acb sums it up again

yup.

”It’s a sobering thought that, as you read this, in candle-lit suburban bedrooms all over North America, pizza-faced teenaged girls in size-XXL Hot Topic fishnet tops are pouring her fantasies about Legolas (”OMG he’s so hott!!!1!”) and angst about their lousy non-pony-buying parents into their PCs, thus endlessly replenishing this cornucopia of pure shite for future visitors.”

The Earthquake at Lisbon

Jo is one of the employees at Diedrich Coffee where we all hang out.

She’s probably in her late forties (streaks of gray in the black), a pleasant outgoing woman who is always cheerful and works very hard. Slinging coffee is her second job; she works full-time in medical research as well. She has a couple of kids. Her husband left her years ago. She also cares for elderly parents who increasingly need a lot of supervision and assistance.

This year Jo got the influenza pretty badly and ended up with both viral and bacterial pneumonia; she had to be hospitalized for a few days. She also seriously injured her foot, and it isn’t healing up too well. She wears one of those protective immobilizing boot things on her foot the second half of the shift most of the time.

So here we have a middle-aged woman who spends approximately 18 hours a day caring for elderly parents and children and working two jobs, who has been having some serious medical problems lately, is flat broke, and is doing this all on her own because her man walked out on her.

The punchline? She now has lupus.

Shit ain’t right.

Chicken Soup for the Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze

I had a Brain Inventory today. Hils asked how I was doing on toner. Actually it was funny (haw) because I had left my wallet at D’s right before the appointment with the psych doc and when I filled out the Brain Inventory one of the questions was “Do you frequently lose important objects?” YES OFTEN.

This therapy is right on the borderline between New Age Bubblehead and Science, which is probably good for me in a number of ways. It’s genuinely holistic, in that she looks at all sorts of causes and cures for the brain rot I seem to have. I’m not sure how I feel about all of it (when people talk about things like nutritional supplements I get nervous), but the EMDR bit and some of the attention to things like diet and exercise make sense.

I was sent off to buy some pop psych book with a title like SQUEEZE YOUR BRAIN, SQUEEZE YOUR BALLS that I have not started yet to read.

EMDR sounds like Modern Therapeutic Phrenology but you know, I’m about to try anything that doesn’t involve Scientology or psychic surgery at this point.

Also, no exorcists thanks.

My latest theory on human relations is that communication is actually impossible and that our insistence to the contrary is a form of near-universal hominid psychosis. Please do not steal my Nobel Prize/Macarthur Grant for this one.