On last night’s CBS Evening News, Steve Hartman did a story on a 78-year-old blind man who lives in a small town (only 1 million people!) in India. This man lives in a house with four generations of his family. They share one bank account. Even when he goes to work grinding flour, some family member is always following and watching to make sure he is okay, even if he does not know it.

Toward the end of the story, Hartman suggested to the man that in another country he could well be alone and fending for himself. The old man replied:

And I would ask myself, “What’s the use of having a family if when I need help I get shooed away like flies from milk?” What kind of family would that be?

I have some supposedly “Super Christian” relatives who could well ask themselves that question.

Indeed, “What kind of family would that be?”

Tags: CBS Evening News, Christianity, Christians, Family, India, Katie Couric, Steve Hartman
Comments: 1

Ah, another in my long sub-genre of “Why I am not writing” writings. Irony appreciated.

I wrote the original draft of this article in March of 2009 — nearly a year ago. The opening paragraphs read:

It’s not a matter of writing but not posting, which I sometimes fall into — I haven’t been writing at all. Period.

It’s not writer’s block. I think of plenty of things to write, I’ve simply let them flit away. And while it’s not unusual for me to stop writing for 2 or 3 months on occasion, this is something altogether different.

(As a free aside: anyone who tells you “there’s no such thing as writers’ block” is full of a bovine byproduct which prize-winning gardens find extremely nutritious.)

What happened to me? What drove me from the keyboard, the blank piece of paper, the written word? If the title of this blog article didn’t clue you in, allow my younger self from a year ago to do so:

I got my heart broken around the mid-point of (2008). Over the last two years or so I could have had no more graphic a demonstration of why I gave up on romance. I tried to “hang in there, baby,” tried to “soldier on,” even limped into September, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t go on-line at all for nearly 4 months. Didn’t even turn on the computer for nearly three months. It had become a source of pain I meant to avoid at all cost. Even now I am trepidatious at venturing into cyberspace. There’s no call for it. I assiduously avoid anywhere she might be. I know she has no intention of contacting me in any way. But still. That instinctive shying away, as if to avoid touching a deeply bruised area, remains.

She broke my heart, she broke my blog. (She broke a lot more, but that sounded like a pithy title to me….) I don’t blame her. It’s all on me — as usual. If I was any good at this stuff, I wouldn’t be 40 and single. My mistake was answering when hope knocked. The biggest mistake of all was loving to begin with. (I’d like to think if there’d not been history between us, I wouldn’t have fallen for it… but I know what a fool I am.)

Looking back, it seems ridiculous that “I couldn’t take it anymore,” ridiculous to have feared the computer, to have not even turned it on for months… but there it is. And here I am… still thinking of things to write but doing nothing… still dreaming futilely… still wondering what I can ever do to be all right.

As I concluded a year ago:

Though I have started turning on the computer again, and even dipping my cyber toe into the bit streams, writing is something I have completely fallen out of. If only love were so easy to leave.

Comments: 1

Eat as much pork as you can. We have to stop these bastards.

Tags: Humor, humour, Swine Flu
Comments: 3

For no reason whatsoever, here are some Big Brother 11 predictions.

The house usually seems to split into two groups, with one group being considered by the bulk of viewers to be “good guys,” and the other side villains. A third group doesn’t fully align but either floats back and forth as the power shifts or tries laying completely low and under the radar.

Here’s how the house is divided and my predictions for each house guest (as of 7-28-09):

“Good Guys”
Braden (already gone)
Laura (already gone)
Casey (no doubt he’s going this week)
Jordan (probably get evicted)
Jeff

“Evil Doers”
Ronnie (definitely will be evicted; I feel like he’s going next week)
Jessie (definitely will be evicted)
Natalie (definitely will be evicted)
Chima

Floaters:
Lydia (definitely will be evicted)
Kevin (definitely will be evicted)
Michelle (probably get evicted)
Russell

The ones without predictions are the ones I’m not sure about at all. Since I’m not positive they’ll get evicted, and can’t even say they probably will be evicted, I suppose that means I expect they have a great shot at making it to the end.

As of now, I would expect the final two to be Jeff and Russell. Other possibles: Chima, Michelle, or Jordan.

UPDATE 8-7-09:
Now that Ronnie is gone, I expect Jeff to use the Coup d’état and put Jessie and Natalie up together (for no other reason than that is what I would do).

Tags: Big Brother, Big Brother 11, Entertainment, Reality TV, Television
Comments: 2

When I saw Superman Returns, one of the previews which flickered onto the screen was for M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. People openly mocked it. Not just a couple disaffected teen slackers sitting too close to the screen, no, all types of people all over the theater. They were laughing, making jokes about it. As expected, that didn’t bode well for the film’s popularity. Perhaps you can gauge how not well by Shyamalan’s latest film being described as “by the director of The Sixth Sense and Signs.” (Films from 1999 and 2002 respectively, which ought to tell you something right there.)

I knew then things weren’t looking good for Shyamalan’s career. His latest film The Happening also isn’t out yet, and already the mocking has begun, as evidenced by this poster, defaced by anonymous wits in NYC:

(photo by wellohorld)

Or, as this review of The Happening by Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club states:

M. Night Shyamalan used to have a vast army of fans. Now he has a dwindling network of apologists. The former frightmaster’s descent from wunderkind to embarrassment has been unusually dramatic and public…

Why? Well, first his films are bad. The only (supposedly) good thing about The Sixth Sense is the ending — and I figured it out from the previews. (Really, have you people never read a ghost story that you couldn’t see that coming?) They all feel the same: soaked in dread, self-important, and more ponderously paced than a 36-hour child birth. It doesn’t help that like his films, the man himself is dreadfully self-important, strutting around as if he’s God’s gift to film. About the only good thing I can say about M. Night Shyamalan is he has some skill at crafting a story, but he comes up short in practically every other area I can think of.

I’ve thought for years the best thing Shyamalan could do is stop his two years between films nonsense, stop trying to be the next Alfred Hitchcock, and make several different genres of films in one year. The man needs to make a musical, a slapstick comedy, maybe a crime drama. It would go a long way to expanding his abilities and informing his other films’ outlook. As it is, he just keeps recycling the same crap over and over and audiences have been onto him for the better part of a decade. I don’t even bother watching his films anymore. I just look at spoilers to confirm I once again correctly guessed the ending.

But I’m not holding my breath for any self-discovery out of “Night,” as he likes to be called. He’d first have to acknowledge that perhaps he’s not the genius mommy always told him he was.

Yes, people are so over M. Night Shyamalan. Too bad he’ll never be over himself.

Tags: Entertainment, Film, M. Night Shyamalan, Movies, The Happening
Comments: none