Tuesday, December 28, 2010

and protect us from all anxiety

One of my favorite lines in the whole Mass occurs around the time of the consecration when the priest says "and protect us from all anxiety." It's an unusual line in that it's not overtly religious in the sense of save us from the fires of hell and that sort of thing, hell theology itself causes anxiety and for me the thing right now is this free-floating anxiety out there. Had a pretty good blast of Ole Man Winter day after Christmas and so folks hit the food stores before in droves, pounded the area delis pretty hard and so that's the thing with anxiety, it's hard to define but in your head when mixed with a healthy dose of imagination it takes on distorted dimensions. Now I'm sure a few people actually needed food but I think in many people's minds they had visions of being homebound for a week slowly starving to death. Never quite got this but anyway I was scheduled to work the night shift yesterday but after a couple hours shoveling out my car made what I thought was a very educated decision on my part to just call work and tell 'em I'm not coming in. The plow came through very late in the day as I live on one of those side roads on top of a hill and the tipping point for me was that in my neighborhood it's very hard to find a space at night in such situations and so the co-mgr. picks up the phone and you always get this, it's like from a playbook or something -- Me: "There are too many problems in my neighborhood (yada yada)..." Him (tooting his own horn): "We all have problems but I made it in" but I remained firm and he hung up. Bears mentioning he's a self-described Republican and I'm telling you your average Republican is not good on labor issues, is not on the side of the worker which is why we need a kind of fusion politics these days, recognize the shortcomings of whatever political side we fall down on and combine the best ideas from both although I do realize this deviates from the enemies' camp approach and is problematic for many who seem to revel in a kind of political trench warfare. Dad became sick right before Christmas so nobody was gonna visit there, kids might get sick and so all things considered it was definitely one of those off-center holidays. Talked to my best bud last night and we really don't critique each other about how we may fall short in the friendship department, that ain't true blue and he deals with the same shit at his job and so we rapped about that. It takes too much energy to hate but I'm telling you civil service people have it good, too many flakes falling from the sky and they just head on home, no conservative boss trying to lay a guilt trip on you either. I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, never was and if you're gonna do something no better time like the Present and so while most people vow to lose weight after the Holidays been there done that and no I didn't lose those last nine pounds all in one week, got close and decided to round it off and today I'm at that ideal weight I've talked about but that's probably because I shoveled so much of the white stuff yesterday. Truth be told I know this correction guard and he used to be a husky guy until I went to a party one day and barely recognized him, thought he had the cancer or something but he simply decided to lose the pounds although imo it's better in his line of work the way he was. OK so last post before the New Year's and let's stop causing each other anxiety, Life's too short anyway. Adopt an animal, chill back and if someone gets offended because you refuse to marry your job that's their problem. Me? my main thing today is trying to find a use for anchovies:)

Thursday, December 23, 2010

From Don't Ask/Don't Tell to TMI

President Obama is gonna sign the thing and allow gays to serve openly in the military. I really got no problem here and nondiscrimination means they should have the same opportunity to serve in stupid wars as the rest of us but for me it's always been a matter of TMI. You enroll in the military, WHY would you tell anyone you're gay?? You enroll in the military, WHY would you tell anyone you're straight?? So you like to have a schnitzel shoved down your throat, the issue wouldn't seem germane just like that Jets coach foot fetish. To serve "openly" in the military for me anyway conjures up images of hardons in the male showers, spreading your ass cheeks, whatever. There's just something wrong with the issue or how it's framed:)

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

2010 - a strange year

but Happy Holidays just the same. So I pretty much have thrown off those few extra remaining pounds so am pretty much ending the diet thing today but got to thinking about our nation's obesity epidemic and here's why it won't get any better: we get contradictory medical and social advice. Now this really should be one of the happiest times of my life, I set a goal for myself and reached it but little did I know at the time but it would also be one of the most annoying times of my life and that's because Folks-at-Large don't know how to think about this issue, they get spooky. So the country's obese among us are counseled to lose weight sooner rather than later but ALSO make sure you eat enough since running parallel to this Important Issue in the msm for the past few years has been eating disorders like anorexia and so you're a porker getting these contradictory signals and so the human mind is naturally going to still err on the side of eating a little too much and then you'll bitch about how hard it is to lose weight but not to worry because Dr. OZ tells you to nosh all day and so the cycle just repeats itself because you can't think for yourself or God forbid out-of-the-box (what's that?). What the fuck is with all the crime shows on TV? I mean you always gotta have a couple and if I were to choose I'd go with Hawaii Five-O but it's everywhere, serial killers eating Cap'n Crunch out of skulls and I hear the UMA stalker has been arrested again for bothering her. What I don't get about the whole celebrity stalking craze is where in hell is the attraction to these vapid celebrities in the first place?? I blame E.T. and Access Hollywood. Mean People Suck, you know the type, always prepared with the cutting remark like a nail file or hanky to be whipped out at a moment's notice. It's reflexive like on my first job. You know when you and a person walking from the other way don't know how to pass each other? who knows why it happens but you feel awkward and so I try to pass this old crank coming into the lounge from the other way and she goes "I sure hope you don't drive" (shooooooppp, social dart firmly embedded in neck, thank you). It's weird but you'll remember this stuff years later usually when you're drinking. I already mentioned I lost all this weight but you feel like you did something wrong. I think we're an overmedicated country right now and so you have to put up with your bipolar boss every day because she has the right to be that way. Just give me a good Charles Bronson movie at night and I'm good. Have a good one and may the New Year be even stranger.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Thinking out loud

My friend tried to IHOP me yesterday. Went to the doctor couple days ago, had a great blood pressure reading but that's probably because my boss was off that day and so I weighed in at 209 and my ideal weight he told me again is 200 so I figured why not finish off the rest and kind of do the diet thing until the year is over and then you can start fresh. Good news right? so I'm out driving with my friend yesterday after work and he goes "you lost alot of weight" only this is old news so you got a little vibe action going on right there in the car and so he already knew I wanted to go to Micky D's for a Filet-o-Fish value meal and so he said let's go to IHOP instead and was fairly adamant about it. The counterforce at work so I said I'm not against IHOP and I know they have other things besides pancakes so I promised him in the near future just not TODAY. Interesting and curious though that while my doctor was not at all alarmed by my quite successful weight loss everyone else seemed to be, probably think he's a bad doc. God this subject has gotten me so tired of late and other subjects that have been on my mind recently and kind of taken a toll:

To absolutely demand an apology can in certain cases be an extremist position. To absolutely refuse to apologize in certain situations can also be an extremist position. Part of the reason for this is your own POV by its very nature is subjective and not 100% (does Patrick M cozy up to liberals? subjectively speaking I don't really care as it's not an empirical thing anyway) and this is why I'm against having any kind of subjective standard as the basis of current law (e.g. sexual harassment and related issues) which it's time to revisit that subject again. I also had to get a few things at Walgreen's and passed by the Family Planning section and wondered yet again why in hell there are so many abortions out there. Even if you weren't in a moral frame of mind about the issue there is also the inconvenience of making the app't and going through with it and so even if rubbers aren't your thing there must be something you can do. Talked about this with a Jamaican once, aren't there other things a couple can do but he goes "it has to go in the hole, it's going IN the hole." Ah Jamaicans but there are times when I feel my blog is like Einstein's Theory of Relativity. They say only ten or twelve people actually understand it and so there are times when I blog that......

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

I found this fascinating

Woke up this morning and didn't know what to blog about exactly, different thoughts in a kind of formless mass. Since others' loved ones having health issues is a recurring theme I looked up some stuff from an old book I once read to kind of refresh the old memory base and before long I became absolutely absorbed. This is from the book Beyond MS: It's All in the Image by Nancy A. Bent, Ph.D (Brandon House, NY - 1995) and it's from the Introduction by Dr. Akhter Ahsen called "The Art of Restoration":

"...(Eidetic Image Therapy) is meant as a procedure of return to the natural state of health, not as an emphasis on disease...As was said earlier Rembrandt's 'Night Watch' turned out to be a painting not of the night, as was thought, but of the morning, just the opposite. It had so much varnish on it and had accumulated so much dirt over the years that it only looked like a night scene. That is an apt metaphor for what a patient usually is - a night scene...It is the person's own psyche that moves the limbs and not another individual who externally moves around or massages the body muscles because the true knowledge of movement and healing is only procurable when the person deeply initiates the activity from within."

Here, you can read the whole thing at: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-MS-Its-All-Image/dp/0913412848#reader_0913412848

Think about it and it's true, during the course of your day it's your own Mind which moves your limbs and your body in ways that you want without you even thinking about it. I think that is part of the gist of the passage I just quoted and for me points to Rene Descartes' ghost in the machine. The original functioning of the organism according to its DNA blueprint, that is the goal of modern eidetics. The part about Rembrandt's classic Night Watch (1642) is most interesting. Here was a painting that was commissioned by Captain Banning Cocq and several members of his civic guards as a kind of group portrait and was originally 13' X 16' and had 34 figures in it. It had so much dirt and varnish on it over the years as that is the nature of art collecting that only after WWII was it properly restored according to the artist's original vision and became known as Day Watch.

Every now and then we're gonna get a little culture under our belts.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Heaven and Hell

Here is my personal theology in a nutshell and you don't have to agree but it's a mixture of Old School and New. We all deserve to go to Hell and I'm including myself here BUT I also believe God in His Infinite Mercy saves us but do we deserve it? you betcha, we're not as good as we think we are. Since we're so wrapped up in ourselves we need that Outside Judgement, someone objective enough to say you know something? you're all full of shit. I think that's the problem with the whole Self-Esteem Movement, it ain't reality. You don't feel guilty when you should that's why we have Prozac. I believe when we die we don't automatically go through that trapdoor into the Inferno but see a kind of movie of our lives ("that was me?!?"). Eulogies, oh God I hope I never have to give one! Your prick of a boss dies and everyone says how great he was. Couple of years ago I was at a wake and went down the hallway and passed another wake and the folks in there seemed to be having a good ole time, must've been some specimen. So there you have it, we don't personally deserve Heaven but somehow we wind up there. Call it a divine wormhole.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Conservatives who know more about porn than you do

L. Brent Bozell III in yesterday's NY Post writes about some porn actor who got AIDS on the set and is upset, makes the point that folks don't like to see condoms used in these films and so they really don't care as much as they should. Says Vivid Entertainment had a mandatory condom policy for seven years and saw a 20% drop in sales.

I didn't know that.

I'll betcha porno pete didn't know that either. Anytime I gotta do a research paper on the topic I'm gonna go to my man Brent.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Existential Blog

The fishbowl known as work, the personal questions. Usually there can't be that much work to do if they're grilling you. My Life is fucked up OK? I don't know how I got here. You embellish your answers which is tricky when you're not ready and haven't rehearsed but lurking underneath is The Judgement and you quickly extricate yourself by making a beeline for the Men's Room. When you lose weight people act strange around you. Friend knows I've been dieting and I told him before I picked him up the other day I just had a McRib but he buys me a cheese danish anyway so I ate it to be polite. When you're shedding the pounds real quick there are counterforces at work, the Counter-Conspiracy so we're eating at Stew Leonard's and I'm by the salad bar getting my tuna and whatever else and he's packing it on at the hot food buffet as if to show me and he goes "I'm not judging you" which is fine but why'd he say I'm not judging you? It's we're either all gonna lose weight together, simultaneous-like or not at all. Obama's extending the Bush tax cuts, good for him. Well absinthe is back on the market, a little Van Gogh/Wormwood action. Now just the other day at work everyone was stupendously happy which is fine but more than a little strange for your typical go-back-to-work Monday and so the woman packs out the blue cheese crumbles in their containers but prices them all as roasted porkloin. Get that thujone rockin' for the Holidays!! Wikipedia -- no fan of Assange but you can't tell me those rape prosecutions aren't politically motivated. Let me play catchup and see what I missed. BTW I cracked the 3rd Secret, we're all going to Hell.