TintiTypes

2011 Christmas Letter

Dear Friends and Family:

T'is the season . . . again

And again, this year the Fates of Weird made their annual stop-over at the Nill/Apple homestead. Last year’s visitation was a Zeus zap of lightening. This year’s visit was more subtle yet had the potential of causing catastrophic consequences. When we got home after running errands for a couple of hours one extremely hot July afternoon, in need of a soothing, cold glass of water, Chuck went to get some ice from the fridge’s dispenser. Nothing happened. That is, no ice came out of the dispenser. So, he opened the freezer door to see if there was a cube stuck in the dispenser preventing the ice from coming out. When he opened the freezer door the whole front of the ice dispenser fell out and the odor of burnt refrigerator innards wafted out along with it. The dispenser mechanism and the whole ice bin around it was charred. Weirdly, the ice in the dispenser was still in ice form and not melted water. However, it was completely covered by a layer of black, toxic-looking, oily goo.

After a few seconds of stunned incredulity, the reset button to our brain’s cognitive functions kicked in and we sprang into action. We emptied, as fast as we could, the whole of the freezer and refrigerator’s ruined contents into garbage bags to get them out of the house and also to reduce the appliance’s weight so we could force it out of its tight-fitting home between the kitchen cabinet and the wall to yank the plug before some other part of the possessed thing decided to spontaneously burst in flames. All of this, while inhaling the malodorous and certainly toxic fumes from the burnt plastic, or fiberglass, or whatever in hades the thing was made of. I’m sure we probably reduced our life expectancy by a decade because of all the poisonous crap that we inhaled during this maneuver. On the bright side, the thing that saved the fire from spreading was that the burning ice-maker motor ran out of oxygen in the air-tight refrigerator interior and extinguished itself. Otherwise, I’m sure we would have come home to, well, maybe no home.

 

Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
~C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971

Like I’m sure so many of us do, I have a love/hate relationship with technology. Among the many modern technological doohickeys and amenities I love, the list would have to include the availability of information on the internet, the convenience of on-line shopping, the versatility of word processing, e-mail, instant messaging, hands-free calling from my car and my GPS path finder... well, then again, let me rephrase that because my GPS doesn’t really like paths, but I do. It eternally wants to get me to my destination via expressway even when the more scenic and direct route might be a back road or two-lane highway.

I only turn the thing on when I don’t know where my final destination is, which usually only involves the last couple of miles of the journey. For example, to find a specific place in East Lansing, which is a favorite destination of ours. We like going there to enjoy an outing at Eastwood Mall for a must stop at the Schuler’s Book Store or to dine at a couple of our favorite restaurants. East Lansing, for those of you who are not from Michigan, is about an hour drive from my house. All things being equal, I prefer to take Old Lansing Road, a scenic two-lane country road, which was there long before the expressway was ever built, and which runs parallel to the freeway a few miles to the south of it. Coming home, usually after dark, the expressway is safer than maneuvering the curvy, pitch black, country, deer infested road. But in daylight it is a lovely and relaxing drive through farms and tree-lined foresty areas. The thing is, that like I mentioned before, if our final destination is somewhere we are unfamiliar with, I punch in the address of where we are going into the GPS. The result of this is that, Geepers (my nickname for the GPS) goes berserk the whole way there. At every major intersection along the way, in her stubborn mission to guide me to the freeway, Geepers warns me to turn right. It’s now become a game that we have timed to the millisecond to say in unison with the computerized female voice “recalculating” as we continue straight on our scenic road ignoring the advice from the nagging mechanical device.

I almost feel guilty and it’s often crossed my mind that I hope she never does a “Hal” on me (for those of you too young to know what I’m talking about, Hal is the computer that goes insane in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”). I imagine her voice getting more and more agitated and annoyed with every “recalculating,” until eventually she starts to scream “RECALCULATING! WHAT PART OF TURN RIGHT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND! ARE YOU RETARDED? WHEN I SAY TURN RIGHT, TURN RIGHT, DAMN IT! . . .” or words to that effect. Hmmmmm, if it ever does do that I’m throwing Geepers out the car window. Just saying.

 

Technology to the Rescue

In one of her comedy routines Rita Rudner comments that you know you’re in love when you meet that “certain someone you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” She isn’t wrong. In every relationship there are things that annoys, frustrates, infuriates or just irritates the other person. I don’t care how much you may love and cherish your partner. It is a given. Nothing wrong with it, it’s just the way things are. The trick of it is to embrace it and poke fun at it when you can and just enjoy and accept your differences. One of the things that I do that makes Chuck crazy is the catastrophically messy condition a previously pristine newspaper is left in after I have had my way with it. I don’t see what the problem is. Yes, it is left with folds in odd places, some parts are upside down, others are inside out, but it is basically still intact, if you define intact as being all there . . . somewhere?

Before we got our Nooks last year we used to get the paper version of the Sunday, New York Times. I usually got hold of it first and my sweetie would go apoplectic at the sight of the paper’s painfully distressed state when it was his turn to read it. Patiently, he would pick up the confussed mess of newsprint and proceed to organize it and refold it to it’s original condition before trying to read it. When he had finished reading it the paper always looked as pristine as if it had just come out of the newstand. It is a mystery to me how he does it, or for that matter, why he does it. I find the page size of American newspapers awkward. It is too big to read without folding it, difficult to turn the pages, impossible to fold them in any cohesive manner or to manage it in any user-friendly way. In short, it is a sort of news warfare that I engage in whenever I read the thing. Technology, however, has come to my rescue. I now subscribe to the electronic version of the NY Times. For the price of only the printed Sunday version, we now have it daily, and guess what? I get to read it wherever I am and there are no remains at the end of the day. I’ll have to ask Chuck if he misses the Sunday paper restoration ritual. Who knows, maybe he does.

 

Cart . . . astrophy

Another idiocyncracy that makes my sweetie scratch his head also involves a mess. It is interesting when you think about it. I am fastidiously neat when it comes to most everything, hosekeeping, bookeeping, and having a place for everything and everything in its place. But the chink in my armour, so to speak, are three things: the first I’ve just covered, newspapers; the second, is the tupperware cupboard – I’m not allowed to go there because I just shove with disastrous results; and the third is, according to Chuck, the way I “throw” (his words, not mine) things into a grocery cart. On the occassions when we are together at a grocery store he rearranges the cart every time I stop to put another item into the thing. Funny that three of the things that make him nuts have to do with messiness. But the chaos that is his desk and workspace are perfectly normal and acceptable to him. Just goes to show you, we all have our quirks. It’s what makes us who we are, and that’s alright.

 

2012 – The End is Nigh?

According to the Maya Calendar the world is supposed to end on December 21, 2012. Can’t remember if that is supposed to be Eastern Standard Time or Greenwich Mean Time. Either way. The theory is that there is supposed to be some sort of stellar alignment that will make the earth’s axis tilt and there goes baby, cradle and all. My theory is a little different. I think it is linked to the whole incandescent light bulb phase-out and the horrid mercury-laden fluorescent replacement ones that are supposed to be gradually phased-in starting next year. One of two things related to this event will bring about the annihilation of the human race: we will either all die of mercury poisoning from the damned things, or we will all gradually break our necks because the ghastly new light bulbs take half an hour to actually light up. It’s only a theory, but I think I’m on to something here. You decide.

I wish you all a bright and Happy Holiday and a healthy and grand New Year.

Affectionately,
Cynthia

When Computers Malfunction: The Arg Factor

I am not a computer whiz.  I am pretty versed on navigating and using word processing programs and Microsoft Office.  But when it comes to the computer’s guts and what makes the darned things work, well, there we are getting into a whole new story, and this is where the arg factor of the whole computer thing comes into play.

My troubleshooting computer malfunctions and glitches ability has a very limited repertoire of options.  In fact, it pretty much consists of unplugging and re-plugging devises, and/or shutting down and restarting my computer.  Beyond that I am powerless and clueless.  Please note that I am not the exception to the rule when it comes to computer know-how, but that rather, I am pretty much the rule.  I however, unlike the majority of people who may find themselves in this dilemma, am a very fortunate person because I have a friend who is a computer genius, and when I or my sweetie run into real problems that can’t be solved by an e-mail or phone-guided troubleshooting step-by-step “now do this, and then do this” coaching conversation with this computer genius, he is unbelievably sweet enough to make a house call and help us – a busman’s holiday for him because that is what he does for a living all day at work

So, I have to ask myself, what does the average person who doesn’t have a computer genius for a friend do?  Throw the damned thing out the window? hope that it will get better on its own? or take the computer into a store and hope there is someone who can help them?  I imagine that whatever the answer to that question is, there must, by default, be a lot of cursing involved.

So, I ask myself, why can’t they, or why don’t they make a computer that doesn’t decide to stop functioning properly at random.  Oh yes, it isn’t that the user does anything that causes the malfunction.  I have had countless occasions when I have been happily working along doing something that I have done dozens or hundreds of times before, but for whatever inexplicable reason that particular time it causes my computer to give me a message that goes something like: “YOU HAVE COMMITTED A FATAL ERROR AND NOW THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO SHUT THE PROGRAM DOWN.  WHATEVER WORK IN PROGRESS YOU HAVE BEEN SLAVING OVER FOR THE PAST TWO HOURS IS IRRETRIEVABLY LOST.  YOU ARE SCREWED AND UNLESS YOU ARE A COMPUTER GENIUS YOU MIGHT AS WELL RESIGN YOURSELF TO THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM – EVER.” Ok, perhaps the wording is a bit different, but for all intent and purposes I am not really stretching the point.  This is a terrifying and totally underserved thing to be confronted with on your own computer screen.  I mean, through no fault of your own your computer arbitrarily decides to go on strike and make your life a living hell for an indefinite future.

How do the people that make computers and computer programs get away with this?  How and why do they make a product that is prone to melting down at random?  and why do we, the user, put up with this  and continue to encourage them to sell a product that is obviously still in the experimental stage?  Why do we tolerate and not rebel at the obscure language and gobbledygook that is the computer lingo.  I mean we go along with things like going to the “start” icon or button or whatever it is called, as the go-to place to turn our computer off.  For the love of god! what would be so wrong with calling it the “OFF” button.

The thing is, computers are really still such a mystery to us all that we simply accept that this is the state of affairs.  We, the consumer, pay them (the computer and software manufacturers) to be used as guinea pigs in the experiment in progress that is the modern day computer.  We make the assumption that if a computer malfunctions and we don’t know how to fix the malfunction, that it is not the fault of the company that built the computer or the software that screwed up by making the darned thing impossible to figure out by mere mortals in the first place.  We simply put up with this insane state of affairs and meekly go along with it and blame ourselves for not being more computer savvy.  

What we should really be asking is why they don’t make computers easier for the average computer user to figure out and why they don’t use language in their manuals that is actually understandable.  I mean really… have you ever gone to a manual or to the help button on your computer and tried to figure out what the hell they are talking about?  I mean, really! whenever I’ve tried to look in one of these sources I realize that I don’t even know what the heck the question is.  Let’s be real here, you have to actually know what the problem is before you can ask the question of how to fix the problem, and if you knew what the problem was in the first place you probably wouldn’t have to be asking the question.

SURE SIGNS THAT SPRING IS ON ITS WAY IN MICHIGAN

The robins are back.  But since the ground is still frozen they have to scrounge around for food because they would get beak bleeds if they tried to “dig” for worms.  Therefore, they eat stuff like leftover berries on ornamental fruit trees which have fermented over the winter.  The result of this is that we have a lot of intoxicated robins, which fly in erratic patterns and instead of singing their usual birdie songs they sort of produce a hickupy warble as they fly into walls and windows.

Another sign of spring is that pretty much like clockwork, on the first of March the skunks come out of hibernation.  You know this by the number of skunk carcasses littering the roads.  They are groggy after their hibernation and slower moving than normal.  Plus, not being the brightest of critters they have forgotten the whole “cars on roads” thing and therefore there are a larger number than usual of their dead bodies littering the road and perfuming the air.

Teenagers start wearing shorts and tee-shirts when it hits 40 degrees.  I’m talking teenagers here, so don’t assume heavy brainpower at work or functioning internal temperature gauges.  Teenagers are powered by hormones and what they think is the “cool” thing to do.  Apparently freezing parts of their anatomy is a small price to pay if it means an increase in their perceived coolness factor.  Don’t ask me to understand or explain it.  My mind can’t go there.  I am only reporting what I see.

Grass is again visible after being buried for three straight months.  Well, I call it grass.  It is actually this weird gray and brown stuff that has patches of straw-colored crap that is called winter mold and that apparently, according to my lawn service, I am supposed to rake out of it.  Like I don’t have a life and nothing better to do with my time.

Dry cleaners are busy with the whole Michigan population taking their winter coats to get cleaned before storing them away for the warm weather months.  Of course, we usually get a surprise blizzard sometime in late April and have to drag the darned things out again.  This ritual is a sign that we Michiganders are either slow learners or the eternal optimists.  I’m going with the optimist version.

We all get colds or sinus infections.  The reason for this is simple.  Our bodies have no clue what to do with going from temperatures ranging from 70 to 30 to 40 to 60 to 20 to 15 to 65 degrees – all in the course of one week, and sometimes in one day. When you start out the day in a coat and end up in short sleeves by afternoon and then back to a coat by evening, your immune system sort of goes on strike and says: “Ok, what’s the deal here.  There is just so much I can deal with, so I’m going on strike and you lose.

But don’t get me wrong.  Us Michiganders love our state and we are a strange and hardy lot.  We may grouse about the weather and all the good and bad things that go along with it, and by March we are all sick and tired of the cold and the snow and we look forward to feeling the sun on our faces and not having to pack on five layers of clothing just to walk to our mailboxes.  But if truth be told, we love the change of seasons.  In spring we look forward to warm breezes and sunny days, but by October we are tired of mowing the lawn and the hot weather and feel revitalized when we start getting that chill in the air, and we actually look forward to sweater-weather and the thought cooking a hot batch of chili or a slow cooking roast in the oven. 

Star Trek Zero – Where No Man Should Have Gone Before or After

Note:  There are some spoilers in this article.  So if you plan on seeing the movie you might not want to read this. 

A couple of nights ago my sweetie and I went to see the new Star Trek movie, Star Trek Zero (STZ).   This movie did not pass what I call "The Cynthia Butt Test.”  Let me explain:  if, while watching a movie I start to fidget in my seat and am aware of my butt falling asleep or feeling uncomfortable, it is because the movie is not holding my interest.  If I go through a whole movie without being aware of said butt, then I know that the movie is a winner.  I started to be aware of my butt 15 minutes into this movie.

Let me start by out by saying that being a teenager in the 60’s, I, like millions of others, fell in love with the series and characters that inhabited The Starship Enterprise.  Most of us that enjoy Start Trek have seen all the episodes multiple times and have an understanding of the history of the characters, their personalities, their moral and ethical views, what makes them tick, what their strong points and weaknesses are, the role that their bonds of friendship and loyalties toward each other play in how they relate to each other, and let us not overlook the ever-important role that their mission plays – we were reminded of it at the opening of each and every episode. 

So, having established that there is history here, the new STZ takes all of that and throws it out the Enterprise’s window (or porthole).  The writers (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) show a total lack of integrity and imagination.  I say this because a writer with integrity and imagination would have taken the time to do their homework and understand who the characters were, their history and the history of the Star Trek series, and within that framework, have come up with a plot that was faithful to that already established history and character development.  Hey, this isn’t a new concept.  Many writers take established characters like Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe, and many other such well-known and loved fictional characters and write new stories and adventures that are imaginative, but true to the storyline and respectful of the established history and characterization that the original author has given his creation.  STZ does none of that.  It uses each and every one of the original characters and trashes them.  The characterization in this movie of all the crew of the Starship Enterprise are at best caricatures, and not even good caricatures, or in many cases they are silly and cartoonish and unbelievable (see Doc Apple's Corner article on this movie: Star Trek Zero – a Big Zero for Star Trek  In his article he does a great job of pointing out some specifics about plot and character faux pas with which this movie is replete).

I guess the writers must have thought that it was okay to turn Spock into a horny, emotionally, out of control and illogical Vulcan (what the hell is that about?), destroy the planet Vulcan (untrue in the series), turning Uhura into a sex object that both Kirk and Spock have the hots for (again, what the hell is that about?), making Kirk a jerk (guess they thought that just because those two words rhyme it was an okay idea), killing Spock’s mother (so who the hell is the Earth woman who appears in all those episodes as Spock’s mom?), having Chekov not be 5 years old (he was about 17 in the original series when the other characters are in their 30’s), making Scotty appear as a boob instead of the accomplished engineer he is supposed to be, and the list goes on and on and on. 

This movie’s writing is so bad it is not even internally consistent.  By that I mean that even if you take it as a stand-alone story and disregard your expectation that it should stay true to the original series, the movie isn’t even true to itself.  In order for the movie to at least make any sense, the writers should have done what they promised when the old Spock in the movie tells Kirk that he can fix the timeline, and done so.  If they had at the end of the movie had the Enterprise return to the beginning of the movie and the birth of Kirk, at least they would have redeemed some of the plot.  Instead, they don’t even do that. 

There are so many things that are wrong with this movie that it would take a book to point them all out.  This movie totally failed The Cynthia Butt Test.  What a pity and a missed opportunity.  Going back to when these characters were young and starting out could have been such a good story.  What a shame that the writers were too lazy and incompetent to do the story and the characters justice.

Staging a Garage Sale -- A Necessary Evil

A few weekends ago we had a garage sale.  I swore the last time I had one of those that I would never have another one again as long as I lived.  And so, after a week’s worth of sorting and organizing and pricing and carting and setting-up, here I am again, making the same promissory statement:  I hereby promise to myself never to willingly put myself in a position whereby I find it necessary to have a garage sale to get rid of accumulated junk that needs disposing of by any and all possible means.

Let me explain, I am not a pack-rat by nature.  However, the same cannot be said for my sweetie, who, if unchecked will accumulate stuff and pile it, pretty much anywhere and everywhere – not a habit I find endearing.  So, this garage sale was an act of desperation, a means to an end – the end being to get rid of all the crap that Chuck has been hording for some years now.  The end result of this desperate act is that now the storage room is organized and there is actually room to store the things we need, use and want, and all the unneeded, unwanted and never-to-be-used in a thousand years items are gone – huzzah, alleluia, hurrah, yippy, bravo, well done that, fantastic, and tidings of joy.

The traffic flow through our garage was a constant for the two days of the sale because we were but one of the participants in a mega, two-subdivision garage sale event.  Which meant that people who take the garage sale thing seriously were out in droves going from garage to garage looking for . . . well, for whatever it is that garage sale bargain hunters look for.

The fun part of the sale was visiting with many of our neighbors who stopped by, mainly, to chat and see how we were weathering the flow of humanity.  And what a flow it was.  The types of people that showed up to stalk the merchandise was, indeed, a sampling of humanity -- crabby people, polite people, biker types, whinny and annoying people, rude people, cordial people, fat types, skinny types, people with well behaved children, and then there was the child from hell.  The particular couple with the hell-boy looked like they had the combined brain power of an amoeba, and their devil-spawned offspring inherited his parents’ lack of intelligence or common sense.  This kid, who was around eight years of age, attempted to climb a ladder leaning against the garage wall, sit on a rocking chair with no bottom, crawl under the table, and attempt any and all types of antics that anyone, including a normal eight year old, would have known were actions detrimental to life and limb.  The parents of this demon child were too stupid to notice or care.  I, on the other hand, did not hesitate to yell at the annoying urchin to stop doing whatever idiotic antic he was attempting – liability insurance might not cover death or dismemberment due to stupidity.  Although these people were on my property for probably only five minutes, those five minutes were definitely reason enough never to want to have another garage sale for as long as I draw breath.

One of the phenomenon that I find fascinating are the total strangers who will tell you their life history or will share intimate details about themselves that you would definitely prefer they kept to themselves.  I’m talking people you’ve never seen before and will (the fates willing) never see again.  It is mystifying to me why anyone would confide that much information to a stranger without any prompting or encouragement.  But there were several people who fell into that category.  It is a weird predicament in which to find yourself.  On the one hand you are hostage to the situation -- you can’t walk away because you are running the garage sale.  So you’re stuck listening to someone’s life-story without an escape option.  Your only recourse is to make somewhat appropriate noises from time to time throughout the stranger’s monologue, but not too many because you don’t really want to encourage this person to continue with their narrative.  So you grunt from time to time and hope that someone with a question will interrupt and save you from the flow of unwanted information streaming your way.

The star of the event, however, was my clematis, which has now climbed half way across the ached trellis which stands on the path leading from the driveway to the back patio and was in glorious, breath-taking full bloom.  I lost count of the number of people who, when they caught sight of it as they approached the garage, would stop dead in their tracks and just stand there admiring it and commenting on how it was the most beautiful clematis they had ever seen.  Many people asked if they could walk up to admire it up-close.  It truly is a thing of beauty.  But like most things in nature, its blooming life is short, in this case, about two weeks.  But it is, indeed, an event to enjoy when it graces us with its short-lived radiance.

And so, like the clematis blooms, my garage sale is now a memory.  In the case of the clematis, a good one, the garage sale . . . well, let’s just say that it served a very necessary and useful purpose.  But man-oh-man, it sure entailed a lot of effort and time.

Tour Traveling: The Good and the Bad of It

This past September I had the good fortune to take a two week tour in Spain.  Although my opinion of tours is mixed, it is still the best way to see a lot of whatever place you are visiting in a short amount of time, in the most economical way, and with the added benefit that someone is taking care of you when you are a stranger in a strange land.  Having said that, the downside of tours is that, well, they are tours, and therefore, by definition, you are on a grueling schedule imposed by the whole tour set-up, which entails getting up at the break of dawn and being on the move, pretty much all day until you finally fall exhausted into bed at whatever time of night the schedule allows you to turn in.  In Spain, that time is usually late, since Spaniards keep odd hours and dinner doesn’t even begin to happen until after 8 or 8:30 p.m.  Therefore, since you are still trying to digest your dinner at 11:00 p.m., you end up going to bed very late, yet are still forced to get up very early to make the tour bus punctually at 8:30 a.m.  That schedule doesn’t leave much time for rest, so that by the end of the tour you look pretty haggard and beat-up. 

The other downside of tours is that you are never in any given place for very long; and on any given tour, there are some places you find yourself wishing you could stay in for several days, and others (places) that you wish and wonder why in the world they were included as part of your itinerary in the first place.  On the particular tour I was on I found this to be true on both the plus and negative end of things.  Anyone who has ever been on a tour can attest to and relate to the long days, frantic pace and the frustration of being at the mercy of the tour’s itinerary.  But as I said before, overlooking the downside, it still is the best way to visit a country or region for the first time because it allows you to at least get an overview of that place in a short amount of time. 

Oh yes, the other thing I almost forgot to mention about traveling on a tour is the people factor:  your travel companions.  In my case, on this tour there were 44 of us traveling together for two weeks.  I have now been on three tours and had the good fortune to have had very nice people as fellow travelers.  In fact, I am still friends with several of the people I have met on previous tours.  Or is it good fortune?  Perhaps it is more than coincidence or luck that accounts for the pleasant people who have been my fellow travelers on the various tours.  I think it has a lot to do with the type of people who enjoy traveling.  Perhaps the very reason they are going on a tour is because they are predisposed to being open to new ideas, new flavors, experiencing new sights, new people, learning about the history and customs of foreign places, and making new friends.  After all, if you weren’t open to all of those things, why in the world would you leave the comfort zone of the familiar. 

I will be writing more about my trip to Spain in other articles, but thought that a few words and thoughts concerning traveling on a tour might be helpful to some considering traveling on one.  I believe that if you are a first time traveler to a given country a tour is a good way to learn about a place and get a taste and feel for the lay of the land.  If you truly want to experience a place, you can return to it, but at least you will have some notion of where you would like to spend more time and where you have no interest in revisiting. 

In summary, know that by the end of your tour you will be tired, but you will also take back home with you a lot of good memories, lots of interesting facts learned along the way, tons of pictures, and probably some new friends. 

 

Getting Old Sucks

Don’t believe a word of anything you’ve ever heard about the benefits or joys of aging. They are all nothing but platitudes and clichés at best, and in truth, outright lies and deceptions. The thing is, no one, and I do really, really mean, no one, either likes the idea of getting older or is enjoying the heck out of the whole getting older thing. Let’s face it, what is there to like about it? Oh, I know the whole, what are the alternatives thing? yeah, yeah, blah, blah. I get it, and I agree that being dead sucks a heck of a lot more that growing old.

Fine, so now that we’ve gotten that whole old B.S. argument out of the way let’s get down to reality, and reality is that I have never met anyone who is dancing for joy at the thought of aging. Why, I ask you would anyone like the idea of seeing your body doing things you never imagined in your worst dreams that it would do. It’s a total betrayal of all the care and attention you may have given it throughout your life. And I don’t care how much you’ve exercised, how well you’ve fed it, clothed it, moisturized it and pampered it. It is inevitable that eventually parts of it spread, sag, stiffen up, hurt, fall, widen, sprout unwanted hair, lose unwanted muscle tone, lose elasticity, and misbehave in a million other ways that you never saw coming.

When I look at pictures of myself in my 20’s and 30’s and look at myself now I wonder what the hell happened? What’s sad is that it creeps up on you. You don’t see the difference from one day to the next, or even from one week or month to the next. Yet one day you wake up and look in the mirror and you know that you are not the same person that looked in that same mirror, in really, what doesn’t seem all that long ago. Yet the mirror doesn’t lie. You are looking older. What used to be high cheek bones are now still high cheek bones, but the skin is no longer adhering to those bones. Instead, it has decided to migrate to the lower part of your face and become jowls, you know, those little pouches of flesh on either side of your chin, which by the way, is not as defined as it used to be either. And the same southern migration has happened to your eyelids, which are now threatening to fall over your eyes even when they are wide open. And the skin under “them eyes” isn’t staying put where it should either.

 The same effects of gravity that are ravaging your face are taking their toll on all the other parts of your anatomy. And let me emphasize that the result of all that gravitational pull isn’t doing much to improve either your figure or your outlook on the future of that figure. And what’s with all the unwanted hair that sprouts from the weirdest places. And why does it do that? Just this week my sweetie had a piece of Kleenex attached to the side of his ear. When I asked him about this oddity he said he had cut himself.

“How?” I asked, “could you cut your ear?

“I was trimming the hairs growing out of my ear,” was his response. “It’s what happens when you get older, hair grows out of your ears.”

I must say, that is just plain wrong. Men have the double whammy of having to deal with the sad reality of thinning hairlines, and adding insult to injury, having to deal with their lost locks migrating from the top of their heads into strange territory, like the inside of their ears, nose and heaven only knows where else.

The other day a good friend of mine and I were talking about the whole aging thing and she said that she didn’t think that she could run anymore. She said she hadn’t tried it in a long time, but that she was sure that even if she had to run for any reason that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it. It got me thinking about it and while walking the track at the gym the other day I decided that I would try and see if I could do it. I took a few fast strides and then decided to reconsider the whole attempt to run since I don’t think that there is a sports-bra made that would be strong enough to protect me if I really tried to seriously give it a go. It saddened me because I remember a time when I could sprint with the best of them and get up to a pretty good speed in a short amount of time without having to consider whether parts of my body would sway out of control or go in opposing directions to the intended one.

And then there are the visits to the doctor. Those are really terribly depressing. Whenever you complain about something hurting you can be sure that the doctor’s explanation for whatever ails you will be prefaced with the words “well, you know, as we get older……” That’s when you know you are doomed. From this point on in your life those words will always be the explanation for the deterioration happening to whatever part of your anatomy that happens to be under discussion. And I don’t care if it is your digestive tract, a sore joint, moles sprouting, veins popping or calcium deposits shaking loose in your inner ear. It is all age related and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it from happening. It is going to happen. Why? Because you are getting old.

And then there are your conversations with friends. Notice how those change with age? As you get older whenever you get together with friends the conversation eventually and inevitably gravitates to the topic of which part or parts of your body are misbehaving and to what tortuous and humiliating medical procedure or test you will be shortly subjected to for the purpose of finding out why or what the problem is with said body part.

No, the whole myth of “getting better with age” only applies to wine, single malt and some cheeses. It most definitely does not apply to humans. Age is only fun from birth until somewhere in our mid-thirties. After that the fun part is over and the slide toward annoying and really annoying begins. I doubt there is a person out there who is truthfully not frightened of what getting older will do to them. I don’t think you can be sane and not be afraid of aging. It sucks. Some of us will age more gracefully and in better condition and health than others. But the bottom line is that we are all getting older by the minute.

So, with that comforting thought I will end this with the poem “Crabbed Age and Youth,” sometimes attributed to the Bard but officially anonymous, which perhaps tells it best:

Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport,
Age’s breath is short;
Youth is nimble, Age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and Age is tame.
Age, I do abhor thee;
Youth, I do adore thee;
O, my Love, my Love is young!
Age, I do defy thee:
 O, sweet shepherd, hie thee!
For methinks thou stay’st too long.

? by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from The Passionate Pilgrim, XII.

McCain ’s Campaign of Distraction and Shame

While the United States and the world is on the brink of a complete monetary meltdown and we watch our pension funds and investments shrink in value with the threat of completely disappearing, the Republican Party chooses as its issue of the day to cry foul play because Newsweek magazine did not airbrush a photo of their brainless beauty queen Sarah Palin (or as I call her, “Winkie”) on this week’s cover of that magazine. It is truly mind-numbing to think that a close-up picture showing Palin’s clogged pores, and unplucked mustache and eyebrows is something that anyone should give a flying fiddle about. Talk about playing the harp while Rome burns, or in this case, the whole world.

But that is typical of the Republican Party’s track record of practicing the politics of distraction. In the past it’s worked – hence, two terms of the Bush administration. But in a world where, except for perhaps the still very wealthy, we all are in danger of losing our jobs, our pensions, our homes or our standard of living, I would have thought that even the pundits and the spin meisters would get a clue and realize that, except for the truly brainless out there, the rest of us are worried about our very survival, not on Palin’s plucking problems.

In another totally repugnant and scary example of the lack of any platform of their own to stand on, McCain and Palin have committed, what I would think is edging on criminal behavior: inciting a crowd to the point of threatening a presidential candidate’s life. I suspect that the secret service might have had a talk with McCain, which is probably why he has toned it down in the last couple of days. Their behavior – McCain and Palin’s – is beyond contemptible and reprehensible, and the media has been asleep at their jobs letting them get away with this type of conduct. They, the media, should be screaming at the top of their voices about this and not just commenting as an aside about something as potentially dangerous and scandalous as this kind of extreme sliminess in a campaign.

I am disgusted with the low-class, and in my opinion, criminal tactics which the McCain campaign has sunk to in this presidential campaign. Shame on you John McCain. You have shown yourself to be, not a hero of any sort, but a punk who will stoop to the lowest levels of decency to try and win at any cost, including putting the life of your opponent at risk. In my book that is surely not heroic behavior. Heroes win that title through acts of altruism. By that standard, you, Mr. McCain, are no hero.

McCain and his Shadow: Why Is Cindy Always There?

Does anyone besides me find it weird that wherever John goes Cindy is sure to follow?  I don’t think that I have yet to see a photo op or TV news clip in which John McCain appears without his wife Cindy.  All candidates have their spouses appear with them from time to time at special events, but I don’t recall ever (and by ever I really mean ever, in any campaign in my lifetime) seeing a candidate ALWAYS have his (or her) spouse glued to them like a shadow throughout every appearance and every event throughout a political campaign.  

Is there a reason why McCain’s campaign has Cindy tagging along the McCain campaign trail?  I can’t help but ask myself what the possible reason, or reasons, they might have for forever dragging Mrs. McCain around the McCain political campaign trail.  I realize that Cindy holds the purse strings, but does she also hold the puppet strings that keep McCain functioning?

Is Cindy there to help keep his infamous temper in check?  Is she like a human tranquilizer, a blond valium pill to keep his bad temper in check?  Is she there as a constant reminder to help McCain keep himself in line and to prevent a turrets syndrome attack when the cameras are rolling?  Or is McCain’s campaign staff weary of becoming the target of his foul disposition and use Cindy as she their go-between to calm the turbulent waters of McCain’s tantrums?  Is she the beauty to McCain’s beastly side?

Or, is Cindy’s presence an indication of a more serious matter, one that should be of grave concern to all of us.  Does McCain have some health issues that she is there to help monitor?  After all, he only gave the press X# of hours to look through thousands of pages of his medical history.  From some of McCain’s confusion on basics, like not knowing the difference between Shias and Sunnis, not knowing that Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, or not knowing how many houses he owns or what his stance is on a woman’s right to choose, I truly wonder whether or not he is suffering from the first stages of dementia.  If that is the case, is Cindy there as a familiar face to ground him in time and space?  Is there something that the American public needs to know about his mental and physical capabilities that could and would have vital impact on his ability to perform the duties of the President of the United States? Or would his presidency be like Woodrow Wilson’s, where his wife took it upon herself to hide from the public the incapacitating stroke her husband had suffered and acted as president behind the scenes against every constitutional rule or law in this country.  Is Cindy there to help prop him up, to help give the illusion of vitality, of a vigor that he no longer possesses? 

Or is Cindy’s role a less scary one but equally vital to a campaign.  Is she there to try and keep him on message?  The McCain campaign has had their hands full attempting to keep him from going off on the tangent of the day.  Is Cindy more able to help keep him on track than any of his campaign aids, with the added benefit that she is more willing and used to absorbing the brunt of his nasty temperament.

Or, is Cindy there as a human photo prop?  Do they think that if they have an attractive woman standing next to John McCain that people will be distracted and look at her rather than at him and therefore not notice how old and doddering he often appears?  Or is the thinking that people might not view him as old as he really is because his wife is younger looking and therefore, by association it somehow subtracts a decade or two off of his lifespan.  Or is it McCain’s idea.  Does he think that having Cindy by his side makes him look and feel younger?   Yeah, convoluted thinking, but hey, men think that if they surround themselves with younger women that it somehow makes them younger.  I don’t understand the logic on that one, but apparently it is what a lot of guys think.  Maybe he is one such man. 

All these questions and more come cascading to my mind, casting a shadow of a doubt about what is going on with the McCain.  Why is Cindy being used as human wallpaper?  What is her perpetual presence in this campaign signify?  Aren’t you just a bit mystified too?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks: Appointment of Palin as VP – The Ultimate Sexist Act

 

September 9, 2008

By Cynthia Nill

It should be obvious to anyone with a brain in their head that the very choice of Palin as a VP running mate is in itself the ultimate sexist act. Is there anyone who truly believes that a man with Palin’s qualifications (or better stated, lack of qualifications) would have ever been even considered as a VP running mate? In what alternate universe is she qualified to be a skin melanoma away from becoming president of the United States? I’m sure that in the Republican Party there must surely be much more qualified men, or women, which were overlooked and bypassed for the unknown, un-vetted, and totally unqualified Palin.

So why did McCain choose her? There is only one reason: because she is a woman, and more specifically, an attractive woman, period, end of sentence, full stop. If you don’t believe me, let’s take a look at some of what we know.

We know that it isn’t because of a history of friendship or prior working camaraderie between Palin and McCain, since McCain had only met her once before appointing her.

It isn’t because of her knowledge or experience in foreign affairs – knowing where Russia is on a map, not really much in the way of expertise.

Her much touted “experience” and executive abilities gained from her stint as major of a small village, population 6000 – oh please, I live in a bedroom community of 40,000 and we don’t even need a major, a city council does the job nicely. The major position she held was, at best, a part-time job, a figurehead position without many real responsibilities or power.

Her experience and expertise as Governor of Alaska? She’s held that job for like, what? five minutes? And if you start to look at her record in that position, she has managed in the short time she has been governor of that State to be under investigation into her possible abuse of power. Yeah, a real plus that.

And why Palin rather than some other woman who might have actually possessed abilities and experience to hold the important office of VP? In McCain’s case, because she is not only a woman, but she is an attractive woman. McCain suffers from the old man delusion that if you surround yourself with attractive younger women that somehow, by either osmosis or association, that it either makes you look younger or that it actually somehow, miraculously, makes you younger. Truth is though, he still looks old. If fact, he looks and is old enough to be her father.

Since McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his VP running mate the Republican Party has been screaming sexism at any and all comments, questions or criticism of Palin, while at the same time, keeping her sequestered and completely out of reach of the press. I’m sure that she has been cramming like a school kid before an exam to try not to appear as green and unqualified as she actually is. Another McCain reason (a purely sexist one, I may add) for choosing the woman Palin for his VP was as an attempt to win over Hillary’s supporters. Please, that should be the ultimate insult to any and all women in possession of an intellect. Hillary’s appeal, popularity and support was garnered by Hillary through hard work, campaign strategy and know-how, Hillary’s education as a lawyer, her experience as a former First Lady, a senator for the State of New York, an intelligent woman and politician who earned every one of the 18 million supporters she won over during her hard-fought campaign. Just because Palin possesses a vagina does not get her those 18 million votes. Hillary’s supporters flocked to her because of issues – remember those? They are reasons why people should be voting for someone, not just because they say that they are for change, without an iota of evidence to support that claim. Among those are: a woman’s right to choose; a comprehensive health care plan; getting out of Iraq, a war which Bush and his mini-me, McCain lied us into; getting us out of the horrible deficit that the Republican Party’s last 8 years of ineptitude have put us into, and the list goes on and on. Those are the reasons why Hillary, a woman, won the support of so many. Killing a moose, being major of a postage-stamp sized village and giving birth to five kids are not qualifications for a VP.

The Republican Party’s mouthpiece, the Fox “News” Network, told Hillary that if she couldn’t stand the heat to get out of the kitchen. Well, back at you. Palin, if you can’t play with the big boys, guess what… And I don’t think that is a sexist remark. It would be sexist if Palin were a qualified candidate like Hillary was, but Palin is only a candidate because she is a woman – and that is the ultimate act of sexism, and it is the Republican Party who is guilty of that sin.

I saw a report on TV the other day which horrified me. They were interviewing “the common person on the street,” in this case, a woman, about her opinion of Palin. The woman’s answer was that she liked Palin because she (Palin) was just like her, which meant that anyone could be vice president. Now I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I know that I would want the choice for Vice President of the United States to have more qualifications and know-how than what it takes to be a greeter at Wal-Mart (please, I have nothing against Wal-Mart greeters, I just don’t think of them as a good choice for VP). What is a very scary trend in this country is that we have stooped to the lowest common denominator in our expectations for the people who are supposed to make decisions for us that have both, world-wide and very personal impact in our everyday lives. The people we elect should be not just pretty, or folksy, or just like us. No, they should be people qualified to be statesmen; have the knowledge and ability to grasp and tackle complex issues; national and international problems, issues and concerns; the ability to study and analyze economic, social, political, international, judicial and environmental issues; and after gathering the facts, they should have the competence to analyze those facts and the judgment to make wise decisions. The last eight years of bad judgment and decisions has cost this country dearly. The Bush, Republican administration has squandered our standing in the world, has tortured prisoners of war, has trashed our economy, has eroded our constitutional rights and is responsible for the death of thousands of our soldiers in a war based on lies.

If we are not careful we are going to be dooming our country to more of the same catastrophic agenda of the Bush–Cheney administration. The Republican Party, under the tutelage of Karl Rove learned that if you say something often enough that people believe it. Unfortunately they seem to be right. If they keep on saying that questioning Palin’s competence and credentials is sexist, apparently there are enough people who take that line of propaganda at face value without questioning its validity. That is how we got into the mess we are presently into, and why if we as a people don’t start questioning the validity of false assertions we may find ourselves losing more of our freedoms. It is not Palin’s gender that is of concern, it is her lack of qualifications that are of great concern. That is not sexist. It is our right and our responsibility to question.