Odds and Sods: End of 2010 Edition

Hey you crazy kidz, hope you all have a great New Years celebration planned. And resolutions, lots and lots of good-hearted resolutions, that make us feel all warm and fuzzy (at least until we break them).

This year has seen DEAD AIR's lowest number of blog posts ever, and one of my resolutions is to post more, even if the posts are short. I don't have to turn everything into a damn epistle! But alas, old habits die hard.

The important thing is the HABIT, I have discovered. If you let a few days go by without writing, well... it's easier to let a few MORE days go by... and finally, you aren't writing at all. That's how it initially happened to me some years ago, when I went long periods (like, years) without writing. I missed chronicling some very important, earth-shattering events, and I now greatly mourn the loss. (We can't remember everything we were thinking/doing ten years ago, even if we believe we do; I re-read parts of this blog from only three years ago and I am astounded at the details I have forgotten already.) I decided I wouldn't let that happen again, but this year, I nearly did.

As many of you know, my spiritual center (so to speak) was re-centered (so to speak), and I found it hard to adequately convey my thoughts and feelings around the shift in sensibility. I still find it very difficult, and I am largely unable to write sensibly about leaving the Church. It remains a jumble of emotions and I need to let it all settle, before I attempt to go there. I have about a half-dozen unfinished posts regarding sudden realizations I have had, re: Christianity and identifying as Christian. For one thing, a loss of respectability, that 1) I didn't know I had and 2) didn't know I valued. Some of this respectability is social, some political, and some is self-respect, and that last one is the one that caught me off guard.

I still identify as a Catholic in a social/ethnic way, and that is also very hard to quantify. I am not sure I even understand what it means, but it is simply true.

And so, forward into another year...

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Two of Cravin Melon, but not sure which two! (They introduced themselves as "2/5 of Cravin Melon" at the Earth Fare benefit for Harvest Hope Food Bank, Thanksgiving Eve.)

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DEAD AIR almost got through a whole year without a troll invasion, but last night, there they were, scurrying out from under all kinds of rocks. (((screams)))

I am currently waiting for the cops to arrive to arrest me for not deleting the troll's angry posts (!), as I have been assured they are on the way.

Today, I drove home at breakneck pace and the only thing I found was two florescent light bulbs outside my door, to install in the kitchen. *sigh* No cops. No subpoena. No indictment. Galdurnit! (as my late uncle liked to say) It appears I got all my hopes up for nothing.

I was planning a really JAZZY end-of-year post about Freedom of Speech and blogging, complete with trolls sending me to jail after posting their addresses on my blog (seriously, read the link)... but nah. I was also hopeful that this would be a big First Amendment case, endearing me to all of Blogdonia (and bringing me thousands of hits, of course), but it all turned out to be just another annoying pain in the ass.

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Tyler Ramsey at the Bohemian Cafe in Greenville, December 4th. His musical compatriots, BAND OF HORSES, have just been nominated for a Grammy award, which he called "Some crazy news!" It certainly is!

Congrats on the nomination, Tyler, and good luck. (Apologies for the blurry photo, but it was kinda dark in there.)

~*~

I did want to link a few people who posted especially interesting, fun and/or very readable stuff that I didn't get to highlight previously:

:: How do I feel about the recent lift of the ban on openly gay soldiers (i.e. Don't ask, don't tell)? Truthfully? I hate when still another group gets turned into cannon fodder. Suzan sums up my feelings perfectly in the title of her piece: To the Gay Community: Now That You Can Join the Military, Please Don’t!

:: Renegade Evolution meets the Furries... great stuff: You’re going to Baltimore? You might need…

:: Jon shared this one with me: The Professional Left Versus The Left of Us. Money quote:

But to some the fascism warned of in all those faint allusions to totalitarian horrors already exists and the death camp trains have been running for decades with barely a peep from the professional liberals. Should we care about Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo when he never felt pressure enough to even lie about wanting to shut down the Corrections Corporation of America? Prisons and the racist legislation, hyper-policing, brutality and fraudulent judicial system that keep them filled are among the nation’s biggest businesses. Joblessness and poverty continue to worsen and even the tens of thousands dying from war abroad are more than matched by the deaths in this country resulting from public policies which deny adequate housing, food and health care to millions.

Preach it, preach it!

:: Skepchick: Eating Disorders, the Media, and Skepticism.

:: AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga by Joe Bageant. Required reading for every culture warrior!

Yellowdog Granny's recent funnies! It's where I found the comic on the left.



Speaking of which, I've been a loyal REAL HOUSEWIVES fan since day one, but this year, I was pretty disappointed in the newest incarnation: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Boring, predictable, with no authentic or amusingly-outrageous neurosis at all, just garden-variety, high-tax-bracket narcissism. Narcissism without neurosis is just... narcissism. Neurosis, however, is what makes the world go round! (We crave copious tearful, self-centered confessions about how no one understands what they go through!!!!) The Bev Hills gang doesn't have enough self-pity to suit me... or it could be that they've had SO MUCH BOTOX they are totally unable to move their faces (the husbands too!) and as a result, cry with their eyes wide open. And that just doesn't pull at my heartstrings in the same way.

If you can't even scrunch up your face and cry like the rest of us, fuck you.

:: Media Matters: 15 Whoppers [Glenn] Beck did not get fired for in 2010. (My first thought: What?! ONLY 15?)

:: Sheila instructs us in Relearning how to breathe. As a customer service rep, I would often notice that my breathing would get all raggedy and strange, after an hour or so of getting my ass chewed out non-stop. I would take a few seconds and concentrate on breathing in and out, and I was amazed at the difference in my state of mind, my countenance, my inner calm.

:: Mia Mingus shares her feelings about November 6, the anniversary of her adoption. This is her recorded birthday, but of course, not really her birthday. I had never really stopped to consider the fact that most adoptees do not know their actual birthdays:

I hate the confusion that surrounds my birthday now. People constantly getting confused, “so which birthday do you celebrate?” “When is your real birthday?” Since finding out the truth, I would rather deny my birthday all together, no celebrations, no worries about what or how birthdays are supposed to feel to someone who does not even know how to think of her own birth. It only marks another year that I have spent separated from pieces of myself that may or may not even exist; pieces of my self that made me, created me, but don’t know me now. It only marks a deep sadness at having celebrated something that was so wrong for so long, something that wasn’t real, the way sometimes entire decades of my life have felt.

Beautiful, expressive writing.

:: My always-embarrassing senator, Tea Party busybody Jim DeMint, has just revealed himself to be a starstruck fanboy, gushing to Politico that Sarah Palin has "done more for the Republican Party than anyone since Ronald Reagan," -- apparently with a straight face, too.

As they say, those two need to get a room.

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And now (((drum roll))) DEAD AIR VIDEO OF THE YEAR... as always, my criteria is the same: Which one did I listen to the most after I initially posted it?

Ohhh, that's an easy call. I must have listened to this five thousand times by now. (As I said back in April, all due to the wonders of modern technology!)

Cleo's Mood - Junior Walker and the All Stars



HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Have a fabulous 2011!

*Photos from my FLICKR page*

How we've changed, continued

Karen Carpenter with her beloved drum kit. She was capable and confident while playing, but when she was forced to come out from behind the drums, front the band and wear dresses, that's when trouble really began. Photo from LeadSister.com.


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Yes, I'm here to weigh in, once again, as an official old-timer chronicling How things have changed (belated-birthday edition).

Posts on this Feministe thread talked about weight gain:

College does not make it easy for people who struggle with issues with food. Eating disorders are rampant, but rarely discussed. We’re all familiar with the glance to a friend’s plate, to see whether she is eating macaroni and cheese or salad, and the implicit self-judgment that follows

We are? No, we aren't... and then I realized this is another age (class?) difference.

I don't remember growing up with this dynamic at all.

We didn't monitor each other. Even those of us trying to get thinner in dangerous ways, totally personalized this endeavor as our own private failure, and I don't remember paying any attention to what other girls ate, except to be jealous that they could "eat anything they wanted"--while I never could. I remember all of their ice-cream sundaes, but little else. (We didn't even know about healthy vs. unhealthy fats in those days.) Was this my working-class environment or the era I grew up in?

Back in the day, I recall eating disorders as way under the radar, and consequently, very easy to get by with. As a teenager, I starved myself repeatedly, and nobody noticed anything but the end result, for which I was widely praised. (Nowadays? They'd be onto me in 10 minutes.)

Karen Carpenter's increasingly-alarming, wispy frame was not remarked upon, except to say "Wow!"; people would say she was "dieting" too much. Because she was such a well-known, perfect, archetypal "good girl"--her death had an enormous impact on everyone.

Carpenter's death took recognition of anorexia into the mainstream, just as her music had been so accessible and mainstream.

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MAD MEN continues to do a fabulous job in contrasting NOW with THEN. In the recent episode, we learn that a man who lost his foot to a riding mower (hilarious gallows humor) will also lose his job, all because of his disability: "He'll never golf again!"--may be the best line I ever heard. But anyone startled by that should remember, that is indeed the way it was in 1962. If they didn't like your disability, they could legally get rid of you for that reason alone.

Betty Draper's nightmarish birth experience (after smoking and drinking like a Rat Pack-member throughout her pregnancy), was another historically-accurate and thoroughly instructive exercise in How Things Have Changed. My mother, aunts, cousins and millions of other American women gave birth under such cruel, punishing circumstances during this era.

And remember: feminists radically changed the birth-experience for women, not pro-life fundies.

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The ease and omnipresence of cell phones has made decades of phone-jokes and comedy routines (in vintage movies and television shows), truly incomprehensible to the kids. They don't quite understand how it was to get calls from people you don't know. They also don't understand that once upon a time, talking on the phone all the time was regarded as rude as hell, as well as socially inept and backward (like a teenybopper). Old movies such as Woody Allen's Play it Again Sam, in which Tony Roberts (movie-still at left) is constantly calling his answering service to leave his call-back number, was riotously funny back in the 70s... while also simultaneously communicating the idea that Roberts was unbelievably self-centered and narcissistic. But now? What, the kids wonder, is wrong with Roberts' behavior? OMG, the man must track down his unreturned calls!!!!

((sigh))

I am reminded of the social mores of the past that I regret losing...and phones in their proper place is one of these.

Not everything from the past was bad, you know. ;)

~*~

I got both a rainy day and a Monday...

Re: this video. Nobody could look good in that dress, why didn't somebody put her in some DECENT CLOTHES?! Always tried to make her look like some damn choirgirl. growf!

Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters