I’m off on an adventure with the family this weekend and, as a consequence, I won’t have a new post today. I’ll return next week with my typical cantankerousness, and some words about the D & D 5th edition Starter Set. Cheers!
An Unexpected Twist…
A couple of nights ago I was paid one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received in my life. Unsolicited and unbidden my friend, Tricia, sent me an email to inform me that a story stub I’d given her to read made an impression on her. She went on to say that she kept thinking about the story, and that she was sad that there wasn’t, as of yet, more for her to read.
I’ve been writing, on and off, for sometime… since I was in my early teens. Of course, most of the time, I’d never share my writing with others… for the most part, that’s still the case. I shared my writing back in my poetry club days and during the comic book writing days… but then I just lapsed… first to not writing at all, and then to writing but not sharing. A few years ago I started writing an Urban Fantasy novel just to the give the subgenre a try. I’d read Jim Butcher and Kim Harrison, and I liked their blend of Fantasy, Noir, and wry humor.
That novel became the first I’ve ever completed, and the first I’ve ever shared. I recruited three test readers: Mike, my brother; and Dolores, my “sister from another mister” — I mean, they were natural choices: they’re my life-bullshit filters. I also recruited Tricia, a librarian at the library where I work and a good friend. To me she was a perfect and important choice as representative of an omnivorous reader. Mike and Dolores are both more particular in their reading tastes and they serve more no-holds-barred roles in my test reading circle. Dolores, in particular, will roll me all over the mat and gleefully twist my arm if she deems it necessary… figuratively, of course… although she’s pretty strong and ornery.
Tricia is far more gentle, and far more immersed in genre reading. Tricia is the “control” in the tripartite set of outsider eyes to whom I show my works in progress. Dolores is the “yoke” and Mike is the “engineer.” This dynamic worked well for the first novel which, now in retrospect, was really more of an experiment than an actual attempt at a novel… but it’s simultaneously the first and only novel I’ve ever finished… ever. My NaNoWriMo stories are “finished” in the sense of the parameters of the challenge rules, but they all still need fine tuning, refinement, editing, rewriting. The core of the story is done in those… for the most part. They’re “stories in the raw…” that’s probably the best description of those…
The first noveling experiment was a challenge to me… from me to myself. It was as much a test run as it was a fun story to tell. My participation in NaNoWriMo is as much a challenge from me to myself… and it’s terrible, painful fun… rather like marathon running or mountain climbing. Tricia took it to another level though…
I’ve been floundering because of the health bullshit… Really, it ought not occupy as much of my brain space as it does… and it’s beginning to taper off… but the heap in my brain is volatile and likely to ignite due to the smallest spark. The worst part: it’s interfering with my creativity. Worse still: I’m allowing it to interfere with my creativity. The more I read on the topics of health, nutrition, and diet the more confused I get and the more conflicting information I find. And I know that no one is right — NO-FUCKING-ONE — I know this shit… but I can’t pry my eyes away from the bloody, flaming train wreck because that’s me in the wreckage… me, and millions of others.
I’m pissed and tired of being lied to… of being taken advantage of by fear tactics, spurious advice, quackery, and falsehoods in the name of profiteering. I’m angry at myself for allowing myself to be scammed and for not acting sooner… I knew where I was headed. I knew my inactivity and shit diet were fucking me up. Dr. Fucknutz from San Antonio Urology (I can’t, for the life of me, remember that dude’s name…) forewarned me. He patted my belly and he told me where I was headed, and I listened to him… but, like every other dumb ass, I fell off the wagon because I’m stupid. I knew I was going in the wrong direction and ignored it for no good reason. I’m a tightly wound ball of anxiety because of it all… and then here comes Tricia.
Her statement to me wasn’t so much flattering — at least I don’t feel like I should take it as flattery — as much as it was a call and reminder to do something that I enjoy doing… something that makes me happy… something that, to me, is a lot of fun. My friend wants me to tell her a story. She likes the stories I tell and she wants me to tell her a story, and that’s more powerful than the “21st Century dread” I’m feeling. You know, that fear we all feel: that everything is getting to big, too fast, too impersonal, too synthetic, too modified, too manipulated, too Orwellian, too Dickian… That dread is the forge from which my dietary anxieties are poured out and tempered.
Tricia sent me a clear signal; a loud, booming signal. Tricia shot straight at the core and cut through all the noise buzzing, constantly buzzing, in my brain as of late. My friend wants me to tell her a story, and I feel I ought to do it because it’s something I truly love to do… something I need to do… for Tricia… for me… for my wife and my kids, and my friends, and my family… I owe it to all of them, as much as I owe it to myself, to do that thing that I enjoy doing so much… telling stories.
Thank you, all…
Happy Independence Day
I hope everyone is having a pleasant and safe Independence Day (if you’re not in the States, I hope you’re having a pleasant and safe day as well). I’m spending my holiday weekend reading the D & D 5th edition Basic Rules which were made available yesterday on the D&D website as a free download. What?! You didn’t get the rules yet? Get them here: D & D 5th Edition Basic Rules
I have to wait until July 15th to receive the D & D Starter Set I pre-ordered (someone I know already got his…
Lucky duckie!) If you’re not familiar with @graphicgeekis, aka @freddylopez, you should check out his webpage and get familiar, his artwork is amazing… Did I say “amazing?” I meant, AMAZING! And, he’s a super-nice dude. Go here and tell him I sent you: Art of Freddy Lopez Jr.
I have a more robust post in the works, and I may or may not get that out tomorrow… it just depends on whether or not I can tear myself away from my reading. Anyhoot… Enjoy the holiday weekend, eat some barbecue, drink some beer, blow something up (nothing major, now… let’s all play nice together), and have a good time with good people… but ultimately, give at least some thought to the importance of the freedom and the privilege we enjoy and celebrate today.
Cheers!
Trying on a New Look
I’m trying on a new theme to see if I like the way the text is displayed… So far I like the fact that all the noisy sidebar stuff got moved to the bottom. I might keep it… I might not… Cheers!
Don’t Take Your Guns to Town…
Composed by Johnny Cash, and released on The Fabulous Johnny Cash (1959), this song may well be the best advice that I can think of in light of all of the Open Carry Texas bullshit. To be absolutely certain, Texas law does permit people to openly carry “long firearms” like rifles and shotguns. Legally, there’s no problem… except when people take their guns to places where alcoholic beverages are sold, like Target, in which case it’s against the law.
Why am I, a guy who works in a library and who likes to write stories, weighing in on this controversial topic? Well it started with an article forwarded to my department by one of my coworkers (who always regales us with fascinating and thought-provoking articles)… this one. Reading this certainly did provoke some thought. I have daughters… two of them… and perhaps I’m an idiot or just ridiculously naive, but I’ve never felt a need or desire to buy a gun to protect them… not a serious need/desire, anyway. Jokingly, I’ve told my girls that I intend to meet their first boyfriends at the door wearing a tutu and holding a shotgun… but that’s just to alarm the kids… you know: dad humor.
This isn’t funny, it’s sad. It smacks of victim hood… this is what happens when there’s too much fear-mongering — people get scared, and they turn to an easily misinterpreted passage in The Constitution to justify their “need” to arm themselves against an enemy that’s not coming… at least not in any way that an AK-47 used to hunt deer (???) will be meaningfully useful… but that’s the post-9/11 world we live in. This isn’t funny either… in fact this is down right, motherfucking scary! It’s no wonder organizations like Mom’s Demand Action for Gun Sense in America are up in arms (no pun intended… seriously, I didn’t even think about that until after I read it back to myself… but I’m leaving it…). According to the ABC article I linked to: “FBI data shows that firearms are responsible for 69 percent of homicides in the United States,” however, other stats you find roving around the old interwebs will tell you other stories… like the Guns And the Christian site which posts “Facts you can use,” and says, “it is instructive to compare the non-firearms murder rate in the U.S. to the total murder rates in those countries which have strict gun control; e.g., Japan, where the total murder rate of .6 per 100,000 is about one quarter of the non-firearms murder rate in the U.S. This proves that the absence of firearms does not lead to lower murder rates.”
It’s hard to believe statistics because they can be skewed in any direction to make the issue appear to be in favor of one side or the other. The media is notorious for headlines like: “Violence up 60% over last year’s stats.” That sounds like a lot, unless you look at the data which may show that last year there were only four violent crimes and this year there are ten… that’s up 60%, right (or something like that… I suck at math…). It’s important to take all statistics with a grain of salt, especially if there’s a politician, activist, extremist, or other shithead waving them around. Don’t believe them because — holy shit — they lie. No, seriously… people lie to get their way; I know it’s a difficult concept to grasp. I’m being partly facetious here, but we all suffer from confirmation bias; that is, we tend to gravitate toward the things which agree with our beliefs and ignore the stuff that contradicts them.
I don’t give a shit if people own guns. I know many very responsible gun owners, and I know plenty of people who should be legally restricted from owning any sort of implement with which they can do harm to themselves or others. Personally, I’d never own a firearm — I’m not interested. I’ve fired a variety of firearms (handguns and long guns), mostly in my youth, and my take on the whole experience is, meh. I’m not scared. I’m not a pacifist, although I have a very strong leaning in the direction of peacefulness. I don’t need a firearm to prove anything to anyone. I appreciate the fact that I have a legal right to own a firearm, and that the state in which I reside gives me the legal right to carry around a long gun if I so choose, but the Open Carry movement is all twisted up over a “can/should” issue. Can Texas folks carry their long guns openly? Yes, legally they can. Should Texas folks carry their long guns openly? Well… I’m going to say, probably not… but that’s my opinion.
I hesitate to say, “it shouldn’t be done because seeing weapons carried openly like that upsets people,” because seeing public displays of affection between gay/bisexual/transgendered/trans-sexual/queer people upsets people (doesn’t bother me any… affection is a good thing) and it’s most definitely not in the same fucking ball park. I think brandishing weapons and being “in your face” about it is irresponsible… doing that with weapons which are loaded is on an order of magnitude even more irresponsible, and in light of the mass shootings in recent history, it’s insensitive… and that makes Open Carry folks dicks. Wheaton’s Law, folks: Don’t be a dick!
“Leave your guns at home, don’t take your guns to town…”
A Whole New World
No, I’m not going to break into song — crooning while riding a magic carpet over vast lands… but, then again… I want to talk about world building. As a fan of fiction the principal element which attracts and keeps my attention is “story.” I can forgive all sorts of crap if the story is good; even more if the characters are well done, but underlying the whole experience is the world in which the story and the characters exist. This is a little more than setting, a little deeper. I’m talking about the foundational tapestry upon which all other elements of the story are woven.
I just started reading James S. A. Corey’s latest novel in The Expanse series, Cibola Burn, and the thing that got me immediately was the familiarity of the world in which the story takes place. Over the years I’ve visited the world of The Expanse a number of times; enough to know the trappings of this science fiction world immediately upon entering it. Corey’s done a fabulous job of dressing The Expanse universe in such a way that I find it immediately recognizable and (in spite of the in-world perils) comforting — that is to say: I know when I step into this universe that I’m going to recognize the laws of the world and the feel of the macro-setting (Can we call it that? What the hell, this is my blog after all…), beyond the immediate setting like the helm of a space ship, or a colony on an asteroid, or whatever. The world should be as familiar as my own.
This isn’t limited to fiction, of course, you can find this engrossing element of world building in may other entertainment sources like video games, TV series, feature films, and table top RPGs; to name just a few. I immediately think of the Final Fantasy worlds and the Fallout world for video games; The Walking Dead for TV and comics (since I really don’t watch much TV and The Wil Wheaton Project doesn’t exist in its own universe… at least I don’t think so…); the Marvel Super Hero movies for feature films; the Forgotten Realms for table top RPGs. The examples all have one thing in common: excruciating and exacting detail baked into the worlds from which these stories are told. One of the most common gripes I hear about George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is that he spends too much time describing banquets and other minutiae about Westeros, but without that level of detail the series would be nothing but dicks and death.
One of the things that I absolutely love about Ed Greenwood’s The Forgotten Realms setting for Dungeons & Dragons is the amount of careful detail Greenwood has crafted into his creation. For me, excellent world building really demonstrates a creator’s love for his/her creation. World building is a massive investment of imagination — there is no other way, I believe, to interact so intimately with the imagination of another. This is magic in the real world, a conjuration that far outstrips any petty chicanery ever attempted by a magician. Read any of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle series novels and allow yourself to be steeped in a world so richly imagined you will swear you can smell the damned air and count the damn money (Rothfuss has created one of the most complex systems of currency ever!).
The source of this line of thinking comes from a book I borrowed from the library (and which I will soon own) called Wonderbook: The illustrated guide to creating imaginative fiction by Jeff VanderMeer (who also wrote a ridiculously creepy book called, Annihilation — read it because it’s all kinds of good). Wonderbook is a beast of a book. Ever since my health bullshit got in the way of my writing, I’ve been looking for stuff that will help me reignite the pilot light in the old brain furnace. The cover of this book alone totally grabbed me:
As did the book trailer:
I would be happier to report that my writing got immediately back on track, but alas it’s going to take a little more to turn my morbid fascination away from the stuff I’ve been shoveling into my brain lately… although the new James S. A. Corey book had just the sort of lure I needed to bring my attention back toward fiction. This is a very good thing because I’ve been missing some good stuff… I’ve allowed some good books to slip through my fingers… books I’ve been dying to read. My brain simply isn’t in it right now… but it’s getting better.
When I do write fiction, one of the big traps I have to work to avoid is getting too lost in the world building… I purposefully steer myself away from going too far into minute details because I can easily get completely lost in that aspect of the creative act. Often this expresses itself in a very “mecha-fish” kind of way. (What do you mean what am I talking about? You watched the book trailer, right? Right?) That’s something I’m trying to beat which translates into a lot of work… but creative work is good work, and I really want to get back to it… soon… because I dislike intensely this much less desirable path upon which I find myself. I was too filled with triumph when the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance grilled Dr. Mehmet Oz like a fucking fish over coals about his deceptive dietary recommendations. It’s good to lambaste snake oil salespersons, and I’ve felt that this dude’s pants where on fire for some time now… but this shouldn’t give me this amount of pleasure. Unfortunately it’s where my attention happens to be at the moment.
I’m subjecting myself to fiction therapy and I expect to make a full recovery. Reading inspires me to write, and between Cibola Burn and Wonderbook, I think I have a pretty tasty recipe for inspiration in my hands right now. All I want and need is to have the switch flipped to “on.” I’m happy when I write, and I want to be writing a lot. I guess this is what’s commonly referred to as “writer’s block.” I think I’ll call it, “An unfortunate collision between reality and imagination.” It sucks. Too much reality ruins everything.
My Dietary Dilemma… One Week Later
As a follow-up to my posting last week, I thought I would share with you some insights I’ve achieved in the interceding days, and it’s important (although perhaps a tad redundant) to point out that the opinions and view expressed below are entirely my own. First, I must admit that I’m surprised (although I shouldn’t be) at the antidotal effect of having written down that entire litany — excising that demon from the dusty innards of my brain gave me the opportunity to examine it as an entity on the outside of my mind and has given me a better perspective and some much needed clarity. That perspective is this: I’m not alone.
The anxieties and regret I feel about the food I eat and the dietary choices I made leading up to my visit to the doctor’s office are not only common, they’re part of a national eating disorder. I, like millions of other Americans, am completely bamboozled by all the bullshit that’s out there regarding nutrition and diet. There are convincing sounding arguments and justifications for practically any dietary approach you can imagine, and though much of it is pseudoscience and quackery in advertising we believe it readily. When you add a celebrity or a comely spokesperson to the solution being sold there is an appreciable amount of traction added. Better still, add a celebrity or celebrity-approved doctor, nutritionist, or authoritative-appearing person and your solution becomes as good as gold — you sell millions of books, diet planners, food brands, you name it. It’s a multi-billion dollar confidence scheme, and we buy it because it’s all aimed directly at our mortality.
The businesses behind the food industry have a lot of money, power, and influence. They fund most of the research that gets published, they lobby the government with their ample coffers and influence policy to put their products on the top of the food pyramid (rather now the choosemyplate.gov diagram) as well as the supermarket shelves… and it’s all a part of big money marketing.
The big businesses don’t give two wet shits about our health because none of this is about health… it’s about profit, and lots of it.
So is the solution then to return to a more fundamental and historical diet and way of life; perhaps to adopt the Paleo lifestyle? Let me make one thing absolutely clear: I am neither for, nor against the Paleo lifestyle, but I am reading Dr. Marlene Zuk’s book, Paleofantasy as a contrast to Liz Wolfe’s Eat the Yolks. There are components of the Paleo lifestyle with which I agree wholeheartedly, and then there are parts which I find to be naive, too idealistic, and fanciful. A natural, whole food diet is probably a very good idea; this is something which I have come to truly believe. A return to a fantastical “Garden of Eden” way of living is not only not possible, it’s too simple and it ignores two things in which I staunchly believe: evolution and genetics… not to mention the fact that the byproducts of civilization (e.g. trash, industrial waste and pollution, ambient radiation levels, light and noise pollution, you name it) have forever altered our ecology (air, water, and soil are all polluted to some extent) and there probably isn’t any going back. That means the only things left to do are to move forward and adapt; something human beings have been doing (with mixed success) for a pretty long time now.
I’m learning more and more about the love/hate relationship we have with our food, and just picked up Consumed: why Americans love, hate, and fear food by Michelle Stacey; I can’t wait to start reading it. I think it’s fascinating and something worth exploring because I not only wish to educate myself about nutrition in general, I also want to understand why we have the attitudes we have about the food we eat. That mixed attitude is referred to as “the omnivore’s dilemma,” a term coined by anthropologists looking into prehistoric human dietary practices and it’s defined by Michael Pollan (in his book titled The Omnivore’s Dilemma) as the confusion we feel from having too many choices in what we eat. Human diets are complex… really complex. Koalas, for example, have it easy by comparison: they have very limited dietary possibilities and that equals to no quandary (or resulting angst) when determining what they will eat. Of course if their very limited food source disappears, they’re goners. Humans can pretty much eat anything… pretty much. We aren’t tied to one specific source, and we’re adaptable enough to tolerate a wide variety of foods… but unfortunately, we’re not born with the ability to intuit which foods are good and which are bad. We have old fashioned trial and error for that, and the results can be… well… deadly.
Businesses and their marketing divisions/firms are acutely aware of the existence of this dilemma and they exploit it with some truly fantastical claims… which we buy because they attach safe words to their products like “healthy,” “organic,” “natural,” and others — you know the ones. It’s all bullshit. The only health they’re concerned with is the health of our wallets, and they’ve mapped a pretty good way to get at the money in there.
Allow me to forewarn you before I go any further, the big caveat here is that there is no one easy answer. We humans like blanket answers; i.e., answers that apply to everyone so that we don’t have to make uncomfortable decisions or think too much about this crap. Worse still: we’re more than willing to co-opt our decision making to faceless institutions and industries (like governments, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Energy, and more), or to be directed by them because we want to believe in the security of perceived authority — life is easier when someone else is responsible for you, as opposed to when you are responsible for yourself. After all our parents taught us that we should mind authority and place trust in our institutions (I’m not knocking the hard work parents do… I’m a parent, and it’s not an easy path… but that’s a subject for a different post); school taught us the same thing. What they didn’t teach us is that our institutions — our government and big businesses — are subject to greed and corruption… but that’s not their fault… that’s our fault.
Since we are willing to co-opt our decision making and blindly put our trust in the big institutions, we allow them to operate with little or no oversight. And where the oversight provided by the government is too strict, industries and institutions will simply leverage more favorable legislation by hurling a metric shit ton of money at the problem… the money they, no doubt, got from us by first scaring our pants off and then selling us their products to combat that fear. It’s also important to note that I suspect many “grassroots movements” are started by big business as a means to pacify groups and organizations who are making noise where they’d prefer no noise be made. I know that sounds paranoid, but my typical means of expression is decidedly imaginative and geared toward fiction — if I was writing a story about this, that’s how I’d plot it… it just seems most feasible and makes sense… to me, anyway.
In light of this the only things left for us to do are to educate ourselves, or fall back on the old trial and error method. I prefer education, myself… since I’m not a big fan of risking my life trying to decided which berries are not poisonous. As I mentioned before, there are no easy answers and certainly there is no one answer that is true for all of us… I have no secrets to sell, no wonder drug or super food to purvey… I just have some accrued wisdom to share, and I hope that it serves you well in some manner or another. Some of it is as easy as: don’t eat the stuff you’re unable to tolerate and read those damned labels. Everyone raves about how healthful and beneficial fish is, but I’m in the lucky 2% who’s allergic to both fish protein and shellfish… so it’s dangerous for me to eat. If you’re allergic to wheat, for the love of the Universe, don’t eat it. Likewise for dairy, or nuts, or seafood, or anything else… Just don’t eat that stuff. Don’t try to force something on yourself because someone tells you it’s supposed to be good for you. I know I can’t eat fish, but a few weeks ago I tried some flounder in an attempt to take the advice of various health professionals, and guess what? I had a minor allergic reaction (hence why I chose a whitefish as opposed to a very fatty fish on which to experiment — this after I tell you that I’m not a fan of trial and error, go figure). Just don’t do it, okay? Please?
Listen to your body. Believe it or not, when you’re wolfing down a mega-meal and your stomach starts to hurt it’s because you’re full and it’s time to stop. Just stop. Put the leftovers away and enjoy it later, or better still: share the leftovers with a buddy (I’m notorious for not eating leftovers). Our bodies send us all sorts of signals all the time, and we do ourselves an extreme disservice when we learn to ignore our body’s attempts to communicate with us. It’s like when you ring the bell for a stop and the bus driver just keeps on going; I don’t know about you, but that pisses me off. Your body gets pissed off too and you won’t like what it will do to you if you continue to ignore it… believe me, I found out for myself. Listen to your body cues… I’m re-learning to listen to my body because I taught myself to ignore it through forty-some odd years of lifestyle; it’s an ongoing process but I find I’m truly feeling better.
Finally: keep your body and mind active and engaged. Life is busy and we are often pulled in more directions than we are able to move in. Contemporary life is also full of stress and worry; we’re all constantly bombarded with things that need to be done, things to which we need to attend, things we need to do for others, bills, work, assorted other obligations… you name it; we all have ’em and nothing is going to make all that stuff go away. Although the temptation to alleviate that fatigue by vegging out in front of the TV or the computer is strong, it’s pretty important to ignore that and do something else. Walking is a great stress reliever — it’s amazing how well you can sort stuff out and analyze all those things you have on your mind while you’re walking (or jogging, or bicycling, or gardening, or <insert your chosen physical activity>). The idea is to engage your body in the activity of sorting your mind. For your mind, you might consider taking up a craft or an artistic outlet (paint, draw, play music, write, etc.); do word or math puzzles; read or listen to audio books… make that super computer inside your skull process some stuff other than the shit that’s stressing you out… put it to good use. What you eat is only part of the big picture that is the complex wonder of the human body and mind.
This whole thing isn’t over for me… not by a long shot. I have a lot to learn, a lot to consider, and a lot of distance to cover before I’m satisfied by what I learn. I broke up with my old doctor (the one who tried to sell me hormone injections and that ridiculous diet I didn’t need), and I’m scheduled to see a different doctor in a couple of weeks. I’ve shed a considerable amount of weight — about 45 lbs. the last time I checked. I’m hoping that I’ll get a better picture of my health and how I’m doing, so I can better plan my ongoing dietary and nutrition needs and so I can get back to writing and reading stuff I prefer. This has been an ample, time consuming distraction and I’m really feeling the need to do something different.
My Dietary Dilemma…
…is consuming entirely too much of my time… bordering on obsession… perhaps crossing that line a little. My mind is devoting quite a bit of its resources to unraveling this Gordian knot, but I’m making very little actual progress other than to become more confounded. This entire business of nutrition and diet is ridiculously confusing. The simplicity of Paleo dietary practices is very attractive, but too simple and idyllic to believe whole-heartedly. The New York Times opinion piece I read a few days ago, I believe, put it in a way which is as close to reality as one can get while attempting to sort out this morass: there simply isn’t enough real scientific evidence to conclusively prove or disprove any of it… I’m paraphrasing, accurately I hope; I’ll have to look at the article again.
I still have difficulty believing that human dietary adaptation is incapable of drawing nutrition from grains… but I do believe that processed grains have little/no nutritional value. I believe the same about sugar, but that I attribute to my own personal experience — I’ve noticed a serious difference in my overall well-being ever since I quit eating sugar. Oh, I’m as addicted as the next guy, just like I’m addicted to nicotine… but I choose not to smoke (I know now how unhealthy that is for me), and I choose not to consume sugar (refined sugar, not the sort found in fruit… I now know how unhealthy that refined sugar is for me… the nicotine might actually, almost, be better…). I consume an occasional artificial sweetener due to my sugar addiction, I eat an occasional sugar free hard candy for the same reason, but that’s all about to stop… because that garbage is exactly that: garbage.
By comparison, I eat a much more healthful diet now than I did before, but the true difference makers for me (besides breaking up with sugar) are drinking a large quantity of water, a significantly lower calorie intake, and increased physical activity… that’s how I’m losing weight — no absurdly expensive fad diet necessary. I was offered, by my doctor, a very expensive diet which included a wonderful little hormone called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, weekly office visits for injections (covered by my insurance, naturally), and the requirement to purchase an almost $500 kit (not covered by my insurance, so this would come out of pocket). This bullshit quackery really undermined my trust in my physician. I do agree, though, with what he was saying about my current eating practices not being sustainable (and he actually used the word correctly — “sustainable” has become a buzz word that makes me cringe the way I do when I hear finger nails applied to a black board): even the healthful foods I’m preferring right now are processed and genetically modified… the fruits and vegetables I’m consuming in large quantities are almost devoid of any nutritive value… junk food is too easily and readily available. Thus my quest for the right nutrition continues.
Now, I have to say that it’s not (nor ever has been) my goal to turn this blog into a diet/nutrition site… and I, sure as shit, am not a scientist or doctor… but I like sharing what I learn, and this whole episode has had a pretty profound affect on my ability to write and create… my anxiety about all of this nutrition stuff is dominating my attention and preventing me from using my head to make stories. The other side of the sword’s edge is that I just can’t simply ignore or dismiss it. I felt like total shit not that long ago… and, in one particularly nasty instance, I thought I might be on the verge of a heart attack or a stroke. The sedentary lifestyle is dangerous… and in order to accomplish one’s writing, one has to put his/her ass in the chair and write… For me, though, it was the other choices I made along the way… the better part of forty years worth of choices… wrong choices, I’ll admit… which got me where I was.
In true library worker fashion, I’m reading a number of books at the moment… Liz Wolfe’s Eat the Yolks, David Perlmutter’s Grain Brain, and Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry about What We Eat by Harvey Levenstein… books by a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, a Doctor, and a Historian — and I have to admit that I find the Historian’s perspective most in alignment with my own. What Levenstein is demonstrating in his book is that it’s extremely profitable to scare the living shit out of people, and that sounds about right… greed seems to underlie everything. Fortunately for me I have good friends who have my back and look out for me. One such friend forwarded to me a LifeHacker article on How to Quack-Proof Yourself Against Pseudoscience, and I think it bears consideration; especially since everyone is trying to make a fast buck off of health hysteria these days… EVERYONE! Eat bread: you’re fucked; eat meat: you’re fucked; eat vegetables: you’re fucked; eat fruits: you’re fucked; take medicines: you’re fucked; breathe air: you’re fucked; you fuck: you’re fucked… fuck, fuck, fuck!!!
So this is what my explorations have uncovered for me thus far: I’m fucked… we’re all fucked. I suspect what made me ill was my own torpor and excessive ingestion of shit I knew was no good for me. My cholesterol is high… Liz Wolfe says that’s a good thing , my doctor thinks that sucks (of course Liz Wolfe can tell me to eat a raw squirrel and I’d consider it because she’s a fox! What? Hey, I’m human… I’m not immune…). Many seem to think eating grains is like sucking on the devil’s pooper, but grains are a staple food upon which people around the world subsist. My brain is suffering, but I suspect this is not because I had toast this morning… I suspect that it’s because a vast amount of quackery is being hurled at me and it’s hard as hell to parse all this shit because everyone claims to be a definitive authority. Who’s right? Search me… I have no bloody idea. I refer back to the first article to which I linked in this post which I believe contains one of the few kernels of truth I’ve encountered on this quest (oh by the way, if you eat corn: you’re fucked).
The answer, the right answer for me anyway, lies in a balance of moderation and activity — those were the two things which were severely out of balance when I started to feel unwell: I had a terrible diet which I ate to excess and I participated in no exercise… none… zero… almost complete slug-hood… I was turning into one of those humans in Wall-E: 
Perhaps the real source of our ills lies not in some external thing to which it’s easier for us to pass the buck or point the finger. Probably the real cause of our poor health is ourselves and the convenience we have at our disposal; our own shitty habits which we often carry to that point of excess — we are our own worst enemies, after all. Maybe our brains are decaying because we spend entirely too much time in front of the TV or the computer or engaged in pursuits which do not stimulate the brain… maybe our brains are decaying because we live a routine, unimaginative lifestyle largely free from challenge. Our brains are no longer devoted to trying to figure out ways to survive or to withstand the elements or to find shelter or to innovate something that will enable us to provide sustenance for ourselves. We file our reports, take our medications, spend our paychecks at the supermarket, obsess over material things, and then repeat the next day… and the day after that… and the day after that… and the day after that… Bleak. Fitter, happier, more productive… Maybe we need to demonize something to take the focus away from ourselves, so that we don’t have to make hard decisions and so we can continue to pretend that there is last minute salvation.
The punchline to the joke is still death. We all die… no one gets out of here alive. Probably we shouldn’t do anything to speed that eventuality along, but we probably shouldn’t allow our anxieties to consume us either because worrying too much is just as bad for us as eating the wrong sorts of foods… whatever those are. (Stressed? You’re fucked!) I wish I could say that in writing these words here I’m helping to alleviate my own obsession and anxiety… but I know myself too well. I’ll continue to obsess and worry about all of this even though the truth is I’ve lost a fair amount of weight and I feel a lot better. I’m miserable because I still associate my laziness and shitty diet with “enjoying myself.” The hardest part about changing a lifestyle is changing the way you think… especially when it’s thinking I’ve taken over forty years to cultivate. I’m no better or different than anyone else… I want to disbelieve the authorities; I want to tell my doctor, to his face, that I think he’s full of shit; I want to throw away the statin I’m taking because that shit is poison… but what if it’s not? I don’t know who to believe… but my skepticism sets off an alarm every time I encounter someone or something that claims to prove beyond a shadow of all doubt to have the right answer. Shenanigans!!! But what if..?
It’s a web of various agendas, but I don’t want to become that unwashed paranoid who hangs out at the main public library everyday and talks to himself about all of the various organizations who are out to get him. There is no right answer… except perhaps to have an alert trust in the world, to maintain a healthy level of skepticism, to make art and be creative, to enjoy oneself as much as possible, and to accept the inevitability: that we all die…
Friday’s Post is Delayed…
To quote Douglas Adams: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” I ended up having to fix a toilet and prepare for a landscaping class my wife signed us up for tomorrow, so the actual Friday post will be a day late.
Yeah, yeah… I know: “he hadn’t posted in months, and now he’s trying to keep a deadline he broke a long time ago.” Yeah, that’s right: I am…
Cheers!
On the Death of Jay Lake…
Science fiction and fantasy author Jay Lake died on June 1 after a nasty battle with cancer. I’ve never read any of Lake’s books (several of them are in my piles of stuff to read), but I followed his Twitter and occasionally read his blog. My own cousin died from complications of cancer back in May, and a close friend’s father was recently and suddenly taken by the disease as well; so Lake’s death touched a raw, exposed nerve. I have nothing but sincere condolences for his family and friends; he’s at peace and no longer suffering, and the living are the ones who have to remain behind and make sense of the world without the person(s) we love and care for.
Here is a link to Lake’s Fantastic Fiction page in case you’d like to peruse his bibliography. At the library where I work, Lake’s books flew off the shelf before my coworkers were able to put up an “In Memorium” display for him.
The Write Experience 
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