addiction

As far as I know I am not addicted to anything, which is one of the criteria of being an addict now that I think about it.  Let's see, I drink alcohol, mostly beer and wine, because I like the flavors and the way it mingles with food.  I don't like the feeling of being drunk, though being buzzed for a time can be enjoyable sometimes.  I have never smoked or taken illegal drugs and I have never wanted to abuse addictive prescription drugs.  It simply doesn't interest me.   I am far too concerned with organ damage, or impairing my cognitive ability, or damaging my genetic material to give drugs a try despite how awesome it feels for a minute, an hour or a day.  I suppose that sometimes I exhibit addictive behavior by doing something too often or to the exclusion of all else.  Loo calls this "binging" and it usually involves playing video games for too long without a break, or watching episodes of a show in sequence one season after another.

 What really interests me is how some people are enthralled by an addiction, I know a few people who do suffer from addiction, I lived with one such person.  It's as if saying no to themselves is impossible.  I have naively wondered why couldn't they just stop?  What is stopping them from stopping themselves?  What's the big deal?  Just stop.  But they can't.  Or they wont or they are unable to.  It's really quite sad.  I can imagine, a lot and vividly, what it would be like to be unable to deny myself, to live as a subject to myself.  I would be a tyrant otherwise.  My internal dialog would be, "Its beer o clock, lets get some!"

"I don't think that is such a good idea.  We have work later."

"Just one drink wont affect our job, c'mon, you know you want to."

"Well, maybe you're right.  Just one."
 ***
instead of, "It's beer o clock!, Lets get some."

"No, I got to work later."

"C'mon, just one won't matter."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."   

Can you imagine?  You get an urge for something, say alcohol and you must have it right now, even if its 8am, or if you have work later or it messes up your plans.  Than you get drunk and can't make it into work so you call in sick and drink some more.

Its a life experience I don't have, thankfully, lucky me, but I empathize with those who do and I see, or at least I think I do, or imagine I do, how that life experience colors a person's personality and decision making process.  I'm not sure I am making sense here, it's just a pseudo-epiphany I had that though I may not have much money, and I spend most of my time away from my favorite people and things, I do have my health and I am not effected by addiction or psychological problems (as far as I know).  What a different life I would have if
things were different.    

PS:  After reading about free will, or the lack thereof, I think addiction is a great example of how we are slaves to our subconscious, it calls the shots and our conscious mind has to deal with the consequences.  thinking about not being in control of my brain is terrifying, though as far as neuroscience can tell, we are not in control in the slightest.  Weird.

The great Bup Escape

The other day while I was at work, Loo hooked Bup up to his dog harness (for a chihuahua) and clipped a 30 foot leash to him and corkscrewed it into the lawn.  This is the way Bup spends a lot of his time outside so he doesn't run away and terrorize the local populace.  He waited until Loo walked around the corner for one minute and couldn't see him and than he shrugged out of the harness and escaped.  Loo was shocked and devastated, and convinced she would never see him again.  She searched for six hours, but to no avail.  Bup was gone.

I came home, put her back together and had her show me where he was last seen.  She showed me the empty harness in front of the garage.  I put my writing techniques to good use, remembering an exercise that Gayle Brandeis showed me to get into character, and to know them.  (during class we thought about what it would be like to sit in the desk if were were very old, how our aching bones would not like the hard plastic, and then to imagine we were six or seven, how our feet wouldn't touch the ground and we would be looking up to everybody, etc)  So I laid down to the ground and got to Bup's eye level and started to look around.

I said, "If I were a large predatory reptile, where would I hide?" could see great places to hide under the tool chests, and under the cars, behind the shelves and next to jacks and tools.  The tool chest was closest, so I crawled over there and examined it.  There was a hole torn through the cobwebs down there, as if a baby dinosaur crawled through it recently.  But one of the wheels of the tool chest blocked the way behind the shelves, so this was a dead end.  From here I looked around, eyes not one inch from the ground.

I saw under the Firebird and a path to the other side of the garage.  It looked like a good place to hide.  I asked Loo for a flashlight and crawled over to the other side of the garage.  Here, next to the washer, clothes bins and piles of clothes I could feel the warmth of the water heater from the other garage blowing toward me.  This would be a great place for a cold blooded predator to hide. 

With flashlight in hand I pulled back a clothes bin and shined a light down into the corner behind all of this.  Bup looked back, his pupil constricting in the light.  It reminded me of Jurassic Park when Lex shines her flashlight into the T-Rex's eye and his pupil constricted.  I called out to Loo while pointing the light on Bup's face.  He started to hiss.  He knew he had been found.  I slowly reached back with the light in his face so he couldn't see me and dropped my hand on his cobwebby back.  He tensed up and gave one violent shake, but than I hauled him out hissing and bleary-eyed.  I gave him to Loo and she hugged him in joy and relief.  I was a hero.  Bup stopped hissing and acted friendly to her.  He has always liked her more.  Rotten lizard.

Stella and Bup

I write today on my day off (Ahhh, at long last) and with a large predatory reptile not an inch away.  Come to think of it, Bup is closer than my beer. 

Speaking of which Stella Artois is a very delicious beer, but we beer drinkers have noticed your lack of substance Stella.  I am of course referring to your 11.2 fl. oz. capacity, which is staggering in this day and age when many beers regularly hit the 12 oz. mark.  For shame!  Did you think we would not notice that the prices stay the same but the quantity goes down?  I'd get very upset about this if I didn't have 30 more of you in the fridge, so that's all I'll say for now.  But I will say those horrible words, most crushingly espoused by mothers around the world: I am very disappointed in you.  And that doesn't even touch my personal pet peeve regarding the paper wrapper.  I realize there is a perforated edge, but it never tears along the perforation, though come to think of it that may be a universal quality of perforated edges.

What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, Bup!  Now speaking of Bup, a two year old, two foot long, nine pound, Savannah monitor lizard, I thought I would tell you what its like to share a life with a large predatory reptile.  For those who don't know Monitor lizards are the smartest reptiles on the planet.  There is a really good nature show by PBS about this on netflix and elsewhere called Lizard Kings.  You should check it out, you can even see lizards just like Bup completing science experiments.  Bup and all his monitor lizard cohorts evolved from a large aquatic reptile called a mossosaur, look it up, but suffice it to say the Mossosaur was the tyrannosaurus of the sea, the largest apex predator at the time.  Because all monitor lizards come from this one giant, aquatic, super predator, they are all comfortable in the water and can swim effortlessly even when they have never seen water before.  They are also very smart, which is something that is hard to explain because they are smart in ways that it is hard to get used to.

Bup had a wooden cage with a swinging door that opened outwards, the door latch was one of those window clasps that you turn to lift a window straight up.  Bup found out, actually we both found out, that if you rattle to door back and forth the clasp will break internally and repeated rattling will flip the latch and open the door.  When I read that Bups were escape artists I thought to myself, psh, how can he get out of a cage with a door and a lock?  Well, he did and he explored the whole house. I had to come home from work early to find him for fear of him eating the cats or hurting the dog.  He was chilling behind the sofa. 

And though our 120 pound rottweiler Nina is loath to admit it, nine pound Bup rules the roost and Nina gives him a wide berth, as does Buddy our 110 pound chocolate lab.  But Murrs, our seven pound cat had to find this out the hard way.   When Bup was exploring the house, as he likes to do, Murr decided to stake a territorial claim.  Murr walked towards Bup and sat in his intended path and waited, stoic, proud, fearless.  Bup walked forward, moving like a dinosaur--which I have to admit is part of the appeal--tasting things along the way until he came face to face with Murr.  An epic stare down ensued between  Felis catus and Veranus exanthematicus.  Cats, it is said, have an abundance of patience, but pales in comparison to that of a cold blooded reptile.  And while they locked eyes, Murr looking down at the reptilian predator that outweighed him by just a couple pounds, she must have thought she would win this stare down being taller, unimpressed and stoic.  Bup could have been cast from bronze, he was absolutely motionless, though when Murr moved so did he.  I was on the edge of my seat, both in preparation to break up a fight and in excitement, until it happen.

Murr, incapable of waiting any longer, leapt at Bup in a preemptive surprise attack.  It happened so quickly I could do nothing to stop it.  Bup's tail came from nowhere and bashed Murr mid-flight, like an anklyosaurus, knocking her aside where she scrambled up the couch, across its length, and back down to the carpet where I could hear her running down the hall in abject terror.  Bup watched all of this, and when she was gone Bup looked forward and continued exploring, as he had before he was so rudely interrupted.

The other day I went to get Bup out of his new Bup-proof cage when I saw he had rearranged it.  There is a large beer box that functions as his hidey-hole (pet stores don't make commercial hides Bup-size), a large plastic tub full of water all of which sit atop an indoor outdoor carpet.  Well, today Bup moved all of this around so that he had made himself a cave out of all of it, and it hid him from view from the outside.  I had to go looking for him before I found him in the corner seeming poised to escape when I wasn't looking.  Bad lizard.

JC was not my homeboy

I have a million things on my brain right now, so I dont know where this will go, but...

Yesterday I listened to a talk by Richard Carrier who is a super smart guy, holds a PhD in History and is an expert in ancient science, or about how and when and where science took its first steps.  He talks about the historicity of Jesus and the events in the Bible.  I had thought, based on what I had read a few years ago, that there was some secular account of the birth, life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.  LIke a Roman execution warrant for a one Yessuah Christ, but no.  There is practically nothing, and what remains is a huge collection of documents written fifty years or later after Jesus allegedly died that explain what it was like to hang out with Him.  Of course they can't write about it, because Jesus died fifty years or more before they got around to writing it.  Its very involved and I dont have time to go into all of it, but it is truly fascinating.

The thing that gets me though is how the Book of Daniel is a forgery.  It was written around 300 bce when Daniel was trying to be a apocalyptic prophet and applied to the Greeks taking over and killing everyone around that time.  The book of Daniel is the one that talks about the prophesy of a son of God, that comes, gets sacrificed, and God does all the stuff mentioned in Revelation, all that scary end of the world demons humping your face stuff.  So they wanted to find the prophet to sacrifice the guy to start the end of the world and get up to heaven already... only Daniel didn't finish the book in time.  He failed.  New people took his book, recalculated his end of the world time tables and found out that the new messiah comes around the year that Jesus allegedly came.  This period of time in history is plagued with messiahs, they were all over the place.  The Romans, and Jews crucified (false) messiahs left and right.  Why was this place so plagued with Messiahs?  Because Daniel said the messiah would come at that time and start the end of the world.  Lots of people wanted to be that messiah and were willing to die for it, and many did.  Is it any surprise that one of those messiahs acquired a following after his death?  Taken this way Christianity doesn't seem any more real than a failed end of the world prophecy, which the evidence points to.

In my estimation, because of the power Religion has over people and policy and the minds of millions, people will be drawn to it and ask questions.  As science, archeology and the like improve we will be able to make new inferences about ancient civilizations, culture and creeds.  Because Christianity draws so much attention, it will be studied most.  And after years of study Christianity already seems very much like the rest of religions started in that area.  Not unique, or more true, but an equally unlikely hypothesis about the origin of the life of humans.  I look forward to future years when we know more than we do now, not because religion will be undone, but because the mystery will be revealed, and we will know.  A revelation much deserved and eagerly awaited.

Snugglesaur

Bup says, "Sweet Dreams!"

The three guys who write podcast

The three guys who write (though not as much as they would like) podcast...

I joined my writing buddies Jonar and Matt in a writing podcast called two guys that write.  Now that we all like my input and have fun the name has to change to the Three guys who write.  It's a lot of fun.  And sometimes it is all the writing I can get in a week, even though it isn't writing.  I'm still thinking about it.  And that obviously worked because here I am, writing late at night before bed just for a bit.

In listening to Matt explain how he can write in ten minutes I understood how I could use his method.  Moreover I saw how I was making excuses for myself to prevent any writing at all.  I think what sealed the deal for me was when Matt said, paraphrased, "Well you could write ten minutes and make it goo because you dont have any other time to write so it has to get done now, or you could wait for more time to write, which never comes."  Which made me think about how and when I write.  I dont.  Though if I did write ten minutes a day at the end of the week I would have an hour in the writing bank, which is one hour more than I would get otherwise.  My current method of complaining and making excuses hasn't gotten me very far.

So Matt, this blog post is because of you.  And Jonar too of course because he facilitated this whole idea, which gives me hope for our little podcast; if it can help me get out of a rut, maybe it can help someone else.

While I recorded the podcast Loo recognized my moment of weakness, how I could properly defend myself.  She took this moment to sit on my shins and attempt to paint my toenails.  I tried to kick her off without making too much noise, but it didn't work.  I knew that much when Jonar said, "It sounds like you are fighting a war over there Brian, are you ok?"

Towards the end of the podcast Loo started playing DOAX Beach Volleyball.  And I was distracted by the jiggle physics.  They are off in this game.  Each boob moves independently in an unnatural way that is both distracting and off putting. 

I guess that is it.  Time for bed and sleep and all that jazz.  I look forward to my ten minutes tomorrow.  I will try to have something worthwhile to cram into that ten minute block.  So... a reva derche as they say in New York.

Strong women

In a story I like my women strong of character.  It's kind of a big deal for me.  I have always been into women, which led me to take classes about feminism or feminist studies and gender and a bunch of others.  When I see a woman in a story that is stereotyped or hollywoodized I pick up on it quickly and it turns me off, not sexually, just in interest with the story.  Helpless women that wait around for their men to do something for them, passive characters like whats her face from Twilight stories, rubs me the wrong way.  I want my women to be the arbiters of their fate and I like to see them reconcile their feminism with the task they need to do.  So while they are out there kicking ass I also want to hear about love and being a mother, that struggle between being a tough chick and a mom or a lover is so much more interesting than a sexy badass girl. 

In the movie Aliens, Ripley (a female main character) lost her daughter because she was in cryosleep for too long and her daughter outlived her.  When she finds a little girl that is a survivor on this colony she takes to her like a mother would, obviously we know she lost her daughter and we know this new girl is about the same age as her daughter was the last time Ripley saw her.  In a way she needs to make up for failing her daughter, so when the Aliens get Newt, the little girl (for those who haven't seen this movie drop what you are doing and see it right now) Ripley goes into the HIVE of the aliens and rescues her before the colony explodes from nuclear meltdown.  She doesn't wait for a guy to tell her what to do, or to go in for her to rescue the girl and she doesn't leave her behind like some kind of heroic sacrifice.  She goes in there, kicks ass and escapes with Newt who calls her mommy.  We know that is what Ripley has wanted so badly that we feel it too, the story satisfies us on multiple levels.  That's desirable. I challenge you to find another movie that addresses these issues.  You need a movie where the main character is a woman, isn't a passive character, and can move between the roles of hero and woman, either as a mom or as a lover.  Firefly does this really well with Zoe the Warrior woman.  Maybe I just like that dynamic between the lethal bad ass and the soft woman, like she can be on the 'fair maiden pedestal' but she can also step off and kick ass and climb back up there, you know, like real women.

Think of women in movies today.  Like the movie Salt with Angelina Jolie.  The movie was originally made for Tom Cruise but he backed out at the last minute so they brought in Angelina Jolie.  I like that she is a bad ass spy chick, but I get a strong masculine vibe from the character because she is very direct and kicks ass like any action movie guy would.  where is her feminine wiles?  Where is her struggle to reconcile life giver to life taker?  No, no, we couldn't have any of that, she will be bad ass number one, a role which any actor  can slip into without changing the story in the slightest.

Loo made me read some of Twilight and I remember reading it and seeing this passive character.  I finally yelled at the book, "Do something!"  Than they made a movie. Now all kinds of young girls read the book and see how everything works out for the girl because she waits while things happen to her, guys fight over her and on and on.  So the message is, girls just wait for the guy to figure everything out for you. 

Ahhhh!!! 


It makes me CrAzY!   Glad I got that off my chest. 

Carry on.

Seal Team Six

I just finished Seal Team Six by Howard Wasdin.

This memoir of an elite navy SEAL sniper is well done.  He isn't a writer, but he has a story to tell and he tells it well.  I knew SEALs were bad ass dudes, but I didn't know just how badass.  He tells his story, where he came from and where he went.  What a life.  


I recommend it highly.  There is a thread throughout of him trying to help people. I think I might check out more military memoirs.  This story made humans out of heroes.

I thought I had a lot to say about this, but I guess I don't.  I guess I am interested in war and conflict and violence.  I bet everyone is though, they just don't want to admit it.  Violence is the way nature deals conflict, so when it happens right in front of you it speaks to you on an innate level.  It gets your blood pumping, kick starting your lungs to draw more air and your brain releases chemicals in response, most notably cortisol, which makes your blood coagulate.  Your brain does this in the event you lose some blood.  Than it releases dopamine to make you happy, and deaden pain and adrenaline to allow you to run or fight as it decides. 

Weird thing abour the brain, it wants to protect itself, and when it sees violence and perceives danger it protects itself.  That's when the fight or flight response kicks in. 

This is where you really get to know people, or rather get to know who a person really is.   I remember this story this guy told me about a car that flipped over on an icy mountain road. Lets call him Stan.  I know it to be true because I have seen similar things happen in front of me.  Stan sees the car lose control, slide across the road and right off the mountain and tumble down the side.  He parks near the edge and goes down to help the people.  On his way down this guy comes running up like its part of an obstacle course, he just had to get out of there.  He doesn't need Stan's help so Stan keeps going while crazy man runs up the road.  At the bottom of the mountain the car is on it's roof.  Stan lays on his belly to look inside.  There is a woman still buckled up and hanging upside down and she calmly looks over to him and says, "Have you seen my husband?  I think he got thrown out."
        "I just saw him, he is fine," Stan says.
        "He's ok?  That's great!" the woman says.  Stan tries to get her out, telling her to support herself when he unbuckles her and they crawl out together and up the mountain they go.  The woman keeps checking with Stan to make sure her husband is ok.  Stan keeps assuring her he is.  Finally they reach the top of the mountain and they see the husband walking away, and he is way up the road by now, like a half mile.  She asks where he is going.  Stan shook his head and offered her a ride to the hospital.  She gets in and they pick up the husband.  She calls out to him, "Honey!  Honey!"  And Stan sees he is crying.  He pulls up and opens the door.  The guy climbs in back with his wife.  And she kisses him all over and is over joyed he isn't dead.  That they survived.  The husband looks up in the rear view mirror and sees Stan looking at him and quickly looks away and starts sobbing.

In the hospital the wife was getting some x rays and the husband was standing next to Stan, the two were alone, and he says to Stan, "You know, I wasn't leaving her back there."  And Stan looks at him.  His face is neutral, no blame, but no belief either.  Than he adds, "I just had to clear my head."  Stan didn't believe him, but didn't want to make a scene.  He nodded.  The husband seemed happy about this, like his conscience was now clear.  The wife returned and was unhurt.  Both were ok, which is to say that the wife was ok but the husband was not.

He would forever be tortured with guilt for leaving her trapped in the car.  He was her husband, how could he leave her like that? Not knowing if she were alive or dead and just running away.  And than to keep on going...  No, he convinced himself there was something wrong with him and she deserved something better.

He tried to make problems with her so she would ask for a divorce, but where this tumble off the cliff had separated him from her, she was only drawn closer to him for having survived it together.  So he kept doing bad, being rude to her, cheating on her, treating her worse than a bad pet, and she kept taking him back and loving him despite all of it.  Finally she suggested they go to counseling. 

They had to come to terms with reality, his abandonment and her deliberate ignorance of it.  After many sessions he accepted what he had done, she was made aware of her deliberate ignorance and could not accept what he had done.  Her forced ignorance was the only thing holding them together after the crash, with that gone they divorced, a year after the crash.      


   

It's been so long.

Hi there!

I'm coming back.  I don't have much time to write anymore, so I decided to make time.  Weird concept, I know.

I forget things a lot, unless they are cool, in which case I remember specific details.  Like the surface temperature of Venus is 847 degrees Fahrenheit and since Russia was the first to send a probe to the planet there is a silver bust of Lenin on the surface somewhere that has since melted into a puddle.  I read that venus book over a year ago.

Anyway, It was bad to forget the important stuff I was supposed to do when I got home from work.  Like get groceries or important paperwork for the bank and work.  I had planned to get one of those mini tape recorder gizmos.  I could say into it, "after work pick up 40lbs of dog food."  I told this idea to loo thinking it was a good one.  She didn't think so because I would forget to rewind it and it costs money.  She got one of my dad's little calendar books and now I have several days on each page that I can write notes in.  So the days of forgetting to take out the trash and clean the cat box and the oft forgotten date night are over.  At least in theory.  I have to get into the habit of checking it and writing stuff down in it.  I already feel less stressed.

Update:  There are usually six people in our house all the time.  Three couples.  Mom and Dad, Loo and I, and Kevin and Oscar.  The house feels a lot smaller now. Add two dogs, two cats, a monitor lizard, two snakes and fish and you have a full house. 

Funny story:  My brother and his boyfriend decorated the house with hearts and pink stuff for Valentines day.  There are strings of hearts stretched all over the house.  They called me out front to the family room to ask me what I thought about the job they did.  We all had some beers on board.  I took a look at all that pink stuff and I wore a disgusted face and said, "God, this room is so GAY!"  and we all laughed.  My brother high-fived me.

Later Kev's boyfriend  and him made a cake and it was all rainbow sprinkles and cuteness.  While I was eating breakfast with Loo and Dad and Oscar I said, "Man, everything you make turns gay!"  and we all laughed.  Than loo said, "You know, Oscar made the coffee this morning."

"Oh, no," I said, "Does that mean the coffee is gay too?"

"Yeah," Oscar said, "But I like it straight!"

We all laughed at that and I had to high five him.

 The two of them were at my work getting some tires put on Kev's truck and the two of them were huddled up outside watching videos on their iPhones and one of my co workers comes up to me and says, "Hey, is that Kevin's gay boyfriend?"

"No, that's his straight boyfriend," I said.  He looked so confused.

Total lunar eclipse 6am

I woke up 30 minutes earlier than normal to see the total lunar eclipse this morning.  It was only viewable for people on the west coast and I think they said it was the last one viewable from the west coast in our lifetime. 

I stumbled over Loo and out the door, down the dark hallway and opened the door at the end.  On the other side of the door was our cat Murrs who was 'murring' loudly and trying to slip through the open door, but I closed the door before she could slip in and I stepped over her while she walked circles around my feet to get to the front door. 

It looked cold and dark outside.  It was then that I realized I forgot my shoes.  I thought about going back to get shoes and missing the total lunar eclipse, the last one in my lifetime.  I walked outside bare foot. 

The brick walkway was icy and it took me a bit of time to scan the horizon to find the moon.  I heard owls hooting in the palm trees in front of the house and when I approached to see the moon an owl leapt off the top of the tree and glided into the field behind our house.  Jerry Bruckheimer's field. 

And there, for all to see was the moon, half of which was red and clearly visible in the early morning sky.  Ideally I would have viewed it for some time to watch it change, but my feet were frozen and I was cold because I was wearing my PJs.  I walked back inside and decided to make a fire and coffee.  Now I have my coffee on my left, the fire at my back and my kitty on my right. 

This is a good way to start a Saturday morning before work.

One month has gone by and a lot has happened.

This time I mean it though. A lot has happened, life changing changes ahead.

I have been stupid-busy with work.  A bunch of people quit, were transferred, or started school.  As the only non student there I had to pick up the slack.  I had back to back 13 hour days giving me more than 40 hours a week, a lot more.  At first I didn't mind it, I zoned out and let my body do the job as my mind wandered to the stories and characters I will write about later, when I have time, when I'm not completely fried to the bone.  Tengo el cerebro frito.  But the part that was bad was coming home exhausted.  I didn't want to do anything.  Eat, sleep, repeat, that was me.  It was pretty shitty for Loo because I was so grouchy and burned out.  She wanted to do SOMETHING, anything and I was like NO!  And finally I relented and went to a bar with her friends.  I was nodding off in the middle and could barely stay awake.  Working all the time was tough on the two of us.

But the money was good, too good apparently.

On august 29th the lease was up at the place I was staying at with my two coworkers.  One of them I like the other I do not.  When it came to sign up again I was an emphatic NO.  I started looking at new places to live with Loo to get her out of her family's house.  I found places for cheap that were nice but I didn't like the idea of facing another Michigan winter.  Or any Michigan winters for that matter.  I started wondering what I was doing out here and why I had come and when I would go back.

Loo recently graduated with a degree in accounting and was ravenously looking for a job.  All day that I worked she was applying, searching and filling out applications for jobs all over. But she wasn't having much luck.  Seems like they want people with experience and don't want to pay them for it and don't want to give experience either.  I asked my uncle what to do (he is an accountant and lives back in Cali)  He said that Loo needed to be in California if she wanted to be an accountant.  There were more people and more jobs.  She started looking for jobs in California.

There were hundreds and they paid better.  Starting pay was often more than three times what I make.

She started applying there too.

Long story short we are coming home to Cali.  I want to tell you I am excited, but it seems naive to say that, or maybe temporary.  No, the feeling I have is a deeper general happiness. 

We were going to leave a week ago, but Loo checked with the University of Michigan's Migraine pain clinic (best in the country, 2 year wait for an appointment is normal, she had been on the list for a year already and had an appt for next November) and they had a cancellation on the 21st. 

That is our departure date.  Our cars are packed and we are taking all our stuff including all my books (whew!) our two rats Swiper and Shredder, and our Savannah monitor lizard Bup and his new big cage, which he hasn't used yet. It looks funny on the roof of my car.

I strapped it to the roof of my car with two ratcheting tie straps and we filled it with bulky and light weight items.  Funny story about that.  EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about how it should be strapped down and it isn't the way that I did it.  Loo's mom wants me to strap a third strap running from the front of the car to the back across the windshield and back window and rear wing.  There wasn't anything to hook it to, but that didn't seem to matter so long as it was hooked.

got to go, see ya soon!

when animals fight

I see animals fight everyday.
They fight and yell for territory and revenge
for sex and resources,
they show their teeth, they snarl and they puff up
to look bigger than they really are
to scare the other away and avoid a fight.
It usually works.
This is the way of the noble animal
the human
The Homo Sapiens
the "Wise man"
the "Thinking man"
though I struggle to see the noble part
I see I am a thinking animal.


Where did that come from? It burned in my mind. Needed to be written, needed to be free. It brings with it some thoughts.

Recently, within the last year or so, I have started seeing humans as animals. When they do things I see the instant similarities between gorilla and chimpanzee. Sometimes with sex, on tv or in real life, I see this animal interaction. The sex face of pain/pleasure identical on a Lion or a Mountain Goat or a moose or a porcupine or a human. Sometimes I feel like I am an animal doing animal things like marking territory not with urine but with pictures and prosody. And I see everyone else doing animal things as well. It can make it difficult to talk to people that think they are better than or above animals, something distinct. When somebody yells and challenges another I see a chimp on a rock slapping its hands down hooting a threat. And when others commend the bravery of these individuals and remark about their sophistication I can barely keep my mouth closed. I want to tell them they are animals.

Sometimes with violence and fighting in movies or real life I see the struggle of animals. Chimps and Gorillas fight one another like we do, minus the guns and stuff. When I see humans fighting the idea of the noble animal or the wise man melts away and I see the savage brutality that is primate aggression, that is us. Its like watching a nature show.

The face with its numerous muscles (52?) expresses some universal faces like pain, fear and aggression in dogs, in cats, in us. When I see a guy get punched and wince in pain I see a multitude of animals in pain, a universal expression of pain. Even when stories talk about people fighting I can't help put envision primitive people hooting and hollering around one another throwing stones and sticks wrestling to the ground kicking and biting until someone dies. That hasn't really changed, except for the weapons which keep improving to kill better and better.

But there is a lot more to it than that.

But I will have to tell you about it later.

Deadly

There is a show called deadliest warrior where they test weapons and armor with fancy technology and science. They use ballistic gel which simulates the density and viscosity of human flesh. Here is a bullet piercing the gel and showing hydrostatic shock.



They also use animal carcasses like sides of beef and torsos of pig which also simulate human tissue. Than they use weapons from the ancient and modern world of war on these items to see what they can do. This interests me but not Loo, so I watch it by myself. In season two they started filling the test items, ballistic gel, and animal carcasses with bags of presumably fake blood. When a weapon hits they bleed, which is useful to judge from afar how lethal a weapon is. However as time goes on and more shows get made the blood and gore increases and becomes sensational. I don't really like that. But at the same time, after awhile, I do. What I like most about the show is seeing these weapons from all over the world. There was this Maori weapon called a 'Mere' which is a flat club made of Jade.

It didn't look dangerous at all because it had no sharp edge. But he broke a cow's skull in half with it. A cow's skull is twice the thickness of our own, which is just crazy from a hand-held weapon. Oh I should talk about the Maori here. This is from memory:

The Maori (Mow-ree) are a group of Polynesians that traveled to New Zealand around 1300 CE. Form there, in isolation, they developed their own language and culture and were considered the last 'pure' native group having lived in seclusion until around 1800 when Europeans started showing up. It is from the Maori that the world got tattoos. Captain Cook's crew drew pictures of the natives facial tattoos and brought them back to England. The Maori also practiced cannibalism which is not unique among humans. Humans all over the world tend to think the body has power and when an enemy is bested you gain his power by eating him. If he was courageous you might eat his heart, strong you might eat his muscles, fast his legs, etc. Anyway, the Maori fought against the Europeans who had Gun Powder and muskets and scared them out of New Zealand. Maori are tough dudes.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the weapons from all over the world interest me a lot. The Deadliest Warrior show did a comparison once with Pirate vs Knight. And I thought for sure the knight would not stand a chance because the Pirate had gun powder. But when they put a ballistic gel torso on a stand and put the knight's steel breast plate on it and had a pirate guy fire the flintlock pistol at it the lead ball bounced of the breastplate harmlessly.

There was a very famous episode we talked about in my Japanese Film and Visual Culture class where they had the epic match up of Viking vs. Samurai. It is so culturally charged. The Vikings are huge white guys wielding steel weapons with brute strength. The Samurai are small Asians wielding weapons of perfect quality used with skill and speed. Who will win? (neither of those two statements are accurate btw because both are GIANT stereotypes)

Because of WWII there is a competetive culture war going on between America and Japan and you see it in our movies and our games and our news stories. The Japanese are ninja warriors, faster than light, move without sound, with martial arts training, a serious honor code and a fearless reputation. All of this depicts the Japanese as ninja super men, better than Americans, able to take on huge groups of people and emerge victorious, due to martial training and dedication, they are depicted as being capable of everything, everything except being human. Which makes it easy to fight them in war. An enemy that is like you is hard to kill. I'm jumping around a lot. Point is that episode of deadliest warrior only fed this erroneous idea. Contrary to popular opinion the Japanese are very human with idiots and jerks among them just like us.

Sidenote: WWII propaganda worked for both the Americans and Japanese. The Japanese were told by their government that the Americans were savages, you are better than them, and not to surrender to them because they would cut you up and do unspeakable things to you. The Americans were told a similar thing. They were both told this because humans are scared of that.

When they met each other on the battlefield they fought tenaciously. The Japanese soldiers didn't want to get chopped up or tortured. And the Americans didn't either. After the fight the Americans were victorious and started cutting off the ears, eyes, fingers, toes and teeth of the Japanese as trophies and started hanging them around their necks. The other Japanese saw the Americans do this, forever cementing the propaganda they had been told as truth. Now the Americans had seen similar things done to their guys. So both people did the same thing. I'm not sure who started it first, but it doesn't really matter. What you hear in our stories is how the Japanese did that to our guys. The Japanese were savages. We had to beat them. The fact that we did it back or even did it first isn't mentioned. What matters is they BOTH did it because they believed their propaganda. Its also important to see beyond culture and realize that humans are capable of some nasty things regardless of culture.

It's weird. like, I am aware of violence. When I see it in a movie I often react negatively, like I don't like it. I wonder if it was necessary to show that for the sake of the story. Might there be a way to convey that info without violence? Sometimes violence bothers me and sometimes it doesn't and I like it. Though I think that is human and depends on context. Like imagine the movie The Count of Monte Cristo. Imagine you skip ahead to the final fight and you see this savage sword battle between two people. It is hard to watch, the violence is high. You don't know who will win, or how, or why they are fighting. Its only with context that you understand why they are fighting, that the bad guy ruined the good guy's life and tried to take everything he held dear and now after all that horror the good guy is going to get him back, REVENGE! Revenge is soooo human. We get it, and because we do some of the most violent images can be shown and we can watch and feel justified in doing so.

Axle number 3

Political topic sprang into my head, an uncaused cause.

You know the tea party movement? Listen to this:

http://youtu.be/An6CeNRCBvo

It's like the shift from top dog to equals that really bothers them. I imagine that is why there are so few minorities within the tea party movement. This must also be why that when they come on TV they are white, christian, republican, conservatives that write signs and spell poorly and chant about Obama being a Kenyan spy or some such.

Somebody asked me to consider the tea party movement for a moment, to give it a chance, to stop being so close minded.

It's like, guess what, if your position is crazy I dont have to try it on for size or give it a test run. I can look at it and say, "That looks crazy, so, no thank you." And the tea party people should accept that.

I have this crazy idea that political movements or other life practices should stand on their own principals. And by that virtue alone should they be considered good or bad.

new topic: Loo's car broke it's axle AGAIN. So I ordered axle number three because they were fresh out. The first axles went bad about a month after installation. They started to wobble under acceleration. So when you gave it gas it would shake the steering wheel like the car was coming apart. Once I found the problem I replaced the axles with set two of Autozone Chinese-slave-labor-specials. They have a lifetime warranty so I keep getting new ones for free. It would be nice if I didn't have to, like they could make a quality product, but apparently we don't have time for rational solutions.

Shortly after I installed axle set number two the transmission started leaking transmission fluid. I undid the work I had done before to get a look at the problem. The transmission seals had gone bad and did not seal anymore. Back story: her transmission died a while back and I replaced it with a certified used one from a giant auto wrecker online. The seals in that new-to-us trans were on their way out. I didn't think to replace them at the time. Anyway I called up my brother, lord of car knowledge, and asked him what I should do. He said that Autozone was worse than Pepboys, which is pretty bad, and I should get parts from Kragen/Oreilly's or the deal, which was closed that day.

I went to Autozone and saw a woman behind the counter. Now, I am usually very good about not being sexist, or prejudicial, but when women work at auto parts stores they usually, in my experience, know very little about cars, and it is difficult to be objective on account of the failure rate I have experienced. Of the ten women behind the counter I have got parts from only one of them knew her stuff, and knew more than I did. The others can, with my assistance, look up my car, show me a picture of the part and ask me if that looks right before walking off to match the numbers up. That's what this lady did.

The part she brought back looked far too large to be correct.

"Are you sure this is the right part?" I asked.
"Absolutely," she said, "Transmission axle seals."
"They look too big to me."
"Oh, that's the right part."
"Will you check the axle hub seal part number and make sure these aren't them?"
"Sure, lets see, nope, same part number, same part inner and outer. Can't go wrong."

Here she asked the manager about it to double check her work. I was causing doubt. He said she was right. I wasn't convinced, but I had no evidence.

"Hmm... Ok, well, if this doesn't work I can exchange for the right one, yeah?"
"Yep!" Came her chipper response.
"Alright, thank you," I said before buying 70 bucks worth of transmission seals.

Than I went home, removed the axles and used a wrench to pry the old seals out because they fit so tightly. When the old seals came out I compared it to the new seals. It fit inside the new part and passed through it.

"Wrong fucking part," I said to myself. I got up, put the tools away, cleaned my hands and drove over there in the Green Machine ( a 96 Pontiac grand prix with 211k miles). I brought the old bad part with me so I could show them as well as compare it to the new part they would give me in the store.

"You gave me the wrong part," I said placing the parts, old and new, as well as the receipt on the counter. Having worked in the customer service industry (tires) for almost eight years I knew all the tricks. I have been on the receiving end of customer ire and there aren't that many forms it can take, but it causes a certain kind of action to take place. 'Shit gets taken care of,' as they say. Besides I was angry for having to come back. If they had given me the right part I wouldn't be there. That meant that super-polite me and wrathful me met somewhere in the middle to be stern me.

I didn't want an apology because it would be hollow and well-faked after being rattled off so often, but I wanted them to acknowledge their mistake and take action in the future to prevent this. Anyway, this new guy picked up both parts and examined them for about a minute before proclaiming that I was in fact correct in my original assessment. Than the woman from four hours ago saw me and stood silently at the new guy's shoulder watching his screen.

"Did I give you the wrong part?" She asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I'm so sorry!" She said.

I would have thought she meant it had she not worn the fake sincerity face. It's a face I know well, a face I use often at work. If you don't work in customer service and don't know this face you can recognize it by the extra long time it takes to blink the eyes. The best fake sincerity faces slowly open their eyes at the last word of what they say so they don't have to look you in the eye when they lie.

The most jaded of us can look you right in the eye and show you how much we care. It satisfies all subconscious queues, and its undetectable even to veterans of the industry except in one area: it is too clean, too perfect, exactly the right amount of words in the right order. And beneath that mask there is nothing resembling sincerity. A genuinely sincere person expresses sincerity with whatever words they can, often repeating words or using words like gosh, oh no, that's horrible, I had no idea, and many others.

Of course the customer has a role to play as well. They don't believe that we deliberately fooled them, but they insist on an apology almost every time as though we did. This causes us to apologize all the time for stuff we have no control over. We both know this, but the charade continues. This conditioning bleeds into my life and I often apologize to Loo for stuff that I'm not responsible for. And she corrects me.

Where was I?

Oh yeah she apologized.
"It happens," I said. My typical response.
"you know what happened?" she asked me. I didn't really care what happened. I wanted to fix Loos's car and get back to my day off. Did I mention I was annoyed to have to come back there? "I clicked the wrong part and compared it to the wrong part and told you it was the right one." She said with a shrug, meaning perhaps it was a simple mistake that could happen to anyone. I still wasn't interested. But she seemed desperate for forgiveness. I felt like if I forgave her she wouldn't change, and I didn't want to give her a lesson about finding parts that she would have to listen to because the customer is always right and then disregard after I left. So I said nothing, let her imagination fill in the blanks. When customers do that to me when I make a mistake (I rarely make mistakes at work) it helps me to be better. I am scarred by the sting of my incompetence.

I like that last sentence.

Anyway the mood in O'reilly's dropped down a bit and everyone worked toward solving my problem. They grabbed the correct part, of which there were two different part numbers. One for the left and one for the right side. They were slightly different sizes. Anyway I thanked them (why did I do that?) and went home. With the right parts for the job now I finished in a few hours in time for dinner. I think. I can't remember.

After fixing the seals and the leak I needed to fill the transmission back up. Loo came down to check on me at this point.

"Whatcha doin?" she asked.
"Adding trans fluid," I said.
"How do you know how much to add?"
"I don't," I said, "I got to kind of eye-ball it."
"Do you need a funnel?"
"If you have one."
"Let me look. Hey, thanks for fixing my car."
"yeah."
"I can't find a funnel. Do you need me to get you one?"
"No, I know a trick," I said. I was actually kind of excited to use the trick which I had only ever heard of but never seen or tried myself.

I pulled the trans dipstick up 90% of the way out and poured the trans fluid into the dipstick. The red fluid stuck to the dipstick and slid right down the tube.

"whoa, cool!" Loo said, "Why's it do that?"
"Capillary action," I said.
"What's that?"
"The molecules hold together so well that they pull themselves together and stick to things. It's how trees can pull water up from the ground to their leaves."
"Thats pretty fancy Beyo," she said. (hear a baby try to say the word bear)
"Yep."
"You're smarter than the average bear," she said.

After that we drove it to make sure it was fixed. For a few days it worked great without any problems at all. Than a couple days ago on my day off, a day I requested, we were pulling into traffic and there was a snap and a crash followed by a grinding as we slid backwards slowly. I quickly deduced the problem and turned the car off. We called AAA and had them tow it to her Ma's house where it would have to sit until today, my next day off. And today I pulled the axle shaft out to examine it.


You can see the end is rounded off.
I think the metal clip that holds it in failed and allowed the shaft to slip out. And when I tried to get out into traffic all 200 horse power was applied to the end of the shaft rather than the whole length and it shredded those teeth right off. Luckily the transmission is made out of a stronger steel and it is OK.

OR

They gave me the wrong part, a part for another car, one that is too short. Either way there were fresh out of CV axle shafts for a '96 Nissan Maxima. It should be in tomorrow. So after (11 hours of) work I get to install a new axle. Yahoo!

Loo and I recognize how much that sucks, but she needs her car. To help the situation not suck so bad she bought me lunch with plans for two full-body massages, one tonight and one tomorrow.

Winning!

Hopefully tomorrow's new axle install fixes everything.

Huh, I just realized that about a year ago her transmission died. Weird.

Maybe July is rough on transmission?

Purposeless anger

I'm in a weird place right now, emotionally. I'm not sure what's wrong, but I'm sure something is wrong. I think I am depressed for the moment. It kinda runs in the family, but perhaps it hits me least of all. I have no fear revealing everything to you, gentle reader, but I don't want to divulge info about other people. So take it from me when I tell you that I am familiar with depression in myself and others.

I have these depressive episodes where everything pretty much sucks. The things I normally love hold no excitement. Luckily, if there is any luck to be found in depression, these episodes are brief lasting only a day or two or three. I see how living with this everyday would suck beyond all measure of sucky things. I want to tell you that I can't imagine what its like, but I can. I can imagine what its like to live like this without any idea when it will end. I guess I should explain what it's like. I keep forgetting you don't have my brain and can't know what I'm thinking.

Imagine you have a roommate that tells you one day that they peed on your pillow just to make you mad. Imagine the indignation and rage you would feel, all that anger bubbling inside of you. Questions of why and how and wtf, why me, what did I do to deserve that, more importantly what the hell is wrong with you, Roommate?

Now Imagine there is no roommate and no pillow incident. You are just angry and rage filled randomly without a reason. These emotions, very real and powerful, flood your body and brain, but you, your consciousness, recognizes that you are angry for no reason. But you can't turn it off. Everything makes you angry. When your eyes fall on a glass that is half empty (they are always half empty now) it pisses you off. Who had the audacity to fill a glass only half way? That means you will have to get up and refill it sooner. Or you see a towel on a shower rack and it hasn't dried yet. WTF is wrong with this Chinese-slave-labor-special towels that can't dry off after use? And etc, you could see a crooked paper and get angry about how it isn't straight or a pencil with a dull graphite point. Now, somewhere in your brain you know you are being unreasonable, that none of this stuff is important or deserves attention, but it doesn't matter because the feeling remains as strong as ever despite your logical musings.

I know that the conscious mind makes sense of the unconscious, that we have no control over our subconscious and whatever it does whenever it wants gets rationalized by the conscious. So the anger and rage and general pissed-off-ness is there floating around and your conscious mind says, "hey, I should attach this anger to something in the real world." There is so much anger that anything will do. Crooked paper, empty water glass, the urge to pee, people, girlfriend and dirty laundry are all prime candidates for this purposeless anger. I recognize that, so for the things that matter, like Loo, I just tell her I'm not feeling well. In the past this purposeless rage has snuck up on me and I have said some horrible things to her just to pick a fight, just to hurt her because I'm angry and she should be too. Meanwhile a part of me is saying no, don't.

After saying a bunch of mean things to her one time a long time ago she said to me, "You know me so well, for eleven years now, you know just what to say to destroy me." And with her words I could see through the haze just what kind of person I was, like an arrow through fog striking me in the chest. I got the message.

I'd want to tell you that I didn't have control over my body, that I was a puppet and IT did it and I was there in the background whispering, "hey, don't! Stop!" like I was some kind of victim looking for both sympathy and a scapegoat for you to blame and absolve me of responsibility. But the reality is I was there egging myself on because I wanted to break stuff and hurt people and anyone would do. I wanted to.

I should take a moment to point out that I'm not violent an I don't actually break stuff and beat people up, I talk and think things mostly. I recognize this whole anger/rage/haze thing so I intentionally seek solitude. It is hard to hurt others, especially people you love, when you are alone, though it's still possible. I'm using too many commas. Grrr...

After you sit with anger for a bit it gets dull and morphs into this general depression where lights aren't as bright, colors seems dull, food tastes bland and everything makes you frustrated and mad. People could offer you money and you'd bite their head off. I hate being this irrational.

So I am getting sick and most likely on day two of a depressive episode. I don't know if they are related. I heard you can tell you are depressed by hearing a happy story or about how happy people are and getting angry about it, like it makes you sick. So I watched a video about Beth Ostrosky Howard Sterns Wife. I'm a long time Stern fan so I know all about them and like them both a lot. As I listened to the bright and smiling Beth describe her perfect life rescuing animals in the Hamptons I felt a snarl crawl across my teeth. When it was over I wondered what I should do before bed. Nothing interested me even though I have been reading AMAZING books.

About a week ago I tripled the word count of my future best selling book (haha!) to a grand total of 20k. Afterward I felt so goood nothing could bring me down. In light of that experience and this one I wonder if I am manic depressive, aka bipolar. Who knows. Maybe when I can afford to I will see a psychiatrist counselor and she can tell me if I'm messed up or not and what to do about it.

The other thing is I am TIRED of my tire job. I work really hard and don't have much to show for it. And I see that after each ten hour day I am exhausted and not much fun to be around. My days off are more like recovery days than days off. This angers me. I don't want this to be my life. But I need money, you know? I want to write. Even talking to you, gentle reader, has lifted my spirit some.

Which reminds me in my book about Killing people the guy says that sharing depressive stories or feelings and talking about your problems actually HALVES the feelings you carry about it afterward. So you should talk about your problems because the person you tell carries half of it briefly, and after the talk is done you have measurably half the burden to carry while the other person quickly drops the half they were holding. It isn't their burden after all and now you have 50% burden. Winning!

Now that it's late and I still have to pee (stupid bladder!) I should go. Remind me to tell you about Venus, Killing and Free Will.

Do the right thing

I remember Richard Dawkins talking about how humans generally want to do good, it is in our DNA, and there is a physiological reaction to a person in need not unlike sexual lust, a lust to do good. There is a perfectly serviceable evolutionary explanation which he tried not to go into, but after being pressed he had to explain. His point was it doesn't really matter what causes the lust-to-do-good feeling, we know the feeling exists regardless of our understanding. A lot of religious people would quickly tell you that God put that in us. Even though they don't have a biblical leg to stand on. They feel like it must be that way, so that solves it. (Dawkins explains that in our evolutionary history the human population was quite small, and seeing a fellow human in trouble or need was likely a relative and in helping them you help yourself by encouraging reciprocity, and keeping your family line alive and well. Fast forward 300k years and you still have the feeling but only for one person at a time...) I guess I have to get into this now.

There was an experiment and study mentioned in Sam Harris' and Richard Dawkins' Books. In the study they show people pictures of a single person in need. And you know the picture. These are the pictures used by christian charity organizations that say things like, "You can help this ONE person for 11 cents a day" or some such. They found 100% of responders in the study wanted to help the one person in need with 100% of their resources. The lust-to-do-good was strong, the strongest (100%). After that they showed the same people (and different ones for control group) pictures with the same little boy and his little sister. Now there were two kids in dire need of help. Amazingly they found 100% of the responders had a lack luster response, it was less than half the strength of the initial reaction (43%). The prediction for this part of the study was the same I would have predicted, that with two people in need the lust-to-do-good would feel twice as powerful, it seems to me that's how it should work out, but it was less than half. [side note: if more people in need increased the lust-to-do-good feeling it would disprove evolution and natural selection]

They keep going in this vein. Pictures of a family of kids, than an orphanage, than a village, each time the people in need increasing. They found the more people there were in need of help of any kind the more responders COULD NOT CARE. They could vocalize displeasure as in, "That's horrible," but when asked to donate money or help out in some way 100% of responders gave an unfavorable response hovering under 1%. These people were religious and not religious, men and women randomized. The study has been repeated to show this appears to be a universal human constant. All humans in all parts of the world care about one person a lot, even a stranger, especially a child, and their lust-to-do-good takes a steep nosedive with the inclusion of another person. I told you this for three reasons.

Firstly, Humans have a strong desire to be good, do the right thing and help out. The desire to help out and do the right thing alone ISN'T ENOUGH. You have to want to do the right thing, know what will help and than do that. Without understanding how to maximize well-being desire to do good can be very damaging or do nothing. What's that christian saying? "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Intentions alone aren't enough. I hope I don't have to give examples of this.

Ok I will, and I will pick on a seemingly innocuous non-religious entity. Breast cancer organizations, the pink ribbon, feel your boobies, etc champion a serious cause that kills a lot of women every year (though diarrhea, kills more women a year than breast cancer. It isn't as sexy though.) They take donations, give talks, go on walks, and 'raise awareness' which is where the majority of the donations go. It FEELS good to help. And lots of people do. But does it ACTUALLY help find a cure for breast cancer? Does it actually accomplish what it says it will?

No. In fact they are no closer to finding a cure now than they were before those non profit organization started popping up. If you read the fine print, about one cent per dollar actually goes to cancer research, (they don't say where, or who) which WILL find the cure for cancer. In other words walking around wont find it, talking in hotel lobbies and in parks wont find it, buying shirts, magnets and stickers wont cure it. Dedicated medical science and experimentation and study in a cancer lab is the most likely source of a cancer cure.

So here is a crazy idea: donate to that cancer research lab specifically. Than they get 100 cents of every dollar instead of one. Both the cancer lab and breast cancer awareness organizations have overheads most of the money they get goes there, followed by paying the staff. Than for the nonprofit orgs. comes raising awareness leaving a little bit for the cancer research center. Think about a hundred dollar donation to the Feel Your Boobies people. ONE whole dollar goes to a cancer researcher of their choice. Wahoo! [Side note: this means that a hundred dollar donation to feel your boobies and a one dollar donation to a cancer research center are the same to the cancer center. So a five dollar donation to the cancer research center directly is more money than they normally see. So YOU can help fight cancer for 11 cents a day! So why don't you?]

point 2: without understanding what actually helps humans, one feel-good reason is as good as any other. And this is where average religious person sits, you know, not the easily dismissible zealots we can all agree are bad like the, "Pope who’d tell Africans not to use condoms to protect themselves from AIDS, or a nun who would tell teenagers at a Catholic school that masturbation is evil, or a Mormon who would start a TV campaign in response to Prop 8 about how The Gays are out to corrupt our children. Or for that matter, a Muslim who would fly a plane into a building." No, the average christian, the one who wants to do the right thing (without knowing what that is) who hears an interpretation of a story, he is told, exemplifies how he should act, what he should do, how he should think. That guy, or girl IS A PROBLEM to the rest of us humans as a whole. Often if they do something right that helps people it is by accident. There is a right way to do this, to help people. Quick example: prayer.

Prayer has been tested and studied by science. In regards to people recovering from a common surgery. In every case it has done no better than chance/wishing/voodoo/sugar pills. And It actually harms people, believers most of all. It causes them to require more time to heal than people who were not prayed for, or people who were unaware they were being prayed for indicating it is in the mind of the believer. This means a lot of things, most importantly it means prayer is harmful to people in recovery. When my brother had chest surgery my religious uncle came to him and wanted to tell him that he and his church were praying for him. Kevin cut him off before he could say that and told him not to pray for him. And if he did to keep it to himself because he doesn't want to be recovering any longer than he needs. My uncle was hurt, but I am sure he prayed on his own.

thirdly: Sometimes doing the right thing is counter intuitive, or feels wrong. In some medical procedures causing pain helps people feel better sooner than letting them heal untouched. I suppose my overall point is sometimes wisdom from the superstitious people of bronze-age Palestine isn't wisdom. We can do better now and we should. Thank you.

**steps down from soap box**

Loo's Tonsils part 2 the yawn thief.

"It hurts so bad," Loo said between sobs. It was day four of her tonsillectomy post-op. I could do nothing for her to stop the pain.

I hate this feeling. This impotence. I could only watch her suffer. No. Had to watch her suffer. It was my duty to watch her in pain. I felt like if I looked away it would hurt her more, as though I was saying 'you are on your own,' which I could not do. So I looked into her submerged blue eyes rimmed in red. And she looked back, seeming to plead with me. 'Make it stop,' they said. 'I can't' mine said.

"Together," I said, " we can get through this." I poured the last teaspoon of liquid codeine that looked and smelled like cough medicine into a plastic measuring cylinder-spoon. A liquid medicine measuring device I hadn't seen or used since I was seven years old. She opened her mouth, eyes sealed tightly, anticipating the agony that would follow. I knew if I poured the medicine a certain way it would stick to her tongue and travel down her throat the right way. I knew that capillary action would keep the medicine on her tongue and travel down her tongue without touching the back of her throat and it would minimize the pain. I did not know that at first, but in trying to find ways to not hurt her I figured it out. The medicine slipped down her tongue, down her throat and she swallowed it. Her hand shot out and gripped my arm. Her nails dug into my bicep. It hurt. I wanted to pull my arm away. Instead I held her as she cried, wracked with pain. I watched her as her nails dug deeper into my arm. Sweat leapt to the surface of her fair and freckled face, her skin turned red, the strained veins swelled beneath her skin, a delta of emerald rivers pulsing underground.

"Fuck!" she would yell.
"I know" I would say. What else could I say?
"Fuck bear, that hurt so bad," she said opening her eyes. Bear is her nickname for me. Not because I am furry, because I am not. But because, well, it's a long story. Suffice it to say she renames a lot of things. The dog park is now referred to as the bark park. Song birds are tweeters, chipmunks are chippies and so on.

She described the pain in her throat as the most pain ever. She had to drink a gallon of water a day and take oral medication every four hours. Mealtime immediately followed medication. The medicine took the pain away enough that she could eat. Small bites, chewed thoroughly could sometimes be swallowed. Other times they could not and though she was hungry she couldn't eat another bite. I ate those.

I found myself very protective of her at this point. I couldn't do very much, but what was in my power to control I did. I took it upon myself to mitigate the pain every chance I could. Beverages and food were presented at the perfect temperature, conversations were cut short, topics of conversation I knew would turn into long arguments between her family and her were avoided, sometimes nimbly, elegantly, other times not so much. I didn't really care though, avoidance of pain was my focus. The niceties of everyday interactions and conversations were overlooked. People might have said I was terse, annoying, or something else. I could not care. I would not allow pain to get my Loo.

Sometimes we would communicate with text messages standing two feet apart. Sometimes pointing and gestures were easier. We used my dry erase board for a bit. A few days later she could start talking again, but certain words were difficult to say. Our roommates dog Cody was called Hohy because the c and d sounds hurt her throat. Cody came to this name anyway, the tone was the same, which I what dogs recognize. Than came the yawns.

Oh the yawns. The first yawn caught her off guard. Her hands went up suddenly and fluttered, flapping like a bird. She yawned. Than she screamed and cried. I held her, asked what happened.

"The yawn," she said, "wors.pain.evah."
"Oh," I said.
"Rememmer tha hime you yawn and I diggs you and you lose it?"
"The time you jabbed me in the side when a yawn was coming and it went away like you stole it?"
She nodded.
"What about it?"
"When I gib the signal I wan you to sdeal my yawn by smakin me."
"I don't want to smack you."
"Please," she said pleading.
"I dont want to hurt you," I said.
"I order you. No more yawns," she said. Tears filled her eyes and she whispered, "Neber again. Neber again."

I thought about it. I didn't want to strike her like she wanted me too, but I didn't want her to experience the worst.pain.ever. I was reading a book then, still am now. The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. In it he describes a lot of things that are counter intuitive that actually help, and we should focus on ameliorating pain rather than doing what feels right or good, because that can mislead us. We get caught up in feeling good about doing something, rather than doing something good that doesn't feel so good. An example he gives is when they first started doing the colonoscope procedure to detect cancer in its operable stages before anesthesia. It hurt quite a bit, as you might imagine, but they found that the procedure, while painful, was lifesaving. Also, if they yanked the colonoscope out after they were done it hurt the most, a painful cherry added to the already horrible pain-sundae. It was such a painful experience people would not come back. But, some doctor, I forget his name, decided to leave the colonoscope inside the body for some time after the procedure which produced a dull pain. In fact it added to the total amount of pain. But the person only remembered the dull pain, and forgot the excruciating pain prior to that. They returned for future colonoscope procedures decreasing death by cancer in the human population. Everybody wins. The Doctor accomplished it by increasing pain.

Six hours later she made a sharp pleading moan. I had learned her moans very well by this point. This one was the pre-yawn signal. I knew what I had to do. I swiped my hand at her and struck her in the shoulder and hand, a stinging sensation tingled my palm. And though she shook her hand afterward she thanked me profusely. We both felt good, her for dodging the yawn and me for not having to strike her in the face or body. The hand I could do. And would do. Sometimes it took multiple strikes. She would let me know when the yawn passed when her hand stopped flapping. So I would strike and slap and pinch and punch until her hand stopped flapping.

At first I felt bad, striking her. I made a promise to myself not to strike girls when I was seven. And on some gut level it felt wrong to me. Now that I am 27 I have to amend that promise to myself. I promise not to strike a woman unless she asks me to and only if it will help her.

After days of stealing her yawns, repressing my own and turning her away from the yawns of others it became second nature to smack her and steal her yawn. We went and saw the new X-Men movie, First Class (awesome movie, best x-men movie I think). As the credits rolled by and the lights came on I saw her hand flapping her hand toward me, the other on her throat. Instinctively I struck her all over until the yawn was gone. I hadn't given any thought to how this might look to others. What they might think, what they might do. I heard murmurs, whispers and hushed conversation and the guy behind me scowled. I prepared to duck a blow. and stood up quickly. What could I say? She made me do it? She told me to? It's her fault? I'm trying to steal her yawn? Nothing could be said, so I left with her quickly. Not that quickly, because she is still recovering form surgery, but quicklyish.

Loo's Tonsils part 1

Ten days ago Loo had her tonsils removed. Never having experienced anyone losing their tonsils I didn't know what to expect. The procedure itself, the surgeon told us, would take ten minutes. Loo would be under general anesthetic and it would take at least an hour before she came to, and another hour after that when she would be coming in and out of consciousness. I was familiar with that when my brother was recovering from chest surgery about a year ago. Consciousness than was a short order cook in a slow diner, moving between busy and calm on a whim.

The anesthetist told us she would be out for a couple hours. Having been to the hospital with Loo in the past I knew her to be resistant to local anesthetics, narcotics and other medicine. Vicodin has no effect, local anesthetics do not work, Novocain might as well be water. I felt like it was my duty to tell the anesthetist about this.

"I don't know if it is relevant to you or not," I said to the anesthetist, "but, she is highly resistant to anesthesia and narcotics."

The anesthetist, an older, wiry, tall man in surgical greens looked at me in a way that made me feel stupid. It was a look I might have given customers at the tire store that told me to simply bolt the spare tire onto their mid 90's corvette after the news that their tire was no good and not safe to repair. (90's corvettes and newer do not have spare tires, relying instead on run-flat tires)

The anesthetist said, "She will be under general," as if that obviously cleared everything up.

"Kay," I said. He smiled, it looked forced to me, and he walked out.

The surgeon entered the room next. She was an attractive young woman with mascara, brown hair and fair skin, straight teeth and a big smile. She asked the question we had all anticipated.

"Do you have any questions for me?" she asked. I should have said earlier that the room was occupied by Loo, her mom and myself plus the surgeon. For whatever reason Ma dislikes and distrusts our baby dinosaur Bup (a one year old Savannah Monitor) and she got it into her head that Bup would be dangerous to Loo during recovery. Something about reptile to human germ transfer.

"I have a question about pets during her recovery," Ma said.

"That has nothing to do with this," said the surgeon, "but go ahead."

"She has a monitor lizard," Ma said.

"Yeah?" said the surgeon. she seemed to search for the relevance.

"Isn't it unsafe for her to recover around that?" Ma said while nodding.

"No. Not at all. Reptiles are very clean and have few germs that are transferable to humans. Dogs are the ones to look out for. Dogs lick their wounds, and a dog will smell her wound and try to lick her to make her better. Dogs have fewer germs in their mouths than we do, but they are bad, bad guys you do not want in your mouth. So no dog kisses."

"But a lizard is bad, right?" Ma asked nodding her head.

"No," the surgeon said shaking her head, "Lizards are fine."

"See," Loo said.

"Ok," Ma said.

"But," said the surgeon, "Good question, that is an exotic pet. It's good to make sure." I agree with that, even when the sixth or seventh doctor says it, as it comes up every time it can. After that the surgeon had some information about recovery.

"Right after surgery you should go to wendy's and get a frosty and fries for her. Dip the hot salty fries into the frosty and eat it. Doctor's orders."

I think we all thought she was kidding. She continued on. "Seriously, the salt is good at killing germs, and helps hold onto water, which you will be drinking, a gallon a day," she said pointing at Loo, "And for the nerves, the temperature signal takes precedent over the pain signal. The hot and cold occupy the nerve so that it has no room for pain. So fries dipped in chocolate. Doctors orders."

They came and took her then. I prepared to wait a long time. I had my computer and my books and looked forward to catching up on some reading and writing.

Nine minutes from when they rolled her away the surgeon told us the surgery was a success and Loo was in recovery.

We prepared for the two hour wait. I got settled into the waiting room sofa chair. I mean really hunkered down. It wasn't 5 minutes later that we were told she was ready to go. I packed everything back in and walked back there.

Loo was sitting upright eating sherbet. As I walked in she waved at me. She gave no indication of feeling dopey or drugged. She had to take an IV bag of fluids before she could go. All the nurses and people were very surprised Loo was awake and ready to go so quickly. I repressed the "I told you so," I wanted to tell everyone.

She walked into the family van, and we went to Wendy's for fries and a frosty. It was surprisingly tasty.

"I feel fine," Loo said, "I think this is going to be good and easy." She pointed to her frosty dipped fries, "I could get use to this."

"doctors orders," I said. I was relieved she was healing so well. They said the pain would be bad for ten days. Day one at this point was no sweat.

Joke

What do you call a black man that flies planes?

...

A pilot, you racist!



Black can be replaced with woman, answer can be replaced with sexist: woman/sexist

there are others like gay/homophobe. And others still left to discover. I like this joke.

The three people I met on the Rapture

I met three really strange people today, the day of the rapture, or some such.

First: A woman getting an air check at the tire store today told me she didn't have to be nice and insisted on being rude and mean because, as she explained to me, the world ends today at 6pm precisely.

One timezone at a time?
Or is that Pacific standard time?
Or Jerusalem standard time?
Or New Zealand time which is 23 hours ahead where it's Sunday, the day of rest. Oh noes!

The woman was very rude, ordered me around told me to hurry up, talked about the rapture and about how she didn't have to keep up this facade and didn't give a shit and Jesus was coming, Hallelujah! I asked her if she thought Jesus would approve of her treatment of others on his return trip to earth (on Air-God? interdemensional travel line?). She immediately stopped being Douchey Mc Doucherton and started apologizing profusely to me saying she had made a mistake and asked if I could forgive her. I immediately wanted to say that forgiveness is between her and God, but I didn't. Instead I nodded and told her to have a nice day and went back to work.

And then she called out to me asking if she could make an appointment to rotate her tires tomorrow. I was almost dumbstruck. I thought about making some kind of comment about only if the world is still here, but in all honesty I think she had mental problems and I was keen to slip away like sand through fingers. I sent her up front.

Later I pulled a car in to be worked on, well, let me start over. I approached the beat up car, opened the door and found the inside to be covered in rosary beads and crucifixes. I had to remove a clump of them from the seat before I could sit down. I didn't want to get poked in the butt by Jesus.

When I started the car I looked into the rearview mirror. It was wrapped in rosaries and unusable as mirror. When I pulled the gear lever down some rosaries fell to the floor bright red ones. Through the speakers came the voice of some dull monotoned woman saying those famous catholic prayers. I dont know thier names, but you might. It was the one about mother mary full of grace. And then an audience of people repeated this woman. It sounded like the Borg from Star Trek. Then she spoke again, some other line of a prayer. I thought it was pretty ballsy to play something so Christiany on the radio, but it was actually a CD on track three, seven minutes in. I immediately started making judgments about the kind of person that would drive this vehicle: She was old, white hair, unmarried, unattractive, overweight, a cat lady with a mean countenance that said 'thanks a lot,' and, 'god bless,' often.

The prayer stuff was turning my stomach so I turned it off. As I drove over the hydraulic lift all the rosaries, crucifixes and mother Mary figurines started swaying and clinking together, a pitter-patter of plastic rain. After I repaired the tire an old woman, described above, came over to ask what was in. When I told her it was ascrew that punctured her tire and that I had drilled it out to remove the rust and filled it with a plug, a patch, a chemical cement and a sealer and that it would never ever leak again from that spot she said, "Thanks a lot. God Bless." As I handed her the paper work I saw she was without a ring on her finger. As far as I could tell, my original prediction was accurate.

Person number three was a middle aged fat black man in gray sweat pants and a sports jersey. I know nothing of sports so I can't tell you anything about it. There were numbers and colors and a name, if it helps. Anyway he was standing behind the car I was torquing and he was talking. Now to whom I do not know, because as far as I could tell he was totally alone. I couldn't help but over hear what he was talking about.

He said, "I'm burying my face in your Poo-say, can you feel it?"

I stopped torquing to turn around to see him. He turned a bit to face me and I saw he had a bluetooth ear piece in. So he was not insane. Nothing to worry about there, just your average large man standing behind his car in a parking lot having phone sex while I finish his vehicle. Right before I got out of earshot he said, "I am pounding your Poo-say. You feel me inside you? Uh huh. I am slamming into your cervix. Ummhmm you know it gurl." I torqued the left front wheel than the right front than approached the right rear, the final wheel. I heard him say

"I'm filling you up gurl. You gaining weight now gurl. Mmhmm you gonna be white after it soak into you."

I gave him his paper work, told him to have a nice day. He thanked me and walked to his car talking about someone getting drenched.

It started to rain.

Dirty, dirty rain.