When The Smoke Cleared And The Dust Settled...

So we had an election.

We all know how that went.

I guess I am very disappointed in us more than anything.  I mean, sure, let's sell out all women of reproductive age and black and Hispanic people and gay and trans people to make more money.  I thought we were better than that.  Well, I think I thought we were better than that.  Because actually, I'm not surprised.  Disappointed.  But not surprised.

When Joe Biden stepped down, I thought it was a mistake.  People liked him.  Lots of people, me included, had already voted for him in the primaries.  I don't know if there are any statistics on this, but some of those people might have taken major exception to swapping him out for another candidate. And, Americans are racist sexist bastards.  Particularly sexist.  Argue with me if you want, but it's true.  I predict we'll have another black President, and probably a Hispanic President, before we ever have a woman, much less a black/Asian woman.  Hillary never had a chance.

If you don't believe me about the sexism part, how much do women make an hour compared to men?  What procedures that affect men's bodies are restricted by state law?  How often are men told they're selfish for wanting both a career and kids?  How are men's names changed at marriage to show how they're connected to a woman?  When was the last time a man complained to you that some woman was checking him out on the street or yelling something offensive about his body?

So again, disappointed.  But not surprised.

But:

This has all happened before.  No, not just in 2016, but then, too.

We have elected some bad Presidents over the years.  Take Warren G. Harding, for example.  Please.  Primarily elected because he was better-looking than James Cox, he won in a landslide. He fired everybody in charge at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, only to realize a year later that he'd made a big mistake and that he had to quietly rehire everybody or, uh, the US would run out of printed money.  At his direction, the Department of the Interior leased the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Harry Sinclair, thus permanently poisoning a potential national park (and getting him all kinds of rich in the process).  He also kept us out of the League of Nations, which led almost directly to World War II by way of--well, a number of things. He was a notorious philanderer and may, in fact, have been poisoned by his wife. If so, thank you, Florence.  You did your country a great service.

Then we have James Buchanan, who lobbied the Supreme Court to issue the Dred Scott ruling.  He got Kansas admitted as a slave state, did plenty to increase the tension between halves of a sharply divided country (kind of like now), and failed to act in the face of economic chaos, more or less causing the Panic of 1857.  That the worst depression until, well, the Depression.  Like that Depression, the Panic only ended because of a war, the Civil War, when rampant government spending for armaments and paying soldiers cranked things up again.  (Which is how we usually get out of economic downturns.  But I digress.)

And let's not forget Herbert Hoover.  He  also won in a landslide, but had the bad luck to take office right as the Great Depression was really getting underway.  Once he was in charge, though, he signed a tariff act that caused a trade war and made the Depression even worse.  He sent the Army--yes, that Army--in to deal with World War I veterans who were protesting for their pensions, and many were injured and killed.  He was a terrible speaker and while he didn't quite rise to Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" (if she really said that), he managed to say a lot of other stupid things that made him sound like he gave a shit about nobody but himself, which should sound familiar to some of you.  Shantytowns made up of unemployed people were called "Hoovervilles" in his honor.

I'm not gonna mention Reagan.  Oops, I mentioned Reagan.  It takes a special kind of talent to totally destroy an entire nation's economic foundation, kill 300,000 people, lie to Congress while framing some colonel and run the country through astrology.

Also, the United States has had plenty of dark days.  On August 24, 1814, the British Army burned our fledgling capital at Washington, DC more or less to the ground.  After keeping the country from tearing itself apart by civil war, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.  On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Army attacked Pearl Harbor.  On October 22, 1961, there was reasonable fear that we were all about to be nuked into oblivion (and probably several times since then, though understandably, a lot of those are classified).

I wasn't around for any of those, that I know of.  I was, however, around when Ronald Reagan was elected and everybody cheered. I was here when AIDS was rampantly killing people and there was no cure or treatment, and people who had it were written off as unimportant because they were probably gay (or worse, Hatian).  I was here for the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area (in fact, my father was physically there) that killed 65 people and injured thousands and did major economic damage. I was here when we attacked Afghanistan, stayed there for more than 20 years, and then left, letting the same people and the same problems that were running things before waltz right back in and take over again.  I was here when an organization we'd never heard up blew up the World Trade Centers, and I was also here when we promptly went to war with an innocent third party and "bombed them into the Stone Age." And of course I was here on January 6, 2021.

Don't get me wrong, November 6, 2024 was one of the worst days ever.

But:

All that happened, and I am still here.  And so are you.

The way I see it, there's really only three things we can do.  We can pack up and leave the country (really only an option for able-bodied people with money who can handle logistics and speak another language and don't have cats).  We can lie down and die, or maybe commit suicide.  Or, we can do what we need to do to get through the day and just keep on keeping on.

I am a big advocate of that last thing.  Because as long as we're doing that, we can also do what we can to help the lots and lots of people, like trans kids and women who need abortions, who are going to need help.  And we can do whatever we can, in whatever ways we have available, to fuck everything up for the people that would legislate us into the 1400s.

I'm not saying it's gonna be easy.  But what percentage of things that are worth doing are ever easy?  Giving my cat his ear medicine every day isn't easy either, but I do it.  I've got scars to prove it.  I also have a happy cat.  So it is worth doing.

Anyway, I hope you guys are okay and people you love are okay.  If you haven't checked on them, you should do that, because some people are not okay.  Which is why they need us to stick around and help.  Donate to abortion funds, if you can.  The NAACP, United We Dream, Planned Parenthood, this little organization that's close to my heart,  and the ACLU could all use your help, too.  

That last one more than ever.

The Five Really Excellent Suggestions

5 minute meditation: Take a few minutes to consider what something is made of. I don't mean just the ingredients. I mean, the work that goes into it, the people who designed it, the process of making it at and the people who transport it, sell it and fix it when it breaks.

I tried to do this with a cell phone recently and about had a meltdown, so let us instead consider a single piece of paper. (!) A piece of paper is made primarily of wood. Wood comes from trees, which grow in a forest, so there's a forest in the piece of paper. There's the earth and the sunlight and the rain. There are the lives of the men and women who harvest the tree, put it on a truck and drive it where it needs to go. There are the people who get the tree and cut it into pieces so that it can be made into paper. There are big pieces of equipment in the factory that break the wood down into pulp. There are giant rollers that roll out the paper, and there are also machines that cut it to size and wrap it up. Somebody had to invent that process and design all those machines. Somebody also has to pick up the wrapped packages of paper at the end of the process and put them on a truck. The truck has to go someplace that sells the paper. And so on and so on and so on.

The deeper you look into this, the more you realize that there's actually an entire universe in that piece of paper. And in everything else, including you. Try it for five minutes. It's pretty amazing.

So I haven't done anything really Buddhist-y in a while. I mean, I could talk about the Noble Eightfold Path or the Four Noble Truths or the Three Nifty Teacups or the Six Scary Things Not To Do With Electricity (Buddhists are big on numbered lists; in fact, Buddha may have invented the bullet point). However, I think I'll just take on the Five Precepts today. This is the short list of Buddha's suggestions for living a good and happy life, and increasing the happiness of those around you. They should be kind of familiar to those of you who know of these Ten Commandments. There's only five of them, so they're easier to remember, and you don't have to define "adultery" or "false witness".

Now, there are a lot of different kinds of Buddhists and we don't all agree. One person's interpretation of "sexual misconduct" is gonna be different than another's. So this is my interpretation of What All This Means, shaped in no small way by Thich Nhat Hanh and my Buddhist group. If you want the official Thich Nhat Hanh version, it is here. (Probably worth a look, anyway.) You'll note our boy got a bit wordy. Some of these have been edited since he died but I don't think the essential meaning has changed.

Here they are:

• I will refrain from killing any living being.

This covers every living being everywhere, even blades of grass, but it's not meant to be unreasonable. I mean, we all gotta eat. We all gotta breathe air (every time you do, you massacre millions of germs). The idea is to do what you can not to do harm to things, and it's dependent largely on your awareness. You may or may not be aware, for example, that lower life forms, like insects, are afraid of getting hurt or killed. Of course they are. They even have dreams, and they are crafty. They think things through. If you are aware of this, you will probably try not to kill them, if you're a reasonably nice person. I mean, I try not to kill them. I make an exception for those Big Creepy Bugs, not because I particularly want to. It's just that they're fast and they're scary and my brain won't let me go near them and so I can't always catch them and throw them outside, which would be my preference. I feel bad about it when I do stomp on one, or kill one by proxy (that's my wife's job). I am getting better at catching them. I don't think something should have to die just because I'm afraid of it.

That doesn't stop me from having regular pest control service at my house. My hope, tho, is that it convinces the critters to Just Stay Away.

Some people also interpret this one to mean that you have to be a vegetarian. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested (gently) that people aspire to not eat meat to the extent possible. As a young monk, he and the other monks did daily alms rounds with begging bowls, where they took whatever food people gave out, and sometimes that was meat. They were supposed to refuse if the animal had been especially killed for them, but you're not always gonna know that. And some people (like me) need meat to keep their iron count up, or their blood sugar low, or both. Again, it's do what you can do. If you can get meat from farms where the animals had good lives, enough space to run and play, and fresh air, that's obviously better than factory farmed meat where the chickens never leave their 2 foot by 2 foot space. Better for the chickens and better for you.

• I will refrain from taking that which is not freely given.

The second one is basically about not stealing, but it goes beyond physical things. It encourages us not to steal people's time, either, or their goodwill. Also to practice generosity with other people and with yourself. I dunno about you, but I'll cut other people way more slack than myself. Maybe give yourself a break sometimes. Take a nap if you need one. Tell a friend you need help or a friendly ear. Tip well. Give money and things to people in need. Whoever they are and regardless of their political, religious or citizenship status. And, you know, if somebody says something that comes across to you as really ignorant, racist or otherwise, maybe assume they don't know any better before jumping down their throats.

• I will refrain from committing sexual misconduct.

This is a big one. Most Buddhists interpret this as "Don't fool around." Which means different things to different people of course, but to me it means, "Don't have sex with somebody with whom you're not in a committed, long-term relationship." So one night stands are off the table. Cheating on your partner is off the table. Sex with exes is off the table. Group sex orgies are definitely off the table. (Some people somewhere must really do that.) I'm not sure about people married to more than one person. That sounds really complicated, but some societies make it work, so I guess never say never. Are you in a committed, long term relationship? Does the person you want to have sex with, with whom you are in the committed, long term relationship, want to have sex with you? In that case, knock yourself out. (Use a condom, please.) But I think it also means to keep your sex life out of public view, and not to indulge in salacious gossip about who's sleeping with whom. (I'm looking at you, Grey's Anatomy.) 

• I will refrain from misusing my power of speech.

"Misusing power of speech" generally means "Don't lie," but like everything else, it also means other things. Don't spread gossip. Don't say things to people to hurt their feelings or put them down. Don't say things just to sound superior or smarter than everybody else. If it's not really contributing anything, it's fine to just keep your mouf shut. In short, be mindful about what you're saying and to whom you are saying it. The same thing that's appropriate to say to a good friend may be totally inappropriate to say to your boss. Dude.

• I will refrain from taking intoxicants that cloud the mind.

Which are, in no particular order, alcohol, drugs not prescribed by a doctor, weed, excessive sugar, video games, social media and cell phones generally. (Cell phones are the anti-Buddha.) And gambling. Buddha made a point of not gambling. In short, it's anything addictive, which you fall into, waste tons of time you don't have, and lose track of everything else, with negative consequences for your peace of mind. Such as, losing money, losing time, deleterious effects on your body, etc. Also stuff that's flat-out bad for you. I love horror movies, for example, but I can only watch a very narrow stripe of the spectrum. Anything with serial killers, zombies, torture porn or psycho stalkers is right out.  I can't tolerate that kind of stuff. I also can't watch anything about slavery, mental hospitals in the 1900s, the Spanish Inquisition or El Salvador circa 1984-1992. Social media is also bad for me. Does that keep me off it? No. I'm doing my best, though.

And that's kind of the point. They don't say, "Thou shalt not." Buddha didn't give commandments. He gave really excellent suggestions. Also, the way the precepts are phrased, it's more of a statement of aspiration, not so much "I will" (or will not) but "I will do my best." Because really, all we can do is our best. We're human. We're gonna screw up. It's endemic to the species. The neat thing about being human is, we know when we've screwed up and we can do better next time. Probably some dolphins and whales also know this, and octopuses, and certainly cats. (If you've ever seen your cat do something inadvertently funny and then make a great show of washing its paws, that's because it's embarrassed. Yes, cats know when they screwed up.)

So that's it.

Let's not screw up this election, everybody.

Haunted Switchboard

Here's today's 5-minute meditation tip. Next time you listen to a popular song, listen to the drums. Seriously. Just concentrate on what the drummer is doing.  Unless you are or were a drummer yourself, you have probably never heard what the drums are doing before. (In which case, listen to the bass player.) You will hear amazing stuff. You will notice that the drums often play the melody, in a way. That they offer cues for when it's time for the other musicians to come in. You will hear the song in a whole nother way. It's a nice 3 or 4 minute mental break.

So just to revisit the Office Ghost, something happened a couple days ago that I have not been able to get out of my head. I was at home in the evening when somebody called my cell phone from the office switchboard. It was like 9:30 pm. I was of course thinking there was some kind of emergency. I rushed to answer the phone but they had already hung up and did not leave a message. I called back immediately, but what I got was the switchboard, which had gone over to the answering service.

Then I got to thinking, "Wait a minute. If there was some kind of emergency, they wouldn't have called me from the switchboard. They would have called me from their cell phone." I mean, the switchboard doesn't have my phone number on it and won't dial me if you click on the link. A cell phone will. Plus, whoever was having the emergency would probably be in his/her office freaking out at his/her computer, not anywhere near the switchboard which is in the lobby.

The next day I asked the receptionist who had called me. She looked, and someone had indeed called me at the time I mentioned, from the switchboard. But there was no way to know who, of course. So she looked at the feed from the security cameras. Reader, no one was there. Or anywhere else in the office for that matter. The last person left at like 7:10 and the janitor had already come and gone by then.

(🎵"Twilight Zone Theme"🎶)

So we maybe have an Office Ghost who can not only impersonate living people but also use the switchboard. Which is digital, so I guess that makes sense (they say ghosts are whizzes at electronics). Whatever, but 😬😬😬. And just in time for the spooky season to roll in, too.

Speaking of spooky season, we have these neighbors who just go all out for Halloween. They have probably 20 figures on their lawn and the roof of their house, all life size or larger, many of them animatronic. People literally come for miles around, and bring their little kids, to see their display. On Halloween night it's hard to get to my house because there's so much traffic. This year they have groups of skeletons drinking coffee at a Starbucks, partying at a bar (one of them has on a tutu) and playing in a band (fife, drum and guitar). And yeah, there's the obligatory flying witches, a werewolf and a giant spider, but, you know, it's Halloween.

Anyway, this has inspired me to do my own yard display. I have three (count them, three) yard signs for Harris/Walz and my pick for Senator on my lawn. I'm gonna order a life size skeleton to hold a vinyl sign that says, "The Alternative Is Scary." I'll post a pic when I have it set up. By the way, all the signs are right close to the wheelchair ramp so anyone who messes with them will show up on the Ring doorbell cam. Oh, and this is interesting: Right after I put up my yard signs, three more yards on my street suddenly had signs. This goes to my theory of volunteering, which is, some people won't volunteer until someone else has already volunteered. Anyway, it's cool to see yard signs. I haven't seen a single one for the Orange Shitgibbon anywhere around here.

(Apologies to actual gibbons.)

My gang of Buddhists is reading Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, by Thich Nhat Hanh. This is one of those annoying books that is very easy to read, only after a page you say "Wait a minute, what was that?" and go back and read it again. It's full of simple concepts that, despite being simple, are really hard to wrap your brain around. Foremost is this idea that before you can work on saving the planet, you have to get a grip on yourself. It's kind of like the idea that if there's a sudden pressure loss on an airplane, you have to get your own mask on before you assist your child, or anyone acting like a child, or maybe the person next to you. Reason: You have about 30 seconds before you lose consciousness. Obviously, if you don't get the mask on in 30 seconds, you won't be able to assist anybody. And it's not like the flight attendants can walk down the aisle checking everybody because they'd have to take their own masks off. Anyway, similar concept here. If you're still full of rage about the oil companies, the idiotic administrations that got us to this point, and general cluelessness on behalf of lots of other people, all you're gonna do is more harm. So you have to, get this, work on living in the present moment first. I mean the guy says this over and over again, in lots of ways and in many different books, and it has yet to sink in. I keep finding myself arguing with him in my head. Then losing those arguments. Anyway, it is a good book.

Also, it's time for lots of health care things that happen this time of year. One of them is a mammogram. The last time I had a mammogram, about a year ago, I literally got hurt. I told the technician specifically not to do a certain thing and the second time she had to reposition me, she did that very thing. Plus I yelled and she didn't stop. She's lucky I didn't hit her. (They say battery by patients is endemic in medical settings. Gee, I wonder why. Evidently I bit a dentist when I was five, too. He probably said, "This won't hurt a bit" and then it did. Of course, five year olds can't be prosecuted in most states.) Also, this was not a minor injury. I needed treatment, I couldn't wear a bra for a week, and as a consequence, I didn't go to work or pretty much leave the house. For me that was not a big deal, I still got paid. But for some people it would be a Very Big Deal. Yes, I complained at the time, and they were very nice about it. But I'm very hesitant to schedule another one, at least at that establishment.

Someone very wise to whom I happened to be married commented that if they were a clinic and a patient was considering not scheduling with them ever again, they would want to know that. So this week I sent a letter to four of their chief executives, copying my Regular Doc. It was kinda long but it outlined exactly what happened, why it happened, and more importantly, why it should NEVER HAPPEN EVER. Real quick, name me a routine medical screening that people sometimes leave with a fresh injury. Go ahead, I'll wait. Plus that they were seriously shortchanging fat people and people with large breasts and giving them substandard medical care, and the things they need to do to fix that.

Did you know that about 25-33% of women who are supposed to be having regular mammograms are already not doing so, and of those that are, 18% of those are injured during a mammogram, because "sometimes this happens", either delay their next mammogram for years or never go back for another one? So by letting this happen, the clinic is eroding its own customer base.

Anyway, I hope they read it for what it is: A demand letter. (That's what I based it on, one of my office's demand letters.) A demand letter, incidentally, is the last thing you send another party before you sue them, telling them how they can settle this thing with you before it goes to court. I didn't ask them for money. I asked them to better train their staff and order a medical supply item that completely prevents this kind of injury. I think that's a reasonable demand and it won't even cost them much. I also told them I would not be back without a support person, ie, my wife, and that she will be in the room with me witnessing the procedure. If I don't get a response, I will of course not ever return there for anything. I will also go to every single medical review site on the Internet that I can find, like Yelp and Healthgrades and Google Reviews and so on, and leave a lengthy review of exactly what happened. It's not libel if it's true, just incidentally, unless it's also intentionally defamatory. Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, 501 U.S. 496, 516 (1991).

I mean, I guess the alternative is to just stop getting mammograms. I've already called a halt to Pap smears, and a colonoscopy is not ever happening. I've had plenty of invasive exams in my life, thank you, and I'm Done. Oh, and before you start sending me horror stories about people you know who died agonizing deaths from various unspeakable cancers because they didn't get their screenings, just don't. You have control over exactly one person's medical choices and that person is you. Anyway, statistically the odds of breast cancer are considerably higher than colon or cervical cancer. And a mammogram is not, in itself, invasive. But we'll see what they say, and what they say about a support person. I'd hate to drag us both all the way there and then have to call the whole thing off because they don't want any witnesses.

So that's what's going on. Next week I'm at a nifty conference for a couple of days and then I'll probably sleep all weekend. Cheers!

This Diabetes Thing

So in the course of surgery and recovery and so on, I developed something called hyponatremia. That is, the sodium content in my blood is too low. Now, I dunno about you, but only very rarely have I ever heard anyone say, "He/she doesn't have enough salt." I mean that is not normally a problem. And the first thing my doc in the hospital said was that they were gonna have a kidney specialist come check me out because this is usually a kidney failure issue.

Well, good news. It isn't. My kidneys are fine. The hyponatremia seems to be some combination of genetics and the meds I take for bipolar disorder. Some other family members have also had this. I can't do anything about either issue, so I just kinda have to live with it. I take salt tablets twice a day (it's like swallowing a teaspoon of salt in the form of a tablet) and I have to drink a lot of Gatorade. I have always hated Gatorade and having to drink it every day has not helped matters. Luckily there are Nuun and Skratch, which at least aren't sweet and are available at Amazon. But, and here's the thing: I CAN HAVE ALL THE CHEETOS I WANT. FOREVER. You gotta look at the positive with this sort of stuff.

Speaking of things health related, the other day I ate something that made my blood sugar go way, way up. I have a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) so it tells me this stuff. And I mean, the mature and logical response probably should have been "Okay, don't eat that again, duly noted." Instead I felt guilty. Like how dare I eat something that shoots up my blood sugar. (I might add, what shoots up your blood sugar is very individual and is often a matter of trial and error. For example, half a banana shoots up my blood sugar. A piece of toast with jam on it does not. No, that makes no sense. For someone else it might be the opposite. Like I said, trial and error.)

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out why I felt, of all things, guilty and I think it's diet culture, folks. What's that? Well, that's when people say stuff like "Oh, I really shouldn't" when they have dessert with dinner or, worse, get mad at their significant other and say, "Why did you let me eat that?" Whether they're trying to lose weight or not. Which, I know, is just part of our cultural repartee, but think about it for a second; what are they saying, actually? We're so conditioned to believe that enjoying a food (or enjoying anything, really, like marijuana, or sex, or a beer after work) is a bad thing that we do this to ourselves as readily as the 75-billion-a-year diet industry does it to us. I mean, it could be that Puritan work ethic thing, but I really believe the diet industry has monetized that and is just running it for all it's worth. After all, would people go back and shell out money for weight loss programs that don't work, time and time again, if there wasn't some aspect of religion involved? Would they have life-altering, invasive abdominal surgery or take medications that make them constantly sick? Even if it's "I believe against all logic that this is what I need to do", which, incidentally, is the very definition of religion.

When I first got diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), I didn't tell anybody except my wife for quite a while because I was convinced everybody was going to say, "There, see? Serves you right." Like people deserve to have a potentially fatal medical condition because they, I dunno, take away school lunches from hungry kids or molest children or serially kill people or, in my case, are fat. I realize that's crazy, and T2D, despite what you may have heard, is not even caused by being fat; fat or skinny, you have to have the genetic marker or you will never get it no matter what you eat. (Tho, if you do have said marker, when it shows up in your life may have something to do with what you eat and how fat you are. Like, does it show up at 40 or 50. Research is ongoing.) But there's diet culture again. Actually authoritative culture generally. "You should shut up and do everything we say because it's what's good for you." This idea took a body blow after the Black Death, when the Church, for all its supposed power, could do nothing to stop the dying. But obviously it is still around.

 

Nobody said it. Most people were kind of, "Eh." Which, I guess, is the right response, more or less? I mean, if you said "I have arthritis" or "I have hypertension" or "I have Osgood Schlatter disease" nobody would freak out. Or maybe people just expect I have T2D because I'm, you know, fat. I just expected much more drama. The actual drama ensued after the diagnosis during the happy-go-lucky months that followed, during which we tried to come up with a medication combination that actually worked and also didn't kill me. For some reason, all new medications go directly to my stomach, and if there's even a 1% chance a medication can cause nausea and vomiting, it will. (And some meds that have never caused nausea and vomiting in anyone ever still cause them in, uh, me.) Then of course there was the whole thing with one of the Ozempic-type drugs blocking all my mental health meds, and flying out the metaphorical windshield at 95 mph, and having to take a week off work and so forth and so on. But that's behind us, I hope, and I'm taking two meds that seem to be working fine. My CGM tells me I'm within the desired range about 90% of the time and my A1C is happy.

I gotta tell ya, compared to bipolar disorder and ADHD, T2D is a walk in the park. I mean, yeah, I don't eat rice anymore, but I never liked it anyway and I'm fine with opting out of it forever. My favorite Chinese food place just gives you more vegetables if you say "no rice." Which, you have to admit, is just heartbreaking. Otherwise I really have not changed very much. Except for breakfasts. I used to have peanut butter toast and half a banana for breakfast. And I do still do that sometimes, but mostly I have eggs or chicken fingers. Not nearly as much fun, but if you start out the day with your blood sugar way high, you're gonna spend the rest of the day trying to get it back down. It's easier to just not get that high in the first place.

If T2D makes me feel bad at all, it's when my blood sugar is falling off a cliff. (T2D, in case you did not know this, is when the natural process by which your pancreas secretes insulin to digest your food gets subverted somehow. Either you're not secreting enough insulin, or what you're secreting is not any good, or the pancreas gets the timing wrong, or sometimes all three.) There's a brief time period between the falling-off of blood sugar and the moment your liver realizes things are awry and dumps some more sugar into your bloodstream. You can also eat something, which helps too. But that falling-off is horrible. I get sick to my stomach, I break out in a sweat, I feel shaky, I can't walk right. A few ginger candies fixes it right up, but I can't get them into my system fast enough.

Bipolar disorder, though. Bipolar disorder makes me feel bad every single day. Yes, the meds help a lot. But I'm still either up or down. Being down is, of course, not fun. But sometimes being up is not fun either. Sometimes being up is being jittery and anxious and not able to sit still. Other times being up means I feel like doing stuff I can't actually do, like, I dunno, climbing Mount Everest or hiking the Amazon or quitting my job, driving to Bonham, Texas and opening a Chinese restaurant. (That was something I became obsessed with for a couple of weeks back about a year ago. There are no Chinese restaurants in Bonham. A person could make a fortune opening a Chinese restaurant there. Not, by the way, that I know how to cook or know anything about Chinese food or how to run a restaurant.) So I have to sit there and talk myself out of doing things that should be completely unnatural in the first place. I don't know if you've ever had to do that, so take my word for it that it's a huge drain on mental energy. I mean, yes, I'm doing better than a lot of people, and I haven't had to call in sick to work to lie in bed and stare at the wall for a long time. But still. It is always there. It does not go away.

Then there's ADHD. It's called "attention deficit" but it's really "attention instability." I can, when conditions are right, focus deeply on something that has lots of tiny details for several hours at a time. That's how I make beaded jewelry. But, I never know when conditions will be right or, indeed, what "right" even looks like. Other times I can't focus on anything for more than about ten seconds. I mean, I definitely have good and bad days. I even have lists of stuff to do at work for good and bad days. On bad days, I may spend eight hours reading mail from the Federal Courts. Which, don't get me wrong, needs to be done. It's just that there are, you know, 200 other things that also need my attention that are getting ignored while I'm having a bad day. Plus, there's nothing like getting to the end of a day and feeling like you wasted your employer's time and money and didn't get enough done. (Which, given my wonky personality, I might feel regardless, but trust me, having ADHD does not help.)

T2D, though. Take meds. Watch carbs. Eat good food. Keep an eye on the blood glucose monitor. Send numbers to doctor once a month. I mean, unless I'm shooting above 200 all the time for no apparent reason, T2D is easy. I mean, for now, anyway. I could always develop a bunch of complications later and have both my legs amputated or, I dunno, drop dead, but I think that's a remote possibility. Which, I mean, just goes to show something or other. I guess the lesson here is that anybody you know might have a disabling condition. And maybe they've told you and maybe they haven't, and maybe for them it's the worst thing ever or maybe it's not. But regardless, the experience of having a condition or a disability is just really, really individual. You have been warned. 

Ten Things I Wish People Knew About Lawsuits

 I am not a licensed attorney in any state and this blog post is not to be even slightly construed as legal advice. Though it might be humorous.

Back in the olden days, we had an interesting way of settling disputes. The injured party walked up to the offender, hit him in the face with a glove, and challenged him to a duel. The two combatants then fought with swords or shot guns at each other until one was dead. Which was great, I guess, in that there was always a clear winner, but not so great in that the other party was, well, dead. Then you might have that person's relatives coming after you for bloody revenge, which sometimes devolved into feuds, and then whole nations got involved, and fortunately the Vikings figured out at some point that if they didn't nip this sort of thing in the bud, they'd kill each other off (being hotheaded and prone to taking offense). They came up with the weregeld, or danegeld system. If you offended or injured another person, the local lord could determine that you owed that person a certain amount of money. A lot if their life was lost, less if it was, you know, just an arm or something. (Some districts even had fee schedules.) And that worked pretty well until it occurred to people that there might be a way to handle this sort of stuff without anybody getting hurt whatsoever. And so they invented courts, first held by the local lord, then later by judges and lawyers.

Fast forward about a thousand years and you have the American civil legal system. It's kind of like the British civil legal system, and it also doesn't resemble the British civil legal system in any way whatsoever. It's a slime mold growing out of control, spawning new jurisdictions and laws and rules and procedures every time you turn around. Somebody, of course, has to keep on top of it all. That would be my job. Hello, I'm your friendly paralegal. I solve problems you never knew you had in ways that you would never understand.

Most of us will eventually be in court about some matter or other, either as a juror, a plaintiff, a defendant or (hopefully not a) criminal defendant. This is why we learn about courts in school, which was a long time ago for most people. Luckily, we have legal procedural shows like Law & Order to fill in the gaps. Not very well. And what I know about criminal law would fit on my tiniest fingernail, and there'd still be room for all the stuff I know about administrative law. But should you ever be in some kind of business or personal injury dispute and are contemplating maybe suing somebody, there are ten things you really need to know. Will your lawyer tell you these things? Maybe, if he or she remembers to. Will your paralegal? Also maybe. They should, but they don't always get to it because the slime mold keeps growing and spawning and sending out new psuedopods and there's only so many hours in the day.

Firstly, if you're even thinking about suing somebody, you need to talk to a lawyer. That sounds obvious, but people are strange. Sure, you can also get on Reddit or Facebook or talk to your friends, and who knows, you may even get the right answer. But you really want to talk to a lawyer too, and you should do it early, before things get out of control. Most lawyers do a free or low-cost consultation to meet you and consider what you want and let you know if it's even possible, for one thing, and if it's something they'd entertain doing, for another. Also, if you can't find a lawyer who will do the thing, that's a good sign that it's probably not legally possible, or, if possible, not worth the expense and bother of suing in the first place. If, for example, you wanna sue the driver who hit you in the car accident because his or her insurance company is not paying your expenses, you can probably find a lawyer (or nine or ten) to do that for you. If, on the other hand, you wanna sue the state of Texas because your lights went out for ten days during Snowpocalypse 2021, well, good luck with that. But don't take my word for it. Ask an actual lawyer. Also ask them to define sovereign immunity, because hey, that's important here.

Anyway, all that said, here are Ten Things I Wish People Knew About Filing Lawsuits.

10. It's going to take a long time. When you first bring the matter to the lawyer, the lawyer is going to try to settle it, because filing lawsuits is expensive and risky. Your statute of limitations, or the time you have to sue, may not even run for a year or more, and that's a good amount of time to work out a satisfactory settlement. Only if that doesn't work will the lawyer file the lawsuit, often the day of or just before the statute runs. (Paralegals lose sleep over this all the time.) Then, after it's filed, it may easily be another year to 18 months before the case is resolved and/or trial date is reached. So, filing lawsuits is not for the short of patience. It's going to take a long time. Bank on it.

9. In between months of nothing happening, there will be sudden frantic phone calls from your attorney (or, more likely, your paralegal) needing some document or some piece of paper IMMEDIATELY. This is not due to poor planning, necessarily; it's often due to the fact that the other side dug something up on you that you didn't mention to your attorney (because people do that) and the attorney needs the Real Story right this very minute. Also, court deadlines are sometimes issued ten days from now with no warning and much scrambling must ensue. This is the nature of the beast. So expect to be suddenly interrupted with this sort of thing. If you can, take all the relevant documents, put them in order and have them handy for when this kind of phone call comes in.

8. Keep all the emails and text messages associated with the matter saved in a special place, but DO NOT DISCUSS YOUR CASE ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Yes, you can mention you're involved in a lawsuit, but that's IT. Not the whys, not the whos, not the wherefores. The other side will be searching for you on social media too.  Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You heard it here and on 9,000 cop shows first.

7. If your case involves an injury, the other side can and will get your medical records. You can't prosecute a lawsuit without evidence and the defendant has as much of a right to that evidence as you do. Now, they usually can't get, say, your gynecologist's records if you broke your leg, but then again, if they can prove it's relevant, they might be able to. You can ask your attorney about what records are being requested, and your attorney can file a Motion to Quash if you think the other side is requesting irrelevant records. The Judge will then decide if the other side is entitled to have those records or not.

6. You will probably have to answer discovery questions, which can be long and intrusive. If you can, go into your attorney's office and talk to your paralegal to do this. Bring all your documents. You may also have to appear for a deposition. This is a formal interview, usually conducted by the attorney for the other side, where you will answer questions under oath just like you would in court. Usually everybody's pretty friendly and cordial, but if the other attorney gets out of line, your attorney will start saying "Objection" a lot and instruct you not to answer. Listen to your attorney when he or she says this and don't answer. Also, please don't wear sweat pants and flip flops to a deposition. A lawsuit doesn't have to be scary but it is serious, and you need to take it seriously.

5. Don't forget that lots of other people besides you have a hand on your settlement once your case resolves. For one thing, that's how your attorney gets paid; rent and keeping the office lights on are not free. I mean, that sounds dumb, but people forget this all the time and are surprised (yea verily, angry) when the case is resolved and they don't get a check for the whole $1 million. Also, bear in mind if you are getting medical treatment pending the resolution of the case, those bills are not free; you will still need to pay them once the money has been released. If you have health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, you will have to reimburse the insurer for at least part of the cost of your care, too.

4. Speaking of when the money rolls in, please do not make any specific plans for when that's gonna be. Usually, if the case settles, the funds are set to be released in a certain amount of time, but that time starts ticking AFTER all the preliminary stuff is done. That includes checking with such people as Medicare, Medicaid, your health insurance company, your doctors and the state office of child support enforcement to make sure you don't owe anybody any money. If you have an ongoing bankruptcy, the settlement can be held up until the bankruptcy case is over. If there is a trial and you win money in court, things are, ironically, even less certain. The other side could appeal, holding things up for months or years. Their insurance company could declare insolvency, pushing responsibility for the judgment back onto their reinsurer and largely starting things from the beginning. Stuff can happen, is what I'm saying. Until your attorney calls and tells you "I have the check in my hand," it's not a done deal.

3. Tell your attorney stuff. If you were high on meth at the time of the car accident, you need to cop to that even if you weren't the driver at fault. It's gonna be in your medical records, anyway, and if you don't think the other side's not gonna find it and make a Big Deal out of it, you are living in an alternate reality. Got in a bar fight the night before your deposition? Call your lawyer in the morning before you show up with a black eye. Did the same thing you're accusing the other party of having done? Yep, better cop to that too. Doesn't mean your case isn't worth anything, but it does change how your attorney will approach things and they can't change their approach if they don't know.

2. It's Complicated. Sure, your case may seem very straightforward to you, but if it's that straightforward, then thousands of people over the years have filed roughly the same case. That's that many thousands of opportunities for judges to make rulings that people don't like, people appealing those rulings, higher courts publishing rulings about those rulings, and, eventually, legislators passing laws about those rulings, which starts the whole ball rolling again. So please don't be annoyed when you ask your lawyer or paralegal a simple question and they can't answer it. "It depends" is probably the truth and "I'll get back to you in a couple days" is probably realistic.

And finally (drum roll, please) the No. 1 thing I wish people knew about filing a lawsuit:

1. You can lose. You can have a great case, a great attorney, all the facts in your favor, and sometimes the jury STILL decides for the other party. Why? Well, they know that and you don't, and unless they decide to tell you, you never will. Filing a lawsuit is always a risky endeavor. It's never a sure thing. So if there's any other way to settle your dispute, do that first. Sometimes there isn't. But go into it at least being aware that the worst case scenario can happen and in fact does every day.

Bonus point, and I'm listing it as a bonus point so that you'll pay more attention to it: DO NOT EVER TAKE OUT A PRE-SETTLEMENT LOAN WITH ANY FINANCE COMPANY OF ANY KIND EVER. AT ALL. Please oh please. Your lawyer will advise you against it, your paralegal will advise you against it, any financial advisor will advise you against it and it's Just A Really Bad Idea. A lawsuit is a gamble, not an asset. Yes, you're about to be homeless, your grandmother needs cancer treatment, your cat has gout. I get it. But get the money some other way. Borrow it on your credit card, take out a signature loan, borrow it from your cousin in Boston. Anything. Hell, go to one of those payday loan places on the street corner before you take out a pre-settlement loan. They are That Bad of a Deal. Real life scenario that I have seen happen, with variations: Client borrows $50,000 from a pre-settlement loan company. Client wins $100K at trial. Trial and other costs amount to $25k. Lawyer gets $40k. Doctor is owed $10k. Client would get the remaining $25k except they borrowed $50k from the finance company, which with interest is now up to $75k, so client gets nothing and finance company sues them for the $50k balance they can't pay now. And wins, since they signed a contract. And seizes their house, their car, and other major assets. Please don't do it. Please oh please.

Having said all that, though, I hope you never in your life need to file a lawsuit or appear in court or try to decide if you need to say "Guilty" or "Not guilty" when the Judge asks. If you ever do, though, find a good lawyer. You have been briefed. Pun intended. Cheers!

A Buddhist Goes To a Horror Movie,,,

(Serious spoiler alert: I'm gonna talk a lot about the plots of various horror movies, most of which have been out for a long time, but anyway, if you don't want to know anything about the plots of certain horror movies, you might wanna skip this blog post. Thank you.)

I guess it is kind of weird for a Buddhist to like horror movies. I mean, so much about Buddhism is cultivating certain states of mind, none of which involve being scared silly. I've been trying to figure out if I like horror movies because I don't have enough immediate threats to life and limb to appreciate the life I have, or if it's because life itself is scary and sometimes you just need that reduced to a screen and a plot and a couple of actors. Regardless, I have always been a big fan of horror movies. I lied to my parents that "Kingdom of the Spiders," starring William Shatner (!), was a National Geographic special that I needed to see for school so I could stay up and watch it. I think I was nine. I was also very good at going to a movie theater for some kiddie movie and sneaking into something else, which is how I got to see Poltergeist when I was maybe ten or eleven.

(For parents: The biggest problem with horror movies, and scary things generally, for kids is not having anybody to talk to about what scared them and why. If you're sneaking into horror movies, like I did, you will perpetually lack that somebody to talk to. So I'm just sayin', if your kid wants to see a scary movie, you might do better to just let them see it, or maybe see it with them, and then talk about it afterwards. What was scary? Why was that scary? What do they think the characters could have done better to improve the situation? Is there anything going on in kid's life that is similarly scary, and if so, what does kid think would help? Serious learning experiences possible here.)

There is a huge spectrum of horror movies, and I only like one very narrow stripe of that spectrum. I don't like slasher or serial killer movies. I'm not all that interested in zombies or found footage. What I like is A. a strong female protagonist, B. a situation where something supernatural is going on, C. a Big Deep Dark Dirty Secret that needs to be revealed, and D. a twist ending, the more mind blowing the better. If you want to see how this pattern works without being scared silly, there's a movie called Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, that follows it exactly. (Okay, there are a few scary moments. But it's not a scary movie. It's more of a sci fi/thriller. And Sandra Bullock is amazing in it.)

I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think what makes a scary movie scary is the unexpected. I mean, to some degree we all know that the protagonist will make a bunch of dumb decisions to invite the threat, the threat will get worse, and the situation will continue to deteriorate until they get out alive, or don't. Kind of like an opera, in a way. But the unexpected is what makes it truly scary.

Here's where I start talking about movie plots. You have been warned.

I try to avoid all reviews of horror movies until after I see them, and I usually only like seeing them in a crowded theater (appropriately masked) in amongst a bunch of other people that are jumping at the jump scares. So I try to either see them opening weekend or skip them entirely. Another reason to be choosy about my horror movies as that can get pricey.

Here's how I ended up seeing The Ring, American version with Naomi Watts, which is in my top five list of best scary movies of all time and probably the one that scared me the most. (The Japanese original is also fantastic for different reasons.) Joan was away at a conference and I took myself out to a scary movie in the San Diego Gaslamp district called "Ghost Ship." It was not very scary and kind of dumb. I went back to the box office and said, "Scarier. I want scarier." The guy selling tickets said a new movie called The Ring had just come out and he'd heard it was very scary but it wasn't playing there, it was at a theater about 2 blocks away. So I walked down there and saw it. (You can do that in the Gaslamp, it's pretty safe even at 10 pm.)

Well, The Ring scared the pants off me, broke my heart and then, just when I thought it was all over, scared the pants off me again. So there I was with a broken heart and no pants. I was totally unprepared for the scary little girl crawling out of the TV set and coming to kill you. I'd never seen anything like that before. I was so blown away I dragged my wife to see The Ring and I don't think I'll ever get her to another scary movie again ever. She said later that the scary little girl was along the lines of seeing Star Wars for the first time, in that opening shot where the giant space ship fills the entire screen and just seems to go on forever. That had never been done before (yeah, they do it all the time now, but hey, I was eight years old and ILM was all new). That's a wow moment. The scary little girl was a holy shit moment.

The thing is, you're never expecting the unthinkable til it happens. I mean before 9-11 who would think a bunch of extremists would fly airplanes into buildings? Besides the Department of Homeland Security, we need a Department of Worst Case Scenarios, where a bunch of people with a really sordid view of human nature and great imaginations sit around thinking up the worst things people could possibly do to each other so we'll be prepared for them when they happen or better yet, before. (My nominee: Smuggling a nuclear time bomb into the Port of Los Angeles in a shipping container. Those shipping containers are like giant UPS trucks full of anonymous packages and there's no way to check everything that's in there. I'm just sayin'. Sleep tight.) The guys who write the really good horror movies are all about worst case scenarios. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse again. And then something you never saw coming happens right in front of you.

Ferexample: Hostel, which was not a very good movie really. But I happened to see it on opening weekend before all the hype. I knew nothing about it, had no expectations and aside from the dialogue, which is terrible, the first 45 minutes of that film are just electrifying. These kids are on vacation in Eastern Europe and members of their party just keep disappearing. You don't know why. Takahashi Miike, director of the great Japanese horror movies Audition and Three Extremes, has a cameo that you'd think would warn the kids off, but no. And there is one hell of a twist ending involving a German businessman the kids met on the train on their way out to Eastern Europe turning up at the end for a pivotal scene that I'm not sure I can explain except that it made me cry and I wondered for days if emotional repression creates serial killers because I kind of think maybe it does.

And Alien, which has nothing supernatural going on whatsoever but the whole series is so great and imaginative that I love it anyway. The baby alien bursting out of John Hurt's chest was a similar "never saw that coming" moment. (I saw a parody once where the baby alien had on a top hat and cane and began dancing and singing "Hello mah baby, hello mah darlin', hello mah ragtime ga-aaal...") I actually saw Aliens way before I saw Alien, and I saw it at a drive in when I was about 16. My scariest iconic moment from that movie was when the beleaguered party of Marines was tracking the approaching aliens with a scope. "Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet." One guy says, "That's impossible. That's inside the room." "Five feet," says the first guy. And then the aliens fall on them from inside the ceiling. I don't think I slept with the lights off for more than a month.

Some gems in the Jeniverse horror movie firmament are The Ring, The Grudge, Shutter, Reincarnation (I think there's only a Japanese version of this one) and the Insidious series. Shutter, though. Shutter is almost perfect. If you can find the original Thai version from 2004, see that, but the American remake wasn't bad either. I got to the end of Shutter and suddenly realized that what I thought was going on was maybe not what was going on and was there really a ghost or wasn't there and I had to go back and watch it again and to be totally honest, I'm still not sure I know the answer. That's how a good horror movie works, folks. It leaves you with more questions than answers and it's kind of up to you to fill in the gaps.

Also, if you like horror movies and you haven't seen The Cabin in the Woods, you'd be well advised to check it out. Yes, it's Joss Whedon, yes, I know he's evil, but it's a very cerebral horror film that talks a lot about horror tropes and audience expectations. When I saw it, though, I didn't get that. I just thought it was an unusually bad, misogynistic horror film until my friend Rhett explained it to me. Then I had to go back and see it again and sure 'nuff... (boy, did I feel dumb).

Anyway. Alien Romulus premieres next week and I wanna be there on opening day. Yes, they're the same critters from the Alien movies before that and I pretty much know what they do and what's gonna happen, but every entry in the series has been an absolute nailbiter and I wouldn't miss this for all the laser space rifles in the space Marine Corps. Then I'll go back to cultivating positive states of mind and all that. Cheers!

Olympics!

So the other day at swim team practice I was toweling off next to a couple of guys who were Not From 'Round These Parts.  I was listening to their accents, like I always do, and one of them saw me and said hi.  I said, "Hi.  South Africa, right?"  "Sorry?" "Your accent.  Are you from South Africa?"  The guy kind of blinked at me and said, "Most people guess Australia." I said, "Oh, no. Not Australia."  He said, "Why not Australia?"

And I had to think about it for a sec.  I mean, to me an Australian accent sounds like a South African accent the way a Moscow accent sounds like a Belarus accent, which is to say, not at all.  But there are some similarities.  Plus, I didn't want to just say, "I know it when I hear it," even though that's also true.  Finally I said, "I think it's the vowel sounds, especially the A sound.  In Australian they're short and kind of clipped, and in South African they're rounder and, well, warmer."  "Oh," he said, still looking at me like I was an alien creature.  "In fact," I went on, "if I had to guess I'd say Cape Town."

His eyebrows shot right up and I knew I'd nailed it.  And I'm pleased to say, I remembered to add, "Well, welcome to Texas.  Have you been swimming long?"  I have learned a few things about socialization by watching my fellow hairless beach apes.

So this got me to thinking.  I did, in fact, spend 6 years training to be a classical musician (and that I wound up a paralegal in a mass torts law firm is Just Kinda How The Road Turned).  During much of that I was a youngster and I'm sure the bones in my ears hadn't ossified or whatever.  And as anybody who plays an instrument knows, there's a lot of subtlety of sound that goes into it.  Heck, even a punk guitarist probably knows how to tune that thing.  Is the string flat or sharp? By how much? A half turn or a quarter turn?  You have to turn up as your last movement or the string will go out of tune again, so how far down can you go before you need to come back up? I'm positive that's where I got the accent thing.  I spent years listening for small sounds. So is it any surprise, then, that my encounter with the Office Ghost was all sound and no visual? I don't think so.

Also, I have all the visual acuity of a rock.  When I have to imagine something, I get a muddy picture that's fuzzy around all the edges.  I got a little bit better at this when I took some painting classes some years ago, but not much.  I'm much better at imagining what something smells, sounds or feels like.  So it's maybe not the fault of ghosts that I don't see them.  I maybe don't see them because frankly, I don't see much.  Sometimes not even traffic signs.

Speaking of swimming and unfamiliar accents, the Olympics have been on for the last week, and I have been happy as a clam.  The wife and I are kind of Olympics junkies.  Let's face it, there really aren't any other things where you get to see lots of interesting sports at the same time and learn stuff you didn't know about them.  (CBS:  Bring back "Wide World of Sports"!!) Plus seeing people from all over the world and all different races and religions in the same room doing the same stuff at the same time and not fighting about it.  I mean that's pretty cool.

(Now, the opening ceremonies were really out there, don't get me wrong.  I somehow missed all the outrage where the Christian Right thought the painting of Dionysus was actually the Last Supper or some silly thing, but look, singing headless Marie Antoinettes are weird.  I don't care what country you're from.  Though, as Joan pointed out, it was all very French.)

I am a sucker for watching people do the thing that they're best at, better than they've ever done it before.  One of my favorite movies is "Sneakers" with Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley before he was a Sir.  Yeah, it was kind of forgettable, but you should look it up if you haven't seen it.  This gang of reformed criminals hires themselves out to break into a business's security, and then makes recommendations for how they can improve their security.  And there's this whole plot about unbreakable codes and the Russians and Ben Kingsley is doing something sinister but anyway, all of these guys are really good at whatever it is they do.  They do computer things (1990s tech, but anyway) or they know electronics backward and forward or they understand people and how they work in a security system or--whatever, and the person who wrote the dialogue clearly knew about this stuff because I can't understand 90% of it.  But it doesn't matter because you can just tell they really know what they're doing.  Plus there are moments of divine comedy, like when the blind guy has to drive a truck across a parking lot at great speed, or when Sidney Poiter's refined and urbane character loses his temper, decks somebody and uses the 12-letter expletive.  (And decides to take his wife to Tahiti.)  I like watching actors act really well, too.

Anyway, there's no better place for this sort of thing than the Olympics.  I can't really wrap my head around how somebody takes a running start, does a handspring, hits a springboard going backwards and then flies over a big piece of equipment while doing multiple twists or somersaults in midair and then lands on their feet and stays there, but watching somebody do that, and then do it again, better than the first time, is just beyond amazing.  And don't get me started on the balance beam.  I took gymnastics very briefly as a kid, they had one that was literally 2 inches off the ground, and I still wouldn't get on it.  Too scary.  I think the gymnasts backflip off the beam, land on their feet and say to themselves, "Thank God I'm off that thing." Never mind spinning around on one foot.  Never mind doing no-handed cartwheels backwards and landing them on four inches of wood.

Both swimming and track are awesome for something else: nail-biting finishes.  Yes, it's cool when the American wins, but it's just as cool, maybe cooler, when the Australian starts out behind, catches up to the person in front, and then races neck-and-neck for the finish line.  Or when whoever's ahead is right next to or on top of the world record line.  Or when the ending is so close that they literally need digital photos to see who won.  Or when someone almost falls or wobbles and still wins.

And diving!  Guys, a 10 meter platform is the same height as a three story building.  Most people, when you ask them to hurl themselves off the edge of a three story building, will say, "No thank you," not ask you if they should do a triple flip with a double twist on the way down. Even if you are landing in water. (You can get seriously hurt landing in water from that height if you don't know what you're doing.  I'm talking broken bones.)  The only thing more dangerous than diving is probably surfing.  The place where everybody's surfing, Tea'huapo, translates as something like "the place of the smashed skulls." I am not making that up.

One of my favorite sports, tho, is actually water polo (!).  I sometimes think about trying out for the adult water polo team that's attached to my swim club.  I always thought I'd make a good goalie. I am not a fast swimmer (I'm all about distance) but I am large, and my swimming superpower is getting out of the way.  No reason I can't turn this around and make my superpower getting in the way.  Anyway, water polo is great. It's like soccer, only in 8 feet of water, and faster.  If you haven't checked it out, you might want to.  Kudos to rapper Flava Flav, by the way, for sponsoring the U.S. women's water polo team and paying all of their training expenses when he found out some of them were working 2 and 3 jobs to be able to afford to go to the Olympics.  You shouldn't have to do a GoFundMe to go to to the Olympics and represent your country.  I'm just sayin'.

One of my other favorite sports is pole vaulting.  I dunno who decided it was a good idea to hurl himself or herself up to a height of 20 feet, not hit a bar and then fall down the other side onto his or her back. But wow.  And one of my other favorite sports is fencing.  And one of my other favorite sports is handball.  And one of my other favorite sports is break dancing.  And one of my other favorite sports is...

Well, I could go on.  But I'll stop there.  Hey, it's only August 6 and there are still 5 days of Olympic coverage left to go.  So get out there and watch, y'all.  Because it's cool. Cheers!

More Ghostly Annoyances

The wife and I have become enamoured of a new TV show on Netflix. It's scary without a lot of jump scares and occasionally funny as hell. It's called "Paranormal", which really cuts to the chase. Our protagonist is Mr. Refaat, a quiet, somewhat mousy college professor who's a scientist and a very by the book guy about reality and life. The thing is, he's A. being haunted by a demon, and B. has become the reluctant go-to guy for paranormal disturbances in his suburban Cairo (Egypt) neighborhood. If that's not complicated enough, he's also C. deeply in love, though not with the woman he's about to marry. It's in Arabic with subtitles and in case you did not know this, Muslims are just as superstitious about otherworldly beings as Christians are. Maybe more so. They did, for example, bring us the djinn, among other things. 

So in my last blog post, I talked about ghosts, and that I don't see them, or maybe I do see them and I just don't pay enough f_____ attention to know that I'm seeing them. I talked about this with a friend and she pointed out that I've been hanging with a gang of Buddhists since 2006 and meditating quite a lot, and that she thought I could probably use that focus to notice when stuff like that happens. And I thought, wow, applying a religious principle to real life. How novel.

Aside: I hung around with a bunch of Lutherans in San Diego for about 10 years. Tricky, since I didn't believe in God for most of that time, but I grew up in the Lutheran Church and these guys really walked the walk. (First Lutheran Church of San Diego, https://www.firstlutheransd.org/, and if you stop by, tell them I said hi.) Fed meals to the homeless in violation of local laws, set up a free medical clinic, had a lawyer who came in pro bono once a week to help people apply for Social Security or veterans' benefits (I helped), stuff like that. Oh, and they had this church over here, too, and if you came by on a Sunday you could hear some good music and maybe learn something. If more Christians were like that, then those other Christians would be too ashamed to rant about being demonized for being Christian and maybe realize we demonize them because they are assholes.

But yeah, seriously, apply meditation principles to paying attention to small things (since most ghost encounters are quite brief, a second or two, a single sound, etc., and if you're not paying attention, you will miss it). I have that whole ADHD thing about not being able to focus and also being able to hyperfocus, which makes no sense and drives other people crazy but makes Perfect Sense To Me. So I can do that. Just, you know, not all the time and often not when I want to.

Anyway, this brings us to the Office Ghost.

I dunno if the Office Ghost is a common phenomenon, but I've been told by more than one person that our office, at least, has a ghost. People talk of seeing a big shadow going down the hall by itself, and one lady told me about a human-shaped blob of light that came out of somebody's office and went into the copy room, then disappeared. Since I have never seen one, despite being many haunted places, I just figured I was never going to see it anyway and so it did not matter if our office had a ghost or not. At least until yesterday.

(Foreshadowing. Your sign of quality blog posts.)

So I have a small office that's across from a vacant office, and the office to the right is also vacant. The room to the left is the server room, and people rarely go in there, so it's pretty quiet in my neck of the woods. I face the back wall so I can't generally see people coming (except with my little rear view mirror), but I can hear them about halfway down the hall, and I've gotten pretty good at knowing who matches what stride cadence and breath sounds. In particular there's one lawyer named Tom who has a very distinct sound. He often comes up the hall to talk to his paralegal, whose office is a little farther on.

Yesterday I heard him coming and was glad, because I had to ask him something. As he got about even with my office I said, "Hey, Tom, come here a sec." I waited for him to stop and stick his head in my door and say, "What's up, Trouble?" like he usually does. Only he didn't. Which was odd. I looked at my little rear view mirror and I thought I saw him, so I turned around. And, uh, he was not there.

I got up and looked out into the hallway. No Tom. No anybody, for that matter. Now I'm thinking maybe he just didn't hear me and went on by, so I went back to my desk and waited for him to go back the other way. After about ten minutes I thought maybe I just missed him. So I got up and went down to his office and--he was not there. Furthermore, it didn't look like he'd been there all day. His light was off and none of his stuff was there.

Very puzzled, I went back to my office. I had only been back there a minute or two when the phone rang. It was Tom! "Hey, where are you?" "I'm in Colorado. Why?" Uh, that kind of threw me. "Oh, I thought I heard you go by." "No, I just landed in Colorado. I was in Nevada yesterday." And by the end of the conversation I figured out that he hadn't been in the office since Friday and there was no way he could have walked past my office.

And while I was pondering the weirdness of that, I realized that about a week previously, I was at a restaurant getting take-out. The order wasn't ready so I was sitting down, and somebody suddenly whispered "Hey!" in my ear. I was sitting next to a wall, so it's not like that was really possible. And besides hearing "Hey!", I felt the breath against my ear. I turned and looked, but of course there was no one in, uh, the wall. And I mostly forgot about this because they called my order and I got up to get it.

So, maybe I don't see ghosts. But, maybe I've been hearing them all along and I just didn't realize it. I still don't have a logical explanation for what walked past my office yesterday. My wife thought maybe Tom fell asleep on the plane and accidentally astrally projected himself back to the office because he needed to talk to me. Which I guess is possible. But, uh, it's also possible that whatever is haunting our office can impersonate living people.

And I'll be sleeping with the lights on tonight. Cheers!

Ghostly Annoyances

So I am a big fan of ghost shows. Not horror movies (though I like supernatural horror movies too) but fact-based shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Nation. And Paranormal Caught on Camera, though in that instance mostly so I can yell "It's a bug!" or "It's a drone!" at the screen. And I may have mentioned on this site before that ghosts don't seem to like me. I've been in plenty of haunted places and never seen or felt a darn thing. Which is frustrating but also kind of a relief.

For the record, tho, it's not a question of whether I "believe" in ghosts. I have no reason to doubt people who see ghosts, though, because I've met some pretty together people who have very interesting ghost stories, and I don't think they're all lying. Some even have impressive video footage to back it up. What I've come to believe about this is, not all of us can do everything. Some people can run a 4 minute mile. Some can solve impressive algebra equations. Some can, I dunno, swim ridiculous distances while fat. Some people can see ghosts or maybe even talk to them. I just can't, is all.

I feel much the same way about God. I say I don't believe in God, which is basically true, but kind of simplistic. It's more like, some people can talk to God, but if God exists, and I highly doubt that, he doesn't know that I exist. We can't talk to each other. Hell, I can't even tune into the right radio station. Still, when something happens, like when I was stuck in the hospital and our cat Grayson got out, I ask the Threads community (@J3ninDallas) or friends or whomever to intercede with whatever divine beings they can talk to and ask if they can help. Because it can't hurt, right? (Grayson was back inside in a couple of hours, thanks in no small part to our friend Kellum. Thanks, Kellum!)

Last week I saw a documentary called "74 minutes." Check it out if you can find it. It's about a ghost hunter, Chad Calek, who went through something like 30 years of footage from ghost hunting and edited out everything that had a potential explanation. What was left was 74 minutes' worth of all the stuff he had no way to explain. The footage is interesting and, yeah, scary. But the best part at the end was when Calek went into What I Have Learned. He said he'd figured out, first of all, that he thinks what he documented is future science. We don't know what's going on vis a vis ghosts, yet, but we will in the future. Second thing, he doesn't think there's any way to "prove" ghosts exist or not. Science will not investigate paranormal stuff, because "proving" it absolutely would not leave any room for faith, and as human beings, we need room for faith.

But thirdly, and most interesting, Calek said that whether or not you see ghosts seems to be largely a matter of what you believe. If you don't think ghosts exist, you're not likely to ever see one. As an example, he had some footage of a friend of his, Ryan Buell, confronting a "demonic entity" with the Prayer of St. Michael. It was filmed though a heat-seeking camera and as Ryan got to the climax of the prayer that banned demons from the world, darned if the heat signature on the camera didn't go way, way up. Then faded out. Calek commented that if he had been there and reciting the Prayer of St. Michael, he doesn't think anything would have happened because he is not Catholic and the prayer does not have any special meaning for him.

So maybe I never see ghosts because I don't expect to? I guess that is one possibility. The other one, which I don't like as much, is that I don't see ghosts because I'm not f_____ paying attention. It does seem like a lot of this stuff is corner of your eye or brief glimpse types of things. Given my remarkably scattered brain, I bet I could walk all the way through the Conjuring House, pass like five or six demonic entities shaking angry fists at me, and the whole time be saying to myself, "I know I left my cell phone here somewhere."

Anyway, back in the land of the living: I am a fan of the advice columns. All of them. Dear Abby, Carolyn Hax, Asking Eric, Ask Amy (gone but not forgotten), etc. I'm not sure why. My suspicion is that I like knowing what other people think about, what worries them, and stuff like that. My darker suspicion is that the advice columns make me feel NORMAL. That I read them and say to myself, "Hey, I'm a mess, but I'm not as much of a mess as THAT guy."

Friday at noon most weeks is Carolyn Hax's live chat. This is a bonus column because a whole bunch of people send in (relatively) short questions and she answers them in brief. It's like getting three or four extra columns. I greatly look forward to it and I hate it when she takes a holiday. (Yes, I know, we all need holidays.)

This week, there was a live chat, and what a live chat it was. The first letter was from a lady who was mad because her husband didn't want to travel with her to see her family members. She thought he should just suck it up and come with because it was Important To Her. Next there was a letter from a lady who had a friend with a chronic illness who had to cancel at the last minute a lot because, well, she had a chronic illness, and her friend was getting cranky and resentful. Then we had a letter from a guy who frequently got invited to barbecues that started at 6pm. No problem there, but apparently the host didn't serve the food until about 10. He wanted the host to start serving the food earlier.

There were a couple of other interesting letters, but there seemed to be a theme. The theme was, "I want another person to do something that they're not going to do, how do I make them do it?" And while I can think of other ways to pound your head against the wall, I can't imagine that there are too many others that are this bad for you and at the same time, bad for all of your fellow passengers.

I hate to tell you guys this, but the one and only person you have any control over whatsoever is you. Not your parents, not your spouse, not your minor children (yes, you can pick them up until they're about three or so, but after that, lots of luck). More importantly, you have control over your EXPECTATIONS. If you keep expecting that someone's going to do something that they've made it abundantly clear they aren't going to do, then who's the idiot? What's more, what do you stand to gain? Yes, you can feel selfrighteous because so and so isn't Doing What's Expected. And you get to feel like a victim, which some people like, I guess. But selfrighteousness lasts for about 5 seconds, I don't personally like feeling like a victim and if you keep expecting something that's not happening, what you get is a truckload of disappointment and resentment.

I mean, examples abound, but here are a few just from people I've known:

• "My ex husband pays child support but never shows up for his kids."

• "My medical patients don't make decisions based on logic and what's good for them."

• "My teenager is having sex and he/she shouldn't because he/she is too young."

• "The Orange Shitgibbon said something appalling."

For the record one, the first thing is very common. Lots of men (and some women) seem to think getting divorced is a good reason to forget they have the first batch of kids and just go start another family with someone else. For all of me, they only pay child support because they're legally forced to.

For the record two, the second thing is because people make decisions for reasons other than the Best Medical Outcome. People refuse surgery because they can't afford it, can't spare the time off work, or their insurance won't cover it. People don't have cancer treatment because they'd rather spend three months on the beach in Belize vs. six months horribly sick from chemo and six more months in a hospital bed gasping for air before they die anyway. I personally take meds for bipolar disorder that are notoriously toxic. They will probably shorten my life and may cause any number of horrible diseases, but am I gonna stop taking them? No way in hell. When it comes to the body vs the brain, the brain is gonna win every time. If I'm not sane enough to know what's going on, there's no reason for me to hang around anyway.

For the record three, we have excellent documentation dating back to ancient history that they always have and they always will. Shakespeare even wrote a play about it. Which is why it's so important to have The Birth Control Talk with your kid when he/she is YOUNG, like by 13 or so, and then GET THEM SOME so they'll have it on hand when they need it. Which, statistically, they will, and probably well before college. Also talk about Plan B. There's a word for people that ignore this advice. It is "grandparent."

For the record four, he has always done that and he always will. He mocked a disabled reporter on camera, for God's sake. I get the outrage, I do, but why are you so surprised?

(Apologies to actual gibbons, who are not at all related.)

So why do it? Why not look, instead, at the other person and just -- accept them the way that they are? Expect them to do stuff they are going to do, and that you know they're going to do, because they have done it many times. And if that doesn't work for you, ie, if you entered a relationship contingent on your husband accompanying you to visit your family, maybe re-evaluate your relationship and not the content of your husband's character.

My friend Tera once said that if you're having a problem with a friend or a sweetie or--pretty much anybody, really--you would be wise to ask yourself four questions:

1. What do I need out of this relationship?

2. Is it reasonable to expect that the other person will provide that to me, based on their past behavior?

3. What does this person need out of me?

4. Am I reasonably able to provide that to this person?

If the answer to No. 2 is no, you have the option to get what you need elsewhere. If you must, absolutely must have That Thing from This Person and This Person can't provide it, well then, the relationship is doomed. Likewise, if the answer to No. 4 is no, is there anything you can do to help the person get what they need from someone other than you? If not, the relationship is also doomed. You can't do what you can't or are obviously unwilling to do. And you can't expect other people to do what they can't or are obviously unwilling to do.

To sum up (too late), we human beings need to do a much better job of letting other people be who they are. We get mad as hell when people expect us to do things we're not going to do and give us a hard time about it. Why not extend that same grace to other people? Less frustration, less head pounding, better relationships and a kinder world. You're welcome.

And watch out for ghosts.

Three Wishes

Just unrolled a red rug at a flea market to shake it out and suddenly there's this guy standing there. Tall, swarthy, thick black beard and mustache. He's wearing a long, colorful dishdasha and sandals. "Three wishes," he says in Arabic- accented English. 

I'm a little taken aback. Where did he just come from? "Three wishes?" 

"Three wishes. Hurry up, I am tired.  Then roll me back up. It has been a hell of a century."

"That it has." I peer closer and notice that his black eyes are full of fire. "You're a djinn?"

He bows low, sweeping out an arm. "Faran Al-Naar. Djinn. Now about those wishes."

"Okay, okay." Persistent guy. I think a minute. "All right. I want you to have whatever you want." 

His brow wrinkles in confusion. "You want what now?"

"I want you to have whatever you want," I say again. "I mean you're hundreds of years old, right? Maybe thousands. And all that time somebody rubs your lamp--"

"Unrolls my rug." 

"Unrolls your rug, right, and wishes for three totally impractical things that'll never work, like a giant house they can't afford the taxes on, or--"

"Or a yacht, when they live in North Dakota and don't know how to sail," says the djinn.

"Right, or they wish for world peace, so you have to make all the humans disappear, or for global warming to be fixed, so you have to move us all into grass huts--"

"And then they spend their second and third wishes undoing their first wish!" exclaims Al-Naar. "Exactly!"

"And you never get what you want. Nobody ever grants your wish."  I fold my arms. "So that's my wish. I wish for you to get whatever you wish for."

The djinn's eyes flash. "All right," he says. "Done." 

Nothing happens. I glance around. Three men and a woman are entering a Starbucks across the street. A few cars go by. Al-Naar stretches his arms and takes a deep breath. 

"Well?" I say. "How is it?" 

"Hm." He looks at his hands. "Not at all like I expected." 

"Isn't that what usually happens?"

"Yes."

I pat him on the arm. "Come on, I'll buy you a Starbucks. There's a lot more to life than being rolled up in a moldy old rug." 

He starts to follow. "What is a Star-bucks?" 

"It's a drink we drink a lot. You'll like it."

He stops. "Oh."

"What's wrong?" 

"I just realized. I cannot grant you your second and third wishes now." He looks sheepish.

"That's okay," I say. "I couldn't think of anything good anyway." 

Physical Therapy Handy Tips

So I had total knee replacement surgery (!).  It all went surprisingly well, no complications or other glitches.  Or so the surgeon told me in post op.  At least I think that was the surgeon.  I'm not sure.  There was also a little gray kitten running up and down my bed on my leg.  I told the nurse I was pretty sure it wasn't real but I kept seeing a little gray kitten.  The nurse promised me there were no little gray kittens in post op.  If there wasn't a little gray kitten, was there ever a surgeon?  You can understand my confusion on this point.  I'll see him in like 3 weeks and I guess we will find out then.  (Joan brought me a little stuffed gray kitten once I got to my room.  I named him Bruce.) 

I was in the hospital a full two extra days longer than planned.  After surgery, my electrolytes took a nosedive and the internist was very worried.  This wasn't presented to me as "Your electrolytes are low, so you can go home if you want, but be sure to drink lots of Gatorade."  It was, "Your electrolytes are low, and you are not going anywhere until we figure this out."  So I had to drink lots of Gatorade.  I hate Gatorade.  I have never liked it.  The hospital only had two flavors but I obediently drank them.  I am home now and I still hate Gatorade.  And I'm still drinking a lot of it.  

The other thing I did a lot in the hospital was walk.  Whenever I woke up (which was not often; they had me taking OxyContin and that stuff knocks me six ways to Sunday) and could gather myself together enough to get up and pee, I would also ask the nurses to take me for a walk.  I would set out in my walker, walk as far as possible and then turn around and go back.  This might be at 10 am, 3 in the afternoon or 4 in the morning.  In fact 4 in the morning was more likely because that was when the staff had extra time.  So the first time I made it as far as the emergency stairs.  (Always know where the emergency stairs are, kids.)  The second time I made it to the nurse's station.  The third time I made it all the way around and back to my room. (Private room, by the way.  I think they were warned about me.)  I kept doing that as long as I was there.  

There were some glitches.  We found out if I take Tramadol, it interferes with something else I'm taking.  So I can't take Tramadol, which is like the step-down drug from opioids.  So I'm taking the mildest opioid there is, hydrocodone, and just reducing the amount.  I'm down to one pill every 4 hours.  I can cut them in half, so the next thing will be half a pill.  Maybe in a few more days.

Have I been in pain?  Why yes, I have, but I was in a fair amount of pain before the surgery.  So this is really not new.  At physical therapy it gets bad, but just walking around, sitting, etc it is not bad.  It's there but I kind of just ignore it if that makes any sense.  I mean, unless I do something that brings it forcibly to my attention, like standing on one foot or turning the wrong way.  Don't do that.  

But I am home now and going to physical therapy.  And as healthy as all of you are, some of you will have to go to physical therapy.  So this is what I have learned in physical therapy.  Just in case you ever need it.  

Physical therapy tip No. 1: It's going to hurt no matter what you do. Take your pain meds (or something over the counter, if you can) about 45 minutes before your appointment and hope for the best.

Physical therapy tip No. 2: Don't cheat. Yes, there are a lot of ways to cheat, but don't do it. You're there to get better. Let those guys help you.

Physical therapy tip No. 3: No. 2 notwithstanding, if you need a short break, ask for a glass of water.

Physical therapy tip No. 4: Also No. 2 notwithstanding, it's OK to take short breaks. Like 5 seconds after 5 reps and 10 seconds after 10 reps. Just don't abuse the privilege.

Physical therapy tip No. 5: Every exercise (that I've encountered) has 2 parts. There's the movement that's the point of the exercise, and there's the opposite movement. Like bend the knee, straighten the knee. The tip is, don't neglect the second part. If bending the knee is the point, bend the knee, but also fully straighten the knee until you get a stretch between bends. You will progress faster and you'll have to do this fewer times.

Physical therapy tip No. 6: Try really hard to do what the physical therapist says the way they say to do it. If you need a short break, say so, but don't argue and don't opt out of doing an exercise because you don't feel like it. You won't feel like it next time either. Be an adult about this.

Physical therapy tip No. 7: You want a 10 minute ice wrap at the end of the session. Yes, you do, no matter how much you want to run screaming out the door and never see these people again. Ask for one. And when you get home, you'll want to sit with an ice pack for about 30 minutes.

Physical therapy tip No. 8: Do your home exercises. I know, I know. But do them. Three times a day if you can. Or at least twice. And on the day of a session, you would be a total rock star if you did your exercises at least once in addition.

Physical therapy tip No. 9: Send your physical therapy office donuts or Tiffs Treats or something after you're done. Physical therapists are underappreciated in the medical field even though what they do is critical. Let them know they are loved. Just don't do it while you are still a patient. It might look like a bribe. 

Oh man, I forgot the most important one! Physical therapy tip No. 10: Three minutes is the first two verses and the first two choruses of Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now." Four minutes is the first two verses, the first two choruses, the saxophone solo and the first line of the third verse.

Well, there ya go.  Hopefully that will help.  If you have any more tips, send them along and I'll publish them in a future blog post.  And probably you all have great DNA and never get in accidents and will never need to know this anyway.  But you never know.  Cheers!