Oh, this sucks.

Work FINALLY gets interesting, and I've got jury duty.

Guess I should do my patriotic duty, before the Chinese buy the country out from under us.

Anybody ever have to do this? Is it the combination of boring and horrifying that the Grisham novels and the movies make it out to be?

Weekend wasn't a total loss - they had the (original) Grinch on TBS. You know, it's funny - I have the thing in DVD, yet I went out of my way last night to make sure I was plopped down in from of the TV when the TBS overlords deemed that it was time to air. Why is that?
Chuck Jones is (still) a genius.

Current Music: "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch" from the cartoon

Another disgruntled, armed male. This time, in Oregon.

Another situation where NOBODY knew that an armed nutcase was walking around, about to kill people.

Another person dead, for the crime of going to work.

They put the Beltway Sniper to death tonight, and that didn't stop the guy in Oregon from killing.

Texas fries more people on death row than anybody; that didn't slow down the guy at Fort Hood.

Prison isn't working; neither are psycho hospitals or death row. Let's get the world's scientists to isolate the "kill for religion" and "prey on defenseless children" gene.

*************************************
The day wasn't a total loss. I tested the limits of my car speakers with System of a Down's "Chop Suey".

Spent my last remaining minutes of the weekend watching "Mad Men" end for the season. I'm not sure why watching how people drank and slept their way to fortune 50 years ago seems so appealing.

It may be that there's enough nods to 2009 that it's become almost a 60's role playing game, with everyone dressed like Frank and Nancy Sinatra. It's possible, sometimes, to plug yourself in and see the parallels to today.

Tonight, it hit home, a bit too close. Anyone who has ever depended on a steady paycheck had to lose a little bit of lunch, when they saw all the principals bagging their stuff and leaving those not "in the know" to pick up the pieces Monday morning.

I've been there. In my case, it was one month after I joined a new company. My first meeting with my boss' boss concluded with him trying to dispell a rumor that people were fleeing to a competitor. Well, not only was the rumor true, but he left along with the two people above him, two weeks later. In the meantime, the economy tanked, so I stuck it out, wondering if the rudderless ship I just jumped on would stay afloat.

The company and the job are surviving. But I still think my current situation is a lot closer to Kate Winslet at the end of Titanic (cold, tired, and bobbing on a door in the North Atlantic with a Leo Dicaprio popsicle on one corner) than the beginning. Not that being naked, save a million dollar rock on my chest, would be any better.

I better go. The imvu cartoon blonde is really begin to bug me. And the avatar is annoying, too.

My dad's attitude about what to fight for (and what NOT to) was fairly cut and dried. Stuff not worth fighting for was trivia. He'd give you that Teutonic dead-eye look (he never laid a hand on me, but it was just as effective), label whatever we were arguing about as trivia. Fight over.

But if it was worth taking a stand over, take a stand. Get loud, if you have to. But, arms at the sides.

Now, everything is a battle. Work or home, it doesn't matter. No bar is too low, and I don't have the "This is too silly to argue about" get-out-of-jail free card. And if I'm winning the argument? I'm shouting. I've got a TONE.

I'm tired of fighting over sh*t not worth fighting over.

I think that's why I like to stay up late, even on workdays. It's so quiet right now.

OK, so it's raining. It's free candy, kiddies! Get outside! Nobody ever got swine flu from walking around the neighborhood in a moderately moistened Harry Potter getup! I don't even like the peanut ones - you can have that first!

And is it me, or did peanut allergies just EXPLODE in the last 5-10 years? I can still remember telling two flight attendants on the same flight not to bother with the mandatory packet of petrified nuts.

Well, if you want a Baby Ruth, come on down! Mr. Goodbar? How about two?

I ought to thank the Redskins and the Hokies for giving me my weekends back. Now I don't even have to DVR the games. Nobody close to home will win anything important.

Was that a knock? Back later...

Final Note: Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter? Netflix had it in the instant play group. Let's just say the premise was better than the movie.

Current Mood: In a giving mood

This entry was going to be a rounded, well-thought-out, blurb on parents and yelling. I had a source (NY Times) and a point, namely that there are two camps - wimpy pushovers and the Rage_Against_the_Rugrats - and as much room for a centrist as there is on Capitol Hill these days. I had managed to fill a couple of paragraphs on a BlackBerry while waiting for my kids to get out of practice. All I needed to do was hit Send Entry.

Er, all I needed to do was hit Send Entry.
Hit Send Entry!
Hit Send Entry!
Hit Send Entry!
Hit %$%$##@$ end Entry!

You get the idea. Send button didn't want to work. Neither did cut and paste. Oh well.

Meanwhile, some 9-year-old is texting away, almost the entire time I'm sitting there. Hope her mommy has paid for unlimited text, or she's going to get quite a surprise.

OK, here's a question for the panel.

One of my HS buddied dated this girl for about a year, senior year. They broke up (his idea), she went in the Navy, end of story. She was a nice girl, and I was her friend while she was dating him.

Eons later, he's married (to somebody else); I am too. A couple years back, she calls me out of the blue, talking like we're all 18 again, and how she'd like to see everyone again. I mention the call to him, and I...shall we say, I get the sense he's REALLY not interested. She never calls either of us back, and I forgot about it.

Now she just sent me a FB friend request. Not a big deal, except I'm HIS FB friend, and he's got one of those locked accounts.

Here's the question: does my friending both of them make it any easier for her to contact him? I wouldn't mind the usual conversation I've had with folks from back then, "So...what have you been up to since the 80's?", but I'd hate to inadvertedly open him up.

Thoughts?

OK, I can deal with the fact that I snore. Rather loudly, apparently.

But riddle me this. You know that time of the night, after you've closed your eyes, but you're either thinking about the day, or getting the dreams started? You're still fairly conscious then, right?

Last night, I was just about asleep, but I still felt not so much awake as well, aware. I don't know what I was thinking about, but I was thinking about something, when, all of a sudden, I hear, "Stop snoring!"

It struck me that, if I was aware, that I would have at least felt myself snoring, if not heard it. I don't know - maybe it really is an on/off switch, and your hearing and your other senses close down to a lower level.

Re: yesterday: Open mouth, insert foot.

I dashed off my previous LJ post in such haste, I missed a word, and twisted what I was trying to say:
I said: "I don't get it. I don't Mackenzie Phillips is CELEBRATING the fact that she slept with her father."
I meant: "I don't get it. I don't think Mackenzie Phillips is CELEBRATING the fact that she slept with her father."

And if her next-day clarifications are any indication, she said pretty much the same thing.

What caused me to go off to begin with, was that when I clicked on the Google News, it was the top story. A thousand wire services, newspapers, and other media had this story above all others. Even Oprah was chiming in. And there was a picture of Mackenzie Phillips, circa 1980, smiling. It felt gross.

Like too many of us who pay a bit too much attention to the celebrity news, I read it and reacted. Which is kind of the point, to be honest. Certainly, on the surface, Mackenzie Phillips seemed to be no different than the panty-less dunderheads that usually clog the airwaves.

But this was different. When two (or more) non-blood-related consenting adults have sex, that's OK. But I don't care if you're nine, nineteen, or 49 - your parent is your parent. And with all the tail John Phillips chased over the years, that was one line he shouldn't have crossed. Having your child spend the rest of his/her life with that memory permanently burned into their psyche is more than anyone should bear, especially when it comes from the person that child is supposed to trust.

So I don't think she was celebrating. But I do think it came across that way.

And second, I am taking issue with my own solution. Stepping in front of a train is, in of itself, destructive. I'd certainly hate to be the conductor of that train. And the person who commits the act is not the only one who is affected by suicide. The feeling of abandonment, the guilt (was it me that caused him to do that?), the gaping hole left in the family - I can't even begin to think how traumatic that might be. So, I apologize if I made a bad situation even worse.

I can't begin to fathom what gets into the mind of a person who would do that to their own child. So, I'll just leave it as this - it's certainly something I wouldn't do. And I guess if Mackenzie Phillips can take the lemon of her childhood and make enough lemonade to support herself in her later years, who am I to judge?

I don't get it. I don't Mackenzie Phillips is CELEBRATING the fact that she slept with her father. So what are all the news stations treating this family tragedy like she won the lottery?

I'm sorry - I think I'd throw myself in front of an oncoming train before I did that with my children.