Ironic Deaths part Deux
I know it is only a coincidence, but I still feel a little odd about my post about ironic deaths. Just a couple days later I was watching CNN to find that roofing magnate Ken Hendricks died by falling off of his garage roof.
Ironic Deaths
Bouncing around the net this morning I was wondering what ever happened to Patrick Nagel, the iconic artist who severely damaged lots of us young men with his minimalistic depictions of women that no girlfriend would ever live up to. Back in the early 80’s his work was ubiquitous, but he suddenly disappeared. I always thought that he had simply fallen out of fashion, but it turns out he was a victim of an ironic death.
How so? Well, he apparently participated in a celebrity fund raiser for the American Heart Association called the “Aerobathon” in which he did aerobics for 15 minutes. He was later found dead of a heart attack in his car. Not bad for a 38 year old.
And here I thought nobody could compete with Jim Fixx.
Lost childhood
Maybe it is just me today, but this is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen:
I found this one in one of the LiveJournals I tend to go through: It isn’t that it is a grave for a pet…I’ve seen those. The stuffed animal left behind, though, is a killer. I wonder if it was left to keep the cat company or if it was more of a symbol of a lost childhood. Either way the whole thing is pretty fucking depressing…so I thought I’d share it with you.
You’re welcome!
Emergency Preparedness
For those who don’t know, last year Buffalo got hit with a nasty storm that would later be called the October Surprise. We had an unusually early snowfall on October 12th and since the leaves hadn’t fallen from the trees as yet we suffered massive tree damage. By 8am on Friday the 13th 22” of snow had fallen leaving vast amounts of the area without power. Even though the snow melted just a couple days later it took quite a while for many people to get power again and months to clear up most of the devastation.
You can read up on it, of course, in wikipedia.
I was one of the lucky ones in that my power was only out for a couple days. We were all lucky in that we didn’t have such devastation in the middle of the winter. The fatalities would have been ludicrous.
During that time I had to make a run out to the grocery store to get some more food because we didn’t really have enough around the house. After that we had to go on another quest for something to cook on since our one camp stove was old, and trying to cook soup on a regular grill doesn’t work out so well. On the other hand we were able to figure out a few ways to make life easier in that situation.
Afterward I got to thinking about planning for such things. It wasn’t the first time we’ve gone without power. Just a few years before when I was living in another house we had an ice storm that took our power away from us in the middle of winter, and honestly that sucked beyond all compare.
So now that we’re reaching the time of year where our last catastrophe happened I’ve been thinking about it again. I have to remember to get some extra canned goods so we can eat in case we’re snowed in. I have to make sure I know where all of our emergency supplies are so we can get to them quickly. I’m thinking of investing in a generator so I can get the furnace rewired in case we’re without power when we really need the heat, or at least get a couple space heaters going to keep the pipes from bursting.
The big issue I’m having is trying to figure out a good way to catalog where everything is and what we’re prepared for. This way I can look for gaps in our plans, and make sure things are fresh. After all, nothing would suck more than huddling in the basement with a pile of expired food.
I wonder how many other people have emergency plans, and how thorough they are. I can easily see myself going overboard with as I tend to, but honestly just having a little extra food and some way to keep the house warm will make a huge difference the next time the shit hits the fan.
Season Finales
This week has demonstrated for me exactly why I hate TV so much.
On Monday we had the finale of Heroes, and man was it nice. I like how they ended it like a good comic book story. The story is finished…there is no real cliff hanger or anything like that, but they still leave enough open and foreshadowed for the next season to keep your interest. Similarly, last night we had the season finale of Lost, and FUCK was that good. I didn’t get into Lost when it first started…it wasn’t until my friend NamantH let me borrow his season 1 DVDs that I got hooked. But now…damn!
So here’s the first point of why I hate TV - if it is a good serialized series they punish you by making you wait for the next season. At one point the little woman (and for those who don’t get the reference I call her that because of one of my favorite Daffy cartoons) didn’t let us watch the finale for Las Vegas until just before the start of the next season. I should have done that with both Heroes and Lost.
So what’s the other thing? Well, there are a lot of shows I start to like but get yanked for who knows what reason. Hell…I can’t express how happy we were when they announced that Studio 60 was coming back. I don’t know why but I really like the show. Shit…I know one of the reasons…I like the nice contest of faith v/ faithlessness between Matt and Harriet (if I remember the names correctly). Why? Well, it’s kind of my thing I guess.
So anyway, if you haven’t been watching either Heroes or Lost I’d recommend it. Ignore what most of the fucknauts have been saying about them since as we all know that a lot of negative criticism on the net is written by attention seeking dorks, and not by people who actually try to enjoy their entertainment. We can of course reference the fine article by my illustrious office-mate, Mike about that one (that and I want to give him a trackback to see what happens).
Shorpy
Checking on some of my recent web comics I ran across a LOTD from User Friendly pointing to Shorpy, one of the best photo blogs I’ve seen to date. It consists of nothing but old photos. The oldest are from the Civil War, but the most recent ones are from the 50’s. All said, just some cool stuff
The funny part is that today’s entry has a photo with a woman (the one on the left) who looks a hell of a lot like someone I knew back in high school. I wonder what she’s up to these days.
I’ll have to remember to add it to my Gregarious list. I have to clean it up anyway…lots of re-arranging to do. 
Office nosferatu
There seems to be one in every office, every store, every group of friends. That one guy who decides that in spite of illness he just has to go out and make sure you get nice and infected. It happens to me all of the time, and honestly it gets incredibly frustrating. I mean, come on, it’s the 21st century. We know how diseases spread. We know about bacteria and viruses. We know about communicable diseases and how to get over them as quickly as possible.
Every doctor I’ve had has had the same recommendation: drink lots of fluids, eat well, and get some fucking sleep. When I get sick I take a couple days off of work and do exactly that. Yeah, I’ve added taking some vitamin supplements, and like most I take some drugs to work on the symptoms, but the core of the treatment is the same. Nutrition, hydration, and sleep. For a smoker I tend to recover pretty quickly. Fancy that…listening to my doctor yields positive results.
What I don’t do is show up at work and cough on everybody in sight spreading germs on every surface I touch.
Granted, I can’t entirely blame these people. After all we get to see tons of commercials about how you can treat all of the symptoms and carry on as though nothing has happened at all. Smile on your face, briefcase in hand you head off to yet another productive workday spreading the still very active disease you carry within you. We also can’t forget that a lot of jobs don’t take kindly to taking a little time off to get over the flu much less a cold. Of course that’s a policy that simply has to bite them in the ass as it spreads through the personnel.
For me it comes down to one simple thing at the end of the day: consideration. As much as I may want to hang out with people, and believe me I’m a very social person, I know that basic etiquette tells me it is best to stay home, get better, and not put everyone else at risk.
Bloody Nose
It appears that my car has a bloody nose. She’s leaking power steering fluid and honestly it is way too fucking cold out there (currently 0°F without the wind chill) for me to do much of a diagnosis so I get to take her to the shop.
The sucky thing about this is that it could be a $50 job or a $500 job. Maybe even more. I just don’t know.
This compounded with the fact that I still have to get that cracked spring taken care of before getting around to having the big 100k mile tuneup isn’t making me or my wallet particularly happy. Hopefully after all of this is done I won’t have to do much more with her for a while. Well…beyond fixing the rear wiper, but I think that’s a pretty easy one to do myself. 