Saturday, August 27, 2005
Someone else's reasons to not have commenting
(In one of the oddest synchronicities in a while, on the very day I had scheduled to post about a friend's decision to no longer have comments on her blog, she turned them back on; I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, especially since I was counting on what I'd written on that topic to be tonight's essay. Since the reasons she gave are interesting regardless of her current "comment status," I'm going to post them anyways; they haven't lost validity because she later changed her mind. I'm not going to go through the essay and make all the changes of case and so forth in my discussion of the quotes to reflect that her commenting is no longer "off," as to do so would make it too garbled; just look at it as a theoretical discussion of why one might not enable commenting.)
It's no secret that I don't have commenting on here to prevent the no-life cockroaches who get all in a lather about my posts from spoiling my blog for everyone with their venom; this puts me at odds with much of the blogosphere, since most bloggers not only have commenting, but also want everyone else to have it. Because the nice people of the world consistently underestimate the destructive potential of the evil ones, many of my "blog buddies" have posted to me on their sites or in their comments trying to coax me into enabling commenting, never being anything but nice about it but clearly not really comprehending why anyone would choose to not allow comments... so imagine my amazement when one of those people chose to have a comment-free blog. Because she was so kind as to share her reasons for going comment-free, and because she's one of the bloggers I like and respect the most, I wanted to present some of her explanation (used with her permission, of course) in the hopes of promoting greater understanding of why some people want their blogs to, GASP, just showcase their own ideas.
The blogger I'm referring to is the lovely and gracious Amber, whose excellent new blog is here
http://aspectsofamber.blogspot.com/
Those of you who followed the link in my list to her old blog know that she used to have very active comments from her many loyal readers, the kind most bloggers can only dream of; what could have made her choose to NOT have commenting on her new blog? She obviously gave this alot of thought, and here's what she came up with:
"You might notice I don't have comments up on my new blog. I don't plan on putting them in, either. I have developed certain reservations regarding blog comments in general over the past several months. It seems far too many people take advantage of the ease and public exposure of using blog comments in order to purposely cause havoc and bad feelings amongst some bloggers' regular readers. Fighting ensues, feelings get hurt, both from the readers and the blogger, and I just don't want to deal with any of that."
I'm at as much of a loss as to why most people ARE willing to let the trolls spew on their blogs as they are about why I'm NOT willing, so it's nice to see someone else describing troll behavior as undesirable.
"Plus, it seems to me that comments often become a popularity contest. Like we're "voting" for the post or the blogger. I got a lot of comments on my old blog and while I appreciated them greatly and they were a lot of fun, they also sometimes made me feel a little bit embarrassed just by the sheer numbers of them. I don't want this to be a popularity contest. I don't want to worry what it might mean if I get lots of comments or not many comments, or what if someone I know doesn't comment, are they mad at me?"
I think this is a crucial point; how can a blogger really give it their all if they're worrying about whether the readers will judge a given post worthy of commenting on... and besides, how could a person NOT start catering to the readers, if only subconsciously, to try to keep the # of comments high?
"public comments which allow any yahoo-butthole passing by to say whatever they like, whether it's true or not, without having to take any responsibility in return for what they might say."
You can't beat Amber for a great turn of phrase, lol, and she brings up the central reason that people feel free to misbehave online; no one ever holds them accountable for what they do, because we can't knock on their doors and demand an explanation for their behavior.
"Some people seem to get some cockeyed idea that they are making a public 'stand' of some type when they see comments are available on a blog, and that is so not where I want to go. If people want to make a stand, or promote their own ideas, fine; then they can get their own damn blog and say whatever they like."
That's the perfect response to those who claim that their "freedom of speech" is being curtailed because they're not allowed to say what they like on someone else's blog. Part of the reason that trolls want to be allowed to comment on the blogs of others is that they can't bring enough people to their own blogs to give them a wide enough audience for their nonsense, so they feel driven to post on more popular blogs... and of course, being evil, they want to try to assure that the innocent blogger, and all of their readers, see the ugly comments, which won't happen if they post on their own blogs.
In case you're assuming that Amber might just feel the way she does because she got inundated by trolls, here's one last quote:
"our comments on our last blogs were almost 100 percent free of any drama or unpleasantness. They were a pleasure to read 99.9999 percent of the time. "
It's the principle of the thing... and even if I could be assured of having near-ideal commenters like Amber did, as opposed to the bloodbath I'd actually have, I still wouldn't enable commenting, because I want my visits to my blog to be a source of happiness and pride, rather than tension and stress from wondering if today's the day a troll's going to show up, and I want my visitors to see my laboriously thought out ideas, NOT a bunch of abusive garbage.
Many thanks to Amber for sharing her reasoning behind her choice to not have comments; I'm happy to be able to comment on her blog again, but it was still fascinating to see what her thought process was for when she didn't have commenting.
It's no secret that I don't have commenting on here to prevent the no-life cockroaches who get all in a lather about my posts from spoiling my blog for everyone with their venom; this puts me at odds with much of the blogosphere, since most bloggers not only have commenting, but also want everyone else to have it. Because the nice people of the world consistently underestimate the destructive potential of the evil ones, many of my "blog buddies" have posted to me on their sites or in their comments trying to coax me into enabling commenting, never being anything but nice about it but clearly not really comprehending why anyone would choose to not allow comments... so imagine my amazement when one of those people chose to have a comment-free blog. Because she was so kind as to share her reasons for going comment-free, and because she's one of the bloggers I like and respect the most, I wanted to present some of her explanation (used with her permission, of course) in the hopes of promoting greater understanding of why some people want their blogs to, GASP, just showcase their own ideas.
The blogger I'm referring to is the lovely and gracious Amber, whose excellent new blog is here
http://aspectsofamber.blogspot.com/
Those of you who followed the link in my list to her old blog know that she used to have very active comments from her many loyal readers, the kind most bloggers can only dream of; what could have made her choose to NOT have commenting on her new blog? She obviously gave this alot of thought, and here's what she came up with:
"You might notice I don't have comments up on my new blog. I don't plan on putting them in, either. I have developed certain reservations regarding blog comments in general over the past several months. It seems far too many people take advantage of the ease and public exposure of using blog comments in order to purposely cause havoc and bad feelings amongst some bloggers' regular readers. Fighting ensues, feelings get hurt, both from the readers and the blogger, and I just don't want to deal with any of that."
I'm at as much of a loss as to why most people ARE willing to let the trolls spew on their blogs as they are about why I'm NOT willing, so it's nice to see someone else describing troll behavior as undesirable.
"Plus, it seems to me that comments often become a popularity contest. Like we're "voting" for the post or the blogger. I got a lot of comments on my old blog and while I appreciated them greatly and they were a lot of fun, they also sometimes made me feel a little bit embarrassed just by the sheer numbers of them. I don't want this to be a popularity contest. I don't want to worry what it might mean if I get lots of comments or not many comments, or what if someone I know doesn't comment, are they mad at me?"
I think this is a crucial point; how can a blogger really give it their all if they're worrying about whether the readers will judge a given post worthy of commenting on... and besides, how could a person NOT start catering to the readers, if only subconsciously, to try to keep the # of comments high?
"public comments which allow any yahoo-butthole passing by to say whatever they like, whether it's true or not, without having to take any responsibility in return for what they might say."
You can't beat Amber for a great turn of phrase, lol, and she brings up the central reason that people feel free to misbehave online; no one ever holds them accountable for what they do, because we can't knock on their doors and demand an explanation for their behavior.
"Some people seem to get some cockeyed idea that they are making a public 'stand' of some type when they see comments are available on a blog, and that is so not where I want to go. If people want to make a stand, or promote their own ideas, fine; then they can get their own damn blog and say whatever they like."
That's the perfect response to those who claim that their "freedom of speech" is being curtailed because they're not allowed to say what they like on someone else's blog. Part of the reason that trolls want to be allowed to comment on the blogs of others is that they can't bring enough people to their own blogs to give them a wide enough audience for their nonsense, so they feel driven to post on more popular blogs... and of course, being evil, they want to try to assure that the innocent blogger, and all of their readers, see the ugly comments, which won't happen if they post on their own blogs.
In case you're assuming that Amber might just feel the way she does because she got inundated by trolls, here's one last quote:
"our comments on our last blogs were almost 100 percent free of any drama or unpleasantness. They were a pleasure to read 99.9999 percent of the time. "
It's the principle of the thing... and even if I could be assured of having near-ideal commenters like Amber did, as opposed to the bloodbath I'd actually have, I still wouldn't enable commenting, because I want my visits to my blog to be a source of happiness and pride, rather than tension and stress from wondering if today's the day a troll's going to show up, and I want my visitors to see my laboriously thought out ideas, NOT a bunch of abusive garbage.
Many thanks to Amber for sharing her reasoning behind her choice to not have comments; I'm happy to be able to comment on her blog again, but it was still fascinating to see what her thought process was for when she didn't have commenting.
Friday, August 26, 2005
How sweet it is; the TRUTH about aspartame
In the August 2005 issue of Discover magazine is an article called "The Chemistry of . . . Artificial Sweeteners," which contains information that needs to be tattooed on the foreheads of people who're still making melodramatic pronouncements about the supposed dangers of aspartame.
The article begins with a little info on the sweetener that we're seeing advertised constantly these days:
"sucralose, also known as Splenda... 'Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar,' the slogan claims, but like all other sugar substitutes, sucralose was born in a laboratory... truckloads of common table sugar are shipped in weekly, to be modified via a complex chemical process involving chlorine and phosgene gas. The result is so intensely sweet that Tate & Lyle has to cut it with 600 parts filler to approximate a natural sweetness."
It doesn't sound very appetizing, does it? (Chlorine and phosgene are toxic gases that were used for chemical warfare in WW1; they're often used in the lab, and their involvement does NOT mean that sucralose is poisonous, but it's hard not to have a gut reaction to hard-core chemicals like that.) Still, in an ever more obese nation, we need every calorie-saving sweetener we can get; we don't have the luxury of being squeamish.
I'm very gung-ho about science, but I've said before that many important discoveries have been made by accident, and here's more proof:
"Saccharin was invented in Baltimore about 130 years ago by two chemists at Johns Hopkins University who were experimenting with coal-tar derivatives. Aspartame was found in the 1960s by a medical chemist in Illinois who was investigating a drug for gastric ulcers. Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by a graduate student at King's College London. His head researcher had told him to test some compounds, but he misunderstood and tasted them instead."
Because we've been bombarded for several decades with the idea that "natural" is somehow better, some folks object to artificial sweeteners because of their UNnaturalness, and this hasn't been lost on the Splenda people:
"Of the three sweeteners, sucralose has been touted as the most natural, but that claim 'has more to do with clever marketing than with chemistry,' Walters says. Although sucralose is made from sugar, its chemical structure is significantly different: A molecule of the artificial sweetener has three chlorine atoms, whereas sugar has three pairs of oxygen and hydrogen atoms."
And here's the 1st big point about aspartame:
"the only unnatural component in aspartame is a methyl ester bond that connects phenylalanine and aspartic acid, two amino acids abundant in the human body. The body's digestive enzymes recognize aspartame as a protein and break it down much as they would a natural compound."
By contrast:
"Sucralose, on the other hand, slips through undigested, as does saccharin-a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms. 'The body doesn't know what to make of it, so it doesn't make anything,' Walters says."
Ugh, give me aspartame any day!!
The next big point about aspartame is:
"When the sweetener aspartame is digested, its methyl ester bond is broken down into methanol, which further degrades into formaldehyde. Both methanol and formaldehyde are toxic in high doses, but a person would have to drink 600 cans of diet soda to get as much of either substance as is contained in a single orange."
We tend to forget that ALL foods are made out of chemicals, often including minuscule amounts of poisonous or otherwise dangerous ones, and then get hysterical when any non-zero amount of anything "bad" is found in something manmade; this example gives a rare sense of perspective about that.
I like to see the relationships between our biology and what we're driven to eat (or not eat), so it caught my attention that there are:
"...more than 30 [genes] that code for bitter receptors [on the taste buds] but only a single receptor devoted to sweet. 'Evolutionarily, it makes sense,' says Grant DuBois, a chemist for Coca-Cola. 'The theory being that there are a lot of varyingly toxic bitter compounds we have to know how to distinguish between, but everything sweet can be lumped together as good.'"
They've been working hard to find better ways to stimulate that 1 receptor:
"Cyclamate is 45 times as sweet as sugar, aspartame and saccharin are 180 and 300 times as sweet, respectively, and sucralose is 600 times sweeter. But the next generation of aspartame, known as neotame, is 13,000 times as sweet as sugar, and other compounds have been isolated that are more than 100,000 times as sweet."
Can you imagine what one of those latter compounds must taste like?
There ARE some genuinely unfortunate things about artificial sweeteners:
"Even when they've been cut with fillers, none of these sweeteners can truly pass for sugar. Saccharin has a disconcertingly metallic aftertaste-not, thankfully, because it leaches aluminum from cans but because it also triggers bitter and sour receptors. Aspartame and neotame are fragile molecules that break down relatively quickly on supermarket shelves and can't withstand the heat of cooking. Sucralose can take the heat and is stable, but it lacks the bulk, the browning ability, and the 'mouthfeel' of real sugar."
But the real problem, in the minds of the uninformed, is (asterisks are mine):
"That these sweeteners were invented by chemists has long made them suspect. Saccharin was listed as an 'anticipated human carcinogen' [what a load of baloney] in 1981, sucralose has been shown to weakly mutate genes in test tubes, and aspartame has triggered fears about everything from autism to multiple sclerosis. Still, *****no concerns have held up under scrutiny.*****"
Did you catch that? Furthermore:
"Food additives have to meet much higher standards than drugs, Walters points out, because their drawbacks aren't weighed against their medical benefits."
And here's the biggie:
************************************************************************************************
"Aspartame, for instance, has been studied more than any other substance in FDA history, yet it has consistently been declared safe."
************************************************************************************************
All that time, effort and $ WASTED to prove that a totally safe substance was in fact totally safe. If you had any doubts about aspartame, this should be the end of them. If you hear/read anyone else spouting off about aspartame, hit them with this info; there's just no excuse for anyone to be ignorant on this issue anymore.
As for the other sweeteners:
"Sucralose has shown no carcinogenic effects in animals, even at high doses. And saccharin was rehabilitated as a safe additive in 1997, when scientists found that rats used in earlier studies had a predisposition to cancer unrelated to the sweetener."
In other words, you can drink your diet soda worry-free, whichever of these sweeteners it contains.
A few more bits of useful info:
"Although sucralose and saccharin aren't absorbed by the body, they're not quite calorie-free: The dextrose and maltodextrin that manufacturers use to bulk them up contain about a quarter of the calories found in sugar."
Translation; even if something's artificially sweetened, read the label for the calorie count.
"although diabetics choose sugar substitutes over sucrose, animal studies suggest that artificial sweeteners can also trigger the release of insulin-albeit in much smaller quantities."
Translation; if you're diabetic, keep track of your blood sugar no matter what you're eating or drinking.
I love this one:
"Studies show that people who drink sugar-free sodas can lose more weight than those who drink regular sodas"
because it's in direct contrast to what the so-called diet experts say; they claim, without proof, that you'll automatically eat more sweets to make up for the calories you lose by drinking diet soda, when the reality is that switching to a non-caloric but tasty beverage is an easy and painless way to cut what could easily be several hundred calories a day (a can of non-diet soda averages about 150 calories) from your diet.
Aspartame and the other artificial sweeteners give us that rarest of things; something for nothing. We can chug delicious, refreshing diet soda and have consumed no calories... and nothing that will cause brain tumors or any of the other medical tragedies that various nonsensical claims have said about aspartame, either, so ignore the liars and hypochondriacs and drink up.
The article begins with a little info on the sweetener that we're seeing advertised constantly these days:
"sucralose, also known as Splenda... 'Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar,' the slogan claims, but like all other sugar substitutes, sucralose was born in a laboratory... truckloads of common table sugar are shipped in weekly, to be modified via a complex chemical process involving chlorine and phosgene gas. The result is so intensely sweet that Tate & Lyle has to cut it with 600 parts filler to approximate a natural sweetness."
It doesn't sound very appetizing, does it? (Chlorine and phosgene are toxic gases that were used for chemical warfare in WW1; they're often used in the lab, and their involvement does NOT mean that sucralose is poisonous, but it's hard not to have a gut reaction to hard-core chemicals like that.) Still, in an ever more obese nation, we need every calorie-saving sweetener we can get; we don't have the luxury of being squeamish.
I'm very gung-ho about science, but I've said before that many important discoveries have been made by accident, and here's more proof:
"Saccharin was invented in Baltimore about 130 years ago by two chemists at Johns Hopkins University who were experimenting with coal-tar derivatives. Aspartame was found in the 1960s by a medical chemist in Illinois who was investigating a drug for gastric ulcers. Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by a graduate student at King's College London. His head researcher had told him to test some compounds, but he misunderstood and tasted them instead."
Because we've been bombarded for several decades with the idea that "natural" is somehow better, some folks object to artificial sweeteners because of their UNnaturalness, and this hasn't been lost on the Splenda people:
"Of the three sweeteners, sucralose has been touted as the most natural, but that claim 'has more to do with clever marketing than with chemistry,' Walters says. Although sucralose is made from sugar, its chemical structure is significantly different: A molecule of the artificial sweetener has three chlorine atoms, whereas sugar has three pairs of oxygen and hydrogen atoms."
And here's the 1st big point about aspartame:
"the only unnatural component in aspartame is a methyl ester bond that connects phenylalanine and aspartic acid, two amino acids abundant in the human body. The body's digestive enzymes recognize aspartame as a protein and break it down much as they would a natural compound."
By contrast:
"Sucralose, on the other hand, slips through undigested, as does saccharin-a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms. 'The body doesn't know what to make of it, so it doesn't make anything,' Walters says."
Ugh, give me aspartame any day!!
The next big point about aspartame is:
"When the sweetener aspartame is digested, its methyl ester bond is broken down into methanol, which further degrades into formaldehyde. Both methanol and formaldehyde are toxic in high doses, but a person would have to drink 600 cans of diet soda to get as much of either substance as is contained in a single orange."
We tend to forget that ALL foods are made out of chemicals, often including minuscule amounts of poisonous or otherwise dangerous ones, and then get hysterical when any non-zero amount of anything "bad" is found in something manmade; this example gives a rare sense of perspective about that.
I like to see the relationships between our biology and what we're driven to eat (or not eat), so it caught my attention that there are:
"...more than 30 [genes] that code for bitter receptors [on the taste buds] but only a single receptor devoted to sweet. 'Evolutionarily, it makes sense,' says Grant DuBois, a chemist for Coca-Cola. 'The theory being that there are a lot of varyingly toxic bitter compounds we have to know how to distinguish between, but everything sweet can be lumped together as good.'"
They've been working hard to find better ways to stimulate that 1 receptor:
"Cyclamate is 45 times as sweet as sugar, aspartame and saccharin are 180 and 300 times as sweet, respectively, and sucralose is 600 times sweeter. But the next generation of aspartame, known as neotame, is 13,000 times as sweet as sugar, and other compounds have been isolated that are more than 100,000 times as sweet."
Can you imagine what one of those latter compounds must taste like?
There ARE some genuinely unfortunate things about artificial sweeteners:
"Even when they've been cut with fillers, none of these sweeteners can truly pass for sugar. Saccharin has a disconcertingly metallic aftertaste-not, thankfully, because it leaches aluminum from cans but because it also triggers bitter and sour receptors. Aspartame and neotame are fragile molecules that break down relatively quickly on supermarket shelves and can't withstand the heat of cooking. Sucralose can take the heat and is stable, but it lacks the bulk, the browning ability, and the 'mouthfeel' of real sugar."
But the real problem, in the minds of the uninformed, is (asterisks are mine):
"That these sweeteners were invented by chemists has long made them suspect. Saccharin was listed as an 'anticipated human carcinogen' [what a load of baloney] in 1981, sucralose has been shown to weakly mutate genes in test tubes, and aspartame has triggered fears about everything from autism to multiple sclerosis. Still, *****no concerns have held up under scrutiny.*****"
Did you catch that? Furthermore:
"Food additives have to meet much higher standards than drugs, Walters points out, because their drawbacks aren't weighed against their medical benefits."
And here's the biggie:
************************************************************************************************
"Aspartame, for instance, has been studied more than any other substance in FDA history, yet it has consistently been declared safe."
************************************************************************************************
All that time, effort and $ WASTED to prove that a totally safe substance was in fact totally safe. If you had any doubts about aspartame, this should be the end of them. If you hear/read anyone else spouting off about aspartame, hit them with this info; there's just no excuse for anyone to be ignorant on this issue anymore.
As for the other sweeteners:
"Sucralose has shown no carcinogenic effects in animals, even at high doses. And saccharin was rehabilitated as a safe additive in 1997, when scientists found that rats used in earlier studies had a predisposition to cancer unrelated to the sweetener."
In other words, you can drink your diet soda worry-free, whichever of these sweeteners it contains.
A few more bits of useful info:
"Although sucralose and saccharin aren't absorbed by the body, they're not quite calorie-free: The dextrose and maltodextrin that manufacturers use to bulk them up contain about a quarter of the calories found in sugar."
Translation; even if something's artificially sweetened, read the label for the calorie count.
"although diabetics choose sugar substitutes over sucrose, animal studies suggest that artificial sweeteners can also trigger the release of insulin-albeit in much smaller quantities."
Translation; if you're diabetic, keep track of your blood sugar no matter what you're eating or drinking.
I love this one:
"Studies show that people who drink sugar-free sodas can lose more weight than those who drink regular sodas"
because it's in direct contrast to what the so-called diet experts say; they claim, without proof, that you'll automatically eat more sweets to make up for the calories you lose by drinking diet soda, when the reality is that switching to a non-caloric but tasty beverage is an easy and painless way to cut what could easily be several hundred calories a day (a can of non-diet soda averages about 150 calories) from your diet.
Aspartame and the other artificial sweeteners give us that rarest of things; something for nothing. We can chug delicious, refreshing diet soda and have consumed no calories... and nothing that will cause brain tumors or any of the other medical tragedies that various nonsensical claims have said about aspartame, either, so ignore the liars and hypochondriacs and drink up.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
A sad example of the "blame the victim" mindset
Tonight I saw an episode of "Clean House," a show that appears to combine dumping junk, organizing clutter and redecorating; it might usually be a good program, but today it was a train wreck.
Getting people to toss out the piles of stuff that they don't need and would probably never even look at again is worthwhile, but they arm-twisted the mother to give up lamps that she loved and used, and the college-age daughter to give up all of her towels but one, and most of her jeans, not because they were in bad shape or didn't fit, but just because the host decided that she only needed 7 pairs; to my mind, making it necessary for a single mom to buy new stuff to replace the excessive amount that got thrown out is NOT helping.
And it gets worse; they badgered the mother to give up a beautiful sofa that she loved, that appeared to be in excellent condition, AND a brand-new loveseat. What reason, what EXCUSE, was there to get rid of perfectly good furniture, especially with a very limited budget that meant they weren't going to be able to replace it with high-quality stuff that would have made it a good deal for the family? The mother tried to fight them for the couch, and they promised her that they'd replace it with one that was comfortable, not of "modern" styling (as she made it clear that she disliked that), and not of a horrible color to make her give up.
My husband wandered in towards the end of the show, just as they were revealing the girl's newly-decorated room. It was pretty awful (purple and green), and the mother was dismayed that they'd covered expensive wooden furniture with green paint and tacky wallpaper; she also expressed dislike of some ugly white pillows that looked like cheap fuzzy fabric wrapped around foam rectangles, and in fact probably were (this will be important later).
The family room was a thousand times worse; the poor mother was so horrified that she could hardly speak. They'd painted the walls a hideous puke green, replaced her nice sofa with an orange pillow-back one (so much for the promise of no modern styling or awful color), replaced the brand-new loveseat with a blocky chair with glaring patterned fabric, put in a rug that looked like it was made out of rope, which might be ok for a man's fishing cabin but not for a household of 2 ladies... I wasn't surprised when she started crying, because it's going to cost a fortune to fix it all, and she doesn't make much $. I kept waiting for the host to say that they'd give her her old furniture back, repaint the walls, haul out the rug, whatever it took to make it ok, but instead, she... guess what? What do you think the leader of the group that had caused this disaster by failing to obtain the woman's preferences or even to keep their promise about the sofa, and had tossed out stuff that they absolutely should have kept and worked around, had to say to the devastated mother?
First, the host tried to hammer her into saying that some aspect of the dreadful room was great; when the mother made clear that she disliked each thing the host indicated, the host responded with a standard ploy of those who don't care that they've messed up and caused harm... she announced that NOTHING could have pleased the mother, and as a corollary to that of course refused to admit that anything her group had done had been wrong or even to apologize for upsetting the poor woman. That still ticks me off as I look back on it, that the host couldn't even be bothered to offer the typical not-quite-apology of the badly-behaved, "I'm sorry you're upset" (as opposed to the proper apology, "I'm sorry that I/we took actions that caused you to be upset")... what were the decision-makers for that show thinking, to air an episode where they caused a disaster and then blamed the victim rather than apologizing?
That's not the "sad example of the 'blame the victim' mindset" that my title refers to, though; my husband supplied that when he announced that HE thought that the woman was impossible to please. When questioned, he agreed totally about the horribleness of every aspect of the new decor, and the outrageous wrongness of forcing the woman to give up the sofa and loveseat... but still maintained that the woman was upset because she was impossible to please, NOT in reaction to what had been done to her home. When I pointed out that his denial that the actual situation could be the cause of the upset made no sense, he denied THAT. When I asked him to point out something, anything, he'd seen that suggested that the woman would have complained about attractively-done rooms, or was in general hard to please, he of course couldn't, but that didn't change his mind. When pushed to reveal his line of reasoning, all he had to say was that she'd complained too many times... and apparently her having complained about the crummy white pillows was particularly significant, because, even after I reviewed with him what had been done to the woman's home, and what it would probably cost her to UNdo it, and the hardship that would entail to a single working mom putting a kid through college, his reply was, "But she complained about the pillows 3 times," by which comment he honestly believed he'd cancelled out everything else that had happened. You heard right; in his mind, no matter how many bad things a victim has done to them, no matter how terrible those things are separately or collectively, the victim is only allowed a certain # of complaints if they're to maintain their victimhood... and if they exceed that unspecified (but very small) #, then magically they not only cease to be the victim, they somehow inexplicably become the wrongdoer, deserving of contempt rather than sympathy. He refuses to accept that a victim has the RIGHT to address EVERY upsetting thing that happened to them, the right to BE upset, and, because of that upset, that they have the right to complain multiple times about each thing, in accordance with what human nature would tend to make people do under those circumstances.
And yes, he applies that warped thinking to ME... and I scorch him to the bone every time, believe me.
Those of you who lack my emotional armor-plating should be very, VERY wary of this sort of attitude from the people in your lives, because it tells you that anyone holding it is a relentless screw-up, or a relentless wrongdoer, or, worst of all, a sociopath, because only these sorts of people come up with ways for victims to become the ones to blame, and totally lack not only sympathy, which is bad enough, but empathy for the sufferings of others.
A nice person allows, and even expects, a victim to say "ouch," and to say it as many times as the # and degree of wrongs done to them engender in someone of their personality; if you want a sweet, sensitive romantic partner, watching how they respond to a non-stoic victim is the best acid test there is.
A final comment about complaining; if things have happened that you just don't like, as opposed to things that are actually upsetting, the unfortunate reality is that nearly everyone will judge against you after a fairly small # of complaints, so, once you've indicated that some situation or thing is not to your liking, you need to just bite your tongue and fake being ok with it, because people are generally unable to distinguish between someone faced with many things deserving of being complained about and someone who's just a complainer. Why does human nature so often lead to kicking people in the head when they're already having a hard time?
Getting people to toss out the piles of stuff that they don't need and would probably never even look at again is worthwhile, but they arm-twisted the mother to give up lamps that she loved and used, and the college-age daughter to give up all of her towels but one, and most of her jeans, not because they were in bad shape or didn't fit, but just because the host decided that she only needed 7 pairs; to my mind, making it necessary for a single mom to buy new stuff to replace the excessive amount that got thrown out is NOT helping.
And it gets worse; they badgered the mother to give up a beautiful sofa that she loved, that appeared to be in excellent condition, AND a brand-new loveseat. What reason, what EXCUSE, was there to get rid of perfectly good furniture, especially with a very limited budget that meant they weren't going to be able to replace it with high-quality stuff that would have made it a good deal for the family? The mother tried to fight them for the couch, and they promised her that they'd replace it with one that was comfortable, not of "modern" styling (as she made it clear that she disliked that), and not of a horrible color to make her give up.
My husband wandered in towards the end of the show, just as they were revealing the girl's newly-decorated room. It was pretty awful (purple and green), and the mother was dismayed that they'd covered expensive wooden furniture with green paint and tacky wallpaper; she also expressed dislike of some ugly white pillows that looked like cheap fuzzy fabric wrapped around foam rectangles, and in fact probably were (this will be important later).
The family room was a thousand times worse; the poor mother was so horrified that she could hardly speak. They'd painted the walls a hideous puke green, replaced her nice sofa with an orange pillow-back one (so much for the promise of no modern styling or awful color), replaced the brand-new loveseat with a blocky chair with glaring patterned fabric, put in a rug that looked like it was made out of rope, which might be ok for a man's fishing cabin but not for a household of 2 ladies... I wasn't surprised when she started crying, because it's going to cost a fortune to fix it all, and she doesn't make much $. I kept waiting for the host to say that they'd give her her old furniture back, repaint the walls, haul out the rug, whatever it took to make it ok, but instead, she... guess what? What do you think the leader of the group that had caused this disaster by failing to obtain the woman's preferences or even to keep their promise about the sofa, and had tossed out stuff that they absolutely should have kept and worked around, had to say to the devastated mother?
First, the host tried to hammer her into saying that some aspect of the dreadful room was great; when the mother made clear that she disliked each thing the host indicated, the host responded with a standard ploy of those who don't care that they've messed up and caused harm... she announced that NOTHING could have pleased the mother, and as a corollary to that of course refused to admit that anything her group had done had been wrong or even to apologize for upsetting the poor woman. That still ticks me off as I look back on it, that the host couldn't even be bothered to offer the typical not-quite-apology of the badly-behaved, "I'm sorry you're upset" (as opposed to the proper apology, "I'm sorry that I/we took actions that caused you to be upset")... what were the decision-makers for that show thinking, to air an episode where they caused a disaster and then blamed the victim rather than apologizing?
That's not the "sad example of the 'blame the victim' mindset" that my title refers to, though; my husband supplied that when he announced that HE thought that the woman was impossible to please. When questioned, he agreed totally about the horribleness of every aspect of the new decor, and the outrageous wrongness of forcing the woman to give up the sofa and loveseat... but still maintained that the woman was upset because she was impossible to please, NOT in reaction to what had been done to her home. When I pointed out that his denial that the actual situation could be the cause of the upset made no sense, he denied THAT. When I asked him to point out something, anything, he'd seen that suggested that the woman would have complained about attractively-done rooms, or was in general hard to please, he of course couldn't, but that didn't change his mind. When pushed to reveal his line of reasoning, all he had to say was that she'd complained too many times... and apparently her having complained about the crummy white pillows was particularly significant, because, even after I reviewed with him what had been done to the woman's home, and what it would probably cost her to UNdo it, and the hardship that would entail to a single working mom putting a kid through college, his reply was, "But she complained about the pillows 3 times," by which comment he honestly believed he'd cancelled out everything else that had happened. You heard right; in his mind, no matter how many bad things a victim has done to them, no matter how terrible those things are separately or collectively, the victim is only allowed a certain # of complaints if they're to maintain their victimhood... and if they exceed that unspecified (but very small) #, then magically they not only cease to be the victim, they somehow inexplicably become the wrongdoer, deserving of contempt rather than sympathy. He refuses to accept that a victim has the RIGHT to address EVERY upsetting thing that happened to them, the right to BE upset, and, because of that upset, that they have the right to complain multiple times about each thing, in accordance with what human nature would tend to make people do under those circumstances.
And yes, he applies that warped thinking to ME... and I scorch him to the bone every time, believe me.
Those of you who lack my emotional armor-plating should be very, VERY wary of this sort of attitude from the people in your lives, because it tells you that anyone holding it is a relentless screw-up, or a relentless wrongdoer, or, worst of all, a sociopath, because only these sorts of people come up with ways for victims to become the ones to blame, and totally lack not only sympathy, which is bad enough, but empathy for the sufferings of others.
A nice person allows, and even expects, a victim to say "ouch," and to say it as many times as the # and degree of wrongs done to them engender in someone of their personality; if you want a sweet, sensitive romantic partner, watching how they respond to a non-stoic victim is the best acid test there is.
A final comment about complaining; if things have happened that you just don't like, as opposed to things that are actually upsetting, the unfortunate reality is that nearly everyone will judge against you after a fairly small # of complaints, so, once you've indicated that some situation or thing is not to your liking, you need to just bite your tongue and fake being ok with it, because people are generally unable to distinguish between someone faced with many things deserving of being complained about and someone who's just a complainer. Why does human nature so often lead to kicking people in the head when they're already having a hard time?
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
More precious than gold
What do you suppose I might be referring to? Friendship, love, health, or something similarly trite? Those things are all terrific, but most people have them, at least some of the time, and what's on my mind is something very few people have, the value of which is enormous; a top-notch dentist.
There was an article in Reader's Digest some years back describing how a man had gone to dentists all over the country to test their ability, not to mention their honesty, by having them examine him and tell him what work he needed done; the dreadful result was that they came up with analyses that were all over the map, from very extensive procedures costing many thousands of dollars to no work being required... and most distressing of all, a non-trivial # of these quacks were so busy inventing work that he allegedly needed that they completely missed the work he actually DID need (which had been determined by a panel of experts from, if memory serves, the American Dental Association).
How much confidence do you have in what YOUR dentist says, and what do you base that on other than wishful thinking?
Unlike non-surgeon doctors, who make $ just from seeing you, not from actually doing anything to you, dentists make their $ from doing procedures on you... so why would we ever think that they're only telling us that we need what we objectively do in fact need?
For anything other than the most trivial surgical procedures, we rush to get a 2nd opinion... but who gets a 2nd opinion for even the most major dental procedures? I know people who've been told they need dental work that equals the cost of a luxury car, and they never questioned that much less asked another dentist to verify it... despite the $, despite the pain that's always involved with dental work, despite the fact that once you mess with a tooth you have to keep messing with it, often to a steadily greater extent, for the rest of your life, despite even claims that teeth need to be removed, although dealing with dental implants, bridges and dentures, or a permanent gap, is no joke.
We wouldn't trust a surgeon, who has wildly more medical training than a dentist, to automatically tell us the right thing even with the best of intentions, so why do we blindly go along with what any and every dentist says without question?
It's not just by doing unnecessary multi-thousand dollar work that dentists stick it to you; they also have some very common scams that patients are still falling for. Here are the primary examples:
Scam #1: "You've got fillings with mercury in them, and mercury is dangerous, so they need to be drilled out and replaced."
Reality: Drilling those fillings out will release FAR more mercury into your body than having them for your entire life will, so they shouldn't be touched unless it's necessary for other reasons.
Scam #2: "Those fillings are old and worn, so they should be drilled out and redone."
Reality: Every time you drill a filling out, a bigger hole gets made, and eventually it can't be re-filled and needs to be replaced with a crown, so you should NOT have fillings removed unless they're falling apart and validly need to be replaced... the claims you see that fillings that you've had for as little as 15 years "have to" be replaced are pure BS.
Scam #3: "Those wisdom teeth need to come out."
Reality: If someone's talking about the problems they had after their wisdom teeth were removed (and there are almost always problems, as it's a serious, ugly procedure), and you ask them what kind of problems they were having with those teeth that led to the extractions, the answer usually starts with, "None, but my dentist said..." Dentists, and their buddies the oral surgeons, love to tell you that your wisdom teeth are impacted, that they'll never break through your gums, and this goes x10 if the teeth are actually trying to come out and you're feeling discomfort... and they see the chance of making a quick buck from you fading fast. Although there certainly ARE people who truly need 1 or more wisdom teeth extracted, in general there are 2 categories of people; those who listened to the dentists' dire warnings and had the teeth pulled, and those whose wisdom teeth grew out and are still there.
If your dentist has never tried to pull any of these scams on you, congratulations, you might have a keeper; otherwise, you might want to find someone more honest.
Now, what makes MY dentist so great, so great that you can't become a new patient of his unless a current patient recommends you, so great that, although he doesn't take insurance, we still went to him even when we were forced to pay for dental coverage as part of a health plan and had to pay him out of pocket on top of that?
1) Every time I go in for a cleaning, he comes in towards the end, questions the dental hygienist about my teeth and gums, questions ME about what's up in my mouth, and then has a look for himself... and he either remembers all about me or is re-reading my records every time I come, because he's totally up on my dental history.
2) Both my husband and I have fillings 30 or more years old, and, not only has he never suggested replacing them, he told my husband, when asked, that his policy is to leave fillings alone unless an actual problem develops.
3) Needless to say, those old fillings have mercury; when questioned, he gave the correct answer about the danger of drilling them out vs leaving them in.
4) My lower wisdom teeth are only partly out, and come out a tiny bit more each year, with a few days of mild pain each time; despite this, he has never mentioned taking them out until today, when for the 1st time I was in his office (for a cleaning) with the back of the left side of my mouth all inflamed from the latest round of growth... and when I described my fear of dry socket, infections and such, not to mention the pain, he nodded and said that it was a matter of my preference because it wasn't doing any harm at this time.
5) When my husband had a wisdom tooth that was giving him so much pain that he couldn't function, and probably technically needed to go to an oral surgeon, he confided his fear of general anesthetic to the dentist, who agreed that, since it was partially broken through, he could give removing it a try, and was in fact successful.
6) When one of my wisdom teeth developed a cavity a few years back:
a) His recommendation was a filling, NOT to yank it.
b) He sat down with me to discuss my painkilling options, particularly that one of the 2 things that would normally be given together could cause the heart to race, and that my standard anxiety level is so high that it might be unpleasant for me... and then he let ME choose which way to go (I didn't have the 2nd drug).
7) When my husband had a cavity filled recently, the dentist gave him the option to have NO pain-killing agent, which I'd never heard was possible; apparently, it's just standard among dentists to pump novocaine and such in there even if there shouldn't be any actual pain (!!!), and this dentist doesn't want to inject drugs if he doesn't have to. My husband chose to go drug-free, and had no pain during or after the filling.
8) His family is committed to dentistry; his father was an orthodontist (and he still has some elderly patients that used to go to his father), and his son just completed dental school.
I spent most of my life with an enormous fear of dentists; I didn't see one for 15 years, literally, until the dry-mouth caused by meds I took for several months made me afraid enough of the grim possible effects on my teeth and gums to finally go. When I tell you that my dentist is wonderful, and I trust him, then, that's saying alot. If you don't feel that way about YOUR dentist... isn't it time to do something about it?
There was an article in Reader's Digest some years back describing how a man had gone to dentists all over the country to test their ability, not to mention their honesty, by having them examine him and tell him what work he needed done; the dreadful result was that they came up with analyses that were all over the map, from very extensive procedures costing many thousands of dollars to no work being required... and most distressing of all, a non-trivial # of these quacks were so busy inventing work that he allegedly needed that they completely missed the work he actually DID need (which had been determined by a panel of experts from, if memory serves, the American Dental Association).
How much confidence do you have in what YOUR dentist says, and what do you base that on other than wishful thinking?
Unlike non-surgeon doctors, who make $ just from seeing you, not from actually doing anything to you, dentists make their $ from doing procedures on you... so why would we ever think that they're only telling us that we need what we objectively do in fact need?
For anything other than the most trivial surgical procedures, we rush to get a 2nd opinion... but who gets a 2nd opinion for even the most major dental procedures? I know people who've been told they need dental work that equals the cost of a luxury car, and they never questioned that much less asked another dentist to verify it... despite the $, despite the pain that's always involved with dental work, despite the fact that once you mess with a tooth you have to keep messing with it, often to a steadily greater extent, for the rest of your life, despite even claims that teeth need to be removed, although dealing with dental implants, bridges and dentures, or a permanent gap, is no joke.
We wouldn't trust a surgeon, who has wildly more medical training than a dentist, to automatically tell us the right thing even with the best of intentions, so why do we blindly go along with what any and every dentist says without question?
It's not just by doing unnecessary multi-thousand dollar work that dentists stick it to you; they also have some very common scams that patients are still falling for. Here are the primary examples:
Scam #1: "You've got fillings with mercury in them, and mercury is dangerous, so they need to be drilled out and replaced."
Reality: Drilling those fillings out will release FAR more mercury into your body than having them for your entire life will, so they shouldn't be touched unless it's necessary for other reasons.
Scam #2: "Those fillings are old and worn, so they should be drilled out and redone."
Reality: Every time you drill a filling out, a bigger hole gets made, and eventually it can't be re-filled and needs to be replaced with a crown, so you should NOT have fillings removed unless they're falling apart and validly need to be replaced... the claims you see that fillings that you've had for as little as 15 years "have to" be replaced are pure BS.
Scam #3: "Those wisdom teeth need to come out."
Reality: If someone's talking about the problems they had after their wisdom teeth were removed (and there are almost always problems, as it's a serious, ugly procedure), and you ask them what kind of problems they were having with those teeth that led to the extractions, the answer usually starts with, "None, but my dentist said..." Dentists, and their buddies the oral surgeons, love to tell you that your wisdom teeth are impacted, that they'll never break through your gums, and this goes x10 if the teeth are actually trying to come out and you're feeling discomfort... and they see the chance of making a quick buck from you fading fast. Although there certainly ARE people who truly need 1 or more wisdom teeth extracted, in general there are 2 categories of people; those who listened to the dentists' dire warnings and had the teeth pulled, and those whose wisdom teeth grew out and are still there.
If your dentist has never tried to pull any of these scams on you, congratulations, you might have a keeper; otherwise, you might want to find someone more honest.
Now, what makes MY dentist so great, so great that you can't become a new patient of his unless a current patient recommends you, so great that, although he doesn't take insurance, we still went to him even when we were forced to pay for dental coverage as part of a health plan and had to pay him out of pocket on top of that?
1) Every time I go in for a cleaning, he comes in towards the end, questions the dental hygienist about my teeth and gums, questions ME about what's up in my mouth, and then has a look for himself... and he either remembers all about me or is re-reading my records every time I come, because he's totally up on my dental history.
2) Both my husband and I have fillings 30 or more years old, and, not only has he never suggested replacing them, he told my husband, when asked, that his policy is to leave fillings alone unless an actual problem develops.
3) Needless to say, those old fillings have mercury; when questioned, he gave the correct answer about the danger of drilling them out vs leaving them in.
4) My lower wisdom teeth are only partly out, and come out a tiny bit more each year, with a few days of mild pain each time; despite this, he has never mentioned taking them out until today, when for the 1st time I was in his office (for a cleaning) with the back of the left side of my mouth all inflamed from the latest round of growth... and when I described my fear of dry socket, infections and such, not to mention the pain, he nodded and said that it was a matter of my preference because it wasn't doing any harm at this time.
5) When my husband had a wisdom tooth that was giving him so much pain that he couldn't function, and probably technically needed to go to an oral surgeon, he confided his fear of general anesthetic to the dentist, who agreed that, since it was partially broken through, he could give removing it a try, and was in fact successful.
6) When one of my wisdom teeth developed a cavity a few years back:
a) His recommendation was a filling, NOT to yank it.
b) He sat down with me to discuss my painkilling options, particularly that one of the 2 things that would normally be given together could cause the heart to race, and that my standard anxiety level is so high that it might be unpleasant for me... and then he let ME choose which way to go (I didn't have the 2nd drug).
7) When my husband had a cavity filled recently, the dentist gave him the option to have NO pain-killing agent, which I'd never heard was possible; apparently, it's just standard among dentists to pump novocaine and such in there even if there shouldn't be any actual pain (!!!), and this dentist doesn't want to inject drugs if he doesn't have to. My husband chose to go drug-free, and had no pain during or after the filling.
8) His family is committed to dentistry; his father was an orthodontist (and he still has some elderly patients that used to go to his father), and his son just completed dental school.
I spent most of my life with an enormous fear of dentists; I didn't see one for 15 years, literally, until the dry-mouth caused by meds I took for several months made me afraid enough of the grim possible effects on my teeth and gums to finally go. When I tell you that my dentist is wonderful, and I trust him, then, that's saying alot. If you don't feel that way about YOUR dentist... isn't it time to do something about it?
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Odds and ends
I generally don't see my mother for several months at a time, which makes any alterations in her appearance really stand out because they don't sneak under my radar by virtue of happening gradually, and when I saw her recently, I noticed that she'd developed... I don't even know what to call it, because we use the term "double chin" to refer to rolls of flesh under the jaw, but what she has now is REALLY like a chin, a protuberant "chunk" of flesh that's about where the so-called "turkey wattles" show up, but it's not an empty flap of flesh like a wattle. My mother is nearly 70, and it's reasonable to expect that she'd be getting these sorts of things, but she'd looked more like 50 until this happened, and now I suddenly have to see her as an old woman... it's vaguely disturbing.
Far more dismaying is the situation with my grandmother; although she's in her 90's, she's been very sharp until the last couple of years, where her mind, and unfortunately her hearing as well, have been going... and now mother reported that she's not even getting out of bed until someone shows up at her apartment to get her going, and my aunt has reported that she's "fading fast," not physically, but mentally, which really is worse... and the amazing woman who was one of the few lights of my early life is nearly gone.
The Hitchcockian swarm of rats out in our patio area that I wrote about on 8-11-05 continues, and has even managed to worsen; they ate through the doorframe of our shed, and tunneled under it, and it appears that what we 1st thought were baby rats may in fact be mice... 2 species of rodent running around together, which I'd never heard of, and wish I could be spared now. And that's not the only vermin problems we're having; I has several weeks where I was getting 2-3 earwigs per night crawling around where I sit on the floor with my laptop, then a week or so where a steady flow of pinhead-sized spiders were lowering themselves down from the light fixture overhead right in front of my nose, then our problem with moths, which have been eluding our attempts to stop them from reproducing in the food in our pantry for nearly a year, wildly escalated when they got into the kibble we had for some of our mammalian visitors and we were suddenly killing them 100 at a time (and that's NOT a typo), and THEN, grossest of all, I've now spotted 3 of their revolting larvae, which are normally never seen outside of food packages, creeping around in the open... one on a wall, one fell down from the ceiling onto my papers, and the 3rd was crawling around on my keyboard when I came back from a bathroom break tonight.
Words cannot describe how horrifying this has all been, or how ready I am for the hot weather to be over, and with it the "vermin season."
On a lighter note, I've seen an amazing thing in my searches for socks on eBay; there are an unbelievable # of people auctioning USED socks, "very well worn" socks, and I've even seen socks with mended spots and holes being sold in big lots for more per pair than new ones would cost... when did used socks become a valuable commodity? Did I miss a memo or something?
And finally, a little food for thought; for far too long, we've been seeing bone-thin genetic freaks portrayed as the height of beauty, and in recent years we've seen some plus-size ladies, varying from somewhat chunky to seriously Junoesque, being (rightly) put forward as also being beautiful, although when used for marketing purposes they've appeared in ads for makeup rather than ads for clothes or in which they'd be the sex that sells a product... but where are the women in the wide, wide spectrum between emaciated and chubby? With the exception of the current Dove ads for firming cream (as part of their "Campaign for Real Beauty" that I posted about on 8-2-05), I can't think of a single ad for anything that shows normal-sized women, and can't think of a single actress or famous woman who exists in that no-woman's-land. No clothes are designed for women and girls in this weight range; we have scaled-up clothes that were designed on skinny fitting models. Fashion and other women's magazines that purport to give clothes-picking advice for every figure type routinely skip over the sort of woman who weighs enough to have hips and a butt to work around, and maybe bigger thighs than she'd like, but not enough to qualify as "curvy" or "hourglass" (which requires big boobs). Will our culture EVER get away from the extremes and address regular-sized women somewhere other than one company's moisturizer ads, or are we too unglamorous to bother with?
Far more dismaying is the situation with my grandmother; although she's in her 90's, she's been very sharp until the last couple of years, where her mind, and unfortunately her hearing as well, have been going... and now mother reported that she's not even getting out of bed until someone shows up at her apartment to get her going, and my aunt has reported that she's "fading fast," not physically, but mentally, which really is worse... and the amazing woman who was one of the few lights of my early life is nearly gone.
The Hitchcockian swarm of rats out in our patio area that I wrote about on 8-11-05 continues, and has even managed to worsen; they ate through the doorframe of our shed, and tunneled under it, and it appears that what we 1st thought were baby rats may in fact be mice... 2 species of rodent running around together, which I'd never heard of, and wish I could be spared now. And that's not the only vermin problems we're having; I has several weeks where I was getting 2-3 earwigs per night crawling around where I sit on the floor with my laptop, then a week or so where a steady flow of pinhead-sized spiders were lowering themselves down from the light fixture overhead right in front of my nose, then our problem with moths, which have been eluding our attempts to stop them from reproducing in the food in our pantry for nearly a year, wildly escalated when they got into the kibble we had for some of our mammalian visitors and we were suddenly killing them 100 at a time (and that's NOT a typo), and THEN, grossest of all, I've now spotted 3 of their revolting larvae, which are normally never seen outside of food packages, creeping around in the open... one on a wall, one fell down from the ceiling onto my papers, and the 3rd was crawling around on my keyboard when I came back from a bathroom break tonight.
Words cannot describe how horrifying this has all been, or how ready I am for the hot weather to be over, and with it the "vermin season."
On a lighter note, I've seen an amazing thing in my searches for socks on eBay; there are an unbelievable # of people auctioning USED socks, "very well worn" socks, and I've even seen socks with mended spots and holes being sold in big lots for more per pair than new ones would cost... when did used socks become a valuable commodity? Did I miss a memo or something?
And finally, a little food for thought; for far too long, we've been seeing bone-thin genetic freaks portrayed as the height of beauty, and in recent years we've seen some plus-size ladies, varying from somewhat chunky to seriously Junoesque, being (rightly) put forward as also being beautiful, although when used for marketing purposes they've appeared in ads for makeup rather than ads for clothes or in which they'd be the sex that sells a product... but where are the women in the wide, wide spectrum between emaciated and chubby? With the exception of the current Dove ads for firming cream (as part of their "Campaign for Real Beauty" that I posted about on 8-2-05), I can't think of a single ad for anything that shows normal-sized women, and can't think of a single actress or famous woman who exists in that no-woman's-land. No clothes are designed for women and girls in this weight range; we have scaled-up clothes that were designed on skinny fitting models. Fashion and other women's magazines that purport to give clothes-picking advice for every figure type routinely skip over the sort of woman who weighs enough to have hips and a butt to work around, and maybe bigger thighs than she'd like, but not enough to qualify as "curvy" or "hourglass" (which requires big boobs). Will our culture EVER get away from the extremes and address regular-sized women somewhere other than one company's moisturizer ads, or are we too unglamorous to bother with?
Monday, August 22, 2005
The latest from Joel Osteen
I was taking notes while watching Joel Osteen tonight, so I've got alot of quotes rather than just a summary; I actually watched the sermon a 2nd time to try to be as complete as possible, because he covered a wide range of points, including some new ones:
Osteen was still focusing on the power of thought in tonight's sermon. He said that fear and worry lead to a "negative frame of mind," which makes the connection between fear and negativity that's crucial to understanding why bad things happen to good people; in other words, you can be a virtual saint, but if you're fearful/anxious/worried that creates negative energy that draws negative things into your life. He made the repeated point that fear activates "the Enemy's" power and faith activates God's power; he said it just like that, as if we could tap directly into the power of these beings at will as easily as flipping a switch... and who knows, maybe we can (if they exist, which the jury is still out on due to lack of evidence). He tells us that we need to raise our "level of expectancy," because we get exactly what we're expecting; this appears in the Bible where Jesus said "According to your faith be it done unto you." Osteen believes this happens because "God meets us at the level of our expectations," but it's perfectly in agreement with my idea of karma, because if you're expecting something you're focusing energy in the shape of that thing, which tends to draw it to you.
He advises us to "call the things that are not as if they already were," which is a new one from him; intriguingly, this is what a variety of pagan and new-age belief systems say to do, and is essentially what the various visualization techniques try to do as well. He warns that "expecting the worst opens the door to trouble," that if you expect the worst, negative things begin to happen; it fascinates me endlessly that he makes these sorts of karmic proclamations when the standard idea of Christianity is that God is supposed to give you what you deserve, not what you expect or think about... and this is why I continue to watch Osteen religiously, as it were.
He got more intense about the idea of controlling one's thoughts; he asserts that you can have no access to God's power unless you discipline your mind, no "victory" unless you control your "thought life." I've become increasingly fanatical about not letting myself think about things that I don't want to call forth, and the idea that the power of karma (or whatever) might be available as a result of "disciplining" my mind is an appealing one, especially since I HAVE seen karma work more and more to my benefit the more I've channeled my mind into the "right" thoughts.
The next thing Osteen said was, "the only doorway 'the Enemy' has into your life is through your thinking"... in other words, that you can fight off the temptation to misbehave if you're in control of your thoughts, if you can stop them when they begin to go astray. It makes perfect sense, even if you take "the Enemy" out of the equation, which of course I do.
Osteen then touched on the value of belief, that "believing that good things will happen activates God's power" (he had quite a few repetitions of this idea of "activating power"), and then went on to say that, and this is a new one on me, "we give life to what we believe by what we say... when we verbalize a thought, it takes on new meaning"; that's a concept I'm going to have to spend some time pondering, because, although talking sends out energy and thus obviously has some influence, he's clearly seeing something more than that, and his intuitions about karma are so powerful that anything he suggests is, to my mind, automatically worth taking a look at.
And finally, we have; thinking about something "gives it more and more life," our thoughts are powerful and what we expect is powerful, and to have a "life of victory," you need a disciplined mind, and to "cast down wrong imaginations"... as good of a summary of the relation of thought to karma as any, although he of course wouldn't see it that way.
Your thoughts shape the course of your life; keep a positive mindset and focus on what you want, and amazing things will happen... and does it matter whether the ultimate source of that is karma or something else?
Osteen was still focusing on the power of thought in tonight's sermon. He said that fear and worry lead to a "negative frame of mind," which makes the connection between fear and negativity that's crucial to understanding why bad things happen to good people; in other words, you can be a virtual saint, but if you're fearful/anxious/worried that creates negative energy that draws negative things into your life. He made the repeated point that fear activates "the Enemy's" power and faith activates God's power; he said it just like that, as if we could tap directly into the power of these beings at will as easily as flipping a switch... and who knows, maybe we can (if they exist, which the jury is still out on due to lack of evidence). He tells us that we need to raise our "level of expectancy," because we get exactly what we're expecting; this appears in the Bible where Jesus said "According to your faith be it done unto you." Osteen believes this happens because "God meets us at the level of our expectations," but it's perfectly in agreement with my idea of karma, because if you're expecting something you're focusing energy in the shape of that thing, which tends to draw it to you.
He advises us to "call the things that are not as if they already were," which is a new one from him; intriguingly, this is what a variety of pagan and new-age belief systems say to do, and is essentially what the various visualization techniques try to do as well. He warns that "expecting the worst opens the door to trouble," that if you expect the worst, negative things begin to happen; it fascinates me endlessly that he makes these sorts of karmic proclamations when the standard idea of Christianity is that God is supposed to give you what you deserve, not what you expect or think about... and this is why I continue to watch Osteen religiously, as it were.
He got more intense about the idea of controlling one's thoughts; he asserts that you can have no access to God's power unless you discipline your mind, no "victory" unless you control your "thought life." I've become increasingly fanatical about not letting myself think about things that I don't want to call forth, and the idea that the power of karma (or whatever) might be available as a result of "disciplining" my mind is an appealing one, especially since I HAVE seen karma work more and more to my benefit the more I've channeled my mind into the "right" thoughts.
The next thing Osteen said was, "the only doorway 'the Enemy' has into your life is through your thinking"... in other words, that you can fight off the temptation to misbehave if you're in control of your thoughts, if you can stop them when they begin to go astray. It makes perfect sense, even if you take "the Enemy" out of the equation, which of course I do.
Osteen then touched on the value of belief, that "believing that good things will happen activates God's power" (he had quite a few repetitions of this idea of "activating power"), and then went on to say that, and this is a new one on me, "we give life to what we believe by what we say... when we verbalize a thought, it takes on new meaning"; that's a concept I'm going to have to spend some time pondering, because, although talking sends out energy and thus obviously has some influence, he's clearly seeing something more than that, and his intuitions about karma are so powerful that anything he suggests is, to my mind, automatically worth taking a look at.
And finally, we have; thinking about something "gives it more and more life," our thoughts are powerful and what we expect is powerful, and to have a "life of victory," you need a disciplined mind, and to "cast down wrong imaginations"... as good of a summary of the relation of thought to karma as any, although he of course wouldn't see it that way.
Your thoughts shape the course of your life; keep a positive mindset and focus on what you want, and amazing things will happen... and does it matter whether the ultimate source of that is karma or something else?
Sunday, August 21, 2005
An inexplicable emotional reaction
Here's something that I've never told anyone, that I'm so used to brushing aside as meaningless that I haven't ever contemplated that it might be meaningFUL until a couple of hours ago; I'm not entirely sure what made it stand out in my mind today, but my best guess is that perhaps the discussion I had with a friend about spiritual issues this evening got my mind working... or maybe it was just the right time for me to start thinking about this.
I was watching "Babylon 5" on DVD, and I'd gotten to the episode where the mysterious alien ambassador Kosh has to leave the "encounter suit" that he's hidden in for 2 seasons and show himself for the 1st time, in order to save Captain Sheridan; the encounter suit opens, light streams out, and we see that Kosh is... an angel. (Each witness sees him as a being of light, complete with white robe and wings, of their own species; a true masterstroke, even by the ultra-high standards of this brilliant series.) As soon as the angelic form is shown, and not even fully human in appearance yet, I got a lump in my throat and the prickling of tears behind my eyes... despite the fact that there's nothing remotely sad about what's going on, and, as I've seen this episode many times, I knew it was going to happen and had no cause to be surprised into getting carried away.
I remember the video for the song "Stranger in Town" by Toto, which, true to the lyrics
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/TOTO/Stranger-In-Town.html
suggests that a man being sought by the authorities is in fact Jesus; each time the video got to the point where the man, as he was being captured, spread out his arms in the "on the cross" position, I'd get that same reaction.
Every time I've read Ray Bradbury's classic short story "The Man," in which there is in fact a man (who's clearly supposed to be Jesus), one we never actually "see," who has brought love and peace and healing to the inhabitants of a planet and then supposedly gone, and gotten to the end, where the belligerent one of the astronauts has gone charging off trying to hunt "the man" down, and those members of the crew who chose to stay on the planet just to be in that aura of goodness are told that "the man" is in fact still there, waiting to meet them... I get the same reaction.
I was given no religious indoctrination as a child, spent most of my life as a hard-core atheist, and then a few years as an indifferent agnostic before branching out into what you might call non-mystical metaphysical agnosticism... so why, WHY, have I had these ridiculously intense reactions to certain types of fictional representations of Jesus (and occasionally angels) my entire life? Not to Bible stories, or philosophical discussions, or mentions in Joel Osteen's sermons, or any of the countless images I've seen over the years, but only in this sort of "Surprise!! It's Jesus/an angel here among the humans!!" storyline. WHY?
Any hard-core Christians among my readers will likely see this bizarre phenomenon as something like, "You know the truth, and that's why you have that reaction," and, while I'm not denying that it's a possibility, and freely admit that I can't come up with any other explanation, it just doesn't make sense that if I were having some sort of perception of God, Jesus, angels, whatever, that I'd get it via scifi stories and rock videos... does it?
Clearly, even in my most fervidly atheistic days, I was picking up on something, but what? WHAT? Is the important point in the stories that I react to that the "religious figure" is among us, but disguised or otherwise unseen? If so, that means... what, that I've encountered Jesus or angels in human form, or had them nearby, and that's why these sorts of stories resonate for me?
There just isn't an angle I can see to approach this by that doesn't sound crazy, but the feelings are THERE, so...
Whatever force is responsible for these feelings, please send me some enlightenment.
I was watching "Babylon 5" on DVD, and I'd gotten to the episode where the mysterious alien ambassador Kosh has to leave the "encounter suit" that he's hidden in for 2 seasons and show himself for the 1st time, in order to save Captain Sheridan; the encounter suit opens, light streams out, and we see that Kosh is... an angel. (Each witness sees him as a being of light, complete with white robe and wings, of their own species; a true masterstroke, even by the ultra-high standards of this brilliant series.) As soon as the angelic form is shown, and not even fully human in appearance yet, I got a lump in my throat and the prickling of tears behind my eyes... despite the fact that there's nothing remotely sad about what's going on, and, as I've seen this episode many times, I knew it was going to happen and had no cause to be surprised into getting carried away.
I remember the video for the song "Stranger in Town" by Toto, which, true to the lyrics
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/TOTO/Stranger-In-Town.html
suggests that a man being sought by the authorities is in fact Jesus; each time the video got to the point where the man, as he was being captured, spread out his arms in the "on the cross" position, I'd get that same reaction.
Every time I've read Ray Bradbury's classic short story "The Man," in which there is in fact a man (who's clearly supposed to be Jesus), one we never actually "see," who has brought love and peace and healing to the inhabitants of a planet and then supposedly gone, and gotten to the end, where the belligerent one of the astronauts has gone charging off trying to hunt "the man" down, and those members of the crew who chose to stay on the planet just to be in that aura of goodness are told that "the man" is in fact still there, waiting to meet them... I get the same reaction.
I was given no religious indoctrination as a child, spent most of my life as a hard-core atheist, and then a few years as an indifferent agnostic before branching out into what you might call non-mystical metaphysical agnosticism... so why, WHY, have I had these ridiculously intense reactions to certain types of fictional representations of Jesus (and occasionally angels) my entire life? Not to Bible stories, or philosophical discussions, or mentions in Joel Osteen's sermons, or any of the countless images I've seen over the years, but only in this sort of "Surprise!! It's Jesus/an angel here among the humans!!" storyline. WHY?
Any hard-core Christians among my readers will likely see this bizarre phenomenon as something like, "You know the truth, and that's why you have that reaction," and, while I'm not denying that it's a possibility, and freely admit that I can't come up with any other explanation, it just doesn't make sense that if I were having some sort of perception of God, Jesus, angels, whatever, that I'd get it via scifi stories and rock videos... does it?
Clearly, even in my most fervidly atheistic days, I was picking up on something, but what? WHAT? Is the important point in the stories that I react to that the "religious figure" is among us, but disguised or otherwise unseen? If so, that means... what, that I've encountered Jesus or angels in human form, or had them nearby, and that's why these sorts of stories resonate for me?
There just isn't an angle I can see to approach this by that doesn't sound crazy, but the feelings are THERE, so...
Whatever force is responsible for these feelings, please send me some enlightenment.
