Abracadabra

This past Thursday I got a call from someone at the college I’m getting my long-postponed degree from telling me that the main admissions office just called and said they’re missing a transcript from one of my previous schools.  All my transcripts were sent by the schools I previously attended way back in August, and I glanced at the calendar to confirm that this was indeed February of the following year and why was this coming up now?  I was told that admissions, located in a land far, far away, was only able to find page two of the transcript from my last school.

No worries, I said.  They probably don’t realize it’s a double-sided transcript, so whoever is looking at the original just needs to turn it over and page one is on the other side.  Several phone calls later I was assured that admissions did indeed have the original, but only page two.  I’m taking a History of Math class right now and I’m certain there must be some law that states one side of a double-sided sheet can’t just disappear into the black hole of zero, but since it was hardly the time to engage in mathematical philosophy, I just asked what needed to be done to correct the situation.

I was told to fax the unofficial copy I had (also double-sided) over to the school and they would forward it to admissions.  I booked it over to Staples forthwith and did just that.  On my return home I had an email waiting for me saying they really needed the original, but far away admissions had contacted my former school and was told they would waive the $10 fee and send another one with my authorization.

Friday morning I called my former school to give authorization, but was told it needed to be done in person.  I would have been shocked to hear otherwise.  On my drive over there my cell phone rang and I pulled to the side of the road to take Daughter’s call.  She was recovering from swine flu, as I mentioned in Eat Drink Mom Kids, but had been able to return to her job as a special ed teacher during the week.  While at work she lost her balance restraining an agitated student and crashed backward into a wall hitting her head.  She went home and proceeded to sleep for 18 hours straight, interrupted only by her boyfriend, whose job it was to poke her every two hours to make sure she was alive.  Now she was calling me so I could stop worrying.  As if that would work.

DTR:  I’m just walking back from the doctors’ and they said everything is fine.  The CAT scan was negative.  My brain is okay.

OSV:  So they said it’s the flu that’s making you sleep around the clock?

DTR:  It was a CAT scan, Mom.  They don’t do swine flu.

OSV:  Who does swine flu?

DTR:  My regular doctor who sent me for the scan.  Don’t worry, Mom.  What are you doing?

OSV:  Oh, you know, the usual.  Get some rest.

DTR:  That’s what I’m all about.

I walked through the front door of my former school and was greeted by the Director of Admissions who gestured me into his office.

DOA:  Here you go.  Sign this form and we’ll mail your transcript right out, no extra charge.  Just answer this question:  how does one side of a two-sided original disappear?

OSV:  It’s a math thing.

The mysterious tagger known as BNE strikes again in Daughter’s Featured Fotos

BNE in chel-sea

BNE in chel-sea

BNE on TV

BNE on TV

DJs at BNE

DJs at BNE

i am BNE

i am BNE

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Eat Drink Mom Kids

This is Restaurant Week in New York, the time of year when eateries citywide offer specially priced selections to strut their stuff and bring in new patrons.  Restaurants that may be rather expensive on a regular night devise prix fixe menus of appetizer, entrée and dessert for a set amount well below their standard price.  Daughter and I always try and zero in on a new place during Restaurant Week, and this year Son joined us while Husband honored a work commitment elsewhere.

I picked Son up at his house, and when we got a few blocks away he realized he had left his wallet at home.  I asked him if we should turn back and he said, “Why?”  Hey, nobody has to draw me a picture.  Since Daughter suggested it and Son agreed to come, it was my dinner party.

SON:  So what’s this upscale Mexican restaurant we’re going to?  Did you check out the menu online?

OSV:  It’s Dos Caminos on Park Avenue South.  And yes, I think I’ll be having the appetizer of grilled squid, plantain and papaya salad with wild baby arugula and smoked chile-mint vinaigrette.  I haven’t decided on an entrée, but dessert is definitely banana bread pudding with pecan toffee and mexican vanilla bean ice cream.

SON:  I’m starting with the grilled chicken tortilla soup with creamy pasilla tomato broth and chihuahua cheese.

OSV:  What, was this a quiz?  You looked at the menu?

SON:  It’s all about the preparation, Mom.  What’s my sister ordering?

OSV:  I don’t know.  Have you talked to her this week?  She’s just getting over swine flu.

SON:  WHAT?  That’s terrible.  Is she up to going?  Is she contagious?  This is terrible.  Are you going to kiss her when we get there?

OSV:  Don’t be silly.  She’s my daughter.  I’ll see how she looks.

SON:  You go in first.

Daughter greeted us at her apartment door and I gave her a big hug.  Son walked in behind me.

SON:  I’m going to pass on the physical contact.

DTR:  Your hands in your coat pockets were a dead giveaway.  Let’s get going.

Dos Caminos was fresh and lively, and dinner was outstanding.  Daughter observed as the shapely hostess bent over a nearby table in her low-cut top that something else might be out soon as well.  Son commented he couldn’t be that lucky.

On our way out we all took a magnet printed with the signature Dos Caminos guacamole recipe, the best I’ve ever had.  Here is your own souvenir of Restaurant Week to enjoy at home in whatever top you choose to wear as you bend over your table.  Print it out, stick a magnet on the back, and slap it on your fridge.  Now you’re one of us.

eat drink 1 doscaminosguac

From New Year’s Eve, Daughter says Let Them Eat Cake

eat drink 2 queenofthecake1

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To Phoebe, With Love

J.D. Salinger died this week.  Friday’s paper said it happened on Wednesday, but he was such a massive recluse it figures he wouldn’t tell anyone for two days.  I imagine he was a difficult guy, maybe depressive or even borderline according to those who got close enough to know.  Still, it would be hard to come up with five words that command the kind of singular yet universal response as The Catcher in the Rye.  Four decades after first reading it I still smile at Holden’s description of his sister, Phoebe, as being rollerskate skinny.  I guess because I was too.  RIP J.D.  You never wanted my admiration but it couldn’t be helped.

Two other stories this week seemed to feed off each other, if you will.  First, Glen W. Bell, Jr., the founder of Taco Bell, died at 86.  I didn’t even know the Bell in Taco Bell was someone’s name and I’ve consumed my weight in Beef Meximelts over the years.  Life changed when I had to start substituting Lipitor for guacamole, but we all must know our limits and manage them, right?  Which brings us to the second story, this one written by a recovering anorexic who took up half a page ranting that the calorie content of restaurant meals shouldn’t be posted because it causes her anxiety.  New York eateries have been posting this information for two years to promote health awareness and encourage better meal choices.  At the risk of appearing insensitive, my lunch is not about your phobias.  Pack a yogurt.

Even the Non Sequitur comic fit my cynical mood

to phoebe 1 nonsequitur

But Cash Cab saved me.  I wrote here about New York City’s game show in a taxicab in Take the money and ride, but the episode I watched while doing my math homework was classic.  A very elderly couple got in the cab, a fragile looking pair easily in their eighties.  When the lights started flashing and the sirens squealing inside the car, I was afraid one of them might throw an embolism and expire right there.  They looked around panicked, like, “What’s that?” and the cabdriver/host, Ben Bailey, told them they were in the Cash Cab, a television game show.  To which the woman replied, “You can’t afford a studio?”

Ben explained he’d be asking them questions on the way to their destination, and if they answered correctly they’d win money.  He said, “What are your names?”  The woman said, “I’m Arlene and this is Julius,” and she turned to Julius and said, “These questions are easy.”  She was hilarious.  The best part was that the questions were tough and they got them all right and won $550.  When asked if they wanted to go double or nothing on the video bonus question, Arlene replied, “Just let us out at the museum and give us the money.  We’re too old to take any more chances.”  Don’t bet on it, Arlene.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos say Explain This

stylized mantis

stylized mantis

basquiat

basquiat

brain waves

brain waves

walk, no, wait, no, walk

walk, no, wait, no, walk

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Existential Cowboys: A conversation between Sigmund Freud and Quentin Tarantino

The following discourse takes place in a late night Green Room.  Present is auteur film director Quentin Tarantino, dressed casually in vintage jeans and a stonewashed cotton pullover.  Dr. Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, sits opposite him wearing a three-piece black suit.  Tarantino’s signature scowl is deepened by his companion’s dank smell of cigars.  The two men are comfortably seated in chairs left over from the set of Conan O’Brien’s recently canceled talk show.

QT:  Sigmund, I’m told you just saw my latest movie.  I can call you Sigmund, right?

SF:  Only if I can call you Quentin T. and write about you later.

QT:  Deal.  Just don’t try and read too much into what I say.

SF:  (crossing his legs impatiently)  I can see you’re not familiar with my work.

QT:  My mother always kept a copy of The Interpretation of Dreams in the bathroom, but I never needed any incentive.  Well, let’s discuss the work of mine we’re both familiar with, Inglourious Basterds.  Were you taken with the movie’s plot detailing the ultimate Jewish revenge fantasy?

SF:  You know, as a Jew, and especially a Galician Jew in pre-war Austria, I had my own fantasies about retribution for the despicable manner in which my superior intelligence was dismissed by those in the golden kingdom of academia.  Pishers.  It’s clear their mothers let them sit in dirty diapers so long the befoulment beneath them retracted so far into their bodies it reached their brains.

QT:  Okay, so you’re a fan?

SF:  I rocked the scene where the theatre burned.  All the Nazis and their pathetic hangers-on vaporized while watching their precious propaganda film.  Genius.

QT:  (smiling broadly)  You’re too kind.  That’s what the critics called me.  And my grandmother always said, “If two people say you look sick, lay down.”  So it must be true.

SF:  (stroking his chin whiskers)  You know, it’s very interesting that in this brief conversation we’re having, you’ve already mentioned your mother and your grandmother.  In the dreams you’ve had of these two women closest to you, what were they wearing?

QT:  Bear suits.

SF:  And in light of that, do you find it significant that one of your characters, the Basterd who smashes Nazis’ heads with a baseball bat, is called The Bear Jew?

QT:  You know, I wanted Adam Sandler for that role, but he had a conflict.

SF:  Loved his Hanukkah Song.  Such a kibitzer.

QT:  Sweet guy.  But actually, the backstory to The Bear Jew is that he was rumored by the Nazis to be a vengeful golem summoned by an angry rabbi.  So it has nothing to do with me.  Tarantino is an Italian name.

SF:  Same thing.  Meat balls, brisket, no difference.  Let me ask you this:  When the Basterds killed a bunch of Nazis, why scalp them?  Was this a symbolic gesture regarding the brain, in other words, the big brain behind Nazism, Adolf Hitler?

QT:  No, I just thought it was cool.  I’m all about the blood, always uber blood, especially when you don’t expect it.  I like to pair violence with a comical scene, so the audience is laughing but they don’t feel right about it because of all the blood.  Also, if the Nazis got scalped it gave me a reason to give Brad Pitt a kickass name – Aldo the Apache.  He was nuts for that, I’m telling you, nuts.

SF:  Speaking of nuts, I’m glad you brought them up.  When the Basterds encountered a company of Nazis, they would kill and scalp all of them except one.  That one they would cut with a knife and let go so he could tell his superiors how ruthless they were.  The first time Aldo raised his knife and told the Nazi, “I’m going to give you something so everyone will always know what you are,” I thought he was going to –

QT:  Circumcise him?  That’s what a lot of people thought.  I try not to go for the easy joke.  Besides, who would know he’s got a pecked pecker?  Just the chicks he convinces to sleep with him.  Isn’t it better to carve a swastika into his forehead?  Then everyone knows.  Anyway, that kind of humor is beneath me.  It’s unsophisticated.  I leave that stuff to Judd Apatow and the Superbad crew.  What’s the word Jews use instead of pecker – you call it a schmeckel, right?

SF:  I call it a penis and so should you.  In your dreams, what do you call your mother’s genitals?

QT:  In my dreams??  Christ, that’s no dream, that’s a nightmare.  What do you call your mother’s genitals?

SF:  Watch your filthy mouth and leave my mother out of it.  The woman was a saint.  You have no idea what a handful I was.  I started smoking cigars at ten.

QT:  Where does a ten-year-old get money for cigars?

SF:  We lived on a busy street.  Lots of men hanging out.  Men with money.

QT:  You worked the street?  Jesus, I had no idea.  Believe it or not, I try to be sensitive to people’s issues, people in the audience.  Maybe you noticed there was absolutely no sex at all in Inglourious Basterds.  The two main female characters were a double agent and a young woman who escaped the Nazi slaughter of her family.  Noble women who fought for their beliefs with courage and strength.

SF:  Excellent device, albeit unlikely.  When they’re not hysterical, women are busy marrying men to fight for them in the hopes their wives will give them sex.  This movie you’ve made, it’s fiction.

QT:  Of course it’s fiction.  Hitler wasn’t murdered in a burning theatre.

SF:  He wasn’t?  I wouldn’t know that.  I died right before the Holocaust.

QT:  It’s just as well, Sig.  You went through enough.

SF:  And so will you.  Just wait for my next book.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos hover on a Higher Level

glo-cone

glo-cone

leftover

leftover

merging contours

merging contours

the scaffold dance

the scaffold dance

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Finding Safety in Numbers

It’s only in the last twenty years or so that the general public has embraced the word ‘breast’.  Until the mothers, sisters and daughters of our nation began falling into the pit of breast cancer, the word was mired in an aura of sophomoric sexuality.  Saying it out loud brought on a wave of nervous giggles, so common language opted for the Playboy magazine euphemisms of hooters and boobs.  But the appalling and seemingly unstoppable onslaught of a disease that has reached into a society’s soul and ripped out its heart has at least succeeded in killing its shyness.

Yesterday was my yearly mammogram, part of the pact I made with my body to do everything I can to dodge the 1-in-9 bullet, one in nine being the statistical odds for a woman in my part of the state to be stricken with breast cancer.  When the wizards on the recent government-appointed preventive health panel came out with their recommendation that yearly mammograms and self-exams were not only unnecessary, but might in fact be perpetuating the disease, words failed me.  But not written words.

At the radiologist’s office, I sat in the anteroom with a group of fellow soldiers, all of us in pants and shoes with our purses in our laps, and the open-in-front blue gown fastened any way it would fit around our various shapes.  Female conversations begin much differently than men’s, which are often sparked by news or sports events or work-related topics.  Our group share began when one of us said aloud, “I’m very anxious.  Does this make anyone else feel anxious?”  The floodgates opened.

One woman said she’d been unemployed for a year and finally landed a job two weeks ago.  She was worried about asking for the morning off to keep the mammogram appointment she had made back in October.  So yes, she was doubly anxious.  Another woman spoke of her 60-year-old sister who meditated, practiced yoga, and refused to have a mammogram saying she didn’t want to know; an ironic choice on the path to enlightenment.  I told of the other measures I take to stay informed about my health.  The Department of Health is all about men including a PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test in their yearly physical to detect early prostate cancer.  But a woman has to ask her primary care physician to include a CA-125 test in her blood screening and most women don’t even know it exists.  CA-125 detects the specific cancer antigen that is an early indicator of ovarian cancer, known as the silent killer because by the time a woman has symptoms, it’s usually too late to treat.  There’s no extra charge to include this test in your blood profile, yet it’s not publicized and doctors don’t think to tell their patients about it.  So we have to keep thinking and advocating for our own health.

Breast cancer is something that affects us all one way or another, be it in our own body, that of a family member, coworker, friend – even just seeing the news footage depicting an ocean of pink hats marching in the Susan G. Komen or Avon Walk for the Cure.  I once received a promotion at work because the employee who held the position for 15 years died of breast cancer.  I have never been sadder to get a pay raise in my life.

All of us in the waiting room expressed similar feelings about the whole process and its accompanying internal chaos:  making the appointment months in advance; seeing it written on the calendar every time we walk by; preparing that morning to go; sitting there waiting; having the test and then waiting for the films to be read; being called back in to repeat one of the views and seeing the x-ray hanging there with circles drawn around possible trouble spots; sitting back in the waiting room; hearing our name called to come speak with the doctor.

We talked about how hard it is for our husbands to know how to support us.  If they ask, “Does it hurt a lot?” we squash down the urge to say, “Would it hurt to put your testicles in a vise?  Four times?”  If they say, “Don’t worry so much; I’m sure the results will be fine,” they’re guilty of minimizing our anxiety.  If they say, “Whatever happens I’ll be at your side,” it fuels our fears of what if?  And if they’re silent because they just don’t know what to say, their inability to comfort us leaves us feeling alone and vulnerable.  They’re doomed to be damned, unfair victims of our unspoken misery.  Here is my own personal Partner Primer, which Husband does so well:  Hug us when we part and call later to say you love us.  We’ll tell you everything.  We with the breasts are not shy.

After the week off, Daughter’s Featured Fotos are Back With A Vengeance

late night

late night

ipod graffiti, oh my!

ipod graffiti, oh my!

style wars art show - live painting

style wars art show – live painting

infinite time

infinite time

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Modeling Modesty

People have different styles, and some may be quirkier than others.  The definition depends largely on who is describing the behavior, the person with it, or the person living with the person with it.  In this instance, I would be the first person, which makes Husband the second.

Here’s the story.  We have five windows in our upstairs master bedroom.  After a protracted discussion (battle) over how to shade these windows, we reached a decision (compromise).  Husband wanted no shades at all, and I wanted those privacy blinds that allow only enough light in so you know you’re not in a coffin.  What we settled on were silhouette shades that allow in filtered light while obscuring vision from outside.

This would be a good compromise except Husband wants the shades pulled up all the time we’re not sleeping.  One of the windows looks out onto the path that students walk to the local high school and another looks out onto our neighbor’s roof.  I told Husband I want those two shades down all the time because I don’t need packs of teenagers looking up into our bedroom.  He gave me a look that said, “Are you kidding?  They’re busy selling drugs to each other,” which I can’t argue with so let’s move to the other window, the one facing the neighbor’s roof.

These neighbors are very nice people who have sorely neglected the back of their house, the side our bedroom faces.  They’ve done all manner of landscaping and design to the front and sides, but the back looks like it belongs to a foreclosure.  We’ve carefully mentioned this to them in a non-critical way, like, “You know that rotting wood attracts termites and carpenter ants, right?” and they just nod and ask how the kids are.  So we’ve had to let it go.  But that doesn’t mean I want to look at it.

Being in the field of social work, Husband often likes me to explore the underlying meaning of my preferences.  Sometimes I go along with it and sometimes it just gives me cramps.  Saturday morning I pulled up all the bedroom shades except the roof-facing one.  Noticing Husband looking at me, I explained.

OSV:  I’m going in to take a shower and I don’t want to come out with that window shade up.  The roof is ugly, and besides, who knows if they’ll be having work done and there’s someone standing up there.

For a Certified Social Worker, this is the Aha! moment since everyone in the psychology field knows the part that comes after the ‘besides’ is the real deal.

HUSBAND:  They never have work done.  Why don’t you just admit you’re a little paranoid about privacy?

Just to show him, I pulled the shade up and went in the shower while he left on errands.

After my shower, I entered the bedroom in my towel and something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.  Directly to my left, right out that freaking window, were two guys standing on the neighbor’s roof.  One had his back to me and the other one looked away quickly when I appeared.  No young guy wants to see a woman in her fifties in a skimpy towel unless maybe she’s Michelle Pfeiffer or he has Cougaritis.  I found out later that a pregnant raccoon had found its way into the neighbor’s attic through the rotted fascia board.  The guys on the roof were with an animal removal service, and at least one of them was going to need an extra beer at lunch.

All things considered, I fared better than the woman who submitted the following response to a magazine asking about readers’ most embarrassing moments.  She had taken a shower, and then ran down to the basement in her towel to get the basket of clean laundry.  While there, she noticed her son had left his football helmet on the washer after putting his dirty uniform in.  Since the basket was full and she knew he’d be looking for the helmet after school, she put it on her head and went to go upstairs.

Unfortunately, as she walked the towel came loose and fell to the floor.  Not having a free hand to retrieve it, she just kept going since it was only her husband in the house.  But unaware his wife was in the basement laundry room, the husband had let in the meter reader.  As the woman approached the stairs, she was stunned to see a strange man standing there.  Equally stunned to see a naked woman holding a laundry basket and wearing a football helmet, the meter reader said, “Lady, I don’t know the game you’re playing, but I hope your team wins.”

Today’s Featured Fotos add alliteration with Cousin‘s Costa Rican Catches

modeling 1 cuzbutterfly

modeling 2 cuztram

modeling 3 cuzbird

modeling 4 cuzvolcano

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The next voice you hear

One of the side effects of relentless communication is phantom phone calls.  During the recent holiday school break, my friend with younger children at home must have had her hands full.  Two times in the same day my cell rang and the screen indicated her number was calling, but no one was there.  I could hear a lot of activity on her end; unfortunately none of it included me.  In the past, Husband’s phone has called mine while he’s driving home in his car unaware of the conversation he’s missing out on.  Every time this happens I yell HELLO! as loud as I can but no one cares.

The theme for advertising this past Christmas was the new generation of iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, Nexus One, you name it.  Very shortly, it will be impossible to buy a cell phone that just makes phone calls.  A friend of mine who is a longtime attorney just outfitted his New York office with webcams so he can run things from his out-of-state vacation home this winter.  Although it’s an experiment for now, he’s looking toward the future and that’s never a bad move.  With technology always on the rise and the economy circling the drain, business as usual is anything but usual.  Shortly after we spoke, I watched the powerful Coen brothers movie No Country For Old Men.  I’ve seen it before, but my favorite piece of dialogue remains the same.

“What are you doing?”

“Just looking for what’s coming next.”

“Yeah.  Problem is you never see it.”

In the morning newspaper, the comic strip Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman struck a familiar chord.

next voice 1 zits

It reminded me of a story told by another friend, this one with a grown son who just became a psychiatrist.  Last year during his hospital rotation, my friend’s phone rang and she saw that it was her son’s cell number.  She greeted him, but when he didn’t respond she realized he was speaking instead to someone in the room with him.  She called out, “Hang up the phone!”

She then heard her son the doctor ask his patient how the new medication was working.  The patient said he was feeling okay.  Not wanting to eavesdrop, my friend hung up.  But a few moments later her phone rang again, once more accidentally redialed.  And once again she called out to alert her son.  Suddenly the patient yelled, “They’re back!  The voices are back!”  With great interest, the doctor asked if he could discern what the voices were saying.  The patient called out excitedly, “Yes!  They’re saying, THIS IS YOUR MOTHER TELLING YOU TO HANG UP THE PHONE!”

My pal Blondie sent these photos along to remind us of Retro Before Robo

next voice 2 retro1

next voice 3 retro2

next voice 4 retro3

next voice 5 retro4

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Don’t make me laugh

One of the classes I’m taking when the new semester begins is an advanced study called Comedy: Theory and Practice.  I got the reading list in advance and picked up one of the required books over the weekend at Barnes & Noble.  I have to admit I was a little surprised to see Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious by Sigmund Freud on my Comedy reading list.  Not that I expected to spend the semester getting down with Mel Brooks movies, but one can hope.

I’m almost through the book and believe me, Freud was no Henny Youngman.  Even though the iconic picture on the cover shows him in a mustache holding a cigar, there’s no mistaking him for Groucho.  Not even Harpo’s brother could pull off a joke that ends with, “She could abschlagen nothing except her own water.”  They must have been howling in the streets of Austria with that one.  Even the hunchbacks.  Forget the Jews.  No, really, forget them.  Two Jews met in the neighborhood of the bathhouse.  “Have you taken a bath?” asked one of them.  “What?” asked the other in return, “is there one missing?”  You’re killing me Sig.

Knowing what’s funny is serious business, and who better to get to the bottom of it than the father of psychoanalysis.  After all, no one can resist a guy who hypothesizes, “An examination of the determinants of laughing will perhaps lead us to a plainer idea of what happens when a joke affords assistance against suppression.”  What, you want repression?  Try this:  “But if we are to judge by the impressions gained from non-tendentious jests, we cannot possibly think the amount of this pleasure great enough to attribute to it the strength to lift deeply-rooted inhibitions and repressions.”  Don’t say later I never told you.

All jesting aside, Freud presents some gems of illumination that transcend time and place.  And without even listening hard, you can hear Henny and Woody in the background.  On the subject of returning an insult to someone of a higher class without getting hanged, Freud offers us this snappy repartee:  A German royal was making a tour through his provinces and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to his own exalted person.  He beckoned to him and asked, “Was your mother at one time in service in the Palace?”  “No, your Highness,” was the reply, “but my father was.”

In its simplest terms (a place Freud never goes) anecdotal humor needs three things:  an incident, someone to tell about it, and a listener.  The motive and manner can differ along with the content.  In the following joke that the book uses to demonstrate a mixed-meaning play on words, it is the listener who appreciates the satirical irony, which in turn pleases the joke teller:  A doctor, as he came away from a lady’s bedside, said to her husband with a shake of his head, “I don’t like her looks.”  “I’ve not liked her looks for a long time,” the husband hastened to agree.

To further quote Freud, “In laughter, therefore, on our hypothesis, the conditions are present under which a sum of psychical energy which has hitherto been used for cathexis is allowed free discharge.”  In other words, bring on Young Frankenstein.  But first, as long as you’re listening, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar. . .

Daughter’s Featured Fotos examine Concepts And Sunsets

angry, angry claudette

angry, angry claudette

propaganda

propaganda

james marshall-dalek, and there was war in heaven

james marshall-dalek, and there was war in heaven

first sunset of 2010

first sunset of 2010

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TwentyTen

My two New Year’s resolutions are to exercise a half hour every day, and maintain my composure when retail customer service does not meet my expectations.  Like if the cashier won’t hang up the phone with her boyfriend, I will just say no to register rage.  I have also resolved not to instantly download every update Microsoft throws my way because some of them are half-baked and cause trouble.  It’s enough that pharmaceutical companies rush their drugs into the marketplace without sufficient test trials or knowledge of long-term effects on our chromosomes.  There’s nothing I can do anymore about future generations of turtleheads, but I refuse to play guinea pig to the latest version of Internet Explorer.

In the midst of all this careful New Year planning, Sunday morning I went to log onto the website where I check our health insurance claims so I know where we stand with our deductible.  I entered my member ID and password as usual and the screen said to try again.  Because all my screen names and passwords are written down near my computer, I looked over to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and entered it all again.  No go.  I then repeated these same steps five more times, as if the computer would eventually say, okay, what the hell, you’re logged on.  So you already know two things:  one, that didn’t happen, and two, I’m a one-trick pony.

I then clicked on Forgot your password? which I hadn’t, but I figured at the very least I’d have them email me the link to set up a new one.  Amazingly, the screen responded with the news that this account did not exist in the database.  Hmmm.  Not one to embrace failure, I clicked on Register Now figuring I’d make an end run around their constitution and set up a fresh account.  I filled out the entire registration form using the plastic ID card they sent us, the one we present to our doctors, and the next screen told me there were no such members or claims or hernia surgeries or anything else we’ve shared with their website for the past eight months.  Which makes me wonder:  If our insurance company says we never existed, is my hernia back?

While I waited for a weekday so I could speak to a live person, I hustled over to Target and bought the AirClimber, a step exerciser from the people who inflicted AbRoller on the general public.  Now that Son owns his own home and his room is empty, I set it up in there opposite his old TV with the DVD player.  I’ll let you know how that goes as soon as I start using it.  In the meantime, since it’s a new year, I flipped through the folder of blog ideas I keep on hand for future entries.  Most of them are no longer topical so I’ll start a fresh collection, but one of them is too strange to let go unmentioned.

The following is almost verbatim from a Newsday blurb this past November:  Police charged a gang in the remote Peruvian jungle with killing people for their fat.  Once the victims were dead, the fat was drained from their corpses and offered for sale on the black market for use in cosmetics.  Although medical experts expressed skepticism that a major market for fat existed, three suspects confessed and told police the fat was sold to intermediaries in Lima.

And if that’s not incentive to haul ass onto the AirClimber, I don’t know what is.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos say Think About This

divided faith

divided faith

painted layers in the subway

painted layers in the subway

empty faces

empty faces

save us!

save us!

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Come fly with me

Imagine this scenario:  You have an adult son who has become very secretive, hangs out with a gang, and frequents a location linked to a radical group.  You haven’t seen him in months.  So you call the police and tell them everything, begging them to find your son and return him home before something terrible happens to him or those he comes in contact with.  The cops thank you for calling, hang up the phone, and order in a pizza.  Eventually they call the district attorney’s office who says, “No anchovies for us.”

I don’t think it’s overreacting to say this is pretty much what just happened with the 23-year-old terrorist who tried to blow up a Northwest jetliner from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.  His father, a prominent Nigerian banker, called every authority he could think of to warn them about his son’s frequent visits to Yemen and increasingly extremist behavior.  Word trickled across our Homeland Security network and sure enough, the son was found to be on a “generic” list of possible terrorists.  Instead of moving him to the “DO NOT FLY” list months ago when his father started making phone calls, our Intelligence leaders opted to sit on this warning until it exploded.

Perhaps the banker’s son didn’t act suspicious enough in Amsterdam before boarding.  Yes, he paid cash for his ticket.  True, he had no luggage.  And right again, his passport showed recent trips to known terrorist hubs.  If only he’d asked the flight attendants to show him how to get ON the plane without asking how to get OFF.  That would have been the tip-off.

In contrast, our media seems determined to alert the world to how badly our system screwed up and how vulnerable we are.  But they can’t do it alone so our government officials have to help.  On a news program the day after Christmas, I watched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano attempt to dodge the issue of our Intelligence breakdown while the anchor kept hounding, “But shouldn’t the public know what went wrong?  Are we living with a false sense of security that our government is protecting us?  Doesn’t this show that the system didn’t work?”  Finally Napolitano said, “Yes, the system failed us.”

Okay, pit bull anchorperson, happy now?  In this world of bionic communication, do you not think Al Qaeda watches TV?  You think maybe they skip the news and go straight to Lost?  All we need next is for Homeland Security to go on Larry King and say EXACTLY how it’s all going to be fixed.  Why don’t we just drop fliers over Yemen that say, “We’re morons!  Our leaders answer to people who get paid to interview them in makeup!  You win!”

Maybe we should take a page from Israel’s book.  Pre-boarding security for an El Al flight involves observational profiling.  This means screening passengers with regard to their body language, gestures, attitude, and repeated visits to destinations evidenced in their passports.  Because of this nobody gets to blow up El Al flights.  Which is great for Israel since they’re a country that seems to piss a lot of people off just by existing.  A position the U.S. is swiftly moving toward if we’re not already there.

Not to mention the fact that if something did go wrong, Israeli reporters wouldn’t be on TV grilling the Prime Minister about where the failure occurred.  Israel knows its enemies are always watching.  Making officials discuss security in a televised setting would be, you know, telling.

Am I taking a chance writing all this publicly for the terrorists to see?  Aren’t I doing exactly what I say Al Qaeda counts on?  I doubt it.  I’ve been on the Taliban’s Facebook page, and they don’t read me.

Daughter’s Foto of The Lights of Tiberius wishes you a safe and Happy New Year

come fly 1 israellightsoftiberius

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