Users Are Losers, and Losers Are Users

Happy Valentine's Day! I've never been too keen on this so-called holiday, but I think bethje likes it, and I suppose there's really no harm in it. It's just a little ridiculous, when you get down to it. Speaking of which, our anniversary is coming up. It's our fourth, but by Pirates of Penzance logic it'll be our first, as we got married on the twenty-ninth of February. So I'd like to do something special for that, but I'm terrible at planning. Any ideas? (If you really do have any, you might want to send them to me privately, since Beth can read this.)

So, what else? Whitney Houston died this past weekend, and while I can't say I was ever a particular fan of hers, it still came out of nowhere.

Actually, what's weird is that one of the tabloids they carry at my workplace had a cover story about Whitney collapsing, and I guess for once they were actually on to something. I read Margaret Cho's post on the subject (I'm not sure why I've been referencing her posts so much recently, but she really does nail it sometimes), and I think she has a point when she says she's "sick of the superiority people have about drug addiction and problems and how it’s funny and like a ‘trainwreck’ when someone is caught on camera stumbling and mumbling outside of a club and then they die and no one is surprised." I know I've been guilty of this myself; drugs are one subject on which I can be just as judgmental as the fundamentalists I'm constantly criticizing. I'm trying to overcome that, though, as I realize a lot of people turn to drugs because of actual problems in their life. And hey, I know what it's like to be depressed. I have to say that I'm more sympathetic toward the people who do drugs to overcome pain (real or perceived, because on a mental level it's essentially the same anyway) than the ones who just want to be trendy. I'm also quite critical, perhaps overly so, when it comes to smoking. I've seen pictures of Adele smoking, and I can't help but wonder if that's the reason she needed the throat surgery.

And I LIKE Adele; she's cute (not that that should necessarily matter, but she is) and has a good voice, and "Someone Like You" is a really catchy song.

I don't know. I just don't recommend smoking AND trying to make it as a singer. Well, unless you want to be the next Tom Waits, I guess. Anyway, while it appears that no one knows the cause of Whitney's death for sure, it might have been an overdose on prescription medication. Sound familiar? Is there a conspiracy by Hollywood doctors to do in middle-aged celebrities?

Sunday's new Simpsons episode was a mixed bag for me. I liked Bart and Milhouse busting the myths around the school, but the Lisa plot didn't make a whole lot of sense. The kid writes like Hemingway, so Lisa assumes he also treats girls like Hemingway did? How does that follow? Oh, well. It had its moments, and there have certainly been worse episodes as of late. The Family Guy episode was interesting inasmuch as Beth and I have been to a few horror conventions, so we've probably seen the guy who played Michael Myers in Halloween 4 at some point. Since Myers is such a physical role, he's always been played by stunt men. George P. Wilbur, the guy Tom Tucker was supposed to have been, has done stunt work in a lot of movies, some quite high-profile. Actually, I remember Tucker mentioning in an earlier episode that James Woods talked him out of auditioning for the role of Freddy Krueger, so his having played Myers isn't just an isolated joke. I suppose it's TWO loosely connected jokes, unless there have been other references to his acting career that I'm forgetting about.