Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Calling All Ghostbusters

There are things that go bump in the night at our house. The front bathroom sink has a chip in the porcelain where something appears to have fallen or been dropped. We were in bed and heard the crash on the night that it happened and got up to find no one skulking around in the dark, and no object lying in or near the sink to account for the damage. The doors were all still locked, the alarm still turned on. That was a few months ago. Since then, the night sounds have become such a common occurrence that we barely notice them. My partner snores like a banshee and I sleep with ear plugs, although I sometimes still hear the other noises that sound like someone is either throwing a party in the living room or trying to dismantle the place.

But now there's a little added extra something that seems to have been thrown in for our displeasure. Now things are disappearing. I don't mean the couch or a coffee table or the television set (god forbid!). Not yet. First it was an old pair of sandals that I rarely wore anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. I figured they must have made their way to the dumpster at some point, probably courtesy of my partner. Then, there was a book that I was reading. When my partner lost the first pair of glasses, I thought that he must have inadvertantly carried them to work, or to the car, even though he only wears these particular glasses to watch television and they never leave the house. So, we looked and looked and didn't find the glasses, and I still figured he'd somehow managed to lose them. A little later, I bought a journal to keep my thoughts (such as they are) in. I'd only written a few entries when that disappeared off the table next to my bed. By this time, I was beginning to get a little irritated. I knew where I'd placed the journal but searched the house again anyway. By the time my partner's second pair of television-watching glasses disappeared, I was fed up. I saw him take off the glasses and set them on the dresser when he went to bed, so I know exactly where they were. This time, he accused me of absent-mindedly picking up his glasses and putting them somewhere. So, a fight ensued and I told him to give the place a thorough going-over and when he was finished, I'd do the same thing. So we looked. And we looked and we looked. Underneath beds, beneath stacks of folded tee-shirts, underwear, and socks on shelves and in various drawers. The dirty clothes hamper, the microwave, the refrigerator, the washer, the dryer. In every closet, behind every couch and dresser, inside toilet tanks. The glasses were nowhere to be found. This is not a simple case of absent mindedness. We have searched the house up one side and down the other. All these things--two pairs of glasses, a journal, a pair of sandals, a book--are gone. As if they never existed! So, what I'm wondering is this: what the hell is going on around here? Who are these noisy party people who keep taking our stuff? How do they get in and what do they want? Most importantly, how do I get rid of them? Because, really, they've worn out their welcome and I'm ready for them to catch the first train back to Boo-ville or wherever it is they come from.

Where's a good Ghostbuster when you need one?

Michael Jackson Died Last Week

Michael Jackson died last week. Before that, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon passed. And afterwards, Billy Mayes, the television pitchman for thousands of products, went to sleep and never woke up. Meanwhile, the government in Iran issued harsh repurcussions against protesters who took to the streets following the "re-election" of the much-reviled Ahmadinejad. Bernie Madoff got 150 years for relieving investors of hundreds of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme that spanned decades. And the Supreme Court ruled in favor of white, New Haven firefighters who claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination after being denied promotions based on a test that they passed and African Americans failed. Uh, what? You pass a promotions exam and aren't promoted because you passed the test and somebody else doesn't? Good for the Supreme Court for showing some balls. There is still racism in this country but it works both ways. Things are still far from equal but cheating people out of well-deserved promotions to satisfy appearances or a sense of political correctness only intensifies misunderstandings and anger, while widening the racial gap. The new nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotameyer, was one of the original judges ruling against the firefighters in the lower courts. I think that, if elected to the Supreme Court, she'll interpret the law based on her personal experiences, and while she'll undoubtedly try and be impartial, I just don't believe she's the right person for the job. But, I hope that a suitable replacement is found soon, and that he or she is more open-minded than some of the justices currently serving (ummm, like maybe Scalia), regardless of race or gender.

The rain has temporarily stopped and I am ending this rambling missive and going to the gym.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The State of the Onion

1) As trumpeted in last night's ABC evening news, PETA is up in arms because President Obama killed a fly during a televised interview yesterday.

2) The media is working overtime because Kate Gosselin (of Jon & Kate) was seen spanking one of her kids in public.

3) The Sarah Palin/David Letterman smackdown is getting as much press coverage as the demonstrations in Iran.

And you think I'm crazy?

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Speidi's and Snakes

Yes, I know, I suck. I swore that I'd be better at posting to this blog and that was back in March. Haven't been back here since then. So, to get everyone up to speed, the cat died, my dog died, I had a camera capsule stuck in my ass (okay, somewhere in my small intestine) for eight weeks until it mysteriously vanished on the day a brand new procedure was about to be performed in an effort to remove it, the theater is having summer down-time so I'm currently unemployed, I have an elusive bleed somewhere in my body that medical science has so far been unable to identify, co-payments on medical bills are flooding in and I'm going to need a federal bail-out just to cover the expenses, and oh yes, things between the partner and myself have gotten mighty dicey (read: unbearable) lately. So, excuse me if I've been a little preoccupied. I realize that I'm lucky that I have food on the table and a roof over my head and that I haven't yet slipped into some sort of health-crisis death-mode oblivion, but cut me some slack okay? I'm not feelin' the love so I'm a little bit edgy. Deal with it.

In other news, I do have a new web page on an online site: http://www.examiner.com/x-13657-West-Palm-Beach-Indie-Film-Examiner. I'm pretty excited about this since it seems to generate a little more traffic than this blog does.

Lately I've found myself watching stuff on TV that I never dreamed I'd be watching. Like "Make Me a Supermodel", for instance. But even that seems like "Masterpiece Theater" compared to "John and Kate + Eight" and "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me the Fuck Out of Here!". Alright, I only saw a couple of minutes of "Celebrity" but those two minutes with Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag could have been spent more productively if I'd, oh I don't know, poked out my eyes with a butter knife. Jesus, what a pair of talentless, thankless non-entities. They are not celebrities. Jon and Kate, on the other hand, seem like Brad and Angelina by comparison. Okay, that's a stretch, I know that. How about we substitute the Pitt's with the Flintstones. That any better? Jon does bear a passing resemblence to Fred, especially now that he's gotten his hair plugs. Poor clueless Kate. I wonder if Jon's really screwing around on her? I wonder why I even care? Then there's "Expedition: Africa" on the History Channel, which I either really love or really hate, I haven't quite made up my mind yet. The lone woman on the expedition was tooling around out in the bush taking a piss one morning and a cobra sidled over near her, reared up, and spat at the camera, leaving a shmear of viscous, oozing snake poison on the lens. Urrrggghhhhh!

What's really bugging me this week is the recent election in Iran, which was undoubtedly fixed. I mean, I was sure that it would be. Now those poor Iranians have to put up with that imbecilic lunatic Ahmadinejad for four more years, or however the hell long his term is going to last. Is he a little bit like the Peter Sellers character in "Being There", where certain people mistake his idiocyncracies for genius? And oh boy, North Korea. They're threatening to go nuclear in a big way if we keep pissing them off. Do they really think that cutting their nose off to spite their face is going to improve the situation? Maybe we could just send over Spencer and Heidi (Speidi) in exchange for Laura Ling and Euna Lee. There'd be no more threats of a nuclear holocaust because Speidi would bore them all to death.

That's probably going to be it for today. I'm uncommonly bitchy and am going to set off to the kitchen in search of food. Perhaps I'll return tomorrow, or later this week, or I might just run away to Dublin and learn to twirl the fire baton. See you in church.