%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  I've maxed out. Closed this blog. |
|
This is a way of making myself write something coherent and grammatically correct almost every day. I'm opinionated and need an outlet. I'm also prone to flights of fancy. Thanks for stopping by. |
| Hooray, for Keanu Reeves who gave up his seat on the bus for a woman with a lot to carry. I'm a bit of a feminist, but I love chivalry. I do things for older people myself, or pregnant women, or anyone who needs a little help. I think it's great that men look out for others, I especially like seeing teenage boys being nice to women of all ages. Chivalry doesn't show that women are weak, but that men are strong. Maybe if there were more men practicing chivalry, we wouldn't need 50 bullying shades of gray in our culture. As for the Gray thing, I'm tired of hearing about this trash. The books have made quite a stir, now this movie is grossing a lot, despite critics panning it. When do women get equal time bullying men in the movies? Would any but a few think female dominance was sexy? My idea of 50 shades of gray is a senior citizen bus trip. (Or the OurTime.Com website.) I'm actually enjoying a week with no TV. I'm rediscovering creative things. I should do it more often. |
| Winter let us know she was really here, and dumped snow on us, with some sleet, and a lot of cold wind and low temps. We didn't lose power here, and the trees didn't ice up like some of the pictures I've seen elsewhere. But it's going to be below 5 degrees at night all week, even negative one night, with another 3-5 inches on Saturday. People who love the stuff don't go to work or school, and can play in it, or stay inside and look out the windows at it. The rest of us have to drive or catch a bus when it runs. But our streets were in pretty good condition by mid-afternoon in this sun, with a high of 27. The hill where I live never dried up, so it will freeze over tonight. Could be messier tomorrow. We had a severe shortage of workers today. I arrived 50 minutes late. I have a shoulder injury and couldn't help much with shoveling to leave my own driveway. My helper is in his 80's, so it took a while. (Yes, I let my father shovel snow. He worked in it all day while I was gone.) My boss made a big deal about me making it in while all the slackers stayed home. He stayed in a hotel across from the hospital last night and could walk in this morning. They won't pay people sick leave or vacation pay for snow days. They have to pay overtime for others to fill in all the shifts. I had to fill in for the office manager and babysit the boss. I had to arrange the hotel room and his lunch yesterday, and lunch service for two groups today. They also rewarded all the employees who showed up today, who didn't attend the luncheons, with meal tickets for the cafeteria. They wanted to show appreciation for just coming in. That was a nice gesture, and a positive reinforcement. But my work was easier than my usual load. Everyone was more relaxed and more casually dressed than usual. So it wasn't a bad day to work, with no problems going or coming. It was worth not staying home. |
| There's just too much going on in the world. It's depressing. The horror, the violence, the insanity, the blood-thirst. It's appalling. What's even more appalling is the lack of moral repulsion from all sides, the lack of leadership to prevent this, the lack of moral outrage form religious groups including Muslim groups. From riots in the streets, looting, personal assaults, assassinations, be-headings, and so much more, our daily concerns seem trite. It makes you want to go into a cocoon so you don't have to hear about it. We live in stressful times, scary times. Our population is heavy laden with cares. Even though we may not know individuals involved, our hearts ache for those people in other towns, other countries--those families who've lost loved ones, whose daughters have been kidnapped, whose family members have been savagely slaughtered. It must be the never ending struggle of the earth. The world cries out for peace, but mankind grows more cruel and more savage. For all our enlightenment and our technological advances, we are still cavemen. Only now, we know about what happens everywhere through advanced communication systems. We can't escape the dreary reality. |
| A local radio station started a book club this month. I signed up, thinking I want to know what the local community is reading and discussing. Not many others signed up. We're talking about 5 counties and a college town. So far no one has answered the questions set up by a librarian. I just got a copy of the book yesterday, so I want to read more before attempting to discuss it. The first book is The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green. Green was a chaplain to children who have cancer, and their families for six months. He decided from that experience to become a writer, and did not become clergy as planned. He knows the terminology and tells a good story so far. I like the characters and want to read more. I'm only about 40% through my e-book. He uses not only a lot of medical terms, but a lot of $5 words. He explains some of them, since the main characters are teenagers, and they ask each other. What surprises me is how little editing was done for grammar and word choices. It was made into a movie last summer, so one would expect later editions to have been corrected. For example there is no such word as "enthused" as an adjective or a verb, which is how he used it. The word "loan" was used when he meant "lent". He wrote about public art, where arcs of steel "imagined". Arcs are not living things with minds. They can't imagine anything. He should have said "Imaged". Granted they don't hurt the story, but many people will be like me and trip over things like these. They distract from the smooth flow of the story. Green is well-educated. We really can't make excuses, but where was his editor? I've also discovered that it has been the object of a lot of ridicule and parody. It's about two teenagers who are dying. Why does anyone think that's funny? I haven't seen the movie. Maybe it was a poorly made movie, and they only mean to ridicule the movie makers, but it sure comes across like they're ridiculing sick people. Apparently, there are a lot of deviant, self-infatuated people who have no compassion. When they encounter troubles in life, do they expect to be treated with sympathy, or are they prepared to be treated crudely and judged on their looks while undergoing chemo? It seems like tender-heartedness or sentimentality brings out the worst in some people, shallow people. Maybe they fear the vulnerability, or death itself, so they strike out however they can. That's too bad. |
| There's a winter storm raging outside. The wind is howling. I'm prepared for a power outage. But the worst of all scenarios has happened. The TV died in the middle of Jeopardy. I'm missing my favorite shows of the week. The big screen TV downstairs is working, but that's reserved for sports events and news shows when my dad is home, or maybe a Clint Eastwood movie. Since I can't watch TV tonight, I will talk about a movie I saw several days ago on TCM or ACM. It's a black and white film from 1946, based on a Hemingway story, The Killers. It launched the career of Burt Lancaster. It was a minor role; he had little screen time. He was seen mostly through flashbacks. But what a good-looking young man he was. The femme fatale was Ava Gardner; she was young, too. The only other name I recognized was William Conrad, one of the killers. It's said that Hemingway claimed to have liked this film version of his story better than other films of other stories, and that he even had a copy to watch at home. That was something in the 40's, considering there were no DVD's or cassettes. The assassins were only minor characters. They were hired by a criminal to get rid of inconvenient criminals. The characters who pieced together the puzzle and bring all the criminals, except the killers, to justice were an insurance investigator and police detective. It was a very good film. The film was remade under the same name in 1964, starring Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the assassins. This time they had a major role and replaced the investigator and detective in solving the puzzle. The key criminal was played by Ronald Reagan. The mistress of RR was Angie Dickinson, but in this version she is brutalized and terrified by the killers. So this version drifts further away from Hemingway's story, and is a rougher. It must be time for another remake. Good films usually make it around several times. I wonder if they return to a closer version of the story or get a little rougher still. |
| I saw a wonderful movie last night about the life of Dr. Ben Carson. It tells the story of how a young boy in poverty with no father, addicted to TV, overcame all the obstacles to learn, to work and achieve. By the end of the movie, people all over the world are coming to see him for help. It's a wonderful story for families to see, for young children to be inspired, for all people of all ages to aspire to something more. One of the heart-breaking moments comes when he wins a spelling bee after turning his study habits around. Yes, that should be a moment of triumph and victory. But instead of being hailed for his achievement, a teacher reprimands the entire student body for being lazy. Other teachers looked embarrassed but no one spoke up for him. It was as though she said to everyone that the only reason he excelled was not because of hard work and diligence, but because the others were lazy. If only "they". the children of privilege, with fathers in the home, had applied themselves, he couldn't possibly have won. Again, as a young intern at John Hopkins, he again met with prejudice, where some assumed the black man in scrubs must be an orderly (shows the times; there are no orderlies any more), or teaching doctors verbally assaulted him directly. making sure he saw no special favors. He rose above it, keeping his promises to his mother and to Jesus. He never gave up. Today he is one of the world's leading pediatric neurosurgeons. He is outspoken politically, too, but that isn't touched in the movie. It's worth watching if you can catch the rerun. See it with your children or grandchildren, ten and older. It opens doors for discussion and shows a child can decide what his fate will be. |
| I heard a new concept today. The new status symbol is exhaustion. If you're successful at anything, you should be exhausted. It's almost a competition. The upwardly mobile work hard, play hard, and never have time to do what they like, or to rest. The person quoting the psychologist-author went on to explain that it ties into self-worth. Feeling needed is part of feeling loved, and that quantifies worth. So if you're the only one who can do the job, whether it's at home, your employment, church, club, or school, you feel needed You have to put in extra time. You lie awake at night thinking about it.That makes you tired. The more tired you feel, the more needed you feel, the more needed you feel, the more loved you feel. Well, maybe. If you feel needed, but unappreciated, that just chips away at your self worth. Then again that might support the argument. The harder you work, the higher your hopes of achieving approval. So whether you get the approval and appreciation or not, the fact that you're trying so hard, and pushing yourself so much is a sign you're trying to win love ultimately. Who would have thunk exhaustion was a sign of success? I always thought it was being laid back and not working hard. But maybe that's for losers these days. Good thing that I don't care about status symbols. I'm ready for some iced tea and mellow time. |
| If you were to skim through my things on this website, you would find I have an obsession with this TV show from the 60's, The Virginian. I discovered it about October 2013, and I have watched the reruns faithfully each week. I think I have finally seen all episodes. The show ran for 9 years, but they run several reruns each weekend. So I have caught up. For the uninitiated, it's about a ranch called Shiloh outside a real town called Medicine Bow, Wyoming. It's named after the foreman on the ranch, but his top hand Trampas is a regular through the whole nine years. Others come and go. It's based on the book by the same name, written in 1892, but published in 1902. It was the first real western novel, following the dime novels or pulp fiction which built up fictitious western characters. The novel is great and worth a read. (The book is less about the ranch of a different name, and more about the man called The Virginian.) It's been made into a movie 4 times, each interpreted differently. The show featured many guest stars, whom we all know from other shows and movies, like Dick Sargent from Bewitched or Mel Torme (young and skinny), Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Jory, John Saxon, Robert Redford, Peter Fuller from Emergency, Cloris Leachman, Joan Collins, Angie Dickinson, Hugh Beaumont, and many more. There was one year I didn't like so much. The ranch owner was replaced by some new owner, Bart Starr. His character changed the nature of the story, and it wasn't enjoyable. Then the time with David Hartman wasn't top notch. (I didn't know he was ever an actor.) They made a comedy of the episodes that featured him, and they were just a waste. A 90 minute dumb TV comedy doesn't cut it. Some of my favorite comedy actors were in one episode, and it was just plain stupid. Tom Bosley, Yvonne DiCarlo, Ann Prentiss, and James Brolin are great in normal venues, but this episode took a lot of patience. It got better when David left, and Tim Mattheson came on. So it's taken me a year and a half almost, to see all of them. I must have started near the end of 1963, went through to 1969, seeing a few reruns of those, and back to 1962. Today they were all ones I've seen before. I'm kind of sad that there are no new ones left for me, nothing new to discover. But they're good the second time around. Today one of my favorite episodes, "Run Quiet", guest starring Clu Gulager, before he was a regular, played again. I had only seen it once. Funny, how your memory plays tricks. I recalled a few things, I thought vividly, but was wrong. It was still a great story, involving good writing, and great acting. I had so much sympathy for the two romantic characters, yet one of them never said a word or made a sound. It was communicated so well. And it ended differently from what I remembered, but it was still happy and romantic and clean. It was fun to watch. So, now I'll keep watching and see if the fascination wears off. |
| I check out Facebook a few times a week. I don't have that many people on there--some from church, my cousins, some distant relatives, and two TV sites. I get dozens of unsolicited ads every day. If I look at anything on the internet, it automatically goes to Facebook to haunt me. There are no secrets. "They" know everything we research, every question we ask, and connect us to merchants and tricksters. I look for recipes to use ingredients I have on hand, so all the sites I visit from a search, go to Facebook with ads or posts. I once checked out Ellen Degeneres wrinkle cream ad, and now am daily faced with ads from various companies for miracle wrinkle creams. I don't know enough to block them or if it's possible. I won't look at anything that requires me to register first. But I still get lots of junk mail as well as the Facebook stuff. I feel like we have no privacy. My dad does the grocery shopping, and the store knows his habits. He gets coupons for the same things in the mail all the time. He feels obligated to use the coupons. I tell him they're making a profit on things that are unhealthy for him. I finally have refused to touch the doughnuts that he brings home--the same kind all the time. He finally stopped after throwing out stale ones. Even our shopping is electronically monitored. Big brother is everywhere, especially if a dime can be made by somebody. |
| I know it was days ago, but people are still wondering about whether he saw his shadow. It's amazing that one little town made up this story and its holiday to increase business and help the tourist industry. Now it's on all the calendars. School children everywhere treat it like Santa or the Easter bunny, which at least have other significance. It is a fun day, a good joke, but it seems like too many people take it seriously. I think Bill Murray's Groundhog Day is better. What if we could relive one day, over and over without getting older, until we got it right? What if we refined it a little each time, or made dramatic, changes, so that the outcome would be different? Our lives, our fortunes could be better at the start of the next day. Maybe we'd be better in the process. I don't know about other folks, but I can think of a few days I'd like to play differently. I can think of a lot of days where I'd do just one hour or even 5 minutes differently, Yes, I think that would be a good groundhog day. Let the groundhog be a symbol of new chances, instead of a false prophet of spring or winter. The down side would be playing a part in someone else's Groundhog Day. They might get it better; maybe I wouldn't. I guess we'll just have to get it right the first time. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
