You can get arrested for that.

On a lighter note…

Stumbled Upon this today, and it made me smile:

That’s a screenshot from a webpage for a book called “You Can Get Arrested For That”. It’s a pretty funny take on the old “can you believe that’s illegal” thing that’s been going around for years. (Yay!)

The book’s website, however, isn’t fully Firefox compatible. (Boo!)

Still. It’s chuckle-worthy.

R.I.P., Mr. Snyder.

The news that Tom Snyder died of leukemia on Sunday has me saddened.

He was the insomniacs’ best friend. Many times, I was greatly amused by his interviews. I still think he was the best late-night interviewer.

R.I.P., my friend.

This REALLY shouldn’t have amused me…

…as much as it did.

Man, I LOVED Oregon Trail growing up. It was the first game I played on the computer. I was dreadfully bad at it, but even so, I loved nothing more than going to the Moscow Grade School library and using the school’s one computer to play it.

Recently, I downloaded a version of it and played it on my computer. I am still just as bad at it-people were dying at an alarming rate. I always did hate long road trips.

Here’s a neat page where you can play one of the original versions of the game online-it requires Windows and Firefox, but if you have those two, have fun! 

This is true.

And also yet one of several reasons why I hate Subway. (My least favorite part about Subway? The sub-par bread. Good deli is all about the bread.)

(Courtesy of Left-handed Tunes [By Right-Handed People.])

Berkeley Breathed.

(Please pardon me if two posts like this appear. WordPress is jerking me around tonight.)

I was remembering tonight how much I enjoyed Bloom County. I didn’t really get introduced to Bloom County until I was in college when I was staying for a few days with a friend, who had a couple of Bloom County books which I sat up most of the night reading.

Here’s a Berkeley Breathed cartoon I found this evening that made me chuckle.

Is it okay to be a Liberal and find that amusing?

Don’t miss this page on Breathed’s official homepage which features his favorite strips, by the way.

One reason our mental health system sucks.

For reasons that will eventually become clear to anyone who’ll chance along this blog, I’m planning a long post on my recent experience with inpatient mental health treatment and why I feel the system is dreadfully broken. (That’s also why I’ve not blogged in a while.)

But this couldn’t wait. I just had to blog about it to process it, I guess.

There was this older woman in the inpatient program while I was there that went home a few days into my stay. It was REALLY painfully apparent to everyone there that she was going home way too soon. She was still talking non-stop, in an obvious manic state. She continued to be confused. Nevertheless, they sent her home on Monday of last week.

Today I learned that on Friday, she was so confused she started down the wrong way on a local road and got into a terrible accident-one that will probably result in her moving to a nursing home after she’s rehabilitated-IF she makes it that far. Currently she’s in intensive care.

We were all floored (I’m in an outpatient program at the moment that’s made up of people who were in inpatient with me.)

There are good things about it-and GREAT people in our mental health care system who are trying to make a difference. I know that. I met several of them over the last few weeks.

But this story is just one reason I think the system may be beyond repair.

Famous Graves.

During our recent trip to St. Louis, we took some time to go and visit the grave of Tennessee Williams. I enjoy old cemeteries, and the one he’s buried in has a historical tour, so we did parts of it.

Here’s ol’ Tennessee.

Dred Scott was also there, and it brought up a question…

What’s with all the pennies?

I emailed the cemetery association in charge, and they said they thought it was related to the Jewish tradition of leaving pebbles on the grave.

But that doesn’t seem quite right to me…I don’t think there’d be THAT many pennies there. Another theory was found at www.ulstl.com:

“At Calvary Cemetery, the top of the tombstone erected over Dred Scott’s grave in 1957 is covered with pennies. The Rev. Robert Tabscott, a lifelong student of the Scott case, called it an old African good-luck tradition. Lynne Jackson suggested the connection is to Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, whose face is on the penny.”

I haven’t been able to find anything more specific than that, but I think that’s probably closer to the case.

Fireworks: Clinton, Illinois.

Dear People Who Do The Fireworks For Clinton,

Please, next year, pick another place to shoot fireworks that DOESN’T include a cell phone tower and motel sign within 100 yards.

Love,

Angie

(By the way, these were taken without a tripod. Every year, I vow I’m going to get a tripod and remote shutter thingy before next year, and I never do. This year, I mean it, by golly.)

Sean really enjoys the fireworks. I don’t as much, but I do kinda enjoy tinkering with the camera. So we’ve gone for the past couple of years.

I saw The Police and you didn’t.

Or at least, I’m guessing you didn’t.

Despite all the reviews I’ve seen online by the pros, I thought they kicked. Really. Even though we had seats BEHIND the stage. Which was okay, because really, I enjoyed watching Stewart Copeland more than I enjoyed watching Sting. Copeland’s a DAMNED good drummer-I guess I never really paid that much attention to him before. But in our seats, we had a big bird’s-eye view of his drum kit, but a GREAT view of the other random percussion instruments he got up and played during various songs.

One thing I decided during the concert was that I’ve got to buy an old cell phone that takes photos. EVERYONE and their dog was shooting photos of the concert-and video. I’m assuming those puppies’d work even if you don’t have service for surrepticious photos. Not that I’d do that, mind you. Nope. Not me. (Actually, I probably wouldn’t use it for video but I might snap a photo or two just for my own enjoyment.)

Here are a few really horrible videos that’ve been posted to YouTube of the concert-all of appropriately bad quality:

Here’s one that shows about how high up we were. Also, I know singing at the top of your lungs at a concert is fun, but it also is annoying. This is a good example of that:

And here are some screen grabs I pulled from those videos so that I have something that still works when those videos get yanked for being illegal or something. They’re primarily just for me-they’re so bad, but it’s fun to have photos of a cool concert that you know you were at:

So it was a great time, well worth the money spent (even though we only bought the cheapest tickets available.)

(Oh, and one last thing for the women [or men who appreciate that kind of thing]…seeing a concert with Sting from behind is NOT money wasted. If you know what I’m sayin’. I’m not really a fan of the posterior, but DAMN.)