According to statistical evidence meticulously accumulated by serious, professional people, presumably in their right minds, upwards of 70% of the world's population suffers from some form of mental illness. If so - and I for one would have guessed a higher number on this - doesn't it suggest that 'sanity' should now be considered a type of psychopathology requiring the immediate attention of the mental health community?
"Bring to me a man who is sane and I will attempt to cure him." (C Jung)
"Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live." (C Bukowski)
Of course, the distinction must be made between crazy and crazy. A guy who quits his fabulously corrupt and high-paying job on Wall Street, moves to Rome and spends all his time creating pornographic graffiti on the walls of the Vatican is probably crazy; the woman in Texas (for some reason this sort of thing always seems to happen in Texas) who drowns her three kids in the bathtub because God told her to do it is the other kind of crazy; i.e. psychotic, dangerously deranged and a lot more than just a little stupid. These, by the way, are the people who generally vote.
The first type generally develops a huge following on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, followed by a lucrative book deal.
The second type is acquitted by a jury of her peers because, well, if God said so, He must have had his God almighty and who are we to question them reasons.
No doubt you're thinking this would be the ideal time to raise the - to my mind at least - obvious point that religious belief (any genre) is a clear cut form of mental illness, the greatest threat, in fact, to continued human evolution since the Biblical flood. But I'll resist the temptation, at least temporarily.
"That Noah's Ark must have been one big motherfucking boat, pardon my French, to be able to hold two of each kind of Dinosaur." (Tour guide at the Creationist Museum somewhere in rural Kentucky)
I can recall a time when mental illness still had a sort of exotic, mysterious appeal. Like being crazy was not only cool, but it could also get you out of having to go to school. Growing up there was a gigantic mental hospital right in our neighborhood. Creedmore State, it was called. Even the name sent chills. I remember my mother saying to me, "Go ahead, keep acting crazy to get out of school and we'll be forced to send you over to Creedmore." I almost wanted to go.
Back then a person could claim to suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder and be proud of it, be proud of it, be proud of it. Now the most we can hope for is a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Syndrome. Whose identity isn't dissociated? Trying to get through life without occasionally dissociating will definitely drive you nuts.
Likewise, there used to be Manic/Depressives. Not only were these people really interesting about 50% of the time, they were great fun to date. Manics tended to be wild in bed; Depressives didn't really care if you never called.
Nowadays we're saddled with the dubious distinction of being Bipolar (yawn!), which, let's face it, sounds more like a global weather situation than a legitimate mental problem.
"Of all the things I've lost in my life, I miss my mind the most." (Anonymous)
What's really scary - I mean aside from people believing in a God who would sanction the murder of children - is that recent advances in medical science and technology now make it possible to pinpoint aberrant areas of the brain which, it is claimed, cause people to do the sick, disgusting, psychopathic things they all too frequently do. In essence this is the "My brain made me do it" legal defense, and lawyers are salivating over it like a pack of famished coyotes honing in on a cattle carcass.
My brain made me do it. Uh ..?
"If only there was something in your head to control the things you say and do." (Chandler Bing)
The implication here is that pedophiles, rapists, serial killers, animal abusers, litterbugs, Republicans
(sorry, that just slipped out, possibly through a dissociated crack) etc. can no longer be held entirely responsible for their actions because, you know, their crazy brains made them do it.
'Their crazy brains, right?'
'Exactly!'
'How about the sheer stupidity you're displaying in buying into this pile of crap?'
'Hey, here's a printout of my latest functional MRI. Read it and weep, pal.'
'If this isn't a blatant and disturbing example of the current cultural paradigm of personal non-responsibility in all things, I don't know what is.'
'Okay, that's just your brain talking now.'
"People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does." (M Foucault)
"Once structuralism went the way of the giant sea turtle we decided to deconstruct what was left, ended up turning the world into a vast debris field of meaning-less signs and symbols, about which we tried to wax self-reflexive and mostly ironic, asserting that once language was allowed to fully reinvent itself the tyrannical era of objective reality would come crashing down, except no one was paying attention and who the fuck were we kidding anyway? Strictly speaking we had all gone insane, but we insisted on continuing to refer to it as philosophy." (Anonymous)
"Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink." (C Bukowski)
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
You don't have to be a lunatic to love baseball ...
... although neither does it particularly hurt.
As a kid I was effectively brainwashed (aka culturally conditioned) into loving baseball.
The basic message was: "Hey, you're an American kid. Either you play baseball or you end up robbing convenience stores. Any questions?"
"Yeah, what's a convenience store?"
"Okay, do you want to ask stupid questions and possibly spend your formative years behind bars, or do you want to play ball?"
So we played ball and, as advertised, it was a fairly effective way of sublimating and refocusing our naturally aggressive tendencies, mediating them into a socially approved form of adolescent energy expenditure. Perhaps more importantly, it began the process of teaching us how to cope with boredom.
Because, let's be honest, baseball is boring. Or is it? (more on this later)
Little League was the next logical step, wearing actual uniforms, playing on actual ball fields. I excelled at every aspect of the game ... except one. Couldn't hit. Couldn't even buy one, and this was back in the days when bribing an opposing pitcher or even an umpire was still relatively affordable. Somewhere along the way I developed what turned out to be the highly unproductive habit of turning my head sharply to right just as the pitcher released the ball. Not sure why exactly, but I may have been laboring under the ludicrously false assumption that by not seeing the ball, there was less of a chance of being hit by it.
Note: There is an extant law on New York's books making it illegal to throw a ball at someone's head for fun. Intent, apparently, is everything. Remove the concept of fun from the equation and you can throw fastballs at somebody's noggin with complete impunity.
High school baseball came next, at least for a day, just long enough to step into the batting cage and demonstrate my ability to put wood to cowhide covered sphere. Afterwards the coach took me aside and rather tactfully suggested baseball might not be my optimal choice for a school sport.
"But coach, I don't want to end up in jail!"
He uttered something about my swing being criminal enough to qualify, then recommended track and field.
Which reminds me of a guy I knew in college who, believing he was an impeccable speller, applied for a part-time job as a proofreader in a law firm. Part of the interview was a spelling test, 30 words, read out loud by this female interviewer, who it was pretty clear really didn't give a shit one way or the other. Spelled 27 of the words incorrectly (or, on the upside, got 3 right), prompting said interviewer to intimate that a career in legal proofreading was pretty much out of the question.
"But how are your math skills?" she inquired.
"Sure, go ahead, rub it in."
Okay, that wasn't some guy I knew, it was me. One more example of a deluded past of which, on balance, I'm fairly proud.
So anyway, baseball. What's the appeal? People watching a major league game for the first time - and by people I mostly mean foreigner types, who generally don't have a clue to begin with - are likely to comment that it doesn't look all that difficult. A group of men dressed in costumes stand around on a field, for the most part barely moving, while some guy with a stick tries to hit a smallish white ball, and then run in a highly predictable pattern, making sure to touch as many white cushions as possible.
Okay, first of all weird, what-planet-are-you-from-anyway guy, they're not called cushions!
Consider the average major league player standing in the batter's box attempting to get a hit off an average major league pitcher. Assume the pitcher has an average speed fastball of, say, 90 mph.
Such a pitch is traveling at 130 feet per second. The distance from pitcher to batter is approximately 66 feet. Hence the batter has approximately half a second to evaluate the pitch and decide whether or not to swing.
Just writing that forced my head to turn sharply to the right.
Note: The average life expectancy of a baseball during a game is 6. 3 pitches.
What attracts me to baseball is that, unlike the other major American sports, it's not time-constrained; it is off the clock, under no pressure to adhere to a schedule, to accomplish some goal within a specified time frame. You can have a game on in the background, glance at it occasionally, perhaps take the dog for a walk, have a nap, discuss TV viewing options with your partner (i.e. Oh God, not baseball again!), without having to worry about what may or may not be happening. The length of any particular baseball game is indeterminate, the eventual outcome secondary to the out-of-time experience of just being in the game, either as spectator or player.
From a modernist perspective, espousing the point of view that the absence of constant, high-speed distraction within predetermined, preferably brief, pockets of time is existentially intolerable, baseball can certainly be construed as boring. The paradoxical insight that baseball - baseball as anti-modernist or, dare I say it, postmodernist sport - provides is that only when nothing appears to be happening does the story begin to get interesting.
So there it is. Baseball is the great, atypical, postmodern American pastime. Reason enough, I'd say, for a lunatic to love the game. Batter up ...
As a kid I was effectively brainwashed (aka culturally conditioned) into loving baseball.
The basic message was: "Hey, you're an American kid. Either you play baseball or you end up robbing convenience stores. Any questions?"
"Yeah, what's a convenience store?"
"Okay, do you want to ask stupid questions and possibly spend your formative years behind bars, or do you want to play ball?"
So we played ball and, as advertised, it was a fairly effective way of sublimating and refocusing our naturally aggressive tendencies, mediating them into a socially approved form of adolescent energy expenditure. Perhaps more importantly, it began the process of teaching us how to cope with boredom.
Because, let's be honest, baseball is boring. Or is it? (more on this later)
Little League was the next logical step, wearing actual uniforms, playing on actual ball fields. I excelled at every aspect of the game ... except one. Couldn't hit. Couldn't even buy one, and this was back in the days when bribing an opposing pitcher or even an umpire was still relatively affordable. Somewhere along the way I developed what turned out to be the highly unproductive habit of turning my head sharply to right just as the pitcher released the ball. Not sure why exactly, but I may have been laboring under the ludicrously false assumption that by not seeing the ball, there was less of a chance of being hit by it.
Note: There is an extant law on New York's books making it illegal to throw a ball at someone's head for fun. Intent, apparently, is everything. Remove the concept of fun from the equation and you can throw fastballs at somebody's noggin with complete impunity.
High school baseball came next, at least for a day, just long enough to step into the batting cage and demonstrate my ability to put wood to cowhide covered sphere. Afterwards the coach took me aside and rather tactfully suggested baseball might not be my optimal choice for a school sport.
"But coach, I don't want to end up in jail!"
He uttered something about my swing being criminal enough to qualify, then recommended track and field.
Which reminds me of a guy I knew in college who, believing he was an impeccable speller, applied for a part-time job as a proofreader in a law firm. Part of the interview was a spelling test, 30 words, read out loud by this female interviewer, who it was pretty clear really didn't give a shit one way or the other. Spelled 27 of the words incorrectly (or, on the upside, got 3 right), prompting said interviewer to intimate that a career in legal proofreading was pretty much out of the question.
"But how are your math skills?" she inquired.
"Sure, go ahead, rub it in."
Okay, that wasn't some guy I knew, it was me. One more example of a deluded past of which, on balance, I'm fairly proud.
So anyway, baseball. What's the appeal? People watching a major league game for the first time - and by people I mostly mean foreigner types, who generally don't have a clue to begin with - are likely to comment that it doesn't look all that difficult. A group of men dressed in costumes stand around on a field, for the most part barely moving, while some guy with a stick tries to hit a smallish white ball, and then run in a highly predictable pattern, making sure to touch as many white cushions as possible.
Okay, first of all weird, what-planet-are-you-from-anyway guy, they're not called cushions!
Consider the average major league player standing in the batter's box attempting to get a hit off an average major league pitcher. Assume the pitcher has an average speed fastball of, say, 90 mph.
Such a pitch is traveling at 130 feet per second. The distance from pitcher to batter is approximately 66 feet. Hence the batter has approximately half a second to evaluate the pitch and decide whether or not to swing.
Just writing that forced my head to turn sharply to the right.
Note: The average life expectancy of a baseball during a game is 6. 3 pitches.
What attracts me to baseball is that, unlike the other major American sports, it's not time-constrained; it is off the clock, under no pressure to adhere to a schedule, to accomplish some goal within a specified time frame. You can have a game on in the background, glance at it occasionally, perhaps take the dog for a walk, have a nap, discuss TV viewing options with your partner (i.e. Oh God, not baseball again!), without having to worry about what may or may not be happening. The length of any particular baseball game is indeterminate, the eventual outcome secondary to the out-of-time experience of just being in the game, either as spectator or player.
From a modernist perspective, espousing the point of view that the absence of constant, high-speed distraction within predetermined, preferably brief, pockets of time is existentially intolerable, baseball can certainly be construed as boring. The paradoxical insight that baseball - baseball as anti-modernist or, dare I say it, postmodernist sport - provides is that only when nothing appears to be happening does the story begin to get interesting.
So there it is. Baseball is the great, atypical, postmodern American pastime. Reason enough, I'd say, for a lunatic to love the game. Batter up ...
Friday, August 10, 2012
To the point of madness driven by like a billion cicadas right outside the window
Dial any number at random:
Right about twilight it's like living next door to an insane asylum for insects.
.... Cut to the streets of Pyongyang, where the remaining one million North Korean kids not in the advanced stages of starvation are singing in unison at the top of their little lungs - their little brainwashed brains vibrating along in perfect party pitch - an apparently endless song about the Great, Pure, Dear, Demented (oops!), Dashing, Darling, Deformed (again, oops!), Divine Leader. He's actually a small rather plump boy who still likes playing with his collection of Barbie Dolls, but who, to his credit, is not completely oblivious to the fact that the hats worn by the contingent of centenarian military commanders who follow him around like a pack of living mummies are ridiculously too big for their little old man heads.
Kim Jung Un had one of those microphone mishaps recently, following a truly inspirational, albeit extremely brief, speech on North Korean freedom and prosperity, thought the mic was turned off, was overhead saying, "Really man, what the fuck is up with those stupid hats?"
Hey, these things happen. Mitt Romney, campaigning in the deep dark south, was overhead quizzing one of his aids if the quasi-humanoid mask that he wears (apparently, when he takes the mask off his head disappears, and there just isn't any way that a headless Mormon is going to get elected President) was showing signs of melting under the scorching Mississippi sun. The aid reassured him by pointing out that the 37 people in the audience, all bussed in from a nearby mental hospital, believed they were listening to a speech by Newt Gingrich.
(Lest we forget, Newt was the man who promised to build state of the art mental health facilities on the moon. As far as campaign slogans go, "Send all the loonies to the moonie!" is not bad at all.)
.... Cut to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (remake # 2) in which all the alien-possessed humans get together and emit a loud, high-pitched screech whenever they sniff out a person who has not yet been ideologically podded.
Note: Body Snatchers #4 will be filmed almost entirely in North Korea, as a documentary, no less. (additional footage courtesy of the upcoming Republican National Convention)
Note: Living mummies are an actual thing, although not mummies that are still living, rather people (presumably) who make a conscious decision to become a mummy, and then die and do so. This was popular in Japan for awhile, old men, fed up with being old, apparently, would head off to a cave somewhere, eat tree bark while meditating on the horrific yen/dollar exchange rate and slowly mummify. One can still run across these mummified remains in remote areas, although nowadays the majority of living mummies are members of the Japanese Parliament.
I read recently that North Korean athletes who win Olympic medals are rewarded with refrigerators.
Which, let's face it, is the perfect gift to give someone living in a country with no food and an iffy at best electrical power grid.
One possible solution for the N.K. problem: Turn the country over to the Disney people. If anyone has a knack for making money out of mindless misery, they do. When you think about it, the whole crazy place is already a defacto theme park. Investment and overhead would be minimal.
Call it 'Disney Dark.' Because, kids, even in the magical land of make believe, things ain't always a fun-filled barrel of monkeys.
Right about twilight it's like living next door to an insane asylum for insects.
.... Cut to the streets of Pyongyang, where the remaining one million North Korean kids not in the advanced stages of starvation are singing in unison at the top of their little lungs - their little brainwashed brains vibrating along in perfect party pitch - an apparently endless song about the Great, Pure, Dear, Demented (oops!), Dashing, Darling, Deformed (again, oops!), Divine Leader. He's actually a small rather plump boy who still likes playing with his collection of Barbie Dolls, but who, to his credit, is not completely oblivious to the fact that the hats worn by the contingent of centenarian military commanders who follow him around like a pack of living mummies are ridiculously too big for their little old man heads.
Kim Jung Un had one of those microphone mishaps recently, following a truly inspirational, albeit extremely brief, speech on North Korean freedom and prosperity, thought the mic was turned off, was overhead saying, "Really man, what the fuck is up with those stupid hats?"
Hey, these things happen. Mitt Romney, campaigning in the deep dark south, was overhead quizzing one of his aids if the quasi-humanoid mask that he wears (apparently, when he takes the mask off his head disappears, and there just isn't any way that a headless Mormon is going to get elected President) was showing signs of melting under the scorching Mississippi sun. The aid reassured him by pointing out that the 37 people in the audience, all bussed in from a nearby mental hospital, believed they were listening to a speech by Newt Gingrich.
(Lest we forget, Newt was the man who promised to build state of the art mental health facilities on the moon. As far as campaign slogans go, "Send all the loonies to the moonie!" is not bad at all.)
.... Cut to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (remake # 2) in which all the alien-possessed humans get together and emit a loud, high-pitched screech whenever they sniff out a person who has not yet been ideologically podded.
Note: Body Snatchers #4 will be filmed almost entirely in North Korea, as a documentary, no less. (additional footage courtesy of the upcoming Republican National Convention)
Note: Living mummies are an actual thing, although not mummies that are still living, rather people (presumably) who make a conscious decision to become a mummy, and then die and do so. This was popular in Japan for awhile, old men, fed up with being old, apparently, would head off to a cave somewhere, eat tree bark while meditating on the horrific yen/dollar exchange rate and slowly mummify. One can still run across these mummified remains in remote areas, although nowadays the majority of living mummies are members of the Japanese Parliament.
I read recently that North Korean athletes who win Olympic medals are rewarded with refrigerators.
Which, let's face it, is the perfect gift to give someone living in a country with no food and an iffy at best electrical power grid.
One possible solution for the N.K. problem: Turn the country over to the Disney people. If anyone has a knack for making money out of mindless misery, they do. When you think about it, the whole crazy place is already a defacto theme park. Investment and overhead would be minimal.
Call it 'Disney Dark.' Because, kids, even in the magical land of make believe, things ain't always a fun-filled barrel of monkeys.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Is God Really Nothing More Than A Mere ...Particle?
A belated hats off to the brainiac physics geeks at CERN's LHC (Large Hadron Collider) for their recent discovery of the Higgs particle, a.k.a. the Higgs Boson. (A boson, for those interested, is a subset of the elementary particle maelstrom distinguished by the fact that many of them can occupy a single quantum state. Think of the entire population of a medium size city fitting comfortably into a single Japanese compact. Sounds like a state of quantum hell on earth, unless of course you happen to be a boson.)
*See related article: Can a person actually be a boson, and vice versa?
*Also of interest, a question proffered by Harold Doorkjam of Bismarck, North Dakota: "If the Higgs can only exist for a billionth of a second at Earthly low energy levels, is it really fair to go on blaming moronic, mean-spirited white men with guns for the wanton slaughter of the great North American Boson herds during the 19th Century?"
Thanks for that, Harold, and the best of luck in your continuing efforts to get that high school equivalency diploma.
Anyway, using enough energy to keep the lights on in Topeka, Kansas for a year, the CERN nerds apparently got a single Higgs to appear for a full billionth of a second. Which in wacky theoretical physics world is actually quite a long time. Interestingly and coincidentally enough, in a follow-up survey the people of Topeka were asked whether they would be willing to live in darkness for a year if it ensured the discovery of the Higgs. A whopping 67% answered in the affirmative. How is this even possible, you're probably asking. It's Kansas, after all; quasi-Bible belt, fundamentalist swarming, ain't gone Democrat since 64. That Kansas. Quantum Mechanics, as far as most Kansans are concerned, are small people, most likely from third world nations, who work on the engines of foreign cars.
So what goes? Are the people of Topeka actually capable of juggling Born Again, End of Days, Creationist fervor and the complex, highly abstract concepts of theoretical physics? Well, not exactly. Turns out that the devious, left-wing elitists who made the survey referred to the Higgs by its colloquial designation, namely, the God particle. It may even have been insinuated that during that glorious one billionth of a second the face of Jesus was clearly visible on the particle's front flap (note: sub-atomic particles generally do not possess flaps) Call it manipulation, call it bold-face lying, call it politics as usual. After all, continued public support for further funding does matter.
Not that this story has a particularly happy ending. Apparently a number of Muslim clerics got wind of the face of Jesus story and are now demanding - based on worldwide religious demographics - that the face of the Prophet Muhammad must appear on the Higgs' 'flap' 21.5% of the time. The situation is further complicated by the fact that certain extremist Islamic factions, most notably the Taliban, have already outlawed the existence - theoretical or otherwise - of all sub-atomic particles, claiming them to be nothing more than yet another example of insidious Western propaganda. Muslim girls suspected of cohabiting with bosons, quarks, or even random electrons are subject to death by stoning.
(By comparison, men suspected of the same crime are forced to face the awful humiliation of having their beards trimmed in public by a Hindu barber.) Take that, so-called double standard!
*Of related interest: In Israel, Romney declares that, as President, he will do whatever it takes to keep the God particle out of the hands of terrorists.
So what, if anything, have we learned? The God particle is real, the source of matter's mass has been confirmed, Rick Santorum now claims to have discovered a reference to the boson in the Bible and will name his next kid Higgs, and even as we figure out the incredible mysteries of the Universe stupidity continues to run rampant here on planet Earth.
If nothing else, this blog is the living proof of that.
*See related article: Can a person actually be a boson, and vice versa?
*Also of interest, a question proffered by Harold Doorkjam of Bismarck, North Dakota: "If the Higgs can only exist for a billionth of a second at Earthly low energy levels, is it really fair to go on blaming moronic, mean-spirited white men with guns for the wanton slaughter of the great North American Boson herds during the 19th Century?"
Thanks for that, Harold, and the best of luck in your continuing efforts to get that high school equivalency diploma.
Anyway, using enough energy to keep the lights on in Topeka, Kansas for a year, the CERN nerds apparently got a single Higgs to appear for a full billionth of a second. Which in wacky theoretical physics world is actually quite a long time. Interestingly and coincidentally enough, in a follow-up survey the people of Topeka were asked whether they would be willing to live in darkness for a year if it ensured the discovery of the Higgs. A whopping 67% answered in the affirmative. How is this even possible, you're probably asking. It's Kansas, after all; quasi-Bible belt, fundamentalist swarming, ain't gone Democrat since 64. That Kansas. Quantum Mechanics, as far as most Kansans are concerned, are small people, most likely from third world nations, who work on the engines of foreign cars.
So what goes? Are the people of Topeka actually capable of juggling Born Again, End of Days, Creationist fervor and the complex, highly abstract concepts of theoretical physics? Well, not exactly. Turns out that the devious, left-wing elitists who made the survey referred to the Higgs by its colloquial designation, namely, the God particle. It may even have been insinuated that during that glorious one billionth of a second the face of Jesus was clearly visible on the particle's front flap (note: sub-atomic particles generally do not possess flaps) Call it manipulation, call it bold-face lying, call it politics as usual. After all, continued public support for further funding does matter.
Not that this story has a particularly happy ending. Apparently a number of Muslim clerics got wind of the face of Jesus story and are now demanding - based on worldwide religious demographics - that the face of the Prophet Muhammad must appear on the Higgs' 'flap' 21.5% of the time. The situation is further complicated by the fact that certain extremist Islamic factions, most notably the Taliban, have already outlawed the existence - theoretical or otherwise - of all sub-atomic particles, claiming them to be nothing more than yet another example of insidious Western propaganda. Muslim girls suspected of cohabiting with bosons, quarks, or even random electrons are subject to death by stoning.
(By comparison, men suspected of the same crime are forced to face the awful humiliation of having their beards trimmed in public by a Hindu barber.) Take that, so-called double standard!
*Of related interest: In Israel, Romney declares that, as President, he will do whatever it takes to keep the God particle out of the hands of terrorists.
So what, if anything, have we learned? The God particle is real, the source of matter's mass has been confirmed, Rick Santorum now claims to have discovered a reference to the boson in the Bible and will name his next kid Higgs, and even as we figure out the incredible mysteries of the Universe stupidity continues to run rampant here on planet Earth.
If nothing else, this blog is the living proof of that.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Bad News, I'm Afraid
The Greek philosopher Philoteradactyl reportedly said: "For everything under the sun there is an associated fear, and none greater than the haunting fear of our own being."
Mind you, this was like 2000 years before the discovery of psychology and the subsequent pouring out of all the creepy/scary stuff percolating in the human mind. Freud, of course, intervened in this tidal wave of terror, reducing its terrible impact by reminding us that all our fears are reducible to one preoccupying fear: namely, the fear of our parents engaging in sex. Ugh! and Yuck!
Anyway, the question remains, what exactly is there to be afraid of? Well, everything, apparently. Not only does virtually everything provoke fear, but every fear has a name. Which is probably a good thing, because what's scarier than a fear to which we cannot assign a label? All therapists, by the way, are required to commit to memory the names of all fears before being given a license to practice.
A few of my favorites:
Ambulophobia / the fear of walking; might this explain why so many people strenuously resist even this simplest form of exercise, or why I continually see legions of old people out on the street, trapped, apparently, in some sort of suspended animation?
Anablephobia / the fear of looking up; a recent survey asked Japanese high school students when the last time was they had looked at the sky. 70% responded that they had no memory of ever having done so. Mnemophobia (the fear of memories) notwithstanding, we may now understand why.
Barophobia / the fear of gravity; this one is serious, fundamental you might even say, gravity being one of the four basic forces sustaining the universe. Take away gravity and we're all just goo rapidly flying off into the void. Maybe it's the fact that gravity is not so much a thing pulling us down, as a warp in space/time constantly pushing on us like an obsessive bully.
Phronemophobia / the fear of thinking; weird, right? Although it does go a long way to explain the continued existence of conservative Republicans.
Sinophobia / the fear of Chinese people; hey, with 1.2 billion of them on the planet, 100 million of the nouveau affluent ones expected to travel abroad within the next two years, this is not so much a fear as basic common sense.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia / perhaps no surprise, the fear of long words; you don't actually have to be phobic to be afraid of this word. The implied irony for long word phobics is that learning the name of their fear is most likely only going to make their condition worse.
Everyone is familiar with the famous F.D.R. quote: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
What most people don't know is that this is an expurgated version of the actual quote,
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and there are, as it turns out, a shitload of them."
Have a favorite fear of your own? Please let me know.
Friday, July 6, 2012
The Moral Dilemma of Ratting out a Weasel
Update on animal sightings:
1: Speculation has been running wild that the weasels in the attic may not be weasels at all, but some other rodent family format, possibly in the guise of weasels. This courtesy of Mister Watanabe, the house fixer guy, who was called in to provide an expert assessment on what exactly has been running around in the attic all night.
I myself, by the way, am holding firm on the opinion that there's nothing in the attic more exotic than mice.
Mice, he informs me, with a quasi-dismissive laugh, could not possibly be producing the noise levels you claim to be hearing.
They could if they're up there jumping off miniature trampolines, I tell him, or playing some sort of full contact sport.
Home owners are often in denial when it comes to slender meat-eating mammals in their attics, he says.
Hold on a second. Weasels eat meat?
Who really knows anything about weasels?
Ask someone what a weasel looks like and he'll probably describe the creepy guy working at his office.
Would you go so far as to characterize this person as a slender, meat-eating mammal?
Come to think of it ... hey, do you know him?
2: A couple of black bears strolled out of the nearby woods the other day - woods that have been officially bear-free for the past 50 years or so. In response, the city office mobilized a team of bureaucrats, who descended on the scene with clipboards in hand and proceeded to stand at the base of the mountain taking copious notes. No bear sightings since, so we might presume that this bizarre behavior worked, although two of the bureaucrats did go missing, possibly captured by the bears.
Note 1: I informed Watanabe in no uncertain terms that in the process of eviction no harm should befall the weasels.
Not to worry, he tells me. We intend to lure them out with colorful brochures depicting much more luxurious attics, a few of them right here in this neighborhood.
Note 2: According to Mister Watanabe, not only are there bears in the nearby woods, but also monkeys.
Any chance the mammals in the attic are not weasels, but monkeys, I ask him?
That same - who is this totally out of touch with the actual world person - laugh.
How would a monkey get into your attic? he asks.
No idea, I say. How would a weasel?
How would a weasel what?
Note 3: Just a question. Is anyone actually reading this blog? There's no shame in leaving a comment, you know? No long term shame, at any rate. Do it anonymously. The more ludicrous the better. Remember, this is blog dedicated to fiction, implying that you don't even have to exist in order to have something to say.
1: Speculation has been running wild that the weasels in the attic may not be weasels at all, but some other rodent family format, possibly in the guise of weasels. This courtesy of Mister Watanabe, the house fixer guy, who was called in to provide an expert assessment on what exactly has been running around in the attic all night.
I myself, by the way, am holding firm on the opinion that there's nothing in the attic more exotic than mice.
Mice, he informs me, with a quasi-dismissive laugh, could not possibly be producing the noise levels you claim to be hearing.
They could if they're up there jumping off miniature trampolines, I tell him, or playing some sort of full contact sport.
Home owners are often in denial when it comes to slender meat-eating mammals in their attics, he says.
Hold on a second. Weasels eat meat?
Who really knows anything about weasels?
Ask someone what a weasel looks like and he'll probably describe the creepy guy working at his office.
Would you go so far as to characterize this person as a slender, meat-eating mammal?
Come to think of it ... hey, do you know him?
2: A couple of black bears strolled out of the nearby woods the other day - woods that have been officially bear-free for the past 50 years or so. In response, the city office mobilized a team of bureaucrats, who descended on the scene with clipboards in hand and proceeded to stand at the base of the mountain taking copious notes. No bear sightings since, so we might presume that this bizarre behavior worked, although two of the bureaucrats did go missing, possibly captured by the bears.
Note 1: I informed Watanabe in no uncertain terms that in the process of eviction no harm should befall the weasels.
Not to worry, he tells me. We intend to lure them out with colorful brochures depicting much more luxurious attics, a few of them right here in this neighborhood.
Note 2: According to Mister Watanabe, not only are there bears in the nearby woods, but also monkeys.
Any chance the mammals in the attic are not weasels, but monkeys, I ask him?
That same - who is this totally out of touch with the actual world person - laugh.
How would a monkey get into your attic? he asks.
No idea, I say. How would a weasel?
How would a weasel what?
Note 3: Just a question. Is anyone actually reading this blog? There's no shame in leaving a comment, you know? No long term shame, at any rate. Do it anonymously. The more ludicrous the better. Remember, this is blog dedicated to fiction, implying that you don't even have to exist in order to have something to say.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
How many kittens can fit on the head of a deranged Zen monk?
So let's say there's this girl, at least I still think of her as a girl, even though she's actually a young woman, although, technically speaking, a young woman is also a girl, I mean all women are girls, there's no way around that, irrespective of age, even if she's, let's say, 87 years old, you still might be inclined to say, assuming, of course, that you knew her well enough, "Hey old girl, how's everything?" Okay, you're probably thinking, who would ever say that to someone's granny? Old girl? Sounds positively ageist. Point taken. Unless, of course, you're a Brit. The Brits say this sort of thing all the time and no one seems to mind. They could even substitute 'old cow' for 'old girl' and totally get away with it. Term of endearment and all that, although 'smelly old cow' might be pushing it just a tad.
Anyway, so there this girl. Turns out she's been living in England, for like a long time, and decides she's had just about enough of it. Nothing against the Brits, mind you, it's just that she was sitting around her rather gloomy flat one day, counting teabags, and had this fearful future vision of being awakened one morning by some pale, withered old geezer with a peck on the cheek and a 'Good morning, old cow."
She started packing that very evening, just prior to breaking up with her originally charming, now rapidly degenerating boyfriend, and made the smart, courageous decision to move to California.
Sort of a no-brainer, you're thinking. I mean why go on living in England when you can live in California? What you sacrifice in correct English grammar usage you make up in much, much better weather. Mention 30 days of uninterrupted sunshine to a Brit and they'll conclude you've most likely been recently kicked in the head by a soccer hooligan.
"You should get yourself to an infirmary without delay, old girl."
Anyway, this girl: she actually does it and moves to California. Very cool! Only problem is that she can't take her cat (while in England she has apparently turned into a 'cat person') As terrific as life on the mythical west coast is, she can't stop feeling guilty about the cat, only exacerbated by the fact that she left the cat with the ex-boyfriend, who is now threatening via e-mail to have the cat turned into a stylishly fury hat and then selling it on e-bay. What else can she do? She decides to return to England, pick up the cat and take it to her mother's place in France, at least for the short term, until she can make arrangements to smuggle the cat into the States. Her mother agrees, albeit reluctantly, citing such possible pitfalls as the language barrier (British cats are notoriously monolingual), the difficult to acquire taste of French cat food and the fact that her dog will almost certainly murder the cat the first chance it gets.
She reasons that no worthwhile endeavor is ever entirely risk free, and besides, what the cat doesn't know in advance ...
She books a flight from London to Paris. She makes preparations, including the purchase of a very small, claw-resistant bilingual dictionary.
Then, as is so often the case, absurdity strikes.
Mere hours before the scheduled departure she is notified by the airline that her request to 'travel with cat' has been denied. Reason offered: there are already too many cats on the plane and, unfortunately, the 'Romney Option' - strapping the cat outside the plane to the top of the fuselage - has been suspended at least until after the U.S. Presidential elections.
Leaving one to ponder, I suppose, what exactly 'already too many cats on the plane' means?
First of all, how many cats could there possibly be on any given flight between London and Paris?
Is there some undisclosed official quota for cats on a plane?
Consider for a moment the size of an airplane compared to the size of an average cat.
The Airbus A380 could hold like a million of them. The entire cat population of England could be easily transported to France in a couple of days. Doing so might even serve the French right.
Anyway, so there this girl. Turns out she's been living in England, for like a long time, and decides she's had just about enough of it. Nothing against the Brits, mind you, it's just that she was sitting around her rather gloomy flat one day, counting teabags, and had this fearful future vision of being awakened one morning by some pale, withered old geezer with a peck on the cheek and a 'Good morning, old cow."
She started packing that very evening, just prior to breaking up with her originally charming, now rapidly degenerating boyfriend, and made the smart, courageous decision to move to California.
Sort of a no-brainer, you're thinking. I mean why go on living in England when you can live in California? What you sacrifice in correct English grammar usage you make up in much, much better weather. Mention 30 days of uninterrupted sunshine to a Brit and they'll conclude you've most likely been recently kicked in the head by a soccer hooligan.
"You should get yourself to an infirmary without delay, old girl."
Anyway, this girl: she actually does it and moves to California. Very cool! Only problem is that she can't take her cat (while in England she has apparently turned into a 'cat person') As terrific as life on the mythical west coast is, she can't stop feeling guilty about the cat, only exacerbated by the fact that she left the cat with the ex-boyfriend, who is now threatening via e-mail to have the cat turned into a stylishly fury hat and then selling it on e-bay. What else can she do? She decides to return to England, pick up the cat and take it to her mother's place in France, at least for the short term, until she can make arrangements to smuggle the cat into the States. Her mother agrees, albeit reluctantly, citing such possible pitfalls as the language barrier (British cats are notoriously monolingual), the difficult to acquire taste of French cat food and the fact that her dog will almost certainly murder the cat the first chance it gets.
She reasons that no worthwhile endeavor is ever entirely risk free, and besides, what the cat doesn't know in advance ...
She books a flight from London to Paris. She makes preparations, including the purchase of a very small, claw-resistant bilingual dictionary.
Then, as is so often the case, absurdity strikes.
Mere hours before the scheduled departure she is notified by the airline that her request to 'travel with cat' has been denied. Reason offered: there are already too many cats on the plane and, unfortunately, the 'Romney Option' - strapping the cat outside the plane to the top of the fuselage - has been suspended at least until after the U.S. Presidential elections.
Leaving one to ponder, I suppose, what exactly 'already too many cats on the plane' means?
First of all, how many cats could there possibly be on any given flight between London and Paris?
Is there some undisclosed official quota for cats on a plane?
Consider for a moment the size of an airplane compared to the size of an average cat.
The Airbus A380 could hold like a million of them. The entire cat population of England could be easily transported to France in a couple of days. Doing so might even serve the French right.
"Not to worry, old cow. I'm not stealing your cat, merely sending it on holiday to the Continent."
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