Slugs And Snails Are After Me

I love days like today.

I spent the whole day with a sky that looked as if snow was imminent.  I know it isn’t, but it is nice to pretend.  Then somehow, the setting sun managed to poke its snout through the cloud cover a little bit.  So that’s what I am looking at now out of my window as I type this damn critique that is due tomorrow and I forgot about until this afternoon, when I was having lunch with Meg and her friend that also teaches at her school.  Sigh.

Ironically, this article is about electronic memory aids.  Go figure.

My original title was, “Hey!  You calling me FAT?” before I got way off track.  :-)  In reality, *this* sentence is the last one I am writing; cool, huh?  “Hey!  Are you calling me FAT?” was the theme of our lunch today; not two minutes after I had sat down, Meg’s friend, in response to something I said, turned to Meg and said, “Know who your sister reminds me of?  Kirstie Alley.”  To which I held up my knife, and said, “Hey!  Are you calling me FAT?”  :-)  For the record and from what I have seen of her, I think Kirstie’s gorgeous, at least most of the time; I was trying to be funny.  Well, it stuck (mainly because, unbeknownst to me, one of Meg’s students had made a similar comment a few days ago—the ‘you calling me FAT?’ part, and so my saying the same thing really struck her as funny), and for the rest of the lunch, we were responding to each other every so often with, “Hey!  Are you calling me FAT?”  

And for what it’s worth, Meg started saying I remind her of Kirstie Alley back when she was doing all those commercials about how great it is to shop; I only saw one or two of them, but Meg watches way more TV than I do, and mentioned it about a thousand times.  But apparently Kirstie’s got new commercials now for Weight Watchers where she does the same shtick.  I should sue her for attitude infringement.  ;-)  

Butsoanyway.

In Other News, I am happy with the way that the Feliway behaviour modification spray and the Bitter Apple (on the wallpaper, once I found all of Squoosh’s secret wallpaper-eating spots) spray are working.  It *looks* like he’s quit.  I hope.  Poor Squooshable; I am certain he feels as if no one understands him, but I don’t think there is any other way out of this situation than to be temporarily mean and frustrating to him.  

And yesterday, I had a kind of epiphany-thing.  Although I am jumping the gun a little bit because I don’t take qualifiers/comprehensive exams until this coming Summer (and then with my luck, re-take them this coming Winter, ha, ha), I think I have worked through the underlying theme of the next Magnificent Octopus.  This is cool, because it gives me a domain (so to speak) on which to intellectually pee so that others don’t get any bright ideas about doing what I am doing.  Not that I think they would, but…it never hurts to clearly stake out what you are doing; I’m looking to reduce confusion later.  So that’s cool.  And I don’t get forced into doing something that I don’t want to do, a fate that has befallen one person in my group because of their procrastination and other forms of foot-dragging.  

And I have a new “stupidest thing I have ever heard”, or at least a new member of my Top Ten.  I do feel for the poor girl, but good lord; how dumb can people be?  That transcends gullible—and I am, at times, pretty gullible.  This is either really funny, or really sad…I can’t figure out which.

And speaking of really sad, last evening I heard the NPR broadcast about lobotomy as I came home, and it really was overwhelming.  I feel for Howard Dully, and it is a testament to his intelligence and humanity that he did not let what happened destroy him.  I am distressed whenever I think of all of the “miracle cures” we are offered today, and how it seems that few remember that something as insane as lobotomy was once a “miracle cure” as well.  It is upsetting to think of something like the sanctity of the human brain, personality, and life spirit being—literally—hacked up as if it were a nuisance, with the casual attitude of ordering breakfast.  Revolting.  Frightening.  Although it might be necessary in some instances, at some point (though I am not sure I would want to speculate on *when* that would be), something like that should be an avenue of last resort and with all solemnity, not something that is conducted on a whim, with such an air of showmanship, as they say that Freeman did; if what they say is true, then he probably was a sociopath.  At least in my book.

And it is things like this that just make me wonder; how can something like lobotomy be—or have been—“ok”, but something like abortion be “not ok”?  It is *exactly* things like this that make me feel as if the stork accidentally dropped me off on the wrong planet.  That is completely backwards, and horribly misled; abortion should be, although not a preferred state of affairs, something that is a less-than-pleasant fact of life, whereas the human mind (of already existing humans) should be sacrosanct.  In my world, Freeman would have been considered a mass murderer…or worse, if there is anything worse.  To *me*, being a lobotomist (the way it was done) is being worse than a mass murderer…but then again, I am an extraterrestrial in this respect, it seems.  Whether or not one believes in a soul, the human brain is the seat of all that is, well…human.  And it should be revered.  Accidents like what happened to Phineas Gage aside, the intentional destruction of a personality is far worse than simple murder (and yes, I realise that murder includes the destruction of a personality, but that is a by-product of the act, and not the *intention* of the act itself, as is a lobotomy).  To me, this conversation by the Moens is more frightening than anything Stephen King could cook up, and more vile than any politician you can name.  Same goes for Rosemary Kennedy.  “Depraved indifference to human life” falls short of adequately describing this mutilation.

And as many people as were suckered in by this “miracle cure”, you would think that we would have learnt to be more wary of panaceas.  But no…you still have people like Son-Friend’s g-f, who would take anything that promised to make her happier, thinner, bigger-boobed, taller, blonder…whatever.  People who would mutilate their body (and probably their brains too, if that were an offered and easily accessible surgery) to lose weight, or whatever.  People who…oh, I’m freaking myself out, and I don’t want to fall back on the “those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it” adage (or however it goes…wasn’t that, in an amazing feat of double-jointed irony that I’m sure only happens once every Quadrillinneum, one of Jim Jones’ favourite sayings?).  :-)   But it seems that people like that outnumber people like me.  I am actually *scared* that so many people think that the FDA is a nuisance, for example.  And, as far as “miracle cures” go, what can you really say to an adult who needs to be told *this*???   I see headlines like this, and think, “Why go on?  Let’s just kill everybody right now, put them out of their misery, and hope that Nature has better ideas next time around.”  What *are* you supposed to say to this?  I mean, I personally have found that saying, “Well, fucking DUH!” is ill-received.  For some reason, lines of reasoning such as this actually are *not* intuitively understood by many people.  

But I guess I am getting off-track.  

The Readers’ Digest Version is this:  lobotomies are bad, mmmkay?  The human brain/mind is SACRED, mmmkay?  Be afraid of miracle cures, mmmkay?  Anything worth having is going to take time and work, and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you, and is probably a very bad and evil person who doesn’t give a fuck about you, mmmkay?  Happiness does not come in a pill, or via surgery; it never has, and it never will, no matter how hard you wish it would, mmmkay?  Oh…and, in a truly just world, Howard Dully’s evil witch whore stepmother would have been drawn and quartered, mmmkay?  

Butsoanyway.

I have nattered on for longer than I had meant to, and need to finish this critique so that I can move on to the next almost-overdue thing.  :-)  Back to work.  Pfft.