Friday, May 29, 2009

Things That Bug Me: The Friday Edition

It's ok for two drunks in Las Vegas to get married and then likely spilt up when the hangover wears off. No one is raising havoc over "Hitched or Ditched," a show on one of the fringe networks that involves a long-term couple getting a free wedding if the would-be bride forces a reluctant groom to the altar. But two people who love, honor, and cherish each other and want to make the formal commitment can't just because they're the same sex and that's a mockery of marriage? Me get it no.
Supermodels. Beauty pageant contestants. Media personalitites. Other parties who show up on talk shows despite being vapid and vaucous. What happened to interviews with artists about their latest project and not their most recent arrest, and why do they frequently get an hour of air time to defend themselves when no one really cares that much. "TMZ" is an awful show, too. It's like junior high, only worse.
People who don't comply with leash or cleanup regulations at the park where I walk my dog. There's a $75 fine for either offence.
I don't get paid $75 a crack for keeping my dog leashed and cleaning up after him.
People who use their issues as an excuse for bad behavior instead of learning how to behave in less detrimental ways.
PBS pledge drive breaks. How long can you listen to babble and watch people answer phones, anyway?
FEH!!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Grateful to be Me

I'd had no intention of watching "Dateline," a news show, this past Friday night. I just couldn't turn away from the shots of a gaunt, pale woman preparing to shave her head. The voiceover explained that she'd been fighting cancer for several years, and this round of chemotherapy had caused her hair to fall out. Determined to stay in control of what she could, she defiantly turned on the clippers and removed the last few locks clinging to her head like cobwebs in a corner.
At first I didn't recognize her, thinking it was just another unfortunate saga of life threatening illness. Then the announcer said her name: Farrah Fawcett. I froze. This is the actress I was so jealous of when I was a pudgy, socially awkward ninth grader with bad skin? At the time, she'd starred in "Charlie's Angels." I had tried really hard to get my nondescript brown hair to look like hers, tried to starve myself down to her size so that I, too, could wear a red bathing suit as she had in the iconic poster. Boys would fight for the privilige of my company, and so on with the fantasies of a fourteen year old.
It took time, but my skin calmed down, my weight stablized at a healthy if non-Hollywood level for myself, and I started getting my hair cut by professionals rather than trying to do it myself in a bathroom mirror with less than optimal scissors. The guys showed up, too, poets and techies rather than the lowest all-too-common denominator that she appealed to.
I don't recall anything that she'd been in after "Charlie's Angels," save a disasterous appearnce on David Letterman, until now. She'd been a fixture in the tabloids, though, and done a video for "Playboy" for her fiftieth birthday.
I sincerely doubt I will do the same when my fifthieth rolls around. But I am pretty confident that I won't be allowing filming of my final days.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Viruses

Gentle Readers, forgive my absence the last four weeks--YIKES.
We have been embroiled in battles against the forces of evil playing out in our sinuses and on my laptop. The Spouse succumbed first; no knight had ever fought so valiently to keep his lady from such dragons. Despite his best efforts, I, too, was smote fore and aft by saidsame enity.
In the middle of all this, I amused myself by researching topics on line. As I visited an organic dairy farm's website, the Adobe logo popped up unbidden. I tried to escape, but couldn't. My laptop suddenly became sluggish and the screen started to melt.
The Spouse, the technical half of our team, swooped in. After twelve hours of downloading, deleting, debugging and cursing, he had it back up and running better than new. A hassle, yes. But nothing to him as a person of technology.
For me, I wondered if that was was getting mugged felt like. The virus encamped in my upper respiritory tract had drained me enough. That one had just evolved on its own as its nature dictated. The one on my computer had been deliberately created for the sake of meanness. I couldn't hate the one triggering off the endless bouts of coughing and sneezing. I hope to forgive the creator of the one that nailed my laptop someday.