Existential Ennui

~ Searching for Meaning Amid the Chaos

Existential Ennui

Tag Archives: crap I learned

I Think Therefore I Suffer

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Sherry in Humor, Life in the Foothills

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

crap I didn't learn, crap I learned, life in the foothills, lifestyle, musings

devolutionI find the human condition dizzyingly complex. I’m not sure we’ll ever get it sorted out. I’m reasonable sure that you have to be slightly off (if you get my drift) to study the human mind, and I’m very sure that prolonged study causes intense breaks with reality meaning that research results become suspect the minute they are conceived.

I mean, I am one of your more ordinary types of “scheduled” persons. I do a whole host of things as part of a routine that can become quite rigid. I walk the dog at 6 a.m. If the weather does not cooperate, but it’s sunny and lovely at 9 a.m., well too bad dog, that window has closed until tomorrow.

If you have ever read a story whose main character is one of those routinized humans who eats the same lunch for twenty-five years while sitting on the same park bench across the street from their work location which is a tiny cubicle in a corner from which said subject does some routine mundane same-old-same-old day in and day out for forty-three glorious years returning home at precisely 5:47 p.m. to one of five carefully arranged TV dinners and then two hours of knitting before climbing into bed at the stroke of 10 p.m. to awaken precisely at 6 a.m. to do it all over again, and equate me as one of those persons, well, you would be mistaken.

You would be deeply mistaken.

I revel in setting up systems of order, but true order is nothing but neurotic obsession. I like knowing that there is a time for every purpose under heaven, but find it serves me best by allowing me to ignore the chores I wish to ignore if fate delivers me some altered time line. You see, I use order for the gifts of avoidance as much a for the gift of organization.

I never met a routine that couldn’t be tweeked.

I never met one that didn’t need major revisions at least twice a year.

Because my desire for orderly organization runs smack into my desire for something new.

It is why I struggle to have “a” hobby, rather than eight or so.

It is why I struggle to add yet another great recipe rather the fine grouping that I already have of tested and true.

It is why I sit puzzling for sometimes day as to “what to read next” because there is so much to choose from.

It is why new thoughts intrigue me rather than bore or frustrate me. Dazzle me with your ideas for my brain loves the challenge.

Why am I not satisfied with a job well done, repetitively? Why am I on this unrelenting quest to master yet another THING?

Who knows.

It may be part of what makes us human, or at least most of us? More than some of us at least, for I live by the theory that I am only original in my sum rather than my parts.

We are driven to conquer new things, we humans. It is what has taken us to the moon, Mars and beyond, which powers us to the Mariana Trench and to the North Pole. From this thing inside, we decided we should be able to fly like birds, and go faster than horses at a full gallop. It propels us ever onward, never satisfied with what is but rather focused on what might be.

I am not Einstein, nor Picasso; no Sophocles am I, no Hypatia, Gertrude Stein, or Curie. The drive to do something new is not limited to only the brightest and most noteworthy inventor or sophist  but resides somewhere beside that reptilian remnant in each braincase.

There is percolates a constant insistent demand or remains dormant throughout most of its life, or somewhere in between. What awakens it, or dampens it, whatever the case may be, is unknown to me for sure. It just surely is in me a sometimes annoying nagging that never ceases.

So I go along in my routines sometimes happily for weeks, until it’s just not enough, and I scrounge around seeking some new challenge. To read the book I’ve long avoided because it was too hard, to attempt a new hobby or take an old one up a notch. To master something new, to add to my resumé offered with the last breath to the only possibly interested entity who common sense (let alone great theologically pondering) tells me has no such interest.

Yet I am so compelled as are countless others, to do SOMETHING, to create, categorize, expand the realm of knowledge, point out the failings of planetary systems be they political or religious. We are all compelled to DO, for no very good reason at all. After all, I am by thinking said Réne. What more needs be said or done?

This is not something morose and melancholy. Whatever you believe about God and death, it accommodates all. What is is, what will be will be, and not much I do changes any of that. But still I do.  Do that is. And with a happy and challenged heart for the doing excites and exhilarates, giving satisfaction beyond the completion of the thing itself.

I should much like to ask a chimpanzee if they experience this sort of thing at all. Is it better not to? I sense not, but I know not either. Perhaps there is a peacefulness that comes from life being sorted out ahead of you and only to be followed with death’s appearance earlier if you slip off the path into the gaping jaws of someone higher up the food chain.

Anyway, I’m busily re-organizing and it’s all so exciting and thrilling to have new challenges. For me it’s biking instead of walking and cooking in a new way driven by a body who has said “enough of that” now nourish me properly. It fills the days with a new expectation, new roads to travel, new discoveries.

The Contrarian views this all from his perch. His “drive” is significantly subdued. He chuckles a lot at my fever pitch, supportive but in his own comical way. He loves this new biking craze I’m starting. “Oh, my, but ANOTHER thing you will grow to hate to do every day!” But as he says, you may hate it but you can be damned determined to do it anyhow.

I am a closet full of discarded crafts away from being the most productive person I know.

So how weird am I?

Really, you can tell me.

heroic_death_dog_mug

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And What Was the Point Again?

17 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Didn't Learn, Crap I Learned, Essays, GOP, Humor, Individual Rights, Reproductive Rights, Satire, teabaggers, Voting

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

and learned again, crap I learned, guns, Humor, ranting, satire, unlearned

bangingheadOr: I am a masochist and I love it!

I was thinking about doing a post about Planet Earth traveling through the Backwards Belt. Trust me, it exists, astronomers just haven’t discovered it yet.

Since we passed through that belt of backwardness, everything pretty much means the opposite of what it portrays itself as meaning.

Example:

Stated Truth: Rick Perry signs into law a bill that is designed to help ensure women’s health safety. It inadvertently might make it more difficult for clinics who do abortions as a minor part of their total service.

Actual Truth: Rick Perry and those like him hate abortions because they have found it useful to portray themselves as “good Christians” for political purposes and making regulations (which are absolutely a job killer in any other arena according to the GOP mantra), so onerous that it essentially puts most women’s health care clinics in Texas out of business and thus makes abortions unavailable to millions of Texas women is the real goal.

Another example:

Stated Truth: Republican controlled states throughout the nation pass laws making it much harder to vote for their citizenry under the stated purpose to reduce the fraudulent use of the ballot to dilute the value of real voters vote, and thus to alter the real will of the people.

Actual Truth: Republicans can’t will elections because they have so alienated the vast majority of middle America, so the only effective way to get a win is do make it as hard as possible for voters who are likely Democratic voters to cast their vote.

Another example?

Stated Truth: The only defense against a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The government is determined to take away your guns because it knows that it can do anything once you have no recourse through armed rebellion.

Actual Truth: We hope you will buy more guns in an effort to feel safer from the government and if you aren’t afraid of the government, we will do everything we can to make you afraid, in the hopes that you will buy more guns. We get rich and powerful that way, and we really like that.

Okay, so you know all this stuff already. Of course you do. You wouldn’t be reading this blog unless more or less you agreed with me. We all have learned that. We all started out on this Internet adventure thinking that we would have a forum finally to talk about issues and hash out differences, and come to agreement, more or less.

We knew there were crazy people, but we didn’t think they were us. But they are.

Because if you care about what is happening to this country, then it makes you crazy.

If you don’t believe me, read this: The Most Depressing Discovery about the Brain Ever.

Except, that it’s not. There are TONS of similar studies. Heck Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, is ALL about the same subject.

The truth is, the more you care, the less you are persuaded that you are wrong by facts. You look the facts straight in the face, and your lyin’ eyes, well lie. The remark attributed to  Richard Pryor comes to mind: “Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”

We are about to go round and round in this circus of guns. After yesterday, and another mentally disturbed man, with a history of inappropriate use of weapons, manages to buy more, and walk into a facility and start killing folks. And WE WEEP that we are such a place where people who are ill are ignored as long as they stay out of our way and don’t gum up our life.

And the head of the trauma center Dr. Orlowski said this:

And we will all say similar things, and we will all mean it, and the crazies on the other side will mean what they say, because they really believe that we’re coming to take their guns and then force them onto communes where they will eat three squares a day and pray to Allah upon pain of death, and that there are death panels, and that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim, and that quiet is kept, black and brown people just not aren’t quite like “us” and never will be, *wink* *wink*.

And I think they are loon crazy bastards and I wish they would just tend to their Ice Road Truckers and Boo Boo whoever that is, and stop meddling with adult issues. Because I can’t convince them that they are wrong on just about everything, and I am told that I am not better, just the other side.

And I HATE believing that, which is quite a corker when you think about it, because if I say, they are wrong, and I’m right, and I’m not like them, then according to the professorial class, I am but proving their point. So.

But I AM NOT LIKE THEM.  I do listen to other views, and I do change my mind, so how can I be like them?

But I sure can’t change them.

So let’s just face it.

All of us bloggers who are pounding away at the keys because we want to make a difference?

Well, we aren’t.

BLOGGING: WELCOME TO MY DIARY.

Or to be “today” let’s call it journaling.

Or, to be cool, let’s call it a rant.

Crap, I sometimes wish I was just part of the great grey cloud that only cares about whether my pinochle game will be disrupted, and of course what they are serving for lunch today at the senior’s center.

Chicken ala King anyone?

 

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The Stupid Chronicles April 27, 2013

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Essays, Gay Rights, GOP, Humor, Islamophobia, racism, Satire, teabaggers, terrorism, The Stupic Chronicles

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

conspiracies, crap I learned, gay rights, homophobia, Humor, racism, terrorism

james-tracyLook closely at the picture attached here. This is the face of lunacy. You now know exactly what to look for when you casually saunter down the street. When you see lunacy, run!

This man’s name is James Tracy. No not Dick Tracy. He bears not brain-sharing with the great detective of comics. No James is one of those rare nuts who actually somehow made it through grad school and got a degree, and purports to teach our youth.

If you have a child enrolled in Florida Atlantic, I’d suggest you shut off the funds now, and get your kid immediately.

James is certifiable. James “teaches” (I use the term loosely of course) communications and, get this, conspiracy theory. James is a conspiracy. A conspiracy to appear like a normal human being.

James believes the Boston Marathon bombing was “staged”. For all the world, to him, it looks like a pre-organized drill.

In short, the event closely resembles a mass-casualty drill, which for training purposes are designed to be as lifelike as possible. Since it is mediated, however, and primarily experienced from afar through the careful assemblage of words, images, and the official pronouncements and commentary of celebrity journalists, it has the semblance of being for all practical purposes “real.”
….

With the above in mind, photographic evidence of the event suggests the possibility of play actors getting into position after the detonation of what may in fact have been a smoke bomb or similarly benign explosive.

And goody of all goodies there is a video!

And you can read more of Tracy’s insanity at his own blog.

New Hampshire makes another appearance in the crazy parade with an entry from their state legislature. Stella Trembley, oh STELLLLLLA, what have you done now? Stella

Stella no doubt in communication with Mr. Tracy, has her own theories about the Boston Marathon bombing.

Stella pays attention to that great witless Beck, so she posted this on Beck’s site:

Just as you said would happen. Top Down, Bottom UP. The Boston Marathon was a Black Ops “terrorist” attack. One suspect killed, the other one will be too before they even have a chance to speak. Drones and now “terrorist” attacks by our own Government. Sad day, but a “wake up” to all of us. First there was a “suspect” then there wasnt. Infowars broke the story and they knew they had been “found out”.
http://youtu.be/axQtAFtmtVA

Yes, I’m sure that Stella believes that George Bush ordered the 9/11 tragedy as well.

Note as well that the YouTube link she gave on her comment is from none other than career nut Alex Jones.

We did mention that Ms. Stella is a Republican didn’t we? No? Well you knew that anyway didn’t you?

One thing you can be sure of, the stupids are well, really really stupid. That’s why they are so endearing, when they are not annoying gnats in need of swatting.

Such is the case of Representative Tom Shaw, who resides at the Iowa State House, where he plays tiddlywinks most of the day long until it’s time for his chocolate milk and nap break.

tom-shaw-199x300Tommy is still mighty angry at the justices of the Iowa Supreme Court, who several years ago had the temerity to actually follow the constitution and declare Iowa’s refusal to allow gays to marry, well, unconstitutional.

Tommy figured out a neat plan to punish the four remaining justices (three were defeated for re-election after a tissue of lies campaign forged by one VanderPlatts and his homophobic friends).

Tommy has offered up a bill directed just at these four justices, cutting their salaries from $163, 200, to just $25,000.

Tommy thinks it’s constitutional.

Tommy is of course an idiot.

Tommy can usually be spotted at the capital building in Des Moines, being led around by his thinking-brain dog Charles.

Tommy also wears Depends and poops in them regularly, so people learn to take a wide berth when seeing him.

From Iowa, we move a bit north and east to my original neck of the woods–Michigan.

platkoHere we find Gloria Platko, a Democrat up in Buena Vista County. She doesn’t seem particularly fond of township supervisor Dwayne Parker, whom she referred to with the “N” word.

She also adjectived that word with “arrogant”.

Gloria, poor dear, was unaware that she was being taped when she made the remarks.

She regrets them of course. NOW.

She assures us she is no racist, because in that time-honored defense, “she’s eaten Thanksgiving dinner at the homes of blacks before.”

She said she probably should have used the word ignoramus.

Sorry, Gloria, that word is taken. You have that dubious distinction of owning the word.

Give back your salary.

It’s always a good bet that Donald Trump can make a stupid list.

trump-stewThe first question or observation one makes about The Donald, is how could stupid make that much money?

Donald doesn’t like Jon Stewart much.

That would be obvious, since Stewart, like all good thinking people tends to point out Donald’s numerous stupid moments.

Donald has another major flaw other than being stupid. He’s very thin-skinned and fights back, hate to use the phrase, but it fits, “like a girl.”

You know what I mean, all snotty and so forth.

So to “get back” at Stewart for being, well, really brilliant at what he does, Trump said,

I am smarter than Jon Stewart will ever be because he is so stupid and because his real name is not even Jon Stewart. It’s something much more Jewish-y. So, ha! Also: he is overrated.

He tweeted it too.

So there, Jon Stewart: It’s all out now. You’re a JEW!, or Jewish-y at least. Take that!

Trumpet head remains, as always,  an idiot.

Oh Gosh, that was a joke Donald, don’t sue me!

hi-there

Related articles
  • N.H. State Rep. Stella Tremblay – “What am I going to apologize for? Asking questions?” (willyloman.wordpress.com)
  • Boston Marathon Bombing Conspiracy: Attack Was U.S. False Flag, Says Florida Professor (latinospost.com)

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The Stupid Chronicles for April 20, 2013

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Sherry in 2nd Amendment, Crap I Learned, Energy, Essays, Gay Rights, GOP, Humor, Immigration, racism, Satire, teabaggers, terrorism, The Stupic Chronicles

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

2nd Amendment, Arkansas, crap I learned, gay rights, green energy, Humor, immigration, Iowa, Louis Gohmert, Maine, racism, Stupid Chronicles, Texas

Gohmert_Louis-Dummy-2Oh don’t mind me, I’m just acting like a Hispanic. Yes dear Louis the Lunatic tops our list today. But it was a close call I tell ya. Louis never fails to deliver the one two punch of stupid all wrapped up in crazy nearly every week. We sometimes wonder if Louis has a bank of writers who dream up his lines, but on reflection that would surely tip the balance and throw civilization into a retrograde orbit.

Louis dear Louis has a gem for us today. Let me put it thusly. Louis viewed Rodin’s the Thinker, and opined, “why is that dude taking a shit in public?”

Louis doesn’t have a pet rock, he’s the pet rock’s pet.

Louis knows his terrorists and he is here to tell you what he has learned. Islamic terrorist organizations are busy helping their Arab folks “act Hispanic” so they can cross the border from Mexico into America. (added joy: there is a video!)

Yes you heard it here.

Although Louis had no opinion of who caused the Boston Marathon bombings at the time he said this, he was pretty darn sure that a fence is the way to go. After all, Israel’s suicide bombings stopped when they built their fence, he offered, unaware that that is not at all true. A good guess is always good enough for Louis.

Compatriot idiot Steve King (R-IA) nodded in agreement and said that the immigration reform bill should be held up, because surely this bombing was caused (he thinks) by some student on a visa.

Louis offered no ideas about how one “acts” Hispanic. Several racist theories comes to mind, but Louis stopped short of asking people to be on the watch for the “typical” Hispanic behaviors. He did whisper that a dead giveaway that you were dealing with a “pretend” Hispanic was to offer him a jalapeño pepper and see if he cries out in anguish and calls for water after taking a bite.

Texas takes our number two spot as well, which isn’t a big surprise–it’s a big state with big idiots in it.

esther-irene-stokes-400x300This is Ms. Ester Irene Stokes. She’s a school teacher in Texas. Or was, or confound it, she probably got herself a medal now.

Anyway, she was accused of fondling one of her female students. Now Ms. Stokes is 61 and the child in question was seven. So that is very bad stuff.

So Ms. Stokes tells police and anyone else who will listen that she is not guilty.

You probably assumed that didn’t ya?

Yes, well she has a rather unique defense.

She says that she is such a racist that she can barely stand to touch those little black girls in her class. The mere touch of their hands gives her the heebie jeebies and sends her off to wash off that black skin feel. I mean she actually cringes when the little nappy heads try to hug here, which must happen once every ice age at least.

There have been no responses by the school in question as to whether Ms. Stokes was still employed. What ya wanna make a bet she won’t have any trouble finding another job in some parts of the country at least.

No doubt that face will be forever seared in your brain.

Third on our hit parade for the week is Maine’s governor Paul LaPage.

getting-to-know-paul-lapageNow Paulie has come to our attention before as you can note from some of his best work at the right.

But he kinda ran out of material for a little while. After the last couple of days though, I think he’s back in fighting form.

The Bangor News seems to have a particularly low opinion in the Guv, suggesting that he “makes things up” a lot.

Well, Paul is at it again. Paul doesn’t like wind power. He thinks it’s somehow un-American, being all cheap and non-polluting and such. Oil and Gas don’t like air power and that’s enough for big Paul.

So Paul said, “Now, to add insult to injury, The University of Maine, Presque Isle – anybody here been up there to see that damn windmill in the back yard? Guess what, if it’s not blowing wind outside and they have somebody visiting the campus, they have a little electric motor that turns the blades. I’m serious. They have an electric motor so that they can show people wind power works. Unbelievable. And that’s the government that you have here in the state of Maine.”

Of course, no such thing is true. The University says there is no “little motor”.

All this would be funny, and it is, but the answer to Paulie’s nonsense is that he’s touched in the head. Read crazy as a loon. Read, coming up on Louis’s shoulder and threatening to pass.

Paulie intends to run for re-election. He predicts that the teacher’s unions better watch out, cuz he’s coming for them. And his new idol? Well that ever-favorite of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.

“I will guarantee you that you will see the most vicious education campaign ads that you’ve ever seen in your life next year, because I am going to be the next Scott Walker in this country, because I am challenging the status quo.”

No, Paulie is challenging the all-time low IQ in the USA. I am putting my bets he will win.

Fourth is a new face for us, GOP House Representative from Iowa, Dennis Guth.

guth-e1366222435292Guth is one of those self-styled experts on the issue of homosexuality.

Guth first focused on the media and accused them of making that homosexual lifestyle seem good and nice, when we all know it’s really yucky.

See, Guth says, homosexuals are like “second-hand” smoke, they cause harm to those around them who are normal. They cause health risks to his family he says, by their increased invitation to transmittable sexual diseases. He opines that there are “more medical tests required” before you can give blood or birth. He thinks they are connected but forgot to say how.

Other than that, Guth was unable to explain why their diseases would “harm” his family, unless of course one posits that either he or members of his family regularly engage the services of willing homosexuals for ummm, sex.

Guth is an idiot, and his Democratic colleague told him so.

Our fifth and last entry for the week comes from good old Arkansas, a state that often shows us the butt end of humanity.

NateNate Bell, is (you guessed it) a REPUBLICAN state rep from good old Ar-KANSAS, who is a protector of the 2nd Amendment, which he neither understands, nor defends with anything other than yippie-ki-yo-ki-yay blather.

Well, inside that fun face is a very human and very empathetic individual. So as soon as he heard about the manhunt going on in Boston and its environs, wondered via Twitter:

I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a high-capacity magazine?

I mean how sympathetic can a guy be?

I mean really?

Nate withdrew the Tweet once it was pointed out to him that he was being a total douche. Of course it was up long enough for a long list of people to tell him that.

Good luck Nate on re-election.

And if you have not run into these videos (YouTube has several by the same guy), then sit back and for a couple of minutes, just chortle your little heart out. Dry up your tears at the above and replace with belly laughs.

Related articles
  • LePage Spins Windmill Conspiracy Theory (thetippingpoint.bangordailynews.com)
  • Outrage as Rep. Gohmert says radical islamists being trained to act Hispanic (nbclatino.com)

 

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Food, Huh! What Is It Good For?

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Life in New Mexico, Life in the Foothills, LifeStyle, Medicine, Psychology, Regulatory Agencies, science

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

crap I learned, diets, food, life in the foothills, lifestyle

foodOkay, you caught me. I’m avoiding politics. Just for a bit. I’m tired of reporting on idiots. Tired up to the tippy-top of my noggin with fools and dopes, and all manner of misanthropes who permeate our political landscape. The last was the isolated butt-stupid “law enforcement” personnel across the country who have determined that “they will not enforce unconstitutional gun laws”. These missing-links to humanity are nothing but assholes with inverted mouths. To suggest that they haven’t thought this through would be to suggest that they can think in the first place.

So.

What ya wanna talk about today?

Food? I thought so.

I been reading about food lately. I read The China Study, and now I’m reading, Healthy at Every Size. I won’t bore you with long drawn out descriptions except to say that the first does an excellent job of proving that for health reasons, a plant-based diet is probably the very best any person could choose. Of course only a tiny segment of the population is or ever will be prepared to never eat a hamburger, a glorious slice of Vermont Cheddar, or a gnaw upon a spicy rib bone. The second, fairly echoes my conclusion but goes ever so much further stating once and for all, that diets don’t work, except again for a tiny segment of the population.

I tend to agree with both. I cannot do a plant-based diet. I’m not that tiny segment. I have tried every manner of diet, and been successful on most all. Until I had lost the weight and tried to eat NORMALLY again. I do mean normally too. I put the weight back on faster than a nearing 40-year-old says “I do”, and as then some. It’s all quite predictable, for diets interfere with the bodies own dynamics, and as soon as the diet is done, the body starts to repair the damage at it sees things. It does little good by the by to try to tell it otherwise. It has a mind of its own.

You see this has to do with systems that are evolutionarily developed over millions of years to care for the body (itself) when the brain sitting atop all this mass of flesh was not smart enough to make the right decisions. A whole mass of interconnected “stuff” in our brains, bloodstreams, and so forth released chemicals, slowed them down, pushed them about, all to regulate what we ate and when. For a lot of millions of years, we did just fine.

Then the mirror was developed. And we saw that fat butt, and that round tummy, and well we became insane. We started to artificially alter our size. And our inborn systems have been rebelling ever since. You diet, the brain says, “we’re starving–quick slow systems down!” So our metabolisms fall making our calorie output slower than normal. We become hungrier, and  the normal level of our satiety is thrown off kilter. So when we stop starving ourselves, we eat more, more often.

Then the food industry comes into play. They want to make money. They don’t care about our natural mechanisms for maintaining a healthy body. They use high fructose corn syrup because it is cheap. It goes into everything now. It messes up the “satiety” bells and whistles. So we eat more and more often. They use all kinds of additives that affect the proper release of various chemicals and so forth into our bloodstream that help us to decide what to eat and when. They mess it up. So we eat Cheetos, instead of an apple.

The government is complicit. They subsidize farmers who grow corn. It stays cheap so it can be the favored supplier of sweeteners. In Europe, by the by, you can hardly find soda pop that uses HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), because it’s BANNED as UNHEALTHY. Here you can’t find any without it. It’s in bread and almost all boxed and pre-made foods.

The government promotes the use of milk, although studies suggest it plays a part in breast and prostate cancer, onset juvenile diabetes, and cant’ be digested properly by tons of people. There are no good studies that say its a good way to avoid osteoporosis either.

Fast food places supersize foods because the french fries are so damn cheap that they can double the size at about only 40% of the cost. And over time, the consumer becomes used to the larger size, and considers it the “normal” portion. The more we eat, the more we crave it. We mess up our internal systems. Go into a McDonald’s and ask for a “small” fry. They will not have a clue what you are talking about. There is no such thing as “small” any more.

We don’t eat because we are hungry. And we don’t eat what our body needs, we eat what our drunken brains have been taught to crave. We eat because it is noon, and we eat a salad because we want to be “good” until evening when we are starved and we devour a bag of chips and a twenty-ounce coke.

Now, I’m not trying to talk you into anything here. But these two books are worth your attention before you start yet another weight-loss scheme. If only to alert you that you can’t depend on the government to keep you safe, nor frankly even a lot of the various medical associations. You cannot believe how many of the things like Pediatric Doctors Associations (and similar things) are heavily contributed to by all the “bad” food makers to get a nod. These associations have a maddeningly bad habit of altering their “advice” to include “reasonable” portions of soda, chocolate, and all the other things we know are not real food in return for those hefty “donations”.

I’m simply trying to make better food choices, and exercise because I find it fun, and because it makes me feel better. I’m trying to make most of my diet from real foods, and meals created from whole ingredients.  Being healthy is, at my age, increasingly much more important than whether I can pop my buns into a pair of sexy jeans. Way more.

Related articles
  • High fructose corn syrup linked with diabetes (thenaturopathicnutritionist.com)
  • Soybean Oil: One of the most harmful ingredients in processed foods (sott.net)
  • Dr. Mercola: Why Americans Are Less Healthy, and Die Sooner Than People In Other Developed Nations (consciouslifenews.com)
  • This is how the food industry makes Americans fat and hungry (rt.com)
  • Fructose Sugar Tells the Brain To Keep Eating (livescience.com)
  • Imaging study examines effect of fructose on brain regions that regulate appetite (esciencenews.com)
  • Diabetes Rates Higher in Countries Using Lots of High Fructose Corn Syrup (nlm.nih.gov)

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Package That in Your Madison Avenue Briefcase

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by Sherry in Advertizing, Crap I Learned, Humor, Life in the Foothills, New Mexico, Satire

≈ 4 Comments

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advertising, crap I learned, Humor, life in the foothills, stupid products

ivegotabone128517441136093750I have a bone stuck in my craw. Trouble is, where the craw is eludes me. And the bone ain’t with you, but you are damn sure gonna listen. Do read on!

For the umpteenth time, I’ve been advised by the earth movers that pass as the intelligentsia of Madison Avenue, that I am dumb as dirt and too stupid to bother existing.

Let me ‘splain Lucy.

I recognize that I am from the cave-keeping days, when *gasp* one actually purchased an onion and cut it into dice (not with the numbers dummy), and cooked it. I didn’t get it out of the freezer section and measure out 1/2 cup into the pan. I realize that. But really. Just how lazy do you think I am?

You used to go to the grocery story and pick out some potatoes and proceed to buy them. Now they come in 5, 10 and 20 lb bags. If the recipe calls for 2 lbs of potatoes, I have no idea on the face of Pluto what that is. I have to run a few potatoes into the bathroom and throw them on the scales? I mean surely you jest!

I used to have the common sense of a cow so it was assumed that I could manage to figure out how many carrots I needed when I shopped. Then some bright farmer decided to bundle them into a new thing called a “bunch”. Maybe you know how many carrots are in a bunch, but my scale is busy weighing potatoes and I don’t have time to count them. Is is a dozen? Or a pound? DO YOU KNOW? — I thought not.

Speaking of dozen, who the hell decided that I wanted eggs by the twelve, or by the eighteen? Nobody asked me. I checked my diaries since the age of sixteen, and there are no references to being asked about this.

Whose the numbers guy who decided all this stuff? It’s harder and harder to be allowed to purchase four turnips you know. They put them in fives and cover them with plastic wrap. Like I can’t get through that crap? They put my grapes in a ziplock bag, and I just this morning, in full view of every other shopper and God herself, opened it and extracted a whole bunch and laid them gently on the display, zipping up my lighter bag and marching off. No alarms, and no police followed me home.

Apparently it’s not okay to put mayo on my hamburger bun (when I choose to have lettuce on my burger) and then draw a smiley face with mustard. No I must BUY some pre-mixed concoction called Djo-nnaise, where somebody way smarter than I has figured out what the perfect ratio of mayo to mustard is. How the hell I have ever mixed the dressing of you-guessed it, mayo-mustard for my to-die-for potato salad is beyond me and the Muses.

I can’t be trusted around cheese either. I’m offered all manner of grated cheese in every flavor, and sometimes mixed together in “premium” offerings. It would be horrifying and would no doubt ruin the dish should I get three shreds more of cheddar than Monterey Jack in my own eyeballing method of shredding.

Oh I know, there is someone even older than I who is crying about how they used to make their own catsup and dill pickles and so on, and so forth, but I’m not trying to be difficult here. Those are reasonable to find ready done at the store. “Mexican blend” is, well just an East Coast innovation to help Brooklynites THINK they are eating some authentic “Mexican” when of course any fool knows that there is actually Mexican cheese that is actually authentic.

Well, I saw a new one the other day, and you may have seen it too. Now Land-o-Lakes wants me to buy their butter in honking chunks with seasonings already in it, so you don’t have to actually buy any herbs or spices, but you can just melt them into your pan and throw your piece of steroid rich chicken breast on top where it will meld into the flesh, seared there until the planet is incinerated in its last gasp before being swallowed by Mother Sun in an incestuous firestorm of eating one’s own.

See, it really is not so much that they think that I’m incapable of deciding on which herbs and spices I want on my skinny chicken flesh. It’s not that, though I can appreciate their snooty, nose in the stratosphere unbelievably gaudy display of wretched excess. No it’s not that. It’s the fact that they think that I am so unthinkingly stupid that I will actually pay them to tell me that I am this stupid that I need their in-your-face slap at my self-esteem.

For this is the bottom line here folks. For all this “time-saving” help they want me to pay a premium price! Here stupid, buy this and pay through the nose too! I mean that is so many insults heaped upon one person, that they should weigh more than enough to sink through the planet and plop out the other side faster than any of those sub-atomic particles that allegedly sling through my body every second without so much as a howdy do or excuse me!

I mean I can take the MENSA application test if I want to be insulted. I can nod dumbly as a nuclear physicist patiently explains the wherefores of string theory if I want to feel OUT OF MY MIND STUPID. I can make a list of stuff like this a mile long that would make me feel light in the neuron-possessing academy.

I don’t need no idiot at Land-o-it’s-butter-for-christsakes-Lakes telling me they know what herb to put on my freakin’ chicken!

So stuff it in your advertisement portfolio and budget and sit on it and twirl!

I feel better now.

 

 

 

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Lovin’ Las Cruces and It’s Wacky Ways

18 Friday May 2012

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Humor, Life in New Mexico, LifeStyle, New Mexico

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

crap I learned, Humor, life in New Mexico

We’ve been here in Las Cruces for two weeks now, and I’ve learned a lot. And what I learn, you learn, that’s just the way it is.

First, humidity matters.

I knew that.

You knew that.

Now I really, really know that. I mean I know that experientially. And to know a thing I experientially is to KNOW a thing.  Shall  I continue? . . . . I figured you’d say that.

Anyways, the air is cleaner, and the sunlight brighter. Sunglasses are a must, and I’m about to invest in some of those old people  sunglasses that slip on over your regular glasses. But they do block out all that light. I now know why Georgia O’Keefe moved here–well Sante Fe/Taos actually. (There is an art museum devoted to her work in Sante Fe.)

It’s hot here, in the mid to high nineties this week, but you don’t sweat, so it doesn’t feel as hot. The mornings are delicious however, being cool and dry, perfect for long walks in the foothills. Did I mention that our house sits just 3 lots up from the foothills of the Organ Mountains? The house we haven’t yet got of course.

To the Northwest are the Doña Ana Mountains, which are more rounded yet an impressive range. There is also a singular mountain called Picachu I believe. There are also the Robledo’s, but I’m not sure which ones they are yet. Skies are either clear or with light clouds.

People here get positively apoplectic when it rains. Annual rainfall is 9 inches and that was not met last year, so they fairly dance when it does rain. Last winter it got very cold–like -9 for three days (virtually unheard of here) and it damaged a lot of the plants. Some of the plants died, and some of the palms are just now coming back.

As you may have heard, New Mexico has always been tied with reports of alien visitation. I’ve always viewed such reports with a healthy dose of skepticism as you might expect, but now I have real evidence.

Real evidence that they have visited. They may still be here. If the are, they patrol the borders.

There are no bugs here, none, NADA, nary an ant. Aliens eat bugs, that is a well-known fact. The enlarge their favorite food by injecting it with some alien growth factor and they got enormous. This was reported in a number of documentaries made in the1950’s in black and white, and starring a number of less-than-B-grade actors who attacked them with military hardware to indicate their danger.

Apparently the aliens ran out of the growth factor, and were reduced to eating all the bugs they could find locally. They have swept the state clean, and are catching all bugs trying to cross into the state. Better than an Orkin Man.

 Sand burrs travel. I bet you were unaware. They travel from Iowa to New Mexico in droves. Our proposed new back yard is full of them. They stick to your shoes. They call them something silly here, like lamb heads or something. But they are sand burrs. I wrote about this some time ago, but I’m way way to lazy to try to find that post.

We are headed off to University today to go to their museum.

We are finding our way around Las Cruces quite nicely. We feel pretty much old hat now. It is a sanely structured place, and that’s all I ask of a city.

People slip in and out of languages here with ease. The checkout clerk is busily engaged in Spanish with the woman in front of me, and then turns to me and smiles, “good morning, did you find everything?”  I’m at least able to pronounce things reasonably well, the Contrarian needs a sign around his neck advising that he is a deaf-mute. He wrecks the language. It is a horrid thing.

Did I mention that food is wild? There is New Mexican cuisine, there is Tex-Mex, there is Mexican, and there is Taco Bell, which is a bad dream created to let middle America think that it eats “Mexican”. For the most part neither New Mexican nor Mexican thinks that sour cream is a condiment that belongs with enchiladas or tacos.

And if anyone has any idea about a chip dip that obviously has tomatillos in it, and green chiles, and possibly pureed creamed corn, let me know. It was delicious. I cannot wait to get back in the kitchen and start experimenting. Also a sour cream dip with green a chiles.

The most basic theme question at restaurants is “red or green”? meaning red sauce or green. One is made solely from chiles and the other with tomatillos. One is not hotter than the other, it all depends on the chiles used. And ordering “christmas” means you want both.

There will be a quiz tomorrow.

Related articles
  • Southwest Adventures – What to do when you come for the Spring Course (wendellhull.wordpress.com)
  • Day 15: Bye for Now El Paso – on to New Mexico (roadsidenut.wordpress.com)

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