ILLNESS

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Pop Culturally Illiterate

My TV viewing is pretty minimal and segregated and comes down to two categories: Reruns (Seinfeld on weekdays and Gunsmoke and Bonanza on weekends) and Informational/Educational shows. The Seinfeld reruns require no apologies on my part. The Westerns, however, are a bit of a guilty pleasure. I do think Gunsmoke was a good show, even though looking back in retrospect with more sophistication, parts were cheesey. It had an eerieness about it, and a starkness of the main characters that I find a bit refreshing. Bonanza is like one of those things you really don't love, but you watch it as comic relief even though it wasn't intended as comedy. It's a pure cheesefest. Informational/Educational viewings are local nightly news where the anchors are always "off" tonight...assorted History Channel shows...Wild West Tech; Discovery Channel...Mythbusters; Animal Planet...Emergency Vets...Animal Cops; Home and Garden...House Hunters, Amazing Vacation Homes...anything about history and architecture where you get to see the inside of a house, but I hate the bimbo decorating shows; A&E...Dog the Bounty Hunter (ok, maybe that's an embarrassing guilty pleasure that I discovered by accident, and maybe it's sort of what the Osbournes were to the early 2000s, this is to the mid-2000s, and it's really annoying when you get the damn theme song stuck in your head like a McDonald's jingle, but I still get a kick out of it), Cold Case Files; Discovery Health...Dr. G Medical Examiner and various shows where they remove 400 lb. tumors from people that live to tell about it. I must have very odd taste to the average TV viewer. I know nothing about network tv, current dramas or sitcoms. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

It's a bit ironic that I have a perennial freelance gig involved in putting together a flyer for a certain charity organization that some celebrities are involved in. Here I am assembling these photographs of people on current tv shows that have fans, and I don't even know their names and who they are. When I'm directed to "put Joe in a more prominent spot because he's a big fan favorite" I don't know who Joe is, so I'm glad that this time the photograph files were labelled with names. A few years ago, I received a finished flyer for my portfolio. I was explaining to Stan that it was for a charity, and that I think they do work with developmentally disabled kids. And here's the really embarrassing part. In some of the pictures, I don't know if it is a celebrity or a developmentally disabled person.

Posted by Ann on 02/17/05@12:26 PM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

Bye, Bye, Past Life

The other day Stan and I drove by Depressions Widget Services (see this entry about its big layoffs), which is only 2 blocks down our street. I noticed something different about the front door. There was a sign on it. It said "for lease." I'd been noticing that in the nights and evenings recently, it hadn't been filled with the glow of late night shift workers busy in their cubicles in front of their monitors. "Depressions" is no more. When I visit its website, (which was never spectactular, which, for a widget service of its type, I would expect web mastery) it now directs to Acme Company, the company that took it over, and then layed off workers.

When we first visited Madison in June of 1989 after I got accepted to grad school at the UW (short for Utter Weirdness), we found a flat on the east side. When we moved in a month later, we had no jobs. We hit the streets. We knew no one. It was a very odd time, one I wish to never experience again. I was looking for employment in the Widget field, as I'd had experience with it working for Stinko's back in Colorado. I interviewed with Depressions. I hoped so hard to get employed there. It was only a couple blocks away from our flat. The irony is when we found a house to buy a year later, it was only a couple blocks away from our flat, and Depressions. It was as if it was meant to be. For several years my life revolved around that area. But in the mid 90s, I didn't appreciate it so. I felt colder and colder working there, and they wouldn't let me use the space heaters because "they would cause power surges with the computers."

I'd had it. I was ready for change. I quit and went on first as a homeworker and then a freelancer. Eventually the freelance work dwindled. No matter, I had my own life now. I didn't need Depressions as my paycheck. I felt so liberated. I feel so fortunate that I quit before it got bad...really bad. I feel bad for the people I knew that still worked there and depended on it, even though I hadn't seen them for a long time: since I stopped working there except to bump into someone in a grocery store or on my way to the post office.

My life as I knew it when I first moved here has been shedding its skin. Little by little, it's been peeled off and the skin that's grown to replace it is hardly recognizable. The people I used to know I have let go (that was in the early part) or they have moved...lost touch with. Honestly, I miss no one. I don't miss my former social life. Parts of it were fun...with Tim and people he knew. But where are they now? Vanished. They became someone else, or in Tim's case, virtually an invalid.

The irony is I still have Colorado. I get more social life there when I visit than the whole rest of the year here. That part, the place I moved from, has stayed the same in that regard, and the place I moved TO, has changed.

It's as if the whole move to Wisconsin was some strange journey, not a physical trip but more a soul journey. Not a trip up the river into the heart of darkness as it appeared from the onset, but a trip up the mountain. After all, I do live on a hill. And now I am the hermit.

----

Two years ago today, Hieronymus was put to sleep after a very sad, but fortunately very quick illness.

Posted by Ann on 02/17/05@10:33 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

By Ann @ 12:26 PM CST:02:17:05 ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

read more entries→