The crazy lady strikes again

In a way, this post does have something to do with Star Trek (often called Star Trek: The Original Series to distinguish it from Enterprise, Voyager, and Star Trek: The Next Generation ). George Takei - who played Capt. Sulu in the original series and six subsequent movies - is here in the Chicago area to serve as a featured speaker at tonight's opening ceremony for the Gay Games at Soldier Field. He was also the grand marshal for Chicago's Gay Pride Parade last month. Takei is an open... Sign in to see full entry.

Loyal readers of this blog will remember that I entitled one of yesterday's entries "Grumble, grumble, grumble; mutiny, mutiny, mutiny." I promised to give you the exact source of this quote as soon as humanly possible. It turns out that the quote comes from a Stan Freberg album called The History of the United States, Part 1. The specific cut of that album containing this quote is actually about Columbus, not the American Revolution (as I'd erroneously thought). In that cut, Freberg (playing... Sign in to see full entry.

Yesterday, I read the latest entry in the blog entitled Opinionated Bitch. Jemmie211, the author of that blog, talked about a communique she'd gotten from a teen member of MySpace.com (the controversial website which seems to have attracted child molesters lately). In that communique - I'm not sure if it was an email to Jemmie211 or a blog entry or just what type of written communication it was - the teen complained about the loss of a cell phone, and his difficulty in obtaining a new one from... Sign in to see full entry.

Yesterday, in one of the entries to this blog, I mentioned Mariska Hargitay in passing during a discussion of the acting ability of rapper Ice-T. (Both of them star on Law & Order: SVU. Hargitay is currently on maternity leave, though; she and her husband just recently had a son.) Someone left a comment on that post, asking if I knew that Hargitay was Jayne Mansfield's daughter. The commentator also asked if I were aware that Hargitay was in the back seat of the car Mansfield drove when... Sign in to see full entry.

The title is a direct quote from one of my favorite spoken-word recordings - a humorous perspective on certain events which occurred during America's battle to achieve independence from England. The title of the spoken-word recording escapes me right now; I'll post it to this blog as soon as I find the title out. I chose the title deliberately, because I'm frustrated about certain events. I noticed that I lost the phone number of my former roommate's friend - the one who read my former roommate... Sign in to see full entry.

This occurred to me only after I wrote my last entry. I don't think I adequately covered the possibility that members of other monotheistic religions could have problems with the concept of "God as we understood Him." The monotheistic religion that came to mind after I wrote my last blog entry was Islam. If you want to become a Muslim, the only thing that's strictly necessary is that you have to publicly proclaim the First Pillar of Islam - you have to say the sentence "There is no God but... Sign in to see full entry.

Now, I'd like to go back to talking about the concept of God often talked about in 12-step programs. As I said in an earlier post, 12-step concepts of God are very vague. In fact, God is referred to as one's Higher Power verbally in such places as 12-step meetings, and one can choose any sort of Higher Power one wishes. I mentioned that one can choose items as diverse as a doorknob, Mt. Rushmore, and even your 12-step home group (the 12-step group you attend most frequently) as your Higher... Sign in to see full entry.

I had real trouble coming up with a catchy title for this entry. I wanted to share some of my observations on Oprah Winfrey's Debt Diet program, now that I've seen at least some of her last five programs. This Debt Diet program seems to me to be meant primarily for people who have run up an enormous amount of credit-card debt - as in, they have several MasterCards and Visas (as opposed to just two or three of them), and they have run up tens of thousands of dollars of debt on those cards. (One... Sign in to see full entry.

I wanted to get this in writing while the memory was still fresh. (I've been having numerous problems with my memory this morning. I will start a sentence, then have to stop talking mid-sentence because I forgot my train of thought. That has even happened to me while I was writing this morning in From Death Into Life - I got midway through a sentence and forgot what I was going to write about while I was in mid-sentence. This is extremely frustrating!) As I write, I have Oprah Winfrey playing on... Sign in to see full entry.

When I was actively practicing several 12-step programs, I read a great deal of recovery-oriented literature. I have already mentioned two of the publishers whose recovery-oriented books I've read - Hazelden and CompCare. (Read my last post if you want to know whether or not these publishers are still in existence.) In that literature, I noted what I felt was a disturbing trend. There was a great deal of emphasis on the self - on things like self-esteem or self-love and so forth. Even in those... Sign in to see full entry.