At the end of the day…
Think outside the box.
Drop-dead date.
Oh no you di’int…
Don’t even go there.
FTW (for the win)
iAnything (I dig my iPhone, but fuuuuck alllll, would the iCrap naming convention die already?)
kewl
do it, you won’t (unlikely you’ve ever heard this if you’re not a forum whore like I’ve been)
Anything 2.0
Additions from Libberroo and NPR:
Moving forward
Reach out
Feel free to add to the list, if I’ve forgotten anything (or if I’m guilty of something).
Via kottke and gruber, here’s the list of the 50 most loathsome people in America for 2007. Number 9 is “you” because:
You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over.
It’s sad. Not because it sounds so like me (thankfully…hopefully), but because it kinda sounds like a lot of people I’ve encountered. For my part, I don’t stop believing in freedom of speech when someone says something that offends me…I stop believing in our education systems and parenting techniques when all I hear from anyone is specious arguments, slippery slopes, straw men, bad analogies, FUD and schadenfreude.
My brother and I were talking the other day about recordings of our parents’ voices. Apparently this is something he’s had on his mind too. He’s got a few recordings of Dad’s voice on answering machine tapes, but he hadn’t found any recordings of Mom’s voice. I could tell from his voice that this was really bringing him down, as he’s probably having as much trouble remembering her voice clearly as I am.
Today he gave me a call to let me know he’s found a few tapes with her voice on them. Both of us are kinda relieved, for more than one reason. I’ll explain:
When my stepmonster was dying, she told me she had something for me. Something only for me, she said, she would not give it to either my brother or sister. It’s best to point out that, while she was dying, I willed myself to be pleasant and diplomatic with her, so that hopefully we could all end things on amicable terms when she died (my brother and sister tried, but within minutes they’d have an irresistible urge to choke her out). Her daughter seemed to be willing to negotiate “inheritances” once her mother was gone (my dad left no will)…but while her mother was still kicking, my stepsister wasn’t going to go against anything she said. And everything she said was quite literally insane.
Anyway, supposedly my stepmonster had the one thing I wanted most. She had a taped message from my mother, to me. She told me where it was. I went to get it, and it wasn’t there. And I’ll tell you this: my stepmonster never…never had this tape. My father distrusted her so completely, he had collected things of this nature and either given them to his children for safekeeping, or put them in crazy undiscoverable corners of the house so that she couldn’t destroy or dispose of them. These included, most especially, artifacts of my mother’s existence. Any reminder of my dad’s previous wife was reviled by my stepmonster.
When my brother and I talked the other day about recordings of Mom and Dad’s voices, I had a little freak-out moment. I feared that, in order to get that tape, I was gonna have to contact my stepsister. And I never want to talk to that putrid cunt again. She is her mother’s daughter, that’s for sure. My sister once said it beautifully: “You know me, I don’t swear, right? But…that…fucking…CUNT!!” Perhaps I’ll expound on that another day. Suffice it to say, no phone calls to my former stepsister or her cocksucker husband are required. I’m certain they’ve still got a number of items that are important to my family, not to mention 100% of the proceeds from the sale of our childhood home, and my father’s pension, but I think we’ve all long ago decided that it’s just smarter to cut our losses and completely sever ourselves from that gang of trash.
Ahem. So. Recordings. I haven’t heard the recordings my brother told me about, since he’s not able to transfer them to computer at the moment. But I’m just comforted to know he’s got it. There’s still one artifact that we’re both looking for: when my mom got sick, my dad made a mixed recording for her. It included music from her favorite soundtracks (Out of Africa and Somewhere In Time), mixed with my father’s voice reading passages from her favorite book of meditations. It’s always struck me as a beautiful thing that my mother specifically asked my father to get his voice down on tape, because it was the most soothing and comforting voice she’d ever known. Christ, I’m welling up just thinking about it. When she died, my father gave me the Walkman she had used for her meditations. I treated it like it was my child. When it got old and worn out and started to chew up tapes, I think I might have cried. When the headphones finally stopped working (after several repairs to the wires with solder and superglue), I think I held onto them for a year before throwing them out. To this day, they’re the only type of headphones that properly fit my ears. I’ve got a similar pair now, but they’re yellow, so I can’t even fool myself into thinking they’re the ones my mother wore.
When I was going through my father’s house after his death, looking for anything that resembled a will, and collecting precious family artifacts, I came across two duplicate copies of tapes, labeled in my father’s handwriting, each labeled “Out of Africa/Somewhere In Time.” The look on my face must have been sheer joy. Sadly, they turned out to be just the soundtracks. No trace of my dad’s voice on either tape.
I’m really hoping my brother finds that one. If there’s a chance it’s not degraded over time, I swear to god I’d make an MP3 of it and carry it on me at all times.