The "C" Word

There is a "C" word that is incredibly profane and vile in American culture, though the British use it rather more freely and comfortably. I'm not talking about the one that offends sensibilities. Frankly, I think that word is an ugly one, but the one I'm going to talk about is a scary one, not one that causes virgin ears to suffer. The "C" word in this case is cancer. It feels like I've always known about and lived in fear of cancer, such is part of the dubious wonder of the modern world. It exists as an invader to be vanquished for some and, for nearly everyone, the imaginary monster under the bed for which we must keep checking.

Cancer was merely the monster under the bed for most of my adult life. In 2011, it assumed a more menacing position. My sister was walking around one day and passed out. After years of being told she was tired and dizzy because she was anemic, doctors finally figured out that she had uterine cancer. The tumor was about as big as a grapefruit and blood vessels from the uterine wall had grown attached to it such that immediate surgery would have resulted in her bleeding to death on the operating table.

People tend to think that cancer is this thing that you can detect early in all cases and that doctors are going to find it if it is there. The truth is that my sister had serious health issues for a very long time before anyone decided to poke around in her lady parts for potential causes. Eventually, they managed to irradiate her enough and fill her full of enough toxic chemicals to shrink the tumor to a sufficiently manageable size. They yanked out all of her reproductive organs and removed the cancer.

People also tend to believe that receiving treatment and surviving is a relatively nice clean deal and that surviving and remaining cancer-free for a certain number of years means you're in the clear. The monster has lost the war and gone home, or at least packed up his crap and headed for less hostile territory. The treatment my sister received decimated her immune system. The radiation killed all of the bone marrow in her pelvis so she has half as much white blood cell activity as she did before treatment. The post-surgery chemo was so toxic that she nearly died from it three times before they gave up and stopped trying to save her from future cancer recurrences by trying to kill her with medical assistance.

The chemo also caused her to have transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) - a sort of mini-stroke which damaged her brain such that she can no longer focus or do more than simple calculations. Multi-tasking is a thing of the past for her. She had mini-seizures for some time and couldn't reliably drive due to the risk of losing control of her body. Since my mother is blind and my father is disabled, this put her in quite a pickle when it came to getting to her doctor's appointments.

At present, two years after her treatment, she has serious issues breathing if exposed to any sort of chemical - even fairly common and innocuous ones. No medical professional can figure out why, but she can't walk in front of a display of scented candles, stand in line with a person wearing perfume, be in a recently cleaned room or a place with old or dirty carpeting without having her lungs struggle to work. She also catches any disease at the drop of a hat now. The cancer is gone (at least for now), but she has been disabled because of the way treatment decimated her body.

Cancer treatment isn't the same for everyone, and many people do much better than my sister. That being said, I read about a study recently which talked about how psychosocial treatment (and marketing) for cancer focuses largely on young, attractive, verbal, intelligent and successful (YAVIS) women when they are a very small portion of cancer survivors/sufferers. The beautiful, bald, bold, and strong woman who gets featured in articles and ads is not the norm. The norm is older, uglier, less resilient, and not likely to return to life as normal without some compromises. My sister may not be the norm, but neither are all of those vivacious women who smile back at you in magazines and talk about how they have bounced back fully from their illness.

In late 2011, while my sister was waiting for her treatment to start, I went to a doctor for a routine check-up and he saw what he believed to be a tumor in my neck. A few samples were taken of what ended up being my enlarged thyroid, but no one could tell me if it was benign (a goiter) or malignant (cancer) until they'd chopped it in half and tested the part they'd removed. The test results took nearly three weeks in which I pondered my mortality and the possible treatment that I'd have to endure. I knew chances were low that I had thyroid cancer, and even lower that it would kill me, but cancer became even less abstract for me. I was looking at having one of the most "treatable" cancers, but I was terrified at the thought of chemo or radiation treatment.

I was lucky. It was a benign tumor for me. There was no monster under my bed,  though people were sure checking to make certain. The long needles inserted into my neck and later the stapled gap across my slit throat were evidence of their careful efforts. My sister was not so lucky. It turns out that my father has been similarly hit by misfortune.

For some years, my father has had what he has concluded are "bladder infections". He'd drink cranberry juice, as that's the rumored natural substance that will clear such things up and gobble down Cystex for supposed urinary tract issues. Like many men, he hated going to doctors and rarely went to one unless he was on death's doorstep or it was required for some sort of paperwork for his disability benefits.

My sister told me that she saw blood on the toilet seat recently. Since my mother is long past menopause and my sister had her fun factory yanked out along with her enormous blood-sucking tumor, she knew there was a high likelihood that it related to my father. She told my mother and, knowing my dad's reluctance to see a physician, old mom tricked him into getting a check-up by saying that their insurance required it for paperwork.

My father reported the urination issues to the doctor and they figured it was an enlarged prostate issue and did some surgery to remove part of it. After the surgery, they found out that he has a very large tumor, about the size of an orange, in his bladder and that the cancer is at stage three. That means it has spread to surrounding tissue (as opposed to being contained in the tumor), but has not yet gotten into his blood stream or more distant organs - at least not as far as they know at this time.

I have little worry that my father will survive cancer. I have a great deal of concern that he won't survive the treatment. He's in his early 70's and has smoked all of his life with at least a half dozen short-term periods in which he has quit. He's an alcoholic and he has had intermittent paralysis and partial blindness during most of his adult life as a result of brain damage he suffered while working in a factory and getting wanged on the head several times by heavy machinery. Despite his many issues, he was actually in fairly decent health - or at least he was told he was by his doctor until they found the cancer.

An article in the Wall Street Journal wrote about how early detection and diagnosis of cancer may not necessarily be a good thing and I'm on the fence about this issue. I've hurtled over said fence and reached some conclusions about treatment in general for cancer though, particularly aggressive follow-up chemotherapy to prevent recurrence. It nearly killed my sister and I'm very, very afraid that it's going to kill my elderly father.

Sometimes I think the "C" word is the monster under the bed, but I think nuking the bed in order to make sure it can never come back may not always be the best solution. One of the reasons that people accept such lethal care is that they are so terrified of cancer that they will accept whatever doctors tell them about what it takes to make sure it doesn't return, but I think it may be time to stop reacting with fear of the monster and more carefully assess the weapons being used against it and the damage they can do.

"Ching Chong, Ching Chong, Ding Dong, Ding Dong"

Before I get into the weeds of relating a recent experience, it's important to understand something about me. I am super white. I couldn't be a whole lot "whiter" in appearance. My skin is very pale. I have blue eyes. My hair is very long and red-blonde (though streaked through enough with white to look closer to blonde these days). My eyebrows are the same color as my hair. I've been told that I have a very "English" face by a British person. I have a long, high-bridged now and a long face. I'm also an endomorphic pear-shaped person (which is to say, I'm fat and squishy like many middle-aged ladies). I've done very little research into my family history, but my sister claims my family is a muttly mix of Scotch, Irish, and German. My family name either means "day laborer" or "sexton" (a sort of grave digger/maintainer) which feels about right for my social status growing up.

There is pretty much zero chance that anyone is going to mistake me for a person of Asian descent. This is the reason that I'm telling you about how white I am. You'd have to be utterly stupid to think I came from China or have very atypical notions of what it means to be Chinese.

Not an hour ago, I was walking down the street from the local library to my apartment. I went there to use their change machines for quarters to do my laundry. The machines are meant to dispense change for copies, but I'm sure I'm not the only one to occasionally feed them dollar bills to clean my stinky britches. Today, I'm wearing a shirt that I picked up at a shop called "Daiso Japan". It's got a graphic on one side of three monkeys in a vertical line. The top one has his hands covering his eyes and it says, in Japanese characters, "See no evil". The next has his hands over his ears and it says, "Hear no evil" and the last, you guessed it, has his mouth covered and, again, in Japanese, it says, "Speak no evil." The joke of the shirt comes in the last bit where a final monkey has his hands over his crotch and, instead of a Japanese phrase, there are just three question marks next to the picture.

I picked up this shirt because I lived in Japan for a long time and they felt that they invented this monkey concept and I saw it many times. I don't know what culture actually spawned the idea of "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" or who decided that it was good to illustrate it with cute animals, but I have a feeling it is one of those things which may have simultaneously developed in various cultures independently. Humans, being of a similar bent psychologically, do that far more often than people realize.

As I'm walking down the street, a man who couldn't have been younger than 24 and was likely no older than 32, is walking in the opposite direction. As he approaches me, he says, "ching chong, ching chong, ding dong, ding dong." You can now see why I made it clear how whiter than a bar of Ivory soap that I am. He was not saying this to me because he thought I was Asian. It could only be a reaction to my shirt.

I resisted the impulse to say that the shirt was Japanese, not Chinese, and that his racist babble was improperly directed. The situation was very peculiar, to say the least. If I could have been mistaken in any way for a person of Asian descent, it would have been a straight up racist move on that dimwit's part, but that could not have been the case. Why would he say such a thing?

I thought this over and I can only conclude that it was an act of social ineptitude. He noticed the shirt and saw the characters. For some reason, he felt compelled to say something to let me know that he noticed the fact that it had what he concluded were Chinese characters (they actually are Chinese - the Japanese appropriated them and changed their pronunciation, but they are the same actual characters, but the language is clearly Japanese to anyone who knows the difference). Instead of saying something like, "cool shirt," he uttered this bizarre nonsense.

I lived outside of America for a very long time and I live now in an extremely racially diverse and relatively progressive area. There are lots of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Hispanic, and, yes, even white, people in this area. There are far fewer African Americans, but they are not uncommon either. I can't imagine someone living in this area with exposure to such diversity would knowingly say such a racist thing while fully comprehending how racist it is. On the other hand, there's been a fair bit of media brouhaha about it in the not too distant past with both Rosie O'Donnell and Stephen Colbert taking some heat and getting some attention for saying those very words.

Colbert knew it was offensive, but used it for satirical purposes. O'Donnell professed genuine confusion and ignorance of how bad it was. She said she really, truly did not know it would offend. The thing is, I believe her. I live din Japan for many years and there were numerous occasions when Japanese people did things which were racist or rude and it was never their intention to be either. They often did them in a way which they felt displayed their admiration of me ("You can eat with chopsticks! That's so great!") or were genuine attempts to connect with me in some fashion ("Americans love hamburgers. I love hamburgers, too!"). They didn't know what a microaggression was nor did they comprehend that applying stereotypes was offensive.

Even if what is done is not meant to be offensive, it doesn't change the fact that it is offensive. In Japan, I gave up on calling people on their actions when they applied to me because it was too frequent and the culture did not support any sort of education in this regard. It was largely impossible to get through to people. I only talked about it with people who were going abroad so that they'd know they shouldn't say such things while traveling. In America, I think people should know better by now, but I am not so sure they do. That guy who made his "ching chong" comment to me may have been trying to be racist, but given my near translucent coloring, I think he was just a dumb ass saying something awkward to a stranger in response to a T-shirt.

The Social System of the Public Pool

Two weeks ago, I began swimming for exercise. When I started, I hadn't entered a body of water bigger than a bath tub for over 30 years. This wasn't an entirely conscious decision as I had moved to an enormous metropolis after having grown up in a remote rural area and it never occurred to me to seek out a man-made means of getting my swim on. In fact, up until my recent foray into the chemical waters of the local swimming facility, I had never been in a public pool. I had only swum in natural bodies of water.

The truth is that, because I had only swam in lakes and rivers before, I was apprehensive about what was to come. There are all of these little things about navigating the experience which I felt anxious about. Every body of water I'd ever entered or departed had a sloping point of entry, not a diving board or steps. The spaces weren't laid out in neat rows or confined in such a way that one had to be concerned about running into or inconveniencing other swimmers. I also swam with family or childhood friends and none of us had ever had a swimming lesson. That meant no one had anything resembling technique and there was no judging going on. Usually, it was just frolicking, cooling, soaking, and horseplay.

Our current apartment is, quite fortunately, near a pool that offers free swimming for "seniors" from 11:00-11:45 am. Even better still for us is that their definition of "senior citizen" starts at 50 and I turned that very age at the end of August. They do allow non-senior people to swim from noon to 1:30 pm as well for the price of $3.00, but those hours don't work quite so well for my husband and I so we're part of the semi-geriatric and fully geriatric set flapping their flabby, wrinkly arms from 11:00. It's only fair that those of us with bat-wing upper arms flock together as birds of a feather.

Even though I was likely to be with people who were far from Olympic in form or substance, I was nervous about my first foray into a man-made pool, especially one so full of men (and women). Fortunately, my husband was along for the ride and supported me both with information and moral encouragement. When I was afraid of how I'd get under the lane dividers, he told me how to do it such that I felt more comfortable crossing lanes to climb out. When I expressed concern that I'd lack the upper body strength to climb out of the ladder, he told me that it wasn't as hard as it looked, even when one was sopping wet. He also explained the guidelines, such as they are, for which lanes and how to behave in them in general. It's commonly understood, for instance, that the outer lanes are for the slower swimmers and the center ones are more for the faster ones.

The first time I swam, I had to rest and catch my breath fairly often. I'm not in bad shape, but swimming is fairly aerobic exercise and I tend to just walk for movement. After swimming seven times, I'm finding that my stamina is increasing at a pretty rapid pace as my muscles get used to the type of stress they are being put under. Of course, I'm pushing myself a little every time because that's the only way to improve. I can't say the same is happening with some of the other people who I started with a fortnight ago.

My first day at the pool was spent in the very first lane from the edge. This lane is only four and a half feet deep along three sides and is good for those with disabilities or who are scared because they've been away from this form of exertion for three decades or so. It's also used almost entirely by older women so I was in what I felt was good company. During those first three runs, I had no idea what I was in for and I've since learned that there is a unique social system concentrated in those lanes.

First of all, certain women seem to make it their habit to plant themselves at the ends of the pool (where the water is shallow and the ladders to get in and out are located) and just sit there. They'll bob up and down a bit on occasion or swim a third- or half-lap or the already half-sized lane then retreat back to their corner for some more chatting. During my first two excursions, I had problems actually breaking free from the conversational needs of some of these ladies as they had me trapped there while I caught my breath.

One of these ladies looked to be in her late 60's to early 70's - though it's impossible to truly read age when someone is wearing tinted goggles and a swim cap - and she told me she was from Venice originally. I had a hard time understanding her because ear plugs are in place and water is being splashed about and lapping the edges, but that did not deter her from telling me that water was everywhere when she was growing up so, of course, she could swim, but not properly. She went to swimming lessons with her grand kids to pick up the proper technique and, since swimming was such good exercise, she was there to improve her health.

Since that day, I've moved over several lanes and am now strong enough to swim laps with my husband, though I still need to stop and catch my breath a little after every two or three laps. While my breaks are getting shorter, the old Italian lady who is there for her health spends about 20% of the time moving about a bit in the water and 80% sitting on he end or chatting. I find myself wondering how much health improvement she's getting from so little actual activity and, if she learned how to swim properly, why she's never swam in my presence at all. I've seen her do a little doggie paddle a few times, but that's it.

Mind you, I am not criticizing her for her pool behavior, but rather it her behavior operates in opposition to her professed desire to improve her health through swimming. Even if I were inclined to think that treating the senior swimming time as a chance to casually hang out and gossip, I couldn't say that without being out of line. This is because the whole point is that anything goes during senior swim time.

In fact, sometimes, the "anything goes" mentality is to the point of being ridiculous. People use snorkels on their mouths and noses, fins on their feet, and paddles on their hands so they can chug along faster than they naturally could. They use flotation devices and slowly and lazily swim on their backs down the middle of lanes. They are permitted to do this, but, as my husband has said, he's not sure what the point is of using artificial means to gain speed. It you're not getting there on your own, you're not burning the same type of energy and this is not a race. Not one of those people is competing on an aging team and is in need of augmentation to up their game.

One of the most obnoxious users of the external devices is a woman who I call the "snorkel steamboat". She chugs along propped on a flotation device with her head barely under water sufficiently to need a snorkel and kicks up an enormous froth with her legs. This creates an enormous amount of splash as she propels herself along largely under the steam of her devices. I'm not a fan of any of the people who I term "splash masters" as they often send water up my nose or into my mouth while I'm trying to get some business done without the aid of external devices.

Beyond the chatty sorts and the device monkeys, there are a handful of glamor girls. These are aging former beauties who still hold much of their former form and wouldn't sully their appearance with swim caps or goggles. One of them, who came up to me after my second swim and suggested I get some tinted goggles - a conclusion I'd already reached - said she rarely swims at all because her hair is so terribly long (then what on earth is she doing there?). Another doggie paddles her way back and forth at a pace that makes even my sluggishness seem a little fast while holding hair clear of the water. When she gets in or out, she's constantly scanning the crowd for recognition of her fading hotness among the flabbier, bulgier sorts in the mix. Her self-conscious way of carrying herself, her choice of swimsuit design, and the way she seems to just be waiting for someone to pay attention to her scream that she expects to be noticed. 

It's clear to me that there is an established order among these people who have been going to the pool for some time and they know what's what. The women who aren't inclined to raise their heart rates hang around the edges and chat. Some of them treat it like their backyard pool on a hot day and just lounge around. Men tend to be much more efficient and swim laps, though even some of them seem to think it's a great time to chat up young lifeguards while they hang around at the edges. Serious swimmers and those who would like to be serious about it (like me) have to congregate in the more central areas if they want to avoid the cliques that form at the end and edges. Even then, you can find that sluggards will make their way into the matrix and jam up the works if they're inclined to do so.

I thought that the whole swimming business was going to be a mechanistic one. One goes to the pool to carry out a task and does it as well as possible. I didn't think about the fact that social groups will form when you put a bunch of people together even when the target activity is a fairly individual one. It's interesting to observe how people go about the business of swimming with so little focus on the actual swimming and so much focus on the people themselves.

Advertising and Privilege

One of my friends once posted a quote by Banksy encouraging people to deface public advertising as a means of protesting the way in which messages are aimed at you that you didn't ask for and that you may not want. Banksy frequently does this in the service of his art. As a graffiti artist, he has built his fame on defacing buildings. It's something that people are happy about when he does it, but it's a crime when others do it.

Setting aside Banksy's inability to comprehend that his message is more likely to get his followers arrested or fined than initiate some sort of awakening in the public about how advertising affects them, I would like to discuss the more core issue of whether or not we determine what is advertised or advertising tells us who we are and what we should want. Do we shape the world or does it shape us? For me, the answer to this question is "both", but others believe the answer falls on one side or the other.

People like my friend seem to regard the rest of the world as being filled with mindless drones who have shiny objects and tasty treats dangled in front of them and that makes them value those things. There is something to that viewpoint. If you see a commercial for a pizza place, you may find yourself wanting to eat pizza. This is "cuing". However, I don't think people who dislike pizza or who have never eaten it would be persuaded to have it as a result of advertising. The seller is showing you something you already like and want and trying to convince you to have it more often, preferably right now. Essentially Pizza Hut isn't teaching you to love pizza. It's reminding you that you already love it. This is not programming you to behave or think in a certain manner, but convincing you to repeat past thinking and actions.

This is the crux of the argument I tried to make with my friend who thinks that we buy into societal messages about beauty, wealth, youth, race, etc. because we're "told" to. I told her that, if you pay attention to advertising and how it works, you will see that advertisers are pandering to and catering to their audience's existing mentality, not telling them what to like. If women's magazines are full of ads about skin cream, it's not because they're telling you to worry about your aging skin. It's because they know you're already worried about it. If men's magazines are full of ads for collectible coins, it's not because they are telling you that you'll enjoy that particular hobby, but they're wanting to sell you on their goods which fit into your existing lifestyle.

Nothing provided stronger evidence that I have a point than a recent ad that I saw in Eating Well magazine. The picture above is a scan of a page from their September/October 2014 issues. The woman in the picture is Gina Belafonte, daughter of famous singer Harry Belafonte. The text that is quoting her talks about social equality and mentions that she's an activist and the headline calls her a "game changer". I had never heard of her before, so I looked her up to figure out what she has to do with social equality. There's not much of an internet track record except that she's commented that people are taken aback when they discover that her father is black. Most of the readily accessible information on her talks about how she's an actress and a producer, but this ad makes it seem like she's all over issues of privilege.

The ad isn't about social awareness or equality. It's selling vitamins. Why are they using talk of her political activism to sell vitamins? They're using it because all of those people who can't help but keep telling people to "check their privilege" are privileged (generally wealthy or upper middle class) people who buy a magazine like Eating Well as it has to do with exotic and nutritious food. The issue that this ad was in focused on Italian food and had a focus on all of the various sorts of olives.

The message of this ad is that, if you're socially aware and have your privileges all in check, you're going to be like this woman, and this woman is endorsing these vitamins, or, if you use these vitamins, you can feel good about yourself as you are part of the tribe that feels strongly that social equality is important. Either way, this ad isn't telling you what to think about social equality. It's pandering to an existing state of mind and a need to be linked through material possessions (in this case, vitamins) to someone with a parent of color.

This ad is using someone's values to sell things. Those values weren't programmed by advertisers. They are exploited. The irony is that my friend who promoted Banksy's "destroy all advertising" message is exactly like this woman. Now that she's part of a group that has defined itself, she is now a demographic to be sold to. These are vitamins for her and others who want to eliminate privilege and they're using a privileged face (famous, successful, thin, attractive, heterosexual, rich)  to sell them. Note that Ms. Belafonte is 53 years old. Pictures of her online look very different than the one in the ad. It has obviously had considerable tweaking in Photoshop to bring her image more in line with what is conventionally appealing. You know, making her look more youthful and attractive (both privileged states of being that one does not earn yet society rewards).

My friend is all over talking about destroying privilege in our society. She thinks that white privilege and the preponderance of white values are programmed into us and that defacing ads will send some sort of message that those ads are keeping down people of color, lesser socioeconomic status, and less conventional beauty. She would not accept that people shown in ads are chosen because they cater to existing desires and preferences. This is despite the fact that her last girlfriend was chosen mainly because she thought she was sexy (and she was conventionally considered appealing and two other people were pursuing her at the time that my friend "won" her over). That relationship crashed and burned rather badly because choosing your partner based on looks tends to not work out so well in many cases. Her actions support the idea that the reason tall, thin, symmetrical people are in ads are used in media is that the majority of people like these "hot" women/men. My friend also wants to have lots of money in the future, wears hipster clothes, and spends her time hanging out with other young people drinking beer. She may not see herself as privileged, but her values elevate people possessing certain characteristics to their privileged state.

The truth is that people have always valued a certain type of beauty (and wealth). There is a famous bust of Nerfertiti which we've all seen because she was clearly gorgeous. Do people know a similar bust of Cleopatra as well as the one of the Egyptian beauty? No, they don't, because the real Cleopatra wasn't gorgeous. We know Elizabeth Taylor made up as Caesar's main squeeze, but she was beautiful.

Back before there was television and advertising, the same type of beauty was valued and the same qualities that are considered unappealing today were not attractive then. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and stories told in pictures show the vanquished leaders of other tribes as short and fat because those qualities were unappealing even then. Enemies were shown as being ugly whereas the victims were tall, thin, and elegant-looking. It's not about what we're programmed to think by the media. It's about what we already think due to our genes. Media just panders to those existing qualities and enhances our sensibilities in this regard. It confirms our values and encourages us to hold them and build on them, but it doesn't inculcate us with them.

My friend is part of the tribe that talks a big game about things like privilege while she continues to act on the same shallow desires that create a privileged status for those possessing certain qualities (youth, wealth, beauty, thinness). She asked me how I would go about eliminating privilege, but I don't think we can and I think it's Quixotic to try, at least in some cases. As long as people are biologically inclined to prefer certain qualities, they will elevate people possessing those qualities to a higher status in society. You cannot re-write the genetic code and the resulting preferences in every being on the planet, and that is what would be required to eliminate privilege.

Of course, it should be noted that my friend spoke of "privilege" as a concept, but the only privilege she was concerned about was "white privilege" and heterosexual privilege. It's okay to offer people beauty, youth, thin, wealth, status, etc. privilege. The only privilege she really cares about managing is the one which comes along with white skin and sexual preference. Since she is Asian and a lesbian, she's only really focusing on the ones which she feels affect her. The rest don't really matter. So, she wasn't really concerned with eliminating privilege so that we lived in a socially equal society. She was only concerned about elevating her status in society.

It Smells Like Burning

Every psychology student hears about the famous case of Kitty Genovese as an illustration of the "bystander effect". This is when people know something is going wrong, but there are a lot of people around and they don't help because they know many others are around and expect someone else will take responsibility. The higher the number of people, the less likely that any individual will decide to take action.

This morning, I had an experience which may or may not have been similar. As I've mentioned before, I live in a building with 19 units and a small (four-machine - two washers and two dryers) laundry room. The laundry room is next to some poor sod's apartment and I've often thought about how annoying it must be to be next to the noise of the machines and the smell and heat of the exhaust vent on the dryers. When you walk by, you can often see and smell fabric softener or laundry detergent as well as feel the hot air blowing out. If you lived in the apartment next door, opening one of the two windows would certainly get you a nose-ful as well as heat up your place from the exhaust.

My usual route to the trash bins takes me by the laundry room. It's a longer jaunt than the closer route, but it ends much closer to the bins and I am generally okay with a little more exercise. As I walked by, I heard what sounded like a high-pitched screech from a belt. It's the sort of thing I used to hear in my old cars when the fan belt got wonky or in a vacuum cleaner which had seen better days and had one foot in the appliance grave. I also thought that I smelled something burning, but figured that it was my imagination.

I walked over to the trash bins and, as I stood there taking care of business, I heard a mother in the opposite building (the one I call the "white trash building") hassling her kid. She said, "You're spilling water everywhere? Why are you doing that? Do you like wasting water? Do you like being messy?" I thought about how this was fairly bad parenting. Kids are careless. Hell, adults are careless, and walking with a cup of water isn't necessarily an easy task when you're young and have less than fully developed balance. Some fully-grown and poorly paid waitresses still can't manage it. Of course the kid wasn't trying to waste water or enjoying being messy. The kid was being a kid. The mom was just being an idiot.

After managing the trash (a task that takes awhile because of the unlocking and locking of the bins and the need to use two different ones for that which is and is not recyclable) and judging that woman's parenting I passed by the laundry room again. At this point, smoke was coming out of a washing machine and the burning smell was clearer. At this point, I also panicked and ran to the property manager's apartment.

The truth is that I have never had any experience with smoking appliances, so I'm not sure what, if anything, I should have done. My estimation of the situation was that it was bad and getting worse, but there was an equation in play that I am too ignorant to know how to safely handle. That little math problem is metal + water + electricity + burning. My fear was that it would soon also include actual fire and that this was best dealt with by someone who has had more experience than me, or at least is less of a coward about touching large, water-filled metal objects connected to enormous power supplies.

I banged a few times on the property manager's door, but there was no answer. As I gave up, I considered whether I should call him and report it or return to the scene. I could actually do both as I could run back and see how bad it was then make a call if it didn't look even worse. As I started to run back, Hector (said property manager) opened the door to his place and I quickly told him the situation and went back to the laundry room and waited for him.

In the short time that had passed, things had gotten worse. The smell was toxic and acrid and the entire laundry room was filled with smoke. I opened the laundry room with my key so Hector could jump in right away (yes, the laundry room is locked, too). He pulled open the lid of the machine and found that an enormous white down comforter had been crammed in there. It seemed to have been attempting to strangle the agitator to death as it was wrapped in a death grip around the central core. The machine had valiantly fought back as little flecks of comforter popped out and fell to the floor when Hector pulled the comforter off of the dying machine's agitator.

Hector asked me is the comforter was mine. The question stunned me, but I guess it wasn't so off-base since I was the one who reported the problem. I said that it was not and I was just passing by and smelled/saw what was going on. Hector's cute daughter (Bella) had followed down and he warned her to stay back as he opened the lone window to disperse the toxic smoke. My guess is he was afraid there still might be fire, but I thought also that she shouldn't be inhaling the almost certainly poisonous smoke.

I commented that the machine was likely ruined now and that whoever did that really should be responsible for the repair. I also noted which machine it was in case it didn't get marked as broken. I don't want to waste my money using a machine that had likely burnt out most of it's belt. Hector said, "Why would anybody do that?" I said that I believed that they may not have wanted to pay more to have it properly cleaned, but he said laundromats have big machines to accommodate them. To this, I could only say that perhaps they were just too lazy to bother. Of course, the more obvious answer is that the party was simply too stupid to figure out why it's a bad idea to cram an enormous comforter into such a machine.

I left Hector after telling him that I was sorry that he had to spend some of his Sunday dealing with these sorts of messes and he thanked me and stood there pondering the next move. The problem with figuring out who to hold responsible is that he'd have to essentially stake out the laundry room for an indefinite time period until someone showed up to claim their vanquished comforter and that's just no practical. He could leave a note telling the mentally limited party to contact him, but unless the perpetrator is really as stupid (and not merely lazy or cheap) as his or her actions indicate, he or she will not own up to what happened knowing money might have to leave a wallet.

After returning to my apartment and explaining what had happened to my husband (who had grown somewhat concerned by my prolonged absence, but figured I'd run into Hector and chatted with him - which I sort of did in a roundabout way), I thought about what had occurred. Mainly, I wondered if people did these sorts of things due to a sense of putting someone else's property at risk. There are signs telling people not to overload the machines. Do people not know why? Do they not care about breaking them because they won't have to pay for repair? Are they really so dumb that they don't understand the consequences or are they acting as if they assessing the situation in the most positive way possible?

The other thought that I had lead me to remembering the bystander effect (also known as bystander apathy) and the Kitty Genovese case that I mentioned initially. Did no one else smell, hear, or see what was going on? In particular, the person living in the adjacent apartment, who was almost certainly home on a Sunday morning around 11:00 am, must have heard that screaming belt. If it were me, I'd have wanted to know what was going on and checked as the sound was pretty annoying.

Did anyone else notice what was happening and ignore it because there are 19 units in the building and they didn't want to be the one to try and deal with the problem? Or, was I simply the only one who was in the "right place" at the "right time" in order to catch a situation which could have resulted in our building being burned down (or, less dramatically, the total loss of our laundry room facility)? It's impossible to know, but it is worth pondering. One thing I do know is that people can be incredibly irresponsible and it's all too often the case that someone else has be be more responsible in order to avoid the worst consequences of their choices. I've found that to be the case more often in America than I might have imagined.

Book: Conversations With History by Susan Lander

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." He was talking about communication via radio, television, telephone, etc. However, that can also be said of psychic mediums. If, for the sake of argument, you are willing to accept for a short period of time that psychics are real, then I'll explain what I mean when I say that. If you're not willing to sit with that possibility for a little while, then you may want to go find something else to read. I've done nine other posts already and none of them are about things metaphysical. You can go back and read one of those while I make my way here.

If I am to consider the possibility that psychics are authentic (and I don't believe all of them are, but I do accept that some of them may be), then I believe the way it works is that they read energy through vibration manipulation. This isn't so far fetched considering we read and interpret energy through our senses. We interpret wavelengths of light through our eyes and sound waves through our ears. Some people see and hear better than others and some can't do either at all due to being born with certain issues, or having accidents or illnesses.

At any rate, a psychic may have a sense that is more acute and that allows her to experience communication differently. Since such communication would be non-verbal, but filtered and relayed in verbal means, the medium or psychic would have to use her own words and voice to offer the information received energetically. To conceptualize what I mean, think about describing the taste, texture, and smell of food to someone who isn't eating some exotic food that you had a chance to sample. Talking about them is a poor substitute for the actual experience, but you can't make someone have your sensations with your mouth and tongue so you describe it as best you can.

Just as your vocabulary, base of knowledge about food, and experience level make your ability to talk about what you're eating more vivid and interesting, a psychic would also be limited to his or her own ability to communicate some sort of energetically offered information from a so-called "spirit". This is how the medium is the message. If the medium is dull and poor at verbal communication, the message will be limited to the medium's poor skills. This is what brings me to the book I just struggled through a portion of, Conversations With History.

The premise of the book is that the writer is a medium who is having interviews with a variety of famous dead people like Gandhi, Ben Franklin, and Sappho. Whether or not she really did talk to the spirits of these people or she imagined she did is not as important as the fact that she can't string together sentences that sound like they weren't part of a senior high school girl's essay. Her writing style is boring and her choice of interview questions mundane and uninspired. If you had a chance to talk to someone who is dead and/or famous, you'd want to dig a lot deeper than she seems to have done and conveyed far less repetitive and insipid messages.

The book is published by Hay House. This is a publisher which focuses on New Age spiritual content and seems to focus more on telling people peppy messages rather than on recruiting good writers. My guess is that they are offering people what they want to hear. The focus too often is on serving up a lot of shiny happy (dead) people information rather than offering anything deeper or more complex.

I have some first-hand experience with an author who wrote another book for Hay House. In that case, I attended a talk by author Anita Moorjani when she was promoting her book Dying to Be Me. Ms. Moorjani's story is very similar to Ms. Lander's in nearly key ways. Both had a very different life professionally and spiritually before becoming critically ill and having a near-death experience. Both rather effortlessly got writing gigs with Hay House (Moorjani was recruited, Lander was chosen rapidly after a submission). It's clear that Hay House has found a market for people who have had such experiences. My best guess is that they play well conceptually to New Age crowds that need to be comforted about what happens after we die. Unfortunately, both are big on reassurances, weak on any real substance, and not especially great or engaging writers.

I'm disappointed that the New Age press doesn't seem to have a place for complexity or sophistication. I'm also unhappy that the message is focused on unicorns, love, and peaceful blissful unity. While I do believe that there is an energetic existence for the essence that runs our meat sacks after we die (I can't defend this - it's a belief - and I admit readily that I could be absolutely wrong), I think the message that we live in some sort of version of this (earth-bound) reality which is more free, more fun, and happy, happy, happy perfection seems not only banal, but "wrong". If we are to move on to another reality after this one, why should it be easier? Wouldn't the point be to be challenged to develop our energy further rather than to join in spiritual campfire songs and arts and crafts? The idea that it's one big hug and a round or two or thousand of "Kumbaya" with all of the other dead folks just seems too close to all of the stories of "heaven" in various religions. It's like a comforting bed-time story.

I'd be more impressed if the spirits had said they're sitting around manipulating energy to create solar flares or inhabiting water molecules to see what it is like to exist in that state. I'd be more impressed if they were haunted by what they'd done or if they had some sort of deeper insight into the nature of reality to convey or a message about what it takes to solve the world's problems beyond "clean house" or "love". Surely, someone who saw this reality from the broader perspective of being in the next could do more than your average New Age hippy. Conversations With History just doesn't offer much either in style of substance and I was deeply disappointed.

A Tale of Two Buildings

About a year ago, my husband and I moved into an apartment complex which seemed to consist of two buildings connected by an extended archway over the entrance to the parking area. The buildings are physically fairly identical as they share color, architecture, apartment styles, door lettering, etc. Each has 19 units and a small coin-operated laundry room with two washers and dryers. The main difference is that

They are so alike that it is very common for both delivery people and visiting individuals to be confused about which one to go to. Two of my friends have gone to the identical-looking apartment in the other building. It doesn't help that the numbers of the building are very similar as well. Ours ends in "85" and the other one ends in "65", but the first two digits are the same.

The reason these buildings are so similar is that they were once owned by the same entity, but in the past several years were split up and sold to different owners. This change was sufficiently recent that some tenants in both buildings are still under the impression that they are under the same ownership. It's also an issue because there is only one manager's office for both buildings, but there are separate property managers for each.

It's often the case that people will wander over to the wrong place because they assume that that office applies to both. I know this because our assigned parking spot is in front of that office and, despite there being a sign which says the parking is restricted and those who park there without authorization will be towed away, people keep parking in our space when they want to see the manager. I have to keep kicking them out and get rude response from people who seem utterly put out by my cheekiness when I assert my right to the parking space that comes along with my apartment and its exorbitant rent. When I ask them to move, they never apologize and just say they've only there for a short time or are there to see the manager. The fact that I need to put my car there and have no other place to park isn't even a factor in their limited capacity to process. They need the space. The space is by the manager's office. Why am I asking them to move?

At any rate, the buildings are ran quite differently, or at least they seem to be. Our building does not allow pets and the other one does. Theirs has junk sitting around outside of some of the apartments. Furniture or children's toys often litter the area in front of some of the two-bedroom units. Ours are generally clean and clear. A lot of their metal screen doors are in a state of disrepair. Some have paint peeling off. Others have missing handles or hinges. Ours either have well-maintained screen doors or no screen doors at all. Their tenants put bags of trash out in front because people aren't quite ready to make the long and arduous three-minute walk over to the trash bins.

Our manager said when we moved in that people wouldn't be doing that in our building, and that is correct. Each apartment has its own labeled trash bin and recycling bin, but ours are locked and theirs are not. Homeless people stop by nearly each day and poke around their bins and their tenants dump trash next to the bins when they overflow. They get much fuller than ours because our tenants are too lazy to unlock the proper bins and just throw their trash in the other ones (and they believe the buildings are still essentially united).

All of this may seem like trivial differences, but the truth is that the tenants are also different. I don't know if that is because our property manager screens differently or if being in a place with stricter rules incites better behavior on the part of tenants. All I can say is that I've come to call the other building the "white trash building" for several reasons.

Before I get any further, I should hasten to add that I am white and come from poverty. I probably would have been called "white trash" growing up if the term had been popular then. However, I don't call people that based on socio-economic status, but based on behavior. What makes them white trash? Well, part of it is that most of them are white. Our building has a much higher proportion of non-white people, especially Indian and Asian, but there's also an African American couple. The other building has one elderly Chinese woman, a couple of Sikh men, and a biracial couple (white and African-American), but otherwise seems to be a lot of white folks.

The reason I've come to call the building the "white trash building" is well illustrated by a situation that occurred several nights ago, though it is hardly rare. Around 10:30 pm, a man parked his car between the buildings (partially blocking traffic into the parking area) and starts having a screaming match with his partner. I didn't listen to it directly, but it went on for some time and sounded very aggressive. This family moved in within the last six months and consists of a mother, father, and two children (a boy and a girl who look to be in the age range of 8-11). At the end of a protracted and very public fight, I heard the husband scream twice, "I want you to get your shit together and follow me."

I don't know what happened, but my guess is that she got her shit together and followed him because about a half hour later, three policemen showed up and started rapping the front door with batons and shining flashlights in the window trying to see if anyone was inside. They cased the place for some time and then gave up and left. The following morning, two policemen returned and were again trying to get inside. A woman stood near the street with a cell phone and they asked her to try and call someone. No one was home and they gave up again.

Today, about 3-4 days later, I saw the woman who lives there finally return. I'm not sure what happened or why the police were called, but my best guess based on the woman with the cell phone is that the woman herself called a female relative in a panic over what was going on and the concerned relative contacted the police. The police arrived too late to intervene and the whole lot of them took off for several days until things cooled off.

The thing is, this incident was the most protracted, but it's not rare. Shortly after moving here, a couple had an enormous fight in front of that building which included shoving. The woman was screaming and yelled for someone to "call the police" (it was not the same couple - they didn't live here at that time and these were younger people). In the past week, someone else stood outside and had an extremely loud and melodramatic phone call about how someone didn't love her, want to be with her, or care about her anymore.

Within the past three weeks, a mob of men stood in the parking lot between our apartments smoking up a storm, talking loudly, and clapping their hands for about an hour between 11:00 pm and midnight. I think they were actually buddies of the Sikh men, so I guess they technically weren't white trash, but were doing a pretty good impression with their rude and disruptive behavior. The thing is, if the office manager of that building called people on this sort of thing, it'd stop. She does not. 

I don't know what sort of mojo is going on over there, but there is more drama and loud behavior coming from there than from here. Our building is far from perfect. There is a 1000-year-old Chinese couple in the apartment beneath us that had been watching T.V. late at night (between midnight and 1:00 am) so loudly that it vibrated our floor. My husband or I went down three times to ask them to cool it, but finally had to enlist the property manager who, fortunately, heard it one night when he came home from work and told them to use headphones if they were too deaf to hear T.V. at a reasonable volume late at night. After that, they cooled it.

Our office manager is actually pretty good about trying to keep the tone of the building civilized. Our immediate neighbors, a very nice Indian couple with the most adorable little boy I've ever seen, were prone to having shouting arguments not only inside their apartment, but between their apartment and the parking space. He'd stand outside and she'd stay inside and they'd carp at each other. Since they did that during the day-time, I didn't complain, but our manager overheard it one day and asked me if it happened a lot. I told him the truth; it happened nearly every day. He put an end to it. They still fight, but less publicly.

I think that people generally are not aware of how their behavior impacts others, especially when they are acting in a state of emotion. However, when people live in a free-for-all environment in which those in authority don't act, others feel it is normal to publicly display their drama and to generally be rude. The tone is set by the authority figure and that other building has a property manager who simply doesn't give a crap. While I think sometimes that too rigid management goes on (and more former apartment would give the Third Reich a run for its money in terms of how uptight they could be), I can very much see the effects of an "anything goes" mentality in the nasty, messy-looking apartments (both inside and out - I've seen into a few of them while walking by and some of them are pig pens - probably because of the higher numbers of people with children and pets) and behavior.

The tale of our two buildings is an intriguing one because they are so similar in every respect except the property managers and (invisible) ownership. The rents are almost certainly close to the same. The location is the same, and they obviously are the same size and style. The factors that differ are the property managers and the tenants, and the latter aren't seriously screened in any way that I can see in either case. The differences in tone, behavior, and cleanliness really do come down to management, and I'm glad that I'm in this building instead of that one.

Book: A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel

Note: Yes, I know. Hearing about what books other people are reading is so boring. Feel free to go watch a YouTube video about cats or peruse Facebook posts which show videos of people dumping ice water on their heads instead. Go ahead. I won't mind. 

I read books. No, really, I do. Well, I read them eventually in many cases. Often, I'll read 1/3, 1/2, or even 2/3 then a new book will come along and I'll start to read it. The Japanese have a word that almost describes this (tsundoku). However, I think it refers to books that are never read at all so I guess I'm a little bit beyond that.

Given this tendency, it surprised me when I tore through A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel in a mere three days. At one point, as I read on, I realized that I'd read something by him on the same theme as the book before. He has written a fair amount for the New York Times and I at one point heard part of an article he'd done about attention. That is, at least in part, what this book is all about.

I don't want to spoil A Deadly Wandering by talking about its contents much. I can say as much as the blurb on the book which is that the story of the tragic death of two rocket scientists (honestly, that's what their jobs were - that's not sarcasm) in a traffic accident is used as a means of talking about the perils of media use. I will hasten to add that the book is not alarmist in the way it deals with the subject. It's incredibly pragmatic and talks about the science behind the issue rather than merely being critical of those darn kids who can't un-glue their thumbs from their cell phones.

The book fleshed out some things which I have suspected for some time and that I'm sure made me sound like an utter curmudgeon. It has been my impression that the internet has shortened attention spans as well as damaged the ability of people to have good relationships with others. The former is addressed in A Deadly Wandering. The latter is being addressed in another book that I'm still working on (but am getting through far more slowly). The bottom line is that our brains are being re-wired by technology. We know this for certain through the magic of other technology - not the sort that rewires your brain, but the magical sort that sends little fairy particles all through your body and tells the nice doctor people which parts of your gray matter are being tickled by various experiences.

A Deadly Wandering does a great job of weaving all of this science stuff into a story in such a way that you're willing to read it. When I say "you", I actually mean "you" and not the more general "you" that includes me. I'm happy to read about brain chemicals all of the time. While I'll read it faster if a super, duper, uber-talented guy like Matt Richtel writes about it such that it is hard to put down, I'll read it with the speed of a determined tortoise even if it's less well-written.

Everyone should read A Deadly Wandering. Every potential parent should have to read it and take a test proving he and/or she has read it and comprehended it before fertilization takes place. It doesn't have a message, but the inescapable conclusion is that people need to stop thinking they can do two things at once because they can't. Their brains switch off between tasks, not perform them simultaneously. If you try to do two things at once and one of them is dangerous, something bad is likely to happen. If it hasn't already, then it probably will in the future.

I once watched a documentary about a woman who worked in a book-binding shop for small run publications. This was some time ago and she worked in front of a machine that chopped the pages to fit the binding. She pushed a book in and a super sharp blade came down and chopped the pages. Then, she pulled the pages out. She'd repeat this process. The job was very tedious. One day, she got distracted and allowed her mind to wander. She looked over at the book binding area and saw four strange white things on the cutter. She wondered what those odd things were. She soon figured out that they were her fingers.

The woman in this documentary had no memory of putting her hand in the machine or having her fingers severed. This is what happens when people think they can attend to two things at once. They actually switch away from one task then switch back to the other. She was "lucky" because the blade was so sharp and cut through so cleanly that she had no pain. She also was able to have the fingers re-attached and regained most of the use of them because the nerve endings were cut cleanly (the documentary was about re-attached body parts). This woman tried to focus on two things at once because one was really boring and the consequences were horrible.

The same happened in A Deadly Wandering. Someone tried to do two things at once and focused on the more interesting task and wasn't paying attention to the boring, dangerous one. And the consequences were horrible. Everyone likes to think he or she is special and has the capacity to multi-task above and beyond that of others. Research shows that almost no one is special in this way, and then bad things happen. The book will convince you of this reality, though it likely won't change your behavior because even when people know the facts, they still act like idiots and think they're somehow immune to the consequences. Read the book and at least understand why you're doing something is a utterly irresponsible and reckless idea that might ruin someone's life (including your own).

That Willful Misunderstanding Thing

One of my friends posted a black and white picture of 80-year-old Yoko Ono on Facebook. In it, she was wearing shorts that were nearly small enough to be underpants and displaying pristine pure white thighs. There was not a blemish or wrinkle. Her legs were as pure and youthful-looking as a 6-year-old schoolboy in his school uniform. Her comment was something like, 'wow, doesn't she look great.'

To this picture and her comment, I said that, though she may indeed look good for her age, the picture was certainly manipulated in some fashion. Either Photoshop was used to adjust the contrast and white out shadowing in her legs and face or the lighting in the original shoot was intense enough to blow-out any shadows. The latter thought occurred to me because I once read someone say that Bette Davis, in one of her much later movies, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, looked young and beautiful in one scene because the bright lighting washed out all of her wrinkles. In the pre-Photoshop era, there were ways to make older folks look younger and that was one of the ways.

I believe that it is possible that Yoko Ono has aged very well. I don't believe it is possible that she has pristine legs at age 80. Japanese women are famous for avoiding the sun and meticulously looking after their skin, but they are not immune to the effects of age and gravity no matter how much of an effort they make. Even if she took a bath in a vat of Oil of Olay every day, she'd still have some blemishes or wrinkling on her legs. Aging is not a failure. Accepting that people who are quite elderly are showing age is not a criticism of them. It's just a fact.

One of my friend's friends came out of the shadows hissing and spitting like a rabid pit bull and attacked me personally for what he interpreted as an knock against Ms. Ono. Apparently, merely asserting the high likelihood that an old lady's picture was likely manipulated by the magazine to hide her flaws was a form of character assassination and  warranted an ad hominem attack. I didn't want to play his game, so I explained that I was not criticizing Yoko Ono, but rather the people who published or manipulated the picture to hide any flaws. I believe that this is not a good thing for anyone as it makes her aging seem like a failure or like a shameful thing. That old broad has been through a lot. I'd think she'd earned some battle scars and it'd be honoring her to let them be seen rather than to smooth them over.

After explaining what I meant, something which any rational person would have understood considering there never was any criticism of her in anything I said, he came back foaming at the mouth again and insisted that I was insulting her. What I meant and actually said was ignored in favor of what he wanted to conclude or believe. It was willful understanding pushed to the next level. I let it drop at that point because one learns not to explain oneself to idiots, especially those who are not close personal friends of a famous person but somehow take anything remotely negative and vaguely related to them as a personal affront. If someone identifies that much with a stranger, their identity and ego integrity are too brittle to tolerate any pesky reality.

In my opening post, I mentioned that I'm not putting up with any willful misunderstanding. Experiences like the one above are part of the reason why. In addition to the uncivilized manner in which such exchanges can be carried out and the fruitlessness of trying to explain to people who don't want to hear it that you didn't say something that they cooked up in their febrile imagination, there are the reasons that people (often willfully) misunderstand. There is little more willful than having an explanation of what was meant and then rejecting that in favor of ones initial erroneous interpretation.

One of the reasons people do this is that we experience all information through their own particular perspective or understanding. The angry being that was sure I was knocking Ms. Ono was clearly a fan who has been a witness to far too many ugly opinions about her character. Frankly, I don't have any feelings about her. I don't give her much thought as she plays no role in my life whatsoever. However, that person's filtering mechanism is turned up to "hyper-vigilant" when it comes to sniffing out potential attacks on his aging idol. Since so many people knock her, I must have been doing so as well. You can never know what someone's filter is going to consist of and can't predict what they're going to interpret your words as. This is not the worst of it, however.

The part that I am tired of putting up with is not just the willful misunderstanding itself, but the insistence that ones interpretation was correct even after an explanation is offered which says, "No, that was not what I meant. Here is what I meant..." Often, what I meant is exactly what I said, not what was read into it. That denial of the writer's intent is about ego. To accept the message the sender intended rather than the one you received is to admit that one is wrong. Since some people can't bear being wrong, then they have to insist that you meant what they thought rather than what you actually said. I get tired of repeating myself, and even tireder of doing so and then being disbelieved.

The second reason relates to the way in which feedback from such people generally comes across. That is, they tend to be snotty, angry, and offensive. They do this because being mad actually feels good. The chemicals released in your brain while you're all hopped up on madness juices make you feel powerful. Personally attacking a person who has no capacity to meaningfully retaliate or make you face any consequences is also empowering. The internet, for all of its delights, provides the perfect platform to find a way to be pissed off and then get lots of fun brain action from the resulting sense of "mad" and the satisfaction of "showing them" by attacking.

The third reason that people misunderstand is the old tl;dr mentality. I write long posts and a lot of the stupidest comments that I've gotten on my other blogs have been the result of people who didn't read all of one or didn't pay much attention as they read. I've had people make a snarky comment saying I didn't acknowledge that pease porridge can be both hot and cold rather than simply writing about how tasty it is cold. I must be utterly unqualified to write about food of any sort if I can't acknowledge the utter short-coming of writing a review that is only about cold pease porridge. I get tired of writing the equivalent of, 'in my fourth paragraph, I said that I've had pease porridge both hot and cold, but I prefer cold and that's what I'm focusing on today.' Why should I waste my time? I'd rather delete the comments in moderation and make the commenter feel he wasted his time.

The final reason, and I can't quantify any of these to say which is most likely, but this one is the easiest to conclude, is that people are stupid and lacking in reading comprehension skills or the ability to remember the contents of a post for more than three seconds. If I could create a commenter qualification test to make sure people were bright enough to understand posts before they were allowed to comment on them, I would. Instead of making you try to read the letters or numbers on fuzzy pictures to prove you're a real person, I'd offer a logic question or something which proved one possessed critical thinking skills before one could bang out a comment. Unfortunately, such technology does not currently exist, but I'll be first in line to beta test it when it becomes available.

The Inbetweeners

I like British comedy. You may believe that people say that because it makes them sound more erudite or sophisticated, but I've found that it is anything but a reflection of a loftier sensibility. One of my friends, a Russian woman named Anastasia (really, that's her name despite sounding like it was made up), said that she couldn't understand the appeal of British comedy because it seemed to be all about farts and crude jokes. I told her that I think a culture which focuses on being so "proper" and stoic finds the opposite to be more humorous. It is because they are stodgier that they find cruder humor appealing.

At some point in the not so distant past, I came across a list of the 50 best British comedies as well as top 10 list which focused more upon recent shows. One of the shows in the top 10 was called The Inbetweeners. I don't know what an "inbetweener" is in English culture. I've watched the entire series as well as a follow-up theatrical movie release and I still am not sure what one is. My best guess is that it is someone who is neither cool or high status nor a complete dork of no status. That is, they are "in between" these social groups.

The setting of the show is a public high school and focuses on the lives of four young men. Narration is provided by the central character named Will. Will used to go to a private school and is intelligent and a bit snobbish, but he had to switch to a public school when his father left his mother for his assistant. Will is self-aware - far more so than his cohort - and realizes that finding the right friends as well as enduring being hazed as a newcomer are part of the experience. In America, I imagine such a character would be a bit shy and pathetic or may, on occasion, scrappily fight back.

In this show, Will manages with a certain level of dignity and forthrightness. People are lobbing verbal darts at him and he just seems to keep putting up defenses effortlessly due to his wit and somewhat higher maturity. Even when he overdoses on energy drinks while cramming for university entrance exams and craps his pants due to the side effects and people mock him for it, he owns up to it and refuses to be humiliated. This is part of what I like about the humor.

The other three characters embody certain stereotypes that reflect aspects of being a young male. All of them are fairly sex-obsessed and preoccupied with girls. In fact, when I first started watching this, I couldn't help but feel that this group is what the guys in The Big Bang Theory would be like if that show took place in high school, was more realistic and less concerned with creating "likeable" characters, and was R-rated. The character of Jay not only acts like Howard on The Big Bang Theory in the early days of the show - overestimating his sex appeal, talking a lot about sleeping with women, etc. - but has a similar hairstyle. I don't think this is a rip-off, however, as the shows were developed nearly concurrently.

I think it's a bit of a waste that some British comedy never takes off in America, or worse, that it is adapted and re-made with American actors and just tends to lose all of its charm and humor. Perhaps I overestimate the audience in the U.S. and their ability to absorb and understand other cultures. Perhaps the entities responsible for broadcasting underestimate them. At any rate, I recommend The Inbetweeners if you're looking for fresh comedy and aren't prudish or sensitive about language or sex. Yes, it's crude, but it's also sharp and funny.

Note: There's a YouTube link there which works now, but may vanish any day. If it goes away, then you'll have to see if there's another outlet from which to view the show or another link on YouTube.

A Dream: September 16, 2014

Context: My father-in-law (FIL, henceforth) lives in a single-story home ("bungalow") in an extremely affluent neighborhood. He is reasonably well off, but not "rich". He mainly gained his money by buying a home for a modest price in the 1970's and seeing the housing market explode such that the value increased from it's original price of around $40,000-$50,000 to being worth over $1,000,000. However, he sold half of that to his daughter and retains only half of the equity. Before he sold her half of the house (in which she presently resides with her family), he rented some of it to other tenants to get more money to purchase a second property in another state. The house is unusual in that it is divided into two homes on a single level (two kitchens, two baths, two living rooms, etc.), so he and his daughter live separately in the same dwelling.

In consultations with his children, it has been explained that each of his three children will equally inherit a portion of his half of the estate if any remains. However, my FIL is a very selfish person who values his comfort above all else. He spends without looking at price tags, though he does not have relatively "rich" tastes. He does indulge and spent $2,000 on a pure-bred dog and spends several hundred dollars a month on toys and special treatment for the dog. He remarked recently in a phone call to my husband that he did not look at prices and joked that, "I guess I'm spending your inheritance." He also said that he might come to regret his indulgence in the future.

The Dream: My husband and I were supposed to visit my FIL in his home, but he seemed to have forgotten. We went to his home and There was someone living on the first floor - ostensibly a renter. My FIL was living on the second floor. We (husband and I) pretended not to be relatives in order to understand the circumstances. We wanted to know how the house was divided between my FIL and the tenant and generally figure out what was going on.

The tenant was talking to us about the situation and how communal spaces were managed. My FIL suddenly came downstairs and was acting like we were the relatives that we were and I put a finger to my lips to get him to not say anything as we spoke to the tenant.

My thinking within the dream was that my FIL had somehow managed to squander too much of his (still fairly considerable) assets through carelessness and that this tenant was taken on as a result of that carelessness.

Analysis: I believe this dream was a simple reflection on recent interactions with my FIL and his guilt, nervousness, and insecurity as reflected in his volitional statements about his spending. It should be noted that my husband and I never comment on his finances or spending. He talked about these things spontaneously. I was simply "replaying" his words while I was asleep. The implication of his assertion that he may "come to regret" spending money without considering prices was that he could run out of money one day if he keeps this up. I believe that is how the tenant in the dream entered the picture.

Interpretation Confidence Scale Rating (1-10): 9

A Dream: September 15, 2014

Context: I took two graduate courses with my husband during classes he took from 2012-2014. I got to know his cohort through those classes and some social situations.

The Dream: In my dream, I was in a structure that was supposed to be a school, but felt like a house. There were a lot of people around. Many of them were moving along to classes or milling about. I was with four or so of my and my husband's former classmates, but he was not with us in our small group.

One of these classmates, Damien, talked about some experience that made him uncomfortable. I noted mentally that the aspect of it that made him ill-at-ease seemed to be the change from routine. Later, we were supposed to take a class and had books in hand. When we were supposed to actually have the class, there was no teacher.

The sense that we were still responsible for "taking the class" despite the lack of one was palpable. In order to do this, I suggested that we each take a chapter of the book in turn and teach each other. Damien was also uncomfortable with this as well. Though I considered that it was the work he didn't want to do, my sense again was that he didn't want to do something new and the changes created anxiety. I confronted him with this second feeling that he was so uncomfortable with change that he didn't want to do anything different.

I also thought as I looked at the book that we wouldn't have enough time to do the entire thing if we did one chapter each week.

That was the end of the dream.

Analysis: Like many people, I am uncomfortable doing new things. Unlike some people, I often see this discomfort as something I should face and push through until the new situation is no longer uncomfortable.

Recently, I started swimming at a local pool with my husband. Doing it for the first time created a high level of anxiety for me for several reasons (my first time in a public pool ever, revealing my body "in public", not having swam for more than 30 years, not knowing the rules and the feel of the place or the people). After the first experience, I felt fairly good about it.

During the second (and most recent) experience, the "slow lane" (a lane with access to a lower depth) for people like me who aren't strong or confident and may need to stop and rest a lot was fairly crowded because it was a fairly hot day. I didn't like having to work around so many people, especially when one person seemed to plant herself at a corner of the lane and didn't move for 20 minutes of the 45-minute swimming time, but I generally didn't mind.

At one point, I was resting at one end and a woman in an adjacent lane asked if I was "using that spot or just hanging out". It was a strange thing to say as I had been swimming back and forth (with rests at the end) fairly regularly. I think she was agitated by people who she saw as just sitting in the pool and this was a form of soft bullying or an attempt to chastise me for a behavior she had growing frustration about. I replied by telling her that I was "resting because I'm weak" (and I am).

At the time, this didn't bother me too much, but I felt recurrent anxiety over the experience over the past several days. I even thought about how I didn't want to swim in that lane with strangers anymore and would like to swim in a lane with my husband if I could manage to be in a lane with no low-depth area to stand in. I also considered that I'd like to avoid swimming if it was too hot as more people show up to hang out and this situation is more likely.

It is possible that, in the dream, Damien is a reflection of my own anxiety related to this new and very different experience and my nagging feelings that I would like to turn away from this activity or change how I do it as a result of what was said to me.

Interpretation Confidence Scale Rating (1-10): 5

Not Crying Over What Is Spilt

When I was 22 years old (and still living with my parents), my mother told me that she was going to the store and asked me what we were out of and subsequently what needed to be purchased. Bearing in mind that I worked two 24-hour shifts outside of my home two days per week and occasionally did another part-time job at which I'd also spend about 16 hours overnight, I told her that I didn't know exactly, but rattled off what I did know. The truth was that I wasn't in a good position to take inventory of our household needs as I wasn't there all of the time.

My mother went off to the local stores to purchase things. When she returned, she went to the bathroom and discovered that we were nearly out of toilet paper. This discovery had her coming to my room in a rage and she started to berate me with great hostility. She attacked me verbally continuously for about five minutes and told me what a horrible and irresponsible person I was. The barrage ended only when she'd reduced me to tears. By way of "apology", she ended her tirade by saying that I "knew" she was like that and that I should be careful not to upset her.

During the entire time I lived at home (I left when I was 23), my mother was emotionally volatile and verbally abusive. As a child, I remember times when I was so terrified of making a mistake that would incite her wrath that I'd suffer anxiety at the thought of the situation playing out. She took no responsibility for her own emotions. She never once apologized for anything she did wrong and she never thanked me for anything I did for her.

I haven't had a face-to-face relationship with my mother since leaving home as I moved too far away for that, so I have been spared any further experiences. The truth is that she is not a bad person, but she is both playing out a generational dynamic and is incapable of managing her stress. My maternal grandmother berated her and was vitriolic when upset. She grew up to do the same. It didn't help that my mother's life was incredibly miserable since we were extremely poor and my father is a disabled alcoholic. She had a lot to be unhappy about and she had little in the way of resilience or role-modeling to manage the situation.

During the first year of my marriage, I would occasionally exhibit the same sorts of behaviors that my mother demonstrated toward me. There was a situation in which I said to my husband that I felt that he'd "intentionally upset me." What he said in response chilled me to the bone. He said, "Why would I upset you knowing it would bring on that sort of response?" I realized that I was holding him responsible for my emotions just as my mother had held me responsible. At that moment, I decided that I would do anything I could to stop the cycle.

That sort of change does not come easily and it does not come fast. It took me years of effort to both dial back my emotions and to strengthen my control. Lately, I've found that the fruits of my labor are fairly intact, though sometimes they are challenged to a greater extent by circumstances. Last night, I had an experience which illustrated this well.

In the past two to three weeks, there have been three occasions in which a relatively large quantity of liquid has accidentally been spilled. The first time, my husband knocked over a cup of fruit punch on his side of the bed that he was keeping there to drink through the night. As someone who has knocked over the glass of water she keeps by the bed at least three times in the past six months, I was very patient with this despite it happening in the middle of the night and the contents emptying into a nearly full bag of hard candy on the same stand. I salvaged the sticky goo, because that's what poor people do - we don't throw things away which can be of marginal use. It's a mess that keeps on giving as it has spawned 30 little messes as I've gotten sticky fingers with each candy's unwrapping. You'd think I'd just give up on the dollar spent on them, but, no.

The next spill was actually my fault with some help from my husband. I made French toast for breakfast and was bringing the dish to the table. My husband had put his coffee cup near the middle of the place mat so he could drink it more comfortably (moving it from the upper corner where I'd placed it ). When I went to move the cup, with my focus on too many things, I knocked over the nearly full cup of coffee. Like the cup of fruit punch, it spilled all over the place including the wall and table.

I was agitated about this spill, but was attempting to keep it together when my husband asked if it was his fault. I angrily said that he had this habit of moving things into the space I needed to serve food and that I did believe it was his fault. It is true that he cluelessly puts things down in the wrong place while I'm trying to carry things over as part of a sequence of managing a meal and it has been annoying. Later, I told him that I didn't think it was his fault and was unhappy with myself for both being angry and for blaming him. I felt this was a temperamental failure on my part. It was likely facilitated both by his question and this habit he has (which I really have not worked with him on) as well as the time of day. I was a bit foggy that morning and just wanted to get the food on the table and relax while I ate, so my impatience also played a role.

Last night, I served tomato soup with dinner. My husband knocked over the full bowl and it spilled everywhere again. The first spill didn't upset me. The second one irritated me, perhaps because it was my fault. The third one was even harder to contain as I'd only slept four or so hours the night before and was pretty tired. However, despite the frustration and accompanying anger welling up in me, I held it together this time. My husband, after the previous experience, wisely did not ask me any questions while I cleaned things up. 

My husband was quite upset about what happened. He said that he felt bad because, not only was a mess made, but it was homemade soup that I put effort into creating. He also remarked that that seemed to be happening more often. It has, but I believe it's because he has been working harder than usual and is worn out. I think that situational awareness is diminished when someone is mentally tapped out and he's been engaged with work and extra training a lot more lately. His brain is drained and he's not seeing things around him. Even if he's suddenly grown more clumsy, that's just the way it is. It's not like he's doing any of these things on purpose.

One of the things that I had to learn and that my mother never learned is that sometimes frustrating or bad things happen and it isn't anybody's fault. Berating someone for carelessness when they spill something or raging at them for the mistake doesn't change the fact that accidents happen and you just have to live with it. In the moment, when the part of your brain that kicks up a little inner tantrum goes off, it may be a relief to yell and blow off steam, but the price for that is that the other party will become anxious at the least and get angry back at you at most. It's a destructive dynamic which ultimately can poison the well of your relationship.

Having grown up a victim of someone who blamed others constantly for anything that upset her, I'm gratified to have had the experience I had last night in which I was upset, but I didn't act on my feelings and was able to calm down and attend to how my husband felt and help him instead of venting destructively. This is a sign of my triumph over the generational dysfunction passed on from my grandmother to my mother.

"Everybody Lies"

A few months ago, my husband and I had dinner at a friend's house. While we were noshing on raw vegetables and cooked fruit - a situation which my husband found less than preferable as he prefers things the other way around - talk of relationships came up. Among other things that were said, we mentioned that we don't lie. In response to this, our friend said, "everybody lies."

To be perfectly honest, because I don't lie, there are situations in which I avoid revealing my every frank and brutal opinion. This is not the same as lying, however, as I would reveal said truths if pressed. I used to teach English to non-native speakers, and it was common for the students to ask me if their English was "good". Instead of saying that it wasn't very good relative to a native speaker, I would tell them about their strengths and weaknesses and point out areas in which they had improved since I started working with them. This answer not only spared the students' feelings, but it was truthful and constructive.

One could call that a "white lie", but there was no dishonesty in what I said. Often, this sort of framing of information is something I employ in the service of sparing feelings, but also in order not to offer a subjective and utterly useless conclusion. Even if I felt I was dealing with someone who could take "the truth", I wouldn't want to say something was "good" or "bad" because such assertions are pointless and lacking in nuance. To the classic question, "does this (piece of attire) make me look fat", I would never say "yes" or "no". I would describe the way in which the clothing made a part or parts of ones body look bigger than they truly are. This is part of how I communicate.

After I explained this to our friend and added that, while I may try to offer honesty in a palatable fashion to others, I never did not re-frame things with my husband. To him, I always told the truth. My friend responded to this by simply repeating, for about the third time, that "everybody lies." What she was saying was, "I lie," and "I lie even in the boundaries of a committed relationship." She has to believe that everyone does so as a means of normalizing her behavior and helping manage whatever negative feelings lying makes her face in herself.

One piece of "truth" about having a relationship in which people don't lie to each other is that it can sometimes be extremely painful. I've asked questions and gotten answers which were utterly devastating to me, and I've probably answered my husband's queries and the honest replies have wounded him as well. It is not an easy thing to be totally honest with someone, but it is vital if you want to have a relationship in which you truly understand each other for who you each are and that has the benefits of transparency - the main one of which is an extremely high level of trust. It's also immensely useful to be correctly understood by your partner rather than being seen as a fake persona that hides behind a tapestry of fibs.

A lot of people would rather lie and be lied to than to live in the type of situation that my husband and I do. I don't have an issue with how others choose to live their lives. As long as both parties embrace the same ethics in this regard, and both are fully prepared to deal with the consequences of those choices, then all I can say is "good for you." Unfortunately, quite often such a situation ends up in the long run not being good for anyone. The classic case of women faking sexual pleasure is the best example. If you pretend something is enjoyable when it is not, you only confuse your partner as to what is a good idea to keep doing. Ultimately, this will create a situation in which you'll spend years enduring a less than optimal sex life, or, worse, you'll have to eventually tell the truth and it'll be all that more hurtful.

My husband said a long time ago that people "get the partners they deserve". If you lie, then you get into relationships with liars. If you are honest, you will get into relationships with honest people. We attract those who are like us and they stay with us because they reinforce the sense that the relationship is being carried out as expected. Many people who have had relationships crash and burn will assert that their partner was the bad one - the liar, the cheater, the shallow one, etc.

Despite the fact that people are nowhere near as good at detecting dishonesty as they tend to believe, over the long run of a relationship, the truth will reveal itself sooner rather than later. If you don't see that, then it's often a case of willful blindness. My friend closed her eyes to what my husband and I said about our honesty because she didn't want to see it. That told us something about the way she deals with her relationships as well. She lies to herself just as she lies to others when the truth is hard to live with.

Commenting On The Elephant

Chances are that this blog will be about things that you aren't interested in or will disagree with. The reason for this is that the thing you're most interested in talking about looks back at you each day when you glance in the mirror and I'm not living in your skin. I'd like anyone who is reading to keep this in mind before posting a comment of any sort.

In fact, I'd also like to further ask a little favor of anyone who stumbles upon this blog and takes a shine to it. And, I'm talking about those who find it shiny in a way which pisses them off as well as makes them happy - especially about those who find the bile climbing to the back of their throats. The favor I'd like to ask is that you find the old story about the three blind men and the elephant and take some time to understand what it means. Just because you're one of the blind men holding the trunk and I'm the one touching the leg, it doesn't make me wrong and you right. If this is something that any comment you make reflects a lack of understanding of, I'll delete your comment and it will go unpublished. OK, I'm not so much "asking a favor" as "demanding" (or, to put it more kindly, "requesting"). My sandbox here. My rules. Go play in your own sandbox if that wads you undies.

I'd also like to emphasize reading skills when you read what I say. One of the issues I've had with blogs in the past is that people seem to almost willfully misunderstand so that they can provide a counterpoint. Either that, or those commenters really were so stupid and lacking in literacy capability that they couldn't follow my points. No, it's not my writing. I'm a good writer and I'm frankly sick of this tendency to assume certain things are implied or being said so that one can prattle on about something I never asserted. If you do this, I'm going to assume you scored poorly in school, and that you need to find a blog which is more suitable to your reading comprehension level. I'm not going to argue with straw men or tangential arguments. 

Beyond asking that you understand that truth isn't a static and absolute concept, I will also ask that you be respectful. In other blogs that I have written (and bid adieu to), I've suggested that people write comments as if they were talking to their boss. You can disagree, but pretend that you have something at stake if you make me mad. If your imagination is so limited that you can't manage this, then I will kick your comment to the curb. Everyone's life is hard and we all experience frustration and have that urge that makes us want to punch a wall. I am not your punching wall, or bag, or the dog you kick, or whatever. I'm a person with feelings just like you. In fact, chances are that I have even more and deeper ones than you do because I'm pretty sensitive, but I'm not going to run away and cry if you are mean to me. I'm going to make sure you've wasted your time commenting by putting you in the spam bucket forever.

As my mother said when she first met my husband, "Orderly Mind takes no guff." You have to remember that I am not here to put up with your crap. If you can manage to understand what I've said here, we'll get along just fine and I will welcome your words.

Now that I've got that off of my chest, let the games begin!