You're Gonna Pay - A Dream

I had a dream last night about Anthony Michael Hall, sort of.

I was dating this guy. He was a child actor who isn't doing much today. He looked just like Anthony Michael Hall, but it wasn't him. I couldn't remember his name. The whole dream I was trying to figure out what his name was without him knowing that I was trying to figure out his name. I thought that maybe if I could think of something that he was in, like a movie or a TV show I could look at the credits and find out. Every role I thought he had, though, turned out to be Anthony Michael Hall. Then I started thinking that I should just dump this guy and start dating Anthony Michael Hall. Then I resigned myself to thinking that if I couldn't have Anthony Michael Hall I would just be happy with dating the guy who people think looks like him and always confuse him for. He drove a big monster truck and he had to drive me home. The route took us through a rough part of town and we had to dodge bullets from people doing drive-by shootings for sport. After we got through the rough part of town we stopped for some beer and tacos and he held my hand. I looked through his wallet but still couldn't find his name.

A little disturbing, I'll give you that, but not as disturbing as the dream I had about Norman Gentle which I refuse to discuss as I'm trying very hard to erase the memory from my head.

Peekay - A Book Review

I just finished reading The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.

I really enjoyed the book but at the moment I'm a bit mad at the estate of Mr. Courtenay and Ballantine Books.

See, I bought the young adult version, not the full version. I'm so mad. I feel duped. I want to read the whole thing but that would mean having to buy the book again. I'm afraid if the estate of Bryce Courtenay and Ballantine Books want me to find out what happened to Peekay, they're going to have to get me a free copy.

The book chronicles the life of a boy named Peekay. He has a pretty hard life in 1930's and 40's South Africa. He makes some interesting friends during the book that shape his life and his world view.

The book started out pretty grim. A little boy is sent to boarding school. He is the only kid of English descent there and gets hazed a lot. Throughout his life he meets people that guide, mentor and influence him. They teach him to stand up for himself and for others. They teach him to be confident in his convictions. He also learns, however, that life is not fair.
At the end of the version of the book I was reading Peekay is heading off to college. I felt cheated that the book stopped so abruptly. I wanted to read about how he got on in college, who he befriended and what kind of hardships he had to overcome, but noooo, I had to buy the condensed version.

Not cool, Ballantine Books and the estate of Bruce Courtenay. Not cool for making a shorter version. Pages upon pages were spent in this book telling the life of this little boy who appreciated when he wasn't talked down to and who proved he could learn 3 African languages, Taal, Latin and play the piano, and Ballantine Books thought it was a good idea to shorten it to a mere 222 pages, thus talking down to the young adult?

I'm going to keep whether I liked the book to myself. I was looking forward to how Peekay's life turned out and that a shorted version exists and I bought it on accident has spoiled it for me. If Ballantine can't give me access to the whole book I'm not going to tell them how much I enjoyed this story.

On another note, this book was turned into a movie, but I havin't seen it. If I had netflix I could rent it, but I don't. If I get the chance to see it, I will and update this post.

Bone Picking (appropriate title because someone called me a fat ass today)

In 2009 David Letterman announced on his show that someone was trying to extort money out of him. Rather than give in to the bully, Letterman fought back and fessed up. On his show Letterman announced that he was having an affair with his assistant and someone was trying to extort $2 million from  him. There are more details to the story. You can look them up yourself if you need to. I only gave you the cliff notes. I'm not condoning his behavior. Cheating on your partner is wrong. But what I liked about the way Letterman handled his situation was that he didn't see any reason to let an extortionist and bully change the way he did things.

It seems I've gotten myself a bully. Someone has been posting mean comments on my blog.

The first one I got I laughed. It came from Charlotte, North Carolina. It was posted anonymously. It arrived on January 3 and the comment was made on the post where I wrote about why I don't eat Hostess Gem Donuts anymore.
It said "I think you're just a little too full of yourself miss perfect.Maybe you should look at your own bad habits before criticizing others." 
Good advice. Don't throw stones. Take the plank out of my own eye.

Then on Jan 8 I got a comment. It also was posted anonymously. This one came from Alameda, CA. It was in reference to a recent blog I posted about where I had to break up with a friend.
It read "maybe you were just so jealous of her because she was pretty and you are so ugly and dirty with disgusting grey teeth and the fattest celulite ridden ass. your greasy hair a constant reminder of your fiflth." (misspellings are those of the comment poster, not mine)
OK, this one was just mean.

I decided to change the settings on my blog restricting comments. The settings I had before allowed anyone to comment, even comment anonymously. I changed the settings so one had to sign in to post a comment. Today I got another comment on the same post listed in the paragraph above. This time the commenter, again from Alameda, signed in, but created an ID using my very own first and last name.
It read "She bested you because you KNOW she is better than you in everyway and every day. You secretly wish you were her. You are a pathetic person, no one even likes you they just tolerate you." (again, spelling mistakes belong to the commenter, not me.)

In response to this comment I restricted comments further by changing the settings to allow only those who followed the blog through google blogger could comment.

I wasn't thinking. I completely forgot about my other blog where I crochet on Muni and then write about it. I didn't change the commenting settings. When I got out of hula class tonight I found another comment. Now I'm only assuming this comment came from our friend in Alameda, but in fairness, my tracking software is not picking up this hit for some reason. Google is, but the other tracking service I use is a little under the weather at the moment. Given the spirit of the comment, though, I'm pretty sure it's from the same person.
It read "think I can't find you? You ugly stupid fat cow. Your crochet is as ugly as YOU ARE!!!
You must really hate yourself, I would if I were you.
Why don't you wear clothes that fit instead of looking like a stuffed sausage in everything you put on. Your ass is so hideous that I want to throw up when I see you."

When I was driving home from class tonight I was thinking that I should close my blog to all traffic except for that which is approved by me. By the time I got home, however, I had talked myself out of it. I'm just a regular, every day person.  That someone is spending his/her time and energy trying to bully me is both funny and sad. What a useless way to spend one's time.

So, I'm following David Letterman's lead. I'm behaving how I always have on my blogs. I will post what I want. I will write about my dreams. I will write about hula class. I will write my book reviews. I refuse to stop doing something that isn't illegal, immoral or wrong just because someone in Alameda doesn't like it.

And as for calling me fat? Tell me something I don't know. It's not like you're surprising me. The scale and I aren't enemies. I'm well aware of what it says.

If you don't like what I write, don't read what I write. 

For example,  I follow Ricky Gervais on twitter. Now, I disagree with him on a lot of things, but if I were really and truly offended by him I would stop following him. Nobody is making me read his tweets. I can read what he has to write about or I can ignore it. It's my choice. He doesn't care if I read his tweets or not.

The internet is a big. It is called the World Wide Web, after all. There's room enough in it that if you don't like me, you never ever have to hear from me. I'm easy to avoid.

So there.

The Descendants - Book Review



Just about every Mother's Day I do the same thing.  I rent a chick flick / weepy movie that I know Hubby won't want to see and I sit in bed, drink coffee, eat french toast and watch the movie. I've rented movies ranging from The Blind Side to The Wedding Planner to The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain to Raising Helen to a whole host of other movies I've long since forgotten about. Last Mother's Day I watched The Descendants. Last Mother's Day I didn't watch it from bed, though. I was 5 months pregnant and it hurt my back to lie in bed for that long. I watched it from the couch.

I just finished reading The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. I liked it. It was a pretty quick read. I think I finished it in just under 2 days.

It's about this Guy and his family. They Guy's wife was in an accident and was in a coma. It was part of her living will to not live by artificial means, so they take The Wife off life support. The Guy finds out that The Wife was having an affair. He's upset but feels it's necessary to give The Wife's lover a chance to say goodbye. While this is going on, The Guy also has to learn how to be a dad, not just a father to his two daughters, plus he has to figure out what to do with a bunch of land he inherited.

Like all books, the movie based on the book was a tiny bit different. There were a few tiny differences in how we learn bits and pieces about the characters. Those didn't bother me so much. You can't put every single detail into the movie and expect people to sit through it. For example, meh, I can't even think of a good example. Changing those tiny bits didn't really matter much.

There were two big things that weren't in both the movie and the book.

In the book, but not the movie - the friend of the oldest daughter is this big Stoner Dude. In the movie his dad is killed by a drunk driver, just like in the book, but in the book he's also a major perv hitting on Stoner Dude's girlfriend. Because of this, Stoner Dude hates the fact that they are looking for The Guy's wife's lover. When they do find him, The Stoner Dude secretly calls The Wife's lover's wife and tells her all about the affair. I think that is an important plot twist that shouldn't have been left out of the movie. The Wife's lover was just going to go on like nothing happened? Was The Wife's Lover's Wife going to stay married to this guy. She needed to know. He's just going to cheat on her again probably.

In the movie, but not the book - The Guy has to sit down and decide whether to sign the rights to his inherited ancestral land away or keep it for his children. In the book he just decides not to sign. There isn't a big deal made about it. In the movie he takes off his shoes, stands on the 'aina and talks about his responsibility to malama it. He realizes that selling his land to the highest bidder will make him even more financially stable than he already is, but it will not make him richer. He has a duty, a kuleana to his Hawaiian ancestry to let the land take care of him. I was waiting for that chapter in the book and I didn't get it. I felt cheated.

I give it a . . . . . . .

Dear Readers - I have written quite a few book reviews. I need to come up with a rating system. I've been thinking about what to use. I'd like to be able to say "I give this book 3 plumerias out of 5" or something like that. I'll have to give it some thought. Thanks, a

 

 

So for now my conclusion is  - the book was good. it kept me entertained but if I lended it to someone I wouldn't be too put off if I never got it back.

Reeboks and Burgers - A Dream

Have you ever broken up with a friend?
I have once. I did it badly. It was messy.



I read an article in some woman's magazine about breaking up with friends many years ago. I had never heard of the concept. Sure I'd heard of people drifting apart, or people having fights and never speaking to each other again, but I had never heard of people having the "we have to talk . . . " conversation with regular friends.

I knew this woman. For a while we were kind of good friends. We worked together. We saw each other every day at work. We had lunch together just about every day. We hung out outside work as well. There was something about her, though, that left me feeling negative and drained.
Not really knowing if I wanted to cut off all ties with this woman I decided to take a little break from her.  She was a real negative influence on my life. It took her absence for me to realize that. I decided a break up was in order. I broke off all contact possible. I still had to work with her, though.

After about 6 months, our friendly "good mornings" turned into snide eye contact. We tried to ignore each other completely unless there was a chance that she or I could throw the other under some kind of oncoming bus. We were playing a super passive-aggressive Spy vs. Spy game that I was determined not to lose. I definately did not handle the situation correctly. While I don't think she would have responded well to the "we have to talk" talk, I still could have done things differently.

Then one day she left the company. For a few months I would see her on Muni as she had found work in the same neighborhood as our place of employment. Sometimes we'd say hello and sometimes we'd pretend we didn't see each other.  I haven't seen or spoken to her in years. We have no common friends so I don't know what she's doing these days.

I had a dream about her last night. Strange because I haven't been thinking about her. It was a work dream.

We were working at Hof's Hut, (which is a restaurant / hamburger joint / trying to be fancier than it is, but the burgers are pretty good kind of place. I worked at one of their locations when I was 19).
In my dream I couldn't get the time of my shift right. I always had conflicts with the time they wanted me to work. My x-friend kept taking all the good shifts, wearing super white reebok tennis shoes which for some reason really rubbed me the wrong way. She kept getting in my way and I couldn't serve my tables. I threw up my hands, said "fine" and left the restaurant, but not before pouring a glass of apple juice down the vent slats in her locker.

I wonder why I dreamed about her. I wonder why in my dream I let her best me. Do I have some unresolved issue with her? Do I have some unresolved issue with any of my current co-workers? I am feeling a bit stressed about a particular situation at my current job, but it has nothing to do with any conflict with anyone. I do feel bad with how we stopped being friends, but I'm not sorry we don't hang out anymore.

hmmmmm

(Paper) Bag Lady



Hubby, The Kiddies and I were coming home from Target this afternoon.

Earlier in the day The Boy asked if we could have tacos for dinner. Considering all he ever responds with when I ask him what he'd like for dinner is pizza, I decided to indulge him. Besides, everyone likes tacos, right?

Realizing we didn't have the dinner fixings for tacos we made an unplanned stop at Lucky.

You can probably guess, or at least you won't be surprised when I tell you that we are not the type of organized family what keeps a stash of reusable bags in the trunk. We have them and use them but they are usually kept in the little cubby under the microwave stand and not in the car. Needless to say, we didn't have any reusable bags to use for this trip to the market.
We bought our stuff and aside from the gallon of milk and 6 pack of beer I bought, we got paper bags for everything else.
The checker seemed perplexed when he asked me how many bags I wanted and I told him I needed as many as were needed for my groceries.

As we were leaving I saw this guy who didn't get a bag. He was balancing about (no exaggeration) 20 small items on top of a frozen pizza. I wanted to shout "get a bag, dude. It's only a dime."
Now, like I said, I use reusable bags. I use them about 90% of the time. Sometimes I don't bring them to use for my groceries on purpose. I use paper bags. They are great for recycling, compost, covering books, and making robot costumes. Paper bags are handy and sometimes necessary.

I am supportive of banning plastic bags. I also support charging a dime for paper bags. I am not opposed to leaving my reusable bags at home when I need to refill my stash of paper bags and I don't freak out if I forget my reusable bags and have to get paper.

A dime isn't that much money but charging for bags does make people stop and think about how many bags they waste and hopefully it'll teach them to take more positive steps towards not wasting resources.