Blog Directory ID: 1379
Blog URL: http://visionsofruin.blogspot.com/
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Blog Description: A personal blog dedicated to my own dysfunctional lifestyle. Sometimes kind, sometimes catty, bitchy, or cruel. Any range of any emotion at any time. Often variable. Always honest.
Blog Category: Personal Blogs
Blog Owner: Vixen
Blog Added: January 05, 2008 03:43:35 AM
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I Have Started Another Blog
Due to this one constantly being viewed by parties that don't have any reason to be here. I am keeping this one, and may even post periodically, but for awhile, I'll be elsewhere. The new blog is invite only, and the vast majority of you are welcome to join me -- just send me an email and I'll add you in -- scalvak@gmail.com
Thanks folks. And thank you to those of you who have emailed me asking where I've been.
Hope to see you soon.
How Have Things Been?
Quite great, actually. The Mechanic and I have hit it off well, much better than I had expected. I'm totally hooked. He's taking me to Branson sometime next month depending on my work schedule. He's also asked me to move in. I haven't said yes yet. I apply for nursing next month, and he's offered to cover my tuition. .o0(Yes, I was totally hooked before the cash-flashing started, so kiss my ass.)
Normally nursing is 2 years, but I've already taken everything required and recommended for the degree, aside from Microbiology and Public Speaking, which I'm taking this fall. This means that if I'm accepted, and after the series starts, I will graduate in a little over 9 months. I graduate from Health Information Technology in April. My CMA state board is the 30th of this month, and I've already passed. I also passed A&P with a B. I know I said an A, but it's the first class that has ever made me cry. It is a very hard class. I also took it in 6 weeks as opposed to the normal 16.
My dogs are well.
I am well.
Life is good.
Fuck. This isn't Funny.
LOS ANGELES - Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Some People Are Stupid. Stuff. People I Can Do Without.
George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.
The counterculture hero's jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks why, he once asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.
"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.
The actor Ben Stiller called Carlin "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats."
Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.
When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.
When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.
"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.
Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."
He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a few TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).
"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"
In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply "die."
"'Older' sounds a little better than 'old,' doesn't it?," he said. "Sounds like it might even last a little longer. ... I'm getting old. And it's OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die I'll 'pass away.' Or I'll 'expire,' like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they'll call it a 'terminal episode.' The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome.' And if it's the result of malpractice they'll say it was a 'therapeutic misadventure.'"
Carlin won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album and was nominated for five Emmys. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.
"Nobody was funnier than George Carlin," said Judd Apatow, director of recent hit comedies such as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." "I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny."
Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.
"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration (though not their close friendship). "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."
That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.
"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things bad language and whatever it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."
Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.
While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.
"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.
From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs, including carnival organist and marketing director for a peanut brittle.
In 1960, he left with $300 and Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. His first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."
Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in the 1950s with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.
It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.
"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."
Eventually Carlin ditched the buttoned-up look for his trademark beard, ponytail and all-black attire.
But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."
Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.
Rest In Peace, Sir.
The Review
The Movie: The Strangers was highly rated, but I found it rather dull. I like movies with gore and this movie had sadly little. Was it scary? Yes and no. No in the sense that I slept perfectly well last night, and yes in the "realism" sense. It was extremely realistic.I don't want to discourage anyone from seeing it, because a lot of people would really like it. It just wasn't my type of movie. I don't regret watching it, but I wouldn't watch it again.
Hope that helps.
Ok, So Here's the Latest
Saturday evening, I'm going out with The Mechanic to see The Strangers. You Know,
If I got more feedback -- I might post more. So see, my absence is your fault.
I have another Lecture test on the 20th, and a Lab test on the 23rd (which also happens to be the day my Medication class begins, 4-9). This time, over the nervous system and the muscles in the body. Oh yes, he wants almost all of them, where they're located, what they do, etc. That's something to look forward to.
Since I know you're wondering: Yes, I flunked my last lab test. There. I said it. Piss off.
The guy in this post, I failed to mention that 3 of said kids are steps, only one is his; she's 14. We still have no direct plans, namely because he works all the time and I have A&P. I'm not sure if it's his age, or the fact that I'm 12 years younger, or what it is, but I make him self conscious! It's so cute. And it's about time I met a man that realizes that getting ahold of me is an honor and not something owed to him. It also greatly increases a man's chances of actually getting ahold of me as well.
We'll further call him The Mechanic, which if I may be frank with you, is strangely splendid. Share with me the flashbacks. I have a special place in my heart for mechanics.
Anyway, census is in folks, I'm a catch.
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