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Week(s) In Review: Music lost and found, adventures in thrifting and a suicidal hitman

So, I don't post for seven years, then I crawl out from under my rock and say I'm going to post every week, and then promptly drop off the face of the earth again. Sounds like me. Anyway, I did mean what I said and I still want to get this blog going again, so I'm going to practice yet another exercise in futility (how many calories d'you suppose that burns?) and attempt to resurrect this blog once more.

50 Years of Junk




I have a lot of stuff. Not just my stuff, the stuff accumulated by various family members that has somehow made it into my collection. This means I often lose track of my stuff and am buried in theirs. I also had a family member who was a packrat, and let's just say I'm not surprised by the stories of those people who die amongst their piles of possessions and are not found for many years.

Every year I try a proper spring cleaning but always run out of steam. This year, though, I have to get through it all and even through I've just gotten started I already feel doomed. I moved a little over a year ago and have two family homes full of crud that needs to be gone through and hopefully tossed. There have been a few good moments, such as finding parts of my music collection that I thought I had lost, including some old cassettes (I don't have any cassette players, though, so there's that). However, for the most part it's been excruciating.


My grandmother in her pre-packrat days.

In particular, trying to go through my grandmother's belongings. She had dementia at the nd, and left behind a mess that I'm still trying to unravel. She was a hoarder, which I knew, but I wasn't prepared for how emotional it would be sifting through her collection of thrift store purchases and various odds and ends that should have been chucked in the bin years ago. Yarn she never used, patterns for clothing and crafts she never made. When someone has dementia or Alzheimer's, it's like losing them twice, and going through the remnants of my grandmother's life was like losing her a third time. This is going to be a long process.

Another person's trash...

My wardrobe has always consisted primarily of clothes from the thrift store. It's hit or miss and definitely not for the faint of heart. It takes consistency and patience and a eye for detail - after all, you have to check for stains, tears, missing buttons and other flaws that make even the quirkiest thrift store find just not worth the money or effort. Where I lived before, there was a thrift store nearby that had 5 for $1 on specific color tags every Sunday. Once I moved to a different city, it just wasn't worth the drive, but I found a thrift store right around the corner from me that has sales ranging from 50 cents to even 10 cents. I haven't found much there, but I did snag a few 10 cent pieces I'm pretty excited about:



This is a nice, grown-up piece that will hopefully hide how immature I am. I already wore it to cover a city council meeting and I seemed to have passed for a professional. However, I have some goth/punk jewelry from when I was a teenager that I think will take it another direction altogether.


This is not quite my usual style but something about it struck me. It has kind of an '80s look that I think I can play up. Looking forward to the challenge with this one.


And then there's this one. I've had an animal print obsession since I was a teenager, and I think I'm definitely going to try to go full punk rocker here. 

Movie of the Week - "The Merry Gentleman"


Many of us know Michael Keaton from his comedic, often over-the-top roles, like "Mr. Mom," which is the first thing I saw him in. In fact, there was incredible backlash when Tim Burton cast him as the brooding "Batman." Keaton has also played some serious roles ("My Life," "Clean and Sober"), but many people associate him more with Beetlejuice.


In "The 2008 film "The Merry Gentleman," Keaton plays an unlikely leading man - a hitman named Frank who wants to exit the biz. By day he's a tailor, and while he carries out his hits in a matter of fact way, it's obvious he wants out - of his job, of his life, of everything. And then he meets Kate (played by Kelly McDonald) a woman on the run from her abusive husband (who's also a cop). Kate witnesses one of Frank's hits,, and we at first assume that he'll have to kill her too, to eliminate any witnesses. Instead, he befriends her, and we watch as both characters evolve and attempt to come to terms with their lives.


Though set at Christmastime, the movie is hardly cheerful, and it's definitely not something you'd watch with the family on Christmas Eve. However, the festive setting only enhances the bleakness of the characters' lives at the beginning. Keaton also directed the movie, in which he delivers an understated, quiet but somehow equally imposing performance. You wouldn't think you could sympathize with a hitman, but in this case you do. Kelly McDonald also delivers, portraying the abused Kate as not a victim or a damsel in distress, but as someone doing everything she can to rebuild her life.


The Merry Gentlemen is free on Tubi and Plex.


Week in Review: City government, punk rock ghosts and green onions

I was a journalist for about 15 years, before I spent the last 4 or so years in insurance. I recently returned to journalism on a freelance basis, and I realized how much I miss it. For a little over a year I've been freelancing for a weekly local newspaper (that still has a print edition - yay!). For them, I primarily cover events in a nearby, smaller city that traditionally doesn't get as much coverage. Mainly I report on the city council meetings there, which I thought would be excruciating, but that I have actually learned a lot from. This week's meeting was particularly scintillating, with new businesses coming to the area, an overhaul of parking ordinances, sales tax incentives...and...cupcakes!


They all got along at this meeting. That doesn't always happen. 


I've been a Scrooge since I was 15, but I have to admit the city hall Christmas decorations made me want to wrap myself in tinsel.

In other news, there's a new Western wear store coming to the city, which I'm sure has everyone breathing a sigh of relief because the other one we had here just announced it will be closing. We're Okies and we need our cowboy boots, damnit.



And finally, free food, which, let's face it, is the real reason journalists do what they do.

TV Discovery of the Week





I cancelled cable about 20 years ago and I now refuse to pay for streaming services. Thankfully, there's a lot of free stuff that's actually really good, but you do have to spend some time looking for it. I'm actually glad I cancelled cable all those years ago, because it meant I had to get creative to find worthwhile movies and TV shows, which led me to shows from all around the world. I wish we required our kids to watch foreign shows, so they could see that there's a great big world out there and that the way we do things here in the United States is not the only way and definitely not the best way. 

I recently down a Reddit rabbithole, as I am wont to do, and saw mention of an Australian series called "Spirited," about the ghost of a 1970s British punk rocker and an Australian (living) dentist who meet and fall in love after the dentist buys the penthouse the rocker was staying in before he disappeared in the early 1980s. It reminded me of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," which I've long been a fan of, and I'm also a fan of anything ghost-related and all things punk rock. Also, shows from Australia and New Zealand are increasingly becoming my favorites because I prefer their sense of humor and they're nearly all full of quirky characters - "Spirited" being a perfect example. I couldn't believe the series was free online at Amazon's Freevee, because anything with that kind of cult following typically isn't. 

I had never heard of the two lead actors, but I was already a fan of Angus Sampson, who plays one of the supporting characters. As always, he was right on target in this show, and in fact, the casting was incredible all around. I'm now actively seeking out other shows featuring Claudia Karvan and Matt King. The show does a great job pulling you into the love story but also makes the supporting characters engaging and relatable and gives each of them a backstory and a character arc. We follow the dentist, Suzy Darling, as she finally learns how to stand up for herself and the punk rocker, Henry Mallet, as he tries to remember how he died and as he learns to face his new reality. Henry adjust to being dead was particularly heart-wrenching. 

A show's soundtrack is as important to me as the storyline, and this show's tracks excel at evoking the punk rock era. The Henry Mallet/Nerve songs sound like something I would have grown up listening to - on vinyl, and many of the songs are available on YouTube.

Check out "Spirited" on the Freevee app or for free on Amazon Prime

Adventures in Gardening



I have a brown thumb. I rarely get anything to grow, and if I do, it dies pretty much immediately. I've lost count of how many times I've watched "On a Clear Day," not just because I like the movie, but because I wish I had Barbra Streisand's character's ability to make plants grow at will. My inability to foster any kind of life would be bad enough as it was, but it was especially crushing because I come from a long line of farmers on both sides of my family, and I grew up eating fresh veggies from my maternal grandmother's and great-aunt's gardens. With the way things are going, pretty soon I'll be subsisting on dandelion salad like they did in the Great Depression, so I figured I'd better try to figure out how to grow something, anything, that can keep me from withering away and floating down the street and into the abyss.

I decided to try something a little different, because I can't start anything from seed, so instead I've been taking my veggies and then starting new plants from them. So far I've had the best luck with the green onion, and have consistently been using off these three for a few weeks now. Maybe at long last I'll have my own victory garden.



I'm Gonna Live Forever...

Source: Wikimedia Commons

I've never been interested in living longer. Better, yes. Healthier, of course. But not longer. Why? Because even as a kid I saw that all that scary shit from the dystopian sci-fi novels was slowly starting to come true. In the last few years this shift has ramped up considerably, to the point where I think the Thought Police are probably watching me chuckle over the many Trump memes Moby posts on his Instagram.

Pack Your Bags, Kids, We're Going to Mars!



Credit: NASA



I call shotgun!

For years, I've been telling everyone I know that the Mothership is going to return for me really, really, really soon. Well, it's time to accept that's not going to happen, and if I want to get off this godforsaken planet I'm going to have to take matters into my own hands. And with the U.S. presidential election nearing, I need to fast track my plan.


"Simmer Down and Pucker Up!" It's International Kissing Day!




Photo Credit: Tambako the Jaguar via Compfight cc

(I blatantly stole the first part of that title from one of my favorite songs, "Do I Wanna Know?" by the Arctic Monkeys.)


Yes, it's International Kissing Day, something I didn't even know existed until I saw a post about it on a random website. And because I have this weird compulsion to dig deep down into any subject I encounter, I couldn't resist a quick Internet search for strange and interesting facts about one of our favorite pastimes. 


1. Romantic Kissing Isn't the Norm.

Here in the United States and other Western cultures, a good kiss is at the heart of any great romance. When we watch a rom-com, we're eagerly cheering on the romantic leads and anxiously awaiting that passionate kiss that signals they'll get their happily ever after. However, this is not a universal practice. In fact, as the Washington Post reports, less than half of cultures kiss romantically, with some even calling it "gross." This comes from researchers both at the University of Nevada and at Indiana University.


I'm Not Nice...and You Should Be Glad

Photo Credit: Neil. Moralee via Compfight cc

As a child, I often met older adults who were grumpy, blunt or downright rude. Were they always like that, or did age bring out the curmudgeon in them? I suspected the latter, given that they grew up in an era when manners and politeness were next to godliness. Clearly, something happened to make them abandon common courtesy. As I grew older, I discovered my gut instinct was right: Age makes you crotchety.

Up until recently, my default setting was “Be nice." Somehow, however, my default setting shifted to “WTF is wrong with you?” Getting past people’s BS trumps sparing someone’s feelings or avoiding a scene. I didn’t even realize what had happened until a customer service rep asked me not to yell at her. (For the record, I didn’t yell at her -- even though she had it coming.)

As it turns out, my disagreeableness is a good thing. A very good thing. In fact, could be a matter of life and death. And if your life is in my hands, you’ll be glad I’m a stubborn ass. As “Psychology Today”  reports, “agreeable” people can be deadly.


WTF are you lookin' at?

Photo Credit: billhd via Compfight cc



Most of us have heard of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments of the 1960s. In a nutshell, researchers told participants to deliver electric shocks to people if they answered questions incorrectly. An alarmingly high number of people delivered shock after shock after shock...eventually dealing a fatal zap to the person on the other end. Who were these sadists? Well..actually, they weren’t sadists at all, but instead the people most of us think of as polite and genial. When confronted with an order to harm someone, they complied. The participants with more “disagreeable” personalities, on the other hand, were more likely to refuse to hurt another person if asked to. It seems that the compulsion to adhere to social expectations could, quite literally, get an innocent person killed. Less regard for “niceties,” however, seems to translate to a personality more inclined to take a stand, question authority and social standards and respect the well-being of others.

So what’s the lesson here? For me, it’s this: The next time someone whines that I’m not “nice” enough, I’ll take comfort in knowing that I’m the last person you’ll ever have to worry about electrocuting you to death.

5 Days #BelowTheLine



Note: This year’s Below the Line challenge is over. While you can’t participate in the fundraiser until next year, you can help raise awareness any time. I hope you’ll consider conducting your own Below the Line experiment or donating to / volunteering with your local food bank or similar charitable organization.

The Challenge
Live Below the Line is sponsored by The Global Poverty Project. Every year, people around the world spend between one and five days eating on a budget just below the poverty line, in an effort to raise awareness of the hardships and prevalence of poverty and hunger. Participants can also raise money for one of the project's many charity partners. In the United States, the daily food budget for this experiment is $1.50. I participated for the first time this year, and here is what I learned.