Chilling

I’m watching a movie late last night, stretched out on the bed. I keep a Pendleton Indian blanket on the bed, usually folded over the footboard, mostly as decor. But sometimes — like when I’m watching a movie — I’ll pull it around me to keep warm. Last night was one of those times.

The movie was Skins, set on the modern Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A character dies and there is a scene at his service, with the actor laid out in the coffin — wrapped in a Pendleton Indian blanket.

Same blanket.

Brrr.

Guys

Dave Barry posted this story on his blog in 2005. It’s a good — and all too typical — one.

So I took my daughter to soccer practice this evening, and another dad and I were talking to one of the moms, whom we both know and whom we have both seen roughly once a week for the past six months. After we talked for about 10 minutes, a second mom showed up, and immediately said to the mom we’d been talking to: “YOU HAD YOUR BABY!” And then they hugged, and the new mom got out baby pictures. And the other dad and I looked at each other and realized that not only had we failed to notice that she’d had a baby, but we had been at most only dimly aware that she had been pregnant. We apologized, and she assured us that it was no big deal. Women are accustomed to the cluelessness of guys in these matters.

The thing is, if she had shown up carrying a cool new cell phone, we would have noticed that.

As Nancy Astor said, when she admitted that she married beneath her, but then, ‘all women do.’”

Conan’s Twitter stunt

Let’s hope Sarah Killen continues to be special. So far, she’s golden.

‘The Marriage Ref’ is a therapist’s nightmare

This essay by Mary T. Kelly at Salon is ostensibly a critique of NBC’s new show, “The Marriage Ref” (which I must admit, I watched).

But Kelly’s essay is more and I recommend it to anyone interested in relationships. An excerpt:

When it gets right down to it, human beings just aren’t as complicated as we like to make ourselves out to be.

We want to be seen… seen for who we are, darker sides and all. We want to be felt in that way that someone is so connected to us that when we feel pain, they feel it for us, too. They can empathize, and we find relief in knowing that we have an ally. We want to be touched, we crave to be touched, whether it’s in the full blown passions of wild and unrestrained sex or the gentle holding of the hand while watching a movie in a dark theater.
. . .

But we are a stubborn group of people, and it is often easier to focus on the silly, the superficial and the insistence that we are right.

The Tattoo to Tooth Ratio

What is this “Tattoo-to-tooth ratio,” you ask? Simply put, the ratio can be calculated by dividing the number of tattoos present on the patient by the number of teeth remaining in the patients skull. For example, a patient with 24 tattoos and 2 teeth would be said to have the astonishing ratio of 12. A general rule of thumb is that if the tattoo-to-tooth ratio is greater than or equal to one, your patient is indestructible. The higher the TTR score, the lower the likelihood of a terminal outcome. A patient with a TTR of just two could be run over by a truck after being shot twice in the back outside of the bar in which they drank six fifths of whiskey, and shortly after admission to the emergency department they would be demanding cigarettes and sexual favors from any nearby persons.

Respiratory Therapy 101: Just Keep Breathing

There’s more. Thanks to SinPantalones for the tweet.

Redux post of the day

First posted here four years ago today.

Malcolm Gladwell from an exchange with ESPN’s Bill Simmons:

As for your (very kind) question about my writing, I’m not sure I can answer that either, except to say that I really love writing, in a totally uncomplicated way. When I was in high school, I ran track and in the beginning I thought of training as a kind of necessary evil on the way to racing. But then, the more I ran, the more I realized that what I loved was running, and it didn’t much matter to me whether it came in the training form or the racing form. I feel the same way about writing. I’m happy writing anywhere and under any circumstances and in fact I’m now to the point where I’m suspicious of people who don’t love what they do in the same way. I was watching golf, before Christmas, and the announcer said of Phil Mickelson that the tournament was the first time he’d picked up a golf club in five weeks. Assuming that’s true, isn’t that profoundly weird? How can you be one of the top two or three golfers of your generation and go five weeks without doing the thing you love? Did Mickelson also not have sex with his wife for five weeks? Did he give up chocolate for five weeks? Is this some weird golfer’s version of Lent that I’m unaware of? They say that Wayne Gretzky, as a 2-year-old, would cry when the Saturday night hockey game on TV was over, because it seemed to him at that age unbearably sad that something he loved so much had to come to end, and I’ve always thought that was the simplest explanation for why Gretzky was Gretzky. And surely it’s the explanation as well for why Mickelson will never be Tiger Woods.

Last words

I’ll quit writing about this now, but I finished James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers this morning around 1. The last quarter of the book deals with the bond tour that followed in 1945 for the three flag-raising survivors and their life after the war.

It’s a very, very good book.

I was left as I turned out the light with this haunting line from another Iwo Jima medic who also served in Korea and Vietnam:

“The dreams have lasted for years. At seventy-three I still get ‘em. I’ve been in three wars and I haven’t got past Iwo yet.”

The Real Hurt Locker

My long-time friend Jeanne volunteers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She sent this along yesterday:

Last summer I saw The Hurt Locker with a friend of mine. About a month ago there was a GI at Walter Reed who did exactly that in Afghanistan. The crew is called something like battle (or battlefield) engineers. They ride over a route a convoy is going to take to clear the IEDs. The vehicles are made in South Africa especially to withstand the shock of explosions and cost a quarter of a million per vehicle. He told me much of the necessary functional stuff is on the outside so they can pull off damaged parts and replace them quickly.

I asked if he’d seen the movie and he had. I said I know movies have to telescope events and asked him if any aspect of the movie was realistic. He got all hung up on the details, i.e. no team would go into a building or site alone like they did in the movie. The sense of the adrenalin rush, however, was real, he admitted. He loved his job.

He broke his back and both legs in an explosion. He said it was because the back seats are bolted in place–different from the front seats to save room. This causes beaucoup broken backs when there’s an explosion. He told his Senator that the vehicles should be modified to lessen injuries.

He has all his limbs and will recover. He can’t go back to his old job, however, because his injuries will leave him below standard for strength. He’s getting out of the Army because there’s no other job that appeals to him.

The perfect gift

At Dinner without Crayons Tanya has another wonderful story.

Overheard in New York

For old time’s sake, the first post ever here from Overheard in New York (four years ago today):

Girl #1: I just don’t think I’m his type. He’s very intellectual.

Girl #2: What do you mean?

Girl #1: He’s all “yada yada yada” and I’m very “What’s your favorite Starburst?”

Classic

Funny stuff from Heather.

Remarkable

There are few ways better to spend 21 minutes on the internet than this.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement (2008) from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Longest Married on Twitter

Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher were married in 1924. That’s 86 years.

The questions are insipid for the most part and the answers unsurprising, but what the heck, it’s Saint Valentine’s Day.

A story for Saint Valentine’s Day

1. HER DIARY

Tonight I thought he was acting weird.

We had made plans to meet at a bar to have a drink. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment. Conversation wasn’t flowing so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed but he kept quiet and absent. I asked him what was wrong; he said nothing. I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said it had nothing to do with me and not to worry.

On the way home I told him that I loved him, he simply smiled and kept driving. I can’t explain his behavior. I don’t know why he didn’t say I love you too. When we got home I felt as if I had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there and watched T.V. He seemed distant and absent.

Finally, I decided to go to bed. About 10 minutes later he came to bed, and to my surprise he responded to my caress and we made love, but I still felt that he was distracted and his thoughts were somewhere else.

He fell asleep – I cried. I don’t know what to do. I’m almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

2. HIS DIARY

I shot the worst round of golf in my life today, but at least I got laid.

Found at Andrew Tobias – Money and Other Subjects in 2006.

Ready to go another round

Over at Dinner without Crayons Tanya is ready to think of her Gram and go another round if needed.

Today’s Photo

OK, I’m cheating.  I didn’t take this photo (and neither did Jill).  It comes from the AP.

Number 85, Pierre Garçon is American-born of Haitian parents.  Yesterday he caught more passes than any receiver in AFC championship game history; 11 for 151 yards.  The record was nine.  

And then there is this, from the Palm Beach Post:

Even amid the bedlam of 67,650 screaming fans Sunday, that rang true. Dwight Lowery was one of a few Jets who took a shot at containing Garcon, the two of them fighting for something only one could have, yet even then, even amid the usual trash-talk, Lowery pulled Garcon aside.

“He said he was going to help me out with Haiti,” Garcon said. “He told me during the game, man. He said to get in contact with him and a couple of guys on their team.”

When the media is the disaster

Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.

Rebecca Solnit, Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

I urge you to read Solnit’s entire essay, especially where she asks, “What Would You Do?”

Laissez les bons temps rouler

At least one New Orleans-based Who Dat, who goes by the name of “Jimbeaux61”, has already made his plans for Super Bowl Sunday, which happens to be nine days before Mardi Gras.

Says Jimbeaux61: “Breakfast will be beignets and café au lait at the French Market. A two-block walk for Bloody Marys at Margaritaville. Catch a Mardi Gras parade on Canal Street. A shrimp po-boy at Johnny’s in the Quarter. A Hurricane at Pat O’Brien’s. Stroll over to the Superdome parking lot for tailgating. Early dinner at Galatoire’s. More Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s. Watch the Saints beat the Colts at the Absinthe House. Back to Canal Street for another parade. Close out the night on Bourbon Street. Sleep till Tuesday. Get ready for the draft. Geaux Super Bowl Champions.”

Peter Finney, Times-Picayune

Sounds like a good day.

Faces of Haiti

Ten days after the massive earthquake in Haiti, some 80,000 of the estimated 200,000 dead have been buried, two million residents now find themselves homeless, and hundreds of thousands of them are now trying to flee the capital city. Rescue crews are beginning to abandon hope of finding any further survivors in the rubble – the last person to be pulled out alive was on was rescued on Wednesday, the 20th. Aid agencies are still ramping up their efforts – the Red Cross alone has deployed what it calls its greatest deployment of emergency responders in its 91-year history. Collected here are some closer looks into recent events in Haiti, seen through the faces of the survivors and the recently-arrived security, rescue and care workers. (46 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Don’t skip this one.

I would make a great criminal

Over at Dinner without Crayons, Erinn confesses to being a crime show junkie and lets us “in on a few things [she's] learned about crime.” For example:

7. No matter how much you love scrapbooking (and Lord knows I do), do not scrapbook pictures of you with the people you kill. Especially if in the pictures they are wearing jewelry you stole from them and are currently wearing. And you’ve already told the police you’ve never seen those people in your life.

People of Walmart

People of Walmart: a collection of all the creatures that grace us with their presence at Walmart, America’s favorite store.

Thanks to Erinn and Mike.

Learning how to tie your shoes

Learn the right way (and the wrong way) to lace your shoes. It’s never too late.

Haiti six days later

I find these still photos from Haiti more interesting, more emotional and more harrowing than the TV images because they can be studied and thought about — in other words, for me, it’s not as mindless as some TV reporter telling me what I’m seeing, what I should think.

Haiti remains a place of profound need, anguish, desperation and danger, with a few glimmers of hope and slowly growing capabilities to receive and distribute the international aid now flowing in. Sporadic looting, sometimes violent, was met with force by security oficials and ordinary citizens, resulting in a number of further deaths and injuries. The tenuous security situation has led to at least one temporary evacuation of a medical facility, to protect the care-givers. Despite the long time since the earthquake, at least five people were pulled from the rubble alive this weekend, including a young girl trapped inside a supermarket who was fortunately surrounded by food, and survived on fruit snacks. (38 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Making out is its own reward

“It is more erotic to wonder if you’re about to be kissed than it is to be kissed.”

Another wonderful look at times and mores past by Roger Ebert, this time sex on campus.

Ebert’s memories resonate with this pre-baby boomer. We weren’t even allowed to dance the Twist at my Catholic high school — as if the Twist was more sexy than slow-dancing. Of course, the rule was the good Carmelite fathers had to be able to see light between the slow dancers.

I'd never heard of wood asps before

… but now that I’ve read this I am pretty sure there are some under the bed and in the closet and god only knows about the garage.

And I don’t even live in East Texas.