beautiful, funny, sad & true

Star Wars geek-out beginniiiiiiiiing. . . . . . . . . . . now.

Ackbar! The Star Wars Talk Show

Today I nonchalantly sent what may have been the best text message ever.

“What do you mean?  I mean, I KNOW what you mean, but what do you MEAN?”

I was tempted to explain the context, and the conversation we were having, but I actually think it’s much more effective if I just leave it hanging there, undefined, on its own merit.

That might be the weirdest title I’ve ever written for a blog entry, but all I ask is that you bear with me on this one.

I got a text message from a friend yesterday that said, “Turn on NPR right now.”  I did, and heard a story about a bunch of bizarre medical conditions that afflict musicians, like that badge-of-honor rash that violinists get on the left side of their necks from rubbing a violin across it for years or decades.

I didn’t hear anything that would have caused my friend to write with such urgency, though, so after the story was over, I wrote back and said, “Caught a bit of it. . .musicians’ ailments.  What’d I miss?”

“Cello scrotum.  You need to hear the whole story.”

“Holy crap!”  I had to find out more.

As it turns out,  an English medical journal back in the 1970’s reported about a condition called ‘guitarist’s nipple’ that is (supposedly) an irritation caused by a guitar rubbing across your chest.  I suppose that’s assuming that you’re not wearing a shirt.  I’ve played guitar for many years, and my nipples are fine and dandy, thank you very much.  (TMI?  NEI?)  My ribs do go in a little bit on one side, where the top of the body of the guitar rests against your chest while you’re sitting down with it.  Oh yeah, and the calluses on my fingers are thick enough that I can touch a hot pan or something for a while and not feel it.  (“Mmmm, what’s that smell?  Smells like bacon.  Oh. . .it’s my finger.”)

So.  Anyway.

Around the time of said nipple affliction, this English doctor and her husband thought it would be funny if they one-upped that condition, so they dreamed up ‘cello scrotum’, which they said was chafing in the scrotal area.  This is, of course, impossible, because when you play the cello, you hold the instrument between your knees, which are spread far apart, which also means that your nether region is getting plenty of air, so there’s no opportunity for chafing.  Not to belabor the point, but. . .

. . .there, you see?  No chafing.  You DO get sore sometimes from sitting on the edge of a chair all the time, but that’s about it.  The cello is one of the most ergonomic instruments out there.

Apparently, though, the myth of scrotal chafing persisted for decades, until another journal mentioned the condition last December, which prompted the doctor to write to the journal and put the matter to rest once and for all.

The money quote of the article was this:   “Perhaps after 34 years, it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.”

Here’s a link to the story.

I had a ball writing this entry, by the way, but ultimately I find this subject to be completely nuts.

In all the stress, I forgot to mention the good thing that happened.  As of yesterday afternoon, I have a second niece.

So there. . .yesterday wasn’t all bad.

Today was, quite frankly, hellish.

The company at which I work was recently bought and taken over by a (formerly) rival company.  Originally, my company was split into three different ‘brands’.  Today we got word that the company that bought us is planning to close one of those three brands, and that Friday will be the day of reckoning.  This means that quite a few of my friends are going to be on the dole.

For a while, we thought that they intended to close the entire department that I’m in.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they do that, to be honest, but at least we made it through this round.  For me, the timing would be spectacularly bad, but then again, I don’t suppose there’s ever a really good time to lose a job.

So yeah.  Between thinking I was heading for unemployment, and then finding that no, a bunch of my friends are heading for unemployment, I just feel like I’ve been tied in knots.  It was an emotionally challenging day.

And by the way, I still have something in my eye; the same thing that was in there yesterday, in fact, and it hurts like effing hell.  Someone told me today that a “crazy but good” way to get things out of your eye is to pull your eyelid away from your eye by pulling on your eyelashes, then plug your nose, and then blow.  Yeah, I know.  It didn’t make any sense to me either, but I did give it the old college try, and I’m here to report that it was ineffective.  Apparently, rather than being ‘crazy and good’, it’s just crazy.

Sorry for the long lapse between entries.  I had a super busy and fun weekend, and then an incredibly busy and stressful week so far.  On Sunday night, IrishBand’s drummer came over and we recorded the drum tracks for another song, then I recorded the bass part and worked out a few guitar parts.

Tonight I have rehearsal, and my cohorts will be here pretty soon, but I did want to check in and give you an update.  And now I’m going to eat dinner and shut my eyes for a while until my friends arrive.

The other day, after writing the entry about flirtation and pedantry, I thought of a couple of examples of the type of sarcastic, pedantic, or downright nasty things I used to say to people.

ONE:
This occurred when I was nineteen, and I worked in the record department at a retail store.  Extremely glamorous (my tongue is very much in my cheek) and also low-paying.  One day, the manager and I were sitting around talking, like we used to do whenever business was slow, and a woman from another department ambled over to talk with us.  “Oh man, I hope today is better than yesterday; yesterday just drug.”

“Dragged,” I said, absently.

“What?” she asked.

“Dragged.  ‘Drug’ is something you take to achieve an altered state of consciousness.  ‘Dragged’ is what yesterday did.”

She gave me a look.  “What are you, some kind of encyclopedia?”

“Dictionary.”

She gave an exasperated sigh, then turned and walked away.  The manager put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

TWO:
This happened when I was about twenty-three, and I worked at a video store.  One of my fellow employees constantly talked about how she was on a diet, and about how she was doing this-and-that to lose weight, but she would constantly snack on candy throughout the day.  I don’t mean an occasional once-a-week kind of thing, either.  She’d buy a couple different bars in the morning and afternoon, and have an ice cream sandwich for lunch.  It was insane.

One day, she said, “I can’t figure out why I’m not losing any weight.  I mean, I eat like a bird.”

“What, you eat twice your own weight every day?”  Cause that’s what birds do.  “Or do you mean you put it down and peck at it like this?”  I made that pecking motion with my head toward her candy bar, which was sitting on the counter, half-eaten.

She got mad and walked away, and the other two employees cracked up laughing.  These days, I would never make that joke.  Maybe it’s because of all the women I know who have eating disorders.  Maybe it’s because I’m wiser about psychological matters now, and about the myriad ways that shame weasels itself into our lives, and into the decisions we make every minute of every day.  Or maybe I just think that it’s mean to make fun of people about their sensitive subjects.

All that being said, I have to confess that I do still think the ‘twice your own weight every day’ thing was funny.  But when I look at videos or pictures of myself at the time, though, I see what a jackass I used to be, and I have to cringe.

I must have been twenty-eight or thirty before I really started to change, and to grow emotionally, and to become the person I am now, but that’ll have to be a story for another day.

Was today frickin’ Christmas and nobody told me?  I got so many random gifts, it was absolutely unreal.

At work, my friend LC sent me an e-mail that said, “Are you here?” and then showed up with a bag full of CD cases.  There must have been twenty-five or thirty cases, and in each case was three CD’s!  I mean. . .oh my GOD that’s a lot of CD’s.  And best of all?  They’re all 80’s metal.  (Except for maybe a handful, like the New York Dolls and At The Drive In.  But otherwise. . .)  Seriously.  I was shaking, I was so excited to start listening to them.  After listening to the inauguration speech and a little bit of the commentary, I got through two Dio’s, a Mötley Crüe, and At The Drive In.

So then I called my mom while I was on my lunch break, and she happened to be over at her friend’s house.  This friend is my adopted aunt, by the way, who recently tracked us down on the net after we’d all been out of contact for almost thirty years.  Turns out that she lives about two blocks from my mom, so she wrote to my mom a few weeks ago and they’ve been reconnecting and spending incredible amounts of time together, which is mind-boggling and also makes perfect sense at the same time.  Naturally, my mom passed the phone to her, so I got to talk to her too.  In fact, here’s a picture of us together, which was taken when I was about a year old.

It was. . .I mean, I was practically speechless by then.

But there’s more.  My friend VL-W sent me a message which said, “Come in and see me when you can.  I have something for you.”  We were super busy, so it took me about an hour and a half, but when I was finally able to make it in there, I found that she had a super-cool black bowler hat waiting for me, which was the same one she let me borrow the other night at the IrishBand show.  She said that I could borrow it until I got one, but then wrote back right afterwards to say, “You know what?  I always think I look like a dyke in that hat, and you totally rock it.  It’s yours.”  Again. . .oh my GOD.

So I got home and there were two copies of the new Susie Blue CD waiting on my doorstep for me.  I’m in her band, and on this CD, which looks great and sounds great.  The other copy is for GuitaristDavid, my neighbor and friend, who also played on the CD.

Oh yeah.  The Susie Blue CD’s were resting on top of a box from my mom, which I didn’t even know that she’d mailed!  It  was full of new towels and kitchen stuff that she just randomly got just because she’s nice that way.

So. . .between the 75 new 80’s metal CD’s, the Susie Blue CD that I’m on, the hat, the box of housewares, the fact that Barack Obama is president now, AND I have an IrishBand show-slash-Obama-celebration tonight which is gonna frickin’ RULE. . . could today be any better?

I suppose that if I didn’t have to work (and work overtime at that) it would’ve been better.  But then again, if I hadn’t gone to work, I wouldn’t have the 75 CD’s or the hat.  So there you go.  Pretty damn good day, if I do say so myself, and it ain’t even close to being over yet.

When I was younger, I used to have this unstoppable urge to correct peoples’ grammar.  Thankfully, that impulse seems to have dissipated as I’ve gotten older, but I found out yesterday that it’s not entirely gone.

I walked over to FamousCoffeeCompany for a bit of the old you-know-what, and I was wearing my dark brown corduroy jacket.  The barista commented on it, saying that she loved it and that it was very teacher-esque.  My first thought was, “I think you mean ‘profesorial,’ ” and if this encounter had happened when I was twenty, I’m quite sure that’s what would have come flying out of my mouth.  With age comes dementia wisdom, however, so I said, “Thank you.”  Smile.  “Yeah, it even has patches on the elbows.” I raised an arm in front of me to show her.

“Nice,” she said, smiling back.  “Well, it looks great.”

I’m learning.  Slowly but surely, I’m learning.  Flirtation is much better than pedantry.  Or should that have been ‘pedanticism’?