Month: February 2011

Carl Jung, genius

~ susie


You know, people aren’t logical, or fair, or even sane most of the time. I rest my case: Dan Snyder? The most ethnically insensitive man in the NFL? (And God knows, that’s a high bar.) From Above The Bar:

This is rich. The owner of the Washington R******s, Dan Snyder, has sued the Washington City Paper for a column he claims defamed him and used anti-Semitic imagery. That’s right, the man who has famously defended his right to name an entire football team after an ethnic slur is playing the ethnic card because a columnist made fun of him.

The kicker is that on top of this amazing execution of rank hypocrisy, Snyder manages to insult all Jews who have actually dealt with anti-Semitism by coming up with an ethnic offense where none existed. The columnist wasn’t making Jewish jokes or playing off of Jewish stereotypes. He was calling Dan Snyder a terrible owner and a shady dude. Saying he was a victim of anti-Semitism degrades the term and make this entire lawsuit look like the petulant reaction of a narcissistic millionaire.As Dennis Green might say: Daniel Snyder is who we thought he was….

Here are the basics of the lawsuit, from ESPN:

Snyder filed the lawsuit against the weekly paper and its parent company, Atalaya Capital management LP, in New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday. The suit seeks at least $1 million in damages for each of the two causes of action, plus punitive damages.

The cover story entitled “The Crazy R******s Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder,” has an altered photo of the owner with horns and a beard drawn in pen. The suit claims the weekly newspaper used “lies, half-truths, innuendo and anti-Semitic imagery to smear, malign, defame and slander” Snyder.

Guitar talk

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

I’ve been obsessing about my guitars lately, because I have them out on a stand now and I’m worried about whether they have enough humidity. So when I stopped by DiPinto Guitars to get the neck adjusted on my old Kay archtop (thanks, L.!), I asked Chris if it was safe to leave the rest of them out in my apartment.

“What kind of heat do you have, radiators?” he said. “I have this humidity gauge and a humidifier that goes on when I need it.” I told him I did not have one square foot to spare for a humidifier. “I did get a couple of those humidifiers you stick in the soundholes for my acoustics.”

“That’s all you need,” he said. “You only have to worry about the acoustics, anyway.” That hadn’t occurred to me. (Duh! You can always buy a new bolt-on neck for an electric!)

We got started talking about old guitars, and I said how I’d always been really good at finding no-name guitars that band boys made fun of, but turned out to be really good guitars, often collectibles. I told him I was very protective of my misfit guitars. He smiled.

“I deal with a lot of famous musicians who come in, and you know, their bands are the same way. They don’t care about the brand name or model or anything else. They want to know how it sounds and how it feels, and that’s all they care about,” he said. “The people who care about the brand names aren’t usually the really good musicians. Touring guys are always trying the no-names, it excites them to find a good one.”

I just love that.

99

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Go read the rest:

I’ve finally arrived. End of the line. My last benefit check comes next week. The finality of it is chilling. With no job, my house teetering at the edge of foreclosure and with no prospects to speak of, I could easily fall into a white hot panic right now. But as an inspirational poster once told me: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the control of it.” So I must have control. I’ve got to be the rock climber on that poster.

Between anxiety attacks, I’ve been thinking. Big questions. What am I doing with my life? Mentally and emotionally speaking, have I become a ward of the state? Is now the time to reinvent myself? Should I follow my passions? Do I have passions anymore? Has being unemployed for over two years diminished my self image and my capacity for hope so significantly that I’m just a zombie now? Partly, yes. Sadly, the fear and the anxiety have taken a toll. I’m chronically depressed. I second guess myself all the time. And in interviews, I feel like I’m asking for a handout. The list of side effects goes on. But is this psychological deformation reversible? I hope so. It has to be. I cannot let my worth and my identity be prescribed to me anymore. In a cruel way week 99 is helping me see that.