Overwhelm

This has been a very rough week.

I have to leave my apartment in 2 days.

Very overwhelmed. Too overwhelmed to speak.

For the record

I've burnt my hand while cooking. So this will be short.

I knew Burris was full of shit from the get go.

More of the Uknown.

I've been severely unmotivated to write here lately. Not exactly sure why.

Maybe I'm overwhelmed by myriad things.

Last Friday they announced 15 layoffs were coming by March 1st, where I work. I don't know what that means for me at this point. The 15 layoffs don't apply entirely to the office where I work, but we don't know how much of that will be dumped to us. If its more than 2, then I'm toast and I honestly don't know what my next steps are.

I've been trying to step up my knowledge of HTML just to add a skill. I think I'm finally beginning to understand it and beginning to know enough to know what to do under basic circumstances.

I know I'm late to the game but a skill is a skill

El Presidente

Spent part of the day watching Moon Over Parador, an old favorite of mine with Richard Dreyfuss as an actor having to impersonate a dead Latin American dictator. Directed by Paul Mazursky, its a very funny film that predates Dave by a few years, another favorite of mine.

Best part for me and the part I relate to most as a frustrated actor, is when he first nails a public performance as the dictator, an acting coup if there ever was one, and then is handed a newspaper right afterwards as he is kvelling about how well he did. He looks at the newspaper and then slams it "They're doing Streetcar at Lincoln Center? Dammit! I would kill to read for Mitch!!"

Dan Ackroyd is a genius

The most brilliant John Boehner imaginable. Sometimes Saturday Night Live actually achieves funny.

Beta be good

There's this blog thing going around where you list 10 things about you that start with a certain letter.

Someone special said to do it with:






1) Big Love and Battlestar Galactica: Two of my very favorite shows on television. BSG is am amazing examination of the human condition in a post 9/11 existence. Who are we? Do we deserve to survive? CAN we survive.
Big Love is an even better show about organized crime than The Sopranos was. It's also an amazing look at alternative ways of looking at love and relationships and it pulls no punches. I will say that polyamory seems a hell of a lot simpler than polygamy.

2) Beacon: This is a small city in the Hudson Valley that I've become pretty much obsessed with. I've been trying to find a way to live there that's workable under the circumstances of my life. I'm finding a way

3) Balance: Something that I might achieve one
day. MAYBE.

4) Beer: My favorite lager is Yeungling out of Pennsylvania, but I'm watching a show on PBS about a beer out of upstate New York that is the first beer since Prohibition to use New York State raised hops (Ithaca Double IPA).

5) Basil Basset Bingo: This was a very strange bingo game that I voice hosted many years ago on old satellite TV. A buddy of mine and I worked for a company owned by the guy that ran 3BTV. At first it was just a continuing series of televised electronic bingo games played by viewers, mostly in the southern states. But they decided to bring in live hosts and my friend and I started creating different characters, all relatives of Basil Basset. His segments were all pre-recorded. My friend and I built on sketches and characters and soon other performers came in. Some did characters, some just had fun schtick.
The idea never really caught on in the way that the company wanted, so to cut costs the they moved the production down from New York to North Carolina. They took out the personalities and hired a group of very nice young performers who unfortunately didn't do much for the show. Playership dropped, in no small part to their missing their familiar hosts (I still have several gifts sent by fans) but also because Bingo in the United States is largely a community activity and not generally done sitting home alone.
I am bragging a little to say that when I was given a severance check (which was very nice and I am still grateful for) I was wished good luck by the accountant who pushed the decision to move. I shook his hand and said "Good luck to you, I can't say I'm confident you will still have a job in 6 months with this move". 5 months later 3BTV folded. It wasn't a hard call.

6) Beautiful: The person who inspired this blog (both in general and this particular entry) is.

7) Beleaguered: Is what I am by my financial situation.

8) Baths: I love them. Deep, hot, eucalyptus and sea salt or just plain sea salt. 20 minutes. I feel new again.

9) Belly: Will be flat by summer's end.

10) Baffled: By weeping drama queens like John Boehner.

The Return of The Master

Tonight is the premier of Dollhouse!!!!!

This is the much anticipated return to TV by Joss Whedon who created Buffy the Vampire Slaver, Angel and the criminally shortlived Firefly.

I miss Whedon's twisty sense of humor and idiosyncratic dialog. I'm very psyched.

The show stars Eliza Dushku, one of my guiltiest pleasuriest guilty pleasures and several other terrific actors including Tahmoh Penikett from Battlestar Galactica and some guest spots by Amy Acker who played Winifred on Angel.

I am very very very psyched and this will definitely help pull me out of the February Blues.

However FOX has demonstrated its habit of not promoting its shows when it doesn't feel like it. There's barely been any publicity even here in New York City. So I'm hoping they don't pull the same nonsense they did with Firefly.

Watch it tonight on FOX.

February

I've never liked February. For the shortest month of the year it's always seemed the longest, most dismal month.

Last night at work we got to talking about how March is so difficult. Unpredictable and also seemingly endless, but maybe because my birthday falls near the end of it, or that it holds the promise of Spring somewhere in there, I've always had an easier time with it.

February makes me wish that humans hibernated. It would definitely be my hibernating month. At the very least it always feels like pull back time. Like covering up and sheltering waiting for brighter days.

With things going as they are in the world. More and more friends losing jobs or cutting back. The uncertainty I have for my own employment I wonder how long a real hibernation would have to last til the brighter days actually arrive.

BUT...since we don't hibernate I'll just do what I do every February. White knuckle it til March and figure out how to brighten things up in the meantime.

President Charlie Brown

Because Bill O'Reilly's Hipocricy Is Always Entertaining

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Bill O'Reilly's Right to Privacy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

It's Square to be Hip

I had my third annual follow up from my hip replacement this morning. It went excellent well. This is the first winter since being hit by a car in November of 2002, that I haven't struggled with some pain, so I expected the surgeon to be very happy and he was.

The device I have is the Stryker ceramic and steel model. Some folks have had issues with it but I haven't had any aside from the adjustment pains that go with any surgery.

I celebrated with a long walk from the East River, through Central Park and then into the subway back home.

Now I don't have to go back for another 2 years and finally feel comfortable with the idea of exercising again.

All I have to do now is kill this mother fracking cold that's been haunting me since Chrsitmas.

Watching The Watchmen

Back in the day....my brother was working for DC Comics and he was talking about this new graphic novel that he thought was amazing.

I hadn't been reading too many at that point. A few here and there like Frank Miller's Ronin, but mostly my interest in comics and graphic novels had faded.

Then I took my brother's suggestion and read Watchmen. It was the story about superheroes I'd been longing for for a long time. Every character had their own real personality and there were geopolitical consequences. The trailers are easily seen at www.watchmenmovie.com

Below are some brilliant promotional videos. I can't wait to see this. I'm worried, because overall Alan Moore's genius hasn't been honored on film previously (like the atrocious League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for one) but I remain hopeful despite being concerned that Night Owl isn't fat for the movie.

The perils of lack of competition

My ISP dropped again for an entire day yesterday, stranding me.

There is only one broadband provider in my area and the regular disappearance of internet access has me seriously considering going back to dial up.

All this makes me cranky....er.

Oops

I missed yesterday. I forgot that at work I'm not blocked from this site.

I didn't have much to say then anyway. But I'm pleased today that the President has decided to take whining Republicans to the woodshed and remind them they lost big and need to wake up.

Other than that, I'm ready for Spring. To make up for my absence I was going to post my new favorite Robot Chicken sketch.

But something is off with the site and it keeps blinking on me...so...it will have to wait.

That sinking feeling

What happened to Obama's crack team of campaigners.

They can't seem to vet, they can't seem to control anyone. I'm starting to feel like its 1993 and we're back at Clinton stumbling.

To be sure, Republicans are grandstanding nonsense and the main stream press is playing along as usual, but seriously, it can't be that hard to find a democrat who pays their taxes.

Daughter's ASPerations Part III (Or, Why My Daughter Is A Hero)

My daughter started her therapeutic schools at 3 and not long into the first year she was in she stated that she had "failed" her other school. We don't know how she determined it as a failure but it was amazing to us that she had that much recognition. After a short time the echolalic behavior gave way to better if still limited ways of expression.

She was the highest functioning of the 8 children in her class and was able to understand all of them, including a boy who had no language skills at all. She was able to determine by the sound of his moans what it was he was trying to express. It always seemed to help either the teachers or the school bus attendant.

She was also able to reach through other kids on a social level in one odd way or another. But it was always her that was the channel to these breakthroughs.

I won't get into the vagaries every kid and story, or the atrocious and ridiculous behavior of many of the parents I encountered. What matters is that through it all, my daughter had a keen sense of wanting to break through what she had.

She continued to gaze transfixed into any reflective surface we passed by. Windows were mirrors rather than a way to see the world outside. We would visit for playdates with kids in her class and the other parents would remark that she didn't seem to need to be in that school. I would tell them to watch what would happen once she passed a mirror.

But as each year passed, each school she went to until we mainstreamed her in 3rd Grade, her progress was remarkable. Much of this is due to the efforts and research of her mother, who now is a teacher in a special ed pre school, but in no small part it is due to my daughter's willingness to break through in some way or another.

By the time my daughter was 10 or 11, the term Asperger's Syndrome came further into mainstream focus and S was evaluated as being in a higher functioning part of that spectrum.

Now, as I have said, she is among the first wave of Aspys going to college and she is struggling to prove herself not only capable but able to thrive.

Each stumble that she has made in her life was always followed by a period of success. I know that's what she's heading toward now.

I wish she didn't take her stumbles as hard as she tends to, but maybe that's part of what drives her as well. Her pioneering efforts.

Daughter's ASPerations Part II (Or, Why My Daughter Is A Hero)

After that incident Sarah seemed to slow down. Her passion for reading (book was her first word even before mommy) ebbed, though it didn't entirely disapear, her responses were slower and she began to develop immediate echolalia as she got a bit older. The poor thing would respond to us by repeating what we had just said to her, like "come here Sarah" and then that was it.

In our ignorance, her mother and I thought she was being willful, that being a normal trait in both our families, but it kept up...and my poor daughter would continue to repeat our commands to come here (or whatever it was at the moment) with increasing tears. She knew that a response was in order, but what that response was supposed to be, she could not fathom. Oh the scenes this sometimes produced.

When she was about 2 we enrolled her into the nursery school where my ex wife worked. Right about this time was when my then wife was becoming my ex wife. I'd get phone calls from her saying that something was wrong, our daughter was not doing well in her class as far as she was observing and suspected that she was autistic. I didn't take this very seriously. For one, my ex wife had a tendency to be read about a disorder and then think she had it and she had just recently been reading up on autism. So I poo pooed it. Her boss did as well. But after awhile the two women who were my daughter's teachers began to suspect that my ex was right.

One afternoon I came in early to pick my daughter up for some lunch and as I watched through the window I saw that while the other kids were playing with eachother or toys, my daughter was standing half an inch from the small mirror, staring as if studying something. Her expression was blank and yet had a determined air about it. When I saw this, I knew that my prejudice against my ex-wife's observation was proving a disservice to our child.

A short time later we had her evaluated and she was indeed diagnosed as autistic. We were guided to seek a formal evaluation in New York so that we could enroll her into a therapeutic program for the following year. NYC is good this way in that it is required by law to provide services through the public school system to children with disabilities. And while over the years we were involved with some serious political wrangling from time to time, my daughter's progress would not have been as good as its been. Though as I continue you will see that so much of it is her own work.

(To be continued further....)