Cold and Hungry...

It's 29 degrees, or maybe by now only 17. I am appalled by a few things tonight, so I will name a few, keep my amblings brief or my briefs ambling which would be infinitely more entertaining.

First off, I must give tribute to my brother Terry's blog at www.organizationalstars.com. Terry's writing is thought provoking and insightful whereas mine is more like a mischievous wood nymph who rearranges QWERTY to mean something immoral. At first I was bitter and resentful that I would have competition from my brother on the blog circuit and then I understood that that's the beauty of blogging - there is room for all of us. I might get serious here, I started to and then digressed into MWN (see aforementioned reference). Maybe Mischievous Wood Nymph can be a separate column where I discuss life's quandaries like putting in panty liners wrong side up or forgetting to shave before you go for a pedicure. But, really, I do have some stuff I want to get out.

Oh faithful reader(s). I can use the conditional (s) because now there are 10 of you!!! Yea! If you had any idea how happy it makes me to be well received or at least mind-numbingly entertaining for 4 minutes.!!!

...pause here to change album on I-Pod, speaking of mind-numbing...

Thank you for following me, for reading my, uh, content..thoughts..writing. Oh dear, does this mean I'm an AUTHOR?

yes, apparently with the attention span of a stapler.

Okay, back to the weather (ironic, huh?). It seems that everyone is struggling. Last week, countless people tried to make sense of the execution of four police officers in Lakewood Washington. I cannot even fathom the devastation of their loss.

I read an article about two people who met in a warming shelter last winter and are now married. The woman is just two years older than me and has health problems and is in a wheel chair. At 46 years old, she's been living on the streets 32 years. I get cranky after five days of camping. And even camping, I usually have a dignified place to pee. I don't camp when it's 17 degrees outside... during the day!

But two people found love in impossible circumstances. They fell in love, homeless, and got married, homeless, and are now seeking shelter from bone-deep cold, hoping that the shelter they land in will allow couples to stay together. They smile in the newspaper photo, they have learned to tolerate the most heinous discomfort. For them, there are no holiday cocktail parties, no fat steaming turkeys festooning burgeoning tables surrounded by 20 bleating celebrants. No, they are content to be warm for eight hours before they are shuffled back onto the street. They are discarded unseen observers. Petulant shoppers will scurry by them, competing for parking spaces, digging for keys in deep Coach handbags. People will contemplate their loose change until the light changes and then they will speed by, cars with heated seats, avoiding eye contact.


And yet the couple smiles. They are in love. They will think about much more than loose change. Change doesn't come loose in their grip. It is revered and metered out in increments. $1.25 might buy them enough coffee to stand in the corner of a convenience market until toes and fingers are warm enough to trudge on.

These things overwhelm me. I have a particular esteem for homeless people. Many of them suffer from mental illness they can not escape. Origins are unclear and frankly without meaning at this point. They were somebody's precious child, ambitious adolescents, hopeful young adults. Dreams and determination succumb to the plague of addiction, abuse and poverty. Illness goes untreated, despair unanswered.

So, whatever you embrace as December locks out the daylight:  Christmas, Winter Solstice, Kwanza, Chanukah, none of that is as important as celebrating your humanity, your comfort, and the gifts of faith and love.

NAME MY BLOG AND WIN!!!

Can you come up with a clever name for my blog?  If I choose your name, you may be already be a winner.  DON'T DELAY, BE THE FIRST CALLER, BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! 

Really, I don't know how what I do here translates.  What title would remind you to look here?  What phrase might bring others to this rhetorical rain that I leave here...

Enter today and you could win...

1.  A 20 minute supply of Ibuprofen
2.  Medical grade orthotics
3.  Barry Manilow's entire 8-track collection*
4. A set of 4 support socks in fashion colors
5. "Team Edward" tee shirt
6.  Slightly used Harry Potter wand
7.  24 pack of Old Milwaukee
8.  A First Edition Metolius Black Bucket
9.  The Missing Keg Tap
10.  Adam Lambert CD

Game on!

*my luck, one of you will actually want this and I wil spend $4700 on ebay getting it...

About the Chinese Hamster Ovaries

Okay, let me just say that mixing my overzealous romantic delusions about Adam Lambert with the topic of Chinese Hamster Ovaries was just too much even for me.

There will be more on this later but here is some food for thought. The medications used to treat Multiple Sclerosis range in price from $2500 to $5000 per month. A very dear friend of mine was recently diagnosed with MS. I don't know what I thought MS was but I didn't know much until now. How perfectly awful! And it seems so ridiculous, your own immune system attacks the myelin which is the casing around your nerves. Some of you are probably close to this disease or know someone who lives with it. This is a life changing event for me and my friend because up until now, ailing and aging was something that happened to other people, not us. She is strong and stoic and when I talk to her, she never crumbles. If her chins begins to quiver, she draws in a deep breath and talks about what she has done to arm herself in the battle or what’s for dinner. She can do that, she has a very toned “so what’ muscle and she uses it when she needs to kick the crap out of life.


So, she is telling me the price range of Interferon drugs used to slow the progression of the immune system’s attack. I am incredulous, sad, livid. She then explains to me why. The drugs are not produced chemically, in other words, the pharmaceutical companies don’t just cook this and add that and make a pill. No, she tells me, they grow the compound in Chinese Hamster Ovaries.


Really? I am still studying her as though she just explained how one might change a light bulb. And then I feel the slightest tension in the corners of my mouth. It starts as a giggle, one that I try vehemently to stifle. I can’t. It’s just too funny. Every aspect, Chinese Hamsters? Not North American or Peruvian or PetCo hamsters? Do they import them or are they churned out of local “hamster farms”. Are female hamsters forced into high-production breeding? I picture little fuzzy beige rodents hooked up to mini-machines, exchanging whatever fluids must be combined to produce something that preserves myelin in a human being.

Seriously? Chinese Hamster Ovaries? I am gone now, I start to hitch and cough. Now she is laughing, we are crying. For 15 minutes, $3000 a month medication, an uncertain future, our fear, our mortality is pushed off. For days Chinese Hamster Ovaries will chase off a number of demons.

So what?

ADAM LAMBERT..TWITTER PATED AT 44!

First of all, you can't judge me... I FREAKIN LOVE ADAM LAMBERT. For those of you who don't know, he was the runner up in last year's American Idol competition. He's dubiously gay, or bi, or not. He did a most controversial performance at the American Music Awards last week (dragging leather-clad, half naked men and women around stage on leashes - if you're interested go watch on YouTube) and now everyone is talking about how over the top it was, but to be fair, somebody thought it was good idea, you don’t get a prime time performance on AMA full of innuendo ‘n stuff and nobody noticed before you go live that it’s, um, inappropriate.

But I don't care about any of that. He was remarkably adorable and infinitely talented on AI. Sweet, unassuming, liquid silver eyes (yes, black liner aside, silver). I have forgiven him for being prettier than I am because he offsets it with spikes and leather and rivets and manly things that make him an almost irresistible boy-goddess. I say that because he is very attractive, even when he's got more make up on than a Mary Kay Cadillac. I remember in high school when Boy George graced the cover of the, oh crap, I'm going to have to Google the name of the band, what the hell? Suzanne will tell me later. Anyway, I was indignant that a fairly “unattractive girl made a band’s album cover. It wasn’t until later that I realized that ugly “girl” was Boy George.

I am NOT prettier than Adam Lambert and I’m really okay with that.  When he sings, out come sounds like melted caramel. The songs cover every visceral romantic experience from lust to heartache to redemption. His new album, For Your Entertainment, is stellar in my opinion. 

I love every song on it, it is mostly teenager friendly (be prepared to explain a few things), you can dance to it, it's makes you happy, sad, giddy  - all at once.


Okay, so when did I turn my blog into an album review? I have no musical discernment.  My father is a gifted musician and when he plays the piano in the background while I'm setting the dinner table, his music fills the room like warm firelight.  Today's pop music lacks tonality, melody, chord complexity and overall musical meat for the most part. I listen to music for the emotional response it evokes.  It has to reach me in the part of me that sees life in colors and textures.  Music inspires me to write, to cry, to feel things that are often just out of my consciousness. Adam Lambert's songs do something like that to me. And I can say that I knew him when... When what April?... when you sat your sorry ass on the couch eating Moose Tracks ice cream and drinking bad Cab?

He was just a pudgy 26 year old with sometimes overdone hair and black eyeliner hoping that he would get that infamous yellow ticket to Hollywood (see AI website if you're lost here). Somehow because I watched him evolve over every episode last season, I feel like we're old friends. Remarkably though, I have a crush like a sweaty 13 year old girl. I can see putting Adam Lambert posters up in my room and downloading his songs as ringtones.  I suddenly want to stock up on the black mascara that comes in the pink and green tube and can be acquired at any 7-11 checkout counter.  What's going on?  Like I actually get a little, okay, wait for it...

twitter-pated.

you heard me. I haven't been twitter-anything since 1982 when Kent Buehler asked me to meet him at the Portland Club Plaza. I thought it was physiologically impossible to twitter-pate at 44. There are some other -ate things that still work for me.
Migrate (downward facing boobs)
Urinate (only when I laugh or sneeze)
Flatulate (eeeww)
But twitter-PATE? Oh hell no.

So, I just had to talk about Adam Lambert, he's my new favorite thing. He will be on Barbara Walters' 10 most fascinating people of 2009 on 12/9/09 just in case you wanted to know. Funny thing is, Adam didn't win American Idol.  It was Kris somebody. Jessica says that Kris should call his first album, Kris Who?  And when Kris won, he was shocked that Adam didn't win.  They hugged, Adam smiled and wished him the best.  He knew...




..."I'm gonna take you to the top to the brink of what you believe."
     -Sure Fire Winners, For Your Entertainment
Adam Lambert