The Soap Box
A place for me to dump my brain and you to pick thru it

OMG
11:43am

The universe is conspiring against me this weekend, I swear. Perhaps this is a lesson in patience, and how I definitely need to cultivate more of it.

Anyway, the answer to the movie quiz below is Grosse Point Blank, in case anyone cares.

I hope your weekend is going better than mine!

Movie Quiz
10:44am

Been busy this week. Working at the VA by day and programming by night to make a few extra bucks. Anyway, can you name the movie the quote below comes from?

Man: (as woman walks by) Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater.

Such a Wuss
12:03am

My name is Damien, fear me!

On The Lighter Side
12:21am

the Cutting Edge (52% dark, 43% spontaneous, 27% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK Your humor's mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there's something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren't in and of themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or are seriously over-the-top. Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman - John Belushi

Regret
6:02am

I held it together pretty well when I was with my brother. I didn't cry when I saw how thin or jaundiced he was. I didn't cry when he would say things like "It's time to get down to the business of dying." But I did have to leave the room when I saw how much love was in his eyes for his ex-wife. You could see that she was his heart, still, even though they had been divorced for at least 12 years. I knew she didn't want to be there. She told me she hated hospitals and hated the act of dying (who likes it?). But she was there holding his hand. The boundless love I saw in his eyes broke my heart. Here was the one woman he loved who he had lost through his own actions. I could only think, "How much must he regret certain choices in his life that would take away the person he loved the most?"

All my life the fear of regret has factored into decisions I've made. It factored into visiting my brother in the end. Previous to his death, I hadn't seen my brother in 10 years. My therapist had said that it didn't matter if I worked out certain issues with him while he was still alive but that didn't sit right with me. I knew in the end I needed to see him. Being with him those last two days truly was a profound experience in so many ways, there is nothing that could have replaced it. The well of compassion I felt when I saw him in that hospital bed was a first for me. I've felt compassion before, of course, but never at such an overwhelming level. It didn't matter what had happened in the past...what he had or hadn't done, how I had felt the need to estrange myself from him...none of it was important. Being there with him during his process of dying to help and comfort him and my other family members was all that mattered.

For me it did matter if I worked out certain issues with my brother in person. The strange thing was that we didn't actually talk anything out. My brother had his voice box removed 2 years ago because of the cancer and he was really too weak to use his whiteboard to "talk." It wasn't through any sort of verbal or written communication that I gained understanding. It was just being in his presence with his ego stripped away, being with who he was deep inside. It is an experience that is very difficult to articulate. Without actually talking about them, many questions were answered, many issues were resolved in a way that were incomparable. There are so many "what ifs?" that I will never have and for that I am grateful. Being there and holding his hand when he died will be something I never regret.

Anger
5:32pm

(a bit rambling. Not going to win any prizes for grammar Read at your own peril.)

When my brother died I was relieved. If you had seen him, you would have been too. He was so thin and jaundiced and in pain. No one should have to endure the pain he was in. But a few weeks after he died, the relief was replaced by anger. (You can spot it if you look for entries about things that piss me off.) I was angry for a lot of reasons but I think mostly I was angry that I had to deal with this and the issues it brought up now. I don't know a family that doesn't have issues and so I'm guessing that you know what I mean when I say it sure is easier not to deal with those issues than be brought face to face with them when you're not expecting it. When my brother was diagnosed again with cancer this January, I actually started to go to a therapist because I knew these issues were coming. Last time this happened 2 years ago, I chose not to deal with them and got sick for months with the flu, bronchitis, strep...you name it. Well, I didn't want that to happen again so I started dealing with them with some help.

I was also angry at my brother for not being the person I wanted him to be. When I was a kid, my brother was my hero, my champion. I followed him around like a puppy dog. There are 12 years between us so by the time I was 6 and my parents were divorced, I didn't see him much anymore. After that, seeing him became a real treat...always a special occasion and a reason to have a party. Then as I entered mid-teens, I began to see that he wasn't the hero I thought he was. He had faults like anyone else, except he had more faults than anyone else in my life. He was an alcoholic. He couldn't hold down a job because of problems with authority. He was forever getting fired for telling his boss off. He was in jail at least twice that I know of for running numbers. He had this enormous ego that made it difficult for me to be to be around him. For example, just 2 years ago, when I told him I had gotten into grad school, a momentous task for me and something that I was incredibly proud of, his response was, "I could tell you everything you need to know about psychology in 5 minutes." Wow! What a way to blow away my accomplishment! While I know he didn't say that to hurt me, I found it hard to take nonetheless. These realizations crushed me. How could someone I love so much turn out to be someone who was hardly a role model? Why wasn't he what I wanted him to be? It hardly seemed fair.

When I was with him those final days, that ego was dropped. How could it not be? It must have taken a lot of energy to keep it up and energy is not something he had in abundance by then. The person I found in that hospital bed was the brother I knew when I was a kid. Someone who was gentle and kind and easy to be with. So why wasn't he this person all his life? I know the answer and you might think it's unfair that I expected him to be what I wanted him to be but I'm being honest. I wanted the brother who picked me up when I cried, the brother who was always kind to me and seemed to always have my interests in mind. I didn't want the huge ego-ed alcoholic who I felt I needed to distance myself from for so many years. Perhaps I was angry also because with his death, I was faced with his faults as well as his good nature and the dissonance created the anger. In those last 2 days of his life I saw who I remembered as a child, who he could have been, but was left with the broken adult version of him.

Reflections on Grief
10:08pm

When someone you love is dying, there isn't really time to process what's going on. You're just kind of there, dealing with the moment to moment needs and care of the person. After they are gone, I always thought you'd just get through the grieving process, a little each day, until you felt better. I mean, when you scrape your knee, you don't have to do anything in particular for it to heal. It scabs over and before you know it, it's completely gone. I thought grief was like that too. It would just take care of itself.

I now realize grief more like a broken hip where you first have to let it heal to a certain extent but then go through physical therapy to learn to walk again. So I've let my grief heal to a certain extent but it's not healing any more on its own. It would seem that now I have to do some work and this seems like as good a place as any. So, upcoming entries may be boring or even maudlin for some of you but I think it will help me so you can choose to skip the grief entries or follow my journey. You have been warned...

Questions from mike
9:24pm

1. what was your favorite band(s) in high school?
Pretenders, J. Geils Band, The Fixx, Flock of Seagulls, Aerosmith, The Cars...

2. what do you think of them now?
Well, I'm not proud of Flock of Seagulls or the Fixx particularly but I'm sorry, J Geils Band was a great party band and the older Pretenders stuff still rocks.

3. what high school movie(or tv show) is most representative (literally or metaphorically) of your high school experience?
Probably Pretty in Pink. I was that miserable for one and there were rich, dumb kids that lived to make others miserable.

4. does your sr picture mortify you?
Nah, not MORTIFY. That was probably the shortest hair I've had in my life but it's not THAT bad.

5. how was your prom?
I went to my junior and senior prom and both were weird. My junior year I had a boyfriend who was an epileptic and had a seizure right before the prom and split his head open so I went stag...the first person to ever go stag at my school as far as I know. My senior year, a different boyfriend had mono and I went with this guy I did not like instead of missing out entirely.

6. did you attend any h/s reunions? if so, what did you think?
I went to the 10 year reunion and it was fun to see who was bald or fat or with a dozen kids. I wanted to go to my 20th last November but I was too sick to travel to Massachusetts for it.

And I just want to thank you for making me relive some really terrible moments.

I'm Seriously Considering Doing This!
9:20pm

So these Japanese monks are carrying a flame kindled from the Hiroshima bomb from San Francisco to the Trinity test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Anyone is invited to walk with them. On August 6th they are only walking 10 miles from Tularosa to Alamogordo, home of the White Sands Missile Range. Tularosa is about 200 miles from my house. It would be easy enough to drive down there and walk with the monks for a few miles, all in the name of world peace.

Hey Betty, see you there?

Stupid Cats
12:05am

I simply cannot make a quilt without it being christened by at least one of the cats. Here is Suzie, just as I had one tie left before finishing this one this evening.

So I kicked her off the table, finished the quilt and folded it up so none of the cats could lie on it. Suzie still found a way to make it her personal pillow and is sleeping on it now. I don't have the heart to kick her off again.

Sadly, the quilt is not for her, but for Project Linus so I'll have to de-fur the quilt before I give it away. I hope whatever little kid gets the quilt likes it half as much as my fricken cat!

Why Me?
6:59pm

I am physically unable to put on a t-shirt without getting deodorant on it, even that supposedly "invisible" stuff. What's up with that?

WTF Is This? England?
11:50am

So, I was watching Morgan Spurlock's show 30 Days last night and the teaser at the end for next week's show stated, "tune in to the season finale of 30 Days next week!" Season finale? That means there are a total of 6 episodes in the season? Hey buddy, 6 episodes might fly as a "season" in England but this is America! We want AT LEAST 13 episodes. So get crackin'! Chop Chop!

Quote Of the Day
10:55am

"If vitamins and exercise alone explain why Tom Cruise is so, um, knowledgeable and well-grounded, pass the Prozac." - Chicago Tribune

Amen to that!

Odds and Ends
10:28am

After last week's debacle of broadcasting Live 8 on MTV, Viacom has decided to run 10 hours of the concerts commercial free today. So far, it's pretty decent coverage, much better than last weekend. When the damn talking heads started chatting over Pink Floyd singing Comfortably Numb, I almost broke my TV screen out of frustration. Here's a band playing together for the first time in 20 some-odd years and they have a couple of twats who weren't even born last time the band played together saying some inane shit. I couldn't believe how stupid it was. I watched a lot of the webcast and even tho I am not a fan of AOHell, I do want to recognize that they did a great job with that webcast. BTW, you can watch any song you want now from the concert. Here is the link for the London show. You can get to other shows from there except for Japan. I'm not sure what's up with that. Anyway, if it's not too late, check out the rebroadcast of the concert on VH1 and MTV today. (BTW, Joss Stone needs a stylist...NOW.)

The London bombings are, of course, tragic but I've felt a bit numb about them. Or maybe desensitized to this kind of violence. I think that's partially due to what's happened in Israel over the past couple of years. However, this website really made the bombings so much more real for me. Seeing the faces of the missing and learning something about their lives makes me realize how the victims were ordinary people just trying to scratch out a living, like the rest of us (well except for maybe Bill Gates. I think he's pretty well set for life). I can't image how painful it would be to have a loved one just gone without a trace.

Need a good laugh? Check out Bobby Brown's playlist on iTunes. OMG, it's hysterical. Eight of the 16 songs on the list are songs he recorded. NONE of the songs are by his wife. No ego there, huh? There are comments for each song. For My Perogative he wrote, "The best song in the world written by me. My song, not Britney's." Another song on his list is Still by Lionel Ritchie. Oh good! A song not by him...or is it? Comments Brown, "I sang this song. It's on my upcoming LP." Oh well. I guess he tried.

Both baseball and softball will not be played in London during the 2012 Olympics. I don't know the whole back story but 2 sports had to be cut for this Olympics and the American pastime go the short end of the stick this time around. I think it's going to the the viewing public's loss as some of those softball players are HOT ;)

Things I Learned About My Car Today
7:48pm

Guess how long it takes for the AC to start working in my 13 year old Mazda Protege when it's close to 100 degrees out. Go ahead, guess.

It takes about 9-12 minutes.

Guess how long my average commute is.

12-15 minutes.

And in case you thought you couldn't burn your ass on a gray cloth car seat, I got a coupla cheeks that would prove you wrong.

Yeah, That About Sums It Up
8:17pm

You Are 42% American

America: You don't love it or want to leave it. But you wouldn't mind giving it an extreme make over. On the 4th of July, you'll fly a freak flag instead... And give Uncle Sam a sucker punch!

(feefed from Betty) 

Just the Stats, Ma'am
8:02pm

Number of patients I was scheduled to see in the last 2 days: 4

Number of patients that actually showed up: 2

Number of patients that actually showed up on time: 1

Oy, what a week.

Damn You Denis Leary!
9:43pm

Dear Mr. Leary:

Because of your show Rescue Me I spent the day in a semi-daze after staying up to watch Tommy in his latest antics. Yes, I have TiVo, but I could not wait to see if Tommy still hallucinated that the crucified Jesus bled in his drinks, if his uncle really got "whacked," how Tommy is going to deal with the pregnancy of his cousin's widow for which he is responsible, not to mention how Laura would get back at the misogynistic men at the firehouse. The way these issues are dealt with a subtle balance of humor and seriousness amazes me. Clearly this show is one of the best written ones on the air...which is why i had to stay up until midnight to watch it...which is what put me in a crappy mood all day. As the creator/writer/director and star, I blame you for making this show irresistible.

Thanks for ruining my day.

Sincerely,

Me

Quote of the Day
12:33pm

Peace is patriotic.

A Little Poll
1:12pm

Just thought I'd have a little fun today. Participate if you like.

How Cool Is This?
6:41pm

I have this friend, who I've known for oh...ten years maybe? He works at the Philadelphia Inquirer for their online division. Over the past couple of years he's been learning Flash and I help him when I can as I used to teach Flash in my previous life. Today, he and I were talking online about Live 8. The Inquirer's entertainment editor or reporter (whichever) had problems identifying who was on stage in London so I filled him on that (Coldplay and lead singer for Verve). Then he had a Flash question that I (and Nick) helped him with. I said jokingly that I wanted a credit for helping him and Holy SHIT! There was my name online! Wow! I feel famous! Thanks Tony!

I'm Such a Lamoid
12:18pm

Last summer I posted a list of DVDs that I own but hadn't watched. My goal was to get thru them before school started. I recently found that list and it consists of:

Adaptation
Bound
The Insider
One Hour Photo
Original Sin
Spun
Titus
Y Tu Mama Tambien

Care to guess how many of those I've watched now that it's 13 months later? 3. THREE! That's it! What the hell do I do with all my time?

When Sharks Attack
8:57pm

So there have been 3 shark attacks this week in Florida. Uhhh, do you think it's possible because we've fucked up their environment? Done something that makes them come in closer and makes them more aggressive? Just maybe?

During the summer a huge "Dead Zone" appears off the coast of Louisiana. This Dead Zone is over 7000 square miles and does not contain enough oxygen to sustain life. The nitrogen level in this area is 3X higher than it was 30 years ago. Guess where that nitrogen comes from? Yup, us good ol' humans. It makes sense to me that if we fuck with the shark's environment, they're gonna fuck with us. We really need to start thinking about what we're doing to this earth and not just do what is easy and makes us money, doncha think?

Random Sports News
6:52pm

Tomorrow is a big day in the sports world. We have Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport playing for the Wimbledon title and the start of the Tour de France.

I will be happy regardless who wins Wimbledon and I appreciate both players but if you put a gun to my head and made me choose one, I'd have to choose Lindsay for the simple reason that she was ready to retire about a year ago and has now come back to play some of the best tennis of her life at the age of 29. As I get older, I definitely have a soft spot for the older players. Venus is also playing great but she's got more years left to win Grand Slams.

In case you are curious, Venus and Lindsay have met on the court 26 times with Lindsay winning 14 of those matches. I think Lindsay won the last 3 times they met so is Venus due? You'll have to wake up early to find out. Play starts at 7am my time (the forgotten time zone) but I think Roddick finishes his semi-final match that was rained out first then the women take the court. Not sure tho. Don't take my word for that.

Lance Armstrong simply blows me away. He's won a record breaking 6 Tour de France and is going for number 7 starting tomorrow. If he succeeds, I'm sure his record will stand for a long time. That man is a machine! Or maybe it's true that it's easier for a ball-less man to ride...who knows but I will be rooting for Lance when he starts racing tomorrow. Oh, BTW, rumor has it that Sheryl Crow broke up with Lance. I wonder if that will affect his performance.

Blog Name: The Soap Box
Email: jenben[at]g-r-c.com
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