I want to write a little about something that happened to me today that I just cannot quit thinking about.
For the uninitiate: I am in a musical through my college called Sex After Sixty?? that is set in an assisted living facility for senior citizens. My character, Mabel, fancies herself as a femme fatale, and hits on the lead character, a woman pretending to be a man, in a scene in the play. In that scene, I have to sing a solo, and dance a little.
When I agreed to be in Sex After Sixty??, I was not aware it was a musical.
I cannot dance. Or sing.
I've been having a lot of anxiety about this solo. This is my first play, musical or otherwise, and I am absolutely terrified that I am going to walk onto the stage and forget the whole song. Because of that, I've been trying to go through all my parts and memorize them as best I can. Generally I'm to the part where I don't need the script anymore, but there are still some parts where I need work. That's one of them.
I went to school this semester Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that's when the play practices are, along with some weekend practices and the like. Practice today was kinda' grueling in that we're trying to get a new cast member up to speed, so we kept having to go over the same things over and over. With about 15 minutes to go in practice, everyone was kinda' tired, so we were going to let out early after we finished the song we were performing. After that song played, it automatically queued mine up. While people were assing around and not paying attention, I figured I'd run through that solo, and asked them to start it at the beginning for me.
Last weekend we practiced this, just me, the producer, and the director, with the goal that we'd work on dance steps as well, but you can't really work on dance until you get the song down, and I hadn't quite yet. I left feeling discouraged, but today I was in the mood to tackle it again.
I don't know what was different between then and now... maybe the extra time it had to percolate in my head helped, but as I got into it, I noticed people gradually start to quiet, and when I was finished, some laughing, cheering, and applause was had.
At the time I curtsied and winked and got out of the way so folks could do something if they wanted to, but it hit me today when I was waiting on dinner:
A) I got up in front of at least 10 people and sang at considerable volume
B) They clapped after I was done!
I can't reconcile the two. You see, I don't sing or dance in front of other people. Ever. There is a good reason for that: I hate looking foolish. But just as I've always desperately wanted to act, I've also desperately wanted to sing. There is always music in my head or in my ears, I'm constantly listening or thinking of music. It is a crucial part of my life. I stayed away from acting because I never had the time and I stayed away from singing because I thought I sucked.
Maybe I shouldn't have stayed away.
I cannot convey how uncharacteristic this is of me. I never do that. And yet, since I did it, I can't wait to do it again.
I have spoken before here, albeit a long time ago, about how I don't like the practices of drug companies, and find them generally no better than insurance companies. Today, I'm going to discuss a realization I just had, and one thing that I do like about Wal-Mart.
Nearly all of us are aware of the various $4 drug programs... $4 a month, some offer $9.99 for 90 days worth of medication, Publix and, iirc, Meijer offering free antibiotics. Walgreens does not have a strict $4 program, they do have a program called the W Card that you can buy into for $20 a year for an individual and $35 for a family, and it offers similar discounted rates, but you do have to buy into it and it is a pain in the ass to set up, and even worse if you want a refund. (I have personally seen the W Card save people hundreds of dollars, though, so I can't speak too harshly about it. And it will even cover your pets, if they take medication on the list. A list of covered medications is available at your local Walgreens, they just expanded the list. Probably on the website too. Only thing, if you're a Medicare patient, can't use it, Walgreens and Medicare have a deal. Go to another pharmacy for those <3 Ad= over.) Anyway. I can't speak as to what medications are on other companies' $4 lists, but ours are all generic, and I'm betting the lists of other companies are similar.
Contrast this with drug companies. Now, to paint all drug companies with one broad stroke is simplistic and doesn't shed light on why they do what they do, so we can work towards changing it, but that is for another essay. Plainly said, I don't like drug companies. Specifically, I don't like their tactics, a few of which I will outline below:
* Evergreening. Drug companies are known to use techniques such as "evergreening," which is when a drug company will come out with a new drug (or a controlled/extended release format) to replace a drug that just went generic. Nexium is probably the best known example of the former (hi, Prilosec!,) Toprol XL is the best example to me of the latter (Metoprolol is the generic for Toprol.)
* Drug Representatives. Otherwise known as Drug Reps, the scourge of the healthcare industry in my always humble opinion, these people come into play once the drug companies already have their spiffy meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss drug. The drug companies detail them to go out into the field, targeting doctors offices, pharmacies (I actually spoke with a drug rep once. You'll be proud to know I was completely cordial and polite,) individual doctors, individual pharmacists, and doctors and pharmacists to be, and get doctors to prescribe these drugs with happening names, these XR/XL/CR versions of drugs whose perfectly fine previous versions just went generic. You can spot these drugs because they generally come with free 7/30 day coupons that you have to send for and bring to the pharmacy. Pro tip: these drugs aren't always covered by insurance at all, and if they are, it's a pain shoving them through. A quick way of finding out is asking your friendly pharmacy tech to run it through without the coupon first, there's no sense in starting a medication if you won't be able to continue it because your insurance won't pay for it. (Please don't attempt this in drive-thru at 5pm on a first of the month Monday, though. Do it at 2pm on a Wednesday or at night after 8pm if your pharmacy is a 24-hour one, your tech will love you for it.) As a side note, people are always talking about the shit economy these days, and cost-cutting measures, but I ring up thousands of dollars of prescriptions every shift, and one thing I notice is people buying these versions of these drugs with nary a realization that there are generics a lot of the time that would save them a lot of money. Might be worth considering.
* Advertising. At the same times drug companies are sending out drug reps to wine and dine various healthcare-related people and leaving little pens and clocks and shit behind as reminders of their message, they saturate our media... our television shows, our magazines, our newspapers, the websites we visit, with advertisements for these same drugs. Actually, quicker than waiting while the pharmacy tech inputs your prescription and runs it through insurance? Just look to see if your drug has an XR/XL/CR on the end, or if it's one being advertised when they hand you the prescription. If it does, the non controlled/extended release just went generic, which means that if you can get them to write you a script for the generic, you can save yourself a lot of money. Drug companies are certainly not the only ones that do this, but I have a problem with this because I believe advertising medication, thereby making it a very commonplace thing, is turning us into a society of drug users, much more legal than not. By marketing these drugs (by being allowed to market these drugs, she snarls,) they also market the idea that there is a pill that cures whatever ails, whatever ails. And I fervently believe that they are turning us into a nation of hypochondriacs.
Ever notice that whenever we aren't perfectly bouncy and peachy, shiny happy, and if someone asks about it, we usually say something about being depressed? Being sad, in a shitty mood, is not the same as clinical depression. You do not need a pill for that. It is completely normal to not be a shiny happy person all the time. Same for Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, otherwise known as, of course, ADD/ADHD. Note: I am not saying that I don't believe ADD/ADHD is not a valid diagnosis, aiding for Sandberg in high school for 3 years erased all doubt I'll ever have about that. I do think it is overdiagnosed, and sometimes, just sometimes, it isn't the child, it's the environment and society they grow up in. That we have created. We all have trouble focusing sometimes. That does not mean you need a damn pill for it.
In advertising these designer drugs, sending people out to convince doctors to prescribe them, then convincing us we need them, drug companies have created a culture of hypochondria. Message: There is not always a pill to cure what ails. This is because, sometimes, there is nothing wrong in the first place. Don't let them convince you there is.
There are others, of course, but those are the tactics I have the most trouble with.
$4 lists and the like fly directly in the face of all that mess. Generics don't have the breezy designer names, the slim, colorful packaging. All that mess, all the heavy co-pays, are an attempt to recoup the R&D funds and administrative costs it takes to push the drug down the pipeline to us. (Which may beg the question of what is wrong with paying higher co-pays for a drug if it will help to re-coup those costs, which are admittedly significant. The difference to me is that a lot of the drugs you see now, or at least I do, are just different formulations of the same stuff that's been out for years solely created to ensure revenue for that company for 17 more years.* I have a problem with that.)
I like seeing what happens when $4 lists and the like go up against drug companies, because guess who generally wins? (Protip: it generally ends with smiling customers.) Tonight I'm happy with Wal-Mart, because while they were not the first to do that, and I do want to stress that... I think K-Mart among other retailers had been doing it for awhile before Wal-Mart ever came on, and while I don't harbor any thought that Wal-Mart did it for anything else than raking in money and market share, and while I have massive reservations about $4 programs and the like as a whole, Wal-Mart doing it brought it to the mainstream, and in doing so, dealt the drug companies a big blow. I like to see that.
* 17 years is generally the length of time patents last for brand name drugs.
If you like mysteries, rock and roll, or just good writing in general, today I have a gift for you.
My dear friend, Deborah Grabien, who you may recognize from her Haunted Ballads series, has a magnificent book coming out on July 8th that I can't not tell ya'll about.
Rock and Roll Never Forgets is but the first novel in the Kinkaid Chronicles, and centers on JP Kinkaid, a long-time guitarist for the band Blacklight, who is in the middle of their sold-out North American tour. Meanwhile, Perry Dillon, the ultimate sleazy tabloid writer, seizes his opportunity to do a little digging in the history of the band members for a tell-all biography. After the opening show at Madison Square Garden, the band comes offstage to find someone has committed a murder backstage... in JP's dressing room.
To get a feel for how the story moves on the page, this is an excerpt currently up on Green Man Review. Also, below is the trailer for R&RNF, take a look:
and here, as always, if you'd like to open it in another window.
When you watch the trailer, if you can, select the option to watch it in High Quality. Also, crank it up! The music is 100% original, created just for the trailer.
Rock and Roll Never Forgets debuts July 8th. The ISBN is 0312379994, and you can pre-order it now. Amazon has it available for pre-ordering as well, and you can find it here.
Full Disclosure: Deborah is a dear friend. I got to see this book in its infancy, and got to watch the next ones in the series created as well. Also, I did some voice work for that trailer, so I'm hardly impartial, but don't take my word for it! Go back and read that excerpt again, and watch the trailer if you haven't already. You don't often see books of this caliber anymore, and I wanted everyone here to know about it.
So, lately I've been thinking a lot, and I need to write a proper entry on this, but basically, I have a request to make.
I would like to read the great, defining, high-water mark works in Feminism, and I have no idea where to start. That's where you guys come in. It can be from any wave, post-modern, early feminism, can be fiction or non-, I don't care. Toss them all at me, and feel free to point people at this entry if you think they might know something to suggest, I'd really appreciate it.
I am opening a can of worms here, and this is probably going to be one of those posts where the ground is scorched and no one says anything afterwards, but I don't give a shit. I'm fed up.
NOTE: This is not directed specifically at anyone. Especially you, Jason... of course you had to post something about it right when I was working up a post about it. I still <3 you :D
I have seen a lot of stuff lately, hell, ever since 1998 or 1999 or so, about people downloading. Music, movies, TV shows, you name it. Whatever. The actual content itself doesn't matter, the actions and the attitudes do.
There are havens, repositories, boatloads of places who either host content you can download for free, without paying the creators, or who link to places you can. I understand they took one of those sites down recently and tossed the guy running it in jail. I never went there, don't know the situation, but that's what prompted me to write this.
It is a firm belief of mine that it is wrong to do this. I believe it is wrong to download music and movies/television shows when the people who created them are around to lose the profit they'd have if you bought it. If the artists/actors aren't around anymore, especially if they didn't leave anyone behind, like Billie Holiday and Ella, I don't have such a problem with it. But if they're alive, I have a huge problem with it.
In this case, I don't care about the law. I despise the RI/MPAA. I think they're fools trying desperately to hold on to outdated business methods to make themselves stay relevant. The labels themselves aren't that much better. This isn't about about their arbitrary, bullshit laws. This is about people depriving the artists/actors who created the content they claim to love the profit the artist/actor would've gotten if they would have purchased the content instead.
That is why we live in the sort of society we do, where you can obtain certain things for free but most other things are sky-high to compensate. If we didn't steal, and it is my firm belief that is exactly what that's called, it wouldn't have to be that way.
I've heard the argument that those who download, most of the time, end up buying the content they download later. I'd hope that is true, but from my own experience, I highly doubt it. I do posess downloaded music. About half of my Ella collection is downloaded. This makes me a damn hypocrite. I do endeavor to try to buy the things I have downloaded, but I find that oftentimes, when I have the money to, buying them legitimately, even though I believe all this, seems kind of silly. I know I'd feel a lot better if I would. But I think I'm in the minority. A lot of people just don't give a damn. And that's the problem.
You people who have been here since May 2005 are well aware of my love for T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. So much so that I have my favorite paragraph linked on my profile.
weds has remixed the last paragraph of that poem. And I must say it is made of absolute win.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (May 24) - The little boy spotted the pretty pile of colored sand on the floor of the vast hall and couldn't resist. Slipping under a protective rope, he danced all over the sand, ruining the carefully crafted picture.
Never mind that it was the creation of eight Tibetan monks who had spent two days cross-legged on the floor of Union Station, meticulously pouring the sand into an intricate design as an expression of their Buddhist faith.
They were more than halfway done with the design - called a mandala - on Tuesday when they ended their work for the day and left. The little boy showed up sometime later with his mother, who was taking a package to a post office in the hall.
"He did a little tap dance on it, completely destroying it," said Lama Chuck Stanford, of the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City.
A security tape shows the boy's mother returning to the mandala, grabbing her son by the arm and walking out of camera range.
The monks saw the destruction Wednesday.
"No problem," Geshe Lobsang Sumdup, leader of the group from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India, said through a translator. "We didn't get despondent. We have three days more. So we will have to work harder."
The monks are on a yearlong tour of the United States and Canada to raise money for their monastery. The original monastery in Tibet was destroyed.
In a ceremony Saturday, they will sweep up the sand and offer bits to onlookers for their gardens. The rest will be placed in the Missouri River.
"The belief is that it will carry the blessings all over the planet, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi to the gulf and to all the oceans of the world," Stanford said.
Got a gift for all you Supernatural fans! My friend and writer extraordinare synecdochic has sworn she is not writing for the Supernatural fandom, and in accordance with that she has written her first Supernatural fic. :D I know several of you watch this series and I hear it's great, so if you want a piece of joy, go read Syne's fic. Spoilers through Season 2, episode 22.
happy
excited
cynical
amused