Random Thinking

The free copy of Forgotten New York by cousin Kevin was won by Laura in Louisiana. Congratulations Laura and thanks to everyone who entered!!!

I went to the doctor yesterday for the first checkup since they put the monitor in. I had had an episode a couple of days ago and used the activator to make the monitor record my heart beat. The curious thing is that my heart rate was up, around 125. This isn’t extraordinarily high, but with the medications I am on it is unusual. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, they couldn’t get my heart rate above 75 during the tilt test even with medication. So why was my heart rate up? I wasn’t doing anything that should have triggered an increased heart rate. And why was I symptomatic? Does this mean that I pass out because of a racing heart instead of a slowed-down heart? Curiouser and curiouser. The mystery continues. More to come later.

Stephanie mentioned the drawing of the little girl at the top of my blog so she probably needs an introduction (that is, the little girl in the drawing needs an introduction… not Stephanie). She is Lenore, the cute little dead girl, a creation of Roman Dirge. We were introduced to Roman Dirge when we became fans of Invader Zim, the Nickelodeon TV show. Roman is a friend of Jhonen Vasquez who created Zim which led Roman to write a couple of episodes of the show (including the hysterically funny Pustulio episode). That led us to Lenore. Lenore is a little girl who died of pneumonia but then came back to life again because she didn’t like the afterlife. She tends to kill things like kittens, usually accidentally but sometimes on sugar-fueled frenzies. The comic strip is darkly funny and filled with memorably odd characters. What makes Lenore appropriate for this blog is that her brain is full of worms, which is often how I feel.

[ Mood: Neutral ]
[ Currently: Working ]
Helen Chenoweth-Hage died on Tuesday. She was 68. For those who don’t remember her, she was a very libertarian Congresswoman from Idaho from 1995 to 2001. After the Oklahoma City bombing, she complained that the government didn’t try to understand her friends in the militias. She was one of the most vocal denouncers of Bill Clinton when his affair with Monica Lewinsky was exposed… until it was discovered that she had been having an adulterous affair herself. She was opposed to the Endangered Species Act and complained that if Idaho’s wild salmon were really endangered then why could she buy salmon in a can. The answer, of course, is that she was buying Alaskan or farm-raised salmon and not Idaho salmon in those cans. Ms. Chenowth-Hage even held hearings on the question of those UN black helicopters full of UN storm troopers that were flying over her constinuents’ houses. In other words, she was a nut.

Ms. Chenowth-Hage was also strongly opposed to seat belt laws and considered them an invasion of her privacy by the government. Which makes the manner of her death all the more ironic. Ms. Chenowth-Hage died in a car accident when she was thrown from her daughter’s Ford Expedition which had flipped. You guessed it… she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. No word on whether Ms. Chenowth-Hage had breast implants.

* Note: Headline stolen from NY Post

[ Mood: Amused ]
[ Currently: Working ]
A 24 year old woman, Elena Marinova, ran a red light in Ruse, Bulgaria and totaled her car when she crashed headlong into another car. Ms. Marinova avoided serious injury, according to the local newspaper, because of her 40DD breast implants which acted as air bags and “absorbed the impact of the crash”. According to the Washington Post, this is the second time in as many months that a woman was saved by her breast implants. In the earlier incident, a woman in Israel was saved when her breast implant stopped a piece of shrapnel from an exploding rocket.

[ Mood: Happy ]
[ Currently: Working ]

It’s Buy a Friend a Book Week so run out to the book store and buy someone a book! BAFAB week is the perfect excuse to buy a gift for that special friend. If you aren’t sure what book to get, Debra (the inventor of BAFAB week) has plenty of suggestions for you.

I already started my BAFAB week shopping. I went today and bought books for Michel and Beth (two of my best friends). But don’t tell them or you’ll spoil the surprise! I need to go back tomorrow and find that perfect gift for my other best friend (Mikey). I think something Spongebob-ish would be perfect!

While I was at the book store, I picked up a copy of cousin Kevin’s book. Don’t forget that you could win this very copy by entering our BAFAB week contest. And if I can get hold of cousin Kevin, it will be an autographed copy! The book itself was hard to find, unfortunately. They had it in the "Local Interest" section next to the Fodor’s Guide to New York. I was hoping they would have it in the "New and Notable" section but no such luck. I took a glance through the book while I was waiting on line and it looks very good. It would make the perfect book to take with you on your walking tours of NYC.

But what if you don’t have a friend? Or what if you don’t have a friend that likes books? Not to worry! I’ll be your friend and you can buy me a book! I’ll be your best friend ever!

But assuming you do have a friend and they don’t live nearby, you can check out our book shop and have something shipped to them from amazon. What could be easier? And don’t forget to tell your friends about BAFAB week. You want to get books, too, don’t you?

Saturday night, Michel and I got out for a change. It was Michel’s high school reunion and she wanted to go to see what happened to everyone. It was a very nice party although we couldn’t dance (surgery) or drink (medication) but the food was excellent and the people were very nice.

Anyway, being the husband I ended up sitting in the corner with a couple of other husbands. One of them is a friend and the other is someone I just met that night (I will refer to him as the new guy). The new guy was very proud of the fact that he was a Manhattan liberal and had a very high opinion of liberals (such as himself) and a very low opinion of everyone else on the political spectrum. Which is fine. I have no problem with people being boorish at parties since it is unlikely that I would ever see this person again. But then he said something that really offended me and I chose to ignore him for the rest of the night.

My friend and the new guy were discussing religion and my friend commented that religious people often think of themselves as being special. The new guy piped up, “Yeah, special as in the ‘short bus’,” referring to the smaller bus sometimes used to transport children in special education programs. So this Manhattan liberal who would never in his wildest imagination consider the possibility of his being racist or sexist and would never consider the possibility of making a joke about African-Americans or gays had no problem with making a joke about children in special education programs.

Fortunately the new guy has no children and with the age of his wife it is unlikely that he ever will. Some people just shouldn’t breed.