He’s currently after hubbie to play a game with him. He was wanting to play WiiPlay but Kore and I are watching “Mulberry” so they’re going to play “the ninja game” on the xBox which is “Dead or Alive 4″ which I recently reinvested in for considerably less than the original copy. I’d bought it from Wal-Mart originally for $40 and then we traded it in towards other games from GameStop. Since then I missed the game and I managed to get it back for $10 from Amazon.com which was great. I’m very pleased with myself.

I’ve also gotten another copy of Wii Sports Resort however I’m not getting that out for a few weeks once munchkin is settled and behaving well consistently. I have to take him to the doctors this afternoon but that should hopefully be easy. He was very well-behaved when I went to my doctor for blood work yesterday.

While I was doing that I saw an advert for “Plants vs. Zombies” and tried the game out. It’s very fun. I went ahead and downloaded it to the computer, and over the course of the past three days have been able to beat the game; but am still playing the puzzle and mini-game section on and off. The game is a lot of fun, as I’ve said, but then anything with zombies tends to have an appeal to me.

The game involves using different sorts of attack plants to fend off zombie invasions in your front and back yard and eventually on your roof. There are various different types of zombies, some tougher than others, some which have to be fought off with very specific plants, others which just succumb to the constant barrage of peas from various plants.

Despite the simplicity the game is very addictive.

Today is another busy day, so I may have to wake him up soon if he doesn’t by himself, as I can’t go pick up groceries and leave him here. We’re doing a mini-party for a couple we know, whose birthdays are next week (they’re within a day of each other), so I have to pick up cake supplies, wonton and sushi supplies, and I’m going to pick some hot dog buns up in case said friend of ours does bring his kids. I’m not sure where that stands after yesterday.

Anyway, I hear the munchkin making noise so I will wrap this up and get things on the move. I want to get to the store and get back before the weekend crowds show up. It’s cutting it a bit to the wire in some respects, but I need the fish to be as fresh as possible for the sushi. You really can’t keep it too long.

Dear Ms. C——,

Thank you for contacting the Comcast office of Rick Germano, Senior Vice President of Customer Operations regarding a showtime ad On demand. My name is K——, and I will be happy to assist you today.

I understand your frustrations in regards to a commercial for a shwotime program that aired On demand. We understand how frustrating it can be to want certain programs, such as sporting events, and to not be able to see them. At the same time, we realize that there is certain programming available that you would rather not see. The relationship between the networks (channels) and Comcast is such that the networks broadcast their signal and Comcast picks it up and distributes it to our
customers. In this way, we are able to offer many channels, packages, and sporting events to choose from.

The type of programming available on each channel is at the discretion of the network that broadcasts the signal. As a result, there will be games and events that are blacked out on local stations due to contracts and agreements with no advanced notice. For the shows that you would like to limit viewing for certain family members, Comcast offers a parental control feature on some analog converter boxes and on most digital boxes. Information about the parental control feature can be
found on www.Comcast.com under the Customers –> FAQ section.

For general concerns about programming that is provided by the networks, please contact the network or programming service directly. I have included a link to the Showtime feedback where you can provide your concerns with the ad you saw.

https://sho.custhelp.com/app/ask/session/L3NpZC8ya29zTFYxaw%3D%3D/page/2/r_id/166/sno/0

Ms. Conkling, if you have any other questions or concerns, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you.

Thank you for choosing Comcast. We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

Um…yeah…how about NO. So, I wrote back to her, unfortunately my phone is still at a friend’s house so I can’t call them directly or answer any phone calls. But, she seriously missed the point. Seriously.

It seems that you misunderstand my point, but if that is not the case then I apologize.
My issues with an ad was not an ad on Showtime, but an ad on your On Demand channel: channel 00/01.
On that channel there is a female announcer who, while you’re browsing the On Demand menus, comes on and highlights shows which are going to be available. I do not believe she is Showtime specific as she advertises various things. I witnessed today her advertising “Shutter Island” and yesterday and the day before aside from the advert for “United States of Tara” there was also an ad for an MTV awards show, and today there was also an ad about the E! channel that she narrated speaking about the search for the next ghost hunter.
Unfortunately I imagine I will no longer be able to catch the offending ad because “Tara” ended last night. I was hoping to record it as proof.
However to try and make things clear so that both you and I can understand I reiterate it did not appear to be a Showtime ad, it was an ad by Comcast On Demand for an On Demand show which made the error.
The announcer was commenting that the show wraps up it’s “second schizophrenic season” and then went on to talk about how the show involves a woman managing a husband, two children and multiple personalities and then showed a few clips from the show will still be able to be caught On Demand through your channel for a set amount of time provided you have a subscription to Showtime.
Believe me if I have issues with Showtime’s portrayal I contact them, and I have in fact spoken about various concerns about the show on their message boards before now, as the show’s chief writer Diablo Cody is known to frequent them. In previous months I have watched the show through Showtime’s website rather than subscribe to Showtime as up until recently we have only had the basic package not including the On Demand because I do enjoy it’s irreverence and it’s treating the condition with humor while enlightening.

So it seems to me that the error was on behalf of whoever it is who writes the advertisements that let us know what is showing on your On Demand channel, not Showtime, unless Showtime provided the script for the On Demand ad, but that I would not know. I have not actually seen any of Showtime’s own ads, except for one that aired on either NBC or ABC which merely spoke of one woman with multiple personalities.

:p I SO wish I could have taped it yesterday. The show’s finale aired LAST NIGHT however. I got an email from Showtime reminding me about it and you know what NOWHERE did they mention schizophrenia.

So I sent this to Comcast.

I just had to write and express my distaste for something advertised on your On Demand channel. I’ve recently witnessed an advert for the Showtime show “United States of Tara”, in which your announcer refers to the show coming to the end of, “it’s second SCHIZOPHRENIC season.”

The show is about a woman with multiple personalities. The show itself and many of us who live with multiple personalities on a day to day to basis strive to educate people that multiplicity is NOT schizophrenia. There is a drastic difference between the two conditions. I find it insulting that your offices would not actually research the nature of a show before promoting it on your network.

You would do yourselves and your viewers a great service if you would educate your announcers, script-writers and viewing public about your error.

Within the first few episodes of the first season there’s a very pointed discussion between Tara and another character about the differences between multiplicity and schizophrenia. One of the points of the show is to educate people on multiple personality disorder and while they don’t get everything right for everyone they do create discussions. Now Comcast is creating one themselves. I wonder if there’ll be some sort of apology or if it will just get swept under the rug. I’m sure if they accused an actual celebrity or well-known person of having the wrong mental disorder they’d be falling all over themselves.

If I catch the advert again I’m going to record it. If anyone else has Comcast Digital and hears the woman talking about Tara please capture the footage and send it to me.

However it had lain dormant in our mind until it came up again in Dave’s RIFTS game (of all places, I say!); when we initially started with the game we were all random rolling for our character types, powers and abilities. Mine came up with “a gestalt”, which is a random collection of some thing, be it people, spirits, animals or trees/plants which comes together to make something greater than it’s individual parts.

If you make a person gestalt, you wind up with something like Captain Planet, where each of the kids energies and such comes together to create the Captain who is a super-being with their individual abilities and so much more. The character I had was known as Dryad. She was the soul of a soldier who had died that combined with various trees and plants to form an entity with the strength of the trees, and their hardiness (unless faced with squirrels, woodpeckers or fire) and the ability to grasp things with vines etc, as well as some of the skills of her former self, such as demolitions.

The character itself didn’t work. I had trouble grasping the whole she’s a tree, yet she’s not a tree, partially because it wasn’t until AFTER I stopped playing her that it was explained to me that yes, I should have still been able to use my skills etc. I mean, at first I thought she was basically an Ent with the vaguest of recollections that she’d been human, and no real ability to retain a human shape, and then it’s “Oh, no, wait, yeah, you could totally have taken human shape more clearly, with like, actual fingers and shit…” and then it’s “Okay where was this info when you’re going oh, no wait, your computer skill is useless now because you’re a TREE.”

Anyway, ramble aside it did give us a reminder of the nature of the word “gestalt” and the fact that it’s very appropriate for what we are. We are individuals, together in this one body, achieving greater things here than we could by ourselves, and the term has the added bonus of not making it seem as though there’s something wrong here that needs to be fixed. Multiple Personality Disorder…Dissociative Identity Disorder. Even when I just speak of “being multiple” or “dissociative” the extra “baggage” is still there, because you tell someone you’re a multiple and they go, “Oh! D.I.D!” and so meh. I hate labels. I really do, but I figure if I give myself a classification then at least it’s something I can own.

Then we get into the whole, labels are labels are labels no matter where they actually come from and so on and so forth; and if you have to sit here and explain to everyone what gestalt actually is…but meh.

We like the term, and it better explains what we are, because still with “multiple” there’s the inference that there’s discord and inability to communicate and work together, which is what we’re moving away from once more because we’re getting back to a point where we can flip at will, whenever, with no loss of memory and with constant back and forth communication. The psychiatric community calls it “co-consciousness” I say “gestalt”.

It’s a little bit more obnoxious than po-tay-toe po-tah-toe but it means I don’t have to call the “whole thing” off, just part of it.

Fun was had though. For a little while we played Wii Sports Resort, and then we switched to karaoke. It was mostly Kore, myself and our friend B whose house we were at, which she shares with her long-term boyfriend S, who has been a friend of ourself and hubbie since high school. We had a lot of fun singing random songs and playing back-up dancer for munchkin to lalalala into the microphone. I suppose I should also say that it was Max who was there not myself, so while the rest of the account is in first person, it’s not what I did.

Then after half of the group went home, upon finishing a D&D game they were running, those of us remaining played Rock Band for a while. It’s the first time I’ve played. I was singer for the night because I can’t play guitar as it locks up my hands after a while, and I felt that I wouldn’t have enough coordination and rhythm to manage playing drums, but I might give that a go if we play again. B and I would duet some of the time while the guys played guitar and Kore did the drums, then after a while we switched out and did various iterations. By far my favorite song is “Bring Me to Life” because the range is perfect for me and I could sing my heart out. The most funny song was “Chop Suey” because the lyrics are so totally crazy and the way you have to chitter them really messes you up to sing the actual lyrics at the right pitch, or at least it does us.

I say it would be interesting to see what happens if others of us try to sing. I know at night if we’re singing to the munchkin before he goes to bed he tends to ask certain songs of certain of us. Like Max he’ll ask anything from but he only ever asks Max for “Morning Has Broken” none of the rest of us, and Jay gets the honor of the “Skye Boat Song”, which I find is interesting.

Back to the original point Rock Band was really fun, but not only could we not afford one of our own we wouldn’t have room to put the accessories anywhere. It’s a very cool set-up though, and munchkin was even able to play a little once we put it into ‘no fail’ mode. Though him hammering away at the drums could be a little distracting some times.

However if I was looking at something online while watching a movie or something like that…I tend to have more than one thing going at once because it actually helps me stay focused. I believe that’s something to do with the multiplicity. If I’m trying to just work on this blog post for example, there’s lots of voices in the back of “my” head making commentary about this and that, but because the munchkin has a PBS show on they’re mostly distracted with that so I can actually maintain my focus and write. Though FrankenStan couldn’t handle that because his RAM was reduced in capacity, so if I was typing the TV show on the computer would start freezing and skipping or the sound would get ahead of the picture.

Speaking of TV we also recently upgraded our TV. I know that sounds horrible because we’ve had so many financial issues, but we didn’t actually buy the TV, Kore and our future room mate Z did. They were initially looking at a Samsung HDTV but then we went to Sam’s and they had such good deals we wound up with a Philips because it was 6 inches larger and had a higher resolution and was only $50 more. I’ve since seen the same TV at Wal-mart for $80 more than we paid for it; and when I looked at the specs for it online it was selling for $300 more than that. So, I maintain the Sam’s card more than paid for itself with that.

Last time we were there Mum picked up the Wii Fit with Plus for $40 cheaper than we could have gotten it elsewhere. We lucked out with that one too because she doesn’t have a Wii of her own so she’s left it with us. She comes by every other day to use it and in the mean time the rest of us can use it to work out. According to it I’ve lost 7lbs since last week; so that’s nifty.

The other are the calls offering me the chance of a life time to go on Disney vacations. This would be more of an incentive, perhaps, if I lived in Pennsylvania, but I live in Florida, and they’re not offering me trips to Disney in California or France, they’re offering me trips to Disney here in Florida. When if I had the money or actual desire I could drive a few hours South and go without too much fuss.