally solves this riddle about how I knew all about the story when "I fist saw it" (the movie version with Striesand) with Christine. Sadly, a poor student by the name of David Ames got dragged onstage by the woman playing Dolly, who then danced with David, and gave him a business card (all in character, of course). The other students teased him so much, and this asshat bully I knew... (keep them unnamed, Punkie...)... poured salt in David's Coke.

Speaking of Coke, in this tape I reveal my first foray into an American culture I never saw at home: sodas. I was not allowed to drink them, and I didn't have Kool-aid until I was in scouts. I drank my first cola when I was 19. NINETEEN! Not that I didn't get offered them in fandom, but by that time, I was convinced cola was nasty for some reason. But in the tape, I am having this Jerry Seinfeld rant about, "What is the deal with everyone drinking soda? And why do they make fun of those who drink milk?" Man, I was SUCH an outcast... I might as well have been from another planet. I was totally not in tune with any kid my age at all. I actually said, "It's bad for my kidneys," for some reason. Where the hell did I get that from?

NERRRRRD!

But I digress.

Lastly, I rant about Mrs. Brown forcing us to do "outlines" of books. "What a dumb way to read books!" I complained to Neal. But, damn it, to this day, I think in outlines! So Mrs. Brown will always have that to brag about.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:02 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "The Amazing Me: Side 1" - Junior Hell continued: DENIED!

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Here's a happy place: "There there's lunch. I eat alone. There is no one to talk to, and they all go, 'I don't want to eat with bucket!'" Ouch. Just... ouch. I did have one friend at school, Steve Moyer, whom I am STILL friends with, but that was after school.

I wonder what else I repressed? Oh, wow. Like right out of some movie...

I finally managed to ask out my crush, Patricia Morrissey, out to the Halloween Dance. I had totally forgotten this, but in a flashback that hit me like a slap, I remember this pretty well, because her reaction, which was really rather exaggerated, was to act disgusted and scream at the top of her lungs and go, "NO WAY!" in a kind of shocked horror, like I had asked her something on the level of asking her to give me oral sex right there and now, bi-atch! I really worked up the courage for about a day, and a whole day's worth of school lessons was lost on me as I nervously planned my smooth moves, what I would say, and how I said it, and finally managed to get her alone in the hallway in front of the cafeteria. Her scream cut me off before I could finish the sentence, and actually quieted the cafeteria. Again, ouch. I can still remember the light in her hair, the sweater she was wearing, and the slightly rank corn smell coming from the cafeteria. When I look back on this, I think this was the pivotal incident that made me decide I would never ask out another girl again. But now, when I hear some of the details, there are a few minor notes. One, I was a fat, pimpled nerd, and she was a popular socialite; I was out of my league. Second, it was a Sadie Hawkins dance anyway, and she was supposed to select a guy, not the other way around. I don't remember who she took, because obviously I didn't go.

I knew this tape would have a lot of pain in it. Part of me wants to reach back in time and go, "Oh, ask someone else! There are a lot of nerdy band girl geeks would would have said yes!" But instead, I have to hear myself say, "Oh well, that's the breaks," in a tone that suggested I was above getting hurt. What's that smell? Sour grapes? Yeah, sour grapes.

Fool.

But, honestly, this was the time when I decided that sex was out for my kind, and to just suck it up and deal with it. I would never date, never be happy, and have to make peace with this "fact." This, in fact, was a great survival tool in high school, because whereas a lot of my male friends were out to get laid, I stayed calmly behind, laughing with the geek girls at the whole ridiculousness of it all. I made good friends, and never felt sexual tension because I knew there was no point. Girls made good friends, but I would never have one for a lover. And I was okay with this. I felt I was "privy to a secret club."

Thank God I grew out of this and met both: a good looking woman AND a best friend. Yay Christine!

So Particia, if you are out there, I totally forgive you. We were kids, and I am not holding you to that moment in any way. As you can see, it turned out all right in the end.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:14 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "The Amazing Me: Side 1" - Hello from Longfellow Intermediate Hell School

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Alas, the tape labeled, "The Great Me," starts off with my description of Longfellow (which I call "The Isle of Misfit Teachers") from 8th grade in comparison to Eastwood Knolls, Neal's school in El Paso. It is quite obvious from my tone that I am not pleased with the school. I also mention I started my hatred of poetry because of the name, "Longfellow." Thank you, Miguel, for turning me around. I go on about how someone stole letters from the front of our school, which now only says, "L n l ow." Heh.

I mention that I have to walk to school with John Wickland, a neighbor who grew up next to me, who was one grade behind me. The Wicklands were kind of a surrogate family of sorts, but I have the feeling they only did so out of pity because after I was out on my own, only their youngest daughter, Jennifer, made any attempt to keep in contact me. And that was a while ago. I spoke with Sonja, the mother, a few years ago, but she seemed kind of nervous around me, like she was a little uncomfortable. I suspect that my father, who continued to live next to them for the next 13 years, made their life uncomfortable. Sonja, it should be noted, was my mother's best friend along with Carolyn, the neighbor next to Sonja. Sonja took me into her house when my mother was too drunk to answer the door, which happened a few times a month. She would feed me, keep me out of the weather, and let me watch TV until my father came home. That was never fun, because then I'd have to make it to the door before my father locked it behind him. And then he'd be all mad that my mother was drunk, the house was a mess, and so on. I tried to clean up where I could, but I was a kid, and never did the housework completely right. The Wicklands never spoke to me about what was going on, because my mother being the neighborhood drunk was certainly well known enough to be considered a "taboo topic," sort of like asking a native of San Francisco, "What about Earthquakes, what are you going to do when the Big One hits?"

Anyway, for the first part of 8th grade, apparently it was me, Andy Oman, Mike Dukes, and John Wickland clumped together and made the 1.5 mile trek to Longfellow. Yes, we did walk a mile and half, uphill, some areas without sidewalks, even in the snow. For some reason (and this was a big hot button for the neighborhood), the bus zoning system was messed up in our neighborhood, and so kids got bussed if they were 2 miles or more from the school, or 1 mile or less... but if you were between 1-2 miles, buddy... you were walking. Or bike-riding. Or more likely, your stay-at-home mom drove you and some kids around you to school. I did have that last option from the Lee family across the street (Gu-yon was in my gaming group, and his sister Chung-eug was in my grade), but my father went on and on about how he had to walk some great distance in Chicago snow drifts that were ten feet high. This may have been true, he and my mom grew up in the Chicago slums, but even though I had to walk to school, I never made my kid do that on bad weather days (he's been lucky, all of his schools are right next to each other, and about 5 blocks away, so if the weather is good, he walks, but if it's not, we drive him). Mike (who confessed some of his family details last year) did not have that option, Andy came from a single-parent home, and Mr. Wickland also walked to school under horrible conditions as a kid (I knew his parents, they were just mean).

Apparently, Andy and I got into fights. I also mentioned that Mike finally got sick of us, and stopped walking with us. Sorry, Mike, I bet we were dweebs.

When you got to school, before 8:30, you had to file to the cafeteria. You weren't allowed to be in any of the halls, at your locker, anything. Mr. Burnsworth, who looked like Dr. Frankenstein, would be in the main intersection, screaming at people to go to the cafeteria. Some of us would try and walk slow so 8:30 would ring and we didn't have to go to the cafeteria. But he was wise to that, that sly Mr. Burnsworth. At 8:30, the rush from the cafeteria was so brutal, many of the slow kids (i.e., me) got run over or knocked into lockers. I forgot about that. Yeah. That sucked.

I describe my locker as "a mess held back by a plastic ruler." Heh. Later, I would stop using my locker because I usually ended up with a locker so far between classes, I just started carrying everything with me. I was fat, not in good shape, and running the length of the school twice in the 5 minute hall time was simply not enough.

I make a passing mention of my new nickname as of the previous year, "bucket." This came from the joke, "What's the difference between Greg and a bucket of lard?" That name stuck with me for 4 agonizing years. A few still called me that in my senior year, but not really as an insult. "I never knew your real name," said one girl, apologetically. I should have fired my marketing department. smile

I name more bullies. Yee. I wish I had forgotten their names, but I mention them, and now memories come flooding back. I won't mention their names now because most of them grew out of bullying me by my sophomore year. A few moved away, but I assume they also grew out of it. One went mental (sort of my fault, my first experimentation of playing with people's heads resulted in him freaking out and being... well, I never saw him again). Another I attacked and hurt real bad, which I am not going into here. But him and his friends never bothered me after that.

I describe my teachers. And substitutes. There was a sub named Mrs. Rooney was was so clueless, she'd believe anything you'd tell her. In one incident, she asks if we did our homework. The class says, "no." So then she decides to do something else. Someone balked, "But I missed all my TV shows to get this done, you guys are liars!" To which we replied, "Shut up, Kit!" I heard Kit Coleman later became a commercial airline pilot. Showed us, she did! smile Greg Cullen and Andrew Birchfield used Rooney time to get in on some erase fight action. When Mrs. Rooney turned her back, they would chuck chalkboard erasers at each other. Another time, they tossed paper airplanes at her helmet of curly hair. One day, one landed like a dart and stuck in her head, and she didn't even notice. We left it like that for the rest of the class, and when the next period came in, we told them not to tell her. Man, we were so bad...

I complain that TWO MONTHS into school, the seventh graders still get lost. Man, those seventh graders... get with the program will ya?? Heh heh... what's funny, is I sound just like Chance, my friend Sean's 10 year old daughter.

I describe my shop teacher, Mr. Dyzak, as "Nothing bad ever happens in his class, therefore, he's boring!" I suspect the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times..." applies a little here. My former shop teacher, Mr. Dileo, has later charged for molesting a student. But that was a few years after I had left. I do mention one incident, where an unnamed student used a copper rod to fling tacks at girls. Man, things were really bad back then! For years, I have had this nagging doubt that parts of my youth were exaggerated with time, but I am telling small stories that make me go, "Man, it was a madhouse in Junior High! A MAAAAAAD HOOOOUSSSSSE!!"

I had forgotten some of my Valley Girl speak from back then. I mean, I remember "Gag me with a spoon," or "tubular," and "grody," but forgot, "Ooooh, what a burn!" and "No DOY!" Plus all the Welcome Back Kotter and Happy Days influences, like "Up your nose with a rubber hose" and "sit on it!"

Nannoo nannoo... I am Mork from Ork. Shazbat!

Posted by Punkie @ 05:11 PM EST [Link]


Thursday, October 7, 2004

A blow to the head, and you're in pain ... you give concussions a bad name...

I know TV isn't supposed to be real, but I am really getting sick of the liberal misuse of concussions in movies and TV. Recently, while watching an old Peel/Steed episode of "The Avengers," I swear to God, I saw half a dozen people receive blows to the head and get knocked unconscious from injuries that, had I received, I would have only gone, "Owww ... hey, you bastard, that fuckin' hurt!". From personal experience, if you get banged in the head hard enough to pass out, you don't wake up "a little groggy." You have nausea, dizziness, and that's it for you for at least a day. A concussion is caused when your brain receives such a shock, it swells in your skull and cuts off blood supply to various parts. It is a VERY bad thing, and can kill you. Here are some links my friend April sent me:

http://www.muhealth.org/~neuromedicine/concussion.shtml

http://www.cdc.gov/doc.do?id=0900f3ec800091d5

And don't get me started on gunshot wounds... ever heard of hydrostatic shock?

Posted by Punkie @ 12:24 PM EST [Link]


Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 2" - The Confession: "I'm a ghoulish freak, Neal"

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Neal's voice: "This is where Grig explains WHY he went to court and got therapy..."

I always have a twinge of guilt here because I never really told Neal EVERYTHING. For the exact same reasons I never kept a diary or journal back then, what if my parents find it? I never told Neal about my suicide attempts, the screaming and yelling with my parents, their fights, or anything. I was scared if they knew I was telling Neal, they would forbid me from contacting him. So Neal saw a much rosier side than was actually true. Some of what I am saying I can hear my voice drifting because I know I am only telling the half truth, but now, as an adult, I want to know what I was really thinking. Too bad, although, I still think if I had said, "Dr. Neal, today started off with trying to kill myself..." he would have told his parents, which would have called my parents, and bye-bye pen pal (or, more accurately, magnetic tape pal). The key was I didn't attempt suicide for attention. I never told ANYONE because I knew a natural reaction would be they would try and stop me. I always wanted "that way out," so I kept it a secret. Well, my guidance counselor found out about it when it slipped out in a moment of anger, the school psychologist saw the scars on my arm from all the self-mutilation, and that started this whole ball rolling.

I have long avoided this story, and I think I may have to tell it because that's what the tapes might cover.

I start off with a nervous laugh...

... and just dump everything. My depression started in 3rd grade. I explain the years of not doing homework, spells of spacing out, bad teachers I had, and then I explain, for probably the first time, my father's wrath. I seem to remember as clear as a bell to this day my father's obsession with grades. He told me that an A was "a minimum standard," as in straight A's were the barest acceptable minimum for achievement. If I were to describe the overlying excuse for his abuse towards me, it was over school. I never got straight A's. I was only on the honor roll twice, and that was after my mother's suicide when teachers just dropped their standards (and the last two quarters of the senior year of high school, when people pretty much already know what college they have been accepted to, are really just written off anyway). My father's sarcastic cruelty is explained, like how his nickname for me was "Little Dummy."

I then confess my suicides. Three by poison attempt, two by stabbing attempt. I am not going to go into what I actually did (blecch, who wants to hear that, ever drink Maracide? Don't... major pukage from ick medicine), but the weird thing is, when I look back on it, is tens minute before an attempt, I didn't even know that ten minutes later, I would be trying to end my life. The mood shifted that quickly. I mean, there'd be some fight when my father would prove what an idiot I was, mock me, deride me, and twist my own logic and defense for my right to exist into some sham where I was stupid and had NO right to live. Then I'd be in my room, crying. Then a long period of just staring at the ceiling or my fish tanks. Then, I just did it. Almost like autopilot. I kept various poisons and a large chef's knife hidden away among my fish tanks stuff, and their presence there was soothing, like if I wanted to, all I had to do was just do it. I never even remember mustering up courage. Just a kind of, "Oh well," and zzzzzip! Blood. Or poison. Whatever my mood was. Of course, then I would fail, and I would cover up my attempts. Poison was easy, I just got sick. And since I always cut myself, any suicide attempts were just another cut, another wound, and if anyone asked, I'd say, "I fell on some glass," or something. No one really wanted to really know, anyway. And I wanted to keep it that way.

In the tape, for the first time, I explain that some part of me wanted to live. That was pretty monumental, and I can hear myself pause in shock. I never had said that before. I mention Mrs. Deborah Tucker, the school psychologist, as putting me in a "peer counseling program." Later, Mrs. Tucker would betray me in the most horrible way, and I swear, if I ever see her face again... well, for right now, and for two years afterwards, she was a pal.

Then the tape ends. Neal didn't number these in any way I can figure, so this may be picked up in a later post.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:11 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 2" - On bad skits

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Man. Rudolph Fritterman sings? What was I *on*? Things like these are why I forgive Saturday Night Live for having bad sketches sometimes. Okay, it's bad enough he sings like Kermit the Frog, but he's singing Bach's "Tocatta and Fugue In D Minor," which doesn't even HAVE lyrics. I guess that was the point, but I think just a few bars would have been enough. No, I sing about 2 minutes of it. Then I do an encore with another part of the song, gargling. I'd fast forward through this, but that's what snapped the tape the last time. How embarrassing. I thought I ended the senseless skit with Rudolph drowning, but he survived, and then there was this interview with him, which was concluded with him squealing in high-pitched foreign language. Okay, I have to admit, that made me smirk, because I made my voice go from Kermit to Elmo, and it sounded like "Elmo now gonna speak in TONGUES!!! ABABABLAH GOO EEEWAAAH..."

Posted by Punkie @ 04:11 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 2" - Tara Lily: 1969-1984

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Oh, wow... now talking about Tara Lily. My math partner. I was so frustrated that I couldn't express how dumb she was, but I gave it my best. I was so annoyed because here was this ditzy socialite in Algebra2/Trig class, a high-level honors class, and she never did work, hated math, and REALLY hated being paired with me. I can still remember her makeup, puffy 80s hair, Gucci clothing... God, I couldn't stand her. "What's a girl like this doing in a high level math class??" I asked in the tape.

God answered that for me. A few months after that entry, Tara got drunk while her parents were gone for the weekend, then drove her parent's new Cadillac and wrecked it. She lived, and she didn't even get hurt very bad. But she got so freaked out by the whole experience (her friend said Tara was babbling her parents were going to kill her), she took a whole bunch of pills, called a friend to say she was killing herself, and her friend rushed over... just in time to see Tara jump from the balcony of her condo (I think it was from the thenth floor). She hit another balcony on the way down, spun around in the air, and landed on the pavement in front of the condo complex. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Her friend, understandably distraught, told all her friends, and by Monday morning, everyone knew. The school had open counseling and everything for a week. The mother offered anyone from the school to come to the funeral (although, while I have no direct proof, I think a lot of kids took this as a free day).

It was a shock to the school, and I think our second suicide in two years. The first was a girl who slit her wrists in science class and died because no one had the sense to apply first aid and bled to death. The school did their best to cover that up, and since the girl who did it wasn't too popular (she was in the semi-Goth crowd, even I knew her only by name), that wasn't very hard. I knew one kid who was in that class, and he said she just exploded during some quiet work time, stood up, said, "Fuck McLean, fuck science, and fuck life!" and slit both her wrists (both? is that possible?) with a razor blade. The entire class freaked out, and backed into one corner of the classroom, and the teacher ran to get the principal. The class was then asked to go into an empty classroom while the paramedics worked on her. The story becomes cloudy if she was already dead, or died on the scene, or in the hospital. The big question asked for a while, especially by the school psychologist, was, "Why didn't anyone do anything? Put pressure on the wound, apply a tourniquet, anything?" I can kind of see that no one there had first aid training, and someone doing that WAS a shock. The school just made an announcement that everyone was going to stay in their classrooms over the intercom, and it took me days to find out what happened (I found out at my weekly gaming group).

And then my friend Copper (Lotus Rhee) was murdered a year before, too. Again, not very popular (VERY new-wave punk, skipped school a lot), and she didn't commit suicide, either. You could say her dangerous hitchhiking was to blame, along with her frequent drug intake, and other bad choices in life. But... I miss you, Copper. Deep down, you were such a sweetie and had a very good heart.

But when Tara died, EVERYONE knew her. She was not someone you'd think would do such a thing. Since then, I have always felt bad about hating Tara. They didn't give me a math partner after her, and that was kind of weird, being the only kid without a partner (I was told first it was to "allow for grief," then I was told, we have an odd number of students, and then finally, "Well, theres only two months of school left now..."). Mr. Hicks, the math teacher, who KNEW about my problems at home by then (he was used in a sting operation to get my father to talk to the school psychologists), was pretty gentle on me the rest of the year.

I have told people about Tara over the years, which leads to my advice about people who think suicide will make an impact. "You'll die, people may grieve, and then... they go on. Without you. You end up as an anecdote in someone's conversation years from now as they knew some kid who killed himself way back when... what's his name?" Suicide is not the answer, it's a lie that gets mislabeled as "the ultimate escape." I have learned from Tara's mistake that the ultimate escape is to just walk away and never return.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:59 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 2" - Nachos and Psychology Tests

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

Washington's First Nacho stand! It's hard to believe there was a time when we did not have nachos around here. I am guessing this would be around 1984. I read a news article, and supplied my own voices. For some reason, I portrayed the nacho stand owner to be a Foster-style drunk. This harkens back to a time when things like nachos, sushi, and Mexican fast food were almost totally unheard of in this area.

I then go into a speil about crazy people in psychologist's waiting rooms. I am sure my friend April would sympathize. One of my comments was anyone would end up crazy if they had been named "Scooter," which, apparently, one of the patients was. Both. I mean, named Scooter and crazy. He had some tall gangly friend who looked like he could crush ships with his teeth, but had a high-pitched goofy voice. They had a long conversation about a green object they had recently seen which was only described with vague references, and I think it bothered me that I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Then I go into this big thing about psychology tests.

Judging by the story, this would have been when the county sent me out for pyschology testing, either right before or after nearly convicting my father for child abuse and negligence. The settlement was that he would pay for 2 years of therapy. I have to say, after this, my father never wanted to talk to me again, which was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. He might have won the case, but he decided to represent himself, and made such an ass out of himself in court, that... well, that's another LONG story. But two lessons came from this:

1. Never say the real problem is your child doesn't receive ENOUGH abuse. Especially in documentation you wrote for the case. For 5 pages. His own testimony was better than anything the psychologists could have ever had.
2. Never tell the judge he's only a judge because he failed as a lawyer. To his face. After saying you hate lawyers.

Yeah, my dad really did that. That is one of the reasons I believe in God, it was too good to be true. What a gift. Damn, thank you, again, God for the light you shone on the courtroom that day.

Anyway, I go onto describe these tests. Here are some sample questions:
- Do you think someone is trying to poison you?
- Do you believe in the Afterlife?
- School is...
- I am ....
- The best is... (I joked, "Away from home, jacking off!"... pretty risque for me back then)
- Are you paying attention to this test?
- Are you sure you understand the directions to this test
- Do people talk about you behind your back?
- Are you lying? [yes/no]
- Have you answered all of the questions on this test?
- How often do you think about sex?
- How often does your date think about sex?

The tape annoyingly snapped in the middle, and I spent almost an hour and a half resplicing it. We used these cheap dictaphone tapes that came 4/$1.00, we reused them again and again, sometimes dozens and dozens of times. Often, tapes would snap from overuse, and the only way I could fix that tape was because I *still* remember how to fix them. And now they are like 20 years old on top of all that.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:23 PM EST [Link]


Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 2" - We Pause for this Commercial

[ where Grig relives his youth via cassette tapes his best friend Neal saved from over 6 years of letters ]

I had some kind of commercial with Fritterman Cola. In our letters, we'd sometimes do skits, often in the form of commercials. Characters that sold these various items where Rudolph Fritterman, Messmore Barnhauser, Harold Blodkin, and Martin Holosis (pronounced Mar-TEEN ho-so-LEESS). Sometimes they'd have their own companies, like Fritterman Enterprises and Martin Hosolis's Laundromat and Quickie Divorce Parlour. The concept of this gag was that you could silence babies with the soda by hitting them with the bottle.

I am sure that was funnier after that babysitting job.

Then it went into a YUK radio. YUK was another gag we shared, where there was a radio station that had the worst people who would call in. This was way before shock jocks, and "Howard Stern RULES!" shout-outs. It hardly seems funny now, what with Jerry Springer-style people. It's eerily foretelling of radio in 10-15 years. In this particular broadcast, a new DJ had taken over, and was being haunted by people who kept disappearing. The former DJ, the station manager, and so on. I don't know what kind of George Clinton type accent I was going for, but it's vaguely Amos and Andy meet Vanilla Ice. So this DJ hears someone at the door, and to his horror, and to the tune of the opening of "Thriller" and "Nature Trail to Hell," the horrifying zombie stumbles in...

"HI! My name is SEYMOUR!"

Okay, this may only be REALLY funny to Neal and me. But you see, years earlier, with his cousin Howe, Neal made a YUK Radio stunt where this little kid kept calling in. His name was Seymour. Which he'd always announce before he'd tell some woeful tale about his brother, who at one time, put his dead goldfish in a sandwich and ate it. "I cried," explained Seymour, "because that was going to be myyyy LUNCH!"

You had to be there. If you were, you'd realize this was comedy gold.

The YUK radio thing turns into a movie trailer about "The Return of Seymour," where several more clips of Howe belted out whiny protests about his awful older brother. These were actual samples from when Neal and Howe were little kids. My voiceovers were done in a voice I can only describe as the accent Jim Henson did for Kermit and Ernie. I used to be REALLY good and doing various accents and voices. At one time, I could do up to six different British regional accents, but I haven't done them in so long, I ended up drifting from Scottish to English to Cockney to Aussie like a drunken toddler drawing a marker on the map of the British Empire in 1890. I have even lost most of my Southern Drawl accents.

Bummer.

Another attempt at a tape letter was interrupted by Rudolph Fritterman trying to sell shares in his company... Fritterman Enterprises, of course! I didn't even know what the hell stocks were back then. At one point, the stocks are endorsed by celebrity interviewer, Robin Leach. Then old Rudie gets angry, and attacks me when I try and describe country music.

Rudie I think retired, when FOLCME (Fritterman On Line Corporation of Maine) was sold just before the Internet bubble burst. Got himself a house near Reno, where he was last seen singing Karaoke with Mr. Barnhauser. Messmore is still invested in Texas Oil (or "Ahl" as he calls it), but is semi-retired after his third heart attack and second double-bypass. Martin was last seen in Brazil, operating under the name, "Muchas Maracas," according to Interpol. Harold, sadly, is dead, after a mysterious incident involving a dachshund and a wicker-rattan chair...

Posted by Punkie @ 09:28 PM EST [Link]


Boooo... crunch crunch... Boooo.... [ding dong]... TRIKKERTREET!

If there's anything that will lift my spirits, it's fall. I have always liked fall. I like the crisp air, the crunchy leaves, and the sight of kids in their coats waiting for the bus. I like the gathering of crows, the trees having one last blast of color before shedding their leaves to go to sleep until next year. The fact that you can now see much more because of the lack of leaves.

But most of all, I like Halloween.

I like the whole candy-centered goodness that is trick-or-treating. I like giving out candy to kids, I like decorating for Halloween, and I just like the whole spooky-perky-Goth theme of it all.

Last year's turnout was great. I hope we have the same amount of kids or more.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:42 PM EST [Link]


Monday, October 4, 2004

Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 1" - On Being a Swede

I describe some of my relatives, like my grandmother Edith and her nephew, Claude. I assume around the same time, December of 1984. This twanged a few heartstrings, as I bumbled through what I thought of them and my Swedish ancestry, which was still a "hush hush" topic in my house.

Apparently, Claude was going to pick up Edith, and pay for my mother and I to go to Chicago to stay for the summer at one of Claude's summer homes, a "lakehouse." I had NO idea at the time, but I think this might have been an attempt at an "intervention" of my mom and her life, which was obviously out of control. In 25 months, she will be dead by her own hand, but at the time, we didn't have a clue she was suicidal. Okay, *I* did not have a clue. Maybe a lot of other people did, or at least guessed because she drank so much, and cried a lot. I recall Edith telling me, years later, that the last time they ever stayed over at out house, as she was hugging her father goodbye at the plane gate, she whispered, "Daddy... please help me... my life has gone so terribly wrong." I am still debating whether that was made more dramatic through her own eyes, but she said it happened, and so, I'll say it happened, too.

Apparently, Karin (one of my second cousins), called (while possibly drunk), and when she found out about the trip, said she'd fly out to join us at the lakehouse, too. Karin was one of my mother's favorite cousins. I made a lot of comments about this side of the family, and how they laugh so much. I make a passing comment about my father's side as being mysterious and in dark shadows, but that was years before I met Uncle Charles.

That trip never happened. I am not sure why, because I don't even remember planning for it. I am guessing my father said, "No," or something, but I don't know for sure. That trip might have saved my mother. I know that Karin said, "We TOLD her, LEAVE that man, TAKE your kid, and COME TO SWEDEN!" She also bitterly mentioned a dozen other attempts the family made to separate them, knowing how awful my father was, and how much in denial my mother was. This was probably one of those attempts.

Goddamnit. Can't I see her again, just once, God? Fuck.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:42 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 1" - More Adventures in Babysitting

Now I hear more details of Babysitting the [names omitted] kids. Wow. No wonder I blocked a lot of it out. I knew the oldest kid was psycho, but I had forgotten just HOW psycho. In one summary, I describe how he "saw the devil," and explained his "proof." "I saw him outside, he came up from behind a rock, and there was all this FIRE and BRIMSTONE..." I tried to refute him (?) with an attack of credulity by stating, "He couldn't have come up from fire, or else the world would catch fire, and then Heaven would come get him." The eldest thought for a moment and said, "Well, there wasn't any FIRE!" I said he told me there was, and he didn't. Sadly, I didn't have the skills to stop arguing with a child of 8, because even if you win, he won't admit it... so I ranted for a while about what a liar he was.

I also tell the tales of the actual beatings the eldest would inflict on his younger brother, like beating him into the door frame, and when his brother was on the floor, screaming, he grabbed a soccer ball and SPIKED it right in his brother's face. I can still picture this kid, his wild eyes flashing from a freckled face, inflicting cruel blows on his younger brother with murderous glee. Then at some point, the eldest got ahold of matches, and tried to set things on fire, including his brother's hair, as I recall. I had a devil of a time trying to get the matches from this kid. I didn't know where he got them from. He apparently got pissed I did this, because he threw screwdrivers and hammers at me, and then locked himself into the bathroom, trying to destroy everything in there. During this, the younger said he "wanted to be DRAGGED to bed," not ushered or carried, so he just fell limp on the floor. When I did get him to bed, he kept trying to get out of his bedroom, so I used some reverse psychology, saying, "Man, I hope he opens that door! I hope he gets out of bed!" I can't believe that worked. I never did say how the older kid left the bathroom.

I also go into some detail about the parents. The mother asked, "Were they any trouble at all?" and I told them what they did (but not about the matches, because apparently I made a deal with the kids if they stayed in bed, I wouldn't tell their parents about the matches... what an idiot...), and every time she'd say, "Oh yeah... sorry about that... yeah, he does hate his brother... we've been working on those issues." The father, OTOH, was some massive, brutish broad-shouldered man, who handed me a $5 tip and asked, "Is this enough?" I went into this rant of "I don't know, what they hell did he mean by that??" He was BRIBING YOU, PUNKIE! Jesus... I was so thick headed sometimes. And now.

I don't know how I stood it. I just really needed to money for school supplies and stuff. I exclaimed that, "I wish I could bash their heads in, like cavemen did in cartoons." I recall having to sit on one while holding onto the other with my arms. As I said many times in the tape, "MAN, those kids are BRATS!" Later, the eldest would stab me with a boning knife. Heh. The ended that hell job.

And pretty much babysitting as I knew it.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:22 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 1" - Sophomore Gym Life

Neal says: "December 1984 - Gym class"

I complain that gym class set some rule that all personal electronics and cameras would be confiscated and thrown in the trash. I am not complaining about this policy per se, but how anyone would manage to GET any such items out into the gym. Hidden in their gym shorts? Then I mull the irony that despite the "no camera rule," there are a lot of photos of sports in the yearbook and newspaper. I guess I didn't know that gym != sports. I also mention that one of our players, Mike Collins, was injured by a gym teacher during wrestling. His hip was "broken" (the hip apparently cracked, the cast covered one of his legs and all of his waist) and he was confined to a wheelchair. Apparently, at least in my sophomore year, I did have a concept of "the popular crowd," which I designated as "Group One." I totally don't remember that, but I thought Mike was part of this crowd. I make rather sardonic comments about him having fun in the wheelchair, getting attention, and how he played up the whole injury thing both as a free spirit and a sympathy ploy.

I immediately wonder, like probably some of you did just now, how he went to the bathroom. It shall remain a mystery... I also wonder why this did not make the news, and my "this school is heavily favored towards the jocks, and will cover up any mishap they may cause."

Little did I know my neck would almost break in two in less than half a year. During wrestling. Because an assistant coach did NOT pair me against someone in my weight category, but a cocaine-using football player. Foreshadowing... ooh...

At some point, some fellow jock, while goofing off with the wheelchair, nearly tips him over, spilling his backpack out of Mike's lap, and it spills to contents all over the floor. One of the contents? Dum dum DUM! A Walkman! [gasp] Well, he thought he was ALLOWED TO USE IT, if you can imagine that disgrace to the anti-personal-electronics I felt was happening. I also point out that he would listen to it, and was singing, aloud at the top of his lungs, the U2 song, "In the Name of Love." In those days, the "personal stereo" was still a new concept, and people, hearing the loudness through their earphones, assumed that no one else could hear them, so sang loudly.

Frat boy material, right there.

Well, Mr. Pease, the gym teacher, grabbed the Walkman, and despite the ardent protests of, "But it's not mine, hey man, it's my brothers's!" Mr. Pease tosses the Walkman across the gym and out the door. Mike rolls to get it, but the gym doors are so hard to open, it's almost a two-man operation for someone in a wheelchair. Luckily, some other student fetched it for him. Doooooooh!

Justice is NOT served for the Punkie...

In other news, they showed us a film where the narrator (another teacher named Mr. Lindstrum) talks like Christopher Walken or William Shatner, in the fact he pauses so dramatically. He was explaining the virtues of our new weight room, complete with top-of-the-line Nautilus equipment (yeah, rich kid's school. It shows. Except in the science labs where people had to practically buy their own frogs to dissect...). Mr. Pease makes a joke that his jocks can't count without moving their lips.

Some kid named Andrew, who I explain, "is retarded, because he apparently comes from another country," (yeesh... sorry about that), and when roll call is uttered, answers, "Right HEWRE!" like Jim Varney (the "Hey Vern" guy). This was before he made all those "Earnest Goes to..." films. Well, I explain ALL of the annoying commercials, in detail, to show how they annoying they were. For about five minutes.

Sorry, Neal. At least I admitted I had digressed.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:17 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: "WJOK Junk: Side 1" - The Unbearable Feeling of Projectionist

WJOK was an all-comedy radio that used to be in the area. It only lasted a few years, but it carried Dr. Demento and was the first "lewd after hours channel" I would come to listen to. I suspect this was a recycled "Best of" tape I would start before I went to sleep.

Neal intros this as "September 1983 - Gym Class"

I give some summary about running in circles in Gym class. I think this is where I got my hatred of jogging, "It's only going in circles! Going nowhere!" Ah... my Gothy youth...

Then it jumps to the part where I was doing the projectionist booth in High school. A lot of chaos is portrayed, and apparently I had totally forgotten what a pain the audience was when we started.

The people watching the movie, "Creep Show," were apparently a rowdy bunch, as they threw popcorn all over the floor. Apparently, they were much better, in my freshman opinion, than the other theater which was showing "Wargames." Apparently, my crush, Trish Morrisey and her friend Kirsten James, screamed a lot, and some 8th grader (you can tell my distaste when I say, "Eight Grader," like he had a disease) had given me and the other guy in the booth the finger. The other projectionist said he was going to "kill that kid," and stop the movie to "deal with him." I guess that kid would have been 34 today... no, sadly, he lives. Apparently the other projectionist (Mike) just banged on the glass instead and shook his head and gave him a wagging finger, and the kid shut up. My estimation was "It must have been terrifying to have a SENIOR do this to you with you are just an Eight Grader." BWAH! Then, later, some OTHER kid gave him the finger, and this was around the time when Mr. Duncan, the head of the whole theater experiment said, "We can't have this sort of behavior," and threw the kids out. They snuck back in anyway. My tone of this event suggested a disapproving "that's life for ya" kind of attitude. I also expressed dismay that the "Ushers" we hired were not ushering, but watching the films.

Renee Hogan, a name that would surface later in life when she was coincidentally a roommate with my friend Tracie some ten years later, apparently burst into the booth for reasons I either didn't know, or could not explain on tape. She was running concessions. I forgot we HAD concessions, that must have been gotten rid of after people threw popcorn everywhere. I had to push her out, I suppose, but the way I described it suggested I nearly pushed her against the opposite wall and slammed the door. Sorry, Renee, I am sure whatever you did to piss me off was pretty insignificant and I overreacted.

I told Ky (another projectionist who had a weak constitution) NOT to watch Creep Show, but I guess she had to when she ran that booth. I told her NOT to watch the part where roaches burst out of that guy's mouth, but she did, and got sick, and had to go home early.

I describe a lot of audience rowdiness, and I guess I had forgotten that part, because I remembered playing to a lot of empty seats before the program was cancelled. I also had forgotten that in the choral room, you couldn't really see the movie through the small glass window the projectors used, but the glass reflected back onto the opposite wall of the projectionist's booth, and we watched for cues there.

Estimating that there were quite a lot of people, and Mr. Duncan, I am guessing this was when we first started showing films. Later, it would just be me, because people kept dropping out.

I wonder why...? Heh.

Later, I explain when yet another projectionist dropped out that I was the only one. I explain that another theater major, Glennica Bufe (pronounced "BOO-fee"), would be there on concessions, and I remember I had a little crush on her, too. I would do it for Glennica...

Apparently, this night, running the booth alone, some guy who shall remain unnamed (it was one of my bullies, but he grew out of it, so in respect for that, shall remain unnamed) kept coming into the projectionist booth to ask when we were going to start. He was so desperate for the movie to start, he started to mess with the projector. He didn't know how it worked, and started demanding I start it. I finally unplugged the master switch for the projectors, and he lost it, hurling names at me, calling me a fag, asshole, "egghead" (that was an insult?), and so on. But apparently his meddling screwed up the audio speakers and the secondary projector. This delayed the movie even longer, and caused a lot of missing audio while I rooted around to fix the problem (someone had also unplugged the speakers in the choral room). When I found the plugs and the audio started up, I said, "Oh, you didn't really NEED that cheesy soundtrack, did you?" Much cheering followed. Yet, someone later unplugged the speaker on the right side again, and this time, they stole the patch cable.

Yeah. Fun.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:38 PM EST [Link]


Punkie's Earlier Years: Intro

I wasn't entirely friendless growing up. I did have a few friends here and there, many whom later turned on me, and some who just acted like they never knew me in the first place. Yeah, boo hoo. But one guy will always stand out, my best friend, Neal.

I met Neal in 4th Grade, and we were friends off and on until 6th Grade, where we became almost inseparable. Then, like many kids in the area, his dad's work was done, and in mid 1981, he moved to El Paso, Texas. We sent letters. Letters became tapes, and for the next 7 years, we sent tapes back and forth. I practically grew up with him. I remember his first girlfriend, Alicia. I still have a photo of her somewhere. Neal impressed me with his wit, humor, and bravado amid the sea of non-nerdy types, he forged a path that led him to a semi-popular state, and he taught me one of my first great lessons:

You can always start over somewhere else.

Unbeknownst to me, he kept some of the cassettes, and at some point, started compiling a "Best of Grig." A few years ago, he sent me those tapes, which have been lying around in the same padded envelope he sent them in. I kept meaning to go through them, but I played one passage about gym which sent me into a spiral of depression for about a week. For about a year now, I have been "bracing myself," because I now going to meet my former self. From Junior High to High School, and possibly beyond. The tapes are in no real order, and they will be sorted by the random labels on them.

I will provide summaries and a commentary where needed. There may be huge gaps, since there are 6 tapes, all about an hour on each side. That's a lot to listen to, and I know most of it will be prattle I will not admit to. Assume most of my rhetoric is slightly tongue-in-cheek, because it's funny to see what I thought was SOOOOO important back then...

A side note: It amazes me how much I sounded like Neal in infection and tone. Maybe he DID learn things from me, although I still say I got my wit from HIM.

Now, for your enjoyment or boredom, I will start...

Punkie's Earlier Years: The Album

Posted by Punkie @ 09:37 PM EST [Link]


Sunday, October 3, 2004

Weekend wrap-up: Chance meeting at Appleby's, a wedding, and exhaustion

Friday, Lou gave me a ride home with her kids. She was doing Christine's hair (which came out great!), and then had to go and have dinner with a friend. Sean stopped by to pick up the kids, but he ended up taking all of us out to Appleby's, and I got to talk with Chance some more.

Crap, it's like someone stuffed my 14 year old brain into a 10 year old girl. She even has the same vocal inflections I used to have. Scary. She seems to really need someone to talk to, so I have taken it upon myself to give her some individualized attention. It can't be easy to be the eldest of 3. The other two kids are kids, but she's already 10 going on 30.

CR didn't come with us. he went to his first football game at his school. He's not into football, and a few years ago, I would have asked the same questions he asked, "Why?" Christine said, "You don't go because of the game, you go because it's a social event!" Oh. OH! That makes sense! This is not one of those things "I wish I knew back then" because none of my friends went. But some of CR's friends have gone. CR is also started doing theater set design with one of his friends, and they would be there, too. So he went.

His school lost like 9 to 38, but he had a good time anyway.

We were at a wedding most of Saturday. Christine's friend Anne got married to her longtime boyfriend John. I have never met John, but he's a chef and a member of a rock band, and apparently a really nice guy.

The wedding was a mix of formal and informal. Anne is kind of a free spirit, and even though she wore a very nice dress, she chose to have no veil, didn't cover up her shoulder tattoo (it was a strapless), and kind of bounced around and rocked her hips in a very happy mood. It reminded me a little of another wedding a I went to a few years ago, where the bride wore cute white sneakers. Anne was definitely having a great time with it, which I always like to see. John is a bit shy, so he didn't act as hyper, but did seem to also be having a good time. It was held in a VERY nice church, St. Johns Church of the United Christ near Baltimore.

The reception was in some historic mansion across the street. Very convenient. The food was good, and the company was pretty cool, too. Christine and I took the table furthest away from the dance floor, so we could hear each other speak. We sat with her boss (president of the company), and the owner of the company, Earnest, and his wife, Penny. Penny was a trip! The other people at the table were some of John's cousins from Chicago. Everyone was really friendly, smart, and cool.

We went home a little early, though, because I have been really tired for the last week.

Earlier this week, I suffered some joint swelling and loss of movement, mostly in my legs. I have arthritis, so I just assumed it was another occurrence, what with the remnants of tropical depression Jeanne washing over us. But then the pain did not go away overnight, and I had trouble walking. By Friday, my pain had spread to my arms and back, but now they were less so in my legs. Then my whole body started to swell, and even my "fat pants" and a loose shirt were tight on me. I was massively put out by this, because recently, I started to eat better again, and hadn't needed to wear my "fat pants" for weeks. I had ballooned out like nothing else. But, by Saturday, the swelling had gone down, and the joint pain lessened to just general muscle aches. I still feel exhausted, but today it was less than it had been in days.

I wonder what happened? I never had a fever or any other symptoms. Weird. I wonder if this is the start of my seasonal depression? God, I hope not.

Because of this, I didn't get any of my usual housework done, like the laundry, cleaning, and so on. I feel really guilty about this, because it's like, "I'd do work, but I am tirrrred..."

Posted by Punkie @ 07:16 PM EST [Link]


Friday, October 1, 2004

Why we need editors: Health posters?

We have a giant first aid placard in all our kitchens. Among the standard list and graphics of the Heimlich maneuver, how to deal with people who faint, splinting broken arms, and so on ... is a small section dedicated to heart attacks. Here's what it states (punctuation intact) below a vague graphic of the "zones" of the pain:

Heart attack.
Symptoms: pain in chest,
arms, jaw, or back. Nausea, dizziness,
Profuse sweating-anxiety.
Shortness of breath, denial

There are two things I'd like to bring to attention, here. First, I realize that they skipped articles, prepositions, and conjunctions like newspaper headlines, so we all know how to really read something that goes like, "Treason: Ambassador Found Guilty, Sentenced." But in this case, they mix their own rules. But the real goof here comes from "Profuse sweating-anxiety." I can just imagine:

Dude1: How is he?
Dude2: Not good. He's dizzy, complaining of chest pain, and REALLY afraid of sweating!

But I wonder about the last item, "Denial." Now, I am sure they put that in there because a lot of times, people go, "No, no... I am not having a heart attack. I am just short of breath, that's all. Leave me alone, and it will go away." Even if they really are having a heart attack. But nowhere else on the placard does it list denial as a symptom of other things. Some of them are obvious, you can't easily deny a broken arm, choking, a serious burn, or being electrocuted ("Nice hair, Bob!"). But how about sun stoke, asthma, or concussion? Then I thought about the line from "The Life of Brian:"

Brian: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!
Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
Brian: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!

By this reasoning, any of you reading this right now, if you claim you are not having a heart attack, I say this placard says you should call 911 immediately! Denial of heart attack means you are having one!

I know, I know, "they mean with all the other symptoms." But since they don't seem to follow any rules of order at all, it would stand to reason than an idiot who is looking at such a placard to determine someone's health will also be foolish enough to claim, "If he says he's not having a heart attack, he probably is."

"Only a true heart attack victim will deny his symptoms..."

Posted by Punkie @ 02:59 PM EST [Link]


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