crazy – Page 23 – Oh Fair New Mexico

Free Association, the headcold version

Posted on April 4, 2011April 4, 2011
by Karen Fayeth
2 Comments

In my internet wanderings over the weekend, I stumbled across LunaNiña.com, and the weekly feature Unconscious Mutterings.

It’s simply a good old-fashioned bit of free association, used to learn something more about a (usually troubled) person.

So what the heck, I’m usually troubled, why not play along?

Here we go…

Limited :: Yeah, that reminds me of that really great store in the mall from when I was a youth. I loved The Limited, used to buy all my clothes there. Is that place even open anymore? A quick Google search says yes. That’s so out of my demographic anymore…

Zombie :: Braaiiiiiins! Braaaaaains! Or, what I looked like this morning with a face puffy from a headcold and a red, raw nose. Tiiiiisssue! Tiiiiisssue!

Energy :: As in, I have none

Proof :: Proof? You want proof? I don’t gotta prove nothing to no one!

Hassle :: I’m saying! Don’t hassle me about proof. I’ll give you proof when I’m damn good and ready! (don’t mind me, it’s the fever talking)

Peep :: Does anyone actually like and eat those marshmallow Peeps? They must, because the stores are filled to the ceilings full of those vibrant hued sticky blobs. Look, I love sugar as much as the next guy, but those things are gross. Give me a Cadbury egg any day of the week!

Jogger :: Which is what I’ll need to become if I keep snarfing down the Cadbury treats.

Hunt :: Where in the hell did I put the TV remote? I swear to god I think The Good Man took it. I’ll whup a knot on his head! Don’t make me hunt you down! Oh…there it is, under my left buttock. I can’t help it, I’m sick. : cue the pitiful music :

Career :: I hope I still have one after being sick three times in seven months. My boss is very patient, but this morning he said “You are sick *again*?” Yeah…..

Plants :: The plants are digging the sun. All the little leaves and buds are alive and kicking. Spring is springing up everywhere, I love it! Not that I can enjoy it today as I’m on the couch snuffling and feeling sorry for myself. : sad trombones :

Ok, ok…enough of that….. I seem to be stuck on a meme, and not a very good one.

Onward into the day. Waiter, I’ll take a bathtub full of Theraflu…nighttime flavor.

Oooh yeaah.

Today’s incoherent ramblings brought to you by:

Themeless in Theattle

Today I rose from my bed and dashed down the hall (with yowling cat underfoot) to look at this week’s Theme Thursday webpage.

I was excited to get started on my blog post for the day. But as the page loaded, alas, no updates.

I fretted, I hit refresh, I worried. What will become of me if I don’t have a Theme Thursday prompt!

About an hour later, I decided “screw it, I’ll make my own theme.”

So I hit my favorite random word website.

The first word offered up was: reactionary

This made me think of chemical reactions things that go *BOOM*

But then I actually Googled the word and it was a lot of blah-blah-blah political stuff and people being mad.

Well that’s no fun.

So after checking the Theme Thursday site again, I went back to the random word site.

This time I got: wipe

Which made me go “ewwwwwww.” Yeah, I know, wipe can be used in non-ew ways. So I considered it. 600 words about wipe? Yeah, no.

Back to the word well.

Third try: Zoom

Ok, that’s a spicier word, and a blog post would allow me to drop the word onomatopoeia in conversation. That part rocks.

But for some reason, onomatopoeia or not, the word zoom wasn’t really inspiring me.

So I checked the Theme Thursday site again, cursed, and went back to the random word site.

Fourth time’s a charm? No, not really. I got: row

As in, the boat? Or have a? (in the British use) Or sit in the?

Nah. Boring.

Pull the magic lever again!

This time I got: advertising

What? No. I got nothing for that….

Feeling a bit frustrated and unable to find a suitable theme for today, this sunny Thursday, I sighed.

Then my brain went screeeeeeetch as though someone had applied non-ABS brakes too firmly. My mind skidded out to the side and off into a bar ditch**.

And that little voice inside my head said, “Hey, ding-a-ling, it’s Wednesday.”

So we’ll see you again tomorrow with the officially sanctioned Theme Thursday post.

Until then, forty lashes with a page a day calendar!

This awesome Fail Whale rendition is by Ed Wheeler and found on deviantart.com. Follow him on Twitter @EduardoWheeler

**I dropped the phrase “bar ditch” on The Good Man yesterday when he called to report he’d experienced a flat tire while in the heart of San Francisco. I said “are you ok?” he said “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” I replied, “well, you’re not off in a bar ditch somewhere, right?”

And then my dearest paused. This is one of those times where a Brooklyn boy and a New Mexico girl are not linguistically on the same page.

I filled the awkward space by saying, “Yeah, not that San Francisco has bar ditches.”

He replied, “Uh, yeah….so anyhow…I called AAA and they should be here in about ten minutes.”

The Tool is Not The Art

Sitting in my inbox is an invitation to join a professional association. For the tidy sum of 130 Euros (about $188 USD) I get membership, subscription to a magazine, access to networking, and as a special gift, I get a Moleskine notebook.

The ad copy reads “synonymous with quality, travel, imagination and personal identity, this notebook is a perfect companion – wherever you find inspiration or a new idea.”

Even the webpage for Moleskine refers to their product as “legendary notebooks,” noting that Hemingway, Van Gogh and Matisse all used Moleskines for their creative endeavors.

I think it’s generally agreed that the Moleskine notebook is the gold standard for artists and intellectuals and such…

Right?

So why do I have *such* a mental block about using these particular notebooks? I mean, I use a LOT of different notebooks in the course of my day, but something about the Moleskine brand itself makes me want to rebel and shout and say “No, no, no! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

I want to buy a dollar store composition book and write the greatest tome that ever existed. I wish to make my 9×6 Mead college ruled notebook the new, best standard! Hell, I can create wonderful poetry on torn piece of brown paper bag!

YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CONFORM! I CAN CREATE ON MY OWN TERMS!

Ahem.

I guess I bristle at the marketing-driven hipster idea that 1) you aren’t a real artist unless you use a Moleskine and 2) by having a Moleskine, that makes automatically makes you an artist.

Plus, they are freaking expensive. A 5×8, 240 page Moleskine is almost $10 on Amazon. And you can’t even angstily tear out a page because of the way its bound, the whole thing gets all jacked up if you rip a page out.

A Mead 5-Star 9×6 college ruled notebook with 180 pages is about $6.00 from Staples. Less if you pick up a bunch on sale. Rip pages out to your heart’s content.

Much more starving artist credibility, if you ask me.

I know, I know. The answer to all of this is, “Then don’t use Moleskines, Crazy Ass (<- my original Indian name)" Ok, by this point are you wondering just what's the point of this blog post? Yeah, me too. I guess the fight went out of me after I typed all those capitalized letters. Oh no wait, no, I got it: The artist makes the tools work. The tools don't make the artist work. If ya wanna use a Moleskine, use a Moleskine. You still have to put pen to paper and make it art.

I love how four years of writing this blog really starts to show the themes that run inside of me. While choosing tags for this post, I was surprised to find that “office supplies” has already been used as a tag. Call me (not) unpredictable…..

In Defense of Frank Burns

Posted on March 1, 2011March 1, 2011
by Karen Fayeth
3 Comments

Lately, I have been subjected to a series of long and longwinded meetings.

When my latent child brain is subject to boredom, fascinating things happen.

So, when someone in a boring meeting made a comment that reminded me of an episode of M*A*S*H, it got me thinking about the characters which led me to…

Maybe over the years, we haven’t given Frank Burns a fair shake.

Stay with me here. I have a reasoned argument to present.

Changing the point of view on this to second person to make it more impactful, here is my defense of Frank Burns and why we shouldn’t hate, but have empathy.

Here we go:

Take the characters and situation and place them in the real world. Imagine if you will:

1) You work a job that is both dangerous and complex, and you are responsible for human lives. Being a doctor is actually very important to you. That said, your two coworkers (who you are also forced to live with) are not only arrogant and disrespectful, they are also complete alcoholics.

And yet, despite being drunk a fair percentage of the time, including while at work, they are viewed as the fair haired boys. Your boss overlooks their obvious addiction and goes so far as to tell you to get over it when you bring their questionable behavior to his attention. And you outrank those two buffoons!

Deep down you know that you, sober as a judge, will never be as good a surgeon as they are while drunk on homemade gin. That knowledge chips away at your self-esteem every single day.

2) You date one of the hottest chicks in camp, which is a good thing. But as I’m fond of telling my guy friends, “dating a very beautiful woman comes with challenges.”

I mean, she IS smoking hot. Fer chrissakes, they call her “hot lips”…the trouble is, there’s been plenty of guys who have sampled those hot lips. Your va-va-voom girlfriend is a notorious flirt and will openly discuss her partying with generals and colonels around the globe, and you’re expected to just take it with a smile.

She expects you to be a good military man and constantly compares you to her legendary father. Then she lets your roommates slide on their non-military behavior because, she reasons, they are so good at what they do.

And you become acutely aware that this chick is WAY out of your league. A little neurosis sets in as you try to hang on to the hottest girl you’ll ever lay a hand on in your entire life.

3) You get zero support at home. Ok, yes, there’s that cheating with Hot Lips issue which means you are not without some blame. And yet, a nice word in the mail from the spouse would be nice. You’d like to think your own wife would be in your corner, but she’s not.

Neither are your parents. And you don’t have any friends. It’s a lonely old world stuck in a grimy tent with two hotshot lunkheads mocking your inadequacies on a daily basis.

4) People call you Ferret Face. To your face. It’s not your fault you were the big loser in the genetic Olympics and wound up with a weak chin.

5) Your hot girlfriend pressures you all the time about getting married. This, despite the fact that you told her from the start you weren’t looking to leave your wife. It’s a constant nagging pressure.

Then she goes off on R&R one day and comes back engaged so some big, tall, athletic bohunk with a strong chin and suddenly your only friend in the world is now off limits.

And this causes you to slip off your nut. You really do love the girl, but maintaining the girl has been more than a weak-chinned man can take.

6) If you can’t have love or respect, then it sure would be great to be promoted to Lt. Colonel. People would be forced to respect a Lt. Colonel. A Medal of Honor would be nice too. That would really shut them up.

7) You are probably an undiagnosed case of Aspergers, or at the very least are prone to vicious bouts of OCD. But you get zero sympathy. Meanwhile, the chronic addicts are lauded and celebrated.

It’s a pretty solid case. The more I think on it, the more I feel a little bad for hating Frank all of those years. Perhaps time has been kind to ol’ Frank.

You know, no matter what Hollywood would have us believe, in life, it’s never as easy as “that guy is the good guy” and “that guy is the bad guy.” We’re all the bad guy. And the good guy.

And Frank Burns is misunderstood.