Incident On Asylum Street

Hi. Last night I went to see Bruce Springsteen at the XL Center in Hartford. Bruce is the hardest working 63 year old man in show business. A 3 hour and 25 minute set by my watch. He is always amazing but as a hard core fan, any show that features Kitty’s Back, Point Blank, and a full band version of Incident On 57th Street breaks the scales on the awesomeness meter.


But it was more interesting than just that. I had forgotten to order a ticket when they went on sale so I decided to try my ace in the hole: visually impaired seating. I’m visually impaired so why not? The younger me would have scoffed at such things and wondered if that constituted a form of playing the victim but the world is built on preferential treatment so why shouldn’t I take advantage too when I can?


So I had an amazing seat in the front row on the side looking straight at the stage. The lights went down and I did what 99 percent of the arena did: I stood up. There were two people behind me sitting down and I saw them talking to the security guard. Oh no. The security guard went over and talked to a couple guys a few seats over from me—but they kept standing. I sat down for a couple slower songs but I stood up again. Pretty soon after a woman tapped me and said, “Can you sit down?” and the other pointed to the security guard. The one that spoke to me was a middle aged woman with what appeared to be an older gentleman. Okay, so they weren’t 22 or anything but….it’s still a rock show, right? It’s not a symphony. I’ve actually gone to one or two of those—and I sit like everyone else. So aren’t the sitters at rock shows the tourists in Rome who have to adapt to the habits of the Romans and not the other way around? So I pointed behind us and said, “Look at everyone else here. They are standing. I’ll sit for now but I’m going to stand up later”.


Granted, the people right next to me were sitting too. But again. 99 percent of the arena was standing! I was in the “special section” so maybe more sitters were to be expected. But even so, why sit? My life is centered around a central irony: I am a disabled person (according to the law and its definition of legal blindness at least) but I spend my life telling people who think they are disabled they are not disabled. They are told they can work by a guy who—according to the law—can’t work but works anyway and tells them to do likewise. No one said life is supposed to make sense. But I do believe that within certain boundaries and ratings along the Bell Curve, disability is an attitude. The world is a stage and we are players and to a large degree we are assigned parts in the play of life and we conform to those parts: we adopt the costumes, speech, habits, and even thoughts of a particular role. Many people are either told by others or by their own inner voice that they need to play the role of the disabled! So they do. But they don’t always have to! In my mind people not standing up at a loud, high energy rock show and insisting others not stand up either is letting the role have too much authority. It’s letting the play inform reality, not the reality inform the play. Disabled or not disabled, rich or poor, weak or strong, beautiful or ugly, we should all stand up! Who is with me?!!??


But it’s hard to deliver such a speech in the teeth of 120 decibels of raw rock power.


Later I heard them talking to the security guard again. He told them, “I can’t tell him to sit down. I could offer you seats farther back but you don’t want to take those seats?”. So that was it. Justice prevailed! The spirit of high energy rock and roll was preserved! Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchikovsky the news.


That’s not the end of the story.

Halfway through the show, Bruce played one of his classics Out In The Street and went, you know, out in the street. Or out in the crowd. The aforementioned middle aged woman behind me tapped me and said, “Can you move to the side so he can see my mom?”. I thought, “What?”. But I moved.


Then I saw Bruce coming RIGHT TOWARD ME. I tapped my lifelong hero on the back. (He was drenched in sweat). And said—of course----“Bruuuuce!”. He then stopped……at the row right behind me and told 16,000 of us, “This is Max’s mom”. And hugged her.



Oh my God.


It was an old lady??


And it was Mrs. Weinberg???


Oh my God.


Max Weinberg is of course the drummer of the E Street Band. The Mighty Max. Former bandleader of the Conan O’Brien Show. A national treasure! Bruce then unknowing drove the knife in when he added, “97 years old!”. Then he finished me off with, “97 yeard old!! And she’s at a rock show!”.


This could only happen to me.


Or George Costanza. But I actually think I might have out-Costanza'd Costanza here!

Oh and sure enough, here is the video to prove it…..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flG_BzrpqZE


A couple songs later—my conscience actually causing excruciating pain—I leaned back and said to the woman I now knew was Max’s sister, “You should have told me you were the Weinbergs! I was just thinking it was a rock show so I should be able to stand”. She said, “Well, she doesn’t see very well”. I said, “Neither do I, actually”.


So maybe she didn’t think I was a total creep. I wasn’t 100 percent sure.


I also decided to try a compromise—which I should have thought of from the beginning—by standing--but in the aisle. The security guards didn’t say anything. So please let the record show that this poor old woman had a PERFECT view of the second half of the show!




I was feeling better until nearly the very end of the show. They left a little early—although until well after 11 PM. Bruce was right, that old girl could rock! As she was about to leave I saw the security guards rolling out…….wait for it………….a wheelchair. Why, God, why? I must have had a truly forlorn, guilt ridden look on my face. Max’s sister—I think—gave me a wave goodbye. Or was she waving to the security guards? Let’s go with the former. And Bruce and the band happened to be playing the song Bobby Jean—a song about a sad goodbye to someone. To me this poignant number will always have the elderly and wheelchair bound Mrs. Weinberg written all over it!


Now again……..this WAS a rock show. Have I mentioned that already? And I didn’t know she was in a wheelchair! (Although she stood when Bruce hugged her—maybe she just can’t walk long distances?). And as far as me confusing her for a man……it was dark. I have poor vision. As we age, men lose testosterone and women lose estrogen so we all start to look roughly the same. It’s not my fault I swear!

And since the meeting with Mrs. W was obviously a planned thing given her daughter's comment to me, maybe Max or Bruce go them their seats too? Why didn't they get them front row seats instead of 2nd row seats? It's Bruce's fault! That's my story.  

I feel this incident—should I call it Incident On Asylum Street?—has really brought me closer to the entire Weinberg family. For example, per Max’s Wikipedia page, Mrs. Weinberg is named Ruth. Max has three sisters named Patty, Abby, and Nancy. They are from Newark, NJ. I’m not going to lie to you, the Wienbergs and I have had our ups and downs, but our bond is even stronger for it! So Ruth, Patty or Abby or Nancy, I’m just bloggin’ one last time not to change your mind, but just say I miss you baby, good luck, goodbye!

Rage Against The Machine (Or Buy A New One)

Boys and girls, here at Blog You Like A Hurricane’s international headquarters we are absolutely committed to the truth. We ARE going to let our campaign for blog world domination be ruled by the fact checkers.   

With that in mind, it is my duty to report to you a very sad event which occurred this week which, some might say, completely pulls the rug out from under my entire epic blog from last week. But facts are stubborn things---even more stubborn than me.

You may recall I sang the praises of the HTC One X smartphone. It has zoom functionality which leaves the iPhone in the dust. It also has the clearest, sharpest, most drop dead gorgeous screen I’ve ever seen on a computerized device ever. But…..I took it from its charger on Wednesday morning and discovered the screen was black. I played around with it, restarted it a couple times and it worked for the rest of the day. Thank God that problem was over! But on Thursday morning the same exact Black Screen Of Death occurred. I tried everything and nothing worked. It had gotten colder at night. Please don't tell me my beautiful screen couldn't handle 50 degree weather.

 

After work I biked down to the AT&T store. The guy agreed it was broken and he also agreed it showed no evidence of water damage. He then explained my two options: get in my car and drive to their warranty center located in beautiful Wallingford, CT. Or if, say, my car was in the shop, I could call their Warranty Hotline and have a new phone mailed to me in a few short days!

A few days? This was a real moment of clarity for me. A painful bit of self-realization. Telling me I can’t have a phone for a few days is like telling a junkie he can’t have heroin until Thursday. Come on AT LEAST offer me some methadone!

I'm proud to report I resisted the tempation to hold up a 7-Eleven to help pay for a brand new phone bought out of contract. Before I explain what I did, let me backtrack slightly. For the last several months my computer at work has been running poorly. Annoyingly enough, it hasn’t been running poorly enough to completely shut down or blow up, just poor enough to cause hassles and semi-regular interruptions of my work—last Tuesday morning, for example, it literally took me 45 minutes worth of shutting down and restarting and logging off and logging back on to get started on my work for the day. I’ve now complained enough that they are getting me a brand new computer and I’m still holding out hope for a 27 inch monitor which can largely negate my need for magnification software in the first place—as said software has been causing all the trouble even though it ran for years at work without major issues. Nothing is more stressful and demoralizing than having computer problems which go on--especially when you are the only one having them and the very reason you are having them is because you need “special” software. Needing to make that a focal point represents the very opposite of how I’ve tried to live my life: i.e., just like everyone else.

So in that context, my patience with phone problems as well was bound to be paper thin. I noticed that the AT@T store actually had my phone on display so the guy obviously could have gone back to the storeroom and replaced it. But he didn’t. So I called an audible and biked down to the Verizon store, transferred my account to them, got a new phone since they don't carry this particular HTC, and decided to just brace myself. I had only recently renewed my AT&T contract so I’m pretty sure I’m going to get absolutely raped with early termination fees. Even Senator Todd Akin will consider this a real rape.

Okay, that wasn’t a smart decision. But in my defense, I have been faced with TWO malfunctioning machines in recent months, the only two that I absolutely need to work: my work computer and my phone. Computers are amazing, but they are the most annoying things on earth when they stop working right.

The phone I got this time: the Samsung Galaxy SIII. This is the other high end Android phone that came out earlier this summer. The Galaxy is actually the more hyped of the two…..but it’s all about deeper advertising pockets since it’s just not quite as good as the HTC. Its screen is actually slightly bigger--4.8 inches to 4.7 inches—but it uses something called a Pentile display which differs from a traditional LCD display. How? I have no idea. It apparently borrows pixels for multiple colors instead of using specific pixels for specific colors---or something like that. But my eyes tell me it makes everything—including text--slightly less sharp.

So…….I face yet another crucial decision. As far as my AT&T account goes, the deed is done. But now that I’m back with Verizon, I have 14 days to decide if I want this phone. I’m not sure if I do or not. The less than beautiful screen just seems to highlight some annoying Android traits. At the top of the list: all those apps! My phone has 45 apps installed on it. Guess how many I actually downloaded? Three. What’s most annoying of all is you can’t delete them and THEY ARE ALWAYS RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND. This drains your battery life for no reason. I guess you can power off every single time you aren’t using the phone, but that’s a pain. You can readjust the settings to disable apps or “force stop” them but this doesn’t seem to completely work. Or you can download an app that will help you force the other apps to stop running but in the process you’ve just created another app which has to run in the background to tell other apps to stop running in the background. It's kind of like solving your whiskey problem with vodka. The apps are like flies that keep getting in your house when you can’t even locate the hole in the screen they seem to be crawling in under! Okay, a maps app is cool. But do I need a latitude app as well?? What’s next? A sea level app? These apps will be key for me the next time I sail to Madagascar. My Application Manager tells me 16 apps are running as we speak. Why are they running? I have no clue! I’ve heard people complain Android phones are too complicated to use. I haven’t found that to be the case. You just have to get used to them. But my beef is they don’t give me enough control. If you want to pre-install a bunch of crap, that’s cool, but at least let me decide what I can delete and if I can’t delete them, at least let me stop them from running.     

And here is where I…..have to give Apple some credit. My Ipad has 20 pre-installed apps. My Ipod Touch has 22. Niether have the Phone app, so on an iPhone it’s what? 23 or 24? And the only 3rd party apps are Safari (which blows compared with Opera or Chrome)  and Youtube—which is apparently going away since Google owns Youtube and Google also owns Android so Google is standing in Apple’s path to world domination and they make a better door than a window. But as far as I can tell, Apple apps aren’t endlessly updating in the background like electronic bedbugs breeding behind your walls.  

And, truth be told, Apple’s stuff seems to be more reliable—possibly because of their extreme idiot proof "let's cut throught the bullshit" implicity. I had an iPhone 4 for two years and I did get it replaced once. It started acting strange…..but I had dropped it a few times. And the Apple Store did replace it on the spot instead of making me drive to Wallingford. During two major power outages last year, about the only things that still worked were my iPhone and iPad. I would not have retained my sanity without them.

HTC’s motto is Quietly Brilliant. And they are right. Their latest phone is amazing. Apple’s motto should be Loudly Reliable. The actual benefit of Apple’s stuff is the opposite of what their marketing says it is. Despite what they claim, none of their products are all that innovative. The new iPhone has a bigger screen. Cool…….except it’s still smaller than many Android screens. It has 4G LTE. Cool……except my phone already has that. They have 8 megapixel cameras. Can you see where this is going? My phone already has that. BUT…..there is a good chance it will be more reliable and have better battery life. So based on those rather boring considerations, it might in fact be as great as they claim.

Android is like that incredibly beautiful girl you become hopelessly smitten by until you get to know her better and start to have nagging doubts about whether coping with her high maintenance ways is worth it. What’s the old saying? “No matter how hot the operating system is, someone, somewhere is sick of her shit?”. Apple is the down to earth girl next door who doesn’t really turn any heads but you can trust her.

So what I’m trying to say is……I’ll see you in line for the new iPhone 5!

Actually that might not be possible. I just don't see myself camping out so I can talk to Siri the next morning. And the odds of finding any in stock before my 14 day return options expire seem slim. But besides…..their zoom function sucks!

But why has a smarphone become such a necessity to me when it’s clearly a luxury? Do any of us need portable computers in our pockets? I didn’t even get one until two years ago-I assumed the screens were too small for me to see and anyone who needed more than a cellphone was CLEARLY someone with issues. I didn’t realize the very high “pixel density” of these screens creates enough clarity to somewhat compensate for their lack of size. Size matters. But only so much.   

Plus all these storms happened and luxury items became necessities. In the world of climate change, the future belongs to battery operated devices.

Well I’ll probably stick with my new, new phone. It’s just an emotional time for me right now. I’m just getting out of a two year relationship with Apple followed by a hot summer fling with HTC. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for a committed relationship with Samsung. I’ve been hurt before.

But if this thing acts up I will probably make another horrible financial decision and end up buying the iPhone 5 out of contract. Don’t make me do it!

                                              

 

 

A Convenient Truth

Hi. So lately I’ve been on a tech geek kick. This is very scary. As if being a tech geek wasn’t scary enough, there’s the added reality that a tech geek and his money are soon parted. But I think I’ve learned something important about technology and---dare I say it?---life itself.
 

Convenience is overrated.

Let’s talk about home computing. I own an IPad—a device that has first world decadence written all over it. “Honey, have you seen my IPad?” is surely not a question Jesus and his disciples could have ever foreseen. I also own a smartphone—an HTC One X. This thing blows away my old IPhone—bigger, clearer screen with retina display by Steve Jobs’ own definition (300+ pixels per inch). The new IPad and Macbook Pro, um, don’t have retina display by that definition. Apparently Apple’s braintrust interprets “retina display” with the same looseness and fluidity that John Edwards interprets “ethics”. The boys in Silicon Valley must have had a meeting and said, “Ah screw it! Let’s say 200 pixels per inch is retina display too and call it a day! No one will notice!”. My phone also has a zoom function which actually reformats the right margins to make the screen readable! Apple’s zoom functions about as well as the zoom on an ‘84 IBM: you can zoom to your heart’s content but good luck navigating around the screen. Apple just won a patent lawsuit against Samsung because, among others things, Samsung allegedly stole their zoom idea on smartphones. That’s like Paula Abdul suing Lindsey Lohan for stealing her idea to mix Xanax and Red Bull.

Anyway……with my hip, trendy mobile devices I decided to do something about my home computer. I had an old Dell PC—with a tower, a mediocre screen, a wired mouse and keyboard. A real eyesore. This thing scored zero on the Sex Appeal meter. Whenever I go to Barnes and Noble or Starbucks or It’s A Grind or Cosi or any other yuppie haven in West Hartford Center I always see people on their laptops. I’ve never been a fan of laptops but I decided it just might be because I have a hard time seeing the screen. I don’t like them but I want to like them. But I had a plan: get a Windows laptop which is compatible with screen magnification software unlike Macs or Macbooks (again, Apple, why do you hate blind people?). I saw they even make laptops with 17 inch screens and “full HD” 1080p screens. So this would be a piece of cake for me to see! I bought a really nice HP Envy—pretty close to the Windows equivalent of the Macbook Pro. It was a beautifully made, top of the line machine.

God, I hated it.

I returned it after two days to Best Buy for my money back. You might say I subconsciously KNEW I would hate it so I chose Best Buy over Amazon because returning it would be easier. Why does anyone like laptops?? If I was an ergonomics expert and I decided to design the perfect anti-ergonomic machine of death, could I do much better than a laptop computer? The keyboards……awful. The keys are paper thin and clumsy to type on, plus they are set far off from you to make room for the touchpad. Oh, let’s talk about that touchpad. I’ve heard turtles have watched people using touchpads and thought, “Geez, hurry up!”. Maybe experienced touchpad users develop lighting fast usage of it, but I can’t imagine how. I saw the movie We Bought A Zoo recently and there is a scene where Matt Damon is on his laptop---a Macbook, obviously, although a still less blatant product placement than the touching ending to the last Mission Impossible movie when Tom Cruise rewarded his daredevil crew for their hard work by giving them new IPhones!. Anyway, Matt Damon was considering deleting a picture of his widow because he knew he had to get over her. He starts to move the touchpad in the general direction of the “X” at the top of the screen. This scene lasts about 4 minutes. In the Director’s Cut I would guess it’s 9 minutes. You could have left the room, made popcorn, and came back and he would still JUST be getting to the moment of truth when he had to decide to delete or not to delete. (SPOILER: he doesn’t delete. He folds up his laptop--which of course demonstrates the Apple logo to all the audience. Another movie featuring graphic full frontal Apple logos). I guess what I’m trying to say is even Jason Bourne and Good Will Hunting are slow with a touchpad! I rest my case.  
 

And what about the screen angle? You always have to look down at it. Has anyone found a correlation between neck surgeries and laptop computers? My idea of health care reform: ban the laptop computer. I suspect we would save $395 billion per year. I know, I know: you can get a stand for the laptop and you can get a mouse to replace the touchpad. But once I started thinking about doing all that I had a realization: maybe I’m just trying to turn this thing into the desktop it will never be.
 

So I turned it in and bought a new desktop with a real mouse, real keyboard, and big screen. Again, I admit I was tempted to get the 27” iMac. I mean they are, like, white and shiny and stuff. But again, I wanted to have at least the security blanket of using screen magnification software since I read that many programs and websites default to small font especially with high resolution screens. So I did some research looking for the Windows equivalent to the Mac and, much to my shock and amazement, I bought another Dell. Dude, I was getting a Dell.
 

And I must say……the 27 inch screen with its 2560 x 1440 is awesome. By using the computer’s internal font and zoom adjustments I actually don’t need screen magnification after all! Where have these screens been all my life? I guess I won’t be able to write The Great American Novel from a chair in Starbucks while sipping a Double Mocha Cappuccino after all, but who cares?
 

But I’m STILL not sure if this is the perfect choice. Like the iMac, it’s a more modern All In One Desktop. The PC and screen are built together like on a laptop, and you just use a wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard (which I upgraded to a Logitech which lights up the keys—the coolest feature my HP Laptop had going for it). Less space, hardly any wires!
 

Except….I noticed something about this thing. If I stream videos for a fair amount of time, the fan kicks into overdrive and the top of the computer gets super hot. That can’t possibly be good, can it? Also……I don’t think I’m imaging this…..if I’ve been running it for a couple of hours it almost seems like the screen gets a bit less sharp. Apparently I’m not crazy because I read All In One’s are notorious for heating issues, poorer reliability, and, yes, even sometimes blurriness from overheating. Even the iMac apparently suffers from the same problems. It’s basically a very large laptop and, like a laptop, it’s not as reliable as a clunky old fashioned desktop.

Damn! I might end up considering trying to sell this thing on E-Bay and crawling right back to an old school desktop—a super fast tower with a separate 27 inch high resolution monitor. (By the way, ever hear someone say, "Don't buy that! It's Chinese made crap!"? I just read the desktop maker with the best reliability ratings is Lenovo: a Chinese company). I retreated back into a less convenient and portable option than a laptop but maybe I didn’t retreat quite far enough. I could turn it off for a while if it gets super hot and turn it back on, but there’s a real irony when a more convenient All In One desktop actually forces such an inconvenient step.
 

And then there is music. Music sales are down, everyone is worried. What happened? Bands started sucking? Okay, in many, many cases I agree. But I have an additional theory: Mp3’s are ruining music. That’s not a new thought. Record companies panicked when free downloads started cutting into record sales. But maybe it’s purchased mp3’s from ITunes and Amazon as well. I made the mistake of actually buying a CD a few months ago! I felt about as dated as I would have if I had bought a pair of bell bottom jeans and a turtleneck. I went home and did a sound comparison. The much maligned, never very cool plastic CD won hands down. I realized I had fooled myself into thinking ITunes downloads sounded as good, but a direct comparison made me realize CD’s sound clearer and much more 3-dimensional. An mp3 is literally a crushed CD—crushed so that downloading an album won’t take up all of your phone or mp3 player’s space and thereby discourage you from downloading more music. In a way, music has come full circle: mp3’s blended, compressed, nearly mono sound somewhat resembles an AM radio station compared with the more FM sound of a CD..
 

No more sonic fast food for this writer! I bought a bunch more CD’s (wish I hadn’t ditched all my old ones) and a portable (I can’t believe I’m publicly admitting this) Sony CD player! Don’t worry—they still feature their miraculous G Protection anti-skipping technology! (My G protection? My AK. Know what I’m sayin’ homes?). I took it on a run with me……and it skipped. Maybe it doesn’t skip on mall walkers, but it skips when you run. And it nearly fell out of my pocket 78 times. No one ever said 1.4 megabytes per second, 16 bit music listening was a walk in the park.
 

So I devised a brilliant compromise: keep buying CD’s but “rip” them as .WAV files. These are similar to mp3’s but not compressed. They also take up much more space so using my phone to store them wasn’t an option. So…..I bought a 64 GB Ipod Touch. Damnit, Apple! You win again!
 

But I also decided to buy a home stereo system. I haven’t owned one in about 10 years. I used to have a monster Sony stereo—two gigantic speakers which were almost as tall as me with a subwoofer for maximum floor and window rattling bass to severely piss off the neighbors. But I ditched it for the convenience of mp3’s and my computer’s disc drive--I was told to love thy neighbor. But I came out of stereo retirement and bought a CD player which does nothing besides play a CD, a receiver which does nothing besides amplify the sound (and get a few radio stations), and two more modestly sized bookshelf speakers which do nothing besides play the music. Blissfully non-versatile. I also learned some important lessons about speaker wire. Wait, don’t stop reading—this will be gripping. it used to come pre-cut and pre-stripped. Now you have to do it all yourself. They obviously laid off the wire-cutters and wire strippers at the RCA factory. Welcome to the new business model. Also, they no longer use pure copper, but some sort of cost saving aluminum-copper combo. But of course that value is passed on to the consumer! Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…..
 

My new system sounds awesome. It’s the anti-smartphone. You can’t put it in your pocket and it does ONE thing. It’s a space hogging, non-versatile collection of parts and I love it. Now…do I go a step further in inconvenience and add a record player? There is that “warm”, “round”, “full” sound of analog every audiophile talks about. They are all sonic chubby chasers, I guess. (Apparently audiophiles also gushed about the crystal clear digital sound of CD’s back in 1983 so they are bigger flip-floppers than Mitt Romney). But I am tempted to relive my childhood when one magical Christmas Eve Santa placed a vinyl copy of Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary Of A Madman under our Christmas tree! (These days I heard Santa just downloads One Direction from the Itunes store. Dark days are upon us, for sure).

But musicians themselves embody a stubborn insistence on old, outdated, inconvenient technology. Most guitar players not only don't use digital amps, they don't even use solid state amps--kind of the bridge to the digital world it seems. They use vacuum tube amps: state of the art technology---in 1930. Stereos and TV's used to be made with tubes too but only guitar amps survive as a standard bearer of the old technology because, most agree, they sound better.
 

Kids, machines are a lot like people: give them one job to do and they just might do a great job at it. Give them multiple jobs and they might do all of them, but will they ever do any of them brilliantly or just passably? Will they be jacks of all trades but masters of none? A smartphone can take photos—but the best smartphone camera is 8 megapixels while an average stand-alone digital camera is in the double digits. Smartphones can play music—but they will never sound as good as a CD or a record. You can type on them—but you have to touch type: which is a bit like crawling after you’ve already learned to walk. You can watch videos—but they will never look as good as on a big screen TV or PC. I’m not sure if there is anything a smartphone does that you can legitimately say it does great except maybe tell time—but they destroy the coolness of a wristwatch. They also work as phones but lack the clumsy coolness of an old analog phone with its rotary dialing ability. You might say they were slow, but I say they were still faster than a laptop touchpad and didn’t make you want to punch something.     
 

Maybe smartphones are a symbol of our modern world where we try to do everything at once. I think our whole economy is in trouble because businesses and politicians seem to have taken the smartphone, All In One approach to managing everything. Businesses want to make profits on sales but they also want to not pay their employees as much—but if every business does the same, who will have the money to keep buying products and services at the same rates? Politicians want to grow the economy but they also don’t want to raise taxes---but how can you grow an economy when you’ve depleted your own education system in the name of lower taxes? You can do all these things at once—but can you have a society which is excelling or just functioning? Our economy today is like an mp3 player, not a home stereo system. You can opt for the convenience and “all in one” approach of a fast food restaurant, but can you expect to have long term health too? Trying to marry convenience and quality in every single aspect of life is a losing game! I say quality rules and convenience blows!

Well, I better wrap this up before my convenient, space saving, versatile All In Once 21^st Century PC blows up. If you want convenience, better make sure you have a good smoke alarm.  

PS--they will have to pry my smartphone from me with my cold, dead hands! 

The Gospel According To Some Random Internet Blogger

Let's talk about religion. I myself, uh, missed Mass on Sunday. My alarm broke. My dog ate my bus pass. I was caught in a blinding storm of locusts. I nearly drowned in a river of blood. It just didn't happen. Sorry, God. 


Like so many other topics, people often take the extreme position on religion. Many are evangelical zealots with "What would Jesus do?" bumper stickers on their hatchbacks (one thing I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't do: stick a "What would Jesus do?" bumper sticker on his car). Many others are hard boiled atheists who proudly display books like The God Delusion or Twilight Of The Gods on their coffee table. 

Me? I don't know. The truth is usually in the middle. While I have problems being a devout, unquestioning believer, I find many atheists silly. They sneer at believers but they are blind faith believers themselves. You can't prove God exists but you can't prove He (or She or Them or It) doesn't exist either.  Bible Thumpers and atheists are flip sides of the same coin: they've each convinced themselves of something without definitive proof. In fact, if I had to choose, I would probably give the nod to the total believers who stop off at Virgin Mary shrines on their way home from midnight shifts at Denny's because if you can't prove something either way, why choose to believe we're alone in the universe and destined to get eaten by worms in our black coffins? I think Atheists are folks who never completely outgrew their Alice In Chains phase. "I feel so alone / Gonna end up a big old pile of them bones". That was just Layne Staley's heroin hangover talking. Switch to the reggae station, for Jah's sake! You're going out of your way to be miserable. 

Besides, science hasn't killed God, only maimed him. Granted, the Earth is apparently 4.6 billion years old, not 5,000 years old. Granted, humans evolved from apes instead of springing from a skull, a piece of clay, or a rib. Granted, prehistoric plant life created photosynthesis which created enough oxygen for future mammals to breathe when we arrived millions of years later--it wasn't something God did in one super busy workweek. But isn't the story of evolution itself so strange and miraculous that it defies all rational logic? The idea that a species--many of them single celled organisms who would have bombed the bar exam more times than a Kennedy--somehow "knew" to promote genetic variations which led to more advantageous physical and mental characteristics? Defining this as "instinct" seem less of a true explanation than redundant semantics. Besides, many pagan religions believed in species changing, metamorphosing, shape shifting, etc. So ancient spiritual minded people intuitively saw the world in a similar way to modern scientists. A scientist might hate a priest and vice versa, but is Science and Religion so opposite after all? Or are they often strange bedfellows like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? And isn't Katie's divorce proof that God does indeed exist even if He sometimes sleeps?

And if the Big Bang Theory is true and the entire universe was once a ball you could have been held in your hand and maybe used on the 16th hole of a primordial Master's Golf Tournament until it exploded and expanded, where did that hot ball of matter come from in the first place? Who created something from nothing? The first rule of science is, "Nothing can be created or destroyed". Isn't that a veiled confession that science lacks the ability to fully explain the origins of the universe?

And even when science solves mysteries which may have once given rise to religious thought, it only stumbles upon new mysteries in the process----which could raise further suspicion that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in our philosphy. If you were wandering around in, say, 16,000 BC, your hunter-gatherer self would have noticed something pretty weird--besides mastadons and a complete lack of Dunkin' Donuts on any street corner. Facing due north, when you get up in the morning the sun is to your right. Walk back inside during lunch time to cook your fresh game and it's right above your head. Go for an evening stroll and it's to your left. WTF? The sun is moving!?! Who the hell is moving it? And what's up with the moon brightening and darkening every month? And why is the ocean water moving too? Even the air is moving on its own when this thing called "wind" happens. Life is a magic show and some invisible magician is doing tricks. The birth of religious thought........?

But science has answered those questions.  You're not going to believe this, but it's actually the Earth moving. Granted, it's moving like a line at the DMV, so while it doesn't seem like it's moving, it really is. On the other hand, the sun is more stationary than a fat guy after 10 hot dogs before the 7th inning stretch. Magic show cancelled, trick exposed. Science is the victor! Einstein even explained just how that all works! E=mc2! Gravity explained. (I will fully explain the Theory Of Relativity in a later blog........when I understand it. Don't hold your breath). But after Einstein explained the movements of large bodies, other overly smart guys started exploring how microscopic objects move and they discovered.......they move differently! WTF? Apparently tiny atoms can skip over space like the crew of the Enterprise getting beamed up from a planet of angry Klingons. Even if a big body is travelling at the spped of light, to get from point A to point B it must travel the intervening space between point A and B. Microscopic objects appear to be capable of getting from A to B without having ever been between A and B! The "quantum leap". No one has been able to figure out why large bodies and small bodies move differently. Maybe it's a matter of time. Or maybe we're right back where we stared in pre-historic times: grappling with the mystery of movement and the possibility of a super-natural force behind it. If matter is beamed from one spot to another, how? Is there an invisible Scotty somewhere? Was the magic show cancelled prematurely like Star Trek itself? 


Maybe people much smarter than me could explain this--but I'm not so sure. The absence of God has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Science isn't necessarily the destroyer of faith in a higher power, it might in fact be its (inadvertent) PR man. Just don't tell Richard Dawkins or Sarah Palin that. 

Besides, would life really be better without religion? Most people who claim this are upper middle class people from Industrialized nations with a closet full of golf shirts. Who needs religion when you have a set of golf clubs or a PS3? But the world is a frequently horrible place. There are more poor people than rich people. There's famine, plague, disease, synth pop music--I mean the world is scary! The world gives many people very little reason to hope. And even if you want to claim religion is nothing but an outdated superstition, after the world has taken everything else from some folks, who are we to take away their illusions too?

I also believe the concept of holy wars is overrated. God is the stated reason for war, the infomercial and rationalization for it, but rarely the true cause. War is usually over territory. Or riches. Or a personal gripe (like when an Iraqi dictator tries to kill a guy but then his son becomes President, or when a creepy guy with a long beard gets banished from his home country and then feels he needs to "protect" his departed homeland from an evil invading power across the ocean so he can be triumphantly welcomed back home again, or when a stud from Turkey runs off with a hot Greek girl with a face that launched a thousand ships because she happens to already be married to a cuckolded Greek guy). Just as animals fight over territory and limited resources, so do humans. But unlike them, we need to rationalize our behavior by claiming we're doing it for a Higher Purpose on behalf of a Higher Power. I think we could end wars by overcoming our animal lust for territory, not necessarily by ridding the world of religion. Sorry, John Lennon.

Having said that...........religion does have a lot to answer to. Especially The Big Three: the monotheistic religions that came out of the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Since these religions came to dominate our world, we assume ALL religious thought is contained within them. But in many respects, they are actually weird anomalies, not standard bearers for all religions ancient and modern. For one thing, they all measure people by their capacity to obey. God destroys the whole world with a flood to get his naughty, disobedient, ADHD suffering children to listen to Him for once. (Being a single Dad is never easy--if you want an omelet sometimes you have to break a few eggs). Jesus preaches to his "disciples", not his colleagues. And the word Islam literally means "submission". But Asian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism really aren't so much like that. For them, a follower's main job is to become enlightened to the interconnectedness to all things, not a meek unthinking sheep. Religion is a secondary school, not a day care center. 


The concept of One God is also unique. Most religions of the world have had many gods--a divine family watching over us, not one single solitary father figure. Some  argue that monotheism is inherently problematic. Instead of a family or an intangible force, God is a single being. This belief may psychologically enhance people's perception of life as a loner's game. If God is solitary and complete in himself, isn't that what humans (made in His image) should strive to be as well? But all solitary notions of being are divorced from life itself--take it from this loner. Life is a joining, not a separating. Life happens when a sperm joins with an egg. Plant life grows when it joins with the elements of the air and the energy of the sun. The waves move in tune with the wind; the tides with the moon. Where there is no joining, there is nothing. There's only a note, never music. Actually, there's no note either because a note is a vibration. So there's silence. A void. So does the very concept of One God take people out of tune with nature and beauty?

And does it do something else..............? Diminish female importance. Monotheism  means a banishing of goddesses. Yahweh of the Old Testament was originally one of many Gods in the pre-Old Testament Semitic religion. He apparently had a wife/goddess named Asherah. Some believe the original meaning of Yahweh was "he who causes to fall"---rain, lightning, enemies.  In other words, in their pantheon, Yahweh may have been the god of war. What is really interesting is that monotheism apparently began to flourish only after Israel lost its independence. Northern Iraqis--the Assyrians-- conquered Israel around 750 BC. Later on, southern Iraqis--the Babylonians---joined in on the sack Israel party. (Don't those Iraqis ever stop causing trouble. I know they founded civilization, but what have you done for me lately?). The psychology of this seems easy to understand:. a conquered nation feels weak and emasculated, so such defensive-minded oppressed people develop the notion that they need to banish all goddesses and hippie-ish lyre playing gods in favor of one, single, solitary, thunder-wielding, warlike God? 

And it's possible to infer psychological scars from foreign rule and a lost homeland in stories in The Old Testament. In fact some books state it outright. Many of these stories were not tellings, but re-tellings of older stories. I recent read The Epic Of Gilgamesh--a story written in Iraq a century before the Old Testament about an Iraqi dictator (some things never change) who is humbled and humanized after losing his best friend which then causes him to face up to his own fear of death. Gilgamesh's father Utnapishtim was the only human ever granted immortality after he had built an ark and sailed to a distant land after one of the Sumerian gods had drowned the entire world in punishment for their sins. (Sound familiar?). 

Also, to reign in Gilgamesh, one of the goddesses creates his "double"--a recreation of "primordial man" named Enkidu. (The African sounding name is interesting. Did the ancient Iraqis believe--along with modern scientists--that human beings originated in Africa?). Note that in Sumerian mythology a goddess created humans, not a male God. Women are the birth givers. Duh! She creates Enkidu out of clay. Ringing any bells? Pretty similar to Adam. He starts out as a Tarzan figure---drinking from the same wells as gazelle and deer, running (sans fig leaf) with them, filling in holes trappers set to catch the gazelle and deer. But the trapper files a complaint. He's a small business owner just trying to make an honest living so he asks for government assistance against this animal rights jerk! Again.....nothing new under the sun. Gilgamesh suggests civilizing Enkidu by sending a priestess of the goddess Ishtar (the predecessor of the Greek love goddess Aphrodite and Roman goddess Venus) to seduce him. A temptress......like Eve. But apple eating Eve in Genesis is a chaste little schoolgirl compared with her counterpart Shamhat. WARNING: for mature audiences only.......


She stripped off her robe and lay there naked, 
with her legs apart, touching herself, 
Enkidu saw her and warily approached,. 
He sniffed the air. He gazed at her body. 
He drew close, Shamhat touched him on the thigh, 
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath 
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is". 

I don't know about you, but I think that's a lot more exciting than an apple peddling serpent, isn't it? Shamhat is a temptress like Eve, but the apple from the Tree Of Knowledge isn't the object of temptation, it's her herself, sex itself. The effect of his seduction? His "fall"?

He turned his back to Shamhat, and as he walked
he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger, 
he knew things now that an animal can't know. 

And that's not all.........

Deep in his heart he felt something stir, 
a longing he had never known before, 
the longing for a true friend. 

That friend becomes Gilgamesh. But imagine: women as muses! Inspiration! Creators of empathy in men! What a concept. 4,000 years before feminism. This idea is only possible if you still have goddesses--like the Sumerians had when Gilgamesh was written. But what if you've banished your goddesses and exclusively hitched your wagon to one single domineering male God? You can't conceive of women this way. So Eve causes nothing but trouble. Nowhere do we read about her expanding Adam's mind or heart......or anything else for that matter. The fall of Man is not so much that which is described in Genesis, but in the re-telling of an old story itself deprived of all its original sex, hope, and compassion. 

But Enkidu does eventually die--killed by the Gods after he and Gilgamesh kill the monster guarding the Cedar Forest and the Bull of the Gods. In other words, our nature boy went from living in harmony with animals and trees to hunting and killing them--and that's what civilization is. That's the Fall Of Man--a self-imposed exile from nature, not a dirty trick played by a woman and a snake. Yes, this story which pre-dates The Bible seems to have both a pro-female and pro-environmentalist theme! But all such sense of kinship and responsibility to nature is removed by the time we get to the writing of Genesis: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”. In Genesis, women are just weak vessels and nature is just our slave. What a dreary outlook on life!


And Islam is also the story of ousting the feminine.  Allah was once just a face in the crowd of Arabian gods much like Yahweh had been one of many Semitic gods. He even lived in a house full of women! He had a goddess wife and three goddess daughters: Allat, Manat, and Al-Uzza. Early in his career, Mohammed apparently wrote lines in praise of the three moon goddess daughters and encouraged people to worship them. He later retracted this statement and claimed the devil tricked him into it. Seriously, that was his alibi. Hence the "Satanic verses". Islam was essentially a transformation into one male God---no goddesses allowed. Like their Semitic neighbors to the north had done over 1,000 years earlier, the Arabs, under Mohammed's leadership, were undergoing a spiritual extreme makeover. The View was cancelled.


So what have we learned? I have no idea. Maybe we've learned religion is not inherently good or bad; it's all a mater of what form it takes. Too often religions have gone the way of warlike Gods and the ousting of the feminine--out of insecurity and vanity, guys have created deadly serious spiritual sausage fests when there was once a super rad co-ed pool party with all the skinny dipping and mind expanding sex and drugs you could ever want. But we can't dismiss religion outright. Who did the Greeks consider the immortal embodiment of wisdom? Athena--a goddess. Who was probably the ancient world's most fervent and articulate pacifist? Jesus---a religious prophet. 

Amen.

Defense Loses Championships

So a guy walks into a bar........

Okay that guy was me last early winter. One night I missed my first bus home from work. I was on time. The bus driver left early. I'm against the death penalty---with the sole exception of bus drivers who leave early so they can finish their route early and light up a Marlboro red while I wait at a cold and dark bus stop for the next bus after missing theirs. We need to get medieval on their asses.

But I digress. To ease the stress of having had to wait outside my building for another half hour in the cold drizzle, I rewarded myself by grabbing a Guiness before taking my second bus home. I live five miles from my job but it takes me an hour to get to and from work. Yes, I want you to feel bad for me. Super bad.

But I digress again. Let me try to stay focused. As I walked into Vaughn's Public House on Pratt Street in beautiful, historic Hartford, CT I heard a gentleman loudly asserting, "Defense wins championships".  I knew right away he was uttering a tried and true adage from football. A first cousin of this statement is, "Pitching and defense wins in baseball". You always sound wise and insightful when you say this. There's only one problem. 

It's wrong. 

Or, at best, vastly overrated.  For example, as I eavesdropped further, I discovered this pigskin pontificator was specifically referring to the Baltimore Ravens--a team with perennially great defenses and his pick to win the 2012 Super Bowl. Hindsight is 20/20 but.......the Ravens lost in the AFC Championship Game to the Patriots--a team with a great offense and shaky defense. Patriots backup cornerback Sterling Moore tipped away a would-be winning touchdown pass in the final minute. So one could argue that offense wins championships--as long as you get JUST enough defense at the right time.

But that's only one game. But consider a fact I just unearthed thanks to my off the hook Googling skillz: over the past 45 years there's been 427 NFL playoff games. The better defensive team has won 58 percent of the time. The better offensive team has won 62 percent of the time. Ronnie Lott was a great safety for those great 49ers teams in the '80's, but would he have won all those rings without Joe Montana? A few years ago Peyton Manning's Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl with the 19th ranked defense in the NFL. Granted, they were aided by facing Rex Grossman and the Bears in the Super Bowl. In the rain of Miami. Rex always provides both his own offense and his own defense. 

But I say the verdict is in: offense wins championships. 

I know what you might be thinking, "This blog sucks! I hate sports!". Hey, thanks for stopping by. Try the veal. But the "defense wins championships" mentality seems to transcend sports--and I believe it's a harmful philosophy in many real and at times even tragic ways. 

Dieting. I say ban all diets! They are defensive to the core. That's probably why so many dieters can't stick with them: playing defense requires more energy than playing offense and it just gets too exhausting. The fault lies not so much with the dieter as the with the concept of dieting in the first place. No one should worry about subtracting calories---which actually aren't all evil---but adding nutrients. "How many points is this?". Who cares? A lot of low calorie processed food has the calories sucked out of it--right along with the nutrients. Not a trade-off that's really worth it. You can be unhealthy by consuming too many calories but you can just as easily be unhealthy by consuming too few nutrients. A lot of full calories are better than a little empty calories. You don't tend to a plant by lopping off leaves, you tend to it by watering it. Dieters are always trying to remove leaves at the expense of water!

Or let's take health care in general. It's an issue so many economists say is a looming crisis in this country. Medicare and medicaid costs are astronomical and growing all the time. People say if we don't do something, we're going to bankrupt the country worse than Paris Hilton chairing the Federal Reserve. But what is our solution? Insuring everyone and forcing them to go to the doctor even when they feel fine. "Preventative care". I am personally all for universal health care, but I have this one problem: I do disability claims for social security, so I've read pages and pages and pages and pages of medical records on patients who are chronically sick even though they go to the doctor daily. Hourly even. And  I don't just mean those salt of the earth folks who go to the ER each time they get stabbed in the neck by their baby mama or are found wandering the streets "naked and disoriented"; I'm also including people with good insurance, a primary care doctor, and at least 22 different specialists. Yet they too often remain sick despite their helicopter care. It may be due to the severity of their illness which could be due to genetics or infections or a million other things, but for many it might have more to do with their insistence on maintaining poor diet and exercise habits while hoping the doctor will take care of it for them! They believe defense wins championships--in the form of an army of defensive medicine practicing doctors. A defensive white coated human shield providing safety and security from sickness and death better than the Great Wall Of China provided security from the Mongols. And the doctors often seem to believe roughly the same thing too.

But I have the answer! I hope you're sitting down for this. Let's stop practicing Ronnie Lott style care and launch Joe Montana-to-Jerry Rice West Coast Offense care! We could never eliminate sickness, but we could greatly reduce it if people ate better--especially poorer people. We already have food stamps. Some say food stamps are evil, let's get rid of them, my tax dollars getting thrown down the drain on these bums, why don't they get a jobby job?, blah, blah, blah. This writer is all for them--but let's change the rules. Apparently you can't buy alcohol, tobacco, or hot food at the deli with food stamps, but that's it. Want a huge bag of Skittles? Go nuts! Five packages of Steak Umms? This one is on Uncle Sam! And we're shocked we have a health care problem. We're basically subsidizing sickness. How about this radical thought: if you want Skittles, Triple Chocolate Chip Fudge Caramel Swirl Ice Cream, or Beef Jerky, you're on your own. If you want to snap into a Slim Jim, show the cashier the money. "Healthy Choice"? Don't even think about it. But if you want items like blueberries, broccoli, or salmon, they will be fully covered by food stamps. In fact, with these restrictions in place, I would be all for making even more people eligible for food stamps. It doesn't force anyone to eat healthy, but it steers them that way. And it would probably save money in the long run because healthier eaters will require less care--which will reduce the amount of times doctors bill Medicare or Medicaid--i.e., bill taxpayers. This idea is genius! I would also strongly favor any government program which funds gym memberships. Don't look at me like that. I've never been more serious. To me, that is preventative, offensive thinking care which might accomplish infinitely more than just forcing people to get physical exams and 38 different screenings for potential diseases before they stop by for a Triple Whopper With Cheese, fries, and a large Coke on their way home after enduring 48 minutes of teeth gnashing misery in the waiting room. 

But........it might makes too much sense to happen. Our government thinks defense wins championships! 

So does private business. Defensive minded businessmen always think cheap labor is the path to wealth. It seems that history contradicts them. Workers are also customers. Henry Ford once said he wanted to pay his workers at the Ford plant good salaries so they could buy Fords. Modern businessmen seem to have lost this farsighted view. If all businesses are racing to the bottom of the pay scale, who will have the money to buy their products or services? American business blossomed in the 20th Century with an offensive strategy: pay the middle class good salaries and benefits so sales of products and services will skyrocket. We fed the economy nutrients and good economic health was the result, today we just want to strip it of calories and a leaner but more emaciated economy is upon us. 

My fellow Americans, I'm afraid our foreign policy provides yet another sad example of the futility of defensive minded strategery. What was the lesson of the first Gulf War? Apparently it was to keep troops permanently stationed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to box in Saddam in case that jerk got the bright idea of trying to get at those oil mines in Kuwait ever again. Mission accomplished. But it was defensive thinking which caused Bin Laden to feel like we were on his turf. He himself had been banished from his homeland, the land of Mohammed himself, but GI Joe could walk through the streets of Medina any time he pleased! (Does anyone want to open a bar with me there called Funky Cold Medina's? Come on. It's even a beach town!). But what should have been the lesson of the Gulf War? I say to move forward yesterday on development of clean energy so we wouldn't have to care about an Iraqi leader invading a neighboring country any more than we cared about it before they discovered oil there or any more than we care about an African leader invading a neighboring African country. Embassies and troops? That's a Baltimore Ravens mindset and last January in Foxboro the men in black and purple were lew-zers. But clean energy is all Tom Brady---who, again, helped the Patriots defeat the Ravens last January before going home for a post-game massage from his Brazilian supermodel wife. But.....to go full steam ahead with clean energy means upsetting oil companies currently making a king's ransom off dirty energy. And it means those Daniel Plainviews, those milkshake drinkers possibly deciding to take away their political donations, which means risking losing the next election. Defense, defense, defense. But defense only loses milkshakes.

But of course this deluded defensive doctrine exists well beyond sports and politics. I'm in absolutely NO position to comment on dating. Instead of spending quality time with my adoring wife and children right now, I'm sitting home at my PC rambling incoherently on Blogger. CLEARY I am not a romantic guru. But whenever I dare browse girls' online profiles (at my age should I be saying "women's profiles"?) I'm often amazed by how many write things like, "If you're just here to play games, do NOT CONTACT ME!!!!! I am tired of two-faced men who lie!! I deserve nothing but the best and I will not settle for anything less!". And sometimes---without a shred of irony, they add: "Please do me a favor and leave your baggage at home!". 

(backs away from the computer). 

Okay, I know dating is tough---especially online dating. And especially for girls (or women) because there's always the slight chance you could run into a date raping,  serial killing American psycho, so you have to be on your guard. But how is hyper-defensiveness not going to scare guys? Even honest guys with impeccable integrity like your humble narrator? Defense loses championships!

Which is why I'm single. 

Do as I blog, not as I do. 

Who wants to get a milkshake?





 

Bread And Circuses

Have you ever wondered whom or what is running your life? Is it the government? You conscience? Your significant other? Your children? Your parents?  Apple Inc.?

Close. 

It's bread. 

Or, if we want to get technical: grain.

I live within a mile of about a billion restaurants. For convenience sake, let's skip the five-star sit-down places with guys in golf shirts discussing NASDAQ prices. (D-Baggers and Sand Baggers--a reality show before its time?) Let's just look at the fast food places. Dunkin Donuts: doughnuts and bagels---made from bread. Bruegger's Bagels: made from bread. Ah but I have a ma and pop diner and a breakfast serving deli where you can get an omelet with home fries or bacon and eggs----with a side of toast. But what about lunch and dinner? There's a Cosi--sandwiches (with bread) but you can get Big Salads! With......rustic or whole grain bread no one can refuse. There's about 5 pizza places---made with dough from bread. There's two taco and burrito joints---made from corn. There are three high end burger places: using buns made from bread. Or what about Chinese? No bread! But.......there's rice.....another cereal grain like wheat and corn. 

All the headlines say meat eating is the devil's handiwork and fruits and vegetables are God's ambrosia. But which food group is the most deeply ingrained? (Pun intended). Think of it this way: could a person swear off fruits and vegetables? Half of America already seems to have perfected that feat. Could a person swear off meat? Relatively easily. Get anchovies on your pizza instead. Have a turkey burger! Sell veggie burritos out of you tie-dyed van to stoned hippies outside Phish shows!  But who eats pizza without the crust? Who eats a burrito without the, you know, burrito wrapping. Who eats a burger without the bun? 

That's right: no one. 

"But that's because everyone eat unhealthy", some would say. "Eat better and it's easy! Try some oatmeal, maybe a little brown rice, or how about some barley soup on a cold rainy day like this?

Grains, grains, grains.

Oh well. Who needs food anyway when you have beer? Cheers!

What? Really? Oh.......yeah. Beer is made from barley. (Or if it's a watery American beer: corn or rice). If you swore off all bread you would have to give up beer and become a yuppie equity insurance managing wine tasting guy named Gary!

See what I mean when I say grains run our lives?

But folks, it runs even deeper than that. Why aren't we all out hunting wild boars to bring back to the campfire for our clan's nightly dinner instead of gathering around our mobile devices to read this incredible blog? Why do we have this thing called civilization? Hint: Miss Manners and bow ties have nothing to do with it. Our prehistoric ancestors figured out how to grow edible grain. Whether it was corn in the Americas, wheat in the Middle East, or rice in Asia, the story was the same: grain agriculture created civilizations. It became a more stable means of obtaining a reliable source of food which allowed people to settle down in farming villages to lead a quieter life so they could invent alphabets, religion, and the slinky. Then they got bored and banned dancing. I mean all roads lead back to grain fields!

Now here is the debate among nutritionists--of which I am obviously not: was the dawn of agriculture a slam dunk success or a mixed blessing? In many ways, agriculture was humankind's first great stroke of genius. (Okay, fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey would say it was our 2nd great stroke of genius). Life had always been the struggle for food, but now it wasn't just a struggle to find food but an opportunity to create food even when none could otherwise be found. Wild cereals are not edible. People had to figure out a complicated process through trial and error before they could convert wild grains into edible wheat, barley, corn, rice, etc. But when the experiments paid off, humans took control of their own destiny for the first time. From the raw materials of nature, they created a food not found in nature that was cheaper and easier than finding edible fruits and vegetables or scary animals to shoot who just might eat you before you could roast them over a fire. Processed foods didn't start with TV Dinners and Skittles, they started about 10,000 years before the birth of Jesus with edible grains. 

BUT, like fast food and TV dinners years later, did we sacrifice nutrition for convenience? Grain stabilized human life, but was the human body happier? Does the body really crave man-made edible grains or does it only tolerate them? Are our bodies naturally best tuned to naturally pre-made, ready to eat foods like apples, broccoli, and chicken breasts?  

If you listen to many food experts, absolutely not. If anything, meat is the problem. There's this cranky preventative medicine doctor on my local public access station. In between discussions about the latest new wonder drug from your friends in the pharmaceutical industry and the importance of going to the doctor 87 times per year for 88 different tests (with preventative medicine like that, who needs Dr. Frankenstein?) he likes to say meat is going to kill you dead. Tomorrow. So knock it off! Human biology is built for plant eating. I've never heard him say a bad thing about Wonder Bread!

But here's where a funny thought occurs to me: maybe grain farmers just have a better union than swine?

Okay, but what about the butchers? Don't they have a union? Sure, but aren't those boys pretty expendable? I mean couldn't you get any ex-con with a cobra tattoo to wack them over the head with a mallet? But farming takes some skill and patience. They depend on rain at the right time and sunshine at the right time--which makes them pray to God, which makes them civilized. Farming created civilization and the psychology of farming stabilized it. (And may have also created religion. And religious leaders may have done a little PR work right back at grain farmers: "Give us this day our daily bread". Who are they fooling!?). But bow and arrow toting hunters or hammer wielding pig slaughterers are instruments of fate, not servants of it. They depend on no one. They are dangerous! A threat to tranquil village life everywhere. So let's favor the farmers.

Is it possible this is (indirectly) why grains are rarely vilified? It's always the burger's fault, never the bun! Me? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. And no two doctors seem in agreement on this. But conspiracy theory lover that I am, it's at least an interesting question to ask whether job protection has influenced our perceptions of foods throughout history.  Again, grain farmers, not Gods or kings, are the creators of civilization, so is painting them as the enemy biting the hand that feeds us---no pun intended this time. As farmers have always represented a vital segment of every society's workforce, has there always been an attempt to protect them by protecting the idea of bread as a healthy staple food? And isn't harvesting grain in the cool autumn breeze so much more tender and bucolic than some jerk beating animals to death in a dark, dirty slaughterhouse? Who cares about those psychos??

And does job protection skew our modern perceptions of food and health in other ways? These days the mad scientists aren't the converters of wild grains into bread, but those who convert chemical debris into Coca-Cola and Fruit Roll Ups. Doesn't our government protect them too? The words "organic" is regulated by the government but the word "natural" is not. You can say a Twix bar is made from pure, all natural coca leaves and no one can stop you. Basically, if it says "natural" on the box. it's unnatural. But if no one notices or cares and buys it anyway.....

So while farmers and food chemists are skilled workmen who need protection, why protect comparatively unskilled hunters or planters? 

All of this is probably BS. But you have to admit: it would make a pretty good Dan Brown novel. Unhealthy food takes skill to make, healthy food requires less skill. So unhealthy food is promoted or protected even at the cost of your life!

Or maybe not. Ah forget it! Are pancakes and beer a good choice for dinner?

 

Health Is On The Way!

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.

Okay, not really. But I have seen them wrestle with the issue of healthcare in America. Does that count?

Our nine august, honorable Supreme Court justices (yes I'm including Clarence "Long Dong Silver" Thomas) are currently debating whether ObmaCare is unconstitutional. This makes perfect sense--unless you've read The Constitution. It has absolutely nothing to say about healthcare. If we really wanted to know what Washington, Adams, and Jefferson would have thought about a health care mandate, we would be better off hiring Danny from The Shining to read their minds from beyond the grave. Tony can come along too--but I hear his service fee is pretty steep. If they're unavailable we might as well break out the Oija board: "When the Fathers said the government is allowed "to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas", was this actually an esoteric reference to the Public Option?". Just let the wood thimble or whatever it is move to "yes" or "no" and call it a day.

But don't worry because you have me. Why don't I put on my Superman cape and solve healthcare all by myself? Don't read any further if you're not prepared to have your mind blown.

First things first: we need to stop lying to ourselves. Horatio Alger must die. The American Dream tells us everyone can obtain success: a high paying and rewarding job, an adoring spouse, 2.3 kids, a dog, and a pool for everyone. Some might get an Olympic sized in-ground pool while others might need to look into a 4 foot deep, circular above ground pool that will humiliate their kids so much they would never invite their friends over for a pool party if their life depended on it, but that's the beginning and end of inequality in America. You can do it!

No you cant.

Well......let me backtrack. You, dear reader, can do it--assuming "you" are a person of at least moderate intelligence with a strong work ethic and you live in a house with more books than fully loaded semi-automatic rifles. Since so many of your competition for a slice of the American pie are lazy slobs, you should get a real leg up on the competition and do well.

That's looking at it from the ground floor, but if we take a bird's eye view of things, it seems The American Dreams is exactly what it says it is: a dream. Even when our economy was better, our job market didn't supply much more than about 120 million domestic jobs. 120 million opportunities! Except we have 300 million people in America. The unemployment rate is a more misleading statistic than George W. Bush's undergrad GPA (he was even dumber). The Department Of Labor uses a much less publicized Participation Rate--the percentage of working age adults currently working. Even including part time workers, that number in February was 63.9%. A LOT OF PEOPLE DON'T WORK. This isn't always a bad thing. Non workers may be Powerball winners or stay at home moms. Or......prison inmates. But the simple, stark fact remains that our country has far fewer jobs than people. What if every single person in the US put down the crack pipe and graduated from Harvard? Would that end unemployment? Probably not. Where would we place them all? Sure, with all that brainpower you could conceivably add a few rocket science jobs, but with a society full of brainiacs those job additions would be offset by a plummeting of jobs selling Gatorade and Limp Bizquit memorabilia, so it would all come out in the wash and not cause a skyrocketing of job creation.

So social entitlements are a necessary evil in any economy in which the population has outgrown the job supply. Many won't be able to work, so what else are we going to do with them? Put them ALL in jail? Let them starve in the streets? Impossible. But we cling to the illusion that if everyone just worked a little harder, unemployment would end forever. Hence the push to cut back or end entitlements. Ron Paul is right about The Constitution. It's a perfect and complete document---for the 13 states of farmers and weavers it was written for. But it doesn't serve or guide us on every issue today--which George Washington himself predicted.

Nevertheless, we "reformed" welfare. People don't receive long-term-to-permanent checks from the government every month based simply on their position along the poverty line. Instead we make poor people grovel on their hands and knees to try to prove they (or their child) is disabled. Again, we cling to the dream that every non-disabled person will have a plush job waiting for him or her if they would only watch Dead Poets Society again and carpe diem.

The problem with this model is it creates a brave new world in which everyone thinks they are disabled! If ADHD didn't exist (and I'm not entirely sure that it does) we would need to invent it. To a poor mom, a baby Einstein is a potential liability, but a learning disabled child offers a chance for her to pay her rent next month. For adults, running 5K's and eating garden salads is a financial non-starter. But becoming morbidly obese and developing diabetes, back problems, heart problems, knee problems, liver problems, kidney prob.......Ah!!! Sorry. I feel like I'm at work all of a sudden. What a nightmare!

Critics of social entitlements often talk about the ways it drains people's initiative. Fair enough, but what can we do? Again, the basic numbers seem to say we're going to have large unemployment no matter what we do because of the limitations of the job market itself. But might it be possible that a social entitlement model skewed toward demanding proof of a disability is endangering the health of America? I don't actually think poor or working class people consciously make a choice to eat Fritos for breakfast and freebase crack for brunch as part of a long term, three pronged strategy to get on disability, but I do think it may have a strong and powerful subconscious influence on behavior. If you have limited education, job experience, and skills and you're surrounded by an unforgiving, risk averse job market and you see friends and families becoming a bit more financially secure after receiving disability, might this weaken your will to eat brocoli, lace on a pair of running shoes, and download the Nike Plus running app?

Are social entitlements and healthcare linked? Is our attempt to truly reform healthcare doomed as long as we're trying to do it in the face of a disability-centric "reformed" social entitlement system? I wish we would say, "We're going to give you benefits because we are a compassionate country, we know you and your family are at risk of starvation, and (don't tell anyone this) but the job market is a room with a seating capacity and the ushers will never escort everyone to a seat. But you will not be financially rewarded by the government for being sick". What would happen to those with mental retardation or paraplegia if we stopped using disability as our criteria for benefits? Nothing. They would still qualify if they were unable to hold down a full time job, but it would be determined by a means test, not an IQ test or an Internist exam.

I know--rich people get cancer too. But poor people are sicker. Rich people do palates--whatever that is. Rich people eat organic squash. Poor people are more likely to eat a Baconator and order an item from Taco Bell's Volcano Menu. So removing ANY financial incentive to be unhealthy is, like, super important and stuff.

People complain, "We have health care, not sick care!". I used to agree with this. But now I think, "Duh. Sicker people are always going to move to the front of the line". Is sick care the problem or is the problem the term "health care" itself and its implied false promise? "A new miracle happens every day!", hospital commercials devoutly proclaim. Most doctors I've talked to seem to feel less like miracle workers and more like damage control experts. They know how limited their powers really are. Other than maybe vaccines, most preventative health care seems to be about eating right and exercising. No doctor can make a patient do that. Healthcare folks don't work in the miracle department, it's the managed sickness department.

So I say sick care isn't a problem when it comes to doctors and nurses, but it's a problem when practiced by elected officials and government bureaucrats. No financial compensation for disability! Only compensation for the disability of the job market!

I just remembered something really weird. I work for Social Security's disability program.