Heath Ledger is dead, apparently found naked on his bed in his apartment and with pills in proximity to his body.
That's what is known; anything else is speculation. However, not to be slowed down by the lack of fact, commentators have spent the hours since the discovery of Ledger's body posing theories about this death -- and then making a point of claiming that they don't want to "speculate" about the cause of his death. When you have no facts, but you speak as if you do, you are "speculating," not reporting, and speculation creates the worst case scenario, rather than giving the benefit of the doubt to the victim of the speculation.
Sure, the actor could have committed suicide, but what if he simply took too many pills because he couldn't sleep? What if he had an allergic reaction to medication? What if something else caused his death, and the pills are coincidental to that cause?
The media doesn't want to wait for the facts, doesn't want NOT to speculate because that wouldn't be a story! These media figures accrue face time at the expense of their victims. and only stop feeding on this event when another comes along to take this one's place.
If nothing is known, then nothing should be reported.
Heath Ledger's family has to endure the public exposure of speculation as if it were fact, and once that bell is rung, there is no undoing it.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Sugar Sugar
A fond memory is the weekend our next-door neighbor was playing his stereo on full volume. My son was home, and we decided to even things up a bit. We put on the song "Sugar, Sugar," one of our favorites, as loud as our stereo would go, then opened the doors and windows. For a few minutes, it was a battle of the bands, and we dissolved into fits of giggles. What fun!
Recently, however, sugar has become no fun for me. After 2 years of being symptomatic, I finally sought medical help about 15 months ago for the physical issues I could not longer cope with; the diagnosis of Diabetes II confirmed that sugar is my enemy. I've worked hard to control the disease with diet and exercise, and both the doctor and I have been pleased with my progress.
However, emotional stress continues to send me into a sugar frenzy, often without conscious knowledge that I am ingesting that particular form of personal poison. Since the Diabetes II went into over-drive, I’ve been so careful not to keep sugar products in the house as I don’t have endless amounts of self-control. When it comes to will power, I will, but when it comes to won’t power, I often will, when I know I should won’t.
Some family news sent me into foraging mode about 4 weeks ago, accompanied by debilitating headaches, the extreme “swimming” dizziness, lethargy, blurry vision, and crankiness. I couldn’t figure out what the heck was wrong until I had an awakening one early afternoon last week and literally saw myself dunking a left-over holiday cookie into my cup of hot coffee. Had you asked me if I was bingeing on sugar, I would have told you “no” because I had no awareness of it.
Alcoholics drink, smokers smoke, drug addicts snort, smoke or shoot, over-eaters gorge, and I mainline sugar, my drug of choice.
Since my moment of lucidity, I have had to work diligently to remove the sugar from my intake process—again. It was a challenge the first time, but more difficult this time because it’s a do-over. The old saying, “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over” comes to mind.
When I stopped smoking decades ago, I went from 2 packs a day to not smoking, and I know that all it would take is one cigarette for me to become a smoker again. Therefore, I don’t buy cigarettes. However, when it’s food, I have decades of food choice patterns that are on auto pilot: I stroll the aisles, pick up the items, check out, take the sacks from the car into the pantry, put the groceries away—and don’t pay attention to what’s there until I stress out. That’s when I go searching for anything that can feed the need for sugar to make me feel better. Because I’m still buying cake mixes, boxes of brownie mix, and the staples of sugar, white flour, and bread on auto-pilot, when I stress out, my drugs are right there in the cabinets. I love cooking, which also soothes me when I’m stressed, so the potential for falling off the wagon to make myself feel better is high.
After 3 weeks of all sugar all the time, packing on the pounds (again), and feeling downright awful, I’m clean, feeling better, and determined not to go there/do that again. One day at a time, dear Lord, one day at a time.
Recently, however, sugar has become no fun for me. After 2 years of being symptomatic, I finally sought medical help about 15 months ago for the physical issues I could not longer cope with; the diagnosis of Diabetes II confirmed that sugar is my enemy. I've worked hard to control the disease with diet and exercise, and both the doctor and I have been pleased with my progress.
However, emotional stress continues to send me into a sugar frenzy, often without conscious knowledge that I am ingesting that particular form of personal poison. Since the Diabetes II went into over-drive, I’ve been so careful not to keep sugar products in the house as I don’t have endless amounts of self-control. When it comes to will power, I will, but when it comes to won’t power, I often will, when I know I should won’t.
Some family news sent me into foraging mode about 4 weeks ago, accompanied by debilitating headaches, the extreme “swimming” dizziness, lethargy, blurry vision, and crankiness. I couldn’t figure out what the heck was wrong until I had an awakening one early afternoon last week and literally saw myself dunking a left-over holiday cookie into my cup of hot coffee. Had you asked me if I was bingeing on sugar, I would have told you “no” because I had no awareness of it.
Alcoholics drink, smokers smoke, drug addicts snort, smoke or shoot, over-eaters gorge, and I mainline sugar, my drug of choice.
Since my moment of lucidity, I have had to work diligently to remove the sugar from my intake process—again. It was a challenge the first time, but more difficult this time because it’s a do-over. The old saying, “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over” comes to mind.
When I stopped smoking decades ago, I went from 2 packs a day to not smoking, and I know that all it would take is one cigarette for me to become a smoker again. Therefore, I don’t buy cigarettes. However, when it’s food, I have decades of food choice patterns that are on auto pilot: I stroll the aisles, pick up the items, check out, take the sacks from the car into the pantry, put the groceries away—and don’t pay attention to what’s there until I stress out. That’s when I go searching for anything that can feed the need for sugar to make me feel better. Because I’m still buying cake mixes, boxes of brownie mix, and the staples of sugar, white flour, and bread on auto-pilot, when I stress out, my drugs are right there in the cabinets. I love cooking, which also soothes me when I’m stressed, so the potential for falling off the wagon to make myself feel better is high.
After 3 weeks of all sugar all the time, packing on the pounds (again), and feeling downright awful, I’m clean, feeling better, and determined not to go there/do that again. One day at a time, dear Lord, one day at a time.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Great Pretenders
In Edge of Evil, one of author J.A. Jance’s protagonists, Ali, learns that her husband is both a liar and a cheat, something she has not considered, but which is well-known to everyone who knows him. However, as is often the case, she is left to discover and deal with Paul’s deception on her own. As Ali tells it, she “assumed that she and Paul had both been working hard on their careers, building something together. With that erroneous assumption now laid to rest, Ali wondered how much else in her life was little more than a mirage—smoke and mirrors and special effects.”
There’s a lot of that going around as the new year kicks off, people whose lives are clouded in smoke, standing behind the one-way mirrors from which they all too often watch themselves act out a life that is little more than a part in a play. What makes their actions so insidious is that they don’t share with the other cast members that there is a play in progress: the others sharing the space with the great pretender believe that it is a life they are living. When the lead actor finally reveals that the play has finished its run and (s)he’s closing it down, the other characters don’t know what to do, what to say, what to think, what to feel—kind of the Truman effect, if you ever saw that movie, leaving nothing but an empty stage where once we thought we lived our lives.
The pretenders move on, but we can’t because everything we thought, everything we did, everything we were was an illusion, and it takes time to catch up to that reality.
Character is how well we handle ourselves when life turns to shit, and there are a lot of people building character this month. Facing up to the fact that life is a charade, a façade of image with no substance, is tough to do when it comes suddenly, without warning, without redress, without options. Ali lets it slide for a bit, until she gets her bearings, and then she takes care of business. Once Ali knows who Paul is and what Paul has done, she doesn’t really care what Paul wants. Since she has to move on without him, she’ll move on her way, not his.
This same theme is present in the movie Juno, a story about a pregnant 16-year-old who decides to give the baby to a couple picked from a classified ad. Juno meets them, likes them, strikes a bargain with them, involves them in the pregnancy, and is as shocked as the man’s wife when he says fatherhood isn’t for him, that he’s moving out and moving on. He plays guitar and wants the career as a rock star that he set aside when he married and pretended to become a responsible adult. The mother-to-be is devastated as she thought they were in it together. To her credit, Juno’s note to the woman is “I’m still in if you are,” so although the husband shatters the wife’s dream of a happily-ever-after marriage, she becomes a parent to Juno’s child. The audience is left to assume that her life will be better without the husband than it was with him.
If nothing else, it will be more honest.
I don’t know if that’s reality or just another plotline in a work of fiction, but it makes sense. Because they know it’s all illusion, the "great pretenders" have planned for the end, and they are ready to move on well before they let anyone else in on their little deception. They leave physically long after they’ve left mentally and emotionally, long after they have changed the course of other people’s lives without having to change themselves. Perhaps the “after play” for these people is laughing at the trust of the people they deceive.
The best revenge is not getting even, not stooping low enough to reach the deceiver’s level, but in getting better by moving on with your life, with reaching your goals, with fulfilling your purpose. It takes time to work through the debris left from the first experience, but once the trash is taken out, the whole house feels cleaner and fresher. Ali learns this lesson and is a better person for her life experience, but it’s not an easy journey for her—or for a real-life person. There are times when she questions her part in the failure of her marriage, in her husband’s need to share intimacy with other women, but she finally comes to understand that the failure is theirs, not hers. He was able to deceive her because she didn’t pay attention to their marriage. She assumed, and we all know what assumptions do to “u” and “me.”
In a relationship, it takes two people working together to create and sustain a healthy relationship. If one person is less vested in the relationship than the other, it’s simply a matter of time before the relationship fades and fails. There is no going back, there is no undoing or redoing the shoulda/ woulda/ coulda’s of the marriage. It’s just getting out of bed, putting the feet to the floor, and making it one day at a time. Some days, that will be tougher than others, but one day, it’ll be the most natural act in the world, the start of another new day.
There’s a lot of that going around as the new year kicks off, people whose lives are clouded in smoke, standing behind the one-way mirrors from which they all too often watch themselves act out a life that is little more than a part in a play. What makes their actions so insidious is that they don’t share with the other cast members that there is a play in progress: the others sharing the space with the great pretender believe that it is a life they are living. When the lead actor finally reveals that the play has finished its run and (s)he’s closing it down, the other characters don’t know what to do, what to say, what to think, what to feel—kind of the Truman effect, if you ever saw that movie, leaving nothing but an empty stage where once we thought we lived our lives.
The pretenders move on, but we can’t because everything we thought, everything we did, everything we were was an illusion, and it takes time to catch up to that reality.
Character is how well we handle ourselves when life turns to shit, and there are a lot of people building character this month. Facing up to the fact that life is a charade, a façade of image with no substance, is tough to do when it comes suddenly, without warning, without redress, without options. Ali lets it slide for a bit, until she gets her bearings, and then she takes care of business. Once Ali knows who Paul is and what Paul has done, she doesn’t really care what Paul wants. Since she has to move on without him, she’ll move on her way, not his.
This same theme is present in the movie Juno, a story about a pregnant 16-year-old who decides to give the baby to a couple picked from a classified ad. Juno meets them, likes them, strikes a bargain with them, involves them in the pregnancy, and is as shocked as the man’s wife when he says fatherhood isn’t for him, that he’s moving out and moving on. He plays guitar and wants the career as a rock star that he set aside when he married and pretended to become a responsible adult. The mother-to-be is devastated as she thought they were in it together. To her credit, Juno’s note to the woman is “I’m still in if you are,” so although the husband shatters the wife’s dream of a happily-ever-after marriage, she becomes a parent to Juno’s child. The audience is left to assume that her life will be better without the husband than it was with him.
If nothing else, it will be more honest.
I don’t know if that’s reality or just another plotline in a work of fiction, but it makes sense. Because they know it’s all illusion, the "great pretenders" have planned for the end, and they are ready to move on well before they let anyone else in on their little deception. They leave physically long after they’ve left mentally and emotionally, long after they have changed the course of other people’s lives without having to change themselves. Perhaps the “after play” for these people is laughing at the trust of the people they deceive.
The best revenge is not getting even, not stooping low enough to reach the deceiver’s level, but in getting better by moving on with your life, with reaching your goals, with fulfilling your purpose. It takes time to work through the debris left from the first experience, but once the trash is taken out, the whole house feels cleaner and fresher. Ali learns this lesson and is a better person for her life experience, but it’s not an easy journey for her—or for a real-life person. There are times when she questions her part in the failure of her marriage, in her husband’s need to share intimacy with other women, but she finally comes to understand that the failure is theirs, not hers. He was able to deceive her because she didn’t pay attention to their marriage. She assumed, and we all know what assumptions do to “u” and “me.”
In a relationship, it takes two people working together to create and sustain a healthy relationship. If one person is less vested in the relationship than the other, it’s simply a matter of time before the relationship fades and fails. There is no going back, there is no undoing or redoing the shoulda/ woulda/ coulda’s of the marriage. It’s just getting out of bed, putting the feet to the floor, and making it one day at a time. Some days, that will be tougher than others, but one day, it’ll be the most natural act in the world, the start of another new day.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Snow Bowl
I enjoy watching a good football game and usually look forward to the play-offs and Super Bowl. However, for today's football game at Green Bay, the home team had a definite advantage in the extreme weather conditions that affected the outcome of the playoff game.
Perhaps Seattle would have lost regardless, but the team should have had a level playing field with the Packers, who live, work, and play in the extreme weather conditions present for today's game. Before the blowing snow blanketed the field, Seattle was holding its own; once the conditions deteriorated to white-out on the field, they lost whatever chance they had to compete fairly against the home team, which has built a tolerance for the extreme winter weather.
No playoff game should be played in an outdoor stadium that can be affected by inclement weather, especially during the winter months in a northern geographical location. Playoff games should ALWAYS be played at a neutral, covered stadium so both teams have an equal chance to showcase their talent and win the game.
Today, the Seahawks lost the game to the Green Bay weather conditions, not to the Packers.
Perhaps Seattle would have lost regardless, but the team should have had a level playing field with the Packers, who live, work, and play in the extreme weather conditions present for today's game. Before the blowing snow blanketed the field, Seattle was holding its own; once the conditions deteriorated to white-out on the field, they lost whatever chance they had to compete fairly against the home team, which has built a tolerance for the extreme winter weather.
No playoff game should be played in an outdoor stadium that can be affected by inclement weather, especially during the winter months in a northern geographical location. Playoff games should ALWAYS be played at a neutral, covered stadium so both teams have an equal chance to showcase their talent and win the game.
Today, the Seahawks lost the game to the Green Bay weather conditions, not to the Packers.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Film Favorites
I’ve been off movies for a while, staying home during the cold weather to work on unfinished craft projects. Actually, I’ve made credible progress toward completion of several projects, and have also watched an unbelievable number of reruns of L&O that have kept me company on the couch. I never watched all of those shows the first time around as I was working 2-3 jobs continuously for the past 30 years, so although they are “ho-hum, not more Law & Order” for most folks, they are all fresh episodes to me! And may I just say that Christopher Meloni can come for lunch any day he’s free!
This past weekend, I went to Juno with my movie buddy. Coming at it from my perspective, after working with pregnant 16-year-olds for the past 30 years, it wasn’t as amusing to me as much as it was poignant. The actor portraying Juno does an excellent job of capturing the pseudo-sophistication of 16-year-old children who are so wise beyond their years in some respects, while totally naïve in so many others. The dialogue, however, is way too sophisticated for a 16-year-old girl! The thought processes, decision-making, and actions come from the mind of a much older writer who has to work hard to make the idea of the movie work. For me, it would have been more believable if the movie portrayed what a real 16-year-old pregnant girl would think, do, and say, but that wouldn’t have been so much funny as it would have been pathetic.
I found myself laughing that self-conscious laugh when it’s not funny, but it’s funny. I felt such sadness that this movie, in many ways, makes being 16 and pregnant “cool,” when it’s anything but “cool” for the pregnant child, as well as for the infant that results. One good aspect is that the boyfriend is so not “hot,” so much more nerd, that at least that visual helps young girls to realize that any guy can get them pregnant, not just the sex masters of the local high school. I also like that when Juno realizes that the much older potential adoptive father comes on to her, she shuts him down. Too many young girls today would be taken in by the older guy’s sexual interest, giving them something to talk about with their friends at school the next day.
Today, I saw The Great Debate and was totally engaged in the plot, as well as the many layers of subtlety that help a good movie to become great. The talent is outstanding: children actors all too often have to act the part, but these young actors, portraying students, were natural in the roles and very believable. The debate is the vehicle for social commentary that brings to a close the web of sub-plots that keeps the viewer engaged with the film. My favorite piece of literature is To Kill a Mockingbird, and this movie captures the same intensity, issues, and importance of Harper Lee’s literary masterpiece.
The Great Debate joins 3:10 to Yuma, No Country for Old Men, and The Valley of Elia as my most recent favorite films. The cinematography is steady, rather than that annoying rapidly flashing technique that young people think is cool. The stories have depth and breadth, not flash and fade. The issues that are at the core of the films are important and handled well. The acting is excellent as all of these pieces are about character, not location, fashion, or fad, and the actors develop, sustain, and triumph in their portrayals of the people around whom the storylines develop. When I want to see the film again, it’s a good movie, and I'll see all of these movies again when they come to the local video store.
All in all, I’m enjoying the big screen right now!
This past weekend, I went to Juno with my movie buddy. Coming at it from my perspective, after working with pregnant 16-year-olds for the past 30 years, it wasn’t as amusing to me as much as it was poignant. The actor portraying Juno does an excellent job of capturing the pseudo-sophistication of 16-year-old children who are so wise beyond their years in some respects, while totally naïve in so many others. The dialogue, however, is way too sophisticated for a 16-year-old girl! The thought processes, decision-making, and actions come from the mind of a much older writer who has to work hard to make the idea of the movie work. For me, it would have been more believable if the movie portrayed what a real 16-year-old pregnant girl would think, do, and say, but that wouldn’t have been so much funny as it would have been pathetic.
I found myself laughing that self-conscious laugh when it’s not funny, but it’s funny. I felt such sadness that this movie, in many ways, makes being 16 and pregnant “cool,” when it’s anything but “cool” for the pregnant child, as well as for the infant that results. One good aspect is that the boyfriend is so not “hot,” so much more nerd, that at least that visual helps young girls to realize that any guy can get them pregnant, not just the sex masters of the local high school. I also like that when Juno realizes that the much older potential adoptive father comes on to her, she shuts him down. Too many young girls today would be taken in by the older guy’s sexual interest, giving them something to talk about with their friends at school the next day.
Today, I saw The Great Debate and was totally engaged in the plot, as well as the many layers of subtlety that help a good movie to become great. The talent is outstanding: children actors all too often have to act the part, but these young actors, portraying students, were natural in the roles and very believable. The debate is the vehicle for social commentary that brings to a close the web of sub-plots that keeps the viewer engaged with the film. My favorite piece of literature is To Kill a Mockingbird, and this movie captures the same intensity, issues, and importance of Harper Lee’s literary masterpiece.
The Great Debate joins 3:10 to Yuma, No Country for Old Men, and The Valley of Elia as my most recent favorite films. The cinematography is steady, rather than that annoying rapidly flashing technique that young people think is cool. The stories have depth and breadth, not flash and fade. The issues that are at the core of the films are important and handled well. The acting is excellent as all of these pieces are about character, not location, fashion, or fad, and the actors develop, sustain, and triumph in their portrayals of the people around whom the storylines develop. When I want to see the film again, it’s a good movie, and I'll see all of these movies again when they come to the local video store.
All in all, I’m enjoying the big screen right now!
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