I've moved
I have set up a new site at my own domain name which is hosted by Yahoo Small Business. My blog is now available at:
michelletackabery.netI hope you will head over there and subscribe to my blog feed. I needed more space and more options than Blogger could provide for my site going forward. I hope to have a pic or two from the NCSU press conference announcing the new coach on that site later on tonight. My husband is going over to the post-presser fan hangout to snap some with our new camera. I'll be home hanging out with the kitties, still recuperating from my hysteroscopic myomectomy which took place yesterday afternoon. I'll be home taking it easy for a few days.
Ciao.
Archie's big brother approached?
Tom Suiter has
reported that NCSU has approached Sean Miller, one of Archie Miller's numerous siblings,
Xavier's current head man and an incredibly smart and passionate coach. I am all for this one, and hope it's true, even if there is a Herb-hating backlash. I'm convinced a few games of Sean popping the trademark Miller bubblegum and
hollerin' on the sidelines would cure them of that.
p.s. I have just registered my own domain name,
michelletackabery.net, and am in the process of moving my blog over there. I am hosting it on
Yahoo Small Business and using
WordPress. It's going to take me a while to get everything moved over. Wordpress will enable me to add categories and search to my blog, and hosting my own site will enable me to add image-rich templates and other cool things in the future. I will get a lot more room over there as well. For the time being I'll be double-posting until I get everything moved over, then I'll keep this up for a while until I'm sure my posts are getting indexed under the new url, which might take six to nine months or even longer. I've been getting more serious about my blog in the last couple of months, and mulling over this step for a while.
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I take back what I said about the NBA
Lebron James is just simply . . . amazing.
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Some Steve guy
I can't quite get my head around Steve Lavin. He
looks like a hockey coach, seems to aspire to dress like Pat Riley, and is the king of bad cliches on that king of bad cliche network, the network that is now
making up the sports news, ESPN. Sports guys down here are creaming themselves over his girlfriend, who looks, well,
plastic. I'm convinced she's actually a Barbie doll. If this is going to be our guy, apparently most of the yahoos on the boards are going to up their season tickets to get a closer look. Which might be statutory rape. What is she, sixteen? The power of the airbrush never fails to astound me.
Yet . . . if he brings that record here and does it again, and again, and again, and manages to tick off Roy and K enough to make us a contender again, I will worship his hair-gelled scalp. But nah . . . it's
so not going to happen. We're going to end up with
the Herb look-alike. Let's be honest. We're going to get
the guy who has an equipment manager named Bubba, so we will keep Werner and Horner. We're Wolfpack fans. It's our fate to be mostly disappointed. What would life actually be like inside the RBC Center if we weren't all yelling "Rebound!" during every offensive possession while the ball falls onto the lonely court, not one guy in white anywhere near the basket because they are all hanging out on the perimeter?
I can't remember . . . it's been such a . . .
long, long time. I liked the Princeton/NC State/one heartbeat/communist party offense, when we were actually running it. I love those heart-stopping threes - nothing better than that moment when your stomach comes straight up to your throat and you are praying to Allah for that ball to fall in the hole! - but when it went cold this year, those iron bricks felt like nails. Bam, bam, bam.
Maybe I'm just in my usual basketball withdrawal mode that always happens at this time of year, right when the NBA playoffs start and the only basketball is being played by a bunch of overpaid pansies trying to muster some manufactured passion with a lot of loud beats and fireworks because they don't play, um,
defense. It's only interesting when the Spurs play somebody and Manu is doing his flying Jedi maneuvers and Duncan is being Duncan, or Lebron is on the court; until I can see
Jules or
AG on tv, I couldn't give a darn what happens in that league.
Sigh. Where's our Coach, Lee? Give us a break.
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The ad from hell got on the Today show
The VW ad made the Today show this morning. You can
catch the clip on Jalopnik's ad blog. It's fascinating to dope the ad wonk's comments on whether or not the ad is effective or not, but at least Today had somebody saying the ads
missed the point. The point about the trauma. I am trying to figure out who gets my complaint letters. I am not going to stop screaming about this, at least here. My medication costs a lot of bloody money. Maybe as much as that damned ad campaign. At least as much as that stupid car that I am never going to buy.
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Debilitation
Since being shocked by
the VW ad last night, I have been in something of a state that has grown progressively more debilitating all day. This morning my husband tried to make love to me, but my orgasm was no release. Like a viper uncurling from its nest, the firing of those muscles unleashed a strike of terror that began a chain reaction in me: anxiety, racing heartbeat, constricted breathing, uncontrollable crying, shaking, rocking.
Hell of a way to start the day. Thank you,
VW.
I managed to get some marginal control over myself after a while, but then I had an appointment with
Dr. Steege to discuss my upcoming
surgery and I was anxious about a possible pelvic exam. I didn't get one, but all day after, my nervous system has been firing and firing and firing. My head is pounding from nervous exhaustion and adrenaline that isn't being used for anything. My eyes hurt. My neck is sore. My stomach is full of acid.
And I can't get that fucking commercial out of my head.Living at this level of anxiety, with all my nerves on high alert, is impossible to sustain for very long. I need to call my shrink, but I'm afraid I'll end up back on nefazodone (
Serzone) or some other SSRI. Nefazodone damps down the neurons. It's as effective as a nuclear bomb at stopping that response cold. The last time I was on it, though, I gained 40 pounds, a fatty liver and high blood pressure. That being said, the alternative -- the inability to shut down my nervous system to a manageable level -- might be worse. When I get tuned up like this, I can jump at every shadow. On the way home from work tonight, a Corolla pulled out in front of us as we were changing lanes. I think my heart stopped as I grabbed the God-almighty bar and tensed up like all hell was about to break loose. Now my back is aching.
All of these physical reactions are torturous. They make me want to rock myself into a coma after I drink half a bottle of Stoli. Or shoot myself in the head.
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If I ever was a VW fan, that bird has flown now
Thanks to their recent “Safe Happens” ad campaign. As someone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder that has been effectively re-triggered by car accidents, those two ads are so graphically realistic and horrible that they caused me physical pain to watch. I disassociated for a moment, and then everything came slamming back, just like when the eye of the storm in the middle of a hurricane passes over, and the wind rushes into the vacuum of silence that is the storm center. All is chaos in my body and my heart. I feel like I can barely breathe from the fear and I can see that crash from the “Movie” spot whenever I close my eyes. I can hear the fiberglass meeting fiberglass and the glass breaking, and the terrible stopping of breath. It scared me so much, I didn’t ever realize until I started
researching the spot on the net that the people riding in the cars were alive at the end.
I work for a
personal injury lawyer, and a few moments later, I started thinking about what I could do about it. I understand what VW is trying to do with this shock approach, but it’s a fine line. It’s such a fine, thin, razor-sharp line, I need medication to blur it down. Otherwise, it cuts.
I cannot believe the blatant disregard for public safety VW and their ad agency (whom I believe is
Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, the same people responsible for the brilliantly artistic, but most likely ineffective, anti-smoking Truth campaign) is showing by not warning people about the consequences of car accidents and that what they are portraying is a basic promise that one cannot get hurt in a car crash that takes place inside one of their vehicles. I can probably find a few thousand car accident reports that prove otherwise, just in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville metropolitan area.
Fair warning, i.e., the disclaimer that VW won’t give you. The links below direct you to a media site in which the linked ads begin playing as soon as they finish loading in your browser. They contain graphically violent depictions of car accidents and the possibility of serious personal injury.VW-Movie (2 couples discussing a movie)VW-Like (2 guys backing out of a driveway)Technorati tags:
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