Category: Thoughts

One time playing Scattergories with some friends, everyone was asked to think of a bad habit beginning with the letter J. Most of the group picked the obivous (and not actually bad) habit. The winner said “jingoism.”

So when you start to say you support that war because it’s in America’s interest, stop and think. First off, America includes more than just the United States. Second, go-it-alone is not in anyone’s interest. And third, consider yourself and your nation in context.

I don’t always think religions have the moral high ground, but most of them are opposed to this war. The WTO, a natural US policy ally if there ever was one, thinks we’re charging off a cliff, economically. Meanwhile, we’re changing the names of food in the congressional cafeterias. Administration experts are joining the chorus of journalists who decry the monomanaical focus on killing Saddam.

This isn’t some fifth column, outside-agitated, dirty longhair hippie crowd. The diminishing, increasingly strident group known as “middle America” needs to wake up and notice that manifest destiny went out with the free-ranging buffalo and the smallpox-laden blanket. They’ll figure it out, eventually. The question is, are you going to think about it, and learn it on your own, or are we all going to be suffer for your self-abuse?

More Ready.gov parodies: via email, via mailing lists.

I’m not so much interested in the Department of Homeland Security any more though. I’d rather look into the Department of Cryptogramic Botany, or maybe Invertebrate Zoology. The Senate Department of Urban Development (Berlin) has a wonderful walking-tour page. Maybe I should just go to the Complaints Department.

In the art department, I’m fond of the Dirty Wallpaper site, which has some nifty graffiti and so forth, and Davegraphics. But if you spend too much time in that department, you’ll get an art degree and be poor.

Speaking of poor, my dear friend’s younger sister arrived in town this week, in the company of a gentleman who goes by the name of Dolores. I think it was Dolores, I may have misheard, but it sounded something like that. An odd name for anyone, especially a boy. May be a nome de guerre, or perhaps a mere alias. The two are quite the merry pranksters, though, and their vigor has filled my friend’s week with awkward, silent reproach. You see, the youngsters are youthful swashbucklers for justice and street credibility, and they disapprove of my friend’s lifestyle and line of work as though she were a sodomite. In other words, she’s working for the man and they’re fucking hippies.

“Danger, war, prison disaster, a tide of heartbreak and human misery…”

This past summer there was a nationwide abduction scare. Before that it was sharks. Remember satanic cults and daycare child molestors? This week we’re all about the Elizabeth Smart hubub in the news. (Thought it was Jessica at first…) Before that, the Columbia and Challenger tragedies. Do you remember Heaven’s Gate, the suicidal cult of web developers from the 90s? It’s true that there are very real dangers and very real tragedies, but many of the items that fill the news these days aren’t. And
it’s often hard to tell the difference.

An anonymous reader sent me an essay he wrote shortly after the Heaven’s Gate suicides, addressing differences between real tragedies, from which we can learn, and faux tragedies, which are mere spectacle. It is included, in its entirety, below.
Continue reading “Fearmongering Hysteria”

What’s with my current focus on eating disorders? I guess I’ve always been fascinated by the way people treat their bodies violently, especially the advocates of that behavior. In the past I spent a lot of time researching body modification and drug abuse. But recently it’s been diet and eating disorders.

I’m finding that exercise and diet occupy more of my time recently: I choose my food more carefully than the days when I subsisted on pizza and soda, and I’m a regular gym-goer. My gym membership includes a subscription to Men’s Fitness, and I’ve read that beauty mags are correlated with eating disorders. But it’s not unhealthy, I don’t think, at least not yet. I can feel that pull though. It’s the same one that makes me wonder if my morning OJ would go better with vodka, or if I should just call my ex girlfriend again, and again, and again.

I’m at 158 pounds now, and my goal weight is 160, at which point I’m going to focus on bringing my body fat back down to around 10%, from the approximately 12 percent that it’s at now. I’m muscular now, and it looks good. My shoulders are bigger. I’ve lost an inch from my waist and gained a half-inch at the neck and one in the shoulders. But maybe I’d be better at 165, you know? I see guys with much larger, much better defined shoulders who are about my height, and I think, hey, I could do that. There’s a lot of room to improve my workouts just by actually planning and scheduling them instead of doing whatever I feel like.

I think I can still can distinguish between the guys who are unreasonably large, especially the ones who are juicing, and the guys who are merely bigger and stronger than I am. But at what point does my view of my body begin to diverge from reality? I’ve asked women what they think is “too muscular” and they respond that they aren’t sure, but I’m not it.

To me, it sounds like a challenge.

I already mentioned the trade press coverage of Swanson Hungry Man Dinners, but here’s non-industry commentary.
Sample:

Now you may think I’m being overly obvious here – everyone knows TV dinners are bad for you, right? This is true, but Swanson’s new breakfast takes it to a level which previously could only be achieved by eating entire alternate universes made only of prosciutto.