Random Thinking

I had to take Malibu to the emergency vet to be put to sleep today. She was 16 or 17 years old, had one kidney which was failing, arthritis, and a bad heart. She had been steadily losing weight and getting weaker so we knew her time was near but today she wasn’t able to walk and looked like she may have been in a little pain. The people at the vet’s office, Long Island Veterinary Specialists, were very nice and the vet made Malibu comfortable and let me be there with her at the end. She gave Malibu something to make her relax and then gave her an overdose of some other medication and she slipped away within seconds.

We got Malibu from the animal shelter about 4 years ago. She had been dumped by her previous owners because of her health issues. She was a good cat and when she was healthier she used to be boss of the house. If she didn’t get her way she would come over and bite my nose although she was nice to everyone else! She was always the first one in the kitchen in the morning demanding her breakfast. We are going to miss her.

This happened not far from my home.

William Calhoun was sitting in his living room watching TV on Thursday when a car came through the wall and struck and killed him. The driver, who was drunk and on drugs, had been spotted by the police in a drug buy and fled when the police tried to arrest him. Calhoun had two sons. The younger of the two, 19, has autism. Read the story. Drunk drivers must be stopped.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Marquess Thomas the Possible of Deep Throcking Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Deep Throcking? I feel like I should be in a porn flick.

Michel is:

Empress Michel the Sentient of Piddletrenthide Under Booth

Thanks to Debra and Minx.

Technorati Tags: memes, peculiar titles

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

So much has been written about this book that it is hard to come up with original ways of describing the genius of it. So, I will pretend that you know nothing about it. The book starts with a murder… the murder of a neighborhood dog. The narrator of the book is falsely accused of being the killer so he decides to solve the crime and discover the true perpetrator. It doesn’t sound too interesting except that the narrator of the story is a 16-year old autistic boy by the name of Christopher Boone. Christopher decides to both solve the crime and write about his investigation in a book for a school project.

Solving the crime will be difficult for Christopher for several reasons related to his autism. He is unable to understand why people react the way they do. He can’t decode metaphors such as I laughed my head off, since the person still has their head. He can’t look at people and use their facial expressions as a clue to what they are saying. He becomes overwhelmed by strangers, crowds, loud noises, and being touched and throws himself on the floor, rocking and moaning when he feels overwhelmed. But solving the mystery is only part of the story as Christopher’s investigation reveals something else that he could never have expected.

The story itself is a framework that Haddon uses to show what autism might feel like from inside the mind of an autistic person. There is a logic to the mind of Christopher and by using the first person Haddon makes Christopher a believable and understandable and sympathetic character. This makes even the common place become engrossing as we struggle with Christopher to perform the simplest of tasks. For example, buying a ticket and getting on a train becomes a page-turner as Christopher struggles with crowds and noises and smells.

Haddon has written a brilliant novel that has that rare quality of being worth re-reading. I don’t know if this book actually reflects the mind of a person with autism but I do know that it is thoroughly fascinating, unique, and enjoyable. I can strongly recommend this book.

Technorati Tags: book reviewing, Curious Incident, Mark Haddon

Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine discovered a friend was a re-gifter because he gave Jerry a gift of the label maker that Elaine had given to him? Americans have apparently embraced re-gifting as a recent poll reports that 78% of Americans believe that re-gifting is acceptable. And 60% of women (as compared to only 37% of men) in the poll admit to having re-gifted at some time. Men apparently (1) don’t believe in re-gifting, (2) don’t give gifts, or (3) lie to poll takers.

There is an etiquette to re-gifting, most of which involves not letting the receiver know they are getting an unwanted gift. A website, Regiftable.com has popped up that tries to provide some useful re-gifting information. Some of the info is fairly obvious (don’t re-gift a gift to the person who gave it to you) and other info useful (forget re-gifting as a last minute option and go with the gift card). But the most important point they make is that you should only re-gift if you are sure that the person you are recycling the gift to will actually like it more that you liked it. So it’s OK to re-gift that label maker as long as you are sure that Jerry actually wants it.

Technorati Tags: regifting, Seinfeld

Gerald Ford was only president for two years so it is hard to judge what kind of president he was or what the world would have been like if he had defeated Jimmy Carter in 1976. As most people know, the headline to the left probably cost Ford the election. (If he had won New York state, he would have beaten Carter.) In 1975, New York City was having severe fiscal problems and was on the verge of bankruptcy because of years of out-of-control spending. The solvency of NYC was also threatening New York state as the state had loaned money to the city. Ford, following his advisors, declared that he would not bail the city out with short term federal loans under any circumstances. A short time later, just before the city was forced to go bankrupt, Ford went against his advisors and did come through with the loans.

So who were these advisors who gave President Ford this bad advice that cost him the election? The names should very familiar as they have been giving bad advice for more than 30 years… Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Yes, the same two who dragged us into the mess of Iraq are the advisors who thought that New York should go bankrupt because it was a liberal city, ignoring the fact that a bankrupt NYC would have been ruinous to the people of NYC, NY state, and the country as a whole. “New York City was going to be their symbol of what could happen if you let liberalism take hold in a big city,” said Felix Rohatyn, one of the chief architects in steering the city through the fiscal crisis.

Technorati Tags: Gerald Ford, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, New York City

You owe one of your friends at the fast food place where you work some money and you don’t have it. So rather than face him, you figure that you would just stay out of work. You could call in sick but that would be so… boring. One 21-year old German woman decided that the best way to avoid going to work would be to send her parents a text message saying that she had been kidnapped. The genius of this plan is not only did she get to stay out of work, but she also caused her parents to worry about her and fear that she was killed plus she got the police of the Bavarian town of Straubing to spend a day searching for her. She turned up the next day, Christmas Eve, and eventually admitted that she made the whole thing up. She now faces a fine that is about 40 times what she owed her friend.

Technorati Tags: fast food, fake kidnapping, stupid things people do

We brought Pop to our home last night. They sprung him from the hospital at about 7 PM. He is having some difficulty walking but he is able to get around with a little assistance. He is going to be staying with us for a little while during his recuperation so that he can see the wound care doctor and the physical therapists. A home care nurse is coming today to change his dressing and check his vitals. It’s good to have him home.

Rant - a loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion

A rant should not be taken too seriously because mostly it is an opportunity to get things off your chest. Mostly it is a chance to clear your mind of all the things that pollute your thinking. So here is my rant…

For the last week and a half, Michel and I have been busting our respective butts to get Michel’s dad the proper treatment. Obviously, other than that Michel knows medicine and knows how to get good care for her father, we are the worst possible people to be doing this. Michel is sick with a condition that is slowly weakening her and we have a child with multiple handicaps. We are both exhausted to the point where we can’t even talk to each other without fighting. I feel like I live in my car. I drive to work then get home and drive to the hospital and then drive my mother to Bingo and then I drive to make sure that there will be something under the Christmas tree and I drive to Brooklyn to pick up Michel’s parents or bring them back. Then when I get home I put Mikey to bed. Getting a decent meal is an exception. We grab a pizza or a bag of Funyons or whatever we can grab before we collapse.

— Rant Mode On —

So where is the help? I don’t mean the “just call if you need anything” help. This sounds like the “I’ll help if it isn’t too inconvenient” help that I got when Michel had her three brain surgeries. Maybe you recall this. I am talking about the “here is what I am going to do to help you” help. And I don’t mean to include Mikey’s therapists in this rant who have been wonderful. One offered to drive my mother-in-law to the hospital and another volunteered to put up any relatives who were staying in the area. I am talking about much closer relatives. Where is their support? How about sending over a meal? How about some flowers and a thank you to Michel for making sure her father gets the treatment he needs so he doesn’t lose his leg? How about volunteering to drive Michel and her mom to the hospital? How about helping Michel arrange Pop’s post-hospital care and volunteering to bring him to some doctor’s appointments? I don’t mind doing all these things for Michel’s dad because he is a great guy and I love him. But Michel is not an only child! The loud banging you are hearing is my head pounding on the wall.

— Rant Mode Off —

I feel better now.

Christmas was a good day. Beth got everything she wanted and Mikey was just happy playing with Beth. It was a DVD Christmas at our house this year. We got the complete 16-ton Monty Python DVD set. The set contains 16 DVDs each weighing a metaphorical ton. Beth got a collection of videos and interviews with the Clash and Beth and Michel got Punk Attitude, a film about the Punk rock movement. After that, it was the Mystery Theater Christmas. Beth and I got Murder She Wrote, seasons 1 & 2; Quincy M.E., seasons 1 & 2, and Columbo, season 1.

Beth and I have a tradition that we started a couple of years ago. Every Saturday night, we stay up late and watch mysteries on TV. We started doing this when Nero Wolfe was on the Biography Channel. We both really enjoyed this show as it was funny, smart, and clever. In fact, we own both seasons of the show on DVD. But with only two seasons, eventually the Biography Channel had run through them several times and switched to Murder, She Wrote. This show is not any of the things that Nero Wolfe is but it is fun to make fun of while watching. And that is what Beth and I did. I would point out the semi-famous and formerly-famous people who were on the show and we would both make fun of the acting and plot. We noticed early on that the murder was almost always committed 30 minutes into the program.

After a short while, the Biography channel did something completely unheard of… they started showing biographies at midnight thus ruining our late night fun. So the last few weeks we have been watching Marx Bothers movies, or Thin Man movies, or Sherlock Holmes movies but none of them were as much fun, mostly because we have watched them all thousands (metaphorically) of times.

But Saturday night I gave Beth an early Christmas present, the first season of Murder, She Wrote! So Saturday night we watched the pilot. It was awful. It was beyond awful. It was also a star-studded cast with Brian Keith, Arthur Hill, Bert Convy, Anne Francis, and Ned Beatty. There was a completely lame love interest that gave away the whole mystery. Plus the mystery turned on the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo so if you weren’t familiar with the book, you would never get the main clue (unless you guessed because of the love interest). It was such a bad episode that Beth and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and are looking forward to watching two seasons of this show, one episode at a time on Saturday nights. We may break it up with some Quincy M. E., another bad TV mystery program, so we are assured of many Saturday nights of awful and yet strangely entertaining TV.

Technorati Tags: DVD, Murder She Wrote, Christmas