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.