Category Archives: Culture

Urban Legends and Knowing What to Do in a Crisis

Posted on by ninjanurse

Your Kmareka correspondent is one of the few with the courage to say it out loud. I hate Christmas. I would gladly skip the whole thing for adults. Children should not be cheated out of their presents and Christmas joy of course, but let’s buy them some toys and the rest of us have cocktail parties and eat samosas. There, I’ve said it.

But as Scroogy as I am, I don’t totally buy into the flip side of American Christmas –bemoaning our greed and materialism. Although this story is true, I sense a touch of the Urban Legend…

Family and friends were stunned by the loss of a West Virginia man who died while shopping on Black Friday as fellow bargain hunters reportedly walked around — and even over — the man’s body.

Family members told WSAZ-TV that 61-year-old Walter Vance of Logan County, W. Va., had become ill and collapsed while shopping for Christmas decorations inside Target in South Charleston. He later died after being taken to the hospital, family said.

Witnesses told the NBC News affiliate in Charleston, W. Wa., that shoppers walked around and even over Vance’s body.

It’s a fact of human nature, and cause for much anguish after the fact, that we tend not to understand or deal well with the unexpected. I have witnessed people collapsing in public, only to be surrounded by concerned bystanders within seconds. The crucial requirement is that the bystanders recognize a crisis and have a script for how to respond. Mr. Vance had the misfortune to have an emergency out of context. I think that most of the crowd of deranged Christmas shoppers simply did not recognize what they were seeing. But Mr. Vance was helped by some people who knew what to do…

An E.R. nurse who also happened to be shopping at the store tried to administer CPR. She and an off-duty paramedic tried to help Vance while he was on the floor.

I’ll be the first to say, ‘Bah, humbug’ to Black Friday. But I think the tragic demise of Walter Vance was more a stroke of fate than an American morality tale.

Celebrity Debris

Posted on by ninjanurse

After running around to three libraries in the freezing cold all last week your Kmareka correspondent has been struck down with a sinus infection.

I’m stuck in bed, reading a lot of Agatha Christie– mistress of distraction, storyteller extraordinaire. Her mysteries don’t actually make any sense, but who cares? I’m not up to anything that requires mental effort.

This week’s New Yorker has a short profile on Crystal Harris, the 24 year old almost college graduate who is engaged to the 84 year old Hugh Hefner. She gave up everything to be with him…

“I was a psychology major, and I didn’t want to be a psychologist,” she said. “I thought it would be cool to come up here and just, you know, hang with Hef. School will always be there, I guess.” Read more

Agatha Christie could have made this stuff up, and she’s a genre writer.

I wish Crystal Harris every happiness, and I want to give her some words of encouragement. Men are living longer these days.

I only see the old people who are sick, so you can extrapolate that there are more well people I never meet. It’s not so unusual to encounter a dude over 90 who still has his marbles.

Any man or woman who makes it past 80 in decent shape has a strong constitution and a good shot at making it to 100. The oldest man I ever took care of was 105, and feisty enough to demand that the items on his bureau be rearranged every ten minutes. How lucky that Hef is loved by a woman with the youth and energy to take care of such needs. And how lucky that his wealth can provide for the many necessities that consume the savings of a lifetime. Hef will even be able to try expensive and experimental cutting edge treatments for longevity. Dick Cheney, I have heard, is bionic. With any luck, it will all come out even and Crystal will not begin her middle age in debt.

If she survives her husband, Crystal will still be young enough to finish school. She’ll have learned so much about psychology by then.

I wish them a long and happy union.

Any more celebrity debris I can find to take my mind off phlegm and congestion will go into updates here.

IN RELATED NEWS: Sr. Cecilia Adorni celebrated her 103rd birthday by dancing a polka. She’s still working. They have her picture and she doesn’t look a day over 90.

You Can’t Take the Sky From Me

Posted on by ninjanurse

The Year of the Rabbit is off to a good start. Joss Wheeden’s ‘Firefly’, the only TV worth watching with the exception of some PBS documentaries and most episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ has emerged from the black hole of series cancellation…

(EW.com) — Browncoats rejoice: “Firefly” is returning to basic cable — and Nathan Fillion has something to say about it.

The Science Channel has acquired the rights to the cult-hit and will air the series in its short-lived entirety, plus some new extras. Science Channel will wrap each episode with interstitial segments starring renowned physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, who will discuss the theoretical science behind the show’s sci-fi concepts.

Nathan Filion, Firefly’s Capt. Mal Reynolds, would love to star in future episodes. I vote for a script that pre-dates the timeline of the movie Serenity so that Alan Tudyk and Ron Glass can resume their roles without doing some hokey Star Trek back from the dead kind of thing. When Joss kills off a character, they stay dead, unless they’re undead.

I have a science crush on Michio Kaku, so I might locate where I threw my TV when Firefly was cancelled by the dastardly Fox and fire it up again.

Gong Hei Fat Choy

Posted on by ninjanurse

I’m just back from Vermont–celebrating the Year of the Rabbit, which officially began on February 3, but is a ten day festival, so you can eat a chocolate bunny on Valentines Day if you want.

Vermont has more snow than Rhode Island, and more fell every day. I learned how to make some Chinese recipes, which will cut my food budget and make several restaurants sad.

The Year of the Rabbit is supposed to be more peaceful and people will be more engaged with their families. We’ve just finished the Year of the Tiger, so expect a different vibe.

I’m glad for good friends and two New Year’s parties every year.

Paul Di Filipo, Local Author

Posted on by ninjanurse

Just a short break from political spitball fights to praise a fellow Rhode Islander.

Paul Di Filipo is a science fiction writer whose clever disguise as a regular guy you see walking around the East Side conceals great literary accomplishments…

Paul Di Filippo is the author of hundreds of short stories, some of which have been collected in these widely-praised collections: The Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, Fractal Paisleys, Lost Pages, Little Doors, Strange Trades, Babylon Sisters, and his multiple-award-nominated novella, A Year in the Linear City. Another earlier collection, Destroy All Brains, was published by Pirate Writings, but is quite rare because of the extremely short print run (if you see one, buy it!).

I have a copy of ‘Lost Pages’, a collection of stories set in the decades from the 20′s to the 60′s, riffing on what might have been. It’s very good. I’ve read the whole book except for one chapter, the one starring Anne Frank. Paul’s writing is so powerful I’m afraid of facing Anne in his fictional world.

I had no idea he had so many other books in print. I’ll look for them. There’s nothing more fun than discovering a new sci-fi writer.

Paul is a literary critic on Salon.com, a site that hires real writers. ‘Is Science Fiction Dying?’. See Paul’s answer here.

Good News for Inner City Art

Posted on by ninjanurse

It will be good to see the Black Rep space on Westminster St. open again…

PROVIDENCE — A nonprofit arts group, led by well-known Rhode Island storyteller Len Cabral, plans to use the former Providence Black Repertory Company building at 276 Westminster St. for a café and performance space called the Westminster Roots Cafe.

Cabral is board chairman of Providence Inner City Arts, which will operate the café. Cabral said the organization will present theater, storytelling, music, dance, poetry and community workshops in the new space, which he hopes to open sometime in March.

Part of the group’s mission is to showcase diversity within the city, he said, and he hopes to team up with local arts groups, libraries and educators.

Cabral said Providence Inner City Arts is best known for presenting the Florentine Faire and other community arts events throughout the city in the ’70s and ’80s.

I’m an admirer of Len and his gifted family. I think I saw him at the very first Florentine Faire, in a vacant lot on Thayer St. He was dressed like he walked out of a Shakespeare play, and he was wearing a sword. We roasted potatoes over a fire in a 50-gallon drum. It was cold.

If there’s anyone who can create something from found objects and inspiration it’s Len. The former Westminster Mall is becoming the city center it tried to be twenty years ago. Good luck, Len and friends.

They’ll Outbreed Us

Posted on by ninjanurse

Truly, work is the curse of the blogging class, taking on a second job forces me to converse with carbon-based life forms in real time. But thank the gods that I can still do something in the material world, and get some bucks for it.

Kmareka Multinational, LLC strives to corner the market in the news before it happens–also recognizing trends. William Gibson, a fine author who writes what used to be called sci-fi, (but stuff happens so fast now, it’s now ‘speculative fiction’) has a book about that, called ‘Pattern Recognition’.

I’m a freelancer myself, part-time, per-diem and grateful to have the opportunity to somewhat control my schedule.

So, in an idle moment I picked up a glossy magazine called ‘LifeStyles’ and saw something alarming.

Celebrities are reproducing at an amazing rate.

Every page had a celebrity pregnancy or birth. They are breeding like rabbits.

They start young, and maintain their fecundity into middle age. They use surrogates and enlarge their families by adoption– traveling across the world to claim babies and sweep them into the celebrity world. How can ordinary people compete?

Soon they’ll outnumber us, and every random person you meet at the bus stop will latch on to your arm and start driveling on about their liposuction and time in rehab.

You won’t have to buy the ‘Globe’ or the ‘Star’. You’ll be wishing you could escape this globe and find a distant star with a planet where people talk about more interesting stuff.

Okay, I’m an elitist. One of those who should be sent to a re-education camp and forced to watch Sarah Palin’s reality show until I confess to whatever is demonized this week. But I’m not terribly fussy about what I read. My sister-in-law is a PhD in literature and she loves junk. I notice the Globe, they’re displayed in the checkout line that gets longer as workers are laid off. The Globe has it in for the President.

Is it just because he’s the Prez? I’m getting a sense of pattern recognition. There are deep messages in our language and culture. I suspect that all those celebrity baby stories send a message to us peasants. And a Prez who is not so old, not so white, is trying to turn around a very old and heavy ship, headed for the falls.

A Matter of Perspective

Posted on by David Jaffe

It helps to have proper perspective, to view the world and oneself with clarity and in context. Unfortunately, perspective is sometimes lost or misplaced. Like my eyeglasses. On occasion, I absentmindedly put the darned things down somewhere and then cannot locate them. My squinty-eyed search is rife with irony. I need the glasses to look for the glasses, but, if I had them, I would not need to look for them. Similarly, it can be hard to find perspective when you lack perspective.

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, a great many Americans are angry and unhappy with the republic. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 66% of respondents voiced dissatisfaction with the way things are going in this country. The blame game is in full swing. In a recent Gallup poll, 46% of respondents expressed disapproval of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President. That’s not too abysmal, when compared to ratings of the legislative branch. In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month, 71% of respondents disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job. The only folks less popular right now are Wall Street bankers, Internet spammers, and Sandra Bullock’s cheating spouse.

While there is ample reason for discontent and worry, I believe that many Americans have lost perspective. Our elected leaders are viewed as both the cause and the solution for this country’s ills. They broke it, and they’re gonna fix it. Except “it”…is us. America does not belong to Barack Obama. It does not belong to Congress. It does not belong to the faceless plutocrats in their mahogany-paneled boardrooms. It belongs to us. We, the citizens, are America. The fate of this nation and its constituent communities rests in our collective hands. It is our responsibility. We would do well to forsake blame and dependency and show some gumption. We have become far too flabby. Democracy must be exercised more than once every couple of years in November.

Similarly, we ought to look elsewhere for celebrity-worship. Turn off Entertainment Tonight. Cast aside Us Weekly. Take a gander around you. That’s not Brad Pitt tinkering with live wires atop the telephone pole out back; that’s a utility worker. That’s not Angelina Jolie strolling up the walk with a heavy bag slung over her shoulder; that’s the mail carrier. That’s certainly not Lindsey Lohan collecting the trash; that’s a sanitation worker. These and others in your community—teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, et al.—are the true stars. They are much more worthy of your devotion (and gratitude) than strangers graced by fame and fortune.

The same might be said of the clergy. There are many who toil in obscurity, whether in your neighborhood parish or in places like the Sudan, while the religious aristocracy garners the lion’s share of attention. It seems wrong. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times appears to agree:

Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.

Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?

Yet if the top of the church has strayed from its roots, much of its base is still deeply inspiring. I came here to impoverished southern Sudan to write about Sudanese problems, not the Catholic Church’s. Yet once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests — notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.

As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church. [link]

It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Ah, there are my eyeglasses.

Howard Stern’s Inner Beauty

Posted on by ninjanurse

I’m always surprised when people get all excited about the fact that actors play roles. That’s why they call them ‘actors’ after all. And shockingly enough, scriptwriters create roles for all kinds of actors.

I didn’t watch the movie, ‘Precious’. I only watch science fiction because I get too much reality on the job. Still I was kind of happy that a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, got ‘best director’, and that Gabourey Sidibe was nominated for best actress.

Other than that, the Oscars kind of fell off my radar. Except that now there’s all kinds of upset that Gaborey Sidibe came out as fat. It seems she really is fat in real life and lots of people are outraged about it.

Or maybe Howard Stern, not nominated for anything lately, is just looking for attention.

We all have our public and private persona. Ninjanurse is very businesslike at work, but likes to let her hair down and enjoy some intelligent company when the day is done.

Ninjanurse at Home

I’ll bet Howard Stern is just a regular guy when he’s not performing. He puts his hair away, slips into a Slanket and watches the 700 Club.

Howard Stern at Home

The sketch is just an artist’s conception, of course, and may not accurately depict Howard Stern. I don’t even know if they still sell Geritol. But I like to think of him this way– a hardworking actor taking a chance to let his inner beauty shine.

Protecting Our Women

Posted on by ninjanurse

Just a question for you real American men. Not men like ‘Joe’ the ‘Plumber’ or ‘Jeff Gannon’. I’m thinking more like Scott Brown, the senator with ‘available’ daughters. Would you want some guy with a drug history and possibly an odorous leaking sore in his personal area to be staring at and judging your daughter as she parades around undressed?

Well, heck yes! It’s the Miss America pageant.

Rush Limbaugh, the man credited with popularizing the term “feminazi,” says he’s a fan of the women’s movement — “especially when walking behind it.”

Hey, only one lucky girl will be Miss America, but who knows how many will get to be Mrs. Limbaugh. It’s three and counting so far.

At the risk of being called a ‘feminazi’, this writer calls the whole thing ‘An Obscene Spectacle’.