Sent West

Like Wow

2008-09-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

My contribution to the Palin speech reaction thread over at Ace of Spades HQ (Link)

Obama = A bunch of guys attacking one at a time.
Palin = Riddick

Palin = Usain Bolt
Obama = Michael Moore

Palin = "Desert Eagle"
Obama = "Replica"

[This clip has awful horrid language. Not recommended for children, adults over 50, or anyone really, be forewarned]

Does it Hurt Yet?

2008-08-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

I’ll say it straight out, I think the vast majority of chronic pain and chronic fatigue disorders are BS. They’re the modern equivalent of having the vapors. As such, I strongly recommend a course of sea air (in a nice tropical clime) and daily hysterical paroxysms (most effective if administered by the hot pool boy).

I’ve researched a good deal about fibromyalgia lately, as I know several people claiming to be debilitated by it. According to Dr. Google about 1% of the population suffers from this horrible disorder. That’s not a terribly insignificant number of folks, especially due to the notion that one may be completely laid up and unable to work or function in any way due to their terrible pain.

Here’s the wikipedia entry on Fibromyalgia for your edification, with a description of symptoms, etc.

I have my own personal theory of this disorder. For the record, unless I acquire a reader with money they need to launder through funding of an amateur research undertaking, this is me talking from a reasonably unscientific compilation of experience and medical research reading.

As an aside, I strongly recommend that anyone interested in any particular disorder skip any website written for laymen about that problem, and go directly to the research. It’s not easy, research papers are boring and require at least a basic comfort level with statistics, but the information therein is 150% better than anything you’ll get on “Jane’s Gallbladder Cancer and Demonic Possession Blog.”

In my opinion fibromyalgia is simply a combination of three factors:

1. Hypochondriasis secondary to availability of tremendous amounts of medical information available on the internet, with gigantic gaps in reliability of source.

2. Societal focus on continuous introspection, with the medical system generally validating self-perception of any symptom with over-testing to protect themselves from lawsuits. Essentially you think: “Why would they be putting me through this test if my itchy thumb wasn’t serious.” But they’re thinking: “Man, I better run that allergy test even though they have no clinical presentation, or if they do have that 0.000001% occurring syndrome they’ll sue me for the GDP of India.”

3. The low level of physical fitness in the general population (also the rising levels of overfat and obese individuals) contributing to a growing number of people who have bodies that do not function correctly, and who do not understand how their bodies work or respond to varying situations.

Please note: I am not at all saying that people with fibromyalgia do not experience symptoms. I do think they are feeling pain. However, I think they are not experiencing as much pain as they think they are, and many of the models for diagnosis and treatment actually lead away from the easiest cure of all. I think this is primarily a disorder of perception, rather than a physical problem. I’m sure this isn’t what some people want to hear, but a perception problem is just as serious as a physical disorder. However it may be easier to fix.

To tie everything together I’m going to veer off for a bit into my experiences with pain. I’ve always thought I had a fairly high pain threshold. I have lots of tattoos, I have cavities drilled without Novocain, when I had appendicitis I could never realistically rate my pain above a 3 on a 1-10 scale. I get migraines infrequently, complete with visual auras and all kinds of fun stuff, and am able to control the pain through breathing techniques I taught myself when I was a kid.

Turns out I really had no idea, and am actually in recovery from being somewhat of a huge wimp.

January of this year I started martial arts training in a small dojo in a bid to improve my fitness. I practice Aikido Yoshinkan which is considered a “hard” form of aikido. Unusually though, our instructor is a former national-class track athlete, and believes strongly in overall fitness and strength training. Our “warm-up” lasts 30-45 minutes, and often leaves pools of sweat on the mat and me staggering. After that we start really training. For example, we did “33’s” to warm up a week ago, that when done properly will have you complete a total of 90 push-ups in about 15 minutes while having a medicine ball flung at your head every 3 push-ups.

Point is, it’s not easy, and I’ve put on more muscle in the last six months than I thought I’d be able to acquire in my life. And it has all been painful. In Yoshinkan we do a lot of falling, rolling and joint locking. All of which hurts when done poorly, and with the joint locking, hurts when done correctly. Very realistically, I probably experience more pain and discomfort in one 2-hour lesson (which I have 3 days a week) than most people experience in a year. In fact, learning to tolerate some of the extreme discomfort of being in a good arm lock or a strangulation hold is part of our training, so we can learn to do the technique, and learn to escape from it.

We have a new adult student who took a bad roll on his shoulder last Thursday, and decided he was too sore to continue being thrown for the remainder of the class. This morning, Saturday, he was still concerned about being injured, though he has full range of motion. I took a poor roll on Thursday too, and stuck my shoulder into the mat so hard that the instructor heard it from across the classroom. I had a good bit of soreness, and the imprint of my gi fabric weave in my shoulder in welts that night. I suspect that I and my fellow classmate are suffering about the same amount of pain. However, I shook it out a little, tested my motion, and knew from experience that I was hurt but I was not injured and continued with business as usual. The other student will learn this in time.

As I’ve trained, both my body and my neurological system have changed. My pain threshold has substantially increased, and I’m getting better at physically reacting in an controlled manner even when in pain or exhausted. Even better, my internal perception of the pain status in my body has changed.

For example, if you asked me right now what my pain level is, I’d say it’s a 0 on the 1-10 scale. No significant pain whatsoever, just normal body feelings. However, if I sit here and carefully examine myself I find that I actually have a bit of a sinus headache, my upper arms and thighs have quite a good deal of muscle soreness, my neck is a stiff and tight, and I have an abrasion on my left knee that burns. My knees and ankles are also pretty stiff as we did seated techniques this morning. My shoulder is still good and bashed up, and I can feel that as well. I’ve learned though, to differentiate between pain that means that I’m injured and need immediate attention, and background pain that signifies nothing. This background pain I can easily dismiss, and don’t notice it much more than I notice wearing a watch.

Looking back at my completely sedentary self of last year, I can see now that I objectively felt much less bodily pain than I do now, but I perceived it as much more! I was laid low by pain that I can easily ignore today. What I have done neurologically is raise my baseline of pain at which my body tries to interrupt my mind with messages of impending doom. Basically the lights and sirens used to go off at 10 psi in the pipes, now they only go off around 5000 psi.

What I believe happens in disorders like fibromyalgia is that a person starts to notice their “background pain” or other relatively normal bodily feelings, and becomes concerned that they signify a major problem. Because this person is pretty sedentary and doesn’t have recent or continuing physical experience as to what constitutes pain that signifies an injury, rather than just noise, they start getting the aforementioned lights and sirens telling them there’s something wrong. They also might be a bit overweight or have little muscle tone, so they really do feel some musculoskeletal and joint pain. This person is pretty responsible, and doesn’t want to go to the doctor frivolously, and fires up old Doc Google to see if what they’re feeling is a symptom of something. They are immediately overwhelmed by myriad sites telling them they have a symptom of everything from fribro to MS to chronic lyme disease to parasites to colon impaction to, well.. you name it.

Now they’re worried. God, this must be bad. They start doing more research and reading more sites. They see that fatigue is an element of many disorders, and realize, yeah they’ve been feeling pretty sluggish lately, and maybe even depressed. Man, they think, as they read hundreds of pages of questionable information, I have a LOT of these symptoms. As they think more about it they focus more on their internal bodily feelings, and to a legitimately concerned person, each feeling can grow in their mind into a symptom. The more they focus, the more they feel, and the more it physically bothers them. For instance, you can feel your watch and clothes if you sit there and concentrate, and they might even start to feel annoying, even if they’ve been comfortable all day.

They eventually go to their doctor and tell them they’re having all this muscle pain and they’re fatigued and can’t concentrate and can’t something be done. The doc orders a bunch of CYA tests, which confirms to our hapless person that there really must be something wrong (or why would they order all the tests). Mr. Doc doesn’t find anything conclusive, but the person (now officially having undergone the transition from person to “patient”) still feels the sensations they felt before, and just knows *something* must be wrong. Someone like me can generally say, “Well, OK, I’m fine, cool, seeya later,” but another person may decide to get a second opinion. They may have also read on the internet that doctors don’t know about this mystery disorder, or that there’s even a medical conspiracy to suppress knowledge about this problem. So they go from doc to doc, maybe one tries a painkiller or an anti-inflammatory prescription, because though I love doctors - but when your tool is a hammer (medicine) sometimes every problem becomes like a nail (medical diagnosis and medication). Maybe they get to a doctor who believes in this internet affluent disorder, and gives them the diagnosis they think they need and a bunch of meds. Or maybe they meet a less than ethical doctor who is willing to prescribe serious pain medications at the drop of a hat and does so.

After a while this persistent patient is still feeling the same sensations, and maybe some side-effects of medication they might be on. They might have a label, as in this person suffers from X Disorder, which for better or worse, comes with a ration of sympathy and ability to make life just a little more flexible: “Don’t bother mommy now, she’s laying down with breakthrough pain (rather than going to work at a crappy office for 10 hours, then driving pell-mell across town to pick up Suzy to get her to ballet and Johnny to guitar and doing all the grocery shopping in 20 minutes flat, picking everyone up, making dinner, helping with homework, writing the bills, cleaning up, herding everyone to bed, trying to figure out whether to file a claim on the roof leak, finishing extra office paperwork, reading a book for 5 minutes and getting to bed 3 hours later than intended).”

Whatever anyone says, there are some benefits to being “sick,” see above for illustration.

Now they still have the sensations which they focus on more and more so they can try to tell if treatments are working, they have reams of medical files, prescriptions, and diagnoses, and all this tells them something MUST BE WRONG!

And we end up with a bunch of folks with the vapors.

My opinion here is backed up by a bit of research. The Journal of Clinical Rheumatology published a paper in 2004 which found that the incidence of fibromyalgia in college athletes is significantly less than the general population. 0.16% compared to 0.5%-10%. Out of 641 athletes they could only find one that met the criteria for a diagnosis. Link to Paper.

Also, it’s been fairly consistently found that exercise cures fibromyalgia. Gee, I could have told you that, and for less money. Link to Paper.

From 1996

This one advocates exercise and agrees with me on source as well.

Oh, just Google fibromyalgia and exercise, you’ll get the picture.

So anyhow, in parting – the solution to your problems is to get off your ass and exercise. It’s a solution to a great many problems, of course it’s not as easy as taking a pill or complaining, wish it were – I’d be able to do more pushups.

Let me reiterate my basic theory for the record: Fibromyalgia is a disorder of perception. Pain is actually felt, but the cure is a neurologic adjustment, not a physical one.

The problem is that the way to change the neurology is to reduce the perception of pain through physical training, which will initially be very uncomfortable. Here's the cure:

--Serious exercise (I'm talking weightlifting, strength training, etc. under the guidance of an experienced trainer, not just a jog at the gym every few days, no pink 2lbs weights).

-- Cognative behavior therapy with the intent of training the mind to refocus away from constant bodily introspection.

-- Additional treament of underlying comorbidity like obesity or overfatness, depression, lack of stress coping skills, or other condition that would interfere with parts 1 and 2.

I am exremely confident if a fibro sufferer commits, I mean REALLY COMMITS, not just takes a stab, feels some pain and gives up (I'm talking at least six months of hardcore commitment), to something like this they will feel better.

I would write a book but I don't think it will sell. People don't want to hear that they need to take responsibility and do something difficult and uncomfortable to be fixed. It has amused me in the past that I've heard fibro sufferers swear they would "do anything" to feel better, but have all kinds of excuses to not exercise, not lose weight, and not start thinking in a productive manner.

Important Note: I'm also conducting an informal study regarding the co-morbidity of fibromyalgia and acute blogcommentum textwallitus. Please be aware that if you write me a six-page essay about your fibroI will:
A) Include you in my study, with or without your permission,
B) Know you probably didn't read my entire post, and
C) Find you really amusing (especially if you have fibro and are also overfat, depressed, bipolar, and/or suffering from Morgellons, chronic fatigue, intestinal parasites, colon impaction, OTC pain med allergies, Aspergers, hypoglycemia, MCS, or you use the ER to treat breakthrough pain, or think the medical establishment refuses to acknowledge your rare disorder so that they can profit from you in an unspecified manner).
D) Please be aware - if you have ever called an ambulance to treat your fibro pain and choose to tell me about it, I will repost your comment in an extremely unflattering manner.

Another Fine Quote

2008-08-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

"It is the fool's metric which declares that unless you are perfect, you aren't good."

From this WATN post on patriotism.

Monday Quotes

2008-04-14T22:52:00.000-07:00

"Thank you for helping us help you help us all."

"If at first you don't succeed, you fail."

"We do what we must, because we can."

~ Portal

I worry for the guys at Valve sometimes, I really do.

Earth to Venus, Come in Venus….

2008-04-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite bloggers, Christopher Taylor over at Word Around the Net, has asked a series of questions that I am supremely qualified to answer, being possessed of a matched set of X chromosomes.

He wonders, quite rightly, what the heck is up with women. Now I’m kind of a guy’s gal. I play video games, shoot guns, like motorcycles, play with swords. Romantic comedies make me nauseous, and I beg to see the latest sci-fi/horror/action flick. I don’t do very girly stuff or hang out with girly girls. I’ve always been one to get along better with men and prefer their company to that of women.

To my surprise getting married clued me in to how truly differently men think. I have occasionally thought I’d have an easier time figuring out Mayan hieroglyphics with no translation key than getting to the bottom of what husband is trying to get across.

I’ll take a crack at answering Mr. Taylor’s questions and be as honest as possible:

1) Is your underwear really that awkward and uncomfortable that you have to keep tugging on it everywhere you go?

Yes it is. Try wearing a chest harness with metal braces in it sometime, you’ll be messing with it too. Unfortunately, it’s more uncomfortable to go without it for some of us. On the other hand, we don’t tend to conspicuously manipulate our crotch area very often. I still haven’t been able to figure out what you guys are doing down there, but you do it an awful lot.

2) Why do you ask questions you do not really want the answer to?

We are under the delusion we might get the “right” answer. Often we just want to be reassured. Between women a line of questioning is usually not just about the topical question, especially in a situation with an uncertain outcome. We are trying to establish the shape of our relationship with the answerer. When asking this sort of question, we are hoping that the answerer will be willing to frame the answer in a protective fashion. This is how men get slapped upside the head when they give the “correct” answer but in the “wrong” way.

3) Why do you care so much about specific dates like the first time we saw a dog with spots and the first week we spent together without seeing a Volvo?

You see, we don’t just care about specific dates, we notice and care about EVERYTHING. I know what kind of toothpaste my husband used when we first started dating and the three kinds he's used since then, even when I can't remember what I had for breakfast. It’s a way of establishing a connection, things we share, even though they’re trivial. I personally kept track of dates and could tell you to the hour how long I’d been dating a guy until I got the current one. With him I’m so relaxed I forget our actual anniversary.

4) Why do you find it endearing when a guy's in love and won't take no for an answer in the movies, but in real life you call it stalking?

This answer is shameful, but realistically, it’s because the guy in the movie is incredibly hot and a stalker. The guy in real life is not very attractive and a stalker. Of course, if you really like the guy, regardless of how he looks, it’s sweet, if you’re kind of lukewarm about him it’s overwhelming and crushes his chances of having us warm up to him over time.

5) Why do you always go to the bathroom in groups?

Hmm. Well, since we all go to our separate stalls, there’s really no privacy concerns. I couldn’t imagine trying to have a conversation with someone standing at a urinal. Also, it gives us a chance to chat about the other people we’re with. Your bathroom buddy can give you a once over for wardrobe and hairstyle malfunctions before you leave. That’s all.

6) Why do you think it's fun to act like a little girl, but stupid when I'm boyish? Related: why do you think the guys that are boyish are so hot, but hate it when I am?

I can’t relate to this one, since I don't like boyishness too much, but maybe you personally don't do boyish very well. I know I'd look like a Doberman in a fluffy tutu trying to pull off acting like a little girl. It just doesn't go with my character.

7) Why is it you always can remember the dumb stuff I said seven years ago but not the nice stuff I said a few hours ago?

The sad truth is that we have a confirmation bias toward stupid and negative comments. You get points for each, and unfortunately you get about -100 points for every stupid thing you say and only about +2 points for every nice thing. It’s rough balancing that particular ledger. Women, as well, hold grudges forever. I don’t think we really understand that you probably left it behind and forgot you even said it years ago, because we would certainly remember saying it and would still have it simmering on a back burner somewhere.

It’s a protective factor, I believe. We are heavily invested in keeping men happy in an evolutionary sense, since we’ve historically relied on their sponsorship for protection and sustenance. A women not taking very strict notice of a man being unhappy with her would be at a disadvantage.

8) If you hate your mom so much, why do you constantly talk to her and run to her every time you are in trouble or upset?

Because, being mom, she can’t tell us to quit whining and shove off.

9) When you read me a quiz out of Cosmo, what exactly are you hoping will happen? What are you looking for?

Couldn’t tell you, I hate those trash magazines. If I did do this I'd be looking for humor.

10) Why is it when a man is the guy that you describe you claim to like and want, he's always the one you ignore?

I don’t know on this one either. I made a mental list of all the things I wanted in a man, picked the person I knew that fit everything the closest, and went out and got him. I know women who do the above though, and I have to think they don’t know what they want (or are willing to admit to what they want), they’re just saying what they think others think they should want.

Ok, with that done, I've discovered my biggest problem with the husband is us having a total failure to communicate revolving around the *way* he says thing. I've found that a number of men simply have no idea how they sound. They just say stuff and expect it to be taken at face value. Even though I'm a bit short in the nuance detection area, I can say that the way that statements are made, the inflection, the tone of voice, the cadence is at least, if not MORE important to women than the actual words. Guys, next time a woman flips out at you and you thought you were being completely innocuous, consider your tone very carefully.

What's New in the West

2008-03-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the typical really... taxes are up, revenues are down, your underage daughter can get an abortion and the first you'll hear of it is when she wakes up with a uncontrollable postsurgical hemorrhage at 2 am. Her school still can't give her an aspirin or mention Jesus without your permission.

Welcome to Cali! Enjoy the palm trees!

So anyway, your intrepid but lazy blogger chick here has been busy. I'm taking Aikido three days a week and really just doing my best to not get too injured. I feel really bad for my partners when I'm a total wuss and squeak at them when I get my hands half wrenched off. On the up side I didn't get pinched on St. Patrick's when I forgot to wear green, the slowly reabsorbing hematomas all over my arms covered for me.

My push-ups are made entirely of fail. If you mainlined this purity of fail you'd die with the needle in your arm.

I'm on a week off and I feel deprived. No one sweaty is going to sit on me and I'm actually getting a bit peakish about it. Whatever will I do without my base level of abuse? May I have another 20 crunches please?

In other news I've landed a new job. To protect the innocent, and guilty, and to enable me to keep my nice paycheck, suffice to say that I now get to be a regulations Nazi with a company car. NOT SHABBY! On the up side I'm in a field position with no obnoxious bosses or insane coworkers since I work from home/field, on the down side I'm probably going to be talking to my cats (er... more than usual) within a month due to crippling social isolation. This will be interesting.

Of course, the catch is that I have to drive to the OC a few times a week for a while. Now, those of you who live in places that do not move at the speed of meth may have this idea that LA/Orange County is at all like the shows you've seen on the telly. I assure you, the box is lying to you yet again. Everything north of San Diego and south of Santa Barbara is one tremendous parking lot. It is your temporal warm-up for purgatory. One does not just "go to LA." One sits on a single linear square mile of LA for six hours with nothing to admire but the other cars (don't make eye contact, seriously, not a good idea) and whatever the local taggers have graced the cinderblock embankment with. That is, if you can see it through the smog.

So my plan is to get up at 5am, be on the freeway at 6am, make it to the office by 8am if I'm lucky and no one's decided to take the sudden unexpected deceleration permanent nap by the side of the road, work for 8 hours, leave at 5pm and hopefully, HOPEFULLY get home by 8pm. Then go to bed at 9pm.

Ick.

I may be a little cranky for a while. Though I love my manual transmission, clutching in single digit traffic for five hours a day doesn't make one a happy camper.

Lucky Wednesday?

2008-03-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

Bizzare.

My cats have been freaking out all evening about something outside the apartment. Apparently a pigeon couple has decided to nest in the hallway beside my front door. Not up in a corner or on a light or in anything that resembles an actual bird nest, mind you. Just in the corner between the fire door and my front door. On the ground.

When I step out to go to the grocery store I find this:

Yep, that's a pigeon egg right in the middle of my doormat.

So weird.

Of course I'm going to blow out the yolk and keep it. It's my lucky doormat egg!

The Late Review: 28 Days Later

2008-02-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Since I'm a boring person and I don't go to movies, rent movies often, or watch TV, I'm invariably a year or two (or six) behind on the latest Hollywood releases. I finally gotten around to renting 28 Days Later. I had to clean my handgun today, and nothings better than zombie movies for keeping one occupied while picking off carbon deposits IMHO.

Since I'm so far behind, I doubt I'll be ruining the plot for anyone when I described the plot as your typical virus-induced post-apocalyptic zombie survival horror flick.

Wonder what it says about my generation that the above can be described as "typical?"

In the film's favor is a decent cast who are all believable as real people, as real people also do not know how to act. Real people tend to have a significantly lower incidence of washboard abs, but I'll forgive that one too. Overall, I bought the characters pretty well, with the exception of Cillian Murphy's habit of standing around with his mouth hanging open like a pallid trout. I found the zombies pretty cool in a Parkinsonian kind of way. I liked the way they vomited blood intermittently, which is how some real hemorrhagic fevers like to transmit themselves. Nothing like bloody vomit and seizures to really fling some love around.

The zombifying virus is accidentally released from poorly guarded animal labs by activists who are apparently too ~~idiotic~~ noble to understand the definition of the words "infected," "contagious," and "blood-borne." Having some limited understanding of the general mindset of the ALF folks, I found this sequence totally believable.

Perhaps I am too much of what my mother calls "those compound people," but I had some serious problems starting with scene one, when our protagonist Jim wanders out of the hospital in his green scrubs. Am I the only one here that when faced with something severely wrong with the world would attempt to locate a jacket, some jeans maybe?

Ok, ok, I'll give it the scrubs because the visual with the green scrubs in the desolate city is pretty good, but....

Here's where the British influence really shows. If faced with a horde of quick but moronic zombies who need to be killed occasionally and transmit a horrible virus through direct fluid contact, whatever would I use to kill them? Gee, I think I'll use a machete or baseball bat that would effectively guarantee copious blood splatter in my facial direction!

Or I could get a Big. Farking. Gun.

Maybe I'm just an evil American, but the first thing I would do if under immediate threat of zombies is locate the nearest gun store, military base, or survivalist enclave and load myself up some serious firepower. Then, because the zombies are stupid and apparently have forgotten how to open doors, I'd find a location that has reinforced buildings and canned food (like a military base or a jail) and camp out there until the zombies starve.

Maybe it's just common knowledge these days that there aren't any guns in London. Perhaps guns are too politically incorrect to sully the hands of our intrepid survivors with, since we find out the only people who have guns are....

...wait for it....

.... the military bad guys. Shocking. No really, I never expect the military to be the antagonists. It just NEVER happens in movies these days.

This is where 28DL really lost me. I completely failed to understand the conflict that they introduced at this point. Our brave band of adventurers (1 male, 2 females, one of which is underage) are picked up by a remnant of the British Army (all male) who have their act pretty well together, but are a bit frayed around the edges. They act uncomfortable from the get-go, are possibly scandalized by the fact that the head honcho is keeping a zombie captive to see how soon it dies, and go all totally batshit insane when they find out that the military guys are trying to track down women.

First, the military guys had the right idea. They made themselves a defensible point and were trying to figure out how to rebuild some semblance of society. Second, the whole needing to have women around to rebuild society with is spot on. Depending on the available female population it seems completely reasonable to hang on to the few you find, even if you can't be 100% polite about it. Having reverted back to an uncivil state of existence, I really don't find it surprising or particularly outrageous that women might be expected to trade sex and childbearing for male protection and sustenance. I kept having this idea that if everyone stopped freaking out about everything quite so much a nicer solution than getting raped anyways could have been found.

Also, I would have kept a captured zombie too. Good source of killed virus for vaccines, if anyone happened to turn up a GlaxoSmithKline employee.

Anyhow, though I started off all geared up to like this movie, and just didn't. The zombies really weren't that bad and didn't have any really imposing value, as they just jumped out and got easily beat down every so often. The military antagonists didn't do it for me because I agreed with their motives.

Bottom line, I'll rent Resident Evil next time instead. That one has better zombies, evil computers, crushing atmosphere, and lasers. And Marilyn Manson. And creepy little girls. And fandom appeal. Can't lose.

Happy Birthday!

2007-11-10T18:53:00.000-08:00

To the US Marine Corps!

You guys look pretty swell for being 232.

Erica's 100% Guaranteed Weight Loss Plan

2007-09-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

Hooray for me!

I finally remembered that I bought a fairly expensive scale (it even tells you if you need to drink more water, and can kill you if you have a pacemaker), and went and stood on it yesterday.

Lo and behold, I have lost 20 pounds since this time last year. And all with the very bare minimum in going to the gym or exercising or doing any other activity that would cause me to break a sweat. I had some very bad habits back in the day, and relied entirely on cigarettes and caffeine to preserve my figure. When my husband and I quit smoking together I put on about 30lbs in a few months, and another 5-10 trying to figure out what was going on.

I topped out the climb on my wedding day, when I weighed in at 160lbs, not that anyone believed me. I’m from a Germanic family and inherited a bigger frame, but I’m well-proportioned and can carry more mass than most without really showing it. If I get down below 125 I start looking like a malnourished lollipop-head.

I have discovered a foolproof weight loss plan that anyone can use. It won’t take off ten pounds this week or make your boobs bigger, but it will work and you will get thinner continuously over a fairly long period of time, and you’ll be able to keep it off automatically when you get there.

Here’s the deal: There is only ONE way to lose weight.

All those ads about supplements and diets and special weird exercise programs are a pile of crap and they’re lying to you. (Note 04/19/08: Exercise is good, really good. I'm referring to "exercise" like trying to target fat areas, which doesn't work, or doing other strange things that try to convince you you're exercising without actually sweating, etc.)

The only way to lose weight is to take in less calories than you need. That’s it. Period.

Of course this is the point where people start to whine “but I have a thyroid disorder” or “I have a slow metabolism” or “obesity runs in my family” or “I have some esoteric medical disorder that gives me a good excuse for stuffing my face with Twinkies and becoming a whalebeast.”

Ok fantastic, I’m sure your insurance carrier loves you, but no. You have no excuse. There is no medical disorder or genetic condition that will magically suck calories out of the aether and paste them to your ass. You have to put them in the piehole to get them to the ass. It doesn’t matter if everyone else in your family has their own gravitational well, they got there by putting it in their mouth, and you certainly could too, if you’re not careful.

Don’t cry to me about your metabolism whilst stuffing an entire Domino’s pizza in your face in one sitting. No metabolism in the world could keep up with that kind of abuse. I have zero sympathy. All part of being an evil conservative.

Here’s what you need to do:

Step One: Set Up Your Goal:

1. Identify your goal weight. Make sure it’s reasonable. If you’ve got a figure like me anything under 120 is just simply ludicrous. My skeletal system probably weighs 110 pounds just on it’s own, and my brain weighs another 6 pounds. Under 120 and I wouldn’t have any weight left for my lungs and guts and other necessary things. If you’re 6’10 being 160 pounds is stupid, don’t try it. Like I said, be reasonable. My goal weight is in the mid 130’s. That’s where I’ll feel good and be happy, and it’s attainable without getting unhealthy.

2. Go over to http://walking.about.com/cs/calories/l/blcalcalc.htm and calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is how many calories you need every day just to maintain your current weight at your height. If you eat more calories than that you’ll gain weight, less, and you’ll lose weight. Simple! Physics! Dude, it’s like conservation of energy, man. It’s not totally accurate, but the next best thing is a bunch of testing that costs lots of money, and I’d prefer to spend my cash on video games and guns. It will give you a good number to start with. My target weight BMR is about 1,300 calories per day, and after being on my plan for 12 months I have to actually work to eat that many calories.

3. Now calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate for your goal weight. This is the maximum number of calories you need to eat each day to reach the weight you want to be at. I suggest that if you want to lose more than 30 pounds you pick a goal weight right at the halfway mark and start with the BMR for that so you don’t put yourself into a coma trying to get your calories down.

4. Ok, so now you know exactly how much you can eat. On to food.

Step Two: Write it Down:

5. First, make an excel spreadsheet or some other grid or place where you can record everything you eat every day. I started with a little cheapo day planner thing and just made a list. You are going to start recording EVERYTHING that passes your lips. And I’m not kidding about the everything. If you eat one Skittle, you have to write it down. If you have one potato chip, you have to write it down. Liquids count too, and you need to make sure you can figure out how much liquid you’re drinking, so brush up on your weights and measures. You have to be real serious with yourself about it, and it’s a real pain in the ass, but it’s worth it. Each meal you’re going to need to figure out how much of everything went onto the plate, including butter and condiments, and other materials used in cooking. DO NOT LIE TO YOURSELF. No one else will see your list, so be honest. If that “just a spoonful” of ice cream was more like a bowl and a half, climb on up in that there saddle and ride that thing.

6. For everything you write down, you’re going to calculate how many calories it equaled. Fat doesn’t matter, cholesterol doesn’t matter, what “kind” of calories they were doesn’t matter, I don’t care if was a starch or a protein, all that matters is the calories in it. There are lots of web sites out there that will tell you the calorie count in everything, use them, but make sure your weights and measures are correct. One oz. of something might look good, but it won’t mean anything if you just ate 10oz. Writing everything down and calculating your calories will most likely have two effects:

7. I found that it was just too much hassle to write down every piece of everything I put in my mouth, but I was really dedicated to keeping an organized list, so I found myself just not eating so much. It would have taken more time and energy to go and figure out how many calories there were in one Skittle than just not eating it. So I didn’t. Also, on the first day you’ll probably have one look at the bottom line at the end of the night and go “Holy flapping cellulite Batman!” You can eat a whole lot more than you intend to if you’re not paying attention. The next thing this leads to is:

8. Learn to read labels. It’s much easier to eat something prepackaged with a set calorie count than try to figure out how many calories are in 3.25oz of asparagus. Make absolutely sure you look at the serving size. I have a can of soup here that says 150 calories. However, that’s just one serving, there are two in the can. So soup for lunch will be 300 calories. That means I’m just having soup, not soup and bread and salad and sandwiches and crisps and pickles and a beer. I work office jobs, and I like to eat at work and surf the internet at my desk and be around to answer calls, so I get the Healthy Choice frozen meals. They have a set calorie count, and have enough variation with the main dish and some veggies and a dessert, that I’m not hungry after eating one, like I am with Lean Cuisine. That’s just one more meal of the day I don’t have to worry about calculating out laboriously. Packaged foods are your friend.

9. You will need to do this for at least 3 months solid. Yes, it’s time consuming, yes it’s a drag, it’s totally not fun at all. Go try on bathing suits for a few hours if you feel yourself running out of motivation. Nothing gets me back on the plan like dressing room mirrors. And this is easy and entirely free, all you have to do is pay attention and write stuff down. You don’t have to go to the gym and feel like Our Lady of the Giant Bobbling Ass in front of a bunch of 18 year olds built like Japanese schoolgirls, you don’t have to break a sweat, or eat weird things. Just eat what you want, and become conscious of how many calories are in it. If you eat out, do your best to remember all the pieces of your meal, so you can calculate it out when you get home. I was brazen enough to pull out my little notepad and scribble it down at the table, but I’m a bit shameless.

10. After three months or so you’ll have seen enough labels and done enough calculations to start to just have a sense of how what you’re eating fits in your daily caloric maximum. For instance, take your average homemade turkey sandwich: two slices of bread at 120 calories each, the meat is another 100, so is one slice of cheese, I’ll throw in 80 calories for mayo and condiments, and say 20 for lettuce. That sandwich alone is 520 calories, so I’ll stick with my 300 calorie soup, which will fill me up just as much, and I’ll be able to eat a bigger dinner. When you start looking at it that way it gets really easy to start making deals with yourself, like “Hey there myself, my favorite person in all the world, you know that slice of cake the coworker brought in is half of what you’re allowed to eat today, hows about we skip it for now, and you can have that big-ass flank steak in the fridge for dinner.” Of course, I always say, “Hells yeah baby, I’m all about the steak!”

11. Cheating’s is allowed. And is hard to do really, since you get to eat whatever you want. Maybe one day you just absolutely MUST have Kraft macaroni in the blue box, and you want to eat the whole damn box yourself because it’s been a rotten day. Go ahead. Just make sure the next day you know how many calories over limit you just ate, and short yourself that many over the next few days. You could even eat a whole box of macaroni yourself every day if you wanted, there just wouldn’t be much room in your diet for much of anything else.

Step Three: Making it Work:

• Clean house. Temptation is easiest to avoid when it’s not there. Throw out all the cookies and candy and chips and crap food that’s not good for you and encourages you to snack. Be ruthless, pretend they’re terrorists. Little evil fat terrorists. Bags of candy make great plinking targets by the way, just a suggestion. Now that you’ve thrown them out, don’t buy any more. Seriously. There will be rows and rows in the grocery store that you can just ignore now, and you’ll have money left over to buy the good steaks. The coolest thing is that if you avoid sweets and junk food for long enough you’ll lose your taste for them, and will find them somewhat disgusting in the future.

• It’s going to suck. For the first couple weeks you will be miserable. You’ll get headaches, and feel hungry constantly, and be a big grump. I also felt lightheaded every so often. Deal with it, it’s worth it. Just drink plenty of water and give your body time to get used to it. After a month or so you just won’t be able to eat as much as you used to, and you won’t feel as hungry at all.

• Beware of liquids. I adore Guinness. A pint of Guinness is like drinking a pureed loaf of bread. Be aware of it and adjust accordingly. Fruit juices are terrible. Just read the label and be shocked. I have here a bottle of Ocean Spray CranAppley fruit drink stuff. Healthy, right? Noooooooo, not really. It’s got 140 calories per 8 fl oz serving, about as many calories as a can of Coke. 8 fl oz is not hardly the glass of juice you’d consider drinking, so a real glass of juice would be about a quarter of my daily calorie allowance. That shit adds up quick, since it’s not really filling, and you can drink a lot of it while pretending you’re doing something healthy. Fruit juice is as bad as soda, and we all know how bad soda is, right, right? It freaks me out that parents are being encouraged to substitute juice for soda fairly arbitrarily. There’s nothing better about calories in juice, and you can turn your kid into the Hindenburg just as easily with it.

• Enlist your friends. Tell everyone what you are doing and encourage them to get on your case if they see you misbehaving, and give you lots of support when you succeed. Hook up with someone who you really respect, and ask them to be your lookout. You’ll feel ashamed if you let them down.

• Keep your thin clothes, throw away your fat clothes. I just now fit back into pants I’ve been stubbornly hanging on to for three years. I fit back in my high school prom dress. I fit in my husband’s cammies that he last squeezed into when he was 18 and in boot camp. As soon as something’s too big it goes in the Goodwill box. I don’t allow myself the option of going up a size. When clothes start to get uncomfortably snug use it as a sign that you’re miscalculating and eating too much (or you’re pregnant, congratulations).

• Diet soda saved me. Yeah it will probably give me cancer, but I can drink it all day long and it’s got nothing in it. It satisfies any cravings for sweets I might have, so I usually have a diet soda for dessert.

• Watch out for the evil salad. You know the one I mean. You think you’re all healthy having a salad, since it’s got all that lettucey rabbit food in it. Rubio’s has the amazing 1,200 calorie salad, which means that if I have one, I can have like three peanuts and an ice cube for the rest of the day, and that’s just not fun.

• Look for quantity. So I’ve got 1,300 calories to spend, what am I going to eat? Well, I could have a bag of chips, and that would eliminate one of my meals, or I could have a nice grilled peppered flank steak with roasted asparagus and mashed potatoes with garlic butter. See where I’m going with this? I could have a teeny bowl of ice cream or a whole pile of strawberries and mango. I could have that serving of Kraft macaroni, or three times as much volume of food in vegetables. You do not have to starve, you do not have to eat little ridiculous micro-portions, and you do not have to eat abnormal foods that taste like alfalfa hay, and you do not have to spend any money, less actually, as most staple foods are much cheaper than “junk” foods.

• You have to have willpower. If you don’t, I’m sorry, I can’t help you, you’re kinda doomed. Of course, you could always set up situations where you don’t have to have willpower. If I were having a major weight problem and was considering gastric bypass or something, I’d take that cash and hire someone to hang out with me all day and make sure I didn’t eat too much. I’d lock down the fridge and cabinets and give someone who actually has willpower the key. If you want it bad enough you can get it done. If I see people out there whining about their weight and not doing anything, I’m going to look at them and assume they didn’t want it that bad and they actually want to be fat. I’m of the opinion that having your feelings hurt may be a really good incentive to fix your problems. I will judge you all day long on perpetuating habits that you claim to want to stop, and eating too much is nothing but an ugly habit.

Mandatory Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor. If you have some crazy condition where you'll die if you restrict your diet you should know about it and be smarter than to do what someone on the internet says. Don't go give yourself a heart attack.

Holden Caulfield FTL, Han Solo FTW

2007-08-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting article on one of my favorite blogs, Word Around the Net today. I'm usually more interested in reading the comments than the article, so WATN is a dream come true. Comments + intelligent commentary p0wnz.

The topic today is Art As Misery and I recommend a read.

The author, Christopher Taylor, comes to the conclusion:

Life can be very hard, and it is easy to become self-pitying and miserable as you wallow in the hardships and horrors you sometimes have to face. The answer is not to embrace this as a life and worldview, but to fight free of it and face life once more; to look to others and help them in their need. The attraction of staying depressed and miserable can be a very perverse compulsion, but the way out is by working and focusing on someone else.

There was a reason I absolutely despised "Catcher in the Rye" in high school, and this is it. The glorification of pathos as heroism just doesn't appeal to me, especially as someone who has suffered from depression in the past, has decided to just not be depressed anymore, mostly by changing useless and damaging thought processes.

One of the most self destructive things one can do is dwell endlessly on ones own feelings and internal barometer, and make their world revolve around that center. The commenter Horst the in WATN post touches on this with his connection to postmodern deconstructionism, where it is no longer about producing a feeling in your audience, but prostituting your innermost self to your viewers/readers in a weak bid for attention, getting away with such impropriety and narcissism under the banner of “art.” I’m an extremely amateur artist, but I would no more expose myself like this than walk down the street naked (of course Zombietime keeps showing us the people who do both…must bleach my eyes now....).

Some of my artwork is dark, I’ll give that point, but I always try to have a sense of humor about it, it is not self-flagellation on canvas. Contrary to what viewers may think, most of my art really isn’t about anything, it’s just what came out when I put my pen on paper, and I can only hope someone else will think it’s neat too. My interests are weird, yes, but I learned years and years ago that someone can be just as “Goth” wearing white as black. You can be just as interesting, and probably more so, being happy than miserable and off-putting.

The people who idolize suffering have the Hemmingways of the world as heroes, since they don’t consider anything but discomfort (real or marginal, think people who file lawsuits so they can bring their comfort ferret without whom they have panic attacks into their dorm rooms) worthy of admiration. For my generation at least, the pressure to have a tragic background is incredible. Just look at college admissions. Every one has an essay choice to write about how you have “overcome adversity.” What if you haven’t had to? That’s a good thing, right? That’s what our grandfathers laid in bloody trenches for right? That's exactly why so many good brave men have come home in parts labeled 1 through 3.

Now hold up pathos as disgusting and wretched and one may have a point.

Crimestop Now!

2007-08-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

I recently went on a few days' trip to Las Vegas to spend some money in style, and read George Orwell's "1984" on the drive.

The passage I found the most striking is the definition of the newspeak word "crimestop" found in the book-within-a-book, Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, most particularly because I encounter just this attitude so very often in debate with leftists as to almost be unsurprising:

"Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of through which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental process as complete as that of a contortionist over his body."

Since compared to Orwell I am but a lightningbug to a kleig light, I've been calling it "willful ignorance" for years. The act of consciously denying and dismissing logic and fact, combined with the ability to force the conscious act of such denial completely out of one's memory as soon as it is committed, therefore rendering all illogic and denial inexistent and any of one's arguments remain unchallenged. Of course, if you are unchallenged, you win. Right?

For an excellent example of the functioning of crimestop in real life, engage in a discussion with a 9/11 "Truthist." I play Orwell bingo every time I do and invariably hit all 4 crimestop signifiers.

Try it yourself and report back!

Finished

2007-08-01T22:48:00.001-07:00

Wrapped up the last Harry Potter installment last week (in under 48 hours no less).

My only significant disappointment is that Snape's patronus didn't turn out to be Johnny Cash.

Number One

2007-07-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

I have been often accused these days of “only looking out for number one.”

It’s a nice big brush to paint Republicans and conservatives with, just vague enough to not really mean anything, but emotionally pointed enough to prick up inflammation in people who feel like they need others to look out for them.

My response: I can only look out for you after I’ve looked out for myself. If I’m a victim I can’t protect you. If I’m destitute I cannot raise you up. I succeed so that I can help others to succeed.

All I expect it you to want to succeed too, and be willing to work at it. I will not support those who refuse to support themselves. “Cannot” is one thing, “will not” is unacceptable.

I Have a Dream

2007-07-06T20:40:00.001-07:00

It's a small dream I guess, but a dream none the less.

I went and visited the USS Midway Museum last weekend with my husband as a sort of anniversary trip. I ditched the headphones and let him narrate, as he spent a substantial amount of the best years of his life going around in a big square in the Gulf on the USS Essex, which is somewhat similar to the Midway. And yes, I still have a hard time imagining what the musty, cramped, humid enlisted quarters would smell like packed with seventy exhausted young men.

As part of the exhibits being displayed in the hold (bay? big empty spot for planes below the deck? ah, it's a hanger deck) they had a bunch of pictures and documents from the Midway's stay in Japan. The Midway helped solve two problems, the first being Japan's venerability to other powers, and second our lack of strategic presence in the area. The pictures were what amazed me. Japanese officials chatting cordially with Navy Officers, the Emperor being welcomed aboard with honors. This, not fifty-ish years after the Japanese were our bitter and zealous enemies.

Think about it: 1940's: kamikaze pilots and Iwo Jima. 2000: State dinners, anime fans, and trendy sushi joints everywhere.

Here's my dream: in 2050 I want to be excited for my granddaughter, who's just been accepted to an overseas graduate program at one of Iraq's excellent universities. I want to contemplate taking a vacation on my 44th wedding anniversary to beautiful Tehran.

I believe in these people. I think it can happen. I think that plenty of them want it to happen too. I won't give up on this future.

Who'd Have Thunk?

2007-07-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

You know the Bible 80%!

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
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I haven't read the Bible in five years or so, but I used to read it once a year, to keep on top of the theological arguments I enjoyed. I usually find I know much more about Bible stories than religious people I encounter. I actually spend much of Sunday night explaining the message of the story of Job to a fellow non-Christian.

Abortion and Secular Morality

2007-07-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

I had a chance recently to write a short piece on why I believe abortion is immoral, from my secular standpoint. Please find below:

I’ve changed my mind in the past few years regarding abortion. Not very distantly I was a strong proponent of abortion on demand, and would argue with you all day long that human fetuses were nothing but parasitic organisms, owned entirely by the mother and at her complete disposal.

Now I admit that I’ve come to being pro-life. However, I’m more interested in changing people’s points of view so that abortion becomes an archaic, barbaric practice, such as the lobotomy, in the minds of the citizenry at large, rather than outlawing it. I’d rather doctors refuse to perform them out of their own conscience rather than fear of legal action.

You can see from my description that I’m an atheist. I have no religious or Biblical basis for being pro-life. Actually, it was part of this that lead me to my current position. You see, I do not believe in God, or heaven, the soul, reincarnation, or any other enduring spirit that exists outside of the physical body. I believe that the mind is the arbiter of the personality, and on the destruction of the physical components that make up the mind, the “person” will be gone as surely and permanently as the picture from a smashed television.

The clump of cells created by fertilization of a human egg has the singular astounding potential of developing into a human. It will create a self-aware animal that thinks and feels and exists independently, and has the ability to consider both the past and the future. A fetus might grow up to be a human that sows great destruction, or creates a new field of philosophy, or overturns Newtonian physics once and for all. Vastly more importantly, it might grow up to be your average human who experiences happiness and sadness doing all the small things that make up life, who worries about the future and ruminates on the past, and whose ability to do so is one of the universe’s natural wonders.

The deliberate destruction of existing potential to grow into a human offends me like the burning of the Library at Alexandria. It offends me like the Taliban destroying ancient Buddhist statues. It offends me like someone bulldozing Stonehenge because its in the way of where they’d like to plant radishes. It is the penultimate act of failing to recognize what is truly extraordinary and exceptional about humanity.

I already mentioned that I don’t believe in the concept of the soul or reincarnation. The person who could have grown from a destroyed fetus will never come back. They are gone forever. They do not have another chance. They do not go to heaven or come back recycled in another baby. Each fetus is the equivalent, in my mind, of the last existing blueprint of the greatest invention of the long dead grandmaster of a forgotten craft. If we put it in a museum and advertised it as such people would come from all over the world to admire it and feel part of something greater. People tell me tossing that blueprint into the fire because it annoys them in some way is a legitimate moral action. I am repulsed by that attitude.

Hopefully now you can see at least why I think abortion is immoral. I extend this immorality even to cases of rape and incest. The mother may be anguished for approximately nine months. The human that may have grown is robbed of the chance to ever be anguished. Neither will they ever be joyful, feel loved, hopeful, distraught, frightened, or content. The potential that they’ll grow up and want live, and think, and feel just as much as the rest of us do outweighs limited temporal discomfort. I would no more be able to accept someone destroying any human fetus than I would approve of them setting torch to the last library on Earth.

Things That Make Me Go Grrr

2007-06-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

I usually like Hannity fairly well. It's something to listen to that's not as vapid as FM, undoubtedly, and he covers lots of news items I wouldn't be aware of if I relied on the main stream media.

But.

But his attitude toward the presidential candidates is abysmal. He's a Rudy-bot, that's clear, but he actually, in the space of several minutes, told every other candidate who's not Rudy, Thompson, or Romney, that they need to get off the stage and give the big boys more time. As soon as he said that he turned around and praised the effort to get the border fence built. Which is being headed by... a presidential candidate that he wants to see abandon the stage to the "real contenders." The same presidential candidate who wrote the fence bill in the first place and got it passed.

I'm sick of this. I want to vote for the person who best represents me, not the one who's most popular, or has the most money, or the best hair. I want the one I who will sit there in Washington and be of the same mind as I.

All these whiners are doing insisting that people abandon the dark horse because gees their principles are excellent but they're just not shiny enough, is to guarantee we get another round of crappy candidates that appeal to the "fence sitters."

I personally don't give an ancient flatulent shih-tuz for this kind of thinking.

See Who Salutes

2007-06-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

Scary things coming out the jaw of the Hillary Machine:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

“Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”

“It’s time to put the common good, the national interest, ahead of individuals.”

It all sounds very warm and fuzzy and "for the children," doesn't it...comrade? I was under the impression we fought the cold war for a reason, and here it sneaks right back up under the guise of quashing individuality for the sake of fairness.

This frightens me. It appeals to the lowest common denominator in human reason: jealously. This is the attitude that sound like, “If I can’t have a BMW, then the CEO of that fortune 500 company can’t either.” You can almost feel the gloating at someone else being brought down to their “proper” level.

I know this feeling well, since I used to share it. I was extremely bitter toward people who had more than me, made more than me, or did more than me. I wondered why they should get it so easily, why I should live in a crappy basement apartment and not afford food while they jetted around in nice cars.

To my credit, I never supported redistribution, since I realized that to many I was the wealthy one, and those people wanted my meager stuff redistributed to them as well. I got over the notion entirely when I joined the business world at full tilt, and gathered first-hand experience of the tremendous sacrifices of money, time, and life, that most CEOs shovel into their companies. They should be rewarded for that, and I’m glad they are. If there were no reward, why would anyone try?

Out of the goodness of their hearts? Right.

I recommend at this juncture, that everyone who hasn’t yet at least make a stab at reading “Atlas Shrugged.” It’s a big fat book, written by an atheist, but it paints a very compelling picture of a world under people like Hillery, who would grind up all the strong, innovative, productive individuals to fertilize the bed of mongoloid fairness.

Think about fairness for a second: if we all lived in small metal boxes of the same size, and were fed the same gruel in the same amount, and wore the same grey jumpsuits, worked at the same factory jobs for the same number of hours, and no one was allowed to do better than anyone else at anything, at least it would all be fair, right? We would all be equal, right?

People who advocate small steps toward that future scare the hell out of me.

Hat tip to Word Around the Net.

3 Small Tips for Living

2007-06-04T19:07:00.000-07:00

For those who struggle with it.

1. If you want to feel better about your life and what you have in it, spend an hour each evening in the non-ambulatory ward of your local nursing home. (You’ll feel much worse at first, then you’ll start to appreciate a lot of things you didn’t notice before.)

2. It doesn’t matter how much you bounce around, as long as the target is in the sights when the hammer comes down.

3. Depression can be alleviated by exercise. Problem is, you have to get off your ass and go do it. You need to do it anyways. Excuses are the rocket fuel of depression. Before you can start recovering in any way, you need to commit to stop making them.

Pick One

2007-06-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

Shrinkwrapped has another interesting post on marriage. I started to leave a comment, that once again turned into an essay:

being able to enter and a maintain a healthy marriage reflects the maturity of the individuals involved

This quote you’ve included from Occam’s Beard touches on a point that I believe a good many of my generation (the tail end of X) are missing, among the others you’ve mentioned: Part of a good marriage is determined by the choosing, not just the maintaining.

I’ve come to the belief, from observing my peers, that the societal unwillingness to make value judgments that has prevailed in the last 50 years has affected their ability to make good relationship choices. They are somewhat mired in the idea that it is unbearably uncouth to set a standard of behavior that they find acceptable in others, and more often than not end up with partners who’s behavior they are unhappy with, due to their inability or unwillingness to ask for better. From my peer group I hear a lot of statements such as “but that would be forcing my opinion on them” and “but they’re their own person.” It seems all well and good for casual relationships, but trying to raise a family or secure a marriage with two people who are determined to not attempt to influence each other spells apathy at best, and disaster at worst.

My friends are aghast when they learn that I quit smoking at my husband’s (then fiancée’s) demand. How could he be so controlling? How could I let myself be judged like that? I recognized that smoking was an unhealthy behavior, and though I did not want to quit, the balance of positive things that he brought to our relationship overwhelmed the discomfort of ending a damaging habit. In marriage we try to enhance each other’s positive behaviors, and eliminate or minimize those that cause distress to the relationship. This process necessarily includes value judgments as to what is positive and what is destructive, and the willingness to recognize that not all parts of a person’s character (whether theirs or your own) are desirable.

This would be more of a non-issue if my peers chose someone with opinions and beliefs closer to their own, but, for whatever reason, they do not. In many cases I believe this to be because they have never examined what their opinions and beliefs are in the first place, and so cannot begin to find someone who compliments them. It seems they are throwing darts blind, and tend to marry whichever one gets hit and sticks around long enough. Or worse, in my opinion, the one who gives them the greatest visceral feeling of romantic love.

The most consternation I’ve caused with my peers when discussing marriage is when I ask what their potential intended will bring to the relationship: What are their long-term goals? Do you think they will continue to succeed in their career? Can they provide a sound household? How do you get along with their family? It is extremely offensive to some that I consider things other than romantic love in evaluating a potential relationship. It seems to be a hallmark of the post-Boomer generations that “love conquers all.” The notion that someone would choose a mate based on the financial benefit or stability they could offer does sound archaic and backwards, but if you think you may want to be a stay-at-home-mom, the choice of a man whose life goal is to be a radical performance artist is a recipe for discontent, no matter how “in love” he makes you feel.

Again, this concerns value judgments. How much do I value a future as a stay-at-home-mom? How much do I value his creativity and spontaneity? What do I think I will value 20 years from now? One needs to load up the alternatives and see how the scales tilt.

Watching those scales, before or after marriage, is something my peer group seems unable or unwilling to do, favoring instead a combination of continuing romantic excitement and perfection without change to bolster their relationships. Unfortunately neither of those factors exists more than fleetingly.

Radical

2007-05-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

Today, I am subversive.

Yes. Today, I am a radical.

I went to my local WalMart-sized Ennui & Latte this afternoon to buy a book to read to my infirm grandmother so I don't have to keep thinking up interesting things to talk about that don't involve Korean horror movies or politics, both of which inspire in me amounts of frothing at the mouth that probably wouldn't be good for her heart.

Of course the first thing I see when I walk through the tastefully appointed faux-hardwood enameled merchandise attrition detector (one of these days they'll just install guard turrets and have done with it) is a display dedicated to Algore's latest shocking magnum opus The Assault on Reason (highly damp NYT fawning piece linked, I do hope the author had a chance to change after writing that). The title alone causes my irony meter to needle dangerously into the red, but that's de rigeur for such matters.

Well actually, it was not so much that I saw it, rather I had to take a swift dodge to the left to squeeze through the less-than-ADA-compliant gap between it and the counter to get into the store proper. They wanted you to see the Algore book, dammit.

But, oh, what is that there, in the corner of the bottom shelf of the rack, with two measly rows stacked five books deep to minimize possible contamination... could it be? Yes. Yes, it is, it's The Reagan Diaries.

I pick one up, and commence in the usual cover reading, page flipping, and price checking so common to bookstores. I've found it's generally useless as thunking melons in the supermarket, everyone does it, but WHY? Does anyone really know what they're listing for? I get a number of looks from other shoppers darting over to snatch up Al's book, and realize I'm holding the SoCal equivalent of a rod of uranium. I think the other shoppers were getting a bit concerned about how close to it they could get without turning green.

Of course, I can't just sneak over to the counter with the book cover turned toward my leg like the time I bought the naughty thing Anne Rice wrote before she got clobbered by Jesus, I've still got to buy the book for grandma. And I'm going to have to ask where it is. And it's by Michael Crichton. And he's a denier.

Oh boy.

And the lady at the info kiosk is big, both in size and lesbianism. She already looks angry when I get to the counter. She looks like someone who gets angry at the breakfast table because the Cheerios are clearly a vestige of oppressive British imperialism.

Oh boy.

I decide to buck up and not try to hide my current handful. "The Reagan Diaries" are 700 pages long after all, and I'm not going to be able to pass it off as the latest JTHM, despite the black cover.

If looks could kill I'd have been a pile of phasered carbon dust before the info kiosk. I asked if she "could please look up Travels for me, and uh, it's by Michael Crichton." She looks at me. "Uh, it's nonfiction." She looks at me.

"Er, in that case, could you just point me toward the travel section?"

Now she types. She types like each key is the pointed head of an oil company administrator. She says, "over here," and "didn' know he wrote nonfiction."

I follow her over to the travel section. She pulls out the book, says "Here," and thrusts it into my hand before turning on her heel and stalking away. I suddenly feel very small and vulnerable in this cavernous, mocha perfumed warehouse. Perhaps passing close to the military history section on my way out will help. It does.

At the counter it suddenly strikes me what it felt like to slouch into Auntie Darla's Paperback Emporium round about 1970 and ask the doily draped bespectacled octogenarian clerk-ess for a copy of Notes on Anarchism.

I almost expected someone to tell me to cut my hair and get a job. But I'm buying Reagan. I probably have a job. I'm probably an oppressor, and have had my hair nicely trimmed by my own personal wage slaves.

I feel both frightened and elated. I have Stood Up. I purchased something Subversive, something Challenging. I alternately want to crawl under the table and hide, or shout "Yes, all you people peeking at me! I HAVE paid my capitalist pig money for a conservative book. And I will READ IT TO MY CHILDREN! MWAHAA!"

Or maybe I'll just go home and give it a read. It's a free country after all, and we're all entitled to buy legal stuff, even if it's on the bottom shelf and the Ennui & Latte staff give you dirty looks.

Next time I want to feel subversive I believe I'll go to Bebe and ask for a size 10.

Now that will shock 'em.

I'm Getting Paranoid

2007-05-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

An MSN story I ran across today:

“A Goodwill Industries worker who turned in more than $5,000 she found in donated pajama pants will get to keep the money because the owner could not be found.”

Okay, first off, the $5,000 ended up at Goodwill. Was it not like Goodwill couldn’t use $5,000? Isn’t that what they’re for? I was thinking that the manager’s decision was somewhat reasonable due to the fact that the employee was going to use the money on education rather than, say, cocaine, then I read....

“The money was in an envelope with a note naming the intended recipient.”

So. Okay. There was a NAMED INTENDED RECIPIENT. Why did the money not go to the person it was clearly named to go to?

I smell a rodent of some sort. Perhaps I am just losing faith in humanity, but I can think of at least five better things to do with that money, including firstly giving it to the person it was obviously intended to go to.

EDIT 05/26/07: I realized last night that there may be at least one good reason for this, namely if the intended recipiant's name was "John Smith" or the like, and tracking down the real one would have been nearly impossible. I still think, however, that since the money ended up at a charity organization, it should have gone to charity.

I Object

2007-05-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

I had a comment to contribute to Shrinkwrapped's post The Immigration Conundrum but it became too large, so I am posting it here for prosperity.

Please read the above post, which is excellent, for context.

My post continues:

Although I know full well the plural of anecdote is not data, but I am a good example of the change that can occur in opinion over time and experience.

I was born and raised in a border city. From childhood my friends and peers were a mixed group of races with a bit of Anglo, Hispanic, and Asian communities all colliding at once. It’s probably one of the few places in the world where you can order your squid enchilada with wasabi and a side of french fries (it’s good, trust me).

Over the last twenty years what was a thriving multicultural community has become somewhat of a nightmare. Some things I’m going to relate may sound like racist generalizations, but living here you’d find it’s just the way things are.

There are parts of my city where white, black, and Asian people cannot go, the police cannot go there without backup. You would be amazed that within our 21st-century city there are areas that look like Tijuana barrios, complete with sewage in the streets and livestock running free. The gangs are virulent and extremely aggressive. In some neighborhoods the Mexican flag is a omnipresent object. Seeing bumper stickers of a cartoon man wearing a sombrero urinating on the US flag is common. The largest problem our schoolteachers have here is the extremely high percentage of children who don’t speak English, don’t care to, and who’s parents don’t care either. One can pretty much assume that the person with whom they are involved in a automobile accident has no insurance, no license, and will “forget” any English they know when the police arrive.

Even in fairly well-off middle-class neighborhoods, one cannot put their laundry to dry on a line, it will be stolen. Anything left in the yard will be stolen, cars are broken into constantly. In my own personal experience I’ve lived in multiple places where I had to literally go sit on top of the community washer and read a book, or I’d see my clothing on the Mexican children in the complex the next week. Illegal Mexicans live in the canyons around neighborhoods, which become centers for drugs, prostitution, and other illegal activities. When I was a child the police made us take down a tree fort that we built in the canyon next to my house. Today there is a camp of 50-70 people there, complete with wrecked cars, raw sewage, open fires in the brush, semi-domesticated animals and assorted animal manure, and the police refuse to touch it. Even when the camp residents steal from the surrounding neighborhood, and citizens are assaulted, nothing is done.

I have indeed met some people who are clearly illegals who are good people, just trying to make it somewhere, but increasingly over the years my experience has been of very aggressive, combative people, who are furious with you for existing, even as they demand what they perceive as entitlements while literally trashing everything around them.

I’m angry that these people, who flaunted the laws from the beginning, continue to flaunt them, do not care about America, demonstrate no sense of caring about anything around them or even of their own possessions, are going to get a free pass, that I will have to pay for. I don’t want my children to grow up in a (excuse me, but it’s the truth) shit-hole like Tijuana, and that’s what they seem to want to –illegally- bring here. I’m angry that when anyone who can sneak over here can get benefits and entitlements, my citizenship is worth practically nothing. I’m angry that I must obey the laws or face the consequences, but a blind eye is turned on wrongdoing by this group of people.

I used to enjoy our multiculturalism. It made me feel good to be around different groups of people and cultures. Now, I am filled with rage if I’m asked to “press 2 for English.” It makes me seethe when my voter registration is printed in Spanish. Every time I see a “piss on the US” bumper sticker I seriously consider taking my college-trained self and highly intelligent husband and moving somewhere where citizenship means something.

It’s wrong, I know. I should be sympathetic, I know. However, I will accept no solution other than the rule of law. Without that, yeah, we might as well get used to living in TJ, that’s what we’re going to look like in 25 years.

The Pet Goat

2007-02-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

Personally, I don’t understand the frothing at the mouth about our President spending a few extra minutes reading the story “The Pet Goat” to students after being informed that the plane crashes into the World Trade Center were intentional.

The criticism is stupid.

Simply stupid.

The President of the United State, Republican or Democrat, adored or reviled, does not take five steps down a corridor without immediate supervision by the Secret Service. He does not enter a building until it has been examined with bomb-sniffing dogs and completely cordoned by federal agents. The teachers at the school President Bush was making an appearance at on September 11th were most likely subjected to background checks and possibly security interviews. The President IS NOT moved without the coordination of all the agents responsible for his security.

Air Force One occasionally lands at my husband’s place of work, and the President has recently made several speeches there. The civilian employees there must have their identification at all times, be where they’re supposed to be, and not go on rooftops without clearance. They will be shot if they act like your typical idiot and not see to it that they make themselves completely harmless and non-threatening.

My point is that for President Bush to get up and run out of the room would be disruptive to the schedule that the Secret Service has laid out to the fraction of the minute. When you’re the President you are no longer your own person, you belong to your security. I strongly suspect that the President is not at liberty to go to the restroom outside the White House without a Secret Service agent standing there right outside the stall and thirty others informed to the second about his position and actions. Take note, if you have public pissing privacy problems… don’t run for President.

The people straining their sphincters about “The Pet Goat” are demonstrating their abysmal understanding of what the life of the President is all about.

In my personal opinion, I think President Bush showed great restraint by calmly continuing with his schedule until his security could safely move him to a place where he could be briefed on what amounted to an extremely sensitive national security matter.

Two more points: Firstly, there were no decisions the President could have directly made at this time that would have changed the outcome of 911, by the time the pertinent information got to his handlers it was already too late. Unfortunately the President, like the rest of us, is not psychic, nor equipped to receive encrypted radio communications. Secondly, there is no information that could somehow have gotten to him faster. We all thought the first plane crash was a tragic accident, it took a few minutes and a second hit for reality to set in and us to realize we were truly under attack.

It is truly unfortunate that some loud people in the US are so terribly ill-reasoned about events, especially when there is plenty of documentation and evidence to work with.

I guess some trust Michael Moore more than they do their own powers of reasoning.

Edit to add:

Hmmm, on a sort of unrelated note, the Secret Service may have thwarted an assisination attempt on the morning of September 11th.

See this reference, provided on Wikipedia under the heading of "My Pet Goat" - http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essayaninterestingday

(couldn't get html tags to work right, sorry.)

Chelation Therapy and Autism: Thinking Rationally

2007-02-13T06:31:00.000-08:00

If one applies a bit of critical thought to the claims that chelation therapy will “cure” autism, the augments of advocates fall apart very quickly.

Think About the Advertising Claims

First and foremost, a number of web sites advocating chelation therapy (CT) for use with childhood diagnoses of autism make frighteningly unreasonable claims about its safety as a medical procedure. This should throw up a number of red flags at first glance.

From the first few links that appear when “chelation therapy” is googled one can see a number of these unreasonable claims (and I’m not cherry-picking, I’m taking the first few advocacy sites that came up, you can easily check up on me using Google):

From http://www.drcranton.com/chelation.htm: (Site references CT for use in heart patients, not autism, but is making very similar claims.):

“How Chelation Works Remains a Mystery” – but you’re going to use it on heart patients anyways? If you don’t know how it works, how do you know the treatment is actually having an effect, rather than some other unrelated process or some additional treatment the patient is taking?

“Chelation Research is All Positive, There is No Negative Data” – This is simply unreasonable and untrue. Any effective procedure is going to have some negative contraindication at some point. Think about it, there is even negative data about something as benign as taking one aspirin a day as part of a heart regimen, and even very simple treatments may not work effectively on some people’s conditions.

“If Chelation Therapy is so Good Why is it Not More Widely Accepted?” - If you care to read this section of the site, you can observe the author going into paroxysms about how there’s a vast conspiracy in the medical field to suppress treatments that have not been researched using double-blind testing. Of course, when you’re comfortable stating that how your treatment works is a mystery, one wouldn’t be very surprised that you’d object to it being tested. Scare-mongering about the rest of the “oppressive” medical field is a typical quack response.

In the interest of space I’m not going to continue further, but please look out for claims such as these, and especially others touting any therapy as “100% safe” or a “guaranteed cure.” NO treatment strong enough to be effective, or that even utilized a needle stuck in your body at some point is “100% safe.” Even a simple saline drip has potential complications. THINK about it when someone makes these claims. What else are they expecting you to ignore? No treatment is a “guaranteed cure.” Especially for a complex neurological disorder such as autism. The only thing it is absolutely guaranteed to do is separate you from your money.

Think About the Treatment Process:

Chelation therapy as advocated for the treatment of autism typically involves administering an IV drip of one of several chemicals such as DMSA, DMPS, ALA or EDTA, over several sittings or several days. These chemicals may also be administered orally or intramuscularly, but I’ve seen most advocates using CT for autism recommending IV administration.

This therapy is commonly used to treat acute heavy metal poisoning in children and adults. Without going into a lot of biochemistry, the administered chemical binds to heavy metal molecules in the body, changing it into a water-soluble form that is able to pass into the bloodstream and exit the body through the kidneys.

This treatment WILL NOT fix neurological or organ damage that has already occurred! The only thing it will do is remove existing heavy metals from the body, with some degree of success. There are various side effects, ranging from mild headache, stomach upset, etc. to rare cases of kidney toxicity. There are reports of at least one child having died from complications of CT.

The rationale for using CT in autism cases revolves around the unsupported theory that autism is caused by exposure to mercury through a preservative (Thimerosal) which was commonly used in childhood vaccinations. At the suggestion of the FDA, thimerosal was removed from the majority of childhood vaccines as of 1999, although no evidence of it causing amounts of mercury above safety guidelines in infants was ever found.

Even some advocates of CT for autism will admit that there are no measurable amounts of mercury or other heavy metals found in laboratory tests of autistic children’s blood or urine, though I did find one advocacy site claiming that mercury would bind to internal organs and could only be detected by biopsy. Of course, an autistic child could definitely be exposed to mercury secondarily in their environment, and eating some seafood may raise mercury to detectable levels.

So:
1. CT is a treatment, with side effects and potential complications, used for removing heavy metals from the body in cases of acute poisoning.
2. CT will not repair existing damage caused by heavy metal poisoning, only assuage further damage.
3. Autistic children typically do not have measurable amounts of heavy metals on blood or urine testing.
4. Potential exposure through vaccinations is unsupported, and extremely unlikely after 1999.

In my opinion, this leads me to believe that the use of CT for autism is basically the useless introduction of a non-indicated medical treatment in order to separate the parents of autistic children from their money.

Unfortunately these irresponsible practitioners prey on the feelings of parent who are so willing to do anything to help their children. What worries me the most is the instances where CT for autism advocates also suggest or demand that parents discontinue conventional medical or psychiatric treatments to ensure that CT is effective. I see that practice as the equivalent of telling someone not to have their broken nose set at the hospital, since you’re going to give them a coffee enema that should fix everything right up.

I encourage anyone with an autistic child to think very critically before utilizing any treatment being touted as a “cure” or that references heavy metal poisoning or toxicity. If anything, discuss these treatments with your primary physician, and have laboratory screenings for heavy metals done in their office, so you can compare any future results obtained by CT advocates.

Another Silent Minority

2007-02-11T00:08:00.000-08:00

I've been doing some cursory reading on conservative women and feminism.

Actually, VERY cursory, since there is an accute dearth of anything about conservative feminists anywhere, and they are widely rumored to be mythological. This is obviously not true, you're looking at the bona-fide typeset of one.

Unfortunately for you neoscholarly types, I will not be referencing any feminist studies or arguments here. If you're looking for postmodernism and deconstructionism I will gladly point you toward your nearest university's programs in womyn's or ethnic studies. Personally, I can stand your typical feminist writings for almost up to five minutes. Close availabilty of duct tape, nose plugs, rum, and Bayer increases this time frame nominally.

You retroscholarly types can rest assured that I will not be making up any new words, or torturing existing words into unrecognizable cognitive frames. Everything contained in this blog comes right out of my trusty 1952 edt. Oxford College Dictionary.

Here are my thoughts on being a conservative feminist:

I am in agreement with the typical feminist movement on several facets:
1. Women should have the right to vote, and have their vote equal to that of men.
2. Women should have the right to own property and have inheritance rights.
3. Women should not be themselves the property of their spouses or relatives.
4. Women should be able to conduct business in the same capacity as men, and have the same legal rights as to earnings etc.

The singular most important cause that I support for females, is the right, protected by law, to start the grand race of life at the same point as males.

That's it.

At this point I break so hard to the right of popular feminism that I shock most of my friends and family. I'll detail the most "radical" of my views.

Men are Not the Problem:

Maybe at one point they were. At this point they are not. I do thank the generations of men and women before me for the work they put forth to bring us to our current situation, and I acknowledge that I really cannot understand what it was like only 50-80 years ago for women in this country. In some ways, I'm sure it was not as comfortable as today, but in others I'm not convinced it was so bad.

However, men today are not covert agents of a conspiring patriarchy. Some of them are stupid, and some are brutal, and some are ignorant, but those types are a minor and infrequent annoyance. In the long run, it really doesn't matter. They're not legally allowed to oppress any individual significantly, and those laws are being enforced. As far as bigotry in the workplace goes, any man who walks that path should soon expect to make a woman and her trial lawyer very very happy.

The laws are in place. The starting line has been chalked equally for everyone. This point in time would be a really good one to lay off men for a while, and quite possibly even consider some of the *gasp* beneficial roles men have in our society.

Women Are Not Stupid:

And are perfectly capable of rational thought regarding the consequences of their actions.

This part always gets me in trouble. I see women who claim to be feminists make long chains of terrible relationship and life decisions, then blame the "patriarcy" on their failure to succeed the way they've envisioned.

Modern feminism has created an aura of evil around men, and imbued them with magical, irresistable powers with which they control the minds of innocent and unsuspecting women. Exerting this esoteric power, they make otherwise budding radical feminists get crazy ideas in their heads, like it would be a good idea to get married and have children. With a wave of their Scepter of Patriarchy, women fall into line like good little brainless lambs, and only their wiser feminist sisters can save them.

I call some serious bullshit on that.

Women have the innate, human ability to examine their surroundings, their actions, and their decisions with a critical eye. They also (unless I'm a rare abberation) can project their observations into the forseeable future to predict reasonable outcomes. I am frankly appalled at the number of women who choose not to do any of this.

This is not the fault of men. Only an individual has the ability to control this aspect of their life. Only an individual can choose to apply themselves rationally to their life. No one can do it for them, but no one can take it away.

I used to spend some significant time up in the vicenity of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and found a hobby in walking over to Isla Vista on weekend nights and observing the human species at its.... most authentic....if not exactly best. (If you're not familiar with the Isla Vista phenomenon, lucky you. It's the college town equivalent of the Tiajuana nightclub strip.)

Almost every time I would see young underdressed women, girls really, most definitely underage, sloshed out of their minds, reeling like sailors down the street. Occasionally I'd see them later, clinging to some sober man. Invariably, the paper the following week would contain cries of rage about rapes and sexual assaults, and call for punishment and re-education of men.

I made myself a minor pariah by countering these publications thusly:

A. No one made these girls put on the scantest amounts of clothing they could legally get away.
B. They left their houses all by themselves, they were not dragged.
C. No one forced alcholol down their gullets.
D. Due the the extremely active women's groups at UCSB there was very slim chance that they were unaware that every male human on earth is a potential rapist and murderer.

Therefore, the women themselves had made a series of poor choices, throughout which they conciously ignored information that could have protected them. Although the man who assaulted them is clearly a criminal and should be punished as such, they are culpable for their chain of actions.

As it is now 1:30am, I will post an edit to continue later.

Indulge Meme

2006-12-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

I do realize I've been slacking in my blogging since I've started. It's just that Final Fantasy XII is just SO GOOD. I've got a couple of things percolating, and will fill in with a couple of long posts in the next few days.

In the meantime, I've been hit with a meme by Rightwingprof. I must oblige, otherwise I feel I might be glowered at, and a glowering by Rightwingprof I'm not sure I could endure.

Here goes: Six Weird Things About Me

1. Palindromes: I will only get out of bed if the current time is a palindrome, which means I typically get up at 7:07 or 7:17. I get very nervous about the day if I get up on a non-palindrome time. I have to turn my alarm off before the minute passes, or it doesn’t count.

(For those of you who think I’m a pansy for not getting up at some ungodly hour before dawn, I got up at 4:34am through jr. high, high school, and two years out of college working in agriculture. I feel I deserve to never see another sunrise.)

2. Music: I like all sorts of music, and there’s at least one song in every genre that I enjoy. I have very odd mix CDs: one of my favorites consists entirely of Marilyn Manson (circa 1990’s) and Debussy.

3. Nationality: People think I’m from England. I speak monthly at workshops my business puts on, and I am asked where I’m really from almost every time. My secret is that I spent five years in speech therapy to correct a profound lisp and stutter. They taught me how to speak in full sentences without using slang, therefore, I must be British.

4. Prosopagnosia: I am face-blind. Interestingly, I have an unusual form of prosopagnosia due to undiagnosed vision problems in early childhood. I could not see far enough to make out facial features, therefore never developed proper recognition characteristics. They popped me in an FMRI a few years ago as part of a prosopagnosia study and confirmed that almost all visual data I received activates my language centers rather than visual centers.

5. Cooking: Oddly enough, I love chemistry and hate cooking. One would think they’re the same thing, but I have a serious mental impairment when it comes to getting in the kitchen. I made edible mashed potatoes and steamed cabbage last night, and it was a major accomplishment. I have failed to boil water correctly, and ruined top ramen.

6. Bad Habit: I interrupt myself if I have a really good thought while I’m talking, and just stand there and think about it momentarily. One of my coworkers has been making inquiries as to whether I might be having petite mal seizures a few times a day. Apparently she’s been informed that I’m fine, just weird.

Veterans' Day

2006-11-11T00:42:00.000-08:00

Throughout my life Veterans’ Day has been a time to honor those Americans who fought in World Wars I and II, Vietnam and the Korean War, and those who recently served in our struggle to win Iraqi freedom and in some part the ideological direction of world.

I’d like to pause this year to consider some veterans far removed from our living generations of American soldiers.

There is a road by a tavern in the state of New York where a strength of about one thousand men, with no weapons but muzzleloaders and pistols, and no armor but cloth jackets, stood to face ten thousand approaching British and Hessian soldiers. Having been deluged with images of modern wars I can hardly imagine what standing in that field on August 27th, 1776 felt like. You could fire perhaps two shots by long gun before it’s usefulness was exceeded, then you had what was in your pistol if you were lucky enough to have one, after that… bayonets and knives in immediate quarters. Are you ready? Here they come.

This was the first true battle of the American Revolution, the first battle fought by any American army: and we lost.

We did not only lose, we were roundly trounced. The British had forty cannons. We had three, and not in the right place. One unit that managed to hold their position did so at the loss of 90% of their men. Reportedly the British felt their honor in battle was besmirched by victory over such a sorry force.

Until 1783, for the next seven years, the men of a few wayward British colonies paid with their blood for the idea of a country that had yet to be created, for a notion that was untested, unproven, unreliable, and altogether new to the entire world. These men fought when we lost, and lost, and lost again. They burned the homes and fields they had built with their own hands so the British could find no sustenance there. They marched into nightmares where two walls of soldiers shot point-blank at each other at the agonizingly slow place of a musket reloading, the battle being over when one force broke and fled, or everyone lay dead.

All this, for an idea.

For the dream of America men fought when they had no food, when they had no ammunition, when they had no weapons at all, and often when they had no hope of victory, only of an honorable death.

We have been handed the deed that they bought so dearly over two hundred and twenty years ago. We have more riches and magic than could possibly be imagined by all those Revolutionaries combined. We have risen to Olympian heights over our humble beginnings, in an astonishingly short span of time. What I fear we are losing is the heart and courage of those on whose backs we stand. That deed slips farther out of our fingers every time we settle for the quick solutions, every time we become too timid and cowed to stand up for our place in the world, and worse, every time we refrain from teaching our children what a tremendous cost was paid for what they have.

This Saturday, when you take a moment to reflect on our Veterans, please include in your prayers or thoughts those that were brave enough to die for us before we even were. Keep their memory with you when you make decisions that will set the course of this nation, it is on the fields of their deaths we build our lives.

Missing the Point

2006-10-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

I can almost understand those Republicans who are commited to giving their own party a thrashing by voting Democrat at the polls this November, though I think they're foolish and will want to eat that vote before too long. I can understand those that want to vote out every encumbant anywhere and at least try to start over. I heard Tom Delay on the AM yesterday, pleading with people to reelect their encumbants. I honestly don't see the point. If it's garbage already, it's not going to magically turn into pearls after being reelected for the umpteenth time. I personally think the American people should ride through Capitol Hill like the horsemen of the apocalypse, lay waste and ruin, and remind the spoiled brats currently running our country who signs their paychecks. And we should have done it yesterday.

What I cannot understand is the cadre of folks who think they're just going to stay home, ride this one out.

Regardless of how much voters may have to hold their noses over candidates for public offices, we are going to be in a world of hurt if the conservative masses take the media's advice and give up this year. Have you noticed there's no "Get out the Vote" campaigns this time around? Every other story on the news (what I see of it) is about a poll stating that Republicans are staying home, with a conspicuous lack of urging the populus to do it's civic duty.

Anyhow, regardless of candidates, the hurt is going to come from the propositions and bills on the ballot if we stay silent.

In my state we are facing a grand total of $42,600,000,000 (that's billions folks) in new bond measures. These are unsurprisingly characterized as a tax-free way to save babies and old people, turn California into an environmental Eden, and save the world. Anyone who doesn't vote for this is a seal-clubbing baby-hating bastard.

I am that bastard. We already have taxes that are intended to pay for these things, don't tell me that we need to spend effectively 80 billion (after interest) more unless you can show me that EVERY SINGLE DIME of the taxes already collected for road repair, and park creation, and welfare for old folks is being spent in the most efficent manner humanly possible. I already know it's not, so I won't be contributing to make an even bigger, less efficent system that loads California up with even more outrageous debt.

That's just one example. If you stayed at home you would also miss the chance to vote again on parental notification for abortions, and to limit the government's power of eminent domain. Each is a no-brainer, and one the left desparately hopes you ignore by skipping this election and staying home with your 200 channels.

This is Not a Democracy

2006-10-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

Now that I've sealed my fate by publishing a blog with a highly google-able title, I have a short disclaimer regarding blog comments:

I review my comments before posting, in part because I hate spam comments, in part because I already have my nerves frayed enough at work and you really don't want to see me go all Defcon 4, man the torpedos.

It ain't pretty, I don't like doing it.

Therefore, I slaughter my free range rude before it has time to spawn. If you would like your comments posted to be read by all and sundry, follow these few rules. Please keep in mind that I am the Elected President, Dictator for Life, and Reincarnation of the Patron Saint of this blog, and I declare only I have free speech rights. Don't like it? Get your own blog. They're free.

1. Ad hominem no bueno

2. Any correspondance submitted as a comment to this blog hereby becomes my property which I may republish and mock at will without respect to intellectual rights claims. By posting a comment to this blog you explicitly agree to waive your intellectual rights to any such correspondance.

3. Any use of cutesy derogatory names for the President, such as Bu$h, Bushitler, Chimpy McBushitler, etc. is stupid. You can do better than that. Come on, impress me.

4. The more intellegent and reasoned your comment, the greater chance is has to be posted. Regardless of the fact that I am a die-hard curmudgeon, and look forward to a fulfilling retirement of shaking my cane at "damn kids," I do enjoy conflicting opinions and debate. What I do not enjoy is having my blood pressure raised by people with talking points chiseled onto their frontal lobes. If you send me one-liners from Kos (and I know what they are, isn't the interweb great!) you'll probably not make it into the hallowed Sent West archives.

Seeing that I only have one comment so far (thank you WarSong, you're the best) this doesn't seem like more than an exercise in hubris at the moment, but hubris is tasty with pita, and it's always better to have things in place up front.

Now you can't say I didn't warn you.

Unschooling

2006-10-03T21:38:00.000-07:00

I have recently been introduced to the concept of "Unschooling" and as a rabid homeschooling advocate and proponent of the elimination of all vestiges of the current public school system, I am horrified.

Horrified.

I'm not going into a lengthy disscussion of what constituted unschooling here, for two very important reasons:

1. Apparantly unschoolers can't define it themselves (off to a great start here, guys)

2. Google "Unschooling" to find myraid pages that are just dying to tell you about it. There are hundreds of supporting sites, and no significant criticism that I can find (yet).

Firstly, let me state that I thoroughly dislike the public school system. I feel that I was a sucess in public school at the mercy of several very excellent teachers and despite the standardized curriculum, not because of it. I would like to homeschool my children to ensure that they are taught to their level and are not held back by the "teaching to the lowest common denominator" that occurs in public school. The other reasons, of course, are so I can indoctrinate them fully to be little evil conservative capitalists AND get them a decent education in biology (no warning stickers on MY textbooks, no sir).

That said, I think unschooling is the worst thing to happen to children short of being kidnapped and forced into the Zimbabwian army. I'll keep it to one reason:

Life Sucks.

When you are an adult you get really fun things like taxes and mortgage payments and insane middle management. Not everything will or can be fun, blissful and personally fulfilling.

You will discover that once doing something you find fun, blissful and personally fulfilling is your job, you'll probably hate it. You will discover you need this green thing called "money" if you expect to live anywhere other than your parent's basement. With the skills you have been able to teach yourself from playing video games all day and watching TV for most of your life because your parents had this idea that you would spontaneously decide to teach yourself calculus at some point, you will be able to get a job in a horrid greasy place with an evil hairy oragutan-like manager who will most certianly not give a crap if you've "found your bliss" that day.

Out here in life, where the rest of us live, one must often do things they do not like, and often do these things for a long time, so that we may do things that we DO like later.

It's called delayed gratification. It's a real difficult concept, much akin to space plasma physics, and I understand that many may never fully grasp it.

Yes, it is so much easier to let little Johnny and little Suzy do what ever they like all day and pretend that they are getting an education. Lord have mercy on you when they turn 16.

Hat tip to
Parentalcation for finding me yet another reason to never sleep again.

Not to Brag

2006-09-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought....

Outcast Genius
91 % Nerd, 78% Geek, 52% Dork

The Nerd, Geek, Dork Test

Given that I spent part of my Saturday night reading a textbook on Digital Electronics (and found an error in one of their examples) I'm not terribly suprised.

My lack of being able to speak Klingon brought down my Dork factor significantly. That and I'm a moderately attractive female human, who understands the general principle behind the whole "makeup" idea.

Media Bias? Nothing to See Here!

2006-09-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

I have to interrupt my previously scheduled programming to make sure and get this in:

Has anyone else noticed that while a group of anti-war protesters can be found on any of the alphabet news organizations, plastered far and wide across teh interweb, as it were....

...where's the coverage of the 35-40 THOUSAND people who turned out to speak their mind about the presence of Ahmadinejad on American soil.

Now discounting how you feel about who does and does not most closely represent Hitler in this crazy modern world, how can anyone not be disturbed by the glaring ommission of this protest by those who would tell us what to find important?

Turn off your TV folks, the bobble-heads at 7:00 and back for an exclusive at the top of the hour are lying to you again.

Here's some pajamas media sources you can check out for yourself:

Little Green Footballs

Jewlicious has Pics

See any Mainstream Media Here?

Thank you to Right Wing Nation for tipping me off to this.

Welcome

2006-09-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome, and yes, it is a Dark Tower reference, which I’ll get to in a moment.

As hinted at by my title, I indeed live in the West, practically on the edge of the world. About five miles to my left there be dragons and whatnot. You’re more likely, however, to find some sunburned Zonies, very territorial surfers, a whole mess of bumper to bumper traffic, a great white shark or two, some moray eels of the aquatic kind, and a number of the blond kind that wear Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses that engulf their entire head.

It’s an odd place, paradise on one hand, the playground of the richest and most beautiful of the rich and beautiful, hell on the other if you step outside the painstakingly illegal-alien-maintained lawns into the blazing scrub desert. You can die of exposure under a rose bush in full bloom here. It has been 85F on Christmas for most of my life.

Politically speaking, and here we get to the important bit, since this will most likely be a political blog, this place is absolutely schizoid delusional. We have hippy communes and white supremacist compounds within miles of each other, and conveniently close to the local mental health facilities. We’ve got UCSD, and Scripps, where you can work in highly classified biological engineering for the Federal Government, then mozy over to the Che (Guevera) Café for a vegan all you can eat dinner and some punk rock. We’ve got old-time cowboys and rhinestone cowboys and midnight cowboys and ranchero cowboys and girls who wear teeny little straw cowboy hats for no reason I’ve been able to figure out. We have thousands of Marines and sailors, and thousands who can’t stand Marines and sailors. All in all we’re a tiny little red city, grudgingly holding our ground between the Mexican behemoth to the South, and the People’s Republic of Los Angeles to the North.

Here I am, in the middle of this mess, with my unfashionable politics and abysmal faith. In Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, failed gunslingers are exiled from their homeland and sent into the shadowy limbo of the West. I don’t sling guns much (though I have a nice little S&W on my Christmas list) and I wasn’t exiled from anywhere, I was spawned right here as a matter of fact, but I don’t much fit the landscape, and haven’t yet figured out where I would. I’m stuck here for the time being and plan to make the best of it. It’s a shadowy limbo however, even with all our touted sunshine, and I’m going to dredge up the best of it for your viewing pleasure.

To follow: the three questions always asked –
1. Why are you an atheist?
2. Why are you a conservative?
3. Are you out of your bloody gourd?