Aww, fluggart! I did it again!

I'm going home now. Have a good weekend.

(Let's see if I can post this on the right web site this time ... 'course, this kind of takes the spontaneity right out of it all ...)

Aww, cripes! I totally $*&^#ed up this page by accidentally overwriting the quote .gif with the Arkham cover image. I don't suppose there're any Joker's Realm devotees out there who saved that quote image for any reason? I don't think I have a back-up. If you have it, and you can send it to me, I will love you forever.
Damn. That was one of the best pages, too. Damned inept file naming.

Aww, cripes, again! I posted to the wrong blog!

Damned inept BlogThis! blogging.

Aww, cripes! I totally $*&^#ed up this page by accidentally overwriting the quote .gif with the Arkham cover image. I don't suppose there're any Joker's Realm devotees out there who saved that quote image for any reason? I don't think I have a back-up. If you have it, and you can send it to me, I will love you forever.

Damn. That was one of the best pages, too. Damned inept file naming.

I wish she would go and talk to me here. Damn Japanese lessons.

I'm bored. Somebody sing to me.

Okay, now, if this featured the original team members, who actually did start out under Xavier's tuteledge as teens, then I'd be really excited about it. As it is, I'm just trepidatious.

On another WB superhero cartoon franchise related note, I just found out that Warner Brothers is delaying their release of "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker" (which was originally supposed to come out in just a couple more weeks) until December. Bastards.

I'm feeling better today, mostly. No more introspective ramblings about my own mortality. Instead I'll ramble about Buffy. Aren't you glad? I knew you would be.

The overall sentiment about this season's opener seems to be that Dracula was a let down, that he should have been more powerful, should have put up a fight and not been so easily defeated, and so on; and I agree.

But do you know what I suspect (and I hope this isn't just a big "well, duh, Jean, we all knew that already, bless your simple little heart")? Buffy's reality has been somehow altered (hence the little sister who heretofore didn't exist). That part is a pretty big "well, duh," but I was thinking it didn't start until the kid sister showed up at the end, that it was probably the little girl pulling something akin to what that Jonathan guy did to make everybody believe he was the ultimate cat's pajamas; but now I think that it started before that, and that Count Vlad is part of the altered reality. We just accepted that he was really there, because he and Buffy both exist in the realm of fiction and our willing suspension of disbelief allows for such things as crossovers; but before this I thought Dracula was supposed to be thought of as fictional in the Realm of Buffydom as well (which was supported by Angel telling that actress chick, when she asked something about if he was like Dracula, that his favorite Drac was Frank Langella). And it's no coincidence that Dracula repeated word for word what the first slayer told Buffy in last season's finale.

So my current theory is that either Dracula is still fictional and his sudden appearance was all tied into this little sister wierdness, or that he's real and he's the one who's creating this little sister wierdness; but either way the way-too-easy confrontation between the Slayer and the Prince of Darkness didn't actually happen.

I'm probably wrong, but still, it's a pretty decent theory.

Introspection has lead to melancholia, and I'm having a hard time snapping out of it.

I finished and turned in that article, but I missed today's a.m. deadline for the testimonial. That's okay, I'm tired of defending my bad wiring to people anyway. I wouldn't have said anything that I haven't already said dozens of times, and nobody ever listened before.

I'm trying to feel good about turning in the article, but even though the editor asked me to write it there is still no guarantee that they'll publish it (or pay me for it), so I think I'll delay my reaction until I get a response.

I just can't stop thinking about what a waste my adult life has been so far. If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, there would be so many things I'd regret, things I haven't done, out of either fear or sheer laziness.

I think my biggest regret would be the complete lack of romance in my life. There was one guy I pined for all through high school, but that never amounted to anything. Other than that, I've never been in love, and I've never had a serious relationship. How depressing is that? It's my own fault for being so damned picky and neurotic. Except for the occasional celebrity-crush, I don't even allow myself to fall in like with a guy until I've found out his religious background and made sure that he doesn't share any character traits whatsoever with my father. You'd be surprised how many guys that knocks out of the running, and how quickly.

I keep thinking about that line from Rent, "give into love or live in fear." I live in so much fear that I'm going to end up with someone like my dad that I've closed myself off from having any kind of really meaningful relationship with the opposite sex. I don't blame my dad, though. I blame myself for being such an overanalytical chickenshit.

The really sad thing is, I'm at a total loss as to what to do about it.

Thanks!

I'm going to have to remember to use that buttmonkey line whenever I finally get around to quitting my job.

Re: Buffy & Angel -- I liked, on both counts. Although, I was a little disappointed in Dracula, and I expected them to do more with Darla. And was it just the lighting, or did Faith have blonde highlights? Do they let people color their hair in prison? Anyway, the best part of the whole two hours was Xander's angry rant after he fell out of thrall. I hope somebody wrote that down somewhere, because I can't remember the exact wording and I want so badly to quote parts of that speech.

I didn't get to delight in them as much as I normally would have, though, because my mom decided about two minutes before Buffy started that it would be a good time to give me bad news.

A few days ago, a guy I went to junior high and high school with died of an anurysm. He was 28 years old.

This news is upsetting on so many levels. I didn't really know Todd that well. He was one of those gawky, nerdy kids that everybody picked on and made fun of. The thing is, I was one of those kids, too. You'd think we'd have banded together against the popular kids, but instead it was more like a competition to stay above each other on the totem pole. When I started to get picked on, I'd try to distract the bullies by turning their attention to Todd, and he did the same to me. There was no animosity between us, at least not on my part. We both understood. It was about survival. I harbored no bad feelings against him, and I hope he didn't have any towards me. All in all, I think we were pretty decent to each other. He was a good kid, and from everything I've heard about him since high school, he turned out to be a great guy. I wish I'd gotten to know him better when I had the chance; but you know what they say about hindsight ...

His parents were both teachers at the school. His dad was my fifth grade Science teacher, and his mom was my English teacher all through high school. She was one of my favorite teachers, one of the ones that treated me like I had potential and pushed me to fulfill it. I hate that they have to go through something like this.

What really bothers me is that 28 year old people are not supposed to just die without any warning or apparant reason. He didn't have a disease. There was no car accident or brutal act of violence or any of the other things that are usually to blame for taking someone so young. There is nowhere to place the blame. He simply died. He'd barely begun to live his life, and now he's gone. That's just not supposed to happen.

I'm in a pretty introspective mood this morning. I keep thinking about all the things I want to accomplish, and how I've barely done anything worthwhile with my life. I go to work, and complain all day about how I'd rather be writing, and fantasize about selling my book, but then I go home and watch TV until I go to bed. I tell myself that there is no hurry, that I've got plenty of time, that I've got my whole life ahead of me; but I can't really be sure of that. There is no guarantee that we'll make it to tomorrow.

I'm not making the most of my life, and I'm angry with myself for that.

I hope Todd made the most of his.

For the first time, while writing out the copyright notice for Joker's Realm today, the realization fully hit me that AOL owns Batman.

How wrong is that?

Yeah, but none of those episodes ever contained the phrase "vs. Dracula" in the title.

When I listen to Broadway cast recordings at home or in my car, I tend to sing along at the top of my lungs. Especially the ballads. I really belt those out. It ain't pretty, but it's fun. When there's noone around to hear, it's easy to pretend I sing as well as Linda Eder or Sarah Brightman.

On the other hand, when I forget myself and begin to sing along at work, my coworkers are usually pretty quick to remind me that I don't.

"Iceland. Or the Phillipines. Or Hastings. Or ... or this place!"

Hee!

By the way, don't anybody try to call me between 7 and 9 tonight, because I won't be answering the phone. Not that I ever answer the phone anyway ...

I have an article for these people due by Friday (it's written, but it's 200+ words over their maximum word limit), and a written testimony for this due by tomorrow, not to mention a bunch of things to do that are actually related to my job, and I can't stay late tonight because I have to go home and watch Buffy & Angel. So, then, I suppose I'd best get right on it ...

I saw Urban Legends: Final Cut this weekend. Now, I liked the first Urban Legend movie. It didn't push any horror barriers or set any new standards, but it was a decent enough slasher flick on par with the "I Know What You Did ..." movies. The sequel was okay, but nowhere near as satisfying, scary or suspenseful as the first. The whole "movie-within-a-movie" concept, as well as the concept of a killer who copies movie devices, were both done already, and a lot better, in the Scream series. Still, it had some good moments -- most of them more comical than scary. The best part for me was the cameo by the "Noxema girl" killer from the first film. I thought that was the most clever part of the whole movie.

My biggest complaints: The female lead was an idiot. She did everything that I thought modern horror heroines had learned not to do. If there was a place that any person with half a brain would know that it's not a good idea to enter, she entered it, alone and unarmed, even after knowing that someone was out to kill her. Whenever it looked like she might be free and clear of her pursuer, if she would just shut the hell up and be quiet, that is, she would scream for no reason in particular and give her location away. There was even one scene that reminded me of the scene in Evil Dead when Cheryl leaves the cabin and goes out into the night by herself and starts hollering, "Who's there?" at the top of her lungs ... the scene that made me think that anyone that stupid deserves what they get. To paraphrase a line from the movie, she was certainly no Jamie Lee Curtis, and I had a lot of trouble caring whether she lived or died.

The title is a bit misleading. Other than the appearances by the hilarious security guard from the first film, and one brief mention by said guard of the events in the first film, it really didn't have any relation whatsoever to the first film and doesn't serve as much of a sequel. Also, the killer is less inspired by urban legends themselves than by the student film the heroine is making which is about a killer who is inspired by urban legends.

Then there was the scene with the girl who had her kidney stolen. Who was this chick? She didn't seem to fit in with the pattern of the other victims, and nobody ever noticed she was missing. Her scenes didn't do anything to advance the plot other than to plant early (misguiding) suspicion about who the killer might be. They were completely gratuitous, just an opportunity for a cheap gross-out. That said, it was a pretty effective gross-out and, relevant or not, one of the most disturbing scenes in the entire movie.

At any rate, it was okay for a Scream knock-off, which is exactly what it was.

And it was nice to see that Joey Lawrence is still getting work these days.

Started. Once I started reading ... oh, you know what I meant.

Buffy Season Premiere Review -- This is really spoiler-heavy, and once I stopped reading I couldn't stop. If you don't want to know, don't go there.

I'm all giddy with anticipation.

Nice.

Last night I watched that show "Fear". I don't believe in ghosts (I believe in the supernatural, i.e. God, Satan, angels and demons, etc., but I believe when people die their spirits either go to Heaven or Hell with really no choice in the matter, so how could they be hanging out in houses and what have you performing hauntings? Anyway ...), but you could not have paid me enough money to go inside that prison at night, let alone to sit by myself in the dark in the creepiest part of the place. I mean, could you imagine? I almost go into apoplectic shock during power outages, and that's in my own living room behind locked doors with a big-ass scary looking dog for company. I had to sleep with the lights on after I saw the Blair Witch Project. No, I don't handle the dark well. And $3,000 would not have been nearly enough of an incentive to get me to face that fear. My figurative hat's off to those kids, even the ones who gave up and left after the first night. They're a hell of a lot braver than I.

"Pi" guy ventures into Bat Cave - This news excites me, as does the tidbit at the bottom that they're also going ahead with the live-action "Batman Beyond" movie ... but in every article I've read so far about "Beyond," they mention the new Batman's name is Tim McGuinness. In the animated version his name is Terry. I wonder if this is just a mistake, or if they changed his name, and if so, why (unless they decided that Terry is kind of a weenie name for any superhero, let alone Batman -- no offense, Terrence)?

I just hope they're not going to try to turn him into some kind of Tim Drake/Terry McGuinness hybrid ... even though the new Batman isn't really much more than a glorified Robin to the crotchety old Bruce Wayne ...

Paul Stanley's Final Lair Scene from "Phantom of the Opera." Yes, really.

Last night I dreamt that I went to a family reunion and Terri Hatcher was there. Actually, it started out as a rather pleasant dream about Dean Cain's Clark Kent, and she showed up there first as Lois Lane, which rather peeved me because I wanted to be alone with Dean/Clark, but then I went to the reunion, and she was there as herself, and ticked because people kept asking her if she could get them Howie Long's autograph. Turned out she was my Aunt Emma Lou's neice or something. Now, I really do have an Aunt Emma Lou, but my dad was the youngest of 10, and I've only actually ever met about half of his siblings, and most of the other half are dead by now, and I can't remember whether Emma Lou was one of his many sisters or one of his brother's wives. Anyway, the confusing thing is that after I woke up, and even now, I'm not sure whether it was all just in the dream, or if someone really did tell me once that Terri Hatcher is some kind of relation.

I think those Radio Shack commercials are beginning to affect me.

Funny, isn't it, how my little spurts of web design inspiration always seem to coincide with my approaching writing deadlines?

That's right, I spelled it "whi." I'll leave you to ponder whether or not it was on purpose.

Whi is it so quiet here today? Because I've been busy fiddling with Joker's Realm, that's why.

I know this is more than a week late (hey, I was in Florida. I'm still catching up.), but congratulations to Fluggart for passing his qualifier exams.

Now this is more like it. Yay, fall!

Sometimes I wish I could be one of those cute, petite little girly girls. But then I get around some of those cute, petite little girly girls and remember how much they get on my nerves, and I'm glad I'm not one of them.

I feel feverish.

Or maybe I just need to take off my jacket.

And last night was fun, in a sheer, mind-numbing terror sort of way.

About a quarter of the way through Roswell the power started going out. I say started because it pulsed on and off repeatedly for about a minute before going out completely, creating an eerie strobe effect with the lights which was accompanied by an even eerier heartbeat effect with the surround sound speaker system. The lights flashing on and off helped me to see just long enough to make my way to the kitchen, clutching Fizgig tightly along the way, and find the rechargeable flashlight. The power went out completely just as I reached for the flashlight, which turned out not to be charged and did not work. As I stood in the dark, clutching my powerless flashlight and my poodle and realizing that all of the lights on my end of the neighborhood were out and that it was really, REALLY dark and that I was going to have to hunt my car keys in the dark and then go outside in the dark to my dark car to get my Maglight and that except for the pets I was alone in my mother's big-ass house and it was DARK, I realized that the situation lended itself to a horror movie plot, and I was much afraid.

Have I mentioned I'm afraid of the dark?

So I started talking to my little dog, telling him how everything was going to be okay, as I fumbled around to find my keys (thankfully this time they were exactly where I thought I'd left them), and then I took Jake, my mom's black lab/chow/possibly some pitbull mix, with me and made it to the car. When I got there, it still felt exactly like a horror movie, so I got inside the car (checking the back seat first for killers) and locked it. After a few minutes I got hot, and sat there debating whether to just start the car and run the air conditioning and stay in there until the power returned, or to drive around for a while and see how far the power outage went, or to quit being a baby and go back in the house, when I saw several flashlights coming towards me from different directions. Soon several neighbors, including my brother and his son, converged on my mom's driveway to ponder the loss of power. I got out of the car and tried to accuse my nephew of causing it, to which he replied "Nuh-uh!" A compelling argument, so I dropped it. My neighbor insisted that I go in the house and pull the main breaker switch in case of a power surge when it finally came back on. I told him that I didn't know where it was and that everything was plugged into surge protectors anyway, and considered the matter dropped. Then my oh-so-helpful big brother piped up and said the fuse box was in the garage and really easy to get to, at which point my neighbor insisted on following me into the garage to help me pull the switch. Then he went away, and my brother and nephew went home, and I was again alone in the dark.

This time I was armed with my big-ass flashlight/battering club, so I went up to my attic space and gathered up several candles and brought them down stairs. I set them around the front room and lit them, and once satisfied with the quality and quantity of light in the room, I settled down to read Batman comics, and convinced myself that all was well and that life was not like a horror movie.

Then the dogs had to go outside.

I couldn't just let Fizgig out because he's tiny and hard to see, and not quite bright enough to move out from in front of approaching vehicles. So I had to go outside, too. Of course Jake went with us, and then he took off. Jake is very black, and it was very dark, and I didn't want to leave him out because he would be hard to see and might get hit by a car. Plus I'd heard gun shots (not really alarming seeing as how my neighborhood rests on a cliff that overlooks woods where lots of hunting takes place) and worried that one of the gun toting neighbors who didn't like Jake in the first place might use this as an excuse to off him. So I figured I should go look for him and bring him home.

I got to the end of the driveway when I heard rustling in the tall grass across the street. I shined my light over there and called out for Jake to come. Something ran out of the grass, and it wasn't Jake. It looked much more like a person than a dog. So I figured Jake was a big dog and could take care of himself, grabbed Fizgig, and ran inside and locked the door.

Again, I was much afraid.

Now for the anti-climax: I sat in the dark, having blown the candles out so I could look out the window without being seen, hoping that whoever had been lurking in the grass was not Michael Myers and was not coming for me, and eventually Jake came back and whined to be let in. I let him in and for about two minutes decided that everything was okay, then he started barking uncontrollably at something outside. So I grabbed my poodle and my comics and my flashlight/weapon and ran to my mommy's bedroom where I camped out behind locked doors reading Batman by flashlight until, simultaneously, the power came back on and my mommy came home.

Life is not a bad horror movie; but I'm still afraid of the dark.

I suppose I should write a bit about my vacation. Really, there's not much to tell. Friday - Monday morning was mostly driving, stopping to sleep in Memphis, New Orleans, and Gainesville, with a stop-off at Graceland in Memphis on Saturday morning. Graceland was impressive in it's tackiness but disappointing in it's size and lack of grandeur.

New Orleans wasn't planned, we just decided at the last minute that it would be cool to take I-55 all the way to I-10 and drive across Lake Ponchartrain (or however you spell it) instead of taking I-12 through Louisiana. I'd planned to get through it that night but it was raining pretty hard and that and all that driving across the swamps made us sleepy. Partiers that we are, when we got to New Orleans we grabbed a motel room, ordered pizza, and then went to sleep. Yep, that was our big night in the Big Easy.

Monday morning it took us about two hours to get from Gainesville to Orlando, then another two hours to find our hotel once inside the Disney compound. Okay, not really that long, but it took us a while at any rate. The hotel was actually pretty nice, considering it was of their mid-priced stock. It was the Port Orleans, so of course it had a Mardis Gras theme, or at least, Mardis Gras as watered down by the Disney Imagineers.

Monday afternoon - Wednesday night was a typical stay at Disney World. Tess was pretty unimpressed by the whole thing, and as it was my fifth time there (yes, really), I found it a little hard to get too excited over anything. I was actually pretty disappointed in a couple of changes that were made at Epcot. They changed the Imagination ride and got rid of both Figment (that little purple dragon) and the Imagination song (I loved that song) and replaced both with Eric Idle (one of the guys from Monty Python). They also changed the closing laser & fireworks show from a pretty nifty celebration of classical music from around the world to this new agey One World millenium thing that projected motion pictures on a metal globe in the middle of the lake to the whiney singing of some Celine Dion wannabe. Or maybe it actually was Celine Dion. I don't know.

Tuesday was Magic Kingdom by day and Downtown Disney (but not Pleasure Island) by night, where we got complimentary burgers at Planet Hollywood and ate them at a table next to a couple of petite foreign girls who were splitting a salad and who stared at us the entire time. I don't know what their deal was.

After dinner we went to see "Watcher" at the AMC. I love James Spader. I love him in everything he's ever been in, even "Supernova." So that made it worth the discounted admission price for me. Keanu is, of course, always fun to watch, but I didn't really buy him as a scarey serial killer. It was like, "Oh no, Ted's gonna get that girl! Bogus!" At the beginning, when he was moving around (dancing, I think, but I couldn't be sure), all I could think was, "I know Kung Fu!" Anyway. It was a wait-for-the-video kind of movie, which seems to pretty well describe all of the movies I've seen since X-Men, which was an I-can't-freaking-WAIT-for-the-video kind of movie.

Wednesday was Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom sucks.

Wednesday was also MGM, but that was when I started having the mini-breakdowns I mentioned yesterday, so we were only there long enough to see the Muppets 3D movie.

Thursday was probably the most pleasant day of the entire trip. We checked out that morning and drove over to Cocoa Beach, where we shopped at Ron Jon's and Tess saw the ocean for the first time, and we contemplated getting tattoos at the tattoo parlor across from RJ's, but Tess still doesn't know for sure what she wants to get a tattoo of, and I didn't have enough money.

After that we went to tour the Kennedy Space Center, where we got to see the launch pads. We didn't get as close to them as I'd have liked, but the Discovery was already loaded on one of them, being prepped for an October launch. From the observation tower you could only see the tip of the orange fuselage sticking up over the launch tower, but that was still pretty cool. At the Apollo/Saturn building I bought my youngest nephew a set of the emblems from each Apollo mission that the astronauts wore on their uniforms, which he thought was pretty cool, as well as a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo that looked like the moon, which he also thought was pretty cool, so I scored some major "Cool Aunt" points there.

After the Apollo tour we were both pretty tired so we cut our tour short and left. We made it all the way to Tallahassee before stopping for sleep. The next morning was when I woke up with the cold I mentioned yesterday, but even though I felt like hell we were both eager to get home, so we pushed and made it all the way to Memphis that night. Saturday was a straight shot form Memphis to home that only took about 6 hours. We were so, SO happy to get home.

So here are the highlights/lessons learned:

• Graceland isn't worth the price of admission, especially if you're not an Elvis fanatic.
• On a road trip you can subsist entirely on Funyuns, beef jerkey, and Halloween candy.
• The entire South is covered with these nasty little mating bugs this time of year. They're everywhere. They're doing it everywhere. Given a chance, they'll do it on you. I took out a lot of them with the van, both directions, but they got their revenge by having guts that refuse to be washed off.
• If you spray the front of your vehicle with WD-40 before driving through the South this time of year, the bugs won't stick to it. Unfortunately nobody told me this until after the trip.
• Days Inn sucks. La Quinta Inn is about the same price as Days Inn but is much more pleasant. Their free continental breakfast consists mainly of individually wrapped bagels and pastries which are easy to shove in your pockets and take with you. Hampton Inn costs about $20 more than La Quinta, and you certainly get your extra $20 worth, but it's all in unnecessary extras (i.e. a writing desk and a refrigerator in your room). They have a better breakfast spread, but as everything is fresh and catered you can't load up and take it with you.
• It's hard to get a room in a University town on a football weekend.
• The week after Labor Day, Disney World's hours are shorter, but so are their lines. Our longest wait for a ride was about 20 - 25 minutes.
• Florida was very hot and humid and muggy, and combined with the bugs, it was hard to maintain a good mood.
• NASA stuff is cool.
• I was mauled by Winnie the Pooh.
• Tess was mauled by Eyore.
• The food at the Crystal Palace is really good.
• The food at virtually every other place inside the Disney theme parks is not really very good at all.
• If I never go to Disney World again, that will be fine with me.

You know, every single presidential election I've been faced with since I reached voting age (all three of them) have been all about choosing between the lesser of two (or three) evils. This time around, it's harder than ever to decide which one is less evil. And they wonder why we hate to vote ...

Somewhere between Cocoa Beach and Tallahasee (both of which are in Florida, for the geographically challenged), I picked up a nasty chest cold which gave me a lovely, oh-so-feminine, rattling, hacking cough, not to mention a wicked sore throat. Today my throat no longer hurts and the cough has taken on a somewhat less moist quality, but it seems to be moving up into my head, because now my nose keeps going back and forth between being completely stopped up to leaking uncontrollably. On the bright side, my voice has taken on a husky, raspy tone which I'm told is very sexy. Too bad you boys can't hear me.

Fortunately, I had the foresight to make a doctor's appointment for this afternoon before I went on my trip. Not that I predicted I'd return to my native state feeling about as well as all of the roadkill I passed along the way. It was simply time for my annual poking and prodding and bloodletting session which my doctor insists on putting me through before renewing my prescriptions for another year. Yay fun.

Since I have to leave for the doc's in about 45 minutes and I've still a lot of work-related catching up to do, I suppose this is the last you'll hear from me today. Any more vacation related musings will have to wait for tomorrow.

You're just on pins and needles, aren't you?

I know you’re dying to hear all about my vacation, but that can wait. Today I want to talk about the disturbing news regarding a lawsuit against the American Psychiatric Association and the makers of Ritalin that claims both parties conspired to create a market to turn America’s children into drug addicts by diagnosing them with a made up disorder.

In a word: bullshit.

Bob Seay, the About.com guide to Attention Deficit Disorder, raises some excellent points about the frivolousness of this lawsuit, so I won’t get into all of that.

It depresses me how much ADD is misunderstood by the general public, as well as by the media, who continue to feed misinformation to said public, thereby increasing this misunderstanding.

I still cannot believe how many people think that ADD = bad behavior, and that the only "cure" for it that’s necessary is more discipline or better parenting; or how many people automatically associate ADD with hyperactivity and childhood rambunctiousness. Hyperactivity is only one symptom of the disorder, and one that many people with ADD, including myself, do not suffer from.

I’ll tell you a little bit about my vacation: on my third day at Disney World, I kept forgetting to take my medication. Several times that day I had to fight to keep from breaking down and crying in the middle of the park. Twice I had to just drop what I was doing and go back to my hotel room to regroup. Why? Because everything was so overwhelming to my senses that my complex thought processes literally shut down. Several times I came to a point where I could not make one more decision, not even as simple a decision as whether to buy a Coke or bottled water at the concession stand, without losing it.

I get this way in my job sometimes, too, if I forget to take my meds. It gets to where I simply cannot function. It is not because I lack the discipline to push through and work past the point of exhaustion; and it’s not because I’m too lazy to do any more work. My brain just reaches a point where it can’t take any more. Sometimes all it takes is twenty or thirty minutes of "quiet time" -- time spent alone with very little sensory input during which my thought processes can regroup and recharge -- to return to a functional state of mind. Sometimes it takes a nap. Sometimes it takes a bubble bath followed by an entire night of sleep. However, I hardly ever get that way in the first place as long as I remember to take my Ritalin.

Imagine living a life in which you get lost even on the most routine routes because you miss exits or get thrown by construction and make wrong turns; in which you’re late every morning because you can’t find your car keys even though you know that you left them right there; in which you come home every night to a messy, disorganized living space and you can’t do anything about it, no matter how miserable it makes you, because your brain has reached that point where you can’t even decide whether to start by putting away the clean dishes in the dishwasher or picking the laundry off of the bathroom floor. This is my life. This is actually only a brief outline of what my life is like. Ritalin helps me to not lose my keys, to not lose my way, to clean my living quarters without getting distracted or overwhelmed, to keep track of my money, to do my job, and to function day to day as the intelligent, capable adult that I am.

Yet according to Richard Scruggs, the lead attorney behind the suit, there is nothing wrong with me that a little discipline can’t fix. I do not have a brain disorder, because according to Scruggs, such a disorder does not exist, and the medication that helps me function as a member of society is something I’m stupid enough to have been conned into taking by the makers of Ritalin and by the APA -- nevermind the fact that I, like a large portion of ADD patients, was diagnosed by my general practitioner who is NOT a psychiatrist, and that I take the generic form of Ritalin which is NOT manufactured by Novartis.

Nevermind also the report released this week by the UCLA School of Medicine that researchers have found a new -- but not the first -- genetic link to ADD, supporting the theory that it is hereditary.

This case is ridiculous, but the lawyers behind it have nothing to lose and billions of dollars to gain by pursuing it. The people whom the lawyers claim to represent, however, which would be anyone and everyone who has ever been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin, have very little to gain and much to lose if the suit is successful. If the lawsuit prevails, claimants will split whatever is left after the attorneys take out their fees and pay off their "expert," Peter Breggin; each share will probably amount to just enough to buy a bottle of Ritalin. If successful, these claimants, along with the rest of the ADD population, will lose their right to pursue every option currently available to them to help them lead normal lives.

Not that I’m worried this will actually happen. I’m just tired of these wankers who believe they know better than I do what is best for my mental health, or who go around trying to get rich by spreading false propaganda about something I’ve struggled with my entire life.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled non-sequiturs.

How depressing. Out of all those e-mails, only 6 of them were personal. The rest was all either spam or mailing lists. Bleah.

I'm back. I just checked my e-mail, I have 163 new messages. If you wrote and expect a reply, it may take me a while.

This time tomorrow -- actually, this time tomorrow I'll probably be sitting in the drive-thru line at Burger King trying to get some good road trip breakfast-type munchies; but an hour or so from this time tomorrow I'll be on the open road with my bestest friend and lots of good, unhealthy snacks, about to cross the state line into Arkansas, on the way to Florida for a week of fun, sun, and ridiculously long lines full of grown adults who have no problem whatsoever with wearing plastic mouse ears on their heads. Yay fun!

I had originally planned to take my new digital camera and my laptop and make regular updates (with pictures no less!) whilst on the trip, but A, I haven't even been able to try out my new camera because my laptop doesn't have enough memory to let me install the driver, and B, I don't feel like messing with it. So you're just going to have to get along without me for the next 10 days. I'm sure you'll find a way to manage in my absence.

I have so much crap to get done today it's not even funny.

And yet I managed to find the time to sit here and ponder why I used an expression that implies that it might be funny if I didn't have quite so much crap to get done today, even though that wouldn't really be very funny, either.

Get to work, Jean.

First of all, as Mark explains at the beginning, it's supposed to be a crummy little tenemant in a crummy neighborhood. Probably still ridiculously expensive by Tulsa standards, but pretty cheap by Manhattan standards. Anyway, Mark probably spent most of his money on film equipment, and the rest on Maureen. Roger's an unemployed musician, he probably doesn't have any money to speak of, and what he does have probably goes for medical bills.

God, but how I miss that show already.

Cut off! I haven't been able to access my e-mail all day, which is incredibly irritating, not to mention isolating and lonely. Not that I get much more than offers to make millions from home and the occasional invitation to drop in and chat with sweet young things named Brandi that are barely of legal age and would love to show me their pictures if I would just drop by their site at www.triplexnaughtypornsite.com, and bill notices, but still, I want my e-mail.

Feh.

It's funny how bad memories can ambush you seemingly out of nowhere and ruin your mood. On the drive to work this morning, I was giving myself my usual pep talk, reminding myself that this job doesn't have nearly as much about which to hate as any of my previous jobs (I'm not sure about the structure of this sentence, but I'm leaving it anyway). For instance, I don't have to work with the public. Cranky co-workers and bosses are much easier to deal with than cranky customers, especially retail customers. Some retail store customers apparantly think that their sole purpose as a shopper is to make sales people feel as crummy as possible; still, a retail associate can get fired for telling such a customer to bite them. If you tell a coworker who is pissing you off to bite you, the worst that usually happens (at least on a first offense) is you get sent to watch a training video about how to maintain an emotionally healthy work environment. Er ... not that I know from experience.

Anyway.

So I was reminding myself how much worse my job could be, counting my blessings, as it were, when I remembered an incident that happened with a customer when I was a student at OU and supported myself by working as a cashier at the local Wal-Mart.

For some reason they liked to stick me out in the garden center at the outside register where I was all by myself, far away from my fellow cashiers. I can't imagine why. It wasn't all bad, because the Garden Center was adjacent to the toy department, which was Terrence's domain, and he would hang out back there with me when business was slow, and sneak me snacks and comic books and fun things to keep me from getting too bored and lonesome ... but I digress. The unfortunate thing about working the garden center register was that it took forever to get a manager when you needed one, there were no witnesses (I could have been killed and robbed and nobody would have known it until Terrence popped out there to chat), and nobody to come to my defense when confronted with one of the aforementioned scumba-- er, I mean, customers.

One such customer seemed pleasant enough at first. I rang him up, bagged his stuff, and took his money, all without incident. Then suddenly, and without warning, he threw a handful of pennies onto the counter and told me he wanted even bills back instead of coins. Without even giving me time to gather the pennies up and count them, he demanded to know where I went to school. I asked him why, and he said because he wanted to know "where they were producing such morons who didn't even know how to count change." I stood there, dumbfounded, and then much to my delight, the woman behind him in line piped up.

"Where did you go to school?" she asked him.

"I graduated Yale, class of (blah blah blah)," he said, smugly.

"Oh, that explains it," she said.

"What?" he asked, confused. "Why did you want to know?"

"I just wanted to know where they're producing such assholes as to go around putting down teenage kids for no good reason whatsoever," she said.

"Yeah!" I said (silently), and then added (also silently), "Fuck you, Yale bastard!"

He gathered up his pennies and took the change I was originally about to hand him and stormed off in a huff. I thanked the woman and rang her up while she railed about people who think they can treat salespeople and cashiers like dirt.

I remembered that incident this morning, and became so angry that I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. I wasn't angry at the man. I was angry at my young scared self for just standing there and letting him abuse me, relying on another customer to come to my defense. Sure, I could have gotten in major trouble if I'd said to him the things that were going through my head at the time, but looking back, there are so many things I could have said in my defense, or in his offense, that would have slipped under the radar and gotten my point across without getting me into trouble. This incident happened years ago, and there I was, getting pissed off about it all over again this morning. I really had to fight to get myself back into a decent mood.

That happens a lot. I can be in a perfectly good mood, then I'll remember something that happened ages ago, something someone said or did to me, or that I failed to say or do in my defense, and it instantly kills my good humor. I've actually had people suggest I might be bi-polar because I appear to have these sudden, major mood swings, but usually, it's just that I remembered something that pissed me off. And I have a lot of memories that piss me off.

On the other hand, it doesn't take long until something distracts me and I forget what it was that I was pissed off about, and then I'm in a decent mood again.

No wonder people think I'm tweaked.

Ooooh yeah.

As you probably expected, this past Saturday I saw both Rent and Highlander: Endgame. Now I shall do my best to review them both, beginning with ...

HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME

This was much less another "Highlander" movie sequel (which is good, because let's face it, all of the sequels thus far have sucked) and more a big screen version of the series. That said, it was pretty good. It could have been better, but it served its purpose, which was to pass the movie torch from Conner McLeod to Duncan and company. The title was a bit deceptive, as the movie did not depict the final battle to be "the one," and left plenty of room for the television series to continue as a film series. It was basically the "Highlander" version of "Star Trek: Generations." In fact, that's pretty much exactly what it was, with Conner McLeod serving as Captain Kirk and Duncan McLeod as Picard. I suppose that makes Joe Dawson and Methos the movie's Riker and Data, respectively. I'd have preferred for it to end on more of an upbeat note, as it was it was quite a downer. Still, it was a pretty decent hand-off, and I look forward to future films. I actually look forward to anything that will put both Adrian Paul and Peter Wingfield on the big screen. Talk about eye candy. Yow.

RENT

I've never been very good at reviewing musicals. They usually fall into one of three categories, and most often, the second of the three. The first is shows that I hate. There has actually only been one of these, and I walked out during intermission and tried to put the whole thing behind me, and couldn't be bothered to say anything more about it than that it sucked.

The second is shows that I like well enough that I don't regret paying to see them, but probably wouldn't go out of my way to see again. I'm actually best at reviewing these shows, because they hold my attention well enough to pay attention all the way through, but don't sweep me away so much that I can't pay attention to detail.

The third category is shows that I love, that from the first note I get so caught up that all my brain can think is "Wow! This is incredible! I'm so happy to be here! I can't believe I got such good seats! This show freaking ROCKS!" and then I'm too full of joy to be able to notice the details that make for a good review. All I can do is gush.

"Rent" falls into the third category. There is not a single critical thing I can think to say about it. Granted, I may have been a bit biased. The first time I saw the original cast perform "La Vie Boheme" and "Seasons of Love" on the Tony Awards the year it opened on Broadway, I was blown away. Soon after I bought the cast recording, and I've listened to it umpteen times since (I'm listening to it as I write this, as a matter of fact). So I was already enamored with the show when I went in.

On the other hand, I went in with impossibly high expectations, which could easily have not been met. I did experience some trepidation when I saw the program insert informing us that the role of Roger would be played at that performance by an understudy. I prepared to be disappointed with his performance, but I needn't have feared. He did a great job (I'd tell you his name if I could remember it. It was Joshua something). From the moment Mark entered the stage and the groupies in the cheap seats started screaming like they were at a rock concert, I knew I was in for something special, and I was right. Everybody did such an incredible job (even the Roger understudy), that they exceeded my expectations and gave me a better show than I'd ever imagined.

"Rent" managed the near-impossible feat of edging out "Jekyll & Hyde" for my second favorite musical (the first, of course, being "Phantom of the Opera," a show that will always be my favorite for all kinds of sentimental reasons I don't want to get into here). It's a show that I'm willing to travel far and wide to see again, that I'd have gone to see again immediately if I'd had the money and if tickets had been available. It's a show that you should see if you ever have the opportunity.

In other Labor Day Weekend news, I shampooed my carpet. I'm sure you're as thrilled about it as I.

Now I'm back at work, and I have three days to accomplish all sorts of things in preparation for my vacation, so don't expect much more than this for the week. I say that, but we both know I'll post some more, because it's a compulsion. Not much more, though.

I had this rant all written up in my little "blog this!" window, but just as I was about to post and publish it occurred to me that it would be unfair of me to inflict it on you poor souls when it would be so much more at home hidden in the pages of Joker's Realm.

... and Highlander too.

<sing-song> I'm going to see Rent tomorrow! Neener neener neener! </sing-song>

Gonna see Rent tommorow!

Gonna see Rent tomorrow.

Several months ago, there was this woman in a nearby town (Bixby, OK) who was selling a pool table (or something like that ... the details escape me), and she allowed a prospective buyer into her house. He kidnapped her, and soon after killed her, beginning a killing spree that stretched through three or four states. I think they eventually caught him in Mississippi. He killed two or three people besides that woman between here and there. So no, I don't think it's horrible that you think about that sort of thing when you go to make transactions with a stranger. A little paranoia can be a healthy thing.

I have bad putt-putt golf associations, too, but they have nothing to do with World War III.