The Wild Winds of Fortune

There are a great many jobs out there that are done by freelancers.  Writing greeting cards is one of those.  Many years ago, I toyed with the idea of writing cards, but then something got in the way (most probably my realization that writing them was harder than I expected) and I did not follow up.  (The story of my life, really.) I also started writing trivia questions, which I found both easier and more interesting.

While cleaning on Saturday, I discovered the box in which I kept the few that I did attempt.  These are probably ten years old at this point.

While your mileage may vary as to whether these are amusing or not, these are some of my favorites (italics indicate interior text):

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Have you ever wondered, jingle all the way to where?

For your birthday, you should go out to dinner — and for once, don’t eat like a bird!  Besides, most restaurants don’t even serve earthworms.

For your birthday, I would give you a perfect rose, gentle waves lapping on a Caribbean shore, a beautiful tropical sunset with cotton-candy clouds… None of those would fit in the envelope.

You know you’ve been in the hospital too long when you start trying to color coordinate your medicines with your hospital gown!* Get well soon.

I miss you! The dog misses you! The cat misses you! The goldfish misses you! Well, I can’t really tell about the goldfish — he’s not very articulate.

I don’t miss you.  I really don’t  miss you.  I am also Napoleon Bonaparte III.

Mom, I wish I could say that, now that I have kids, I sound just like you, but I don’t.  Hey, don’t make that face! It might freeze that way and then where would you be?

Queen Victoria had eight children, all but one of them without anesthesia.  That could explain why she was so seldom amused.

The best things in life are green: shamrocks, beer, Kermit the Frog…. Gee, I didn’t know he was Irish.

You’re the top! You’re the Coliseum! You’re the double grande decaf mocha with extra whipped cream!  Okay, so I’m no Cole Porter — you’re still the best.

Graduate, remember, as Alexander Pope said, “a little learning is a dangerous thing.”  Does this mean you’re now a menace to society?

Son, as you graduate and move into the big exciting world on your own, there is only one thing I want to say to you…. I want all my earrings back before you go.

A college student is a bit like  a caterpillar. He spends four years growing and changing, turning into a beautiful winged creature that graduates to fly free upon the breeze… Only to be eaten for lunch by some large corporate bird.  Happy Graduation, anyway.

So you’re engaged.  You’re not really off the market, you know… You’re just in escrow.**

Since there is nothing under the sun that is new, and people do tend to think alike, I would not be surprised at all if some variant of these has appeared on the card racks at Safeway in the past ten years. Still, I thought some of you might find them amusing.

And hey, if I can just find some stock photos that would match them…

*I am on a variety of meds, and once was sorely disappointed when my doctor changed the dosage of one of them to discover that the color of the new pill clashed with the color of the others. Right now, my meds all fall on the pale yellow — pale orange — tan spectrum., except for the iron supplements, which are an annoying shade of dark green that just does not go well at all with the rest.


**This actually was a conversation I had with a college classmate when I got engaged.

My new favorite drink? Two ounces of Red Stag Black Cherry Bourbon (no, it’s good! really!) and a can of Coke.  Sort of a bourbon cherry coke.

On Sunday, I was listening to NPR, when one of the commentators stated that no detainee had ever been arrested on U.S. soil.  Funny, I never knew Chicago was not in America.*

*Seriously, Padilla’s plight should give pause to anyone who is not bothered by the 2012 NDAA.

I have not written much about SOPA/PIPA, mostly because there were so many people being so much more eloquent about the dangers of the legislation than I would be.* I could not think of anything to say that would not simply be a pale imitation of others’ words.

So this is just an observation: when people whose livelihoods depend upon the security of their copyrights start raising the alarm, it is a bad bill.** (See also.)

A friend of mine on Facebook pointed out, though, that every one of us who illegally downloads a song, who can’t wait for that episode of their favorite show to come out on DVD, who gets movies off of Pirate Bay, contributes to the very real problem that these bills allege to correct. My hands are not clean, but more and more these days I am trying to be careful about where I get material.***  (I was relieved when iTunes started carrying Criminal Minds, because that meant that there was a way to see the episodes without waiting for reruns. I had not been watching the episodes I missed because there was no way to do so legally.)

I know artists, photographers and writers.  They are able to make a living doing what they do because they can control what happens with their work.  The same is true of those who make television, movies and music. They need and deserve to have their work protected.  All of us can help with that.

I am not naive enough to think that if all of us stopped swiping things the efforts to pass bills like SOPA/PIPA will go away; I’m cynical enough to think that these are as much about power and control as they are about protecting artists.  But we can stop being the users who prop up the drug cartel.

*That’s never stopped me before, I know.
**And you have to read this.  I won’t describe it, just… read.  I nearly snorted my Salted Carmel Mocha through my nose.
*** I actually bought Weird Al’s “Don’t Download This Song” for 99 cents from iTunes, which my children found incredibly funny.

New playlist:

“Recruiting Sargeant”    Great Big Sea
“Number Six Driver ”   Eddie From Ohio
“Margaritaville”    Jimmy Buffett
“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” Yvonne Elliman (From Jesus Christ Superstar)*
“Willkommen – (Cabaret)”    Joel Grey
“Bleecker to Broadway”    Eddie from Ohio
“Tainted Love”    Soft Cell
“Sweet Baby James”    James Taylor
“Brown Eyed Girl”    Van Morrison
“Vivaldi The 4 Seasons (Winter) I. Allegro Non Molto”    Antonio Vivaldi
“Rocky Raccoon”    The Beatles
“Passionate Kisses”**    Mary Chapin Carpenter
“And So It Goes”    Billy Joel
“Water Colors”    Janis Ian
“End Of The World”***   Great Big Sea
“The Rainbow Connection”    Sarah McLachlan
“I Never Was to Africa”    Ferron
“I’m Yours/Somewhere Over The Rainbow”    Straight No Chaser

It’s a playlist of songs that remind me of people for whatever reason, arranged alphabetically… by the first name of the person the song reminds me of.

Some of them, any regular reader of this blog will know (Vivaldi….hmmmm), but others… Let’s just say that if you read this, and know me well, you may think you know to whom to assign each song .  You may be right, but more probably not.

There are some strange segues in here, but that’s okay. The people I know are an eclectic lot.

* Edited to add: I changed this because I used “Helplessly Hoping” on yesterday’s playlist.  Some people have more than one song.
**For the Rocket Scientist: no, this one is not about who you think it is.
***Neither is this one, probably. 

I love Eddie from Ohio.  (Thank you, Cathy, for introducing me to them.) “Number Six Driver” is one of my favorite songs.*  Tonight, I was  listening to another song by them, “Gravity,” when I had such a startling thought, I had to replay the song several times.

Is this a song about a woman considering suicide? Okay, fleetingly (“You and I both know I’d never jump”), but still…

Or is it an extended metaphor for fear of commitment?

Or, most likely, the woman is just batshit crazy.

I think I may need to go to bed at this point.  The fact that my mind equated commitment with suicide has me a bit worried.

*Although I think I may like Robbie Schaefer’s version better.

On tonight’s Criminal Minds episode, Dr. Spencer Reid (played by the gorgeously geeky Matthew Gray Gubler) was lamenting the fact that he had  not changed the world, and he was already *gasp!* thirty.  “Do you ever have the feeling you haven’t lived up to your potential?” he asked fellow agent Emily Prentiss (played by the stunningly beautiful and sexy Paget Brewster)  …”By age thirty, Nikola Tesla had discovered alternating current.”*

Oh, I don’t know anyone who has ever felt like that.  Not at all.

And the Red-Headed Menace was wondering why I was laughing through that scene.

*With me, it was always “Alexander the Great conquered the known world by the time he was thirty.”

As someone who has had her fair share of doctor visits, I am very familiar with that standard pain chart — the one with the faces on it.  I can never figure out exactly how to use that to quantify pain.

Thanks to Hyperbole and a Half (the same person who brought you “The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas”),  I now have a better one.

The Red-Headed Menace was so incensed by the Wikipedia blackout that he wrote his Representative and Senators about SOPA and PIPA.  I’m rather proud of him.

I did not see the text of the emails, though, so I am not sure if he mentioned that actually he won’t be eligible to vote for another three years.

It does make a difference when you keep forgetting to get your anti-allergy medications  filled, when you are allergic to the cat which sleeps on your bed.

I am, for the most part, a classical music illiterate.  With the exception of the odd piece here and there, if it wasn’t in either of the Fantasia movies* or a Bugs Bunny cartoon, I likely haven’t heard it.** (Okay, so you can add “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”  I did see 2001, after all.) There is Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major,” Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony,” Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” (mainly from Independence Day concerts by the Boston Pops when I was in college), and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah (mainly from Christmas church services), but really not much else to speak of. Oh, and you can throw in “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” by Bach, which was the processional for my wedding. (The “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth was the recessional.)

The Red-Headed Menace is developing a serious taste for classical music.  And he has introduced me to Vivaldi. Especially the “Four Seasons.”  Especially “Winter.”

Wow.  Just… wow.

*I would like to note that I heard “Rhapsody in Blue” many years before Fantasia 2000, and it may just be my favorite piece of music in the world.  I once commented that if it came down to a choice of never hearing it again (or Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring,” for that matter), or giving up sex, I would probably opt for celibacy. While I think I may have been exaggerating, it was not by much, and I still think it would be a tough call.
**I also know a lot of fifteen second snippets of famous classical music pieces that are used as ringtones.  (E.g., part of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” something from “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” fifteen seconds of the “Moonlight Sonata” …) You can stop shuddering any time now.