Mahabharata

I probably totally just mispelled that, but please forgive me if I did.

Anyway, prozacpark , Karen-who-almost-none-of-you-know and I have started watching what we think is the 1989 version of this.  It is 90 episodes, and it is highly debatable whether or not we'll last that long.  (Well, I can, but I don't know if I can last 90 streaming episodes with questionable subs on my own.  Though if anyone knows of good DLs or legal DVDs...)  It's cheesy fdor the comparative production values, but solid with the story and acting.

Currently, we all madly ship the king and the goddess, and think their kid is a tool.  He's the biggest threat to our interest level.  Also, the goddess's wardrobe is limited but fabulous, and the king has one of the best WOE! looks ever.  Despite the stache.

Anyway, as I know a few here are big fans of the story, can anyone rec a good translation, and/or books based on it?

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros

Like The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a collection of short stories. Unlike The House on Mango Street, however, the stories are not all about the same person. A few could be the same woman at different stages of her life (I only recall one story with a male narrator) but they all appear to be different narrators.

Some stories are about a few minutes, some about a day, and others about an entire lifetime. As with The House on Mango Street, it isn’t so much what happens in the stories that’s important as it is the sense of self that the narrators have, and the impact their lives have on them. Together, they form an interesting and varied representation of the lives of Hispanics on the Texas-Mexico border.

One thing I might need to warn about is that Cisneros does include Spanish words and phrases without translation, including one story that’s actually a collection of letters, with several letters in nothing but Spanish. I can’t speak Spanish to save my life (ok, I can, but it insults the ears of those who know the language) but am familiar with the syntax habit, and can understand the language enough to figure out what they’re talking about. People not familiar with the language might have a more difficult time with those bits.

(no subject)

Oh, blessed air conditioning, never leave me again!  At least, not in midwest  Texas. 

A new form of work rage.

"All ADD is is the ability to multitask."

OMG GET YOUR BIASED< NARROW MINDED DELIBERATE IGNORANCE AWAY FROM ME!!!

How about, it's the INABILITY to focus on a single task, and sometimes, the inability to NOT obsessively focus on something to the exclusion of all else.  Like how a two minute conversation can make you so infuriated that you have to retype almost every single thing you do for the next FOUR HOURS.

Ugh.

So, this person.  From the first time she mentioned her son, I knew he was an extreme ADHD kid.  The kind who can't sit still for two seconds, is always doing bad in school because he can't do the work, and has few friends because he's always bouncing off the walls and they can't keep up and think he's a crazy weird kid.  And then I heard her talking about how she'd been fighting his doctor about him being on medication for four years, and since she'd SAID he was ADHD before, I assumed she meant he was one of those who refuses to diagnose and doesn't believe in it ,but it turned out he's been begging her to put him on medication for four years.

And...ok.  When you KNOW your child has a condition that there's treatment for, and his physician has spent four years begging you to let him get treatment, and you refuse because you don't believe it's a real problem?  YOU ARE EVIL AND YOU ARE DELIBERATELY DAMAGING YOUR CHILD'S LIFE!

Ugh.

Saying "all ADD is isthe ability to multitask" is like saying "being in a wheelchair just means you get special treatment."  You are using you narrowminded biases to completely dismisses a person's basic ability to function on almost every level.

Like...I can handle people just not understanding ADD/ADHD.  And there isn't a shortage of doctors eager to diagnose everything as ADD/ADHD or who "don't believe in it," both of which only make it more and more misunderstood.  As long as people are willing to LISTEN when someone actually tries to explain it to them.  But someone who acknowledges it exists and claims to have researched it, and even to HAVE it (she said she has "Adult ADD," in that way people use to say "I looked at one webpage and diagnosed myself, and when I tried a few concentration exercises, I realized anyone who said it was a real problem was just a whiner") takes that attitude"?  My tolerance and respect CEASE TO EXIST.

I even tried to explain all the problems I've had with it over the years and she actually said "oh, that's just something else that went with the ADD, but that doesn't mean there's a problem with the ADD itself."  YEAH< BECAUSE I TOTALLY WOULD HAVE FELT LIKE I WAS HEADING FOR A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN A FEW MONTHS AGO DUE TO TRYING TO DEAL WITH IT WITHOUT MEDICATION DUE TO YEARS OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU!!!  I almost had an anxiety attack trying not to yell at her.

But seriously, what IS IT with people and mental and neurological conditions?  It's like, if there's no blatant physical aspect to a problem they just pretend it doesn't exist and that people who have the problem should just buck up and quit whining.

Bah.