Thursday, July 31, 2014
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.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
From the bottom: The Patient in Room Twelve
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.
Monday, June 23, 2014
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).
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.
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.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
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.
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.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
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.
Friday, May 16, 2014
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
Friday, April 25, 2014
Guerilla Science
Note from Guerrilla: This experiment has been postponed due to an apparent strike by the subjects. Anyone who has raised plants knows that they have a strong sense of justice and, when they feel an injustice has been levied upon them, as in the case of scientific experimentation, they will practice civil disobedience: Root-ins, photosynthesis strikes, silence. However, though stubborn and shrewd, they are incapable of comprehending deceit, and are easily outsmarted by humans since we are, of course, experts in this area. Therefore, I will let them think they have achieved victory and experiment upon them at a later date when they hardly expect it.
Introduction:
It has been well established in previous investigations that plants communicate chemically through the soil and air (lazy person will eventually insert citations here). It was noted by this observer one day that her own potted plants appeared to be communicating in quite a different manner: by touching their leaves together. In this observational study which will eventually be performed more rigorously, my Fern and African Violet (lazy person will eventually insert scientific names here) were used to demonstrate that plants grown separated in pots, in close proximity to one another, will grow towards one another regardless of the direction of the light.
Methods
My Fern and African Violet, in a direct affront to their autonomy and privacy, were inhumanely isolated in pots and subjected to this cruel experiment. The intention of this researcher, once this preliminary observational study is complete, is to commit more atrocities against plants in the interest of science by expanding her sample size and improving on her study design.
Results
Results will be posted in the form of photos. On the left is a picture of these two rascals caught in the act. Note the direction of the light. Of course, given the Fern's superior flexibility, it is the Fern that is the aggressor in this case. On the right is a photograph taken a few minutes later. The Fern has been moved away from the Violet so that the offending leaf is now approximately two centimeters away (this lazy researcher will use more exact measurements in the future more formal study). Photographs will now be taken and posted daily to see what transpires. Ha. Plant term. No pun intended.
Discussion
Once demonstrated, one can only guess what these mysterious creatures are up to. This lazy researcher is not about to speculate on the possibilities and will leave that part up to more focused individuals. At the risk of sounding like a lunatic, however, this very scientifically minded agnostic will draw one very general conclusion from these observations: there is more going on with plants than we know.
Introduction:
It has been well established in previous investigations that plants communicate chemically through the soil and air (lazy person will eventually insert citations here). It was noted by this observer one day that her own potted plants appeared to be communicating in quite a different manner: by touching their leaves together. In this observational study which will eventually be performed more rigorously, my Fern and African Violet (lazy person will eventually insert scientific names here) were used to demonstrate that plants grown separated in pots, in close proximity to one another, will grow towards one another regardless of the direction of the light.
Methods
My Fern and African Violet, in a direct affront to their autonomy and privacy, were inhumanely isolated in pots and subjected to this cruel experiment. The intention of this researcher, once this preliminary observational study is complete, is to commit more atrocities against plants in the interest of science by expanding her sample size and improving on her study design.
Results
Results will be posted in the form of photos. On the left is a picture of these two rascals caught in the act. Note the direction of the light. Of course, given the Fern's superior flexibility, it is the Fern that is the aggressor in this case. On the right is a photograph taken a few minutes later. The Fern has been moved away from the Violet so that the offending leaf is now approximately two centimeters away (this lazy researcher will use more exact measurements in the future more formal study). Photographs will now be taken and posted daily to see what transpires. Ha. Plant term. No pun intended.
Discussion
Once demonstrated, one can only guess what these mysterious creatures are up to. This lazy researcher is not about to speculate on the possibilities and will leave that part up to more focused individuals. At the risk of sounding like a lunatic, however, this very scientifically minded agnostic will draw one very general conclusion from these observations: there is more going on with plants than we know.
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