Can I just share? I love sharing things with you; you know that, fiends. This post is part RNF, part Various & Sundry, part rant, part head-scratcher, part Boot to the Head, part Everything Else. It’s just a buncha parts. I think it’s how I choose to deal with my crushing stress level this morning. As RD used to tell me: when people are difficult or when you’re pressed to listen to craziness, just lean and smile.

All right, I’m leaning and smiling. It’ll all work out. I will listen, nod my head, then do exactly as I please.

Have you ever figured out why people are difficult? Is it that they’re so convinced they’re right, they simply cannot understand why others can’t see it? I want to be known as someone who listens; someone who defers. I hope my sons recall that lesson (it was hammered into their heads often enough growing up). It never hurts to defer. And it’s fine to know you’re right — without telling the world.

Now that’s not to say that one cannot offer a divergent opinion, or argue for one’s beliefs. Pretty sure that’s what the country was founded upon. It’s the folks who just won’t quit who make me ever so slightly itchy. Did you ever want to say, ALL RIGHT ALREADY! YOU’RE RIGHT! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

*straightening skirt*

I’m sure no one has ever uttered that statement to a spouse or significant other. Anyway.

I hate pretzels. Dry little pieces of table-top. They’re like bagels; totally devoid of flavor. Evil things.

The rough draft of my thesis is due on the 3rd. Birdie opens on the 5th. Is that not a laugh riot? IthinkI’mturningJapaneseIthinkI’mturningJapanese

Have a great day — what day is it anyhow?

FO

Every once in awhile, I’ll go to the BBC to see what’s shaking.

IFC-TV is running a series of Python reunion movies and documentaries: Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyers’ Cut). At least we can see the video clips (I guess Brits can’t).

I just like this title.

Maybe Madonna should just buy the whole building.

Roman Polanski is fried. I really have mixed feelings about this whole thing. What do you say?

I don’t know how I found it last night, but somehow I ended up on some guy’s Flickr site about transistor radios. It was a walk down Memory Lane.

Back in the early 70s (around ’70-’73), Mavis and I would spend our entire summers at “The Pond” in Brown Deer (a suburb of Milwaukee) where we grew up. It was a manmade lake, complete with trucked-in sand for a beach. If you could swim to “the raft” — a stationary platform in the center of the pond where the lifeguard perch was located — then you had truly arrived, and they’d let you swim in the “deep end,” which was all of six feet. (I cannot BELIEVE I found a group of people on Facebook who started a BD Pond fan page! Ka-RAZY. Of course I joined, and so did Mavis. We had a huge laff.) Our parents bought us each a transistor radio to take with us. We used them everywhere, especially in our bedrooms.

I specifically remember putting the radio under my pillow and listening to WLS or WOKY play a list of Beatles tunes in the spring of 1970, when Paul “officially” left the group. I was so sad. The last song they played was “The Long and Winding Road,” and it was late (probably like 10 p.m., but to me it seemed like the middle of the night). I knew I’d be in a world of trouble if Mother walked in and caught me awake, listening to the radio. I loved that radio. I can’t really recall exactly what it looked like, but it was something like what is pictured here (cool photos courtesy of the aforementioned guy). It’s likely close enough; our parents bought everything at Sears.

Dad had one of these in the garage. When he’d do yard work or work on the car, he’d listen to Cubs games on it.

And I can’t remember if I had one of these mod round radios or not. I *think* I did…Mavis, did I ever? If I didn’t, I know I always wished I did.

We didn’t know thing one about sound quality; highs and mid-range and what have you. We just knew that we could take these little jobs to the Pond and spend all day singing along to “It’s Too Late” and “Maggie Mae” and “American Woman” while we nursed our intense crushes on lifeguards named Reinhardt, Jeff and Bob.

Good, good times. *sigh*

Happy Monday — off to another insane week.

Fink, all nostalgic

Random Neuron Firings

~ Why is there such blatant disregard for the Golden Rule nowadays? Maybe it’s always been that way. Here’s a guy who has apparently spent a lot of time thinking about it.

~ We expect 18-year-olds to have a plan for their lives by graduation. They can vote, be prosecuted as adults, and take a bullet in Afghanistan. They can buy tobacco, a lottery ticket and a rifle. But they can’t buy a glass of wine at a restaurant.

~ This is funny, and pretty much true:

~ In my BU class (Have I mentioned that this is the last graduate course I will ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever take?), we’re discussing democratic education — you know, the “pedagogy of the oppressed”: letting students basically take over their school experience, questioning authority and raging against the educational machine. For the first time, I feel really, truly old fashioned and out-of-date. But I don’t care. I said the other day in class that I think this particular aspect of education, among other things, is what helped start the downward spiral in the first place. But that isn’t a very popular viewpoint nowadays. (I’ve used the word “nowadays” twice in this post so far…now I know I’m old. Soon I’ll be ordering gimlets with dinner.)

~ Even in a world where violence and war are all around us every day, to the point where the whole thing becomes somewhat routine and we are no longer horrified, I still marvel at man’s inhumanity to man.

~ Sometimes, I just want to write for a living. Sometimes. Don’t get me wrong; I love my students. It’s, well…those other people. I know: those other people are everywhere.

~ I saw this on a friend’s Facebook profile. Made me laugh, especially starting at about 1:57. I didn’t know this comedian’s stuff at all. He rather puts things in perspective, no?  (Notice his play-in is “Kids” from Birdie)

~

~ The Thriller and I are going to see the Broadway touring production of Young Frankenstein this afternoon in Cleveland. How fun will this be?  I will report back.

Until then, my fiends,

Fink out (of ideas on how to start the thesis — it’s only 24 pages; could it be that bad?)