Oh, Man.

Now I know how the Baby Boomers felt.

When I read this article I very nearly threw up.

There are songs from 1995 that it would have been okay to screw with.

"Stars" is not one of those songs.
"Stars" is a room in a little Wicker Park storefront apartment in the heat of summer, with a mattress and box-spring on the floor in one corner, a cinderblock table, and rummage-sale furniture. It's playing in the fire-hydrant on the way to an apartment full of strangers. It's wondering where we're going to get money for a guitar, for a meal, for a fix. It's lying inert watching a pawnshop-reject TV because it's too hot to move and outside people are dying by the hundreds. It's 25-cent sodas, stealing toilet paper, eating at soup kitchens, and scrounging change for the ice-cream man.

I do not want to see this commercial.

New Years' Resolutions, Several-Days-Late Edition

In the new year, I will not, will NOT, WILL NOT drive myself bat-crap crazy by reading the comment sections of politically-oriented controversial ANY news articles.

Inappropriate BWAHAHAHAHA

It's finally happened.

The Woman With Absolutely No Sense of Boundaries Whatsoever--better known as my mom-- finally got her karmic comeuppance for thirty-seven years of not respecting my personal space.

My mom has a history of demanding too much info--and of obtaining it through any possible means. When I was eighteen she read my diary; even to this day, she still asks inappropriate questions about my finances and other issues. And she absolutely cannot resist opening things she shouldn't--boxes, medicine cabinets...drawers...

Well, when I moved, I stored a bunch of stuff in her basement--boxes, tools, shelves, a bunch of stuff. Among the collection was an old dresser, which had spent the last few years of its life in LJ's room at Chez Gladys. I thought I'd emptied out all the contents of the drawers, but...well, maybe not so much.

Because apparently, a few days ago, Mom was in the basement, and she decided to open up the drawer of this dresser (which could have absolutely NOTHING in it pertaining to her) and rummage through this drawer (containing a tangle of mens' socks and size XXXXXXL t-shirts which were OBVIOUSLY not mine)...

...where she discovered a small collection of DVD's.

(You know where this is heading, don't you?)

DVD's with names like "Black A*N*A*L--Five Hours of HOT A$$-F***ing!!!"

Oh--and they had EXTREMELY relevant cover-art.

She showed this collection to me today, when we were downstairs putting away the Christmas tree. "They're not....YOURS, are they?" she asked, obviously very worried. "I was SO upset when I found them..."

I couldn't help it; I burst out laughing.

"Of course, I COULD ask why exactly you might be rummaging through the drawer of one of MY dressers," I said pointedly (after explaining that no, those were NOT my a$$-f***ing DVD's) but the best answer I could get was something like "Well, I was on the phone, and I just started looking through things..."

Uh-huh.

The offending items were securely encased in several layers of old newspaper and deposited in the alley trash-can, beneath the week's accumulation of yogurt containers and coffee-grounds. I offered to sneak down the alley and bury it in someone ELSE's trash, but she said that wouldn't be necessary; just so they weren't laying out right in the open where the garbage-men would be likely to see them. "I mean, what would they THINK?" she asked, and though I was tempted to treat it as a non-rhetorical question, I forbore.

I'd hope this would cure her of rummaging through other people's belongings, but alas, I know better. But all the same...Classic, man. Just classic.

The New Year's Eve Post

New Year's Eve...is generally not my favorite holiday.

However, I think I managed to find a way around the sadness that was threatening: I made a long list of things I wanted to accomplish today, mostly in the realm of housecleaning and "starting the new year off right" types of stuff.

I washed dishes, cleaned the bathroom, changed sheets, did laundry (even all the stray laundry I'd stowed in the closet til "later"--dust ruffles, cleaning rags, the sheet I took down from my bedroom window last thing before leaving the house). I swept and mopped floors, cleaned the catbox, dragged all the flattened-out packing boxes down to the dumpster. I rearranged the hall closet, straightened out a couple of drawers, vacuumed the whole place. While all this was happening, I put a pot roast in the oven, and so I had a nice New Year's Eve dinner for one; then, once those dishes were cleaned up, I sat down to think about what I wanted this next year to be.

I am going to treat myself better this year. I am going to find things to do that will help me pull my head out of my navel; I am going to stop putting everybody else's wishes in front of mine. I am going to take care of myself, by MY standards--more of what I need to do, less of what everyone else says I ought to do.

I am going to create more. I am going to paint more, draw more, write more, sew more, crochet more, scribble more. Sometimes, I am even going to let the so-called "important" things wait, while I do the things that are important to me.

I am going to be kinder to myself. I am going to be a little bit stricter with myself, in some ways, but it will be for my own good--my REAL own good, instead of all those things that are SUPPOSED to be "for my own good". I am going to start treating myself as well as I treat the other people around me.

I am going to stop complaining. It's a horrible habit; I try to make it funny, when I do it, but complaining is complaining and all it does is make me see the bad in a situation. If I can't do anything about a situation, I'm going to be quiet; if I CAN do something about it, I'm going to actually DO it.

I am going to stop...I am going to TRY to stop assuming that everyone around me sees me as this pathetic, pitiable loser. This one's going to be hard. I bring a lot of it on myself, talking about things that are going on in my life, but obviously that's not having the effect I'd like it to have; ideally, I'd like for people around me to see me as strong, a survivor, somebody who's made some dumb choices, granted, but who has overcome and learned from them. I very, very much don't get the impression that that's how I'm seen. I don't know if that's an error of perception, or if people actually DO see me as a walking one-woman version of the Chicago Cubs. I'm a lot of things, but I'm really not pitiable.

I am going to stop being so scared of everything. I am going to finally let go of my sense of panic--another task which I suspect will be much, much harder than it sounds.

I am going to learn to enjoy my life.

I'm going to learn HTML, so I can pretty up this blog for realz. Templates are lame. :)

Happy New Year to all of you; and thank you all for being here with me through this year. It's been a wild ride, to say the least, and I appreciate everyone's support through the highs and lows. Here's to a wonderful 2008!!!

Arrgh.

I know it's fashionable to bash the traditional media for not being connected to the "new media"--by which they mean, electronic and viral media--and far be it from me to jump on the bandwagon...

...but man, they're gonna have to do better than this (seen on tonight's chyron on Fox News Chicago (WFLD) 10:00 newscast):

(something something) "...Joining the 'Blagosphere'".

If the story had been about Illinois politics, I could see it as an intentional, albeit hackneyed, pun (for my out-of-state friends, our governor's name is Blagojevich, and he's commonly referred to (among many, many less-flattering names) as "Blago", pronounced "bloggo", hence "Blago-sphere", ha ha freakin' ha)...

...but the story had absolutely NOTHING to do with Illinois. The story was about student journalists in Texas who were partnering with Fox News to deliver "new-media" content regarding the primaries and the 2008 election. The word "Illinois" was not mentioned even once during the story.

All of which leads me to these inescapable conclusions: not only does the guy in charge of creating the chyron text for the 10 PM newscast not know how to spell "blog", but he hasn't seen it out of the punny, old-media context to realize that "blagosphere" is not the correct spelling of the term; furthermore, either the individual doing the proofreading for the chyron guy fell down on the job (excusable, I guess) or he/she doesn't know the proper spelling of the term EITHER (just completely, utterly SCARY.)

Sometimes it's nearly impossible NOT to take a ride on the bandwagon.

Trends That Need To Stop, Now

I'll assume that it was that angry little boy in the middle of the top row--Stewie Griffin, of Family Guy fame--that started the whole trend. And yes, yes, babies have big heads. So ONE tiny tot with a football-shaped giant head and teeny-tiny disproportionately small body...yeah, ONE is cute. ONE is funny. ONE is....

Enough.

But then we had Franny, of "Franny's Feet" (top left). She not only has a big head, she has little stick-legs, which make me wonder how she doesn't topple over.

And then the "Super Readers", the four principal characters of "Super Why" ("Whyatt", top right, and then the middle row: "Princess Presto", "Alpha Pig", and "Wonder Red". For some reason, Wonder Red is the one who ticks me off the most; maybe it's that ridiculous spandex outfit and those roller blades, or maybe it's just that they didn't come up with a better superhero name for her than "Wonder Red". If I was going to be a superhero, even an enormous-headed juvenile one wearing spandex, I'd demand something a little flashier in the naming department than "Wonder" anything. But mostly it's their big-headedness that annoys me about these four...at least, as far as their looks. Their substance is even worse, as we'll get to in a moment.)

Then we get into the realm of the REALLY ridiculous. It's one thing to have giant-headed babies and tots, but then we get into the realm of the Big-Headed Tweens. (On the ends, Maya and Miguel, twins, of the show of the same name; and in the middle, the aptly-named Bratz. My opinion of THAT particular adolescent phenomenon is best left unmentioned; let's just say that any trend which results in little girls trying to dress like sluts-in-training does nothing for my estimation of children's television as a whole. I mean, LOOK at the outfits on those little bimbettes. If I had a preadolescent daughter, there would be no Bratz in my house, based on fashion alone--to say nothing of instilling poor spelling habits. It's one thing to use "z" for "s" on something meant for adults, who supposedly know the correct way to pluralize; children, on the other hand, need to see MORE correct usage, not LESS.)

If the large heads of these characters signified greater intelligence, even THAT would be a mitigating circumstance; but with the exception of Stewie, that's just not the case. Franny is probably the least-offensive of the little-kids' group; "Franny's Feet" is a cute show...too cute, if you ask me. It's full of squeaking butterflies and exclamations like "Fran-tastic!" and "Zammy! (apparently an expression of approval--whatever.) It's meant for very young kids, though, and it's far from the worst thing out there; it's interested in diversity, nature, and social skills, so if those things have to be cute-ified for the kids to like them...well, cute-ify away.

That's the good. Then there's the bad... "Super Why" (I refuse to use its official name, which is "Super WHY!", with the inappropriate caps and the exclamation point and the whole works) purportedly teaches kids reading and decoding skills via retellings of well-known fairy-tales.

Sounds like a fairly noble task, doesn't it? Well, there's a small problem: they completely and utterly screw up the fairy tales!!! I mean, an actual STATED part of the plot line involves "changing the story". Here's an example:

The setup for each show starts the same; one of the four main characters--Whyatt (oh, god, the spelling!), Pig, Red Riding Hood, and Princess Pea--encounters a problem in "Storybrook Village", which is where all fairy-tale characters live. In one episode, for example, a character called "Wolfy" (a baby Big Bad Wolf, obviously) keeps playing tricks on Pig, and Pig wants him to stop. He could just ask, of course--but of course, if the obvious answer took place immediately, we'd have no show. So he has Whyatt summon the Super Readers to the "Book Club", using a cell phone (of course) so he can explain the problem they need to solve. At this point the Super Readers transform into their alter egos-- "Super Why", "Alpha Pig", "Wonder Red", and "Princess Presto"--and fly their "Why Flyers" into a fairy-tale book, to see how a famous character escaped a similar situation. In this case, they fly into "Little Red Riding Hood" because (as Super Why explains, in case the parallel isn't obvious enough) the wolf in that story kept tricking Red Riding Hood.

Now first of all, the overlap between the actual fairy-tale and the framing device of the "Super Readers" being characters themselves...If I was four years old, I think I might be confused by this, is all I'm saying. (If Little Red Riding Hood is Wonder Red, and this is supposedly her story, then doesn't she already know how it turns out? Couldn't she just tell them how it ends? Okay, granted, I'm thirty-seven years old, not five; of course, every five-year-old I've ever encountered has been pretty good at picking up on paradoxes like that. Fine. Suspend disbelief, whatever.)

Here's where things go wrong. The Super Readers introduce all sorts of unrelated elements into the story, so that their characters can display their word skills. This usually SORTA sticks to the real story--for example, Princess Presto uses her "spelling power" to spell the word "BOAT" so the Super Readers can get across the river to Grandma's house. Every character has their role; Alpha Pig helps kids identify letters, Wonder Red deals in rhyming words, and Princess Presto demonstrates how letters go together to make words. Fine. But Super Why is supposed to help kids learn comprehension, and how to choose the right word that helps the sentence make sense--to me, the most important skill of all--yet when they get to "Super Why, with the power to READ" that they screw everything up.

Super Why, with the aid of a pen called the "Why Writer", makes changes in important parts of the story--like changing the "Big" "Bad" Wolf into a "Little", "Good" Wolf--and then Little Red Riding Hood asks the wolf to "stop tricking people". And the wolf--now good instead of bad--agrees to stop, in exchange for being made Big again.

At the end of the show, to tie everything together, the Super Readers--who, throughout the show, have been collecting something called "Super Letters"--plug their "Super Letters" into the "Super Duper Computer", which rearranges the letters and gives them the "Super Story Answer"--the word or phrase that is the solution to their problem. In this case, the solution is "STOP"--which, they extrapolate, means that Pig should ask Wolfy to "stop" tricking him. And of course, this solves the problem, and the end of the show features all four characters doing a hip-hop dance to a song which includes the lyrics "We changed the story/We solved the problem/We worked together so Hip Hip Hooray!"

"Changed the story" is right--like, to the point of unrecognizable, watered-down pap. The difference between the REAL fairy tales and their "Super Why" equivalents is the difference between fresh cold chocolate milk and tepid slightly-sour skim milk; between a plate of chocolate-chip cookies and a carob-coated sugar-free fiber bar. Not only are the original versions much, much tastier, you can't even necessarily argue that the redone versions are better for you. I haven't seen a single episode of this show that didn't suck all the life out of the featured fairy-tale--you should see what the hell they did to "Hansel and Gretel", for mercy's sake! And since one of the stated aims of this show is to foster a love of reading, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot--or maybe in this case, a better description would be "gently dropping a blob of room-temperature mush on their shoe". If I was a little kid, and I saw this show, no way would I want to read about Little Red Riding Hood--because I'd have the impression of it being a wishy-washy story about asking people to be nice. And seriously, what five-year-old wants to read THAT?

I'm not sure how this went from a diatribe about ugly cartoon characters to a rant on the state of kids' television--but there it is. And I don't even HAVE kids. I shudder to think how finicky I'd be about television if MY kids were the ones watching it, instead of some hypothetical kids I don't even know. (Of course, there's a good chance I'd be exposed as a total hypocrite; you all would be sitting at your computers reading my judgements on PBS shows, and meanwhile my five-year-old and my three-year-old would be sitting in pajamas from three days ago, eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos and drinking Kool-Aid while watching Maury Povich while I played World of Warcraft, or something. Yeah, that's an exaggeration--but it's surely easy to be all high-minded about other peoples' parenting choices when I haven't got to make any of those choices myself!)

Anyway: Dear animators: Big-headed cartoon characters are ugly. Please stop. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Gladys.

Tomorrow: the New Years' entry.

File Under: Needs Killin'

The highlighted text, for those of you who don't have your microscopes handy (dang, thought I had zoomed it enough):

"GARLAND, Texas--- A 6-year-old girl who won four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay falsely claiming her dad died in Iraq isn't going to the show after all."

(story continues--she won tickets in an essay contest, etc etc)

"The girl's mother had told Club Libby Lu officials the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing, spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said. Mom Priscilla Ceballos admitted later Friday the essay and the military information were untrue.

'We did the essay, and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win,' Ceballos told KDFW-TV of Dallas on Friday."

Hands down, no questions asked, this mom wins the 2007 inaugural Nobel "Totally Going To Hell" Prize.