NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

Awesomeness…

How exquisite and perfect.

Want to read some liveblogging of the debate tonight?

Oops, wrong election.

Go here.

Photo from here.

Just four days ago I got an email from Scott Karp suggesting that his Web startup might have some tools that could make covering an election interesting — really interesting.More emails … phone calls … more emails … phone calls. The result: An idea to let some savvy political followers (except me) find links to the best stories out there and make a list of them that lets readers get the benefit of their foraging and expertise.

Who the hell is Scott Karp? Folio: mag tagged him as one of the 40 most influential people in publishing in 2007. He left his day job as director of digital strategy for the publisher of The Atlantic magazine last year to devote his full energies (and then some) to a startup called Publish2.com.

I’m honored to be in. Thanks to those who have faith in me.

Now if I can just figure it all out.

Hoping I do well.

You know, I never remembered what company this commercial was for when I saw it originally for one of the Super Bowls.

[youtube=[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z2_kKAe9y0&rel=1&border=1]

For obvious reasons, I’m quite fond of it. Do not trust the Squirrel Queen as she will sic her squirrel legion on you.

WANT!

I honestly am shocked by this. And appalled.

A nurse admitted Wednesday he cut body parts from 244 corpses and helped forge paperwork so the parts, some of them diseased, could be used in unsuspecting patients.

Authorities say nurse Lee Cruceta was the lead cutter in a group that trafficked in more than 1,000 stolen body parts for the lucrative transplant market.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy, taking part in a corrupt organization, abuse of a corpse and 244 counts each of theft and forgery. Cruceta, 35, also has pleaded guilty to related charges in New York and negotiated pleas to serve concurrent sentences of 6 1/2 to 20 years.

Jeez.

Yesterday at lunch, the groovy chicks at the office all decided to go out and have lunch. We are a diverse group, conservative, liberals, a couple of blue dogs and two women who are pretty apathetic about politics as a whole. Everyone was there.

I bring this up to say that real people do talk about politics and can be civil about it. It was a good, very open-minded conversation even if we had to agree to disagree on a couple of items. But during the luncheon, the main thing we talked about was the process of voting for president. I would say that roughly four of the eight of us are political junkies so it was interesting to have a conversation about how delegates work and electronic voting (it was agreed on both sides of the political spectrum that we all wanted a paper receipt of our votes on primary and election day which I thought was interesting.)

The other thing we did was talk about the debunking of myths about the candidates. The slanderous and damaging emails about Barack Obama’s spirituality which we all have received (that are weighing on the minds of a couple of them which was good that we had the opportunity to say “Hey, this is spin to damage him”), we had one huge John Edwards fan talking about why she was very disappointed about him “suspending” the race and we discussed the public image in comparison to voting records and that going and reading the candidates issues on their own websites is something we recommend doing for each of these guys on the ballot.

The ages ranged from 62 to 23 years old.

I know this will shock you but I listened and only added my perspective when I was asked. Sometimes it’s best to take a moment and hear that, although there will probably be different candidates supported in the group at the polls, we all believe that our votes still make a difference.

Just an observation.

I’m wishing Scout many kind wishes this morning. Her grandmother is ill. I worked with gma for years before she retired in 2006. There are kind women in this world and Scout’s grandmother is one of them. She literally was the backbone of local politics for fifty years in our neck of the woods as she worked in the County Mayor’s office up until her retirement. She is a blessing and things are grave.

Nurse Elizabeth noticed that my grandmother (We’ll just call her gma, the Finn/Scout texting abbrev for grandmother) had turned an eerie shade of yellow this past Sunday. Gma came home from church early because she was “too tired and weak to stand it anymore,” and Elizabeth convinced her to go to the doctor the next day. Despite gma’s trying to talk Elizabeth out of it, she couldn’t put up enough of a fight and ended up being taken to the doctor anyway. At the hospital, they determined that she had hemolytic anemia and needed a blood transfusion pronto so my sister and dad took her up to a hospital in Paducah to have the transfusion done. Her doctor took one look at her and ushered my dad and sister out in the hall for a conference. He said that he believed that the lymphoma she’d had three years ago had come out of a dormant state and was very quickly taking over her blood because it had come back much stronger than before.

Arrangements are now being made for chemotherapy, but the doctor is not really giving us much hope at this point.

We are sending much love to Mrs. Doris and to her entire family right now.

Vibinc offers a very thoughtful analysis of what it’s like to be a yellow-dog democrat. For me to even pull one snippet out wouldn’t do the whole piece justice.

Head his to his home on the web to read his thoughts on the democratic race for president.

This sort of just grosses me out.

From Random

I’m sort of surprised that John Edwards decided to bow out. The cynic in me thinks there is more here than meets the eye as that’s usually going on with politicians. We see one thing, but other stuff is going on as well.

You never know.

In all honesty, I don’t know why he didn’t do any better. I was leaning heavily toward voting for him even though I knew he wasn’t going to get the stage in Denver.I thought he’d stick around and gather up a smattering of delegates and start brokering deals.

That’s how it’s usually done. Politicians wheel and deal.

I’m sort of surprised that Edwards didn’t do that. Or did we? Once again, you never know.

And that cynic is me is asking “What happened?” Because I think something did. Either personal or a deal down the line perhaps?

Not sure.

A member of my staff is a HUGE Edwards supporter and she is somewhat heartbroken although she is a realist as well. She liked him and every day I would get an update on him from her, something I rather enjoyed over coffee each morning. It’s the enthusiasm that she shared that brightened my morning. I wish I could have 1/4th of her energy and passion about this race, but I don’t.

And now we are down to four choices. Two republicans, two democrats…

It is what it is.

Katie Allison Granju at Knoxville Talks pointed to an article about depression in people in their forties.

As I’m in my forties, I wish to opine.

I think everyone goes through depression from childhood on. Of course there are severe and debilitating mental health issues that are factor for many such as bipolar disorder or just good old fashioned clinical depression but sometimes folks just get a good old case of the blues. I’ve often wondered about the difference between a physical depression and situational ones.

With that said, the article she refers to makes a fine point regarding that there is a sense of not meeting goals that seemed so accessible when, let’s say, I was in my late teens. The shoulda-woulda-coulda syndrome does set in. It did for me to a large degree. I’ve often said I’m too poor for a red sports car and too tired to have an illicit affair so during the mid-life crisis that hit me, I started blogging and I threw myself into learning things that scared me.

Then something wonderful happened.

I really got to a point for the first time in my life that other people’s impressions of me did not make as much of an impact as it did when I was younger. And I started to speak my mind a bit more but learned to be diplomatic about it. I also learned that sometimes people are not acting out of character. They are what they are. And I am what I am. And sometimes those things just don’t mesh.

Middle-age is an odd thing. The article talks about that people in their forties get “down” because they see people they know and love get ill or die. I do have a sense of mortality that I didn’t have even 15 years ago. But, with that said, the 10 year anniversary of my mother’s death is coming up next month and that’s when those feelings started to become more prevalent. If she could die so horribly, then so could I.

You think about these things.

But I want to also say that the year I turned 40 was one of the most liberating times of my life. I shed some emotional skin that had created roadblocks for my personal development. I appreciated patience a bit more.

I believe that sometimes if you realize that you are in a depression and you can recognize that “HEY, I’m depressed over a situation” or “Whoa, I’m not feeling so well and I don’t know why” then you have a better understanding of being part of the solution instead of feeding into the problem. It’s not easy to get there, but it works for me. And there is nothing wrong with asking for help from your friends, your family and, if necessary, a professional. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you smart because the only person who is going to take care of you is you. There is nothing wrong with saying “Help.”

People who say they never get depressed used to irritate me. Now I realize that we channel our own emotions into what is comfortable. Let’s say anger is comfortable for some people but I’ve always believed that anger is just bubbling repression of loss of identity or control over a situation which of course, are things that can make you depressed.
If you aren’t in your forties and this makes no sense whatsoever, I get that as well. But we are all the same when it comes to our feelings to a large degree.

And one thing that I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that feelings change, and with that knowledge, I know there is hope of a bit of sunshine at the end of a dark tunnel.