transcendent "timewaster"

i just spent roughly the last hour here. i recommend some accompanying listening selections. anything will do, really. even mr. bojangles seems to heighten the experience! thanks beck.com links page!

today

something for the rest of us?

Christians are suckers

Excerpted from Jonathan Safran Foer's "A Beginner's Guide to Hanukkah" in yesterday's NYT: Christmas Christmas is a holiday that Christian children celebrate because they aren't Jewish. Instead of eight nights of presents, there is only one. And instead of getting to eat delicious and nutritious latkes, they are forced to drink something called nog, which isn't even a real word. They touch each other's sweaters while they sing together around pianos, they get into the "spirit," and here's another bad thing about Christmas that should make Jewish children excited about celebrating Hanukkah: Christmas trees are a terrible fire hazard.

news

do you believe ?

Death by Bill O'Reilly

Christian or secularist. Freedom lover or liberal. Strong and steady or radical. You are either ONE or the OTHER and there is NO IN-BETWEEN.
Unless you want to be a flip-flopper.
Where could we go on a honeymoon that is very relaxing and somewhat-to-very exotic and not too expensive and will allow us to go to Wis. after 10 days?
The air this morning was moist and cool. I could smell creosote (not the smell of choice to city boys like Jon) and see clouds low in the southwest, probably making fog. Walking to work was nice, especially since our census dropped yesterday. Read: work became less frantic.

A person said "nipped it in the butt" to me today. Three times.

I sort of want to see Good Night and Good Luck, The Producers, Narnia, and the gay cowboy movie whose name I forget.

I wish someone would tell me how to thread a bobbin. I am running out of options.

And time. There's a Hans Christian Andersen story where the maiden has to weave, um, jackets for the seven brothers out of flax before the evil stepmother's curse will turn them all to swans. And she doesn't quite finish in time and one of the brothers has a wing. Or something.

Anybody that teaches me to thread a bobbin will save certain parties from the same fate.

Neil: George Bush would be a good president of a small community college.

Employment: A Song. A Poem. A Proclamation.

Oh there are noooo jobs in Tu-ucson/
And the streets are paved with cheeeese.
-Neil Godfrey, Dec. 4, 2005

Think I'll work retail
and save up for a trailer.
It's the Tucson way.
-Neil Godfrey, Dec. 4, 2005

I'm going to sleep my way to the top.
And I mean that literally.
-Neil Godfrey, Dec. 5, 2005

i'm sick of looking at larry king...

so i'm white spacing him out. larry king can now be seen below the fold.

From National Review

Okay before I get coffee, I thought this vital report from Moscow needed to be posted. From a reader: Here in Moscow we get Larry King a day late, and I occasionally watch him for his unique brand of hard hitting journalism. The other day, with Martha Stewart as his guest, he actually bowled me over with what must have been his trademark wit back in his heyday a hundred years ago. He asked if she was dating (this is a 64 year-old woman, mind you), and added that " . . we went out once." She quickly corrected, "We went out TO DINNER." "Yeah, but we went out." She mumbled, flustered, and Larry turns to the camera and says: "I DATED A CON!". He was back to his old self minutes later with "Why do we like cookies?"

today

Neil has more patience than I, as evidenced by his tolerance for call-ins on C-Span. I hope I get out of work early tomorrow. Inspired by Ryan, we're eating bacon for supper.

lifestyles of the rich and famous

Our apartment. Roger Ebert is really thin. I learned last night at Andrew's weenie roast that rocks have cleavage. Whoo-hoo! Sara and Erik are getting married here in June.When I ask Neil what he wants for graduation, he says underoos. A patient with dementia told me the menu option of chicken parmesan with mediterranean vegetables sounded "too esoteric."























I want to see what happens in an '06 Casey-Santorum race. I want to see what kind of national publicity a pro-life Democrat gets. I want to see a national conversation about the fact that many Democrats, even those who support legal abortion rights, do not think abortion is good or favorable. I wonder if tensions could rise between moderate Democrats and the hardcore abortion-rights groups (e.g., NARAL) who give the Dems big money. I would looooove for abortion rights not to be a politically polarizing issue.










Last night I petted a lot of dogs at Andrew's. Neil says my creative musical setup is an i-pod wannabe. Neil is beautiful. So is Sarah's blanket.

in response to emily

I got a haircut last tuesday. and neil and I rearranged the furniture! I like it a lot. and I set up a sewing machine but I'm afraid to see if it works because there is a 75% chance that I didn't thread the needle correctly. we have cream soda in the refrigerator. neil is a star. we like to go to dunkin' donuts on the weekend. after thanksgiving, I think, neil has a week and a half left of college before finals! my friend anne dreamed last night that she was on her home street in california and a 30 ft. crocodile emerged from nowhere and ate the neighbor. I dreamed about wheel of fortune. neil will come home soon and I will make him pizza.

"I don't want to blog anymore. My life is too boring."

-d

roller-coaster principle

My job can be emotionally stressful. In order to provide cognitive therapy you have to relate to where the patient is coming from so you can build a bridge to better thought organization. Relating to patients often involves talking to their spouses, especially if the patients have expressive aphasia and can't do a very good job of speaking for themselves. At other times it involves talking to their parents. Either way, you get a sense of the patient's life, interests and home environment and can thus make therapy practical. So. That means that at any given time there's a bunch of people that you pretty much don't know, who are of no relation to you, and who you will never see again after the next 1-6 weeks, but who you care about. And caring is hard because it's not like your emotional reservoir has an on/off switch (OK, maybe "yours" does ... maybe my casual use of second person wasn't the best idea). It's hard to sit with a fairly young senior citizen who, despite maximum cues, insists on confusing his daughter with his dead wife, and then working with a hit-and-run victim who is your little sister's age and lists her favorite thing to do as "heroin," and then hearing the father of a 20 year old who is learning to eat again say he doesn't know if he can review positive events from his son's life with him (recommended, to work on memory and orientation) because everything his son ever did was worthless. During the workweek I feel perpetually wide-eyed and braced, like, OK, I'm doing my job, I'm on the move, if you have a problem yo I'll solve it, but I'm not going to allow a feeling to form. At work I am better able to witness the importance of family and/or a supportive community. Imagine, if you are old and have a stroke and there is no one to look after your interests! You could lose the ability to talk and/or efficiently process information and wind up in some marginal adult care home for the last 20 years of your life! Chilling. And a host of faithful pets won't cut it because many facilities don't allow them. At work also I am forced to develop coping strategies. Sometimes my brain repeats "not your problem" like a mantra, when a patient's situation threatens to push buttons and stroke heartstrings. Last week I remembered my favorite strategy for dealing with life in general, realized a few years ago during a rousing ride on the Belmont Park roller coaster with Eliza. What's the best way to reduce the impact during the ride? What if I relax my limbs? It worked, which was really cool, although my screams were somewhat less inspired. "Relax" is something that is much easier said than done, but "relax your limbs" seems more attainable and also feels good. So between caring and trying not to feel and teaching people to talk and thinking desperately about roller coasters, I often come home to Neil a wide-eyed, hyperverbal puddle of mush. But at least it's a learning experience.

spot the fake post

here.

sometimes I feel like a little solitude

heir apparent

If Cheney resigns, is Hastert next in line, or is someone else, or does the GWB get to pick who he wants? The answer may be available on wikipedia.com.

Intelligence design

What are thoughts? Like, when I see Neil and recognize him, different parts of my brain are talking to each other, but where IS Neil in my brain? Do I have an image stored, like in jpeg? Or is it the neurological pattern itself that represents him, like a particular code? Like plotting points and movement on a map, sort of like bits/bytes (except I don't think there's any direction with those)? And memory -- I know how it's manifested, but what IS it in my brain?

It's OK to be nameless

Anonymous is back by popular demand.

Stop dragging your feet.

Who thinks Ryan should stage a TV comeback on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

"Hon, I have a question"

A la Neil: If the contents of person A's mind were downloaded -- every single memory, etc. -- and then that material was uploaded into the mind of person B, whose brain was as yet untouched, would person B then be the same person that person A had been?

A call to all

Hi! This is our wedding blog. Please make statements and queries accordingly. Bye.