If The Universe Could Hear You...

Well, it's almost time for tryptophan with all the fixin's washed down with the alcohol of your choice, but that doesn't really change the fact that, like the last post I wrote, I have no earthly idea what the hell to write about. It kind of sucks. I started writing here again because I wanted to, but the dearth of motivation is preventing me from really making an effort.

Well, motivation is not really the word. I am motivated to write. I tried doing NaNoWriMo and got all of 400-odd words done. Yay, it says I win just for trying. There are about 6,000,000,000 things I read every day that I'd love to comment on or analyze, but I can never keep my thoughts straight.

QUAAAAAACK quackquackquack...

I've thought about crazy-ass things like how globalization has made it easy to travel and pass money around, and consequently has made it easier to spread pathogens throughout the globe as evidenced by Max Brook's excellent book World War Z, a zombie book that is about anything BUT zombies.  And then I read about things like the Stuxnet Virus that brings to reality crazy things that Angelina Jolie could stop with her youthful collagen duckface just 15 years ago, when she was only just beginning to make shitty movies.  After putting 2 and 2 together it seems that this computer pathogen could spread globally along similar vectors as zombies, or pandemic influenza, or whatever, given a motivated enough individual to start the process.

But then ... yawn.  Maybe I'll burn the brain cells doing something more inane like configuring my fantasy football lineup for the coming week to keep my 4-game winning streak alive.

But I digress.  Back to Thanksgiving.

Yes the white man came, across the sea, and brought them pain and misery...because, you know, they were already living in harmony and hadn't already been trying to slaughter each other for their land, food and women for the last however many centuries simply because the other injuns lived over the river and through the woods and not here.  Doesn't justify shit, but face it - homo sapiens = bastards whether you have rifles or rocks tied to sticks.

So the Europeans prayed to God and used him as a convenient conversion sham to conquer and when that had petered out they shrouded expansion under his will.  The natives prayed to the Great Spirit or a pile of sticks or whatever and it did them a whole shitload of good.  At least in Innsmouth they pray to Cthulhu and once you get past the fish transformation you get to live forever.

So I found it kind of amusing when yesterday, at the office just stuff yourself and believe you have it good Thanksgiving potluck, a fellow of mine suggested "Let's have the biggest atheist here say grace."  I snerked.  That would have been him, because I'm still an atheist in denial holding on to what vestiges of his agnosticism can still get him by.  But the reason I snerked was because he was standing behind my boss; a good guy, but a dyed in the wool Christian through and through.  Which is probably why he said it.

So when we had broke to eat, I suggested he try this at his table this Thursday:

"Oh Universe, thank you for big-banging and expanding in such a way that your physical properties developed in such a way that I can experience and enjoy the life I have right now.  But you can't hear or understand this, so why am I even saying anything at all..."

But alas, in the end, I will always be a sort of middle-of-the-road guy when it comes to beliefs.  So enjoy the weekend in whatever way gives you the most benefit.

Pre-Thanksgiving Whatevs...

First thoughts on commencing this four-day weekend is I need this...holy crap it's been a busy summer and fall. It'll be a great chance to recharge a bit and, more importantly, give my wife some time to recharge by taking a little time to chase the kids around so she doesn't have to...

I love Thanksgiving. Why? Because I spend it with my family. S and I love packing the kids up in the car and heading to the South Coast to be with my parents, grandfather, and my aunts and uncles. Been doing it for decades, and it's always been about family. Not sure who I'm giving thanks to, though. Maybe to my family. Maybe it's just expressing deep appreciation through gluttony. Who knows.

Yaaaaay, Comicky Goodness!!!

What's it have to do with Thanksgiving? You'll see...well, they don't have as much to do with it as they are "along for the ride". But I bought these today, the first comics I have bought in God knows how long. I bought The Watchmen graphic novel last month, mostly because it's been 20 years since I read it last and I wanted to get it under my belt again before the movie next year. I tried to get into comics when I was young...I really tried. I told myself I liked the X-Men, Batman, all that stuff. But I was lying. Guess I was just a minor geek.

So as we were out with our kids at a nearby mall early this evening, I noticed a comic store and went in. Had no idea what I was looking for, but I did find something. Ender's Game caught my eye big time. Best science fiction book ever. Bar none. You have another best? You're wrong. Simple enough. Had no idea it was being adapted to a comic, and it turns out that Card himself is overseeing the adaptation in prep for a movie. Supposedly, it's getting great reviews and I can't wait to read it.

Fall of Cthulhu is an all out gamble. I took a flip through an issue, it looked pretty cool, so I bought all the current issues. From the Facebook Page I could confirm what I thought - a Lovecraftian tale concerning the minions of certain "gods" of the mythos going to war with each other. Seems worth a try.

And that center comic...wow. That was a cool find. I remember reading Sgt Rock of Easy Company as a kid, so I had to buy this one. First of six issues in a new series. Now if DC could just get Weird War Tales back in print...or come out with a bound edition reprinting all their issues.

So anyway, after dinner, these comics are all along for the ride back home, when our youngest daughter, O, vacates the contents of her stomach into her lap. Details not necessary; let's just say the combination of fried cheese sticks, ice cream, M&M's and stomach acid was very unpleasant. We thought it might just be that she ate too much, but she's thrown up since then, in bed, and we're pretty sure she has a stomach bug.

So, Thanksgiving on the South Coast is out. I have a 92 y/o grandfather there who just got out of the hospital, he's still getting his strength back, and the last thing one of his great grandkids needs to give to him is a virus. Soooooooo, a rapid trip to the grocery store, and we have what we need for a quiet Thanksgiving at home tomorrow, which is disappointing in some ways, but just fine in others. Hey, I may even get some time to read those new comics.

Happy Thanksgiving.

This Thursday, You Can Shove Your Carbon Footprint Up Your Ass

Did you know that stuffing with sausage generates 4x the carbon of vegetarian stuffing? That pie a la mode is not environmentally correct?

Thanksgiving is, generally, not an environmentally friendly holiday. But it can be.

Hey, at least I can drink wine from Europe and not feel bad about it. So I'm going to make sure I do the wrong thing and drink wine from Australia - wine that has to come here by ship and then drive across country. Oh, and screw the environmentally friendly Thanksgiving. I want to eat a shitload, drink, watch football, and pass gas. You know, that methane stuff all the cows are already making from feeding them the corn that they are not genetically designed to eat.

But seriously, this article makes me think...

The modern industrial food chain seems ridiculously unsustainable. From both the production and consumption side. Each calorie of food produced (non-organic, though "big market" organic isn't a whole lot better!) consumes 10 calories in petroleum energy - in fertilizer, in transportation, in packaging, you name it. That's a lot of energy if everyone in America was just consuming the average daily requirements posted in the article. But since when has America done that? The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that Americans consumed nearly 4000 calories a day on average in 2000-2002. Think that number's gone down in the last six years? Now I'm not pointing fingers or being holier than thou - I will readily admit that I can consume with the best of them - but that is simply ridiculous.

I'm not even thinking about carbon footprint here, just the total amount of petroleum energy that gets used producing 4000 x 300,000,000 = 300 BILLION calories of food a day (by my very presumptive swag) or more, considering how much gets thrown out. And I'm thinking about the known health impacts of over-consumption on the average individual, given that America is a mostly sedentary nation.

We're turning fossil fuel into heart disease - the number one killer in this country. We're killing ourselves with the stuff and it has nothing to do with carbon footprints or air quality. And we are most likely going to continue down this path of production (sorry folks, alternative energy right now probably will NOT be able to sustain food levels needed to feed the country). So, we'll pay more and more for oil (just wait, when the economy starts to recover, these nice sub-$2 gas prices will disappear faster than a drunk co-ed's virginity at spring break) and then we are going to collectively pay huge sums to insure everyone against the ill effects of all the oil we're feeding them.

Depressing.

It's so freaking obvious, but it had never really smacked me in the face that our costs for health care - insofar as paying for treatment for all the obesity-related illnesses that come from over consumption - are tied to petroleum consumption. We eat more and more and more food, sustaining demand for food and driving petroleum prices up (again, assume recovered economy), and at the same time increasing our own financial burden to treat the ill effects.

It would seem to me that the most important part of national health care would be national health. It's going to take more than a federal program to create that. It's going to take a complete shift in the way we think as a people; we do not have a preventive mentality. Some of us do. If we did as a country, we wouldn't be eating 4000 calories a day, we'd be exercising more, we wouldn't need so much goddam gas just to feed ourselves, and we'd be in the hospital less often, not paying as much for health care, and the cost for a basic "national health care" might not be such a big concern.

Just sayin'.

Still...screw yourselves, WaPo. Interesting article, but don't crap all over my thanksgiving. At least one or two days a year, I want sausage in my stuffing and ice cream on my pie.

Gobble, gobble.