Lindsay Lohan turned herself into to custody today to begin her 90 day prison sentence. I heard a brief report about this on the radio this morning and I saw a single tweet about it on the feed from my local ABC affiliate.
I’ve also seen about 100 angry tweets from various and sundry every day folk who think it’s a travesty that Lindsay Lohan is getting more coverage than say, the oil leak in the Gulf.
Now that’s what I call Irony!
I used to hardly ever talk to my mother. Not because I don’t love her, or she me, just because I don’t like being on the telephone, and e-mail seems like it’s pointless unless you’ve got something specific to say and then it feels like it needs to be lengthy enough to justify the effort on the part of both parties. My aversion to talking on the telephone came from her, for two reasons. First, she always made it clear that she had no use for protracted phone conversations. Make the call, say what you have to say, and get off the phone. That was her philosophy. It was never acceptable to call someone “just to say hi” or “just to talk.” Secondly, when I did get on the phone with friends, she would always tell me to get off the phone after about 20 minutes or so, even though I was in another room where my talking wouldn’t disturb her and even though the only people who ever called were my friends, or bill collectors so she never answered the phone anyway. Nevertheless, through these experiences, she taught me to prefer not to be on the telephone for long periods of time.
A couple of months ago, I got a text message from my mother:
“Do you text? Just wondered. going to bed now. ‘Night!”
I confirmed that I do and that was the end of the conversation, that night. Since then, however, we’ve exchanged text messages and had full conversations via text every few days.
This morning I received a text from her while I was getting ready for work and we proceeded to have a conversation on text until I got to work when we moved to Instant Messenger. She informed me that she had gotten a new cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard. She said, “I wanted something with a keyboard so I could text without having to hit the keys several times to get the letter I wanted.”
I answered, “Based on the speed and length of your texts, I had a feeling you had a keyboard now.”
“Yep. The [Boss’s family] are big on texting, so I needed it to keep up!”
“I am too,” I answered, “then I don’t have to ‘talk’ to people. How sad is that?”
She answered, “Pretty sad, by my lights. But it’s the way of things nowadays.”
Hmmm. Interesting perspective for her to have. I continued, “I text Michelle a lot, because if I want to make a quick comment about something, it could turn into a 45 minute conversation and I have a thing against doing other things while I’m on the phone so it blows my whole evening. (I know that’s terrible.)” I was making light of things here, I don’t really think it’s that bad. It get’s said what needs to be said without derailing my plan for the day/evening. And when we get together and I can focus my attention on her and our interaction we talk plenty.
“It’s just one more way in which nuance and empathy and other such non-quantifiables are being eliminated from people’s relationships these days. I just think it’s sad.”
“Yeah, but it’s quick. :-D”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of this situation. Here we are, having conversation by means of electronic written technology and she’s telling me that it’s sad that people don’t spend more time on the phone even though she hates being on the phone as much as I do.
Sometimes, her inability to recognize the irony in her words, and yes, even her hypocrisy, just makes me laugh.
I’m sitting here, briefly catching up on Twitter before I finish up my final this-must-be-done-today-because-it’s-for-tomorrow-morning task of the day because clearly my priorities are firmly planted right where they should be… ahem. Anyway, I’m giving it all a quick once over when I see this from my local ABC News Affiliate:
Sounds pretty exciting, right? I like airplanes. Love to fly. Once upon a time I thought I might like to be a flight attendant except I was always too fat and for many years, until I learned the secret, I experienced severe pain in my ears during descent.
Still the story sounded pretty exciting and we all know I thrill for disaster and mayhem (thought it may come as a surprise that I like near misses even better!) So I clicked the link and looked at the story and didn’t even get past the first sentence before I was disappointed with the anti-climactic story. Well not so much the story as the billing for the story:
I mean, really. It’s great that the flight landed safely and all that. Really! I wouldn’t want it any other way, but for crying out loud, it might as well have read, “Pilot subs for other Pilot. Plane lands. The end.”
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This has been a day for Anti-climactic-ism.
Earlier today, Michelle popped up on my computer screen on Yahoo! Messenger saying:
Michelle: OMG guess what?
Me: You won the lottery and you’re taking me away from all this?
Michelle: Oh I wish.
Michelle: Nope. I’m munching on pistachios and I like it. 🙂
me: Wow that was REALLY anti-climactic.
me: 🙂
me: also, “Hope your boyfriend don’t mind it…”
Michelle: 😦 really? I didn’t think so. LOL. What boyfriend?
me: “I’m munching pistachios and I like it, hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.”
Michelle: aaaaaahhh.
She’s kind of slow sometimes with my humor.
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And speaking of Anti-climactic? yeah, that’s all I’ve got for you today. Kind of Anti-climactic, huh?
Well, I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve procrastinated and procrastinated and put it off and put it off and repeated myself and repeated myself and been just a little bit redundant and then did it again. Long enough! It’s time I wrote a blog post. Only… I’m not sure what to write about.
It seems as if posting only on Fridays is my new thing. I need to get a new, new thing. Only posting on Friday’s isn’t good enough. I was reading some blog posts in my Google reader and I got to this post on Jennsylvania where Jenn Lancaster talks about being out of practice with blogging. It seems funny for her to say that because she is, after all, a very successful, multiple times published writer of books, but I can tell you from my own limited, first-hand knowledge that writing books and writing blog posts is so not the same thing. Anyway, in the posts she says:
I hate when I get out of the habit of writing because it takes such effort to get back into the swing of things. I always tell budding authors that the best way to be a writer is to write; the ability to write is a muscle and it’s got to be worked daily. Presently my writing muscles are flabby and weak, chugging along at two point five miles an hour on a treadmill with no incline.
Worked daily… Gosh, I can’t even seem to manage to work it weekly at this point and that frustrates me because I really do love to write and I want to be able to do it more but finding the time is a real hassle.
There’s another blog I like to read, another blogger who has become a published writer of book. One thing has always stood out to me about his blog. I remember reading in one of his posts once that it takes him 15-20 minutes to write his blog posts, “these things practically write themselves” he said. My blog posts don’t write themselves and they take a lot more than 15 minutes to write. I’m not saying that to draw a comparison between us, either. There is a valid reason behind it, because the truth is, it takes on average two hours to write one of my blog posts. Maybe that’s because I don’t do it daily, or maybe it’s because I don’t know how to be brief or maybe it’s because the things I write about can’t be short and simple, I don’t know. I just know that lately, sometimes when I’ve thought, “maybe I’ll write a blog posts now”, I’ve then looked at the clock, realized it was after 4:00 and remembered my determination not to stay at the office until 7:00 and decided not to write.
I have given some thought, on more than one occasion, to undertaking something called NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. It’s sponsored by the same people who do the National Novel Writing Month program in November that I abandoned you all for last year, only NaBloPoMo isn’t a specific, designated month… I don’t think. Honestly, I haven’t researched it, I’ve just heard other people talk about it. But really? A post a day for 30 days? I couldn’t possibly commit to that. I barely touch a computer on the week-ends and I don’t have time for writing in the evenings. I’m much to busy with food prep, clothes ironing and vegetating in front of the television!
And besides (or maybe it’s because), I spend all day on the computer at work and a good portion of that time is spent dealing with my own personal interests, it hardly seems worthwhile to think about it when I’m at home.
Things haven’t really changed much since my last post as far as feeling overloaded and not being able to get anything done. I’m frustrated because there is so much I want to accomplish, both professionally and personally and it feels humanly impossible to get much of it done, let alone all of it.
Boy this really isn’t going in the direction I would have liked it to go… I spend too much time on this blog talking about all the things I wish could be, or all the time I do not have. What a bummer. That’s not my intention. I’m not sure why I have such a hard time writing fluffier stuff… I guess I’m just not a fluffy person right now. Maybe some day I will be. Maybe you can stick around and find out?
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Here’s something fluffy, sort of. Today is National Donut Day. No kidding. If you don’t believe me look it up. Then again, if you’re reading this, you’re clearly familiar with the internet and with some level of social media and you must already know that today is National Donut Day. Dunkin Donuts, Krispee Kreme’s and Tim Horton’s are all giving away free donuts today in honor of National Donut Day, or so I read on-line.
Today is also Friday, so it’s Another-Friday-At-Riggledo’s-Job-Where-The-Boss-Always-Brings-In-Donuts-On-Friday Day. It’s really not as exciting as it sounds. And if you’re anything like me, it doesn’t sound very exciting to begin with. Anyway, I walked into the office today, and sure enough, there was the giant pink box filled with sugary, glazed goodness that I try so hard to ignore and pretend isn’t’ there and isn’t calling out to me, only today is National Donut Day and what kind of red-blooded American would I be if I didn’t celebrate a national holiday? Six times. Serioulsy! SIX. TIMES.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go lie down now. The sugar coma is taking over.
I received this really special e-mail today. I don’t normally forward or share these things, but sometimes they’re just important enough to pass along.
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In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.
On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.
Twenty years later, peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenage son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.
Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant.
Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter’s legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.
Probably wasn’t the same ____ing elephant.
This is for anyone who’s ever sent out one of those BS “heart-warming” stories.
Riggledo 