youtube should just cut me off after 5 minutes

i could watch videos until my eyes dry up like raisins and fall the hell out.  youtube.com should have a 5 minute limit.

One of my favorite Ramones songs ever and proof the Ramones really weren’t cut out for music videos, but man I love this song:

 

and then that leads me to thinking about Social Distortion who opened for The Ramones in Atlanta…

 

And that makes me think of S.D.’s cover of Ring of Fire, which then makes me think of Johnny Cash covering Hurt…I will let you down, I will make you hurt.

And that is downer enough, I think, to get me off youtube.com for today.

things that make me laugh, and a video that doesn’t

so maybe i’ve posted it before, but so fucking what? get your own blog and post whatever makes you laugh until you snort.

 

and then that randomly reminds me that when Scoot and I went to see Danzig in Knoxville, the entire show there was this guy behind us shouting, “Rock on, big Glenn, wooooooooooo!” so here’s Devil’s Plaything from Lucifuge, one of my favorites that starts out with that trademark crooning and rolls into the caterwauling that I love so much…If you don’t want pain, you don’t understand!

 

 

I’ve remembered a lot lately…

It’s funny how we make ourselves forget moments in time that were painful or upsetting and how we bury them way down deep…and if you remember one forgotten memory, you suddenly remember a hundred horrible things and then you wonder why the hell you stayed on that path so long when diving head first into a briar-filled ditch would’ve been smarter and safer than continuing to put one foot in front of the other going in the same direction.  

But I digress, as always!  The point would be if it feels wrong, like you’ve completely sold your soul, it can still be undone, it can always be undone.  There’s no such thing as a point of no return unless you’ve let it go on until you’re six feet under.  Amen.

twilight

I took MiniMe and MiniScoot to see Twilight, a tweenage chick flick about a girl and her vampire beau.  For me, it was kinda predictable, but the girls absolutely ate it up.  The vampire boyfriend is brooding and aloof, so immediately the girls were hooked on him and his amazing amount of haircare products (all the vampires and their hair remind me of Beverly Hills 90210, the original series not the new one, the boyfriend is so Dylan McKay).  I was pretty partial to the villains in the film; they all looked like they might’ve auditioned to join White Zombie at one point.

In the car on the way home, I asked if the girls liked the movie…the response I got from Minime was, “I really love the way the vampire stares at you.  He’s cute.  It’s totally creepy and I like it.”  And from MiniScoot, “Oh yeah, I like it, too…it’s creepy and romantic.” And as the mom I had to grip the steering wheel tighter as I had an abrupt mental fast forward to Minime trying to convince me it’s okay to ride on the back of her Hells Angels boyfriend’s motorcycle to the prom. 

Who told her?

I think I’ve done a pretty good job of sheltering Minime from brand names and mass marketing mayhem each holiday season…but somehow this year, her Christmas wishlist is nothing but brand names and super expensive brand names at that.  One of the dresses she asked for was $250!!  Who told her about mall stores and brand names and all that crap?

We’ve since had a sitdown to talk about what she might really enjoy once the catalogs and commercials have moved on after December 25, trying to get Minime to understand that having a name brand this or that doesn’t make you a better person or more popular.  I told her to think about the things on her list and consider rewriting it to be less brand name oriented and more focused on what she would actually be excited about year round.

I understand where she’s coming from on some things, why she wants them.  I remember as a kid when Cabbage Patch Kids were the rage, and I wanted one worse than anything because I knew that ALL the girls in my class wanted one, so I’d better get on board with wanting one, too.  I wished, I prayed, I coveted…not really comprehending at that time that my family was simply too poor to buy one.  When Christmas morning rolled around, there was no Cabbage Patch Kid; instead there was some homemade doll that sort of looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid but it wasn’t the real deal.  I was pretty bummed for a while…but a few weeks later, even the friends who got an authentic CPK weren’t playing with them anymore.  Hell, the doll didn’t do a damn thing and was kinda ugly, too…so when the madness of the holidays passed, so did our interest in those dolls.  I realized even back then that I’d gotten swept up in wanting what everyone else wanted just because it was on TV and in catalogs and in the color ads in the Sunday paper…and I never even really wanted it!  I didn’t even like dolls as a kid, but I’d been sucked right into the gimmegimmegimme machine just like the retailers hoped.  I don’t want Minime to be a gimmegimmegimme kid, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’ll come around and create a more reasonable wish list.  Cross your fingers, too.

snow

Our beagle-T-Rex pup was amazed by the snow this morning, and he seemed to want to protect me from it.  He was barking at it and eating it.  And eating it.  And barking and eating…he seemed pretty perplexed that the snow didn’t just run away in fear from his super fierce barking, that it instead kept cascading down on his head.  I watched him bark at the snow and eat big mouthfuls for nearly thirty minutes!  For his sake, I’m glad a lot of it has melted away…and we’ll let him believe that he barked it away.

Paperwork Kills: Don’t Do It

When I got to work this morning, I had so many piles on my desk, so many notes everywhere, that I couldn’t even decide how to begin.  I decided I had to go through the piles, figure out what had been done, what hadn’t been done, what was really important and so on.

I spent a good part of my day going through notes, making a master list, putting my piles in order from most important to least important.  As I organized, I made neat piles to my right on the side of my desk and on top of the 2 drawer filing cabinet that sits beside my desk.  It was beautiful, so tidy, so useful in all its order.

I need to look something up to carry on with my process, so I opened the filing cabinet to find the folder I wanted.  The filing cabinet pitched forward and tipped over, throwing my beautiful organized paperwork everywhere…everywhere!  I can’t decide if it was a stupid move or a smart move to try to grab the filing cabinet as it fell (my wrist still hurts!) but my thought was if the filing cabinet hit the bookcase, the big tall bookcase and its contents would come crashing down on my head…thus I grabbed the tilting cabinet and wrenched my wrist…but on the plus side, the bookcase didn’t hit me.

My hours spent organizing paperwork were promptly undone by this disaster.  My once orderly piles were now just a huge disarray that I scooped off the floor and threw on top of my desk.  Sigh.

The moral of the story is that filing can harm you, possibly kill you or someone you love.  Paperwork kills, man; just don’t do it.

I am Snuffleupagus

It was determined this afternoon that I am indeed Snuffleupagus, the Snuffy of the 70’s and 80’s that was only be seen by Big Bird (it was ’85 or so before Elmo helped Big Bird reveal Snuffy to all the other Sesame Street residents).

photo of Snuffy on Sesame Street

I’m ok with this notion; I’ve got my Big Bird, Big Bird’s got my back, it’s all good.

What’s most important here in this super random train of thought is………………did you know that Mr. Snuffleupagus has a first name?  Aloysius.  Aloysius Snuffleupagus…and he has a kid sister named Alice that I’m also pretty amused by.

Alice

So there you have it.  I am Aloysius Snuffleupagus.  So be it.

 

I passed my motorcycle class!

I’m super excited that I finished my motorcycle class on Sunday, and twenty four hours later, I’m still trying to thaw out.  Saturday the rain poured down, followed by horrible chilling winds…Sunday I awoke to snow blowing around which finally cleared and left behind the horrible wind again.  After two days out in the elements, I’m pretty sure that I’m still defrosting.  Nasty weather.

But the class was fun, learning something new was terrific! When I learn something new that interests me, I can’t think about anything else, so all the stress and worry just evaporate.  Even though I was physically exhausted at the end of the Saturday and Sunday, mentally I was absolutely jazzed!  It was so terrific to move past the initial fear and trepidation of can I do this to hell yes I can totally do this. 

And you never know when these skills will come in handy!  Like, when I get one of those calls I get all the time requesting me to be Angelina Jolie’s stunt double for her next action flick since we look so very much alike and they say Oh, but you have to be able to ride a motorcycle for these scenes and I can be all like Tell Angie I’m in, no problem.  Pretty cool!  Or if I need to quit my dull day job and become a full time Power Ranger (I would like to be the Orange Ranger or possibly the Purple Ranger), having the ability to ride a motorcycle will put me to the top of the list of would-be power rangers!!  New skills open doors, folks, yes indeed.