Princess Diana

There are things I always cry at the drop of a hat for: reading "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein, watching The Shawshank Redemption, thinking about my mother not being around anymore, and watching any Princess Diana show.

And now ten years have gone by since she was killed in that Paris tunnel. I remember talking to someone on the phone and Saturday Night Live was on at the time...I glanced at the television a couple times thinking to myself "Geez, this is a really tacky skit they are doing". Then realizing it wasn't one after changing the channel...and telling my friend in disbelief what I...and the world had just been informed of...that Princess Diana had just been involved in a motor vehicle accident and, her diagnosis on screen going from "some broken bones" to "with internal injuries" to "we are saddened to report, Diana, the former Princess of Wales..."

That seems like ages ago and at the same time, it seems like only yesterday. You see, perhaps it sticks with me so much because I, like many others, woke up early to watch her wedding, live, on television. I watched her with her children, I watched her lithe figure dancing away in some magnificent ballroom...and later sitting alone outside the Taj Mahal...her "idyllic" fairytale life brought to real light with that look of total isolation and unhappiness on her face which no one could dispute...it was...over.

But, what seemed like the end of one life transformed itself into one with more purpose: Diana, the champion of people without a voice. She would be the voice for them...she would use her notoriety not to sell perfume or dog clothes...but to speak out for causes such as land mines, hunger and AIDS...and touched not only the hands of those who were shunned...but also their hearts. Touched countless hearts. With her every step she knew the cameras would follow...and she walked right into places no royal had done before (oh, make that ex-royal, she was, of course stripped of her title upon divorce)...heck, she walked into places MOST people wouldn't dare step.

There is a line in a song (Post World War II Blues) from Al Stewart (whose music I loved growing up) which goes "...I can still remember the last time I cried...The day that Buddy Holly died...I never met him, so it may seem strange...Don't some people just affect you that way..." and that about sums up my feelings for Princess Diana...

...some people DO just affect you that way.

Get Me Rich Quick, Please...Schemes

I've been mulling it over in my head for the past few days and there's a couple ways I could make millions if I found either major backing/venture capital or a lawyer willing to take on a really far-fetched case...you know, like that McD's "drove off with hot coffee between my legs" one. Seems being incredibly stupid with connections or incredibly lucky with connections, like inventing the Topsy Tail ponytail doodle or Barney and selling gazillions of them is the way to go. So here are some plans I've come up with which follow that line of reasoning...

Plan A: J. K. Rowling (of 'Harry Potter' fame) is now writing a detective novel, which isn't really fair as she's already the richest woman in Britain and she could write about a peanut vendor who secretly desires to become a perfumier and moonlights as a human replacement for drug sniffing dogs that call in sick at Heathrow...and she'd still be able to sell it. While I, on the other hand, have no such luck, talent, or connections. BUT...I figure if I could get a willing lawyer, I could sue Ms Rowling on the grounds that I would have come up with whichever plot she's going to...only she'll get it published before I can because she already has all that "best-selling author clout" BS in her favour. Well, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have come up with it...eventually...and just because she has connections, her version will get to press before mine ever would...and that's just not fair, and basically I think she owes me big time. Heck, I'd probably even be willing to make a nice hefty settlement out of court just to spare her the embarrassment over the fact she stole my idea I haven't even had yet.

Plan B: Now for my invention, which I'm sure will be heralded as the next best thing to unsliced bread: The news ticker/news crawl/info scrolly television set cover-upper (okay, the name still needs some work). Are you as annoyed as I am by that black bar they put at the bottom of your TV alerting you to other news that must be so important that they feel compelled to scroll it across the bottom of the screen - but it undoubtedly isn't important enough to warrant a full-blown interruption of what they're reporting on at the moment. Not only do they expect you to concentrate on the top portion of the story, but you also have to simultaneously read about whole other unrelated events as they ticker tape on past. Notice how they don't keep them going during commercials...when apparently they want your whole undivided attention on the product: "HeadOn...apply directly to forehead. HeadOn...apply directly to forehead. HeadOn..." Yes, heaven forbid I miss a single word of that. Oh, let's get back to my "hide the bar" invention, shall we? I figure I could either go directly to the television manufacturers and have them incorporate a "drop down" feature whereas you hit a button on your remote and the picture drops down a tad to cut it off...or easier still, a nice black cloth band, conveniently fastened with two Velcro tab sets for a secure fit to your set. We'll even send you the "adjustable model", sure to fit any sized set: Comes complete with length of black cloth, two sticky Velcro tab sets and a cheapie pair of scissors. See? Once size fits all. Convenient, no? Plans in the future include bands with ads written right on them...or for an extra few dollars, a saying of your choice. I'm sure we'd even find a way to throw in that 2nd Sharpie pen for free (well, for those first 100 callers that is).

And if that doesn't work, I could always go to Plan C and find that lawyer from Plan A and take on CNN, FOX News, and others (if there are others) who do the news crawl scrolly bar and slap a lawsuit on them for inflicting upon me some "as of yet undiscovered" eye dysfunction/mental confusion/brainwave alteration distress. Any of these afflictions, alone, would be clear-cut justification enough to sue, but having the whole EDMCBAD shebang...well, that's definitely cause to employ a crack legal team for representation as surely no amount of "HeadOn" is going to cure those kind of ills.

My Uncanny Blogability

Seems I have the uncanny ability to try to post something here each time their little blogmobile is down for service. As I got in here just now - I'm just letting everyone know that I intend to post up a blog sometime later tonite. Every day they change in my head, so I'm not 100% sure which one will pop up at any given moment, but one is sure to surface before midnite.

Water ya gonna do?

And from the "Things That Make You Go 'Hmmmmmm'" corner of the world...

There's a public service announcement that is running now on Alabama television that really makes me want to give them a call and point out the "Did you guys really think this out thoroughly first?" factor.

It's an anti-drinking-and-boating campaign (put out by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) - which is all well and fine - I can totally understand that concept. But at the end of the spot, the "Marine Trooper" guy in uniform says "Last year drunk boaters caused nearly 1/3 of all fatalities on the water." So I'm thinking "well, that means that a little over 2/3 of the non-drinkers were responsible for the others...so, by that logic, being on a boat with a drunk guy is better odds".

Somehow I don't think that's the point they were trying to drive home. Hmmmm...

I Just Don't Get "It"

My mother used to say "every generation seems to think that they were the first to have sex"...which she might have a point about, as it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same...well, except for more daring displays of sex as these generations go on. The Romans had their orgies, the Victorian times had their "gadgets" (oh, don't let them fool you...they did have sex back then, contrary to what Queen Victoria's history would have you believe), the 20's had Flappers, the 50's had Monroe, the 60's had the pill, Masters and Johnson (I think there's a couple puns there somewhere) and Woodstock, the 80's had big hair, and we have the Internet.

And splattered all over the Internet now are 237 reasons why people have sex and according to this article people are coming up with even more they left out, and AOL's main page the other day had a survey asking what was our worst reason we've rationalized to "get any"...then to top it off they gave us their choices to vote on.

Now there's no denying that sex sells...we've been using sex to sell everything...literally from head to toe. From Herbal Essence Shampoo's apparent orgasmic properties (yes, yes, YES!) to 60's Noxzema shaving cream commercials with a sexy blonde Swede compelling men to "take it off, take it all off" to Joe Namath having Farrah Fawcett slather lather on his face whilst crooning "Let Noxzema cream your face...so the razor won't" (then afterwards telling her "you've got a great pair of hands"), to Joe Namath, yet again, in Beautymist pantyhose. You know, it seems old 'Broadway Joe' scored more passes off the field than on if these 1970's commercials of his were any indication of his sex life.

And then there was that "All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all" men's cologne commercial when I was young. Come to think of it, when I was a kid there were a lot of sexy ads on television...but then again we had to, we didn't have the Internet to get our info. If you were a kid and wanted to look at naughty photos, you did what everyone else did: got out the Sears catalogue and turned to the underwear section.

Ah, yes, the bygone days of my youth...and most people look back on theirs with genuine fondness. How many times do you think back of how things were so great when you were a kid? Or the stories your parents told you when they were young...or your grandparents lingering on tales of what they did when they were children. Well, I've come to the conclusion that while every generation needs to have sex to get to the next generation, life was indeed better without sex. This is also why people want to live vicariously through their own kids when they have them...oh think about it...those glory days of youth. Where would innocent Ralphie, of "A Christmas Story" fame, be if he wasn't mesmerized by that "soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window"? If he truly KNEW about sex, that leg lamp just wouldn't have had the same intrigue...face it.

So, while a lot of us are indeed curious and read online articles about who does "it" and where and what they say to get "it" and wonder why they do "it"...stop complaining about not getting enough of "it" and just remember how uncomplicated and fun life was before you did. Then go and tell your kid a "When I was your age we didn't have...." story and be sure to smirk a lot...they'll really wonder what you are up to. And only you'll know "not much".