The Cosmos Always Gets the Last Laugh

November 5, 2012 by Debbi

Pretend this is me.

Okay, so the first thing I should mention is that I did a book signing on Saturday. I drove myself to the library ~~with my gimpy hand and foot~~ and everything. Awesome.

And, if you click on the first link, you’ll see that I’m going to Richmond to speak to the local Chapter of Sisters in Crime on Dec. 1. But you won’t see the part where someone asked me ~~for the millionth time~~, “Isn’t there something they can do for you?”

And I said, “They can do things. They just don’t work well. ~~And if there were something, don’t you think I’d be doing it after nearly eight years of this shit!!!~~“

Now, here was my quotation of the week.

And here’s why I chose that quotation, other than the content of the sentence, which I agree with as a fiction writer.

I’m quoting from John Lydon’s Wikipedia entry:

Lydon was born in London on 31 January 1956. His parents, John Christopher and Eileen (née Barry) Lydon, were working class immigrants from Ireland, and moved into a two-room Victorian flat with an outdoor toilet in Benwell Road, in the Holloway area of North London. At the time, the area was largely impoverished, with a high crime rate and a population comprised predominantly of working class Irish and Jamaican migrants. Lydon spent summer holidays in his mother’s native County Cork, where he also allegedly suffered abuse and name-calling for having an English accent, a prejudice he claims he still receives today even though he travels under an Irish passport. John was the eldest of four brothers, and as the eldest, he had to look after his siblings due to his mother’s regular illnesses. As a child, he lived on the edge of an industrial estate, and would often play with friends in the factories when they were closed. He belonged to a local gang of neighbourhood kids, and would often end up in fights with other groups, something he would later look back on with fond memories: “Hilarious fiascoes, not at all like the knives and guns of today. The meanness wasn’t there. It was more like yelling, shouting, throwing stones, and running away giggling. Maybe the reality was coloured by my youth.” Describing himself as a “very shy” and “very retiring” kid who was “nervous as hell”, he hated going to school, where he would get caned as punishment and where he “had several embarrassing incidents… I would shit my pants and be too scared to ask the teacher to leave the class. I’d sit there in a pants load of poo all day long.”

When he was seven years old he contracted spinal meningitis and was hospitalised for a whole year in St. Anne’s Hospital in Haringey, London. Throughout the entire experience he suffered from hallucinations, nausea and headaches, whilst the treatments administered by the nurses involved drawing fluid out of his spine with a surgical needle, something that left him with a permanent spinal curvature. The meningitis was also responsible for giving him what he would later describe as the “Lydon stare”, and for him, this experience was “the first step that put me on the road to Rotten”.

With his father often away on work, employed variously on building sites or oil rigs, Lydon got his first job aged 10 as a minicab dispatcher, something he kept up for a year whilst the family was in financial difficulty. He disliked his secondary school, the St William of York Catholic School in Islington, where initially he was bullied, but aged around 14 or 15 he “broke out of the mould” and began to fight back at what he saw as the oppressive nature of the school teachers, whom he felt instigated and encouraged the kids to all be the same and be “anti-anyone-who-doesn’t-quite-fit-the-mold.” Following the completion of his O-levels at school, he got into a row with his father, who disliked Lydon’s long hair, and so, agreeing to get it cut, the teenager not only had it cut, but in an act of rebellion dyed it bright green. Growing up as a teenager, he listened mostly to rock bands like Hawkwind, Captain Beefheart, Alice Cooper and Iggy and the Stooges – bands his mother also used to like, a fact which somewhat embarrassed him – as well as more mainstream groups like T. Rex and Gary Glitter.

Aged 15, he was kicked out of the school after a run in with a teacher, and subsequently went to another state school, Hackney and Kingsway Princeton College, where he befriended John Simon Ritchie, who in later years would become better known as Sid Vicious. It was Lydon who gave him this nickname, after his parents’ pet hamster. Lydon and Vicious began squatting in a house in the wealthy Hampstead area with a group of ageing hippies and stopped bothering to go to college, which was often far away from where they were living. Meanwhile, he began working on building sites during the summer, employment that his father was able to help him with. He also got a job at a children’s play centre in Finsbury Park after friends had recommended him for the job. It was here that he taught woodwork to some of the older children, but he was eventually fired after parents complained that somebody “weird” with bright green hair was teaching their children. Lydon and his friends, including Vicious, John Gray, Jah Wobble, Dave Crowe and Tony Purcell, began going to many of the London clubs, such as the Lacey Lady in Ilford, and also frequented both reggae and gay clubs, the latter of which he enjoyed because in them “you could be yourself, nobody bothered you”.

At some point, when I can do the typing, I’ll write about why I can so totally relate to this man and why I respect him so much. But this post will probably give you some idea.

I didn’t know we born in the same year. Isn’t that ~~weird~~ interesting?

So, anyhow, I spent Sunday putting packages together for all the contributors to this campaign.

And seeking more likes for the Sam McRae Mystery Series FB page.

Plus I read the Sunday paper, of course.

Here are some links of possible interest:

This lady is an inspiration!

Is law school worth the price? I say it was, because I played it smart. I started off going to GWU, but they wouldn’t give me a loan to keep going there, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

So I transferred to the University of Maryland, because I’m a proud Terp.

Which was both cheaper and provided a better education, in my opinion.

And I will quote from the article:

The law school at the University of the District of Columbia … is not fancy, housed as it is in a newly renovated but far from swank building on upper Connecticut Avenue. It is not even ranked on an overall basis by U.S. News, though UDC’s curriculum requiring hundreds of hours of hands-on training does rank 10th on U.S. News’s list of top clinical programs in the country.

An embarrassingly low percentage — just 20.5 percent — of its 2011 graduates are reported as employed nine months post-graduation in full-time jobs requiring a JD. A hyper-practical law degree from UDC is hardly a sure thing.

But it doesn’t pretend to be, and perhaps that is what is rather refreshing about it. UDC Law’s dean, Shelley Broderick, is a wry, unpretentious former criminal defense attorney who paid her way through Georgetown Law with loans and the proceeds of her job as a Teamster working on the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

Here is her pitch, delivered on a break from packing her own moving boxes, as she wore a work shirt and flip-flops one afternoon in September: “It’s affordable, it’s accessible, its curriculum is laser-focused on the kinds of jobs we are trying to prepare you for. We don’t invite people to come here suggesting [they will] get jobs in the big firms. That is not who we are. If you want to be a public interest lawyer, public service lawyer, public policy lawyer, in private practice in a small firm, this is perfect for you. Because you can do this in an affordable way and find work that you are trained to do, educated to do. We can’t all be Yale.”

UDC is dirt-cheap, as law schools go. It charges D.C. residents $10,620 a year (with living expenses, UDC costs $41,630; $52,750 for nonresidents).

And Broderick seems to make her pitch with clear eyes and clear conscience.

Could Broderick make the same pitch if UDC cost $70,000 a year? Would “excellence” justify those costs?

“I couldn’t do it,” Broderick says. “There are not jobs where you can pay that back in a reasonable amount of time for the vast majority of people who go to law school. I couldn’t do it, because it is a lie.”

Respect. Semper fi!

A guidance counselor has been a teen angel for almost 50 years.

Mass production of individuals. I feel your pain, Mr. Teachbad.

And I still owe you and Mary C a much better post about the awesomeness of teachers.

An apple for the teachers.

For Mary C.

Electile dysfunction! Awesome.

~~This is my life, people~~ Snoopy for president!

This is quite a contrast to this.

I never thought I’d cheer so hard for Microsoft!

Does this man like kittens?

Just wondering.

Hello! What have I been saying?

The headline on this article is entirely ~~wrong~~ ~~misleading~~ ~~bizarre~~ impossible to figure out!

Okay, so today I went to acupuncture and made an appointment for an annual exam of my “lady garden” (as The Bloggess once called it) and ovaries.

Then, my husband ~~gave me all sorts of grief~~ got slightly concerned, because I had two appointments scheduled for Nov. 30, and we have to drive to Richmond and stay overnight in order for me to do the presentation on Dec. 1 at 11 a.m. Oh, shit. So, now I have to reschedule appointments or something. I guess.

Anyway, the first rule as always is …

I’m sure it will all work out just fine. Somehow or other.

Kurt Vonnegut was very wise.

It’s hard out there for a pimp. Too true, World O’ Crapsters!

Olive Oyl for President!

The good news is I have a much ~~cleaner~~ tidier office now.

Voila!

Ahhh! Much better.

And my husband vacuumed the whole house! And makes dinner every night. Except when we order carry out. Whatever. He really is the most awesome man in the world. We’re soul mates.