songs

And I will always love you…..

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    Over the past week I have been amazed, astounded and mesmerized by the sheer ignorance of my fellow-man. In the loss of one of the purest voices of our time, I listened, heard and watched many say some of the most inappropriate, if not stupid comments. I listened to commentary and watched live streaming feeds of adversarial anecdotes during the home going celebration. I read, or rather skimmed over blog posts that attempted to lay blame for the course of a life. I watched church people act ugly when deciding who was worthy to sit where in the church to pay their respects. There were so many who came to say goodbye to her, but in the end, when we leave this world, who will mourn us?

    I watched many come to say farewell to a life that was lived on its own terms. We may not have agreed with the way she lived it, but who are we to question? The fame, achievement and notoriety she gained before the age of 25, most of us will never achieve in our lifetime. Yet, we can take one moment in a 25 year career, and focus on just that—while refusing the see the whole picture. I vividly remember the 80’s and am thankful to still be alive not to mention surviving my fashion choices. I was forgiven and I grew while moving on to the next phase.

    There were phases in her life that we questioned her choices for choosing to hide in a chemically induced world, but there, no one was judging her choices. In that world there she experienced no pain. In that world, everyone and everything was love. In that world there was no responsibility and there she could sleep.

    It is hard to imagine what life would be like if on Saturday night, I was in Anaheim, high on the adoration of a crown of 35,000 people. Then on Tuesday, doing the performance all over again in San Diego, Thursday back in Los Angeles and Friday in San Francisco and Saturday in Sacramento. There is no time in between gigs to come down off the performance high. There is no time to decompress. There is no time for sleep.

    In the end, it is all they ever want. They want to sleep. The mind is a wondrous thing. It allows us to dream with our eyes open, we can dream with our eyes closed and we can learn to believe that anything is possible. However, if the mind is strained, the one thing it will not do, is allow us to sleep. I can smile and say that she and her voice are finally resting. I will miss the beauty of her voice, the grace of her presence and I want her to know that I will always love you….

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Did you just unfriend me?

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Today I was just given a shock. I was checking my Facebook page and hubby made the comment that our son had something funny on his wall. I went to check and found that my own child had unfriended me! The nerve!

Here is the beauty of this; he is not able to see my post because he is not my friend. Therefore I can talk about him and he not know.

What does it really mean in Americanspeak when someone unfriends you on a social network? It means that you have been deemed unimportant in their daily lives. It means they do not care to know what you are doing on a daily basis and you are not privy to their information. In other words, you have been ruled as obsolete.

I know, it hurts. It hurts me too. I unfriended by brother-in-law and his insipid wife. I unfriended that guy from high school that I never really spoke to 30 years ago and I don’t really want to know about his daily life. I unfriended that drunk girl from college, who claimed she was allergic to alcohol, but found a way to guzzle it every weekend. I unfriended an Army buddy who found religion. She did not necessarily find God, because she is always judging how someone else is living their lives. I unfriended that former co-worker who I remembered tried to get me fired. Witch!

I blocked Mafia Wars, My Little Pony, I have a Butt Rash, Hearts, Rabbits and other irrelevant applications that drained my phone’s battery. I stopped following and unliking artist who made sucky movies. I stopped liking artist who sold out and added rap music to beautiful R & B ballads. I stopped responding to events that I would never, ever attend, by groups, I don’t want to be associated with anyway.

I took a cue from my son.

I started to update my pages as well and began to remove people that I really didn’t deal with on a regular basis.

I am okay with it.

I just hope some my acquaintances are as well, my sister in law, I don’t really care about.

Unfriending someone is not an insult. I see it as a separation of church and state. I don’t need to see everything that is going on in my son’s life and he does not need to see what I am posting. Not that either of us are saying anything offensive.

I am glad I have a chance to now ask him how was his day, versus sharing his life vicariously through his daily updates. I, now get to talk to him in person. Unfriending me, may just save our relationship.


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A new dirty word

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A  new dirty word

By Cheryl Aaron-Corbin

             Initially I think I was deluded into believing that students had changed.  As an educator, we hear every excuse known to man and few new ones made up for women. Yet, recently, I learned a new dirty word that goes across any genre, any board, and even across generations; that word is accountability. When did we stop being liable for our actions? We can now let the finger pointing begin.

            There is the school of thought that rationalizes wrong doing by compartmentalizing our actions. Saying that oral sex is not in fact intercourse, and because intercourse did not occur, one can stand before the American public and emphatically state, “I did not have sex with that woman!.” Or we can fast forward to the new millennium, and place our playthings in a house in the desert along with our love child, and hope that no one finds out that the love child is a month older than my child. Naturally, it wasn’t his fault, because his wife, at the time, was pregnant, moody, and not paying him enough attention.

            We hear it in songs, where singers tell their mates, “Blame it on me, and say it’s my fault” in which she encourages her cheating spouse, to say that she’s a liar, a cheater, or say anything that he wants.  This codicil was made under the supposition that he would be leaving in haste. Has it come to a state where we accept the bad behavior and excuses just to rid ourselves of the headaches?

            This does not work for me. I think we need to want more, and we need to do better. I teach a customer service class where I taught my students about their communication styles.  I taught this lesson under the premise that if you consistently receive bad service, then maybe it’s time to look at what you are putting out. If your attitude is “stank”, then the response of those serving you will be matched. Further, a student who consistently has poor attendance, does not pay attention in class, and can not for the life of all that is wholly, turn in a consistently formatted document, ends up in tears, then is it my fault?  According to the student, the fault lay with me.

            In the litany of her tears, I was accused of being harder on her, unfair in my assessments of her work and last but not least, she was able to read my disapproval of her in my body language. As the professional and the only adult in the room, I stood back, folded my hands across my lap and took a deep breath.  I calmly asked, “What about you?” Perplexed and confused, she stopped crying and looked at me as if I had just passed gas. When I asked if her lack or preparation, typing the speech in class as others presented their work, while being the only student who was still reading her speech in Week 7, and turning her back to me was an indicator, did she take any accountability? Of course she did not, because she had a list of reasons why she was not prepared, and of course, since I did not like her, she tuned me out.

            I give up. I hereby am selling licenses to any who are interested in becoming a Professional Dumbass Assessor (PDAss). Why not, the country is loaded with them, you live next to one, work with several and probably have dated a few. As a carte blanche card holding aficionado, you will be licensed to speak to your mind and call a spade a spade.  And here is the best part; the fine print on the back of the card says that you are not accountable due to your Tourette’s.

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Surviving My Addiction….to Facebook.

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I was reluctant to admit that I had a problem. Like most addicts it did not become real until I looked in the mirror and found myself with a love jones to get to it, to feel it in my fingers, to connect with my new-found poison and drink it in. My family and friends all knew but none wanted to confront me, but I had to confront myself with a an intervention. I can now say it with pride as I start my recovery, Hi, I am Cheryl and I am a Facebook addict.

It started so innocently. I was speaking to an old college beau and he mentioned that “You should be on Facebook.” I was familiar with the social application, but at the time, you had to have an .edu address to be a part of the network for college students only. Evidently I was misinformed, Facebook had grown up. I had a few extra minutes and I logged on. Please understand, I already had a MySpace account and had gathered some famous movie star and recording friends. I felt like I was moving and shaking, but then I tried Facebook.

It was like manna in my hands and felt as if I had found something that understood me, where I wanted to be and things I needed to say. The world was at my fingertips and all I had to do was push the little button that say “connect”. Yet, as innocently as it started I began to notice changes in my behavior. I had to upgrade my phone to a Palm OS with a Facebook interface so that I could stay connected anywhere and at anytime.

I started slow with just one or two friends and a couple of game applications, hereinafter referred as apps. I connected with my son and a few of his pals that were all at my house, no harm in “friending” them. Then I began to connect with my old high school pals and a few from college. My Army buddies began to sign on and suddenly, people I had not heard from in years were a mouse click away. I had to learn the hard way though, I was in a Mafia, working on a farm in Farmville and was hanging out in Yoville. That turned out to be a waste of time because now I had clients that I had put on Facebook. I went from one account to six in a matter of months, and it was becoming difficult to keep up, so I discovered Tweetdeck.

I did not think it could get worse, but it did. I turned into a Facebook snob. I began to “remove” those friends I thought were undesirable. Friends, who had nothing worthwhile to post but negative updates with comments about other people, were removed. I even went as far to call a few friends and suggest they make their daily post quotes about life until they were able to clean out their list of friends. I even had the audacity to suggest “cooling it” with so many personal pictures and if they really had that many “haters”, why would you tell them where you are going to be every moment of the day? I know….. right?

My addiction is not common place, my addiction is nasty. It is all-consuming. I have addicted others, I have set a standard. I have people who follow my drivel. Why? Because I am addictive. LMBO, yeap, it’s true. Each month I go as far as having a common theme, where my posts are aimed at helping you live a better life. Fancy tidbits of information for websites you did not even know existed for free stuff you didn’t even know you could get. I even set it to music, why, because I am a form of a music and movie savant. I have a photographic memory and love music. I start the day with a praise song and end the day with a pensive piece. Some days, I share my love of music with others and post items on their wall with love notes of “Just because it’s Tuesday”, which has caught on. During Oscar week I posted famous clips from past Oscar winners like On the Waterfront and All About Eve and even included Sydney Poitier’s 1969 acceptance speech.

My favorite fix, I must admit is to post a movie line and see how many people know what it is, while others chime in with other famous lines from the same movie. The high is amazing. It is like being the popular kid in cyberspace. I have to check it at least five or six times a day to see who responded to my post, and to see if the invites that I had received were for events that I actually wanted to go to with people who online, were cool, but did I want to hang out with in real life. I purged my friends list again. If I didn’t want to hang out with you “for real” I didn’t want you in my Facebook sandbox.

        My family wants to stage an intervention, but I don’t think it is THAT bad. I do however, know I need to cutback. And I will, once I make my music selection for the night, so that I can sign out. I am thinking “Why” by Annie Lennox. I know why…and so do you.

Good night my Friends. Ms. Lennox, you have the con……

I may be mad
I may be blind
I may be viciously unkind
But I can still read what you’re thinking

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