Sad Thread again - fuck

[jebreject]

[timecode break]

oh man, I'm so sorry for your losses Dave and Bethany.

[Andrew_TSKS]

I just heard that Odetta passed away. She was really trying to hold out long enough to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration and just couldn't do it. What a shame.

[kadiekatRN]

  to Dave and Bethany.  Hang in there.

Nowhere near the magnitude of other people sad things going on, but still sad:
Atomic Records, a fine record store and a Milwaukee institution will be closing in February after 24 years of business.  The only good thing is that they'll be selling everything on the cheap. 

[DCDave]

I really miss my brother(-in-law) a lot, guys.  There's a ton of shit that's just HARD to do lately, like getting up, and Christmas shopping, and all that, and I just miss him.  I've been reading the facebook page his kids set up for him and it's like getting punched in the guy.  I just miss him.

[Ignatius]

That stuff sucks, and I wish I could say that the parts of life where someone is so conspicuously absent get easier to handle, but there's always an ache... First holidays missing someone close are really tough. On the other hand, you're not the only one missing him (as the facebook page shows), and you'll probably be around other family members and mutual friends soon... The flip side of missing someone is that everyone remembers and tells their favorite stories about him. I know these holidays come on especially soon for you and yours, but hopefully you can have a laugh or two mixed in with everything else. A little booze and some fond remembrances can help a little.

[Killdozersnakeboy]

Pails in comparison to real troubles people are having but fuck me I'm a miserable bastard at the moment. Xmas is usually a pretty crap time of the year for me but this year it's like I've fallen down a hole. I just had to leave a concert after 4 songs cos I couldn't handle being in a crowd at all (this was a band I've been waiting to see for a loooong time). Tomorrow I've got a work xmas lunch/party with 500+ people that I've already been told I have to go to. I feel sick at just the thought.

[clare]

Dave, that really sucks, I hope you can find a place where it's not so hard. You'll always miss him, but it gets easier to bear.

KDSB, is there any way that you can envision yourself at this do? find a quite corner with one or two people you trust? I hope it goes OK.

[hannah]

Found out yesterday someone I first met when I was 10 killed herself this weekend. We went to summer camp and high school together. She was an incredibly talented photographer and writer, very funny and charismatic, and when I wasn't envying her, which was pretty much always, she was an absolute pleasure to be with. We reconnected this past year -- she was working on a book with another camp friend, and they interviewed and photographed me -- and now she's gone. There is a memorial service next week. Many, many people miss her.

[jebreject]

Oh shit. I'm sorry to hear that.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Oh damn. Suicides always make me really sad.

[kyle]

My Dad's life depresses the shit out of me. Lives alone in a huge house that is unkept and overgrown, his neighbors think little of him, and he treats his single friend, his new dog Tess, kind of shitty.

Ugh..

Christmas time is here!

[diesel_powered]

Oh damn. Suicides always make me really sad.

Ditto. My heart goes out to everybody having a rough time.

[silentsigh89]

tomorrow marks six years since my Father died. For some reason, it's hit me harder than most this year. I saw my grandfather (his father) for the first time in a year last night. he has cancer that they can't do anything about and I'm not supposed to know. I was never close with him at all, and can count the number of times I've actually spoken to him on my fingers. Last night I saw him and he looked sickly and so old. He told me that my dad would be proud of me and I found myself curled up and sobbing on his sweater like a little kid, telling him about my mom's brain tumor and snotting all over everything until my aunt brought me alcohol. It took seven words and a pat on the head from a paternal figure to completely rip me apart.

I've been a mopey, mopey, mopey mess. It is not attractive.

[Maaik]

Beth, my heart goes out to you--surrounded by death, I'd be a similar wreck I'm sure.

As long as Last Plane has had Sad threads, we've continually swung from people who reality had just punched in the back of the head with real tragedy to the more ephemeral confusion and sadness that just comes with being alive.  The second kind always seems to apologetically follow the first, but has always gotten a sympathetic pass from the regulars because sadness isn't a competition.

So that having been said

I am ALMOST FINISHED with the Christmas season at the theme park where I work.  We've been flying along since October (officially NO days off for me that month) and these last three months have gone by a lot quicker than I remember them going by last year.

Lately I've lost my emotional ballast.  My mood swings back and forth pretty freely and tonight for seemingly no other reason than it was late, I was tired and tMO had a lot more energy to get chores done after work than I did, I became this apologetic, simpering mess.  We sat on the couch and I cried about just nothing.  We talked it through and I'm better now, but jesus.

It's been happening increasingly lately--is it normal for people not to be able to handle being busy for a few months?  I feel like I'm somehow cracking under a pressure which most other people wouldn't have a problem with.  But that's not really what bothers me--what does is that I can feel the emotional/intellectual disconnect.  Like as it's happening, I'm split in two: the blubbering wreck who has no self-confidence and is full of fear and loathing vs. the guy who can reason out that hey, my blood sugar's probably low and I've been awake and working most of the day in miserable weather, so of course I'm not doing too well.

God love my poor wife who puts up with this shit.

[hannah]

My dad makes me sad.

[kyle]

My dad makes me sad.

yeah

[kadiekatRN]

It seems that Milwaukee is losing its independents.

First, it was Broad Vocabulary, a feminist bookstore, then it was Atomic Records, the long-lived record store of amazingness.  Now it's http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/arts/37807069.html---Harry W. Schwartz, a local chain of bookstores known also for bringing in authors for readings/signings.

Boo!

[RavingLunatic]

To be honest, I don't think brick-and-morter book and CD stores are long for this world, particularly independent ones, except perhaps in large and wealth cities like Berkeley and such. There seems to be a fair chance that my employer, Borders, is going to go the way of Circuit City. I kinda expect it sometime in the next couple years actually. If I didn't work at Borders, I would never buy any CDs or books from any bookstore. Things are cheaper online and there is a much larger selection. It's pretty simple. What's keeping those places in business is people who do not have internet, do not know how to use the internet, or do not have credit cards, and all but that last category are rapidly going extinct.

[Ignatius]

What about people who like to talk to other people about music? Or talk to other people in general?

[Thermofusion]

x-post to RL

Yeah I disagree. At least for the foreseeable future, I think there's always going to be a niche for alternative record shops; there're always going to be people who vastly enjoy crate-digging for old LPs and the treasure-hunter experience of browsing to buying from your online outlets. The independent shops here seem to be doing rather well. I think there's also a small but noticeable subset of people (including music collectors) who render it a moral endeavour to shop, support and buy local.

If you're talking about Borders and Barnes & Noble, however, then yeah I think they're dying ponies and I also think they both deserve their fates. Neither store offers competitive deals on their alleged bread-and-butter (books) and their prices for DVDs and CDs are especially laughable. Even more expensive than the local indie shops, who they themselves can't afford to mark stuff down in the first place. Plus they've each failed their niches; Borders as recently as five or six years ago still enjoyed a strong reputation for its classical and opera selections. Then, slowly, every Borders began shrinking and shrinking those sections to where now you're lucky if they take up half of an aisle. I used to blow hundreds of dollars at a time there and now the only time you'll find me in a Borders or B&N is to randomly trawl the discount tables or to pick up obscure magazines like Gramophone.

But mainly, their prices on books flat out blow. The last book I bought full-retail at Borders was Against The Day, and that was only because I'm a Pynchon nerd who was unable to summon anything resembling patience.

[RavingLunatic]

Yeah, but the main reason the regular prices of books and music and such are so high is because there is a fairly substantial portion of the population who are simply willing to go into a store and buy what they're looking for regardless of what the prices is. Anyone who actually considers the price when purchasing uses the coupons we have that are virtually constantly available. Every 4 or 5 weeks we have 40% off of CDs and 40% off DVDs, and every week there's a 25-30% coupon good on almost all items. I think the only way bookstores can stay in business these days is to price discriminate in this way. If they were forced to come down to internet prices on all items they'd quickly go out of business.

Also, while I will testify to the general uselessness of bookstores and music stores in general (at least the ones that are available to people who don't live in either giant cities or music hotbeds), I will rep for the Borders bargain section. (Full disclosure: I am in charge of our bargain section.) Our bargain stuff is priced about 25% lower than Barnes & Noble's bargain stuff, and while a lot of it is generic stuff of little interest, there's pretty regular flow of good stuff coming through. I've nabbed some great stuff from bargain, particularly our bargain blowout sales.

[Thermofusion]

Most of what I pick up in the bargain sections of your Borders and your what-have-yous are deeply-discounted cookbooks and fluffy, possibly disreputable history titles. Both Borders and B&N seem to have a healthy supply of each of those.

[Greg Nog]

possibly disreputable history titles

I love those!  45-page lavishly-illustrated coffee table books about how Samurais are the greatest warriors ever to stalk the planet!

[Thermofusion]

My guilty favorites are the ones concerning freemasonry, secret societies, pirates craze cash-ins and the ubiquitous $5 collections of apocryphal American history anecdotes