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!