What They Said: Different Rooms?

 So today I watched, alongside my loved ones, a very beautiful woman, in life and death, move on from this world. It was odd in some ways. I know every family, every culture, every funeral home all have their methods of this, so in this time of grief and loss, I too was forced to think along lines that people normally don't feel all that comfortable treading on. Life and Death. In my opinion, funerals are truly for the living. For it is the living who feel the need to express themselves, their love, appreciation, fondness, and yes, even sadness and pain. The funeral isn't for the dead. The dead are no more on this level as we exist. But I must say that this dear woman, if she is, or was capable of seeing from whatever plain she is on because we all have our different beliefs and I care not on proving my belief or contemplating on yours...I believe she would have been (or was, or is) pleased. She was very much loved. And she IS very much loved.

Because she may be gone...but how gone is she really. When someone moves on from this state of being, are they really truly gone. My husband spoke during the funeral and what he said resonated inside my mind for quite a long while. He said something along the lines of when we view a loved ones tombstone you see their name, perhaps a quote or sentimental name and you see two dates. A birth date and a death date. But if you truly want to know a person you don't really gain much information from those two dates. It is what is, or was between those dates that can tell you what you seek to know.

Who's On Top: Fiction

This Week's Spotlight: 
Hardcover:

DEAD EVER AFTER 
by Charlaine Harris

There are secrets in the town of Bon Temps, ones that threaten those closest to Sookie—and could destroy her heart...

Sookie Stackhouse finds it easy to turn down the request of former barmaid Arlene when she wants her job back at Merlotte’s. After all, Arlene tried to have Sookie killed. But her relationship with Eric Northman is not so clearcut. He and his vampires are keeping their distance…and a cold silence. And when Sookie learns the reason why, she is devastated.

Then a shocking murder rocks Bon Temps, and Sookie is arrested for the crime.

But the evidence against Sookie is weak, and she makes bail. Investigating the killing, she’ll learn that what passes for truth in Bon Temps is only a convenient lie. What passes for justice is more spilled blood. And what passes for love is never enough...

Book Cover & Blurb: I Love My Doctor, But...

I Love My Doctor, But…by Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.

Grass Valley, CA - I Love My Doctor, But… deals with serious healthcare matters in a lighthearted and entertaining manner.

Dr. Gold emphasizes patient-physician interaction as a starting point in the healthcare debate.
 

You have questions for your physician, but don’t ask them?

Your physician has questions for you, but he/she doesn’t ask them.

That’s one hell of a way to run an airline, a railroad, a government, or a medical practice.
 

Who’s at fault is beside the point, but difficult or painful questions unasked or unanswered threatens your health and compromises the physician’s ability to care for you.
 

You have something that you want to confide to your physician, but you don’t. You sigh with relief when he/she doesn’t ask.
 

You’re a physician and you need the answers to important questions that might make your patient uncomfortable. You’re relieved when he/she isn’t forthcoming or you run out of time.

Patients and physicians are often wrong when they predict which questions will be offensive.

If it’s important to your health, ask.

If it’s important to your job as a healer, ask.
 

I Love My Doctor, But… empowers patients and their physicians and offers common sense answers to important healthcare questions.
 

The book deals with important issues about being a patient or a physician in this tumultuous healthcare environment. Dr. Gold doesn’t join the chorus in the healthcare debate over financing, but he does make suggestions at the patient-physician level that offers hope.
 

Dr. Gold makes specific suggestions about:

1. Talking with, and getting along with your physician
2. Medical malpractice
3. How much care is enough
4. Matching patient and physician
5. Finding a physician
6. Online information
7. Take away suggestions
8. When to go to the emergency room
9. Glossaries: medical terminology and medical specialists

About the book:
I Love MY Doctor, But…by Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.
ISBN: 978-1484110942
Publisher: CreateSpace
Date of publish:
Pages: 98
S.R.P.: $6.99
 

About the author:
Dr. Gold is a retired physician (nephrologist) and long-distance cruiser. He is the author of First, Do No Harm(2007), No Cure for Murder(2011), For the Love of God(2012), and The Sixth Sense. Dr. Gold is the author of four screenplays. Rage won an honorable mention in the 80th Writer’s Digest contest.

What???

By JccKeith

Alright, just so you know, this post was entirely unplanned.  I had no idea what I was going to write about.  It is ‘what they said’ Monday for me.  Now this is not to say I don’t encounter plenty of things said by other people.  I do.  I watch my sci-fi shows every day.  I watch cartoons with my kids.  I listen to the news, I listen to music and I browse the occasional internet site.  So I have plenty of sources for something someone said.  Problem is, most aren’t worthy of an entire blog post.

Desperate for something to write about that either made me laugh or at least made me take notice, I relied on the internet.  I went to google and typed in “something someone said.”  This led to some music video that I didn’t watch.  So I tried again.  I typed in “somebody talking.”  Bingo!  Ding Ding Ding!

I have no idea why but the urbandictionary.com popped up on my search results.  It was a set of postings that appeared to give a meaning for the phrase “somebody’s talking.”  I thought I already knew what “somebody’s talking” meant – that it indeed meant that someone was speaking.  I had no idea it could be taken a different way. 

So I clicked on the search result to see how else someone might interpret “somebody’s talking.”

This is where things took a different turn.  The page revealed the meanings of the word “doig,” “wha de f#%@ I hearing,” “illuminaughty,” “run it,” and my personal favorite:  “talkin’ tacos.”

I have never had anyone use the phrase “talkin’ tacos” unless perchance it occurred in reference to visiting Taco Bell or perhaps a Mexican restaurant or Tumbleweed or some place which serves tacos.  Apparently, I am out of touch.

This is the meaning I was presented with on the site:

5.	Talkin' Tacos	4 up, 6 down
	If somebody is talking about something different than what you are talking about. It usually implies that if you continue to "talk tacos" while I am trying to push across a certain agenda, violence will ensue

I had no idea.  Talkin’ tacos sounds like some serious business.  I wouldn’t want to ever be talkin’ tacos while someone else was pushing across their own agenda. 

I will however, probably be using this phrase quite often from now on because

a. it made me laugh out loud and

b. I will give it a different meaning entirely.  I will use it whenever people around me are talking about nonsense. 

So if I should describe an event in the following way in the future, “This fool was talkin’ tacos…” you will completely understand my meaning.

Who's On Top: Movies

This Week's Spotlight:

Star Trek Into Darkness

There is some intermittent complaining, in “Star Trek Into Darkness,” about the militarization of the Federation’s Starfleet. You may recall that the historic mission of the starship Enterprise was “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations.” While the crew on the first television series found its way into plenty of fights, the show itself always tried to stay true to the ideals of peaceful intergalactic ethnography. You get a bit of that in the beginning of the new movie, the second in the rebooted franchise directed by J. J. Abrams, which takes place before all the stuff we remember from television and the first six feature films. James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is on the surface of a faraway planet overgrown with bright red vines and populated by primitive creatures with chalky white faces. For a few minutes, the nerdy, earnest multicultural vision of 1960s television is brought to life in the digital present, giving rise to an exciting sense of continuity. How great it would be to update the wit and sincerity of the original with the scale and velocity enabled by 21st-century moviemaking. That hope is not entirely dashed. Mr. Pine and the rest of the cast, with some important new additions, continue to pay sharp and playful tribute to William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and others who first made the voyage from small screen to big. The identity of the main villain cleverly connects the movie to some of the very best episodes from long ago. But all the same, it’s hard to emerge from “Into Darkness” without a feeling of disappointment, even betrayal. Maybe it is too late to lament the militarization of “Star Trek,” but in his pursuit of blockbuster currency, Mr. Abrams has sacrificed a lot of its idiosyncrasy and, worse, the large-spirited humanism that sustained it. — A. O. Scott

Top 10 List:
1. Star Trek Into Darkness
2.  Iron Man 3
3. The Great Gatsby
4. Pain & Gain
5. The Croods
6.  42
7. Oblivion
8. Peeples
9. Mud
10. The Big Wedding

Disclaimer: The list and blurb come from NYTimes.com.