Sunday

I have a friend who is a devout atheist.  I know , that's an oxymoron, but it's true.  Her mission seems to be to  skewer try to change other people's beliefs.  This bothers me as much as someone of faith telling me what to believe.  It's really the same thing, when you get right down to it; someone saying "you should believe as I do" even when that means not believing in anything.  I can't imagine NOT believing in some greater power that holds us all together.  I think if you look at it, God is the same guy for all religions.  After all, each child sees their parent differently. Think about it.  Ask your siblings about your mother or your father and you will get a WHOLE different view than the one YOU have.  It's human nature.  Our interactions are different, so our experience are different.  Just my two cents on it. Now, I love my atheist friends,  and I have a few of them I do read a lot of what is posted as the science is interesting and they make valid points  in a number of places.  I don't take the Bible literally as some people do but my belief is MINE and I will talk to you about it but it is what I feel and it keeps me being who I am.  I don't feel the need to convince anyone to believe as I do.  Your faith ( like your mileage) will vary.

Friday with friends

It had been a LONG week.  What is Friday at work without that 4:30 OMG emergency?  I wound up staying a bit late until it was resolved.  Then Chris and I were going to meet up with friends for a possible dinner and a musical performance.  It was quite an evening!

We found this place across from the venue, Kulak's Woodshed in NoHo  Al Amir had good reviews on Yelp and the price was right so... My chicken kabob was SO full of flavor it burst in my mouth  YUM!  The Lebanese Pizza that came with it was nothing short of heavenly!  The waitstaff was helpful and friendly and recommened a fab dessert.  It was ALL SO VERY GOOD.  We will be going back.  Our friends arrived just in time to order something to go.  We trooped across the street to the venue.

I have never been here, but the place is decorated like someone's garage.  Funky and fun with a BIG fold out bed in the corner.  They have a live webcast and six cameras running during the set.  Interesting to watch.  Apparently you need to bring 15 paying guests with you or pay a total of 150 and you get a DVD of the show.  A nice deal actually.   The performer we saw played Scottish fiddle music, something I am not familiar enough with at this point.  She's a very young musician.  She has a lot of  passion for her art.  It did my heart good to see someone so young totally embrace music.

Afterward, we went to Mel's Diner in Sherman Oaks.  UGH.  I asked the waitress if they had any sugar free desserts. "Nothing here is sugar free" she responded.  Really?  I want a sugared cheese burger with a side sugar salad then....  I asked that my pie NOT be heated.  Something "special" happens to the crust when you do that and it makes a gummy mess. Icky.  She brought me a heated pie.  I touched it.  She said "ooops, I brought you the wrong pie" and proceeded to RETURN the pie I had TOUCHED to the window for pickup.  OH DOUBLE TRIPLE YUCK!  She was not a great waitress, she combined all our checks on one, apparently.  I won't be going back there any time soon-as in NEVER AGAIN!

I slept VERY late this morning and didn't get the things I wanted to done.  So, I am off to bed and an early morning to get some of the work that needs doing DONE!

Comedy, negativity and Friday night music

Ah Friday!  How I have looked forward to you!   It's been a long week.  I am on some new meds that are taking care of one problem, but have been creating another.  They adjusted them this week. SO  if you talked to me and I was in LALA Land , rest assured it was just the meds, I have not taken up drinking or recreational drugs ( tempting though it might be!)  Hopefully, this will make me a bit more "normal"  well.. MY version of "normal" anyway

I start out every day reading a series of comics that I have read for years, including "Funky Winkerbean"   Funky isn't all that funny most of the time, just thought provoking and sometimes amusing.  What gripes me is that on the page I go to there are a whole bunch of people who read it every day just to slam the cartoonist.  Really?  If the strip makes you so crazy, GET A LIFE.   If you feel you could do a better job then by all means DO IT.  It's like a switch on the old adage "those who can do"   These days it's "Those who can do and those who can't ,criticize."


Going to Kulak's Woodshed in NoHo this evening to hear a young girl who plays Celtic Fiddle. Her name is Ket Waters.  It should be fun.  I have never been there, but the place is local and struggling.  I think it's a folk venue more than anything else.  I will post a review of both the place and the evening in the next day or so.  I am not making any promises that I will be doing any writing this weekend.  I'm going to REST!

Saturday at McGroarty Arts Center, the Sunland Tujunga Poets are presenting a program including a guest poet from Ireland.  Should be fun and I plan on trying to make that one.

Hold music, the "news" media and other things floating in my mind on Monday

Who chooses hold music?  I was stuck on hold with my bank the other day and the hold music was a Musak version of "I want it that way"  The song is BAD ENOUGH in the original form, but to have it beiged down to insipidity was just about all I could take.  It didn't help that after ten minutes of being on hold, I finally reached a live person who told me "I am having trouble with my phone.  Please call back"  and get in the holds queue again and MAYBE have to listen to something even worse.  No thanks.  Some places play  "smooth jazz" which I guess studies show calms people down. Not me.  Smooth jazz makes me edgy.  By the time someone comes on the line I am not in the happy mood they want me to be in.  DWP plays this poppy pseudo-techno stuff that sounds like a five year old programmed it.  It is interspersed with "Helpful tips"  "Did you know that you can recycle your Christmas tree?  YES INDEED"  ( seriously.  I got this message in March when I called and the man ACTUALLY SAYS Yes Indeed)  I think I prefer NO music to some of this stuff.  They can come on and tell me where I am in line- now THAT would be helpful!

Am I the only one who doesn't want to hear any more details about the suspect in the Boston bombing?  Cowardly pig, he doesn't deserve to become "famous" for this. Maybe that is what they wanted, to become famous for doing this horrible thing?  His family are of two camps, one says "He deserved to be killed" and the others are claiming America is framing them.  FRAMING THEM?   HUH?  They have them on camera dropping the bag that exploded.  They have a houseful of explosives and they had a shoot out with the cops.  Innocent people don't have an arsenal of exploding pressure cookers.  I for one wish the media would stop milking this story for every small detail.  The real story is in the survivors and what we are doing to help them.

 Dear Monday.  I am SO not ready for you!  What happened to the weekend?  I think we should have another day between Saturday and Sunday.

Boston and other ramblings

I am thinking about the Boston Marathon and the cowardly act of bombing innocent people.  The weasels haven't even come forward to claim credit.  It show what kind of scum would do this sort of thing.  Even the Pakistani Taliban went out of their way to say "it wasn't us!"  geez.  Don't these fools realize what this sort of thing does to the American character?  Do we hide and cower and say "oohh, I'm so afraid"  HELL NO!  It just pisses us off, makes us stronger and more determined.   I don't think this is the reaction the bombers were hoping for.  We move as a nation, when tragedy strikes.  Hit one of us, you hit all of us.  Get it?

I see Michelle Bachman might be in a bit of legal trouble.  DUH.  Illegal payments to someone?  Maybe she can take her Swiss citizenship and leave the country.  There's Presidential Material for you.  Seriously.  THAT WOMAN is the best the Republican Party can offer?  I think  not.  There are perfectly rational  and smart women who are conservative, this woman is just a nut job, wrapped in a "pretty face".

I see the Senate screwed up the tougher gun buying laws.   I am NOT in favor of total gun control ( surprised?)  My theory is that when you make something illegal, people who want it will still be able to get it. ( Drugs?  Remember Prohibition?)  It makes no sense.  I don't know what the answer to gun violence is.  Maybe if we were all armed?   just kidding. 

Thank you notes

I received a"thank you" note in the mail the other day; a sweet old-fashioned gesture that I really appreciated.  It got me to thinking about how I write MY thank yous and send them via email.  I remember being in a "Creative writing" class in college and a woman submitted a "thank you " note she had written as her project for the week.  It was two sentences, something like  "Lunch was lovely and the company more so"  I didn't think that actually qualified for the piece she was supposed to submit and she dropped the class soon after.  I always wondered why she took the class to begin with.  She didn't seem to get that the focus was stories or poetry.  She seemed more focused on letter writing,  she might have thought it would hone that skill.  I seem to recall she was in real estate.  These days I do  email my "Thank you" notes more for speed than anything else, although I have been thinking of writing a letter to a friend and see if she writes one back.  I miss the days of waiting for the mail to come to see if there is a long newsy letter in the mail.  These days it's either junk or bills, seldom something you really want.  One thing I will say is that writing letters can be a pain.  I have TERRIBLE handwriting, so I print.  I like to say "I don't have bad handwriting, I have my own font"  Do they even TEACH what we used to call cursive in school these days?  I had heard they had stopped doing that and I hope not.  It's been a long time since my daughter was in grade school, but they taught it then.  I wonder if, like art and music, handwriting is considered to be non-essential.  We seem to be raising a nation of test-takers, not thinkers, but I think I have talked about that before.  I really think we are doing our children a disservice by not including art in their education.  It's all about math and science, not BAD things, but we need balance.  If scientists can't appreciate art, how can they consider the wonder in the universe?

Mondegreens, Classic rock radio and bad songs

I have been driving my husband's car this week and listening to the radio ( I  don't want to start listening to a book on tape or drag half my cd collection into his car)  His car has the feature on the radio that tells you the name of the song.  For some reason I was suffering thru the Scorpions and glanced at the radio.  DANG  I always thought the guy was saying "Here I am .. RAUNCHY like a hurricane."  My bad.  It reminded me of one of my daughter's friends, when they were little, in the backseat of the car singing along with the Dixie Cups "going to the jack-o-lantern, gonna get married"  I guess when we miss hear, we try to find something that makes sense.  How you get MARRIED at the jack-o-lantern is anyone's guess.
 
Listening to stations that play Classic Rock (even K-Earth doesn't play "Oldies" anymore- they play way to much 70's crummy disco tinged  music for my taste)  I realize that the media believe all Baby Boomers are successful with a lot of disposable income.  In the few miles I was listening to the radio, I heard commercials for BMW, Cadillac and a golf tournament.  I was also offered "unique investment opportunities"  Sorry, I just "invested"  in a tank of gas.  That was all the "disposable income" I had for the week.

A friend asked me my opinion of the classic song by Leonard Cohen, "Suzanne"  I remember liking the song, so I asked my husband about it.  He said it was slow, boring and depressing.  He's right of course, but I like the song anyway.  My friend said that the discussion she was listening to about the song asserted that every man has his "Suzanne" and that the song touches a core in them.  I tried to remember why I liked the song.  I think it's because it evokes a pleasant memory in me, where I was when I first heard it, not the song itself.  I wonder if that is the case with music.  Do we like it for itself, or does it serve as a touchstone to another memory? Both, I suppose. There are songs I love that are really awful on their own, but because of the memory that comes with them I continue to love them.