A Great Marketing Idea

I would like to purchase a t-shirt that says "I hear voices and they tell me that schizophrenia is one of the least funny things in the world and belittling the struggle of those who have it makes you an utterly contemptible bastard."

Tragic, crippling, lifelong pain without hope is just not that funny to me, I guess, and the only reason I can image "voices in my head" jokes are so prevalent is ignorance, because no one who has ever spoken with a schizophrenic would ever make light of it. For example, you'd never see a t-shirt that says "The malignant tumor must have eaten the part of my brain that liked you," because it's accepted by all that cancer really isn't funny. Shizophrenia is worse than cancer; malignant tumors can be destroyed by radiation and chemotherapy and medication. Schizophrenia is terminal. A patient can only hope that the medications that do exist will quiet the voices for a while. They never fully go away. Schizophrenics live in almost constant pain and stress without hope of recovery. I do not see the humor in that.

I think I'm going to make a scene the next time I see someone wearing a shirt that makes a joke at the expense of the mentally ill, because it's beyond tasteless.

A Potato; A Woman; Her Head Lice; A Bear

Does anyone else find this comic strip as funny as I do? (click for full size)



Note: If you enjoyed this post, you should be reading the always hilarious Comics Curmudgeon. If you did not enjoy this post, well, back to making fun of me in comments with you.

Snacks I Like To Snack On

Good 'n' Plenty. The great thing about licorice is that you can offer to share it in a large group setting and maybe one person out of twenty will take you up on it. That person will now be your best friend. If that person happens to be a hot babe, well, torrid love affairs have started over less than shared appreciation for Good 'n' Plenty. Personally, I like licorice because it is dark and bitter, like my soul.

Probably to be continued later.

Desperate For Material

Most of my recent adventures reside in the realm of unbloggable, unless you want to hear about how much I hate one of my coworkers. Such a tale would be a little too merciless for this generally happy and genial blog.

Instead, I'm going to say this:

I went to Ivy Jane's birthday party on Saturday, and stayed afterwards to crash with Casey and Joe. Does it interest you to know that Casey believed that the final Harry Potter book was being released on July 23 due to some weird triangulation involving the first day of summer and Harry's birthday despite the fact that neither occur anywhere near July 23, whereas I believed the correct release date was July 21, because I remembered that it was released on the day before Casey's birthday? I probably shouldn't have to tell you who was right.

Also, Casey has a Word Document on her computer's desktop entitled "Snacks I Like To Snack On." I resisted the urge to read such deep, dark secrets.

YouTube, Part II

Monday Morning YouTube, Pt. 1

No guarantees on how long this one will be around, as it screams "Copyright Infringement."

Yes. Yes it does.

Andy: Hey [client], what do you know?
Client: huh??
Andy: I said, 'Hey [client], what do you know?'
Client: Oh.
Andy: Well?
Client: The Earth is getting warmer and warmer. Science proves it.
Andy: Wow. That was both true and unexpected.
Client: huh??
Andy: Nevermind. Thanks.
Client: Oh. You're welcome.

-----

Now then, I'm not saying that this client is more qualified to be president than the President or anything, I'm just saying it's an interesting theory that merits further study.

Monday Continues To Sneak Up On Me

Not having a typical 5 day work week will do that to you. Anyways, on to hilarity.

Conversations I Never Want To Have Again

The First Installment of a Hopefully Never Continued Series

Morbidly Obese* Nurse Detailed To Our Unit: Hey, how tall are you?
Me: 6'4".
MON: No you're not.
Me: Um.
MON: Because my baby's daddy is 6'7"...
Me: Uh.
MON: So I think you're six-foot.
Me: Well...
Dumb Coworker (to MON): Well, how tall are you?
Me: ...
MON: 5'8".
DC: Well, he looks taller than you.
MON: Wait, let me stand up.
Me: hm.
MON: I guess you might be 6'4".
Me: Yeah. (Quickly leaves).
DC: Not like you needed her permission to... (converstaions ends as I am elsewhere, fast).


And now it's time for a fun interactive web game! Take any one of my monosyllabic responses, provide the cue that provoked it, and replace my response with what you believe I was actually thinking. I mostly am curious as to whether or not people think I am as mean as I actualy am.

*Guilt-induced disclaimer: Due to many unrealistic ideas about the ideal female form, the suggested societal belief that women should not feel good about their bodies, general decency, and the fact that I have had attractive thin women turn me down for dates because they feel fat standing next to me, I do not typically make any form of comment about obesity in women, and generally find the belief that all women should be rail-thin to be utterly distasteful. This nurse, however, went well beyond the borders of healthy, attractive, voluptuous, curvy, and downright American pleasantly plumpness and into the realms of "I have a serious health problem that I refuse to do anything about," akin to a cancer survivor who won't quit smoking. I think I gave up at least 100 pounds to her. Plus, she spent much of the shift in the nurse's station doing very little, and I later had to endure a 5 minute dissertation on how much chocolate she consumes in a normal day. Thus, I refer to her as the Morbidly Obese Nurse simply because I believe morbid obesity is an inextricable part of her personality, not to make a cheap fat joke. Thank you for continuing to believe that I'm a sensitive, nice person despite the fact that the "Misanthropy" tag gets a lot more use than most would deem healthy.

Even More Self-Humiliation

Susie, apparently masquerading as my sister Casey, in comments:

Anything by S&G rocks. Although I do have horrible flashbacks of one of the worst dates of my life (he was a rich yuppie from Carmel who quoted S&G songs all night...eep!)

Hey, a recently repressed memory about my ill-fated romance with my boss while I worked at Shell is returning to consciousness. In no way will this make me feel like a loser, I'm sure.

It seems during one night of passionate romance early on in our star-crossed, furtive relationship, in the throes of post-coital cuddling, pillow-talk began commencing. Now, some of you may have realized by now that complimenting people does not come naturally to me. I have to make an effort at it, and it generally sounds painfully forced. My normal social interaction involves sarcastic jabs and self-deprecation until everyone involved feels considerably worse about their lot in life. As a result, I sucked at pillow talk, got bored very quickly, and decided to make a game out of it: would it be possible to answer every statement and question merely by quoting The Carpenters until the other party becomes so annoyed that the exercise is brought to a screeching halt?

The answer is yes, and it's easier than you'd think because it does not take long. At all. If you've ever had the desire to have your lover laugh at you following your sexual endeavors, this is a foolproof strategy, assuming the fool knows the lyrics to several songs by The Carpenters. As a bonus, The Carpenters immediately transform from a band with cheesy songs that you laugh at into an easy way to get laid. Evidence suggests that it is not a good long-term strategy, however, and should be used sparingly.

Question:

Yahoo! Education's Word of the Day:

Is it intended for absolute morons who don't know the meaning of the depressingly pedestrian featured words, or for a more intelligent and self-absorbed reader who sees his prior knowlege of every word ever featured as evidence that he's the smartest person in the world now that Einstein is dead?

Not that I know anyone like that, of course. Just a question.

Thoughts On Songs I Just Heard On the Radio

Also known as "I haven't written anything for a few days and am quickly becoming a blogging embarrassment, so I have to write something quickly."

I just returned from crashing with my friend Jeff for a couple days that I had off, and my voyage home was marked by three songs on the radio that I deem worthy of comment:

"The Locomotion" by Grand Funk Railroad: Have you heard of anyone ever actually doing the Locomotion? I have not. This song is about a dance that nobody ever dances, and yet became a hit in two incarnations. There are myriad problems with the locomotion as a dance.

First, the song's lyrics inform us that it requires "A little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul." It is difficult to find any group of people that possesses this as a group.

Second, once the basic steps are learned, it's necessary to make a chain. This complicates the first problem because now you not only need a group of people who all possess a little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul, but they all need to have the exact same amount of soul and rhythm or else the chain will break and the dance will be ruined.

Third, the instructions given for how to do the locomotion are vague at best. The dance moves consist of swinging your hips, jumping up, jumping back, and a chugga-chugga motion like a railroad train. How frequently these moves should be employed is apparently left up to the dancers' discretion, but since they need to be all on the same page, any confusion could result in injury to several dancers. Also, swinging hips from side to side while making a chugga chugga motion with the arms is not the most natural of dance moves.

Finally, after the dancers have tripped over each other while jumping up and back and fallen in a pile on the floor, the singer taunts them by saying "There's never been a dance that's so easy to do." However, it's entirely possible that this was true at the time the song was written, and exposed such a glaring deficiency in the field of Easy Dances that Line Dancing and the Macarena were formed.

"The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel: I'm hard-pressed to think of a better constructed pop song, and I really don't see any reason why someone would dislike it.

First, violins. Aptly placed violins add much to the atmosphere of a song without being over-the-top, Jim Steinman-style melodrama. The violins in the boxer don't even play melody lines, just background, held notes above the harmonies, or so it appears. In actuality, the held notes form long, drawn out melodic lines that are appreciated more as the song goes on, making sure the nigh endless "li le li's" do not get irritating.

Second, lyrics that are easy to sing along to yet uncompromised. Simon brilliantly makes the chorus a group of "li le li's" so that even people who have never heard the song before can sing along with it by the end. People who do know the song can appreciate the story of a boy who followed his dreams only to have them crushed and stuck in an endless cycle of poverty and depression where his only friends appear to be the whores, li le li.

The third major element to any good pop song is backup singers, preferably female. There are no females to be found in "The Boxer," but we do have a high baritone and a second tenor who both sound more like back-up singers than leads. Simon and Garfunkel's work on the li le lis sounds backupish, which allows the violin over the top of the melody to take on the leads. I could probably go on about the awesomeness of S&G's unique sound, but I have one more song to expound on.

"Moondance" by Van Morrison: Completely unlike Simon and Garfunkel, "Moondance" seems to succeed despite its construction. First, we have a mostly incomprehensible singer bellowing things like "Nehva tom AH tuh-jo, yo jus trimmalin' I." Second, we have prominent use of the saxophone, easily the cheesiest instrument in pop music history. It's difficult to name good songs that make frequent use of the saxophones. Even in songs I really like, the mere appearance of the saxophone can cause a short guffaw. Third, the chorus of the song is overshadowed by the catchy bass riff that occurs simultaneously. Catchy bass riffs are good, but you generally want people to remember the chorus, and the chorus happens to be the ONLY place the catchy bass riff appears throughout the song. Finally, the song is jazzy. This is fine, except that there are no other jazzy songs on the album that would suggest that Van Morrison would know what he's doing in a jazzy number. All of the other are simple folk ballads and such.

And yet, it all comes together and works marvelously, despite all of the evidence that suggests it should be otherwise. My only theory is that the bass, the flute, the piano, and the saxophone constantly remain busy and melodic, and the whole thing just kind of melts together. Truly, Moondance is a musical masterpiece of mystery.

This has been Thoughts on Songs I Just Heard On the Radio. Tune in next time I have nothing interesting going for more riveting material. You may now proceed in making fun of my musical tastes.

It's Still Monday In Montana

Break Time

No, not from blogging, even though Not Blogging seems to be all the rage these days. I'm not that hip.

Instead, this post is about what I do on my daily break at work. I have a generous 45 minute break, which gives employees enough time to go home or drive to a fast food restaurant to get a meal. The problem is that I live 30 minutes from my place of employment, and I consider fast food to be a luxury I can't afford, which is sad, because I think if I ate a little bit more fast food, I might actually gain back some of the six pounds I've already lost since January. Grumble.

But back to the matter at hand: breaks. Every day I get stranded in Richmond for 45 minutes with nothing to do except escape to a quieter place to get a refill of therapeutic resolve and diet cola. It would take about 10 minutes to drive to Meijer or Kroger, so running errands is usually out. I usually eat a complete and tasty meal with a double-portion of dessert at the hospital cafeteria for a mere fifty cents, so eating isn't a priority either. Since we don't have the staff to send two people at once, socializing cannot be accomplished. I have 45 minutes with nothing to do, every day I work.

Luckily for me, Nothing is pretty much what I do even when given a choice.

The usual break starts with a short, three minute drive to Village Pantry, during which the oldies radio station will often play a Billy Joel song. They play Billy Joel quite frequently.

Once I arrive at Village Pantry, I buy myself a refill of diet cola and possibly a snack of some kind, depending on if I brought anything from home. My snack is usually of the Gummi variety: sharks, worms, Sour Brite Nite Crawlers, or Swedish Fish are the usuals. I notice, when I purachase these gummi comestibles, that the Gonzo Candy Company that packages them offer smaller .59 or 2/$1 bags, and larger .99 bags of the same type of candy. The thing is, you get more gummi candy if you buy 2 of the 2/$1 bags than if you buy a .99 bag, and yet the bigger .99 bags are nearly always sold out while 2/$1 bags are in abundance.

I am seriously craving some Swedish Fish about now. Back to my post.

After my purchase and my daily yakking with the friendly VP staff, I meander toward the nifty booths they have set up and pick up a Palladium Item to read on the way. A lot of people around here criticize the Pal-Item, saying its coverage leaves much to be desired, but I find it suits the area. It covers a lot of local events in depth while leaving national news to other media that have more time and space to cover them better. I don't read about these local events, because I do not give a care, but I still respect the idea behind them.

Instead, I flip straight to the comics. I'm pretty lenient on daily comics, as I'm not sure I could come up with something patently hilarious every day if I had to. My general rule is that if a comic is funny a couple times a week, then it's ok. Regrettably, there are more than a few comics that fail to do this for me, so I have to do my own work to make them funny. For instance, Garfield can often be improved immensely if you ignore all of Garfield's thought balloons. It suddenly becomes a dark and disturbing strip about a lonely man obsessed with his cat. I read that online somewhere. I have no clue where. It's been noted in many places that you can improve The Family Circus by writing your own captions. Using tried and true techniques such as this, there are only a few comics that remain unreadable. I have yet to come up with a method for improving Dennis the Menace, and I really don't have the patience to read For Better Or For Worse, which typically is about 100 words too long in very small print spoken by characters who all look exactly alike without a punchline to be seen, so I can't help you there. Old people love it, so I'd ask one of them. The worst part of the Pal-Item comics is that there are no "serious" comic strips. My life would be more complete if I could make fun of Rex Morgan and The Phantom on a daily basis.

I then read my horoscope. Every day it says some variation of "Get off your ass and do something for a change." Every day I ignore it, just to spite those smarmy stars and their "advice." From the horoscope, it's on to Dear Abby, who recently fielded a letter asking if it's rude to tell a husband not to track deer blood all over the house after he goes hunting. Abby says it is, but the matter was up for debate again in a later column.

Finally, I head over to the always frightening Viewpoints section. This is where the editors of the Pal-Item really shine. Rather than simply asking for "Letters to the Editor," which require some form of literacy, they devised a feature they call "Sound Off", where readers simply call the office and rant for a few minutes, at which point the editors deem it fit to print. Hilarity ensues. Here's my personal favorite:

Universal health care is about the end of the world. Read the Bible and read Revelations -- it's coming down to the end. We're letting all these illegal people in here and giving them rights? And they're taking our Social Security and everything else? I've been disabled for a year and fighting disability and can't get it because of the illegal immigrants getting Social Security that don't even belong in this country. And they're complaining? Right now, they need to get them out of here. They don't belong here in the first place. The end of the world is coming, people. Read your Bible. Get ready.

As expected, after the opinion section, I've had my fill of Completely Normal People and return to work a broken and morose man. If I do my job well enough, my clients will become functional, healthy citizens like that gentleman.

Intervention

Three of my last four posts end with ellipses. Only one of them was warranted. The post title-ending ellipsis might, in fact, be my own personal Silent Penultimate Panel. I'll try to watch out for this in the future.

At Least He's Honest...

[Client that keeps hitting me in the head]: See you tomorrow, sir.
Andy: Good night, [pt.]
C: See you tomorrow.
A: Good night.

10 minutes later...

C (stepping out of his room): Can I come out now?
A: Where are you going?
C (calmly): I'm gonna go hit somebody. (sprints away at full speed)
A: huh? Wait! No! Stop!

*****

The frustrating part about all of this is that I'm the staff that he likes. When he first came, I could redirect him, talk him down, take him for walks, and all that good therapeutic stuff. Now, I'm perpetually guarded when around him, because he's so unpredictable. He's still polite to me, but it's difficult to be as open as I was around him on account of his randomly administered beatings. I feel like I should be making a much better effort towards figuring out his needs and what makes him tick, but instead I put more effort into keeping the other clients, my coworkers, and myself safe.

One reason there are so many bad mental health workers is that it is so hard. It's hard to keep an open mind toward a client who continually beats on people. It's hard to keep one's patience when a client asks for the same things he is not allowed to have approximately 18 times every shift and will argue every word you say. It's hard to feel good about going into work when one's shoulder is still sore from the last takedown. It's hard to address the cooperative clients' needs regularly when a few uncooperative clients demand the attention of the entire staff.

If it's Wednesday...

...then a patient will try to hit me in the head before the night is over.

This is getting really old, really quickly. Luckily, due to my cat-like reflexes, superior coordination, and all around manly physique, he didn't land any, and we assisted him to his room without injury to anyone.

Ok, actually, what happened was Jean, the night shift attendant who always shows up about 15 minutes early for her shift, came into the hall and dragged him back to his room, while I held my arms up and yelled, "I NEED SOME HELP!" while absorbing punches. Absolutely no cat-like reflexes or manly physiques were involved, so I suppose I'll have to rest my laurels on my superior coordination, due to the fact that I didn't manage to trip over myself while retreating down the hall and screaming in fear while absorbing punches before I could get saved by a middle-aged woman. Who doesn't listen to Neil Diamond or drink Diet Coke.

Another softball over the plate...

BerryBird in comments:

My college roommate D loved Neil Diamond. We ragged him pretty good about that, believe me. He also drank diet sodas, which also seemed unlikely for a scrawny male undergraduate. We lumped both traits together into his suite of middle-aged secretary behaviors. But who knows if secretaries really listen to Neil Diamond? D is the only person I've ever met who would admit to it.

My unit's evening shift employees went out for drinks and pizza after work on Friday night in honor of Jerry's last night on the shift. Here's a fun snippet of conversation:

Waitress: Can I get you anything?
Andy: Yes, I'd like a Bavarian Chocolate Cake and a Diet whatever you have... Coke it looks like.
Everyone else: (laughing)
Andy: What?
Jerry: Watching your figure there, Andy?
Claudia: Really. If you're getting a big chocolate cake, why go halfway with the Coke?
Andy: Look, my dentist told me to never drink sugared soda again. He said nothing about not eating chocolate cake.

Monday Morning YouTube

Don't know what kind of sicko would actually like this guy's music. No clue.

Don't Ask Me Why

Today I went to Wal-Mart so that I could finally spend that $10 gift card the nurses on my unit got me for Christmas. The Essential Billy Joel was on sale for $15, so I bought it. After a very, very, very long internal struggle.

You see, I don't know what to make of Billy Joel. I never get the urge to listen to him. I never think, "You know, I'd very much like to listen to 'Movin' Out' right now, but I simply don't have the necessary CD. Pity." On the other hand, I might know the words to every Billy Joel song that has gotten any play on the radio in my lifetime outside of "We Didn't Start the Fire," so I'm obviously not indifferent to his music. I like it enough to remember it, but I've never listed Billy Joel among my favorites. He's in Music Limbo.

Or at least he was. Lately I've discovered that I can pick up 103.5, an oldies station from Cincinnati on my way to work, and for about a two week stretch, I could count on hearing Billy Joel at least once on my way to or from work. On a couple occasions I heard him on the way to and from both. For reasons that are utterly unclear to me, two out of three times the song they played was "Only the Good Die Young". This doesn't make sense to me because I imagine oldies radio's target audience is very old and thus wouldn't react well to a song that mocks the Catholic Church and by extension organized religion in general. But I digress. Billy Joel comes on the radio, and I instantly begin singing along and get in a better mood. I even began joking with myself that the station had better not deny me my Billy Joel fix if it looked like I was getting close without hearing one. I make jokes to myself while I drive quite frequently, by the way, and I might add that I find myself most hilarious.

But then, one day, I heard the screen door slam, and a big yellow taxi took away the old man. And don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Or, more directly, I haven't heard a Billy Joel song in over a week, and Eddie Freaking Money seems to be following me everywhere I go. And now, I've got Billy Joel stuck in my head at least once a day. And if I hear "Baby Hold On" one more time, I'm going to be curt and snippy with a patient. Yes, both curt AND snippy. No foolin.

So now I have a Billy Joel CD, and I really don't know what to think of myself. I've heard people a generation ahead of me talk about how much of a hack Billy Joel is, but I don't see it. Michael Berube, for example, named him in his "What artist should've been a one-hit wonder?" game. (For those not clicking through, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" was the hit Joel should've kept, and the correct answer to that question remains Alanis Morrisette and "Uninvited". Thank you.) I've also heard people of my generation compare him to Elton John, but I don't see that either. Elton John has nothing like "You May Be Right" and Billy Joel never comes close to "Rocketman".

I never expected to hear Joel on an oldies radio station, but it doesn't seem like he belongs on a classic rock station either, and he appears just off of the playlist of the "80s, 90s, Now!" format. I can't seem to make fun of him, but I can't find much praise for him. I feel like I should be indifferent to him, but I'm not. He strikes me as a guy who just wrote some catchy, inoffensive pop songs, but he seems to instill wrath or love in too many people for that to be an accurate depiction.

So really, what is it that makes Billy Joel so polarizing? I can see getting into an argument that the endless airtime reserved for "My Life" and "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" would be better off given to "The Entertainer" and "She's Always a Woman", two songs that I've inexplicably never heard on the radio in my life, but at the end of the day, he remains an artist who has had some catchy hits, and a regular share of forgettable songs, which ranks him well below Tom Petty or Elton John but significantly above, say, Avril Lavigne, who Yahoo!'s front page described as a 'punk princess', implementing a phraseology that irked and troubled me enough that I used Google instead. That oughta show them. I think I should end this post now.

I Don't Like the Drugs; the Drugs, They Like Me

Take a body highly reactive to medication and add a slight head injury with a regular ibuprofen regimen and what do you get? Bizarre dreams, of course.

I dreamt I was going to the optometrist in town. I actually need to go to the eye doctor, so this is not really weird. The building I went to in my dream is actually a dentist's office. I actually need to go to the dentist, so this isn't too weird either, aside from the fact that I thought it was an optometrist.

When I went into the office, my cousin was working there as an assistant, except he had evil plans, I tell you. Evil. As a result, before he could approach my eyes with a vicious looking laser saw, I ran out of the building, and discovered I was in Los Angeles.

After trying to locate my friend Randy, and happily remembering that I'm led to believe SoCal is populated almost entirely by beautiful women, I decided I needed a job. Oh yeah, I knew I was in LA because I kept singing "I Love LA" by Randy Newman. I might actually have BEEN Randy Newman, too, because I sounded exactly like him, whereas in reality, I sound nothing like Randy Newman.

Anyway, I hopped into a subway car and started driving along the track until I reached a hospital. The supervisor there told me he needed someone to clean up a massive medicine spill. It seems that the Haldol and Geodon had spilled and were mixing together to form a hazardous material. Why did they have liquid concentrations of Haldol and Geodon? I don't know, but it was my job to clean them up. The only problem was that I'm hyper-affected by drugs, so the hazmat solution would have a worse effect on me than the people he already had. He wouldn't listen, though, so I had to get away by pointing and saying "Look at that!" and then sprinting back to my subway car before he caught me and threw me into the spill room. Fortunately, I made it just in time, and took off in my subway car very fast.

Regrettably, my subway car broke down at the foot of a gigantic, 30 story-tall hill. Since I didn't want to climb the hill, I got out of my subway car and went into the nearest building, which opened up into a boxing arena and I was coming down the aisle with a blue cape on me. I looked into the ring and my opponent was a patient from my unit, but not the one who hit me. However, after the bell rang, I spent the entirety of the match arguing with his manager and entourage about how much I owed them for dinner while the patient ran back and forth.

And then I woke up, and was very confused. And running late for work because my alarm didn't go off.

I'd kick myself, but my head still hurts.

I've read Tom the Dancing Bug for almost five years now. Every time I read it on uComics, the little navigation arrows inform me that the previous cartoon is "Tiny Sepuku", and yet now, while searching for the name of a song I just heard a snippet of, I find it independently and start reading.

It's hilarious. I waste a jillion hours a year online looking at stupid crap. How did I not just click the "Previous Cartoon" button once?

OW

Ow. Violent autistic patient. oof. Hard left hook. Ugh. Occipital lobe area. Ouch. Concentration not too good. Ack. Not concussed though. Can't get out of anything. Ick. Cold Compress leaking ooze of indeterminate substance.

So how was your day?