Thursday, December 10, 2009

"I Was Big Foot's Love Slave"

I heard recently that the average Westerners is hit with 50,000 images a week --- if that is true, then someone out there is takin' part of mine. Not all of them, mind you, but some of them -- I get my own overload of the media without trying at all.

What I have noticed lately, besides the fact that I am on the Internet more now that I retired, is that I cannot escape the images, put forth by the media -- slinging at me what they consider news worthy --

Come on. Tiger Woods can't even be unfaithful to his wife in private?

I used to use a software program for my email. When I bought two new computers, a desktop and a laptop in the last six months, my brother convinced me to just use the email from the Internet.

Brother: Why do you need a program?
Me:I dunno. You set it up last time.
Brother: You don't need it. Just use the Internet. It's faster.
Me: Okay. I need fast mail. I do. I need to see quickly that you don't read my emails.
Brother: Don't mock.


My carrier is ATT -- so now when I open my email, there is always an advertisement and news from the Internet.

Sometimes it's as lame as "Look at what Sharon Stone is wearing," but sometimes it's a more impacting image --- a starving child in Africa, a bombing in Baghdad, or a video clip from some disaster. Those images hit me sometimes as many as five times a day --- when I check my email. Sometimes it's the same image over and over -- sometimes it's a different one -- but they all have one thing in common -- someone out there thinks that I need to read this, or someone out there thinks I should.

What do you suppose that person looks like?
These are the things I ponder.

Most of the images trash up my memory bank. I don't want to see these things, I don't like to see these things, yet I get to see them anyway.

Talk about Spam -- this is mind spam -- and there really is no Spam filter or delete button installed in my mind-- if I see it, it's burned into my memory hard drive whether I want it or not. Trust me, my memory hard drive is about full -- it's "bitten" out.

I know this is why all those years ago that my parents limited what we watched on tv. My mother had the foresight to recognize that she didn't want some stranger determining what images were embedded in my feeble brain. I have told you before -- one time, during the 1960s, our television was broken for two years.

Eh. It could have been six months, but I was young and exaggerated every thing.

Thirty years ago, there abouts, when I was first teaching school, I would chuckle with my students about the magazines and tabloids displayed by the grocery checkout lines. I would complain that even if you didn't want to read National Enquirer or People -- you had no choice in seeing what was featured in their content free publications.

BTW: A friend of mine from high school would sometimes buy them -- National Enquirer -- bring them over to my house-- and we would take turns reading the articles out loud. We would laugh so hard sometimes that we'd cry --- tears streaming down our faces, slapping our knees, having to leave the room to contain ourselves...

one time, Jonathan left the Enquirer at my house, and I thought my mother would have apoplexy over it. She did not see the humor -- she only saw trash. That was not fun trying to explain what we did. I can still see my mother, her face set frozen with disapproval, when I tried to redo it for her, and she would try not to see the humor. My mother knew I had a sense of humor, but she did want it to be a little more sophisticated, I guess. I'm sure she was not happy that they misspelled "inquiring." LOL

The phrase "enquiring minds want to know" used to bring Jonathan and me to our knees in guffaws and snorts of laughter. We would read an article like "Duck People Colony Found in Texas" and follow it with "enquiring minds want to know" and then fall over laughing at it all. I would laugh until my face and side hurt, and we would beg each other to "quit reading, quit reading!!!"Jonathan, my good friend, if you are out there somewhere, here's to the memory...

Here are some of the memorable headlines from the Enquirer that I remember:

"Moth Baby Eats Mattress"

"Mother Gives Birth to Baby with Moustache: Looks Like Hitler"

"I Was Big Foot's Love Slave"

"Statue of Elvis Found on Mars"

"Kennedy's Body Found in Housewife's Freezer in Tuscon"

The way Jonathan and I would follow the articles with "enquiring minds want to know" was ....

kind of like how my aunts, when they were children in the 1920s, would keep themselves from falling asleep in church: they would flip through the Methodist Hymnal and read the title of a hymn and then follow it with "between the sheets." For example, "Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing" -- "between the sheets."

Bwhahahaha.

My aunt Ava said that part of the fun was trying to stifle the laughter. My aunt and I had the same sense of humor...

I remember thinking this was hilarious, but not quite getting the innuendo until I was older. If you are seven and you think, "He Lives" --- "between the sheets" is funny -- wait till you are twelve.

Never mind.

Anyway, back to school teaching, I taught journalism in my first days of teaching.

*shivers*

I can't tell you how much trouble a newspaper and journalism teacher used to get into for the articles published in the school newspaper, the content of which was ultimately the sponsor's responsibility.

I was young and naive, and I had a marginal sense about what I thought was appropriate or funny compared to what the other teachers or administrators [some of them hating the school newspaper] thought was appropriate or funny -- and I spent many times with the principal defending my student's editorials, articles, or columns.

Each time the newspaper came out, I was sort of sick the night before with anticipation as to what was gonna "overstir the stew" of the readership.

Regardless, our newspaper had a funny edge, and the sales of the newspaper stayed in the black,[most of the student body loved it] which was ultimately more important to the principal than the fact that one student satirized the student's homecoming theme or spoke out about the double standards of the school's dress code and the length of the cheerleaders' skirts.

Good times. Only not. I still have nightmares.
Kidding. Sort of..

I actually did two stints as newspaper sponsor --- I loved the camaraderie I had with the students -- crazy late afternoons trying to meet the deadlines and dashes to the printer where one student would find random clip art and place it on the mock up of the paper at the printer's. It was the first time I had heard of a smelt. I did some serious laughing with those former students, but I also did some serious ulcer growing.

*waves to Captain Jay*

Gosh, did I get off on a tangent.

Meanwhile, to my former journalism students out there --- those were fun days -- weren't they?

Greg?
Mike?
Toni?
Chris?
Brad?
Pam?
Jay?
Kevin?

And I won't even get started telling you the stories of Journal Ball or selling ads during class. I should have been fired....

*whew*

LOL.

NSB: This blog's for you.

7 comments:

  1. This is the very thing Michael and I were discussing the other night. The Media has been reduced to the all too asinine reporting of who's doing whom at what time and in whose living room and do their spouses know-oh wait, oops, they'll know now that we've exposed it, woohoo points for our network!

    It's ridiculous.

    I wonder if those "journalists" shake their heads when they're done for the night, wondering how in the world they ended up playing faux counselors to celebrities and their hang-ups. Is that what they went to school for? Cuz, sheesh, anyone can do that and you don't have to pay for a degree to do it. Just wait outside some famous Hollywood bistro for Lohan to come stumbling out of a car, drunk and pantiless...

    ...see what you started? LOL

    I love your choice of words: Mind Spam. That's exactly what it is, you brilliant woman you! LOL We're assaulted by it everywhere we go: grocery stores, newspaper/magazine stands, Internet. Definitely takes away our Freedom of Choice, doesn't it?

    Now, The National Enquirer. I can imagine the people coming up with those ridiculous stories in some random, dark and dank basement, having the time of their life creating them and putting them to print, knowing at least thousands will pay for their overly rampant imagination...

    And you know the stories/headlines are bogus but you stare at them anyway. And you can't filter them out, it becomes engrained into the inner recesses of your mind and it starts driving you nuts! I hate having to explain to the kids that it's crap and Hillary wouldn't be caught dead holding an alien baby Hitler mustache or sans, whether it be in her Photoshopped man-arms or not...LOL

    My grandmother would actually buy them at the store and read them, cursing America all the while, LOL. My grandfather would tell her she was crazy for reading that crap and believing it, a fight would then ensue and the "I hate this dirty country!" and "Go back to dirty Egypt then!" would start bouncing off the walls, LMAO...sigh..good times, good times...

    I want a blog from you about the Journal Ball, asap. I just know it's gonna be good! Oh and a blog on Aunt Ava's lifetime shenanigans, because if you two were alike, I can imagine she had plenty!!!

    and...

    He Lives, between the sheets! Bwahahaaaa! I love it!

    We add "in bed" to the end of our fortune cookie reads. My fave of all time was: You will discover where your true talents lie...in bed. LMFAO! Priceless!

    and good grief...I just blogged to your blog...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the dedication. I gotta say that Tiger would have an easier time keeping his private business private if he only had one girlfriend. The new GOLF DIGEST was delivered today and on the front is a picture of Tiger with Obama and the lead story is 10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger. Don't you know they wish they hadn't featured that one in this issue?

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOL

    Wow, wonder if Obama will call Tiger a Jackass alongside Kanye West...how sad...

    R.E., HUGS BACK.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My Mom taught me to draw caterpillars on the church tithing(how do you spell that?) envelopes when I got bored in church. It backfired on her though cause when my nanny put me in my crib for a looooooong nap (I must have driven her crazy), I got really bored so I drew caterpillars all over every wall I could reach. I could not understand why my Dad said GD when he found out or my Mom got mad cause it was what they taught me to do to fight boredom. I never got rid of those caterpillars on the wall till I was 13 - gee I guess it backfired on me!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have nothing intelligent to say except that you make me laugh. Hard.

    ReplyDelete
  6. **Big Grin**

    I can say that my favorite class had I in all of the years I went to school including college was your Newspaper class. Well, there was an exception, my Psychology of Sex class in college was pretty good. Any class that shows porn can't be all bad, can it?

    I am sure I caused you at least a couple of ulcers for at least two incidents that I can think of off the top of my head but you were a good sport about it which still gives you the top honor of favorite teacher. :)

    Oh, and I still have every South Cobb Eagle that I actively participated creating. I drag them out every once in while and laugh at what I am bad writer I was; moreover, I really laugh about the picture for Michael Huff's column of Huff's Beef that had a woman next to his name.

    He was not happy about that but I can still remember the tears flowing down my face from the laugh we had about it.

    Eric Borten had told me to sign up for your class. He had told me it was a lot of fun and that you were a really cool teacher. I wasn't really sure but I went along with it. I am sure glad I did.

    Oh, and I was cleaning out my garage recently and came across your yearbook photo of the 1986-87 school year. Great photo of you!

    ReplyDelete