letter to a friend: Transgression

Dear Screams,

It is eight o'clock and I am still suffering the effects of last night's revelry. Why did I go to a party full of late 20-somethings and drink like I was one of them? Was I trying to be inconspicuous? I think they probably noticed I wasn't a peer. Don't let the label fool you, "The Kraken" is not the sea monster from Icelandic folklore but instead is a onomatopoeiac warning describing how your head will feel the next morning after drinking it. This is what happens when you are a lonely person accepting invitations to parties from strangers.

Though only time will cure the cruda, I have at least removed the psychological component from this familiar experience by adopting a trick that eases my next day anxiety about possible manifestations of my disinhibition as stupidity, obnoxiousness or offensiveness. During the episode I periodically {about every twenty minutes} check in with my brain with the following survey question: "Are you doing or saying anything you'll regret right now?" If I find that I am, then I stop. If not, then I answer with an emphatic "no". The next morning when I think "oh crap, what the hell did I do"? I can refer to my mental checklist and feel comforted.

So why do I feel so bothered today? Guilt, I think, because I live the same way now that I've lived since I was in college. I have grown up in the sense that my thinking has evolved and my emotional maturity has increased, but life-style wise it's the same old thing. Not by choice. I go out into the world to quell my loneliness, and do this significantly less when I get what I need at home. Still, I would never be a homebody. I am a restless spirit drawn to measured iniquity. These characteristics are sealed in my brain's immutable rock, the progeny of the blank slate, an impenetrable foundation, not innate but formed in the first few years, months, weeks, days, hours or even minutes after and during the birth process. I have to listen to it.

I know, Screams, I promised I would embrace my loneliness, accept it as fate. I am trying, but the night falls so early now and my heart starts to beat like a drum, and then the churning in my chest: I call it the gerbil on a treadmill. It is a physical sensation, not a mental one. I cannot rest or concentrate even on tasks I usually enjoy like painting, knitting or baking. Some projects, like reading, writing and cartooning are less difficult because I can do them while being out in the world and through them I can imagine a world of good friends.

I must get back on schedule. Early to bed, early to rise will keep my flying right. I am planning to do some volunteering and regain my political activism soon. This will also make a difference. The party threw everything out of whack since I stayed up until four and slept until eleven. On the couch. My clothes scattered everywhere across the floor. My head Kracken open. My mental checklist at least releasing me from regret. Living as I did in college. It is not by choice, Screams. Not by choice.

Love, Lara

Oops

Here it is, the long awaited return of Approaching Zero. Perhaps it has been revived...or perhaps it is only taking its last futile gasp before expiring. Who knows? Apparently Squeak has a boyfriend now. I had no idea. Quite an interesting development but he appears to be a neurotic freak. You'd think she would have better judgment considering her cognitive capacity and I'm very surprised she has the time.


(For those of you that are not aware of this aspect of my artistic life, I have written over 100 of these, the last about five years ago. This one I created yesterday.)

letter to a friend...continued

Dearest Screams:

Today was rainy and warm, and my kitchen has been invaded by fruit flies hatching from the vermiculture bin. It may be the last breath of fall, so I celebrated with an extra long walk. Now, as I write to you, I am thoroughly soaked since I was ill-prepared for the weather.

Walking and thinking go nicely together. My thoughts jumped from car alarms to Christmas lights. From decomposition to rust. I listened to the news on my MP3 player for a while and thought I might detour my June Gypsy plans for a few months in Liberia volunteering as a nurse. I'd leave now but I started a new job, as you know, and I have my bridges to consider. The one's you aren't supposed to burn.

I reflected, also, on the people in my life, from the trivial to the significant. I thought of my day in orientation working with matter-of-fact Scotland, who is highly skilled at her craft of teaching new hires, and plain old Pillsby, the man who is my preceptor and who reminds me of a ball of lifeless white dough. His thinking is flabby and soulless and tells me everything I do is "great",  while Scotland finds a million errors and tells me how to correct them. Then says "good effort" with a sincere and encouraging smile.

As I walked along the patch of concrete, where a lone stroller's footsteps are preserved, defiantly deeper as they go, I thought of the Blasphemer, who initially drew my scattered attention to this observation. He had to return to his Hinterland alone, since he could not extract the essential oils he needed from our relationship. As my gaze turned to the shimmering silhouettes of naked trees I thought about the Mantid, who's unexpected flight has left behind a ghostly exoskeleton for me to puzzle over. The children's toys behind the streaked windows of closed shops reminded me of my inaccessible childhood conducted by my parents, who sent me off to the school of life, my Pandora's lunchbox packed with insecurity and anxiety. I am still sitting on the steps after every one else has gone home, waiting for them to return.

But, Screams, you know, as I ponder these relationships I realize how, despite the lingering impatience and anxiety that plagues me almost constantly, my heart in regards to others has become less damaged. There was a time it was a gaping wound, reopened over and over, purulent, bleeding, swollen, painful, but now, it has healed up quite nicely, with no callous scars. What is my evidence? In the past I would have wrung my hands over Pillsby's incompetent tutelage and I would have begged the Blasphemer to put aside his own feelings in order to nourish mine, and I would have chased after the Mantid, and I would have yearned irrationally for my parents to come pick me up.

Today, however, I just shrug and say "okay", I accept, this is what I have to work with. If these people have malnourished me in one way or another, I will just have to find another source of food. I will keep my attention on the dwindling supply of moments I have left on this floating rock, beneath the stars that surround it, among the hungry life that swallows it and marvel at the existence of my feet, which enable me to walk upon it. I will no longer worry, and beg and chase and yearn. Inaction is not always passivity, more often it is strength.

Well, except maybe in the case of Pillsby. I think he'll have to go.

Goodnight, Screams.

letter to a friend part IV

Good Morning Screams,

This day finds me behind schedule getting off to the grind. I had a slight reprieve from the isolation last night and saw some old friends (I can't believe I've lived in the Arch City long enough to have old friends). We listened to a wonderful concert for Ferguson businesses. I dreamt of music and showers and that I was bathed in some sort of light that made my veins appear as though they were outside my body and had graceful parasitic worms swimming in them. Obviously, the music was a hold-over from the night's events and the infected external vasculature a manifestation of my omnipresent anxiety. I don't know why I'm dreaming about showers but I think I'm mildly irritated with my present choices. All of the showers in my life are evidently suffering from malaise and simply do not leave one feeling very refreshed. A hard shower would do my dreary soul some good. The cats help with their irrepressible ebullience.

Anyway, the expectations are nipping at my toes like a winter wind forcing me inside. I will write soon.

Love, Lara.

letter to a friend: part III

Dear Screams,

So I managed to get up before the sun so now I am settling in to write you a letter and then I must turn in my final grades for that class I told you about. I'm tempted to give all of my students an "A" just to buck the system because I'm fairly irked at systems in general these days and the ubiquitous Christmas music is stirring rebellion in my brain since it feels like a happy pill being shoved down my melancholy throat without my consent.

Yes, it is true, as I have said that I am finally positively alone. Rosalind is busy with family, the Blasphemer is exacting cruel punishment on me for my fastidious heart and, lastly, The Mantid has scurried off into the horizon, leaping entire branches in his haste to make distance. I think he thought I might bite off his head when I only wished to copulate. Anyway, these are my kindred spirits and they are unavailable. Loneliness by circumstance, not choice, since likewise I didn't choose to be introverted or scrupulous.

Last night I dreamt of travel, airplanes and strangers' beds. These are restless dreams since my alienation has set me to pacing the cage. I am browsing RVs and school busses and making calendars to mark the days to my departure from this failed experiment with the Arch City: vowing to perform at least one task a day towards the goal. I had the opportunity to leave so many times and then something would pull me back in. This time I'm not falling for schemes.

The trip is scheduled for June. Where I will go is still uncertain, but living on the fringe is appealing to me: with few modern conveniences and an outsider's view. Time to create which is my calling. Not nursing or teaching or waitressing or giving my tacit approval by participating in the absurd capitalist nightmare America has become.

If I must be lonely then I must accept it as my fate and embrace it whole-heartedly. As an agnostic, Screams, you know I don't believe in such nonsense, but this trajectory has taken on the appearance of fate, since I have fought it so doggedly and trained myself so thoroughly to eke out an existence within the system only to keep landing on my back with a bloody sword lodged in my chest.

Sorry, Screams, for the darkness this morning. I will regain my strength, only this time I will train myself not in the weapons of survival in this endless war, but instead to run fast, away from the battlefield entirely.

Do not listen to sages, but only to your own voice, says Emerson...a sage.  

Love, Lara.

letter to a friend part II

Dear Screams,

There are people who are born to be lonely, then there are people that have loneliness thrust upon them. I am of the latter camp since, despite what I said in my last letter, I am, in fact, social and quite a nice person to be around. But I am always alone and quite tired of it, actually. I mean, tonight...tonight, what did I do? I went to the gym, which was nice, because I was really angry and was able to sustain extra time on the fucking stair stepper and my MP3 player really made a difference getting me pumped up with the classical music and all. Then I went home and did some stupid shit around the house. Then I went to the book store and bought "Plutarch: The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives" because I'm somehow obsessed with the purity of Athens, living, as I do, in a failed, fake, farce of a democracy with a failed, fake, farce of a monotheistic religion at its core. I sat for a while and gazed at the beautiful paintings in a book about the Louvre, pausing specifically on Leonardo, because its so dark and lovely. Then I went to the Stone Spiral and read about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (AKA TORTURE), and then a little about  Romulus and Theseus and listened to some dude play maudlin songs on a piano. Then I went home. And here I am, writing to you, Screams.  I've decided I'm going to start going to bed early and getting up WAY early, you know, like 4:00. I'm more productive in the morning. At night I just tend to pace and drink and think too much. In the morning I'll pay my bills, maybe do some painting, reading, cleaning, listening to political radio, cook, etc. But this is not the life I wanted, Screams. Not at all. I never asked for this life. I'm facing Christmas and New Years alone. I have acquaintances that invite me places but they all have real lives, with kids and spouses and the like. I saw a dude tonight I always see walking around alone and I think "that guy wants to be alone". My friend The Blasphemer from the Hinterland wants to be alone. The loners I know WANT to be alone. I don't. I just have to be alone. I am in the best shape of my life, beautiful and daring and confident and ready to splash into the world with lust and adventure and the people around me are like fragile ballerinas in a jewelry box worn out and winding down while the world just wants to strap me with its chains.

I don't know what to do.

Anyway, I'm going to bed. Early. I'll write to you in the morning.

letters to a friend: part I

Dear Screams,

Well, I officially have no one to talk to now except for you and my best friend Rosalind who lives far away and my cats who don't speak my language. That's alright. Who needs human companionship? I've decided to denounce humans all together as pathetically weak at best and pathetically evil at worst, and I'm fully siding with nature in that eternal war. And, by the way, when I sat down with nature to go over the details of our alliance, we decided that we're taking music with us. Humans can't have music despite being its creator. Music, nature and me against the rest of humanity sans Rosalind who I'll accept as neutral. Alright, were taking wine, too.

Fine! So, I'm too nice of a person to become outright hostile. Crawling into a hole is more my style. I know operation drop out was supposed to start a few months ago but I got side-tracked by hope: a teaching job that has now ended. So, operation drop-out is now back in full swing. I only have to fake it just a little bit longer in order to support my nasty food and shelter habit. Today I've started practicing, though, by purchasing a disconnection device. I think it's called an MP3 player but I was never good at identifying different species of horrible technologies. I've found it really helps to keep one firmly embedded in one's own head. The apathetic traffic doesn't seem so contemptible when Mahler is blasting in your ear. Tearing apart the turtle-lynching holes of a plastic six-pack holder that some asshole left on the pavement is much more dramatic during a Brahms symphony. Yes, despite my rock n roll roots lately I've just been blasting the classical.

Look, Screams, it wasn't my choice. I tried to operate in this farcical tragedy of errors that humans call technological progress or civilization or whatever, but I just keep getting shit upon. I can't do it any more. I'm tired. I was cursed with a recalcitrant brain that just wants to sense and feel and love and create all of the time. I've had it with human indifference and human frailty. To this end, I guess I was fortunate enough not to be born into abject poverty or a warzone, but unfortunate enough to be born into a society that doesn't seem to value the things that I value.

 I have to go find my home.

I'll keep you posted, Screams.

Love, Lara.

ApproachingZero:Get a Life!

t

The fable of the field

 

In the morning the field was asleep,

Crickets hummed, but only just enough.

The tune was captured by the lull of steady wind

Massaging the whispering tufts

Of grass.

 

The humble frogs hardly boasted

The dragonflies dawdled and swayed

Occasionally flicking their fragile wings

And dreaming of more dormant days

They rested on their tender reeds.  

 

The chrysalis blended with the blossoms

The butterflies preferring to linger before they flew

Patiently pressing relaxed quantities

Of their metamorphic dew.

Into thick drops.

 

The bees buzz was muted,

As the popping bubbles of the lazy creek

They paused on comfortable petals

Sipping a sumptuous treat

From a bloom.

 

 

The eastern sun illuminated an immense form in the distance,

It was you.

You were singing and waving furiously,

Stomping with thudding boots.

Towards the snoozing field that curiously

Opened one wary eye

And watched you come closer.

As you approached your wild arms whipped up a wind

So powerful that the grass thrashed like a frenzied loom

Shaking off the butterflies.

Tossing them from their blooms,   

They rose together like a cloud of steam in revelation

As if from a boiling kettle,

Elated by their elevation.

Into the noonday sun.  

 

The song sent sharp ripples across the pond

The frogs pumped up their balloons

Then broke into obstreperous chorus

Matching your frequency with tunes

In harmony.

 

The dragonflies tumbled from their bouncing reeds,

Righted themselves in midair,

Discovered their wings were fashioned for speed,

And took off in daring flight

The disturbance prodded the crickets

To pull their forewings tight

Grinding them forcefully.

The bees swarmed together

To compete with the ruckus

Of the suddenly turbid creek.

 

 Just before sunset you reached the western edge,

Your formidable shadow smothered the churning grass.  

First depleting its color,

Then the giant boot came down with a smash  

Snapping the cricket’s tender bows.

Broken stalks stuck in the tread as it rose

And smashed again.

 

The blow splashed the water out of the pond,

Drenching the butterflies,

Their heavy, soaked wings sent them plummeting to the earth,

Their paper bodies

Dissolved in the dirt.

 

The suffocating frogs flapped feebly

Along the cracked crevices of the thirsty hole.

The dried bed littered with desiccated bees

The dragonflies lost their orientation

Flinging themselves upon the parched stones.

You left the field without looking back,

Then, now whistling, marched over the hill,

And who knows why?

You were swallowed up

By the black curtain sky.

The Hedonists

Where are all the hedonists?
Hiding in the urban weeds?
Lashing their flesh with prickles and
Stinging nettles
Desire numbed by humming bees.

Are they stuck in the suburbs?
Squeezed by the narrow sphincters
Of the properly engaged
Sterilizing themselves with
Lawnmower blades.

Are they holed up in the mountains?
Weathered faces whittled like stakes
They pound the frozen land
Until it breaks
Her curves held tightly in her wintery hands.

This spirit sprints across an empty beach
Collapses on her back
Unable to catch her breath
Fiddling with her broken straps,
Then she moves along through the night alone
Wondering where the hedonists
Have gone.

living is the new lazy

"Um, excuse me, ma'am, I'm, um, over there folding laundry and, well, the problem is that there is this guy on the television who is, um, s-screaming at me t-to buy his vacuum cleaner, and, um, I'm just wondering if there is anyway I can, um, change the channel?"

 

"No, ma'am"

 

"T-there's no way to change the channel?"

 

"No, ma'am."

 

"W-well, then can we at least turn it down?"

 

"No, ma'am."

 

"Okay. How about off?"

 

She gives me a look that says "lady, you've gone to far" and I walk away laughing at the absurdity of a television without any controls, like a house without doors, or a plate with no bottom. I return to my cramped corner, wedged between the walls of spinning dryers, surrounded by churning sounds, the repetitive mechanical music from the video games, the tuneless singing of a restless child as he plays vigorously with a joystick, the thud of a coke popping out of a vending machine, all of it enveloped by the booming voice of the excited, screaming bald man on the television above me. There is no escape. I cower as I try to focus on getting the job done as quickly as possible, folding sloppily, my auditory senses under assault, an electric autonomic storm. I am tempted to rip my socks apart or search through the garbage for dryer lint: anything to stuff into my ears. I am, in short, freaking out.

 

 I feel like a stranger in a strange land as I look around at the patrons, their faces pensive as they calmly fold their clothing. Nobody seems bothered by the loud, incessant infomercial, rendered even more obnoxious when it fades out, seeming as though it will finally end, only to return for another round, another phase, now a brisk, sensible sounding woman with very nice clavicles insisting that a person should clean the area behind her stove and refrigerator more often because, let's face it, it's GROSS.  "I don't really care," I mutter bitterly and at least one person smiles.

 

Emboldened by this hint of camaraderie I am tempted to say more. I am tempted to throw down my underwear, seize the television woman by her petite cashmere sweater and blast at her the assertion that I clean that particular spot in my apartment once and only once: when I move out! If I move out in a year I'll clean it then! If I move out in ten years, I'll clean it then! If I die in this apartment, it will not get done! I do not need a special tool to do this: another piece of plastic that will wind up someday in the throat of an albatross or the gut of a whale! I'll simply move the stove and the refrigerator out from the wall, utter a few obligate phrases of surprise like "Oh, THAT'S where that went to", or "my god that's gross!" and get busy with a few old fashion tools that have served me well: a rag, a broom, vinegar, maybe a paint scraper if I've lived there long enough. These items work just fine and they always have, they always will! When is it going to occur to you people that more is almost always less: less time, less money, less fulfillment, you name it. The more you have, the more miserable you are!

 

This, of course, is the source of my rage. A feeling that my country's quality of life is eroding away because the capitalists and their wily minions have conned us into believing that we need things, in the process, robbing us of what really counts. This feeling becomes more pronounced with each passing year, for some reason usually around the receding Christmas season. They've been doing it so long and with such careful calculation I feel like the acclimating frog in a pot of boiling water, we've barely even noticed how ridiculous it has become: the rewards and the points and the holiday decorations, and the endless renovation projects and updates and oh god, whatever else we are bombarded with, as though we should be spending all of our time shopping, looking for deals, and no time actually living our lives. 

It seems to me that the main defense of industrialism is that it brings us more leisure time when in fact it enslaves us, keeping us always in a frenzy of business, and always producing as much toxic waste as possible. The Christmas season the best example, but all year round the television tells us insidious lies: that a good mother is a stressed mother, that a good family provides lots of gadgets and plastic toys for their children, that a carpet is a beautiful, pristine place to roll around on and not a nasty petri dish that makes cleaning a nightmare, that the human body smells bad and therefore needs to be slathered in carcinogens every day, that the sensory experience of making and drinking coffee in the morning is a total hassle, an inconvenient means to the goal, which is, of course, getting to work.

 

Think about it, people. It's the other way around.

 

Maybe nobody buys any of it. Maybe everyone's a cynic like me, or they are better at ignoring it, but it appears to me if it wasn't working, the capitalist machine would not try to mold the American soul with such precision. They've obviously done the research. They know that people doing crazy dances is the best way to get our attention: a habit extending back to the lure of the village dance, once telling us stories and strengthening community ties, now selling us everything from hamburgers to packing boxes. They have the power to manipulate with neuroscience on their side. They know that humans are visual and emotional. If they have enough people in their commercials looking content as they ride their bicycles through the park, watching their child play in the sandbox, arranging flowers, having a loving moment with their spouse, that the list of gory side-effects droning on in the background will not register.

 

To the capitalists I say this: I have dodged you. You haven't sucked me into your culture of death where nature is the enemy. I know what matters. Time, love, trees, animals, friendship, art, music, serenity, knowledge, health: things you cannot package in a piece of Styrofoam. Dirty is clean. A giant immaculate house is a dirty house, polluting the air and water. A beautiful yard is a wild yard full of flowers and beasts, like Eden. Stress is not good for my body and I refuse to be busy. I will not live to work and I will not feel guilty about not giving meaningless gifts. Every event does not need to be celebrated in the company of metallic balloons that sea turtles mistake for jellyfish. I know how to express love without these things.

 

And I will not clean the area behind my stove and refrigerator until I move out. Take that you capitalist swines.

Approaching Zero: Double Dog FIRED!

 

ApproachingZero: Snevermore!

 

 

Approaching Zero: Intro

Since the sad and mysterious demise of blog/band Graveyard Soup that used to publish witty and gritty political commentary as well as publish my surly and burly cartoon "Approaching Zero" , I have decided to start posting episodes here, especially since I haven't been sufficiently pissed off enough lately to rant about anything. In fact, if you asked me to rant about something now I'd probably rant about how there just isn't enough time to appreciate the unique patterns and colors of each autumn leaf. Sigh.

Approaching Zero was a cartoon I created from 2001-2010 when my life was total shit and I needed some friends. Follow the adventures of Divi, Kurtz, Squeak, Finn, Flo and the mice as they navigate the utterly baffling and surreal world of the working poor in America with some math thrown in for good measure (the square root of 15 joules per second per gallon squared to be exact).

Gig's Disclaimer: any resemblance between Divi and anyone you might know who sometimes wears a similar Absolom Absolom t-shirt and have a fondness for cats and bugs and plants and seems to have a science background is probably coincidental.
 

Approaching Zero: Tuffet Doc

One Long Death

It took some time to notice,
That Barbarism had died.
Its Guts strewn across the beheader’s blade
A stench on the breath of its abandoned knaves.
Since the earth quaked as it thudded to the ground.
Chunks of its body cast long, dark shadows all around.
Slaves crushed by the remnants of its chains.
Masters tending wounds with its poisonous remains.

Love, no longer weep and cower and
Come out of from its shadows.
This is your age.

Playing God

I killed him with comfort measures.
Zipping white crisp plastic over grey sullen skin.

I knew it was what he wanted
Since he was too restless to sleep
And we stayed up all night together
Exploring options.

I rested my hand on his chest to ease his respirations
And delivered his last dose of morphine
No ghosts or gods attended
Just a series of lasts
Then a limp, heavy body to turn cold in patches

So I held his hand before checking for sure
Giving him one minute more.

From the bottom: The Patient in Room Twelve

I answered the call-light from my patient in hospital room twelve. As usual, she was perched on the side of the bed obediently waiting even though she was capable of ambulating herself. At ninety-one she was sharp and spry, but she had been told to call the nurse and so she was complying, going along to get along, not the kind to rock the boat. I accompanied her as she shuffled slowly but steadily to the bathroom. She was just another person without a real reason for being in the hospital. Just "waiting for placement" it's called.

She looked up at me from the toilet and smiled. I smiled back. After a few moments, I noticed she was sobbing.

"What's the matter?" I asked her, caught off guard by the display of emotion. So far, she'd always been chipper.

"I-I-I c-c-can't g-go th-th-th ere."

"Can't go where? To the Rehabilitation facility?"

"Y-y-yes. I-I've been there. I-I know what it's like."

I sighed as I watched her cry openly, stuttering as she spoke. I rubbed her warm, bony back and listened attentively. She continued like this for hours while I pecked around my brain for appropriate responses, trying to remember the rules of therapeutic communication: Don't offer solutions, just listen and empathize, encourage self-expression. But, as my weightless, hollow replies faded fast in the face of the hard truth she was speaking, I could eventually only nod my head in solidarity.

"You're right," I said. Then I found myself offering drugs.

Naturally, I've faced this intractable situation many times before. The elderly often are not honest with their families since they don't want to "be a burden". They go along to get along; they don't want to rock the boat. But they feel comfortable talking to me and I have nothing to offer except a warm hand, platitudes, and Ativan. If I were religious I could offer them god. But there is one thing I definitely can't tell them: that it will "be okay".

But when I think about the situation more deeply I find myself roiling. Why can't I? What is the reason for this iniquity we unleash on the elderly in the last stages of their lives? Most of us say we would rather be "sent out to sea on a block of ice" or drink a "suicide cocktail" than face the sterile inhumanity of the dreaded nursing home. We promise our families we "won't put them there". Yet we do, time after time, because, in the end, it's the only practical choice.

The industry representatives call these perceptions "myths" and insist that care these days is "patient-centered" and "holistic": the decorative phrases of the day, hung loosely on the ugly reality of the cost-effective status-quo. No doubt, there have been some modest cosmetic alterations, and for the rich and/or the lucky there may be some enlightened options, but anyone who has visited or worked in the average nursing home recently, it is obvious that society hasn't made meaningful changes.

This is a national crisis, a human rights issue. This is not just something that needs some minor adjustment. It requires full-fledged balls-to-the wall reform.

...And don't blame the overworked, underpaid staff. The most pressing problem is that nursing homes are still structured as warehouses where inconvenient people are sent to die. The last thing most of us desire is to feel useless and forgotten, yet this is how we treat the elderly and infirm members of our society. The alienating and isolating warehouse mentality that persists is apparent in the design and day to day operations of most of these facilities.

So how do we change it? I think that the analysis of this problem is best approached through examining how most nursing homes manage the private/public dichotomy of space. The preferred private/public ratio is unique to each individual, but most of us require a bit of both. These facilities get things backwards. They isolate when they should be integrating and integrate when they should be isolating.

I'll explain what I mean.

With respect to the private space, most nursing homes integrate. That is, they force people to share. Anyone who's ever lived with another person knows, this arrangement always puts stress on a person since compromises and sacrifices must be made, but for an infirm person, the assault on solitude is extreme, since they can never escape it, and the anxiety it induces persistent. This is why private rooms should be the rule rather than the exception. It wouldn't require much to accommodate this, since a private room doesn't have to be large or elaborate, just a room of one's own.

But, of course, this is an obvious and easy alteration of the current structure: the real innovation should be in the public sphere, where nursing homes isolate when they should be integrating. Oh, I know, the bingo games, meal-time, movie night, but these social activities are merely contrived distractions; they do little to stimulate the mind, or make a person feel "useful". The person remains separated. They are separated from nature, separated from the staff, separated from society.

Would it take much to change this? Here's one suggestion: operate the nursing home as a business where residents can participate in some shared goal commensurate with their interest and ability. Make the product tangible and relevant. Make the nursing home into a day-care center, a bakery, a soup kitchen, a shelter for stray animals, a garden, a book store, a bar. Who cares if it takes a person two hours to pick a tomato or shred some lettuce or shelve a book or read a story to a child, or feed a cat or make a Singapore Sling. That's not the point. And don't do it once a month, or once a week, or once a year, make it the center of nursing home life. Don't force it on people. If they'd rather sit around and do nothing, or that's all they can do, at least they'll be in a stimulating, sensory environment full of soft fur, the laughter of children or the baking of bread. This is real patient-centeredness. This is real holistic care.

The bottom line is this: as a nurse, I want to be able to look at the patient in room twelve in the eye and say "yes, it is going to be okay," and mean it. Patients, families and caregivers facing this situation shouldn't be tormented with guilt and anxiety when this inevitable problem rears its terrible head. We should, instead, feel assured that the place our loved-one is going is doing much more than maximizing safety: it is providing a truly desirable place to live.

Guerilla Science II

A Mock Scientific Article with some Serious Stuff In It About Exciting New Things Like a Cure for IBS and Fibromyalgia

by Lara Samuels RN BSN MS IBS EBM (Economist Beekeeper Musician) and GLMEWD (General Loud Mouth Especially when Drunk)

Abstract:

Semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower.
Elementary penguin singing Hari Krishna.
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.
I am the egg man, they are the egg men.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob g'goo goo g'joob.
Goo goo g'joob g'goo goo g'joob g'goo

(Lennon, 1967)

Introduction:

Around the late nineties when the majority of Americans began cowering in fear from the dangerous rays of the sun (Samuels, 2002), and therefore started regularly slathering obscene amounts of sunscreen on themselves after bathing with carcinogenic hygiene products (Samuels, 2014), and then hopping in their carcinogenic convertibles and heading to the Tobacco Festival (Samuels, 2014), we have been suffering from Vitamin D deficiencies higgely piggely (People & People, 21st century). Highly correlated to this phenomenon (See Figure One Way to Rock) is the rise in two particular vague complaints by Forty-something women. The first, characterized by mysterious digestive problems is called "IBS" (a term cooked up to provide these silly women with a diagnosis so they'll shut up and to ensure that pharmaceutical companies and other snake oil salesmen will have the opportunity to take advantage of their desperation. Besides, they might still qualify as sex objects so they shouldn't be farting), and the second, characterized by generalized body pain is called "fibromyalgia" (a term cooked up also to provide these silly women with a diagnosis so that they'll shut up and to ensure that pharmaceutical companies and other snake oil salesmen will have the opportunity to take advantage of their desperation. Besides, most of these women have been through childbirth and therefore have no idea what pain really is).

                                                       Figure One Way to Rock

These two diagnoses send young doctors of any gender and older male doctors (since older female doctors are suffering from the same thing) into fits of lapsing professionalism as they shove the offending female out of their offices with pockets full of Oxycontin, Lyrica, Linzess, or whatever the hell else they are getting kick-backs for and hope that the woman never returns: Unless she has a Pulmonary Embolism or a Myocardial Infarction or Transient Ischemic Attack or something more understandable (Samuels, 2012).

However, after noticing a relationship between exposing herself to more sunlight and a vast improvement in her own IBSish and fibromyalgiaish symptoms, not to mention a year-old blood test that indicated that she was, in fact, Vitamin D deficient, this intrepid anti-researcher found a couple of articles on-line that got her thinking (Artaza and Norris, 2008) (Dickson and Maher, 1985) (Ianino etal, 2012) (Sprott, Mueller and Heine, 1998): "Gee, if I weren't so lazy and I could do some actual science I might design an experiment to see if most of what women like me are suffering from is actually a Vitamin D deficiency causing excess collagen to build up in the connective tissues lining the skin and gut {since the gut is basically skin on the inside} leading to pain and poor digestion."

So, that's my hypothesis. Shall I repeat it? A lack of Vitamin D causes excess collagen production leading to the symptoms of IBS and Fibromyalgia...and for some reason peri-menopausal women are more susceptible but who knows why. I mean, estrogen and vitamin D are both steroids, so maybe there's a connection there.

Methods:

Methods? What?! I don't have any methods! I made 1300 ml of really bad coffee, read a few credible looking articles and then drew wild conclusions from them based on my pre-existing patchy knowledge of biology and my own recent experience. I then decided to write a mock scientific article because it's fun to write a blog-post this way.

However, I will use this section to make a confession: I've always hated the fucking methods section. I mean, yes, I know, methods are important so people can see how you did the experiment and look for reasons to call you a hack and/or repeat the experiment which they never do (Hinterland, 2014). But boy, what a pain in the ass. The dullest part of the dullest part of science, I say.

Results:

Article #1: Artaza and Norris: Vitamin D reduces the expression of collagen, increases the expression of "anti-fibrotic factors" (things that normally reduce the expression of collagen and other things that look like fibers under a microscope) and decreases the expression of "pro-fibrotic factors (things that normally increase the expression of collagen and other things that look like fibers under a microscope). Incidentally, these "factors" like pro-TGF (Thank God its Friday factor) and anti-TNF (Thank Norse Gods that its Friday factor) are also related to the process of inflammation that occurs when you stick a needle in your finger. By mistake or on purpose. Depending on how sick and/or clutzy you are.

Bottom Line: Vitamin D decreases collagen and may be related to inflammation.

Article #2: Dickson and Maher: Vitamin D increases Collagen resorption (entry into the blood) and decreases its synthesis.

Bottom Line: Vitamin D decreases collagen.

Article #3: Ianino, G, etal: There is this thing called "Microsocopic Colitis" where people poop 10-15 times a day but there is no obvious cause (like there is with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases) until one examines the tissue and one notices that there is a lot of collagen there. I assume that their continuous pooping also involves bloating, abdominal pain, and farting, much like IBS.

Bottom Line: Excess deposits of collagen can cause digestive disturbances like those of IBS.

Article #4: Sprott, Mueller and Heine: Oh, they said it best: "Decreased levels of collagen cross-linking may contribute to remodeling of the extracellular matrix..." {one of my personal favorite biology phrases, it just means the shit that the cells are embedded it} "...and collagen deposition around the nerve fibers in fibromyalgia and contribute to the lower pain threshold at the tender points."

Bottom Line: Excess deposits of collagen can cause pain like that experienced by people with Fibromyalgia.

Grand Bottom Line:

If Vitamin D decreases collagen, then maybe a lack of it increases collagen leading to its deposition in the skin and gut and causing both IBS, Fibromyalgia, and who knows what else considering its association with inflammation as well (other auto-immune disorders?).

Discussion:

Holy shit, I think I fixed myself. I've gotta say, though, one probably can't get enough Vitamin D by taking a supplement (Samuels, 2014), I gather that one has to go out in the scary sun without that slippery stuff one likes to slather on oneself. Why? I mean, the fact that people are scared of the FUCKING SUN, the provider of all that is, in the first place is related to our pathology as a society (Samuels, 2014). I know it causes skin cancer and skin cancer is as serious as, well, skin cancer, but really? Thirty minutes a day?

Look, let's look at the facts and then not reference them. First, Vitamin D is a very unique vitamin because, unlike all of the other vitamins, there are very few foods that contain it naturally (People & People, 19th or 20th century) yet it is so important that almost every cell in the body contains receptors for it (People & People, 21st century) and it is linked to the processes I mentioned plus other processes that I'm sure are to come since we are probably just hitting the tip of the iceberg when it comes to nutrition (Samuels, 2014) or that we already know but I'm too lazy today to find out about.

You go out in the sun and your skin starts making Vitamin D. The Sun has been there since Huitzilopochtli and his friends decided to attack the sea monster Cipactli, and this was long before they decided to sacrifice a god and create man and woman from the god's blood (Aztecs, 12th-15th century). Given all these facts, doesn't it make sense that we evolved to get it this way and NOT orally?

Okay, taking a supplement probably won't hurt (though it might since almost everything is poisonous in large quantities and this is a fat soluble vitamin, which just means you store it in your body and don't piss it out.). But the sun is the key. Try it. See if your generalized pain, inflammation, weird lumps under your skin, bloating, etc. stops. I'd give it a month or two.

**Read the bloody References since they are part of the essay.

References


Artaza, J. and K. Norris (2008). Vitamin D reduces the expression of collagen and key profibrotic factors by inducing an artifibrotic phenotype in mesencymal multipotent cells. Journal of Endocrinology. bloghttp://joe.endocrinology-journals.org/content/200/2/207.abstractence

Aztecs, The (12th to 15th Century). Myths translated from some kind of codex or the writings of bloodthirsty Conquistadors

Dickson, I. R., and P.M. Maher (1985). The influence of vitamin D metabolites of collagen synthesis by chick cartilage in organ culture. Journal of Endocrinology. http://joe.endocrinology-journals.org/content/105/1/79.abstract

Hinterland, Blasphemer from the (2014). Random facts based on reading the headlines and first line of all kinds of crap. Pineapple Studios Non-Publications.

Ianino, G etal. (2012) Microscopic Colitis. World Journal of Gastroenterology. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3501768/

Lennon, John and Perhaps Paul McCartney. (1967). I am the Walrus.

People, Multiple and Credible People (18th - 21st century). We actually base our conclusions on science and don't just pull stuff out of our ass or make up myths. Multiple Credible Publications.

Samuels, Lara (2010-2012). Speculations, Observations, Imaginations, Inferences, and Personal Experiences drawn from a life on earth interacting with humans and being generally curious about the world. Dead Bee Farms Pseudo-Publications.

Sprott, H., Mueller, A., and H. Heine (1998). Collagen cross links in Fibromyalgia Syndrome. Z Rhematology. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10025083.


Addendum:

I think it's strange that the link has been made between vitamin D and collagen (See articles cited above)

...and the link has been made between collagen and fibromyalgia and at least one digestive disorder that seems like an extreme version of IBS. (See articles cited above)

And, the link has been made between vitamin D and fibromyalgia/IBS (See articles cited below)


Article 1: This first article makes the link between taking vitamin D and the easing of fibromyalgia symptoms:

http://www.painjournalonline.com/article/S0304-3959(13)00541-1/abstract

Article 2: This second article makes the link between taking vitamin D and the easing of IBS symptoms:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23239770

But STILL everyone says "there is no known cause" for IBS/Fibromyalgia. What about COLLAGEN DEPOSITS CAUSED BY A LACK OF VITAMIN D? It seems pretty obvious to me that this is a VERY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION.

Once again, I am not promoting supplements. Supplements can be toxic in large amounts and probably aren't the best way to get it anyway. I'm promoting sun exposure. You don't have to take a pill, you don't have to go to the doctor, just make it part of your daily routine to go out in the sun for 30 minutes without sunscreen on in shorts and a tee-shirt, and if it's too cold, cloudy, don't worry, Vitamin D is stored in your fat cells so you should be okay.

Living Rage

What is a living wage in America? I'd define it this way: if a person is wasting her precious time and probably jeopardizing her health forty long, horrible hours a week, that person should be compensated with enough dough to meet all of her expenses comfortably and have a decent amount left over for discretionary spending/saving. It's that simple. I don't care if she’s packing French fries or cleaning up vomit, what she does is important to society and probably amounts to a soulless hell: physically taxing, emotionally draining or both. She deserves just compensation.

Job creators and their duped apologists of the lesser classes forget: while those who are lucky enough to be in a position to create jobs (and, yes, it's usually luck, or they are rich already) are necessary, the people that do the jobs, let's call them the "Job Doers" are also necessary. You see, it's a mutualistic relationship, not a parasitic one as the free market fundamentalists would have you believe. For some reason, those who divide the world into makers and takers leave out the doers, the category where most of us belong.

There is no doubt: labor is deeply undervalued, but coming up with a wage that reflects its value is a challenging task. All of the existing methods of determining this are too abstract or absurd to have any representation in what I like to call the "real world". It is for this reason that I have decided to step up to the plate in order to develop a more rational method: Lara Samuels's Super-duper Living Wage Calculation. And how did I come up it? Am I a qualified economist? No! But unlike the millionaires who make decisions for working people even though they have no clue what things actually cost: I have spent most of my life when I’m not asleep actually living in the real world.

For those of you who hear the word "calculation" and run for the hills because you failed Algebra and hated all of your math teachers except for that one guy you had in college who spoke with a Queen's accent and totally changed your opinion of math when he said “math was discovered, not created”, rest assured: This formula is incredibly easy to understand and uses numbers with nice, round zeros. There are no Greek letters in this formula. There are no constants except maybe one: it’s called sense.

Here it is:

Shelter + Bills + Food + Everything Else = A living wage. Got it? Let’s break it down.

1. Shelter = ($1,000).

Yes, rents vary wildly from place to place, but this is a nice average. Besides, part of Lara Samuels's Super-duper Living Wage Calculation is to leave wiggle room. If the crime rate where you live isn't all that important to you because you are a very angry man with rippling muscles and veins the size of sausages sticking out of your neck, or you're lucky enough to find a nice pad that is only $500, or you have a roommate, then, by all means, use the difference to save for a rainy day, or that vibrating weight set you've been wanting, or spend it now on a really nice bottle of expensive whiskey or dance lessons for your kid. More than likely, though, unless you are living with your parents and paying no rent at all, you’d be shelling out what you might save in this department to variable #2 (coming up). Don’t worry, though, Lara Samuels believes that if one is getting a “living wage”, one should be “living”; and by living I don’t mean not dead, I mean enjoying oneself occasionally. Variable #4 will take this into account.

2. Bills = ($1,000):

For simplicity, this includes anything that is not really optional that one has to pay for every month: Gas, electricity, water, sewage, student loans, laundry, health care, media, communication, transportation, insurance, etc. Also, I’d include all that pesky nickel and diming stuff that goes on in the world of the working class: fee-fees, stamps, oil changes, taxes, unexpected events like a broken window or a parking ticket, etc.

3. Food = ($500):

...And when I say food I’m not talking Twinkie. I'm talking about what Michael Pollan calls "food": You know, healthy stuff that humans have been eating for thousands of years and that doesn’t lead to expensive, long term health problems like heart disease and Type II diabetes. By all means, if you’re like my good friend "The Blasphemer from the Hinterland" and you are such an ectomorph that you can live off one meal a day consisting of Ramen noodles, peanut butter and wonder bread, and you’d rather spend your money on electric guitars, then you have A LOT of wiggle room here. However, I think healthy eating should at least be an option for the working class person. He shouldn't be forgoing fresh vegetables because he can't afford it.

4. Miscellaneous = ($500).

Ah, this is the variable that puts the “living” in “living wage”. I’ll just spout a few things off the top of my head: clothes, furniture, entertainment, pets, booze and other recreational drugs, vacations, haircuts, gifts, bees, books, electronic devices, power tools, appliances, lessons, musical instruments, tablecloths, sex toys, art supplies, jewelry, charity, memberships, nice smelling candles, camping equipment, ugly porcelain knick-knacks etc. Whatever floats your canoe. You might be able to even buy a canoe. I know, I know, clothing is not optional in America, but I’m putting it in this category anyway since theoretically you could get by with just a few things. For example, I’ve had the same pair of sandals since 1992. Yes, I hold everyone else to the same standards of frugality. What? Oh, yeah. Children. Yes, I've heard that they grow. Hmmm. Well, I'm leaving it here anyway. Clothes are cheap if you shop at Thrift stores.

Living Wage = $3,000/month or $36,000/year or about $700 a week or about 17.50/hour AFTER TAXES. So, $20/hour to account for those. That, my friends, is a perfectly reasonable, perfectly fair living wage, given the cost of living today.

I can’t make the assumption that everyone has two incomes or that everyone is dealing drugs on the side or that everyone loves working so much that they put in eighty hours or that (as the free market fundies seem to think) everyone is a teenager working a summer job at Smiling Sue's Ice cream Stand. This is enough for one person working one job, possibly with children, but maybe not, to live a perfectly comfortable existence in America today.

There’s only one problem, the free market fundamentalists will say: “It will wreck the economy!” You see, this is what they will say because the average free market fundamentalist wants the average working poor person to die from exhaustion and/or spend hardly any time at all with our families and friends. I’m not sure why this is, because we’re actually pretty nice, but they don’t want to pay us a decent wage, nor do they want to redistribute any of the money we earned for them with our sweat and blood for social services to subsidize their crappy wages. They do, however, want us to perform the absolute worst jobs in the land and be happy that they are so charitably paying us at all.

Well, to them I say “Take a hike” or something more vulgar if they piss me off enough.

Look, the entire capitalist economy is about their interests; there is nothing wrong with standing up for ours. Besides, using their two favorite concepts (incentive and innovation), if they can’t figure it out, I say raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour and they now have an incentive to innovate!

Oh, wait. I see where this is going. If we raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour there is only ONE WAY to pay for it. The job creators will have NO CHOICE but to raise prices. If that happens every working person will have the same old miserable purchasing power we started with: a bunch of starving puppies, lapping at the heels of a comfortable life. They’ll feed us just enough tall tales about social mobility to keep us working until we are wise enough to figure out their little game. By then, we’ll be too exhausted to do anything about it. Tired, brains soaked in sugar syrup, only capable of making the simplest decisions: Let’s see, the baseball game or Survivor? Let’s see, the albuterol or the porridge? Forget any talk about the makers getting by on less! They may have to choose between the Jaguar and the Porche! They should have both, by god! I mean, if you pay someone three-million dollars instead of five-million dollars, or twenty million instead of fifty-million or whatever the hell those crazy people make, WHERE’S THE INCENTIVE?

Yup, I'm raging now...hmmm? What did you say? Not every job creator is Boeing or Monsanto or McDonalds or Con-Agra or Bank of America or Wal-Mart or Starbucks? You mean, there is such a thing as the little ice cream stand owned by my neighbor Smiling Sue? Okay, okay, so the small business does actually exist. I’ll get to that in a moment.

First, I want to expel a few myths.

1. “Trickle down is the only way!” : Trickle up works better than trickle down. Put money in the pockets of people who will spend it. It has already been proven that a poor person’s dollar puts more back into the economy than a rich person’s dollar.

2. “It will eliminate jobs!” : Your average job creator, who is thinking of the bottom line, will only pay as many employees as it takes to keep his customers satisfied. It’s not like Grumpy Gus is saying: “labor is SO FUCKING CHEAP that I think I’ll just hire extra people to stand around and do nothing! I’ll have them polish my shoes with a Q-tip!” If they want their business to operate they CANNOT eliminate jobs. As efficient as working people are, he can only increase our productivity so much. We are not super-robots.

3. “It will eliminate jobs! Again!” : If people are paid more perhaps they won’t need a second income or a third income and this would actually open up MORE jobs.

4. “I hate paying taxes to subsidize the bad habits of lazy, drug-addled people’s children!” : The higher the living wage, the less is spent on the horrible, lazy person creating safety net...and now we can actually afford our drugs… and food, too! What a deal.

5. “Everyone making minimum wage is a teenager working a summer job!” Fine. Let them make $20 an hour, too. Maybe they can spend more time doing what they should be doing: enjoying their childhood. Or, maybe, if they are so inclined, they can save for college and not accrue so much student debt. Oh, yeah. That’s right. The capitalists WANT us to be in debt. I forgot.

6. “If you aren’t suffering you won’t be driven to better yourself”. This is total free-market fundamentalist propaganda. First “bettering” oneself does not necessarily mean advancing in one’s career. Maybe it means getting stronger or smarter or nicer. Maybe it means creating art or music or poetry… and maybe, just maybe people aren’t only motivated by money. Maybe cleaning up vomit even if you’re making 35,000 dollars a year is not what you’d like to be doing. Maybe you would like to be spending that forty hours a week doing something more fulfilling. Look, capitalists think people are only motivated by money because THEY are only motivated by money and they think everyone else is like them.

7. “Technology will eliminate the need for working people anyway! So nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!” : Hmmm…this one is probably true, but beyond the scope of this post…however, I feel another one coming on. Something about how if we want to make a better world we have to stop capitalism all together…

Okay, I think I hit on most of the most common myths surrounding this debate with elegance and unassailable logic. But, there is one nagging issue that I promised I’d address: the poor, hapless, small business person. Poor Grumpy Gus. Poor Smiling Sue. Do the fucking math, okay Lara? Do the fucking math. Your Algebra teacher from Queens who told you that C = Pie x d was not a formula for a circle but WAS a circle would be proud.

20 employees x 35,000 dollars a year = $700,000 dollars/year.

Holy leaping chipmunks! While clearly this would be nothing to take out of your average large business CEO’s salary without her even noticing, a small business just couldn’t swing it. Shit. What to do, what to do…

Okay, I know. I’m going to create an entirely new category to address this problem. Actually, it’s not my idea, but I’m not sure if it’s ever been proposed to address the “small-business” problem of raising the minimum wage to a perfectly reasonable $20 an hour: it’s called the “cooperative”.

That’s right. No more working for grumpy Gus. All he did was yell at you anyway and make you polish his shoes with a Q-tip. No more working for Smiling Sue. She was really sweet, bringing us donuts everyday even though we were all trying to diet, but she’s going to have to go, too. Unless she’s willing to shell out twice her income for labor costs. It’s okay, though. She can still be involved.

If Sue wants to get away with paying her employees less, she has to be part of a cooperative. If she and her employees (now her business partners) register with the government as a "cooperative", they can dodge the $20/hour minimum wage. In this model, everyone employed at the ice-cream stand gets some base pay and splits the profits equally….compensation is tied to success. Talk about incentive. Yes, it’s been done. Yes, it works. How and why it works is a subject for another day, since it’s time for me to put down what I love doing and go to work where I will clean up some fabulous job creator’s grandmother's poop.

Nah, I don’t deserve a living wage.

Do I Dare?

Middle Class Suburban White American (MiSWA) life as seen on television: Go to school, get a car, get a job, buy a house, accumulate stuff, take care of the house/yard/stuff, buy more stuff, have a family, take care of the family by buying more stuff, send your kids off to college and to a similar fate, grow old with a spouse, retire with a spouse, have a great twenty years relaxing with the spouse and buying even more stuff and then die happy surrounded by loving family...who will throw away your stuff. They have enough stuff of their own, thank you.

THEN, go directly to heaven where you won't have to worry about the polluted environment you left behind.

MiSWA life as experienced by me: Go to school, get a junky car, get a job, get a second job, get a third job, go to school again, get another job, get another junky car, get a second job, go to school again, save some money, crisis, lose all your money, get another job, get another half decent car (that you pay through the nose for), realize that your biological clock is ticking and try and have a family, fail to have a family (though you do get laid a lot), try desperately to keep your life together, save, crisis, lose, save, crisis, lose, watch your dreams get crushed to smithereens, grow old, wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled, suffer, die alone and decompose.

Let me make something clear: most of what the capitalists want me to want I don't want. Well, the kids, yes, and the health insurance and the really good whiskey. But, besides that, MiSWA life as seen on TV seems so banal that it gives me ulcers...or, maybe that's the Ten High. But I digress. I've always wanted to simplify my life, not make it more complicated. I'd rather walk than drive, rather swim than jet-ski, rather read than watch television, rather not be available twenty-four hours a day on a cell phone, rather watch my yard grow into a tangled, fantastic mess of vines and wild-flowers than mow, weed-whack and leaf-blow.

I've always maintained that less I have, the happier I am. I am not a person who wants stuff. If anything, I'm an anti-horder. For some reason, however, I thought the only route to this stress-free, simple life style I imagined was by becoming financially secure through the only route I knew: the MiSWA route as insisted upon by the culture that engulfed me. I guess I thought this because I couldn't get away from the notion that the first step to this perfect life was saving some money and buying some land. I wanted to build a small eco-friendly dwelling on this land and invite some like-minded friends to do the same. I also thought I needed health insurance since my chronic pain was getting worse. So I took their word for it. I dug in my heels and did everything right. The capitalists rubbed their greedy hands together and stuck their golden straws into a giant Tiki cocktail composed of my sweat, blood and crushed dreams.

All I've done, all of my life, is work. Sometimes two jobs, sometimes three, never one. I've always excelled at school, never had a complaint about my work ethic. However, when I look at my life now and compare it to my life twenty years ago, three degrees and two careers later, there is no difference. I am still checking my bank account every day to see if I can afford my groceries. I still haven't seen any other part of the world besides my own. I am finally able to see doctors, but none of them help me or believe me, so I'm still clueless about where all my pain comes from. I am stressed all the time (could that be where my pain comes from?). I realize that I will never make it to retirement except, possibly, as a crippled person, bitter and yellow.

This is what capitalism expects of me. I'm playing right into its hands. Its hands that dangle the carrot of success and the fruit of security and the seed of satisfaction just far enough over my head so that I can't reach it. I try, of course. I grasp and grasp and grasp. I work hard, hard, even harder to get just a piece of it. Eventually, I collapse, and all I have to show for all my efforts is a sore fucking arm. The capitalists go on vacation and I lie in an exhausted heap on the floor.

You see, fellow pathetic little pawns of the working class, it is clear to me now that we've all been deceived. I am not paranoid enough to believe that this is by intent, but it will be the fate of most of us by design. The system is rigged to defeat us. We will not get to reach that glorious retirement when we can actually do what we want to do because when we arrive we will either be too poor, too sick, or probably both.

At forty-six, I am finally clued in to the fact that if I want to enjoy my life I have to go the other direction, now, and before you Fox News types start calling me a "taker", I'm not talking about living off the generous handouts of the makers who drive this just system of which I speak. However, I am going to attempt to earn a living doing something you might find equally distasteful: art. I will work at your soul crushing jobs just enough to get by. This is the only way I will ever get the time that I need to flourish as a human being.

So that's it. I'm going to stop clenching my teeth (giving myself TMJ in the process) and stepping on the gas pedal with all my might, only to spin my wheels and sling dirt across my windshield. Instead, I'm going to calmly shut off the engine, get out and go sit in that glade over there, under that peach tree. I'm going to take a big bite of what ever falls, lie down and watch that big old money pit of a truck called the American Dream disappear as it sinks out of sight into the viscous mud.

In other words: I'm dropping out, man.

I'll be poor, but I'll be happy. I'll be less stressed. No kids. No travel. No good whiskey. No more uncaring doctors. But I'll have my health back, and time. Oh, precious, beautiful time...


Coming up next: Alright so you can't trust me about this, but the next entry WILL BE the long awaited earth-shattering paradigm shifting continental shelf smashing wave crashing anomalous orgasmic essay of orgiastic essaydom: "animal rights is the next human rights". Or maybe not. It might be "I love my metaphors like I love my vegetables: mixed." Or it might be something entirely different.

Dirty is Clean

So clean the surface
The bleached white paper pristine.
But the trees would not agree
Dirty is clean

So clean is the plate
The slick, shiny plastic serene
But the ocean would not agree
Dirty is clean.



So, lately I've been killing a lot of ants in my house. This is not my typical reaction to their presence, since most of the time I am entertained by their frantic parades and respect their right to forage for food. Usually, my only pest control strategy is to try not to tempt them with too many jam smears or cookie crumbs. Despite what pest control companies want the public to believe, the ones most likely to infest the kitchen are totally benign. They don't bite, sting or vector disease. If anything, they are helping with the housework.

When I say I am "killing" ants I don't mean using poison; I mean squishing them with my fingers when they wander inadvertently in to what I've told them several times is "my space". This space includes my body and the immediate vicinity around my body: my computer and the arm's reach portion of my kitchen table. I don't know why they've been doing this lately: ignoring my warnings and wandering solo around this territory (too many to be scouts, I would think) and over a surface that is mostly devoid of organic substances. A question for E.O. Wilson, perhaps.

So why am I killing them? I'm killing them because, despite my fascination with them and my high level of respect for their right to exist, these sentiments are transformed into digust when the population reaches what I term the "Infestation Threshold". It is the same threshold I recently reached with my normally beloved drain-flies when their wormy larvae got a little too comfortable wriggling around in a pile at the base of my sink instead of staying out-of-sight inside the drain where they belong. With their fuzzy, adorable adult forms who have long been my shower companions looking on helplessly, I apologized profusely as I exterminated the lot with bleach. Our relationship has not been the same since.

However, though even an insect afficianado like me is not entirely immune to the typical middle-class suburban white American (MiSWA) fear and loathing of our fellow arthropods, my behavior is very far removed from the prevalent collective cultural schema I like to call in a Minskiesque sort of way: "See Insect, Kill Insect". This, an automatic reaction to anything fast, small and with numerous jointed appendages entering the field of view, seems to be programmed into the average MiSWA brain from a very young age. It is an utterly irrational response, with probable evolutionary origins along the same lines as "See Snake, Kill Snake", and I intend to argue, for reasons I will discuss later, that it needs to be eradicated.

I've seen examples of "See Insect, Kill Insect" many times in my life among the MiSWAs. In order to verify my claim, all one has to do is watch commercial television for a while, or hang out in any place with any MiSWA member long enough to experience a chance to witness it directly or hear a story about it. In every case, there is no attempt to classify the insect (except maybe with butterflies or ladybugs that have escaped reproach due to the "cuddliness" factor), or to consider the actual level of danger or the potential for infestation before squashing the innocuous critter into oblivion. I've seen people instantly kill the sacred praying mantis, the wonderful walking-stick, the sultry cicada, the graceful mosquito-devouring lace-wing, the chipper grasshopper, and the sweet, serenading cricket. Never mind its innocence, any insect is on balance beneficial to humans, something that seems to escape the programming of most MiSWAs. A person I work with the other day said "if I see a bee, I kill it", as she was eating an orange.

I have mentioned some of the less "offensive" groups, but even those that are considered to be "pests" for one reason or another deserve a reprieve from the "See Insect, Kill Insect" phenomenon. Some, like termites, bedbugs, wasps and mosquitoes that are actually pests because they do direct damage to person or home and others, like cave-crickets, the majority of spiders (yes, I am aware that spiders aren't insects, but I'm not splitting pili, here), earwigs, ants, houseflies, cockroaches and carpenter bees that are simply perceived as pests because they look menacing, are often more interesting than they are threatening, and can usually be kept at endemic levels below the "infestation" threshold with relatively minor manipulations of the environment.

So, who cares, besides the likes of crazy Lara Samuels and her minority opinion that all living things are endowed with rights? I'll admit that much of my advocacy for living things, my "pro-life" view as I like to call it, is simply that. However, I realize that this particular argument does not work with most humans and that one most resort to more convincing explanations. People want to know: "What am I going to get out of it?".

So, let me put it plainly: When one dumps poison into the environment, there is an inevitable impact on human health, and there is no doubt that MiSWAs love to poison things. To verify my claim, all one has to do is watch commercial television for a little while, or just hang out in any place with any MiSWA member long enough to experience a chance to witness it directly or hear a story about it.

I'll leave listing the evidence revealing the connection between the toxins that we dump into our environment every day and cancer rates to less lazy individuals like Sandra Steingraber and Rachel Carson, but trust me, the research has been done. This is either a direct effect because all living things are basically composed of the same shit: proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and fats, and poisons are toxic to humans as they are also toxic to other living things, or indirectly because killing a mosquito means killing a bee and killing a bee means killing an orange tree and killing an orange tree means starving to death. Or, less dramatically, you could use a similar line of argument leading to the manifestation of annoying allergies.

The answer is more dirt, not less.

Despite some progress at the industry level to turn to other forms of pest control besides toxins, on the home-front poison is still king. MiSWAs want their homes "sterile", but "sterile", except in certain places like operating tables, is not good. It means that there is no life. Where there is no life, there is no health. Don't dive into a lake if the water is clear and you don't see anything growing or moving around in it. It is likely to eat through your skin.

The only way to return America back to a state of health is to persuade the consumption crazed MiSWA's and their imitators, that clean is, in fact, dirty. And, of course, one can only reach this conclusion if one has been programmed at a very early age to associate the presence of nature with a clean, safe environment. In other words, nature could use some marketing. Given adequate effort in this regard, MiSWAs could be convinced that the presence of life, in most of its forms, is the definition of clean. Furthermore, nature offers other rewards. It is magical, beautiful and interesting not creepy, gross, and scary.

As my recent ant and drain-fly murdering rampage proves, I am not totally resistant to my own evolutionary programming. However, my brain, at least until the Infestation Threshold has been reached, mostly suspends "See Insect, Kill Insect" and replaces it with "See Insect, Observe Insect". How did this happen? Is it innate?

NO! It happened because of marketing, of course. The marketing of biophilia by my mother. Besides also instilling in me a life-long beneficial appreciation for healthy foods, it was about the only good thing she ever gave me.

My mother loved nature, and by capturing, studying, and releasing almost everything living thing we found, by only mowing part of the yard and leaving the rest to grow wild, by taking frequent walks in the forest and pointing out the differences among species of plants and animals, by turning over rocks and observing the ecosystems that thrive there, etc., the development of an appreciation for nature's beauty and magic was inevitable.

So, MiSWAs of all ages, I implore you: throw on your pink tee-shirt, head out to the walk for breast cancer, and on your way, pause to let the little ground beetle pass. Let the ants parade through your kitchen and the carpenter bees drill a few holes in your house. Show the kids. Make a deal with the cockroaches: "stay out of sight most of the time and I won't mess with you". If you see an earwig, which you probably won't, check it out. It's really quite cool. Like a transformer, only real. Forget the trip to Disney World: there is magic all around you. An antlion looks a lot like tinkerbell, but she's a hell of a lot more interesting and she doesn't charge admission. Spare the broom on a few spider webs and let them work for you. They are quite adept at killing flies, by the way, which are, admittedly, annoying. They'll do it without harming you or your children. That fly spray? I'm not so sure I could say the same. The mantra is true for most living things: they won't bother you. If they have the potential to bother you, they won't bother you if you don't bother them.

Do it for the children. The environment is not just some abstract thing that stuck-up purist environmentalists want to save. It's our life support system, guys. Please get a clue about it.


Coming up (when my stupid working-class life allows me some time to actually do what I love): Animal Rights is the Next Human Rights