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Kevin72
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Name: Kevin
Country: United States
State: California
Metro: San Francisco
Gender: Male
Expertise: History, travel, linguistics, metaphysics, weapons procurement, selling Pokemon cards to little kids for $500, pretending that my 80cc motorscooter is a motorcycle.
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
AIM:  Kevin94109
Member Since:
2/9/2004
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| As mentioned in the past, Fark.com has some incredible photoshop contests. The latest one was "Inappropriate Celebrity Endorsements". Lots were funny, but I thought two were the ones I liked best.
Because a few years back, Mel Gibson got stopped by the police for drunk driving and inexplicably while drunk went on a rant to the police blaming the Jews on and on as drunken rants go.
The next one is timely, because just Thanksgiving night at our pool-playing post-party, someone mentioned that they weren't a good bowler, and I mentioned said, "Don't feel bad, Barack Obama is a terrible bowler too, so you have good company".
For most of the contest, the lead votegetter depicted the lead singer of Metallica wearing a Napster t-shirt, because of the huge legal struggle both sides had. Then in the comments, someone complained about how inappropriate it was that someone photoshopped Elie Weisel endorsing ovens. So people started counter-commenting that the theme was INAPPROPRIATE celebrity endorsements, so of course as in bad taste it was, that was the point of the photoshop contest. What's great is that later, some people learned about Elie Weisel and what he had to endure to survive the holocaust just find out why "endorsing ovens" was inappropriate.
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4791375&tt=voteresults0&startid=56249815 to see voting results
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4791375#new to see entries and comments | | |
| I'm all over the place, stirred not shaken. It's been two months since the third detached retina surgery. It should be almost healed, the gas bubble that pushed the eye back in contact with the retina has all but dissipated. But the vision is still very cloudy, so much so that I can only read the most obvious large letters out of that eye.
So I finally made one of those squeeze yourself in appointments at the retina office. Turns out a cataract developed either via the surgery in Thailand or the one in September. But a cataract is not such a bad thing, it's easily operated on, and 90% successful. Even my father wasn't worried when I called him on the phone, he said he has had the surgery on both eyes already.
The only scary thing to me is that one of the risks of cataract surgery is .... detached retina, the same thing I've been screwing around with since June. I don't think it will happen since whatever surgeon does the cataract operation will know my past with detached retina and be extra extra careful. The weird thing about cataract surgery is that usually one comes out of it with 20/20 vision, like surgeons can do that when they replace the overproteined lens with an artificial one. I mean, it would be weird to have 20/20 in the left eye and 20/whateverIhave in the right one.
Because I've been pretty much able to do everything normally with the right eye, the main thing altered these months is not being able to play basketball for exercise. Only recently have I been able to change into a routine of distance walking. It has taken some determination and some creativity, but I feel I am on the other side of the I don't want to/it's too cold/ it's too urban/ it's too boring.
The solutions have been 1) to find new places for distance walking, and this city has lots of special secret places away from the crowds and obvious places where everyone goes and 2) to record more and more songs to my Palm Pre which functions just like an iphone ie can be used like an ipod.
Which is where I'm at now. Back from a 95-minute walk. There's a loop near Ghirardeli's, alongside the bay that is 15 minutes walking. But it can be extended to a 25-minute loop by taking an uphill into Fort Mason.
So that's where I am now, getting into distance walking again while waiting to get back to basketball. Healed detached retina looking forward to getting my left eye vision back after cataract surgery. Looking forward to seeing my father and his queen consort in Miami during Christmas break. I will probably go Greyhound both ways unless airflights go down, but I think I want to do roundtrip Greyhound for adventure and travel-love. And by the time I get back, the 2000s will all but be over, and the 2010s will have begun. (2010s ... two thousand tens? two thousand teens? I just think that sounds way better than the traditional twenty tens/teens and we can do that because it's the millennial century.)
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| Time marches on. Jeopardy had a category called "Real People in Beatles' Lyrics". I knew that I would know all the answers when I heard the categories. But the contestants could only get one out of five right. And the contestants didn't seem THAT young that they wouldn't have heard any Beatles songs, they looked to be about 30 plus or minus 5 years.
One clue was "In 'I am the Walrus', you should have seen them kicking 'this American author'"
Another one was "In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass, and in his pocket is a portrait of this lady"
One clue gave about three lines from the song "The Ballad of John and Yoko", and of course the answer was "Who are John and Yoko?"
One clue that was more history than song referred to "The Taxman", and named two past prime ministers by name, and the question was what was their job.
They were old enough to be Jeopardy contestants, yet so young that they had no idea about Beatles lyrics.
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LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS DEAD FROM LUPUS AT AGE 46 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216660/Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds-Lucy-ODonnell-inspiration-dies-battling-disease.html As much as the world, myself included, thought that "Lucy in the Skies with Diamonds" was about an LSD trip, something John always denied, it turns out the song actually did have NOTHING TO DO with LSD.
John's elder son Julian, (from his first wife Cynthia), drew a picture of a girl he was fond of at nursery school, called it "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and John took the name and the picture, and wrote the song. John was that talented. And here is the picture where John saw a boat on the river with tangerine trees, marmalade skies, cellophane flowers of yellow and green, rocking horse people who eat marshmallow pies, and the girl with colitis goes by (actually "girl with kaleidoscope eyes").
As mentioned in my headline, the real Lucy O'Donnell, aged 4 when Julian drew the picture has just died from Lupus. Julian, upon hearing that Lucy was quite ill contacted her a few times in the last six months of her life. | | |
| Really glad to be back in class and working. I taught Thursday and Friday after the week of recovering from the eye surgery. Like I wrote, physically I felt fine, but I had to stay face down or chin-to-chest for a week for the gas bubble inserted where the vitreous fluid would be to push the eye back to re-attach to the retina.
There was an article from FARK about Oklahoma high school seniors' understanding of civics, and one of the questions indicated that only 23% of them could properly identify George Washington as the first president. So I had to see about San Francisco 7th graders' ability to recognize the first president. Also I added a question much more important which I stressed to the students please evaluate honestly my feelings will not be hurt. So the above chart was the Oklahoma high school answers to who was the first president and 3 other questions. Here is the answers from the 7th grade class, plus a bonus question. I didn't write a count for Obama, because almost all the class raised their hands to vote a second time, just to vote for him.
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| I don't know if anyone read the thing I wrote about September 5,6 and 12, 13 being astrologically difficult days, with the days inbetween being tough too. I wrote it privately on August 19, and published it September 3, but forgot to push xanga's "update the date" button.
Well, I don't know if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but my left eye's retina detached yet again. As much as I tried not to believe it, I had a clear sign of a curtain covering my left eye vision. Who knows why the June 30 surgery failed as did the August 3rd one. The doctor that did the surgery September 9 is truly high rated .... but then again so was the doctor from June 30.
Surgery went fine, but the recovery is much worse. Having to remain in a facedown position 23 hours a day, and that one hour is supposed to be for eyedrop insertion only. 2 drops get put in 4 times a day, 2 drops just twice a day. Good thing they are color coded by their caps. So 9/12 and 9/13 I don't have to worry about anything happening, it's already happened, I'll just be at home face down putting in eyedrops.
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