Vivid Viscosities

So the Pope had a tracheostomy done.
Man, it doesn't look good for that guy.
In his 80's, recurrent pneumonia, tracheostomy...
Most patients I've seen like that are not long for this world. Infectious bacteria usually wins out.

Tracheostomies are yucky. The great thing about your esophagus and trachea is that they meet up in your throat where you can swallow all that nasty stuff that slimes out of your lungs. When you have a tracheostomy it usually comes out of your neck and you need some sort of suctioning to keep the tube clean and clear. That is Bacteria Disneyland, open for business.
If you have a strong cough you can shoot a phlegm ball across the room or onto the nearest nurse.
When you're a nurse, you learn to wear those masks and gloves real quick!

The stuff that comes out of trachs is absolutely disgusting. I can handle the most festering, pustulent, and deeply foul of wounds of various kinds, but nasty lung slime?
Sometimes you suction around the trach opening (when they're not on any mechanical ventilation) and catch up a thick, long, yellow, quivering string of slime that takes forever to get sucked up, making a loud, nasty slurping sound until the last goober on the end of it comes flopping out and jams up the tip of the suction tube.

How would you like to play with that stuff all the time?



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Killer Unicorns Are On The Loose!

I'll bet you didn't know this, but the fall of the Roman Empire came about when their local television channels started terrorizing the citizens with a whole bunch of hooha just to get ratings.
The Ceasar at the time had a pretty smart political strategist who stole that idea and used it to help boost Ceasar's own ratings.

These scare tactics worked for many years as the citizens lived in fear and ran around pell-mell in confusion. Ceasar seemed to have the only 'answers', so everyone believed and followed him.
But at a certain point the lies became so numerous, the whole Roman shebang collapsed on itself in economic and social chaos.

Stay tuned and we'll show you how it could all happen to you!!
Also, a six-year-old died yesterday after being hit by a meteor!! Could your six-year-old be next? We'll show you why.
All that and the weather, at 11.*




*This bout of exasperated sarcasm is in response to a local Colorado news broadcast a few days ago which promised to show how possible floods and mudslides like those happening in California could occur here in Colorado. The final answer given at the very last 20 seconds of the broadcast was this: it's extremely unlikely. WTF?
I suppose if an alligator eats someone in Florida, our local news here in Colorado will do a story on the likelihood of that happening in Aspen.
Hey, all you frail elderly people who live in Aspen! You'd better watch! You don't want to get eaten by an alligator, do ya?!





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Grilled Nursing Student With A Large Fries

If you want to see an interesting phenomenon just watch how nurses treat nursing students.
They treat them like crappola.
Not everywhere and not all the time, but for the most part this is true.

It is fascinating. Not only can you watch nurses shake their heads, roll their eyes, make loud sighs, and do other more rude things around students, but some berate them until they cry.
This is a pretty wide-spread phenomenon, too. Nursing magazines often have articles about how 'nurses eat their young.'
Maybe it's because nurses are so short-staffed and harried that a question from a student is just an extra hassle, or maybe it's a plain power-game. Or perhaps, both. Whatever the reason, it is a sad thing to see.

I love having students. I think it's a blast to teach whatever knowledge I've amassed over the past 10 years. On the flip side of that, students also remind me of how much I don't know, things I've forgot, and stuff that I've gotten lazy in.

The medical profession in general is notorious for raking its students and interns over the coals. Part of this is a Victorian power-game tradition that has been gradually ingrained. Some say it helps teach instinctive actions--basic knowledge and actions that take effect without thinking.
The 'berate until they know' approach is, of course, widely used in sports too.

Just picture an old, wise, white-haired nurse sitting at the end of the hall with a big gnarled stick beating students while laughing at their incompetence--it's like watching a bad kung-fu movie from the 70's.




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Jean Shepherd

Big Pimpin' Goethe

A few years back I got into studying existential philosophy quite heavily. (Drug-free, I swear!)
I survived the ordeal, but one of the things that struck me about reading all these famous authors and philosophers is how many of them often quoted Goethe.
That sonofabitch pretty much covered everything already!

Here's a very small sample:

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
What is not fully understood is not possessed.
Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.
What is important in life is life and not a result of life.
One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.
To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
If God you want to find, first divide and then combine.
He only earns his freedom and existence, who daily conquers them anew.


He probably learned a few of these ideas from his own favorite philosophers, but no one comes close to Goethe for being philosophically pimped out. You can't swing a Schroedinger's cat without hitting a philosopher who has reworded Goethe or has quoted a Goethe sentence to say everything they tried to say in 20 paragraphs!




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The Devil's Dictionary

Fire Up My Left Brain More Often!

In the latest National Geographic they describe a study where neuroscientists measured brain activity in people who tend to be positive and in those who tend to be negative. The latter show more activity in their right prefrontal cortex, and the former show more in their left. They then studied people who meditated for several weeks along with people who didn't, giving each group a flu shot. The meditators showed more left brain activity and better immune response to the shot than did the non-meditators.
So the inference is that if your left brain is sparking more than your right, you will be happier and healthier.

I guess it would be wise to do that study over again in a long-term fashion. The ebb and tide of your left and right brain functions probably works better in hormonal control.
If only one side is sparking all the time, perhaps that causes too much juice to be squeezed out of a gland or two without allowing any refractory/refill time.

You can't squeeze an accordian to hit a single, blissful note forever; at some point you have to pull it apart.
Is the hypothalamus your accordian?

Left-brain is often factored mainly with logic, and the right with emotion.
We do know from stroke victims that other than left and right side body movements (e.g. a left brain stroke causes right side body malfunction) there is little difference in the symptoms.
The prefrontal cortex is found pronounced only in humans. And if it is destroyed, we tend to become a bit uninhibited and animalistic (see the famous case of Phineas Gage).

Neuroscience has got to be a blast.




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Antarctica

Saturday Nights, 1970's

I watched the Saturday Night Live retrospective last night. It covered the first five wonderful years of SNL.
I get all fuzzy and warm thinking about those shows. I can remember seeing the first one, how exciting and funny it was! Every Saturday night was all about staying up late and watching SNL. (And every Sunday was all about watching The Six Million Dollar Man.)

I read Live From New York last year, which is also a retrospective, but about the whole history of SNL. It's surprising, all the stuff that went on behind the scenes.

It's easy to complain about the current SNL. The saying is that it sucks more often than not, which is true. It's lost its edge, it's creativity. The original seasons of SNL took chances. They weren't afraid to do a few non-comedic skits or short film, to be a little 'artsy' once in a while. Think about that touching little film Steve Martin and Gilda Radner did where they danced in a dream sequence. You never see that kind of thing today.
One single exception was a few years back with Tracy Morgan and Maya Rudolph doing a little musical number on the subway. The original SNL didn't hit the bell with every skit, but there were a hell of a lot more hits than misses.

Live From New York describes how SNL evolved into a "repeat-character" factory. If a character is a hit, they will repeat it ad nauseum. That certainly started back in the original seasons, but it didn't get gonzo until the 80's. And Lorne Michaels is the perennial dick involved.
SNL finally jumped the shark when they were made to fire Norm MacDonald.

I miss the kind of sharp, risky humor that only Tina Fey does now, but used to be all through the show. I miss the SCTV-style, the warmth, the excitement. I miss Belushi and Radner, and even asshole Chevy.
I miss my Saturday Nights of the 70's.



What's the cool and funny show these days?
The Daily Show with John Stewart.




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More Stories From The Snake Pit

Although I mainly worked with adults during my job in the early 90's at the mental hospital, I occasionally had to run over to the adolescent building whenever they called a "Code Green", which meant "Anybody! Help!"
This code was called whenever a kid (or kids) was out of control and threatening violence.

So, one day I run over and we all congregate in the fenced-in courtyard off the adolescent unit around a young disturbed gentleman who seems to be a great fan of Jean Claude Van Damme.
(You may remember Van Damme was at the top of his short arc of kick-boxing movie fame at that time.)
With almost monotonously predictive behavior the kid acts like he's going to take all of us on and starts with the verbal threats, "Just try and touch me! You don't know who you're messin' with! I'm gonna hurt all of ya!"
Our collective eyes glaze over as the Code Team Leader (it's a good idea to have only one person speak to the patient) goes through the routine of giving the kid a choice: either calm down and walk to the time-out room (yes, you guessed it, a padded cell) or get taken down and carried there.

I'd been to dozens of these stand-offs, and I use the term "monotonously predictive" because that's what they were. For all their proud individuality, grandiosity, and rebellion, adolescents are amazingly predictable.
You can tell after just a few minutes whether their rage is beyond negotiation or whether they're going to be walking inside, sobbing, with your arm around their shoulders.

But wait! Here was something new! This kid starts flying around in a circle with sky-high kick-boxing moves and taunts us with this:

"My feet are HUNGRY for your FLESH!"

We all stood there for a long moment of silence as that unbelievable declaration sunk in.
Then we couldn't help it...one person started to snort...then another...and then we all busted out laughing!

It was such an absolutely priceless moment that it lived on for years. You couldn't do anything at that hospital without someone quoting that damn thing.

I've tried to Google it in various ways but I can't find it anywhere, not even in a Van Damme movie.

The kick-boxing kid, by the way, was taken down and carried to the time-out room without injury.
We did almost drop him because of the laughter.

Poor little guy... I hope he's doing well now.
Perhaps he made it into the movie business somehow.





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Coca-Cola's other life

Elmo Killed The Mahna Mahna Guy!

I've tried to get all three of my kids into Sesame Street, but they walked away after a few minutes.
Why? Because it sucks now!
It used to be this fun, eclectic show full of a few scenes from the Street, a bunch of little films and cartoons about the Number and Letter of the Day, a bunch of little films and cartoons about anything, several muppet skits, and most of all, No Elmo's World!
It used to be fun to watch. You never knew what was coming on next.

Now it's been so worked over by 'child psychologists' and 'educational experts' that it is mindless.
There's no variety!! There's too much Elmo, too much Search for Ernie, too much repetition and lack of creativity.

It started to suck soon after Jim Henson died. His creative energy was incredible. That was one of the saddest deaths in the history of entertainment.
I doubt he would've stayed or let the Politically Correct 'experts' take over like they have. Dare I bring up my pet peeve of SoccerMomism yet again?

The point of things like the Mahna Mahna song/skit is lost on 'experts'. But kids get it.
Mahna Mahna.



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History of Pi

Goofy Gurus

Ken Wilber, a Boulder, Colorado guru who rode the New Age movement to fame and fortune, made some interesting observations about life. He once said that things are a whole in one context, and part of another whole in another context. Thus, there are only whole/parts, and not one or the other. I think he called whole/parts "holons".
So you just have to be vigilant about not being stuck in contexts and try to experience "holons".

(Which is the same thing as saying you must not be stuck in subjective or objective thinking, but experience both. Like the Sufi saying: Your attention must breathe in and out.)

But, Wilber also said that the aim of consciousness is statelessness, not a perpetual fascination with changes in states; so what are most of his books about? A perpetual fascination with changes in states.
Oy!
Not that it's not interesting reading. It is! Wilber is a brilliant author and philosopher. It's just that he lacks humility and humor, and he focuses on the map instead of what's out the window. That's the ego getting in the way of things.

It's fun to put the mystery of subjective/objective attention into new metaphors (and in his case, dozens of graphs and charts).
Every generation has some new person who does it in a way that speaks to the modern people.
However, most gurus focus on achieving non-duality as if it is a problem to be solved. It's not. As another great thinker once observed, it's a mystery to be lived.
So people like Wilber make a career of trying to solve the problem, to find the meaning of life, to stay in the non-dual state. But that is trying to achieve an end, a state, when there is only a deep experience to gain.

Just like the saying goes, "It's not the destination, stupid! It's the journey!"
Humor is a tool that often helps people realize that. It breaks down our ego to help us keep from this:

We would rather be ruined than changed,

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

The Age of Anxiety, by W. H. Auden

.

.

A good guru is one who has more humor than ego.

Does it help that Wilber is bald and lanky-looking?

.

.

.

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Kids, Krazy, Or Both

Telling your young teenager about some of your drunken adventures when you were in your early 20's and leaving them shocked that their parents ever did such things is priceless.
What? Did he think we hung around some convent or something?

It's fun to blow your kids' minds, even though it'll probably come back to bite you.

When you read biographies about famous and/or creative people, especially great thinkers, it is striking how many of them have no children or paid little attention to their children. You wonder if some of the ones who committed suicide, went crazy, or drifted into Hermit-ville would've done so if they had the reality anchor of a few kids.
Or perhaps it would've made them do those things sooner.


Blowing my mind: my son brings home a consent form from school yesterday asking if it's OK if he sees a film about the Holocaust and listens to a Holocaust survivor speak to the school. WTF?
I wrote on it, "You need a consent to teach kids about history? This is a strange consent form."

I'll probably be getting a squinty-eyed call from some SoccerMom soon.





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Unvarnished Grimms' Fairy Tales

Home Run Records And Liver Damage

The Mark Conseco interview on 60Minutes last night was interesting. He admits that he used steroids and names other baseball players who also used them. Naming names is just a gimmick to help him sell his new book; he should've just stuck to his own story. He is still like school at 3 am. (No class)
Mark McGuire still denies any use of steroids. If he did admit it, his home run record would be in jeopardy, so I don't see him going anywhere near the issue anytime soon.

If a nurse is suspected of drug use, then they are promptly drug tested. It's done pretty quick and easy, so I don't see why it is so hard to drug test athletes. Sure, a few of those steroids are hard to detect, but only a very few. It seems to me the athlete drug testing system is corrupt. (Nothing gets by me, I tell ya!) If they seriously care about the integrity of sports, then they need to scrap the current system. It would be insanely easy and cheap to do.
But then the world of million dollar contacts isn't known for its integrity.

It makes me feel good that the world of nursing has A LOT of integrity....just not a lot of money.




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Stem Cell Blues

It's sad that scientists aren't revered more.
The guy who comes on at 2 in the morning to show you how to lose weight by standing on your head gets more reverence than the guy who invents the pill that staves off Alzheimer's disease.

Someone could cure cancer and they'd be put on page 3 because Prince Charles is getting married.

Actually, the sadder thing is when someone poops on science and expert advice all their life only to beg for their help later on when they develop some problem or disease.

Now I have to go and drink my Coca-Cola and eat my fries.




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Say Professor, This Isn't In The Syllabus.

Ok, so here in Colorado we have an outspoken professor who recently wrote an essay in which he compares the 9/11 victims to the Germans under Nazi rule. (I think he's a professor of How To Easily Incite A Witch Hunt Against Yourself.) His opinion is that Americans are not 'innocent' but have caused much suffering out in the world by action or irresponsible inaction, and the 9/11 attacks were a reaction to this, so we shouldn't act like we didn't ask for it.

I watched the professor talk the other day on C-SPAN. He's about as clear as his sensationally warped logic above suggests. (Did he learn his technique from Bill O'Reilly?) He has some good points, but his choice of analogy is...well...idiotic to say the least.
After watching and listening to him speak you can tell this guy is one of those professors in whose class you don't learn anything about the course subject because he's too busy off on some personal tangent.
"Today, class, we're going to discuss the physics of kinetic energy......but first let me talk about the musical genius of Kurt Cobain!..."
We've all had professors (and even high school teachers!) like that.

If he would've just stated his point without the crazy analogy it would've been better--still controversial, but better. This talk about having him fired is about as silly (and scary) as his diarrhea of the mouth, however the dude should just have the decency to apologize for the poor analogy choice while at the same time defend his point and his right to make it. Alas no, it looks like he's gonna ride his 15 minutes over the cliff.

Don't incite a witch hunt on yourself with your foot in your mouth, because they won't be able to hear you yelling, "Hey, this pyre burns!"
That's about as sharp as blowing yourself up to become a martyr. The sensationalism and violence almost instantly buries the message. He and the terrorists are in the same boat to Crazy-ville.





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Tongue Twisters

Grammys Burn! Make Mad! Must Rampage!

The Grammys are fun, but wasn't the Blackeyed Peas' Let's Get It Started out in 2003?
What the hell is it being nominated for 2004 for?

The most annoying thing about the upcoming Grammy awards is how many artists will thank God for winning.
Like God, the almighty creator and omnipotent Being of the universe, really wants one person to win and others to lose.
How absolutely narcissistic is it to thank God for winning an award? What do the losers say?
"I thank God for letting Kanye win and me lose."

Yeah, sure.

I saw Kanye on Charlie Rose the other night. My son has his album and it's pretty good. Good beats, nice rap rhythym, excellent messages. But the interview with Rose showed Kanye to be a bit self-centered.
Apparently, he got into a car accident a year ago or so and now attributes his survival to God and God's intention for him to live and carry out a "plan". Very convenient and very arrogant.

Why do people who survive tragedy attribute it to God and some purpose? What about the people who die in tragedy? What purpose was that? What plan is it for one kid to be able to survive the Tsunami because he was near a palm tree at the time and another kid to die because he wasn't?
There's no purpose! If someone survives tragedy and feels like they were 'given' a second chance at life and now must do all they can do, then fine. Go to it! Don't thank God, because then you have to thank God that someone didn't win or didn't make it. Do they seriously have the bolas to do that? Or is hypocrisy their middle name?

Doesn't thanking God make one pretty much a wussy? Why can't people realize you must do all you can do without being scared into it?

There's a story about a guy who is caught in his house during a big flood. He climbs on top of his porch as the water rises. A few neighbors come by in a rowboat and tell him to hop in to safety. He says, "No, you go on. God will save me." The water keeps rising and he climbs up to the roof. The police come by in a big boat and tell him to hop in to safety. "No, you go on. God will save me!" The water still rises and he is forced up on top of the chimney. A helicopter rescue is attempted, but he waves them off. "God will save me!"
The water goes over his head and he dies.
When he gets to Heaven he goes up to God and asks, "Why didn't you save me?"
"What are you talking about?" God replies. "I sent you a rowboat, a big motorboat, and then a helicopter!"

If there is a God, He isn't one's personal cheerleader or puppetmaster. And if someone thinks He is, then they ain't humble and they ain't His servant. They're His disgrace.....and a wussy!



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Church of the Blind Chihuahua

Stories From The Snake Pit

I used to be a "mental health technician" (which is just a glorified term for 'nursing assistant') back in the late 80's and early 90's before I became a nurse. I lasted about 7 years working with the mentally ill, which is said to be about the time most people 'burn out', and you do 'burn out'. It's a tough job taking a lot of patience, listening, compassion, stress, repetition, vigilance, danger of personal harm, threats, and so on.

The patients I enjoyed working with the most were the schizophrenics and other psychotics. There was always something out of left field that was interesting, or at least made you duck!
The personality disorders I didn't enjoy so much. Very annoying. The worst were the "Borderline Personality Disorder" people. Usually any difficult patient is branded with BPD, which is wrong, but if you ever meet a true BPD person it's like talking to a wall with an attitude. And if you try and ignore the wall with an attitude, they will do all sorts of sick stuff to get your attention. Fun!
The saddest people were the mood disorder patients who probably only needed a few therapy sessions, a few experiential doses (slaps of reality), and a base of support, but instead they were placed on some medications and became 'victims' to forever wander the mental health landscape with their numbed minds and feelings.
(Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic medications out there that work wonderfully with severe disorders. The problem is they are promoted and used for all disorders, most not severe.)

Anyway, in my first naive years working as a MHT I had the interesting experience of witnessing some hypnosis performed by a psychiatrist on a Multiple Personality Disorder lady. Now, at the time I truly had no idea that MPD was bunk. I thought it was the real deal! (Although I should've been tipped-off by the fact that MPD was supposed to be the rarest disorder in the world and this particular psychiatrist had no less than a dozen patients with the diagnosis!)
So the psychiatrist asks me, very sincerely, that she needs me in the room during this hypnosis session because she's going to ask a "Witch" personality to come out and she doesn't "know what will happen".
Well, well! How exciting!
We're in a closed room. The patient is sitting at one end and the psychiatrist is at the other. I am sitting to the right of the psychiatrist in a corner. She does her "Ok, you're walking down steps, I will count them, and when we reach the bottom you'll be in a trance" thing. The patient plays it better than Meryl Streep. The psychiatrist talks to a few personalities and then asks the "Witch" out. Again, pure Streep, the patient glowers darkly, looking up from her evilly-bowed head, scowls, growls, and throws a box of kleenex across the room.
The doc asks her some Dungeon-Master questions and then she is gone. The "protector" personality comes out and the doc goes over some assignments to help keep the patient from evil. And at last the "true" patient comes back up the hypnotic steps and falls off the chair to the floor, exhausted.
I am dismissed from the room with my Bullshit-Detector blaring in my head.

This was back before the health care reforms when every crazy therapy and its brother was running rampant. The Recovered Memory fiasco was soon to follow. For every 'crazy' patient there were about 6 'crazy' healthcare workers. My head is dizzy with all the ridiculous stuff I witnessed.
Good times... good times...



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Terry Gilliam

Dude, Where's My Moment?

My Uncle was a big Colin Wilson fan. I took his collection of CW books after he died and read them all. They were very interesting and helped introduce me to a lot of philosophy avenues to explore. Wilson is (I think he's still alive) a good writer and explainer, but he is also one hell of a nut.
His writings start out with explorations and commentary on philosphy and end up mired in occultism and the supernatural. What led him into that bog was an obsession with the 'mystery' that lies within all spiritual disciplines which is living in the moment.

Wilson wanted to find a new religion, or more specifically a ritual to help him live in the moment all the time. He called his enlightenment the "St. Neot Margin", because he was hitchhiking in England and caught a ride with a truck driver headed to St. Neot. The truck kept malfunctioning along the way causing Wilson to keep praying they'd make it. This experience seemed to him to be a great metaphor: people go along in life much like a machine doing things without thinking or full experiencing moments, and whenever that machine malfunctions or changes it causes people to be jolted out of their 'machine thinking'. Simply, the St. Neot Margin is the transition from subjective thinking into objective...with a side order of optimism.

For Wilson, the answer to staying in objective thought all the time seemed to lie somewhere in the occult and thus began a prolific writing career delving into aliens, spiritualists, and all sorts of paranormal stuff. To be fair he also looked into art and music. He went all over the belief map looking for a ritual/pattern to permanently jolt his attention out of subjectivism, and if he's still alive I think he's still looking.

Like a lot of people Wilson fails because subjective thought nicely balances the objective. Yes, mankind's existential problem is that we tend to stay in subjective thought and become 'machine-like', but there are numerous rituals and patterns to help one become enlightened, to experience objective thought and gain a new perspective, to become balanced.
This 'mystery' of enlightenment is at the core of all religions and spiritual belief systems. The symbols and patterns that are used may be different, but the meanings are all the same from Hinduism to Christianity to belief in Extraterrestrials to Wiccanism to Islam to belief in Spirits to Judaism to Buddism to New Age-ism, etc., etc., etc....

It's certainly a good thing to find one of these rituals/patterns that has personal meaning to you to help you become 'enlightened'. In fact, it's almost your duty in life to do so. But once you've done it, then it's time to get on with practical living--working, raising family, contributing to community and helping others, etc.
Trying to forever stay in enlightenment defeats enlightenment's purpose. You stagnate. Stagnant peoples' objective experiences become void because they haven't anchored it to reality. On the other side of the coin, people also stagnate when they stay in subjective thinking. They become the people living in quiet desperation.

Picture a person standing in the moment*, holding a balance of subjective meaning on one side and objective on the other.
Say, that looks kinda like a cross!



*in the moment is symbolized by many concepts like Heaven, Eternity, Nirvana, Utopia, and plain Happiness to name just a few.
One Prophet once said Heaven is all about you, yet many do not see it.



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Interactive Autopsy

Superbowl Of Nutshells

Pretty good Superbowl after all.
A little suspense in the game for once.
And Terrill Owens proved all the gossipers wrong. Good for him! I swear, the sportscasters gossip more than Joan Rivers and her pug-ugly daughter!

The pregame show was good, but Charlie Daniels play-synching his violin??? Wait...I meant... Charlie Daniels is still alive???
McCartney was good during the half-time show--just played some good tunes and kept it simple.

However, the social commentary by the Simpsons show after the Superbowl was probably lost on America. Americans love sex and violence and if anything else (anything with non-superficial meaning) is provided then Americans get upset. The hypocrisy of criticising Janet Jackson's boob while at the same time using boobs as a primary marketing tool is the American Way.

The American Soccer Mom approach to life: Don't spend any time trying to improve your shallow life when it is much easier and more satisfying to try and improve others.

While it may feel good and pious to stand on the bodies of heathens, Do-It-Quick America is still no closer to Heaven for it.

That's the whole appeal of those Left-Behind books--it always feels good to step over a dirty heathen, but then where did it get you?


All that from a Simpsons episode?!!




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Wasted Mythic Proportion

I saw a trailer recently for the new Star Wars movie coming out this Spring.
Everyone cheered when they saw the suit of Darth Vader.
I was excited too and can't wait to see the movie. But I know that somehow it will be as sterile as the the other two prequels.
George Lucas, you sure know how to suck the life out of character and storyline.
I'm still dumbfounded about the scene in the first movie where Anakin (most annoying kid actor, ever!) says goodbye to his mom, she tells him not to look back, and he toddles off with his backpack around a corner......and doesn't look back!

Huge mythic symbolic opportunity wasted!!

THAT'S how little George Lucas cares about good storytelling and depth of character!
The first two prequels are great eye-candy, and so will be the third one. But I suspect the final transformation of Anakin into Vader will be without soul.
I'll still cheer when I see that black suit, though.




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Floyd Zappa

I'm excited!
A new Pink Floyd book is coming out in April.
Inside Out: A Personal History Of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason

The last good book about PF was Schaffner's Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey.

I have yet to find a good book about Frank Zappa, though.
I should just write it myself. Yeah! Here I go...





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Pink Floyd, of course

Daily Escape

Mark Twain wrote:

No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one,

no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and

waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me,

but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy

airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its

surfbeat is in my ear, I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its

plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands

above the cloud rack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes, I can

hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers

that perished twenty years ago.

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We took a vacation to the Big Island in 1997. Everyday I think about it.

That quote is spot on!

Listen, can you imagine Mark Twain living today speaking out about the current events?

He was no saint back then and his free speech didn't escape outcry but today, I'm afraid, the political correctness and political viciousness would probably bury him. (Though I'd rather like to think it'd make him all that much stronger.)

Are we moving forward or backward?

It's hard to tell.

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Knots

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Herbs

In the mid-Nineties I got caught up a bit in the New Age/Alternative medicine movement, mainly through the writings of Dr. Andrew Weil. He wrote several books about alternative medicine, herbs, and general healthy living. A lot of his stuff is just plain common sense: drink purified water, eat a balanced diet of the freshest and most non-processed foods you can find, exercise, reduce your stress levels, etc. The rest is the 'alternative' part.
He's a good writer and he doesn't get too kooky, but most of the evidence to back up his claims is anecdotal, i.e it's interesting, but of little value as proof.
He is proper enough to say that modern medicine is valuable and that if he's ever involved in a serious accident he'd want to go directly to the nearest modern ER and be treated with all they've got. But he's also improper enough to tout the benefits of homeopathic medicine (which is absurd science).
Ok, I guess the latter is "too kooky."

Now, at first I got pumped-up about taking these herbs. It made fun faulty-logic sense: herbs are natural, people have been taking them for dozens of centuries, there must be some merit to them. The problem with herbs though is that, again, most of the evidence is anecdotal. Also, finding a good supply of properly potent herbs is difficult. The stuff sold in stores, even health food stores, is usually of very low quality (and I'll bet 9 times out of 10 the stuff you buy contains little if any of the herb listed on the label). Taking these things can interfere with prescription medicines or carry side effects that far outweigh whatever benefits they are intended to provide.
Out of all the herbs out there so far only a very few have any scientific backing. Homeopathic medicine is bunk. And all the other 'alternative' therapies are pretty, but probably no more than that.

One alternative therapy was actually disproven by a young teenager.

She is also the youngest person to ever have an article printed in

JAMA! Through a simple experiment she showed that Therapeutic

Touch is bunk. Read about it here.

Time and evidence are slowly weeding out the New Age movement, and it has a lot of weeds! Just because an entire industry has been built up around anecdotes doesn't mean they're true. Just look at the latest craze of the Atkins Low-carb diet. Again, as with all the other hundreds of diets littering the shoulders our Get-Fit-Quick highway, it is slowly being disproven. The common sense diet of Eat Less/Exercise More keeps faithfully speeding along.
So I take from Dr. Weil the common sense stuff and throw out the rest. Here's my anecdote for him though: eating less processed food and more fresh, natural stuff makes me feel really good!





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Code Talker's Dictionary