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I'm having a really crummy day, and I need to concentrate on work, so I went searching for something wonderful to listen to that wouldn't distract me from work too much.
That means no books on tape, because I want to pay attention to that, and it means no music, not right now. I wanted to be amused.
There is one powerful episode where they do it on death and the moment of death (or the moment right before death). They are able to get the transcrips to a couple black boxes on airplanes that are going down....how the pilots say a last I love you to their family and so on. And this one great moving short story called "Bullet Through the Brain" (or something like that) about the last thoughts of a guy shot in the head by robbers... wow... that was definatly a driveway moment for me.
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It is a great program, isn't it? Sorry you were having a bad day kat--glad you found the antidote.
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There's a segment about Rent heads - a community that existed online and in gatherings to see Rent. There's a girl who was sick - and the community tracked her down so they could help. This is amazing. And it reminds me of the time that someone joked/threatened suicide on Hatrack and Hatrackers tracked him/her down.
*laugh* The opening act is about a performance of Peter Pan.
An audience wants a production to succeed - they paid to be there, and people are generally nice. People don't want to attend a lackluster evening. But there's a point where the prospect of a disaster, a catatrosphe...a fiasco becomes more entertaining than the production could possibly be.
To make a fiasco, start with a malfunctioning flying machine. Add in flying props, face plants, and some sprained ankles, and go from there. *giggle*
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Kat, I think the guy who does "This American Life" sounds wicked sexy. I love that show, but, like "Prairie Home Companion," I never remember to listen to it unless I happen to be in the car at the times it is on.
My recent favorite Garrison Keillor moment: "Old Eye for the Young Guy."
Oh, another one from the same PHC show, paraphrased:
"I used to lie on the ground and look up at the sky through the swaying branches of the trees. I would hear the screams of the people on the ferris wheel, and imagine that I was in Heaven, and they were in Hell. That was the life of a Fundamentalist child in Minnesota in those days..."
[ October 19, 2004, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: Elizabeth ]
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Ah! I remember staring a This American Life thread once! Wow. Reading this thread reminds me of some of my favorite episodes.
Careful, katharina. It doesn't always make you feel better. There was one show about the Parenting stories from hell that quite disturbed me. It had two acts, on covering two sisters who ran away from home, and the second about an attempted teen suicide.
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I have a feeling that heaven is a lot like NPR. Maybe we'll be greeted at the pearly gates by Steve Innskeep.
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"Before we return you to your regularly scheduled bliss, let's remind you of just how expensive it is to maintain the level of paradise you expect from Heaven. Your donations make it all possible...."
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*hides* No kidding. Who would have thought that someone could humiliate themselves so extremely from the safety of a Boy Scout cubicle this early in the day?
That's it. I'm writing an episode called "Adventures in Dating."
First Act: Group-writing rejection letters. This morning, I needed to write a regretful e-mail that "you're very nice and thank you for treating me so well, but I'm not interested." I expressed the feelings, sent them to AJ, and AJ crafted a lovely and coherent letter out of them for me, addressed to X because she didn't know his name. Perfect! I copied and pasted - without changing the opening.
Second Act: The Midnight Train from Prague. It's okay to meet cute med students on the train and spend all night talking, spend the day together in the science museum, and walk along the river during sunset. It's also okay to meet cute history professors on the streets of Munich in the few minutes you are alone that day, and to make plans to meet for ice cream that evening. It is, apparently, not okay to do this on the same day, especially when the ice cream stand is located by the river. I can only blame the lack of sleep.
Third Act: Music of the Night On the piano, I can play the opening bars of Music of the Night, from Phantom of the Opera. Every time I get near a piano, those are the notes I play. However, about 20 seconds in, there is a key change, and since I lost the music years ago, before I memorized the change in key, the song always falls apart at the point because I don't know what comes next. Dating's the same way - I know the opening chords like gold, but I don't know what to do once the key changes. The third act is the story of learning to play that song.
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This post wildly violates Kat's Rule of Life #6: Do not discuss love life or lack thereof on Hatrack. I guess this postscript is a warning that it may not stay.
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Nah. Twould be a shame to delete it. That touch of commonality with everybody's experience with the individual twists is ThisAmericanLife, this human life.
quote:That touch of commonality with everybody's experience
Please tell someone, SOMEONE, else has done the same thing that I did today. I will feel so much better. It't not horrible, right? I immediately followed it with an apology and much self-abasement, which I am usually not fond of, but seemed somewhat warranted by a really, really flaky day.
Maybe that could be my general plea to have pity on me - if it's been longer than a month and I start acting weird, I obviously don't know what I'm doing.
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LOL. That's classic. I needed a laugh today.
I'm fairly certain we helped someone make a Dear John template for WordPerfect back when I worked for Corel. Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Dear John is way, way too strong a word for it. We'd been on two dates, and I was bored. Doesn't "Dear John" imply some sort of relationship? There wasn't that at all - not even remotely.
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Well for Readers Digest submission I think the "dear John" cliche was the most familiar analogy with the fewest number of words. Wonder if there are any other places we could submit it. These little snippets aren't like actual real "articles" so I don't think you need to follow the same strict submission criteria. There wasn't anything in the fine print on the Digest submissions page.
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Oh, that's fine - it conveys the intent very well. I'm just getting antsy - this always happens when I violate rule #6. At this point, however, there are too many references to delete the original post.
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So they didn't go through with it. Not like the story I read of the boy who did it with a bunch of people egging him on.
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The funniest thing is, the person doing the tracking didn't even care about whether she was serious, they cared about their friends who were concerned.
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