Take Them Bowling

We rented Bowling for Columbine this week-end, and I would like to personally deliver it to each of your houses and watch it with you. Barring that, I guess I will just recommend that you rent it. We will probably end up buying it - I for one would like to watch it again. To blatantly steal a thought from a fictional movie, it makes me want to be a better (wo)man. It was depressing, it was uplifting, it made me laugh, and it made me cry. Who would expect that from a documentary? To some extent, it made me mad that Michael Moore went to the lengths he did in order to try and add some spice to the film - it would have stood on its own if he didn't, for example, track down Dick Clark in Hollywood and try and make him look like an asshole. He has a very meaningful interview with Charlton Heston until he decided that he needed to try and make him look bad. But for all these shortcomings (at least in my opinion), it makes a huge impact on the viewer. I believe it is to the movie's credit that it doesn't try and answer any of the questions it asks. Why are Americans so afraid? Of different races, of crime, of strangers, of the Orange Alert, of any number of things. WHEN PETS ATTACK, tonight on Fox. Now we're supposed to be afraid of our pets?

But I digress. The message I am taking away from the movie is to be involved, and not to buy into a culture of fear that is being preached to us from the media and the government. Also, to try and get other people to watch the movie. Grassroots, people, grassroots.

Billy Whoooofleck??

Not a phone call I would want to get again, really:

Phone: Jennifer?

SuperJen: Yes..

Phone: This is Carol, from [my oncologist]'s office.

[insert sound of heart stopping... here.]

Carol: Hello?

SJ: Yes, hello.

C: [my oncologist] would like you to come back in and have your blood tested again, because your Billy Rubin was low.

SJ: What?? Billy who? I don't know anyone named Billy.

C: Bilirubin, it's an enzyme having to do with liver function.

SJ: Uh-huh.

C: So, he would like you to come in in 2-3 weeks.

SJ: 2-3 weeks. Right.

C: OK so we'll see you then.

[click]

Billy Rubin, that bastard. How could he abandon me in this fashion? So, I went back in and told them that I had flunked my blood test, but had studied really hard and would like to take it again. I got nuthin - people who talk to cancer patients all day have very little sense of humor, actually. Then they stuck me again, and said they would only call me back if it was low again. I think it has been long enough that I'm out of Billy Rubin's woods. And man, no more splitting a bottle of wine before my blood tests. I'm thinking that was the culprit - my liver was trying to send an SOS to the oncologist. Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!

Life's Little Victories

These apparently happen to Keith Knight a lot more frequently than they happen to me, but I'm starting my own list.

#1: You hear an all-to-familiar sampled bass line on the radio

No! It's Vanilla Ice! Dear Lord, make it stop!!

And then it's the original song in all its glory!

Bowie! Mercury! YES!!!