tommy's mom's accident is so terrible (though from talking to both him and beth they sound like they are handling it so remarkably well and capably), and i am so far away from charlottesville/d.c., and i feel so impotent, that i don't know what to do, except send their mom terrifying amounts of garish get-well balloons (since flowers aren't allowed. neither are latex balloons. as stanley said, "Anti-latex, anti-flowers... If these hospital folks are anti-Barry-White, I move to label them "anti-gettin'-it-on.").

...oh yeah, and talk about hemorrhoids.

remember a while back i posted about HEAD ON which you APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD, and which is slowly driving me down a path of insanity? i seriously think their strategy is to actaully cause seizures/headaches through their incessant commercials and drive the market for the product up that way.

well, it gets worse. a few days ago i noticed on tv an ad for activon, for arthritis pain, and you know what? you apply it directly where it hurts. of course.

AND THEN, even worse!!! the other day came on a commercial by the same people for, you guessed it, hemorrhoid cream. GAH!H!H!H! freedom from hemorrhoids? FREEdHEM hemorrhoid cream. freedom from hemorrhoids? FREEdHEM hemorrhoid cream. freedom from hemorrhoids? FREEdHEM hemorrhoid cream.

if you would like to join me on my trip to crazytown, you can see the whole series of commercials here.

Wah-wah pedals. Laser pointers. Firearms. These are the sorts of machines that are simply too much for fun humans to use objectively. You might have a considered, intelligent opinion about their proper use, but it'll melt away as soon as you get your hands on one. Motorcycles belong on this list, too.

So, I'll just get it out of the way, since people are asking, and this seems like as good an information-dissemination mechanism as any that are available to me. My mom got into a serious motorcycle accident Wednesday evening. According to the cops, some guy suddenly decided he really, really needed to make that right turn to get some gas — enough so that he was willing to do it from the left lane. I suppose my above list is unfair, since the accident wasn't her fault. But I'm still not feeling very fond of motorcycles at the moment.

The resulting breaks, as of the last round of CTs: clavicle, back, pelvis, ribs, right arm in twenty places. Amazingly, it appears that she'll be fine. The right arm is the worst of the lot, but today's surgery on it went well. It sounds like she'll probably be in the hospital for a week.

What comes after that, I don't know. I'm trying to prepare myself not to be surprised by whatever unpleasant surprises come up in the future. So far everything seems to be going great — but I suspect that when an ICU nurse tells you something is great, it really just means that it isn't horribly, horribly bad. So we'll see. She should be moving out of that unit tomorrow and back into the real world. I'm guessing that a sense of scope will arrive around the same time as her physical therapist.

Anyway, thanks for everyone's kind thoughts and sentiments (and balloons! no flowers in the ICU, so folks have been loading her up with mylar and helium). Honestly, everything is surprisingly fine. My sister has been incredibly great. My mom started off the afternoon groggy, but was pretty lucid and cheerful by the time I left this evening, all things considered. Things are going as well as can be expected. Her head is fine, her life doesn't appear to be in danger, and we basically know what has to happen next. That sort of clarity makes it possible to remain pretty even-keeled about all of this.

after NPR's debacle of old-people programming yesterday, and wanting something upbeat, i turned off this radio this morning on the way to work and put on satellite rides by the old 97's. if you have never listened to them, i super duper recommend it. to be honest, i have never followed them after they released satellite rides except for purchasing the first of rhett miller's abominable solo albums. but satellite rides is such a gem. it races back between power pop and sweet, twangy alt-country rock.

they've got a couple of mp3s over at the band's site:

can't get a line
roller-skate skinny

but the real star of the album, in my opinion, is "designs on you." unfortunately, the only audio i could find of the song was on youtube, where it is set...to a fan video of scenes of pam and jim from "the office." so, yeah. just play the video and click over to another tab so you don't have to watch this sad waste of fantasy tv editing effort.

unrelatedly, what is UP with those sorts of youtube tv relationship videos? in searches for certain clips of episodes of "veronica mars," i can't tell how many montages of veronica and logan set to terrible music that i came across. hundreds! and a disproportionate amount set to blink 182!

UPDATE: and to take this post even further off the original topic, the latest office webisode is up, and it's pretty great. i do love me some stanley.