I've been coping with depression for awhile, but I can't claim that that's the only excuse for quitting my blog. Just lost interest in all three blogs at about the same time. This one I'm continuing now to record my progress with my weight. I saw an orthopedist today and I need to have a total knee replacement done on the Left side--to match the one on my right. But I know a knee replacement isn't the only thing I need.
I need to get help or get over my eating problem. I registered for Wt. Watchers' online this evening, and I find it really confusing. I guess I can get used to it if I practice. It will take a lot of practice to get used to their points. I get thirty points a day with 49 extra points a week, and it's not clear what that means. But I will try. When I left the orthopedist today, I thought to myself, "You are not a child anymore. You cannot go running off eating candy every time you stub your toe."
It's not going to be that easy, but I have made a start. I need to buy a new scale because the old one doesn't work, and there aren't too many places where I can put it.
All for tonight. I am going to try going to bed at a reasonable time like 10:30, even though I'm not sleepy now.
Oh, and that's another issue. I called the pharmacy for a refill on my sleeping medicine and they said I'd picked it up June 17th, and couldn't get anymore until July 17th. I must have lost the damn bottle, because it's not where the rest of my medications are. I would give anything to be able to quit so many medicines, but I did not do well when I ran out of Lamotrigine and gabapentin.
Damn the bipolar disorder, just damn it.
But if I start down that road, I'll be up another hour.
Good night.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Thursday, November 22, 2012
THE PINK CHANEL SUIT--NOV. 22
If you're a woman about my age, you know what I'm referring to. The most chic woman in America would wear that dress for a cheerful greeting in Fort Worth, a breakfast in Dallas, a parade in weather really too warm for the wool jacket. Her pink hat would be noticed by all the women who studied her attire. Thousands of women would envy her as she waved at the enormous crowds. Then in a few terrible moments, a poised and polished woman would be photographed scrambling over the back of a convertible. (to escape? to reach for a fragment of a head she'd caressed ? She refused to change clothes and wore it, shell-shocked, at the side of a sad-looking man with his right hand raised.
The most dramatic footage of the bloody dress was taken when she arrived back in Washington and followed Pres.Kennedy's coffin, holding Robert Kennedy's hand. The dark blotches are on the right lower side of the dress, and even extend to her legs. She had defiantly refused to remove the suit, saying, "let them see what they've done to Jack." She was only sorry that she'd washed the blood from her face before Lyndon's Johnson's inauguration on Air Force 1.
I was a child then and knew very little about the Kennedys except that my parents had not voted for him. And they harrumphed at Jackie's reputation for style which they thought was too expensive-appearing more like a princess than the dowdy Mamie Eisenhower she replaced.
The pink suit looked like a rose in a sea of dark blue and black. It became a sign of innocence and beauty on a day which would destroy both.
The most dramatic footage of the bloody dress was taken when she arrived back in Washington and followed Pres.Kennedy's coffin, holding Robert Kennedy's hand. The dark blotches are on the right lower side of the dress, and even extend to her legs. She had defiantly refused to remove the suit, saying, "let them see what they've done to Jack." She was only sorry that she'd washed the blood from her face before Lyndon's Johnson's inauguration on Air Force 1.
I was a child then and knew very little about the Kennedys except that my parents had not voted for him. And they harrumphed at Jackie's reputation for style which they thought was too expensive-appearing more like a princess than the dowdy Mamie Eisenhower she replaced.
The pink suit looked like a rose in a sea of dark blue and black. It became a sign of innocence and beauty on a day which would destroy both.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG (nsfw)
THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE is different from the previously reported "Useless Information," being presented in Q&A style. In the words of Thomas Edison, the man who didn't invent the lightbulb, "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." The intro ends:
"biologists say that our primal drives are food, sex, and shelter, no different from the animals. We say there is a fourth drive which makes us uniquely human--curiosity. Porcupines do not worry abut the meaning of existence. Moths and aardvarks do not look up at the night sky and wonder what the twinkly bits are.People do...We think we know the answer: Ask more questions."
Diving right in:
Q. What's the largest living thing?
A.It's a mushroom. And it's not even a particularly rare one. You've probably got in in the garden, growing on a dead tree stump. For your sake, let's hope it doesn't reach the size of the largest recorded specimen, in Malheur National Forest in Oregon. It covers 2,200 acres, (mostly underground) and is between two thousand and eight thousand years old..."
Q. What's the most dangerous animal that has ever lived?
A. Half the human being who have ever died, perhaps as many as 45 billion people, have been killed by female mosquitoes. (the male only bite plants--another fact I did not know.)
Mosquitoes carry more than a hundred potentially fatal diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, encephalitis, filariasis, and elephantiasis. Even today, they kill one person every twelve seconds...female mosquitoes are attracted to their hosts by moisture, milk, carbon dioxide, body heat, and movement. Sweaty people and pregnant women have a higher chance of being bitten.
and more delightfully:
Q.Which animals are the best-endowed of all?
A. Barnacles. These unassumingly modest beasts have the longest penis relative to the size of any creature. It can be seven times longer than the body.
Somehow, though, I don't think a human male would like to hear his partner say, "you're a real barnacle!"
The nine-banded armadillo has a penis two-thirds as long as its body (an arresting image). The blue whale's penis, relatively modest compared to its size, is six-ten feet long and 18 inches wide. Hotcha!
"biologists say that our primal drives are food, sex, and shelter, no different from the animals. We say there is a fourth drive which makes us uniquely human--curiosity. Porcupines do not worry abut the meaning of existence. Moths and aardvarks do not look up at the night sky and wonder what the twinkly bits are.People do...We think we know the answer: Ask more questions."
Diving right in:
Q. What's the largest living thing?
A.It's a mushroom. And it's not even a particularly rare one. You've probably got in in the garden, growing on a dead tree stump. For your sake, let's hope it doesn't reach the size of the largest recorded specimen, in Malheur National Forest in Oregon. It covers 2,200 acres, (mostly underground) and is between two thousand and eight thousand years old..."
Q. What's the most dangerous animal that has ever lived?
A. Half the human being who have ever died, perhaps as many as 45 billion people, have been killed by female mosquitoes. (the male only bite plants--another fact I did not know.)
Mosquitoes carry more than a hundred potentially fatal diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, encephalitis, filariasis, and elephantiasis. Even today, they kill one person every twelve seconds...female mosquitoes are attracted to their hosts by moisture, milk, carbon dioxide, body heat, and movement. Sweaty people and pregnant women have a higher chance of being bitten.
and more delightfully:
Q.Which animals are the best-endowed of all?
A. Barnacles. These unassumingly modest beasts have the longest penis relative to the size of any creature. It can be seven times longer than the body.
Somehow, though, I don't think a human male would like to hear his partner say, "you're a real barnacle!"
The nine-banded armadillo has a penis two-thirds as long as its body (an arresting image). The blue whale's penis, relatively modest compared to its size, is six-ten feet long and 18 inches wide. Hotcha!
USELESS INFORMATION, by Noel Botham & The Useless Information Society
I'm going to post some entries from two of my favorite books, "The Book of Useless Information," and "The Book of General Ignorance." I love this type of book as it appeals to my pack rat mind. The "Book of Useless Info" doesn't contain boring trivia like the length of the Mississippi. "All our information has to pass the "Not a Lot of People Know That' test," precede by gasps of surprise, and, in extreme cases, followed by wild applause."
Caveat: I'm quoting all answers directly from the book. If you find an error, it's theirs, but you can let me know. The Useless Info mascot is the squirrel, and about the squirrel it reports: It is estimated that millions of trees are planted by forgetful squirrels. (I once had a house with a 30 foot pecan planted two feet away from the foundation--a real dilemma because it was so tall.)
Squirrels can climb trees faster than they can run on the ground.
A squirrel cannot contract or carry the rabies virus. (But in the Rocky Mountain area they are carriers of bubonic plague--they don't die from it but they can spread it.)
My favorite squirrel story:The Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report of the CDC related a tale about a New York man hospitalized with severe fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes, muscle cramps, bruises all over the body, and pneumonia. The doctors could not determine the cause of the infection until it was related that the man had been camping in New Mexico the week before and had "playfully tossed a dead squirrel toward his wife." So the moral of the story is to not get playful with your wife. <g>
Caveat: I'm quoting all answers directly from the book. If you find an error, it's theirs, but you can let me know. The Useless Info mascot is the squirrel, and about the squirrel it reports: It is estimated that millions of trees are planted by forgetful squirrels. (I once had a house with a 30 foot pecan planted two feet away from the foundation--a real dilemma because it was so tall.)
Squirrels can climb trees faster than they can run on the ground.
A squirrel cannot contract or carry the rabies virus. (But in the Rocky Mountain area they are carriers of bubonic plague--they don't die from it but they can spread it.)
My favorite squirrel story:The Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report of the CDC related a tale about a New York man hospitalized with severe fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes, muscle cramps, bruises all over the body, and pneumonia. The doctors could not determine the cause of the infection until it was related that the man had been camping in New Mexico the week before and had "playfully tossed a dead squirrel toward his wife." So the moral of the story is to not get playful with your wife. <g>
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
OBSESSIONS YAHOO POSTS
My life recently seems to be made up of obsessions. Several weeks ago I could not get enough of Lady Gaga and found my favorite songs with her. And in those few weeks I also listened to many parodies as well. My favorites were as noted before--*BAD ROMANCE -WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE* and *BAD PROJECT.* I'm not really sure why I had to listen to *BAD PROJECT* so many times, but I did. Now my obsession seems to be with YAHOO Posts and Boards. I really can't make myself stop reading and commenting on them. I'm not sure what I think this will accomplish, but for awhile I have been reading and posting for hours a days. I don't have cable anymore, and so this may be a substitute, and my volunteer work came to an end with the election. This is evidence that I should start volunteering again soon. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to check some more thumb up/thumbs down posts.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
GANGNAM STYLE
I'm not as far behind discovering GANGNAM STYLE as I was with LADY GAGA, since GANGNAM STYLE only came out this summer. It's by the Korean singer Psy, and has nothing to do with gangsters as I had feared. The title refers to the Gangnam district of Seoul, very upscale with new wealth. According to an AP piece on the area, an average apartment goes for $716,000. Psy's song mocks it in an very catchy way. The video at first looks odd and amateurish but it grows on you with repetition. Not quite an earworm, but I do enjoy listening to it again and again.
An explanation of the choreography helps. In an early scene Psy in in a stable where horses look out from their stalls on each side. His core dance move is the "horse dance," where the dancers assume a wide legged stance and move up and down as though posting on a trotting horse. The dancers alternate between holding the reins and twirling a lasso. There are also children doing really bad dance moves. I'm not sure whether it helps to know that Psy deliberately searched for cheesy animal dance moves, considering a kangaroo or a panda. Imagining a panda doing the dance is insanely funny.
In the repeated line "Oppa Gangnam Style," Oppa is a term used by Korean women to refer to an older male friend or big brother. The song refers to a perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined and when to be wild.
He sweetly sings about wanting "A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all."
and being " A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscle."
GANGNAM STYLE has multiple parodies--these may be the best :
http://theweek.com/article/index/233651/gangnam-style-the-8-best-parodies-of-the-viral-video
BABY GANGNAM STYLE including mothers at a park who alternate between the sweet and less appealing aspects of parenting like picking up dirty diapers and scrubbing floors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iheCrwQQlI
Also the US Merchant Marine Academy.
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/usmma-midshipmen-film-gangnam-style-parody-1.4130279
An explanation of the choreography helps. In an early scene Psy in in a stable where horses look out from their stalls on each side. His core dance move is the "horse dance," where the dancers assume a wide legged stance and move up and down as though posting on a trotting horse. The dancers alternate between holding the reins and twirling a lasso. There are also children doing really bad dance moves. I'm not sure whether it helps to know that Psy deliberately searched for cheesy animal dance moves, considering a kangaroo or a panda. Imagining a panda doing the dance is insanely funny.
In the repeated line "Oppa Gangnam Style," Oppa is a term used by Korean women to refer to an older male friend or big brother. The song refers to a perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined and when to be wild.
He sweetly sings about wanting "A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all."
and being " A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscle."
GANGNAM STYLE has multiple parodies--these may be the best :
http://theweek.com/article/index/233651/gangnam-style-the-8-best-parodies-of-the-viral-video
BABY GANGNAM STYLE including mothers at a park who alternate between the sweet and less appealing aspects of parenting like picking up dirty diapers and scrubbing floors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iheCrwQQlI
Also the US Merchant Marine Academy.
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/usmma-midshipmen-film-gangnam-style-parody-1.4130279
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
NEWT GINGRICH--STORY EXAGGERATED
I have hated Newt Gingrich for years, partially because he's a far right Republican who's against everything I stand for, but mostly because of the story about his first wife. The story goes that he served his first wife divorce papers while she was on her deathbed dying of cancer. Not true. Jackie Battely was his former geometry teacher--he was 19 and she was 26 when they married.That's legal but ooky.
But she's still alive, and the couple was already in divorce proceedings at the time of the hospital visit. She did not want the divorce and was fighting it. She had previously had uterine cancer, which he exploited politically, and she was in the hospital for the third time. Much has been made of the fact that this tumor turned out to be benign. That totally disregards her pain and suffering with the recovery. Gingrich did visit her in the hospital while she was recovering from surgery and admits that he got into an argument with her. He blows this off as something that couples in a divorce proceeding just do sometimes. He had been married to her for 19 years.
He's deliciously, if apocryphally, quoted by L. H. Carter, Gingrich's campaign treasurer, "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer". This might not be true but it's a great line. Gingrich has denied saying it. His supporters dismiss Carter as a disgruntled former aide who was miffed at not being asked to accompany Gingrich to Washington...
That's so much less satisfying than the myth. What happened next, however, does show the character of the man. Six months after he ended his twenty year relationship with Battely, (wife no.1) he married Marianne Ginther.(wife no.2) Twenty-odd years later he started an affair with a staffer.Callista Bisek who was 23 years younger than him. He continued that affair for six years, then divorced Ginther to marry Bisek.(wife no.3) He married Bisek four months after his divorce from Ginther was final.
This still is very crappy behavior for a "family values" person. All I have to say is that Callista Bisek, now 46, better watch her step.
But she's still alive, and the couple was already in divorce proceedings at the time of the hospital visit. She did not want the divorce and was fighting it. She had previously had uterine cancer, which he exploited politically, and she was in the hospital for the third time. Much has been made of the fact that this tumor turned out to be benign. That totally disregards her pain and suffering with the recovery. Gingrich did visit her in the hospital while she was recovering from surgery and admits that he got into an argument with her. He blows this off as something that couples in a divorce proceeding just do sometimes. He had been married to her for 19 years.
He's deliciously, if apocryphally, quoted by L. H. Carter, Gingrich's campaign treasurer, "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer". This might not be true but it's a great line. Gingrich has denied saying it. His supporters dismiss Carter as a disgruntled former aide who was miffed at not being asked to accompany Gingrich to Washington...
That's so much less satisfying than the myth. What happened next, however, does show the character of the man. Six months after he ended his twenty year relationship with Battely, (wife no.1) he married Marianne Ginther.(wife no.2) Twenty-odd years later he started an affair with a staffer.Callista Bisek who was 23 years younger than him. He continued that affair for six years, then divorced Ginther to marry Bisek.(wife no.3) He married Bisek four months after his divorce from Ginther was final.
This still is very crappy behavior for a "family values" person. All I have to say is that Callista Bisek, now 46, better watch her step.
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