Yesterday Jacob got the results from his Breathing Cert. He scored a double A for his lungs. Crystal clear, said the doc with the x-ray vision in Temple Street, while his mammy exhaled in delighted relief.
We’ve been told by the smart folks at St Michael’s House that because of his history of aspiration/pneumonia/lung infection that it was important for Jacob to drink his bottle in as upright a position as possible, and also to remain in a sitting position for a half hour after feeding. No more last bottle of the day and straight to bed. The top brass in Temple Street reckoned that this was pretty good advice. And so do we.
On a separate note, a big congrats to Sesame who has just qualified as Senior Big Boots Professor in Children With Special Needs. She now Officially Knows Everything™ so scoot on over and ask her something really hard, like what the capital of Bolivia is.
A non-DS related post for a change. Today I’m listing six things that float my boat because Hammie told me to. Then apparently I’ve got to nominate five others who have to do something similar. Hmmm. Is this what memes are? (Incidentally, if you haven’t yet been hammified, you should.)
I’ve tried to avoid the obvious things that I love like family and world peace and completing my collection of Horst Bucholz movies, and apologies in advance for dragging those linked below into this. The least you can do, dear reader, is call in on them and offer some sympathy and have a rummage in their wildly different but similarly excellent drawers of stuff.
Anyway. Happiness. It’s easy.
1. Music.
Can’t imagine life without it. I worship good lyrics. Get tickled when I discover a new meaning after listening to an album for ten years. Sometimes, with particular favourites, I can listen all the way through but only to a specific instrument, or just the harmony voice. R&B (what a ridiculous hijacking of a name) and metal are out. Other than that it’s open season, from The Blue Nile to Marvin Gaye to Schubert to The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I’ve read that 80% of sensory input comes in through the eyes. Hmph. Feed your ears hereor here or here.
2. I like to run.
The sound that ten thousand running shoes make is a sort of high speed schlup-schlup-schlup, like a caterpillar on fast forward, and it’s eerily quiet and solitary to be in the midst of that sound. I love it. I also love the heat that bounces off the wall of Glasnevin Cemetery, even at 11.30 at night, if it’s been a warm day. Did you know that poet Gerard Manley Hopkins lies there? So does Jonathan Swift, and Brendan Behan, along with the usual round ’em ups of Irish history – Devalera, Collins, Pearse, Daniel O’Connell… They must have either great parties or seriously boring yakkfests. Now what had this to do with running again?
Boorish, thick-fingered and brilliant, this man died the month after I was born in October ’67. My sensibilities were formed in rural Cavan, a grey Monaghan stone’s throw away. Yeats had the little people, but Kavanagh had the muck. When I now read that great man’s words, it seems as though he walked the lanes just a short bend ahead of me. Nothing is ever constant, but the moments he captured a generation before mine resonate deeply in me. They can bring me directly to a simpler time I witnessed when I was growing. From the 1970s we were hurtling into the future, but looking back maybe we were doing so with two feet in the past. I remember visiting cousins in Donegal before the rural electrification scheme had reached them. It always seemed quite cosy to be going to bed by Tilley lamp. I can remember too other cousins in Cavan getting the colour telly in. My God! Dan Tanner’s car in Vegas was red! And his denims were blue! I was enraptured, but I’d have to wait until August 1979 before the ‘colour’ reached our house. Thank God for his magnificence Pope John Paul II! We’d lived in monochrome until the Popemobile sashayed into town in a riot of colour (mostly Vatican yellow and white, it has to be said, but everything hitherto had been black and white, so we were transfixed anyway.) Come hell or high water, by Jesus Mam was going to see JP 2 in glorious technicolour. Fine with us, Mammy! Anyway, Kavanagh didn’t have Vegas on colour tv, but he had a Christmas Childhood, breath plumed by frosty starlight, calves born in the wee hours in cosy, hay-smelling byres and he had a love and a hate for his loam-clogged boots. He got the point of a whin bush, and so do I, even yet when I’m cast adrift in a metropolitan landscape of constant bustle and no darkness and nothing but foxes to tell day from night.
Luke Kelly and the Dubliners give a great rendition of his words here.
4. Raising Arizona.
The Coen brothers have made by now an impressive list of fine, fine films. Thoughtful, different and engaging. Always ultra-professional productions. You might choose Miller’s Crossing over Barton Fink, or claim that Fargo was wayyy better than The Big Lebowski, and nobody can argue really. For me, it’s their second one that is the greatest. A perfect little gem of hilarity that ought to be the textbook for how to write a proper screenplay. No wrong note, funny as Mother Teresa in Paula Radcliffe’s running vest and perfectly, perfectly cast. Yes, that includes Nicolas Cage. He’s not wrong in everything he does, you know. I’ve seen it somewhere between 25 and 26 times, and hopefully some more too. I can’t believe this was 21 years ago.
5. Crows
Can’t explain this. Don’t want to anyway. If I see crows flying in any kind of appreciable numbers, my heart skips and I cannot suppress a smile.
Crows know stuff you didn’t know they knew. Loads of stuff. Don’t stone the crows, ok?
6. My iMac
I’m not techie, but I am an utter Mac snob. I love how it goes about its business and how dang fine it looks even when it’s asleep. I can’t understand why anyone uses a PC. Just don’t get it. But I’m not sure I want everyone to have one of these swift beauties either…
Let’s have a heated debate! Opening salvo in the Irish media on Tropic Thunder. I spoke to Newstalk early Thursday about my problems with the movie. You’ll have to overlook the nasty case of cotton mouth I got at the start of the conversation. I ain’t no media-savvy talker. But I think I covered what I wanted to say. Eventually.
As I suspected, there was a barrage of ‘Well don’t go and see it then’ type comments, but the funniest for me had to be when an emailer with red hair likened schoolday name calling (Rusty? Ginger? Dunno. S/he didn’t elaborate.) to the ‘Never go Full Retard’ conundrum. Even to the point of saying they were ok now, and what’s the big deal exactly? I know that’ll be a huge comfort to those who have Down syndrome. When they eventually grow out of it they’ll laugh and hoot at other ‘retards’ and there’ll be cotton candy for everyone and-
But how will they defend themselves without the right tools? Oops, pics of right tools included.
Oh enough sarcasm. My head is tired with this yin-yang. I want to thank two people tonight. Firstly Hammie, who’s been hammering home all the pieces of the debate that I dropped (and there were lots) on forums all over the place. Secondly rock on to Sharon who made some superb points across a few forums. Not only is she concerned and vocal, but she’s also thorough. (She posted this at her place and I’m hijacking it.) Here’s where Stiller got the inspiration for his inspired and inspiring send-up of Tinseltown, actors and egotism:
And more news reports :
And on the other hand…
From the fully informed perspective, Tom at Narrow Ridge has seen, and has written a very balanced view here. He also has a son with DS, Ian, and so his perspective is relevant. Read part 1 here…
And from Suzie Smith in Utah, first hand opinion on the movie here.
Tomorrow morning between nine and eleven, national Irish broadcaster Newstalk 106 will debate the upcoming Ben Stiller movie Tropic Thunder. It ought to get lively. Opinions will be sought, including mine. The film opens today in the US. Its premiers have attracted crowds of protesters who wish to ban it.
I haven’t seen it, and I’m not in favour of banning it, or proscribing the words used in it for that matter, although the ‘R word’ (as the US euphemism is known to the disability lobbyists) has much more weight there than it does here. More on that at a later date. What I do have a problem with is the way that DreamWorks has manipulated the content of this movie, to the point of making a dedicated website, trailer and even merchandising for the fictitious movie within Tropic Thunder called Simple Jack. Its strapline read ‘Once there was a retard.’ References to it on the web have pretty much disappeared. Step up and take a bow, US Disability lobbyists.
(In my utter naivete, I know) I see studios as being a type of moral barometer in these issues. Or at least I want to see them that way. The tone they set will in turn be adopted by the more impressionable, especially the young. The fact that a stellar cast of great comedic talent is involved makes this all the more likely. Fourteen year olds don’t give a flying monkey’s about the scriptwriters’ determination to lampoon Hollywood. They’ll think ‘retard’ bashing is an open sport, and vulnerable people will be hurt. That’s the point for me. Just that. And I want to make my point known. Thanks to people who have opened up the debate so far, including here and here. Apologies if I left you out.
If you want to voice your opinion for Newstalk’s debate you can email yourcall@newstalk.ie and mark the subject Tropic Thunder.
Major thanks to Hammie for the push on this one. She is queen of everything, you know.
Our friends at CafePress, having made the egregious but short-lived error of putting up a t-shirt with an intellectually challenged message on it, have bounced back with the ultimate vindication. Whoop it up for a minute, then get back to work you lot!
And well done CafePress. I’m keeping the link. Next time do the thinking before the duhing, huh?
Our Jacob 