WanderingAmylessly 2.0

David Letterman's finest... Top Ten Signs You Have a Bad Job 10. "It's a 12-hour commute each way" 9. "You know the guy who refills the ketchup bottles in the prison cafeteria? You're his assistant" 8. "You're Courtney Love's Publicist" 7. "For insurance purposes, Boss personally administers a daily physical" 6. "Sign outside your door reads, 'Jim's Office/Men's Room'" 5. "You're taken to and from work in the trunk of a car, blindfolded" 4. "Word 'throb' appears with surprising frequency in job application" 3. "You're working on Labor Day" 2. "Your name is George W. Bush (I'm Sorry, that's a sign you're doing a bad job)" 1. "You're the idiot who has to change the gas prices on the sign every 5 minutes" Top Ten Questions in the White House Press Secretary Job Interview 10. "Does cigar smoke bother you?" 9. ...

I was discharged this afternoon from the hospital's psychiaric ward. My meds were altered. I attended coping skills sessions (what I really needed was a skill to help me deal with the hospital food). Thoughts of harming myself retreated to whatever part of me those thoughts reside when they're being quiet. I'm on the path to recovery. Yet again. I'm weak right now. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. But I'm here. It's a start.

Then God spoke all these words, saying: Original: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Updated: I am the idiot, your President, who brought you into the land of Allah, into the land which had no WMDs. O: You shall have no other gods before me U: You shall have no other Presidents before me – maybe Puppeteers Karl Rove and Dick Cheney – But not other Presidents. O: You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. U: Don’t use the Lord’s name as a swear word. Use a real cuss word like shit or sonofabitch, but never Goddamn. Mama will warsh y’er mouth out with talk like that. O: Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. U: Don’t work on Sunday. Unless you’re planning strategic attacks around the world and hoping to buy a “My president went to Baghdad and all he got me was this lousy” t-shirt. O: Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be...

Why is it that I can't be normal? What is normal, you ask? I don't know, but it's not me. It's not normal to cry all the time and want to hit things and sleep for hours on end. It's not normal to have to fight with your body to get it to calm down, to stop the leg bouncing and pacing and jaw grinding, to stop the racing thoughts and the fluttering heart. It's not normal to love your family one minute and want to run from them the next. It's not normal to think about dying, or to think about wanting to be dead and how to best accomplish that. My brain doesn't work as it should. I take my meds. I go to therapy. It all works for a while, and then it doesn't. And I slip downward, farther and farther, until the darkness envelops me and I barely see a sliver of blue sky above my head. Most times it's not even blue. It's gray. Everyone around me moans a collective, "Oh great, not again." I don't blame them; it's my feeling too, as ...

My husband rode his bike 100 miles yesterday. In weather conditions that included a heat index hot enough to, honest to god, fry an egg on the sidewalk. And why did he do this? To celebrate his birthday. I think he ought to be thanking his lucky cake candles that we're not holding a wake for him today. Even more incredible, he took a VACATION day from work to do it. If it were my birthday, doing anything remotely athletic would be completely out of the question. Even though I'm stunned, flabbergasted, somewhat disgusted by his accomplishment, I must admit it's what I love the most about him. There are things out there that totally rock his world, and he delves into them with his whole being. Most notably, Photography and Cycling. He also finds great interest in the stock market, politics, NPR, reading, hiking, canoeing, and focuses intently on them when the need arises. He's into what he's into, heart and soul. That's true passion. Besides being his birthday and...

An air of mystery hangs over the unexplained death of Hooters chairman Robert Brooks. Hooters, in case you've been on another planet for a while, is the dining chain known for spicy wings and spicier big breasts. Brooks was found dead at his home in South Carolina on Sunday. No one knows how the head of the raunchy restaurants died. An autopsy is being performed today. News stories seem to subtly allude to suspicious goings-on. Nothing was spelled out though. So how do you think he met his demise? Did he: Have a heart attack during an intimate moment with one of his scantily-clad waitresses? Take too much Cialis and die as a result of the oft-mentioned, dangerous 4-hour erection? Have lung cancer? (He was born on a tobacco farm.) Lose a brawl fight with the CEO of Fuddruckers? Consume a poison-laced beverage courtesy the Feminist Majority Foundation? Perhaps it was just his time to pass. After all...his age at the time of his death? Honest truth. 69

I discovered something disturbing this morning. I brought it on myself, as I, just for kicks, googled "Bush Hitler Compare." I got 4,420,000 hits. Two gentlemen went so far as to create a gallery of "Bush = Hitler" allusions, filled with dozens of writers, singers, poets, commentators, pundits and the like, making comparisons. Among the quotes I found: "At least Hitler was elected" (Boondocks comic strip) "Not even the Nazis treated their prisoners this badly" (Cartoonist Ted Rall) One blogger called this comparison obsession a "sport" in the blogosphere. The fact that so many people had this thought enter their head then wrote about it is enough to convince me that we are not completely off track in our observations. Our president lied to us. Attacked people who were NOT responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Kept prisoners of war isolated from the world and tortured them. Helped inflate our federal deficit to the trillion dollar level. Fai...

I bought something on Friday. It's a symbol of a bye-gone era's pop culture. With its bold color palette, its ability to shift and morph its insides from shape to shape, its hypnotic slow motion movement...it soothes my psyche. That was the point. We used it in group therapy as part of our relaxation exercises and I fell in love with its power. My breathing slowed as I watched it in the darkened clinic conference room. My eyes slid from top to bottom of this iconic object, absorbing its subtle energy. It epitomizes the cultural emphasis of its era's culture: PEACE. Nothing else from the 1960s could have such an impact. Not a pet rock or peace sign, not a yellow smiley face or a VW van, not a blacklight or a bong (well, maybe, but I don't have first-hand knowledge of that). People think it's silly. It's pointless. It's passe. I don't agree. It's warm and vibrant, a symbol from a time of love, of relaxed inhibitions, of transformational music, of yearn...

I'm not dead. I'm not in the hospital. I'm not celebrating my lottery winnings. I haven't joined the circus. I did not, despite earlier promises, move to Canada. The Administration did not ship me off to Guantanamo. My guest worker status didn't change. I'm not pregnant. I'm not practicing scientology or any other sort of -ology. The world is not flat. The Law of Gravity's still applicable. Algebra is dumb. And so on. To answer everyone's question... I haven't been blogging because I haven't had much to say. And, I seem to have, at some point in time, acquired a life. I'm sure it won't last. My sarcastic blabbing will return. Never fear.