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Sick as a Dog

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The Only Thing That Refreshes

The Only Thing That Refreshes

Last Thursday I came down with a bad cold, and I am still trying to shake the effects of it. You know I’m ill when I can’t read. Instead, I sat propped up in front of the television while a series of medical hucksters such as Dr. Daniel Amen of brain health fame and Dr. William Davis of “Wheat Belly” fame tried to poison me with bad medical advice. Rather than continue listening, I stumbled into the library and napped while sitting in my uncomfy chair.

As the afternoon wore on, I decided to make a mushroom barley soup, which is now merrily bubbling in the kitchen, and I’ve had several cups of hot Darjeeling tea with a Greek honey I bought at Papa Cristo’s a few weeks ago. Drinking really good hot tea when I’m sick always seems to help. (I can always add a bit of dark rum and fresh lemon juice to make it even better.)

With luck, this sick as a dog feeling will soon pass.

 

 

 

New Year Surprise

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Cabo San Lucas from Medano Beach

Cabo San Lucas from Medano Beach

Next week, Martine and I will be flying down to Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas for a few days on sun and relaxation—before tax season begins in grim earnest. Around Thanksgiving, I found a good combined airfare/hotel rate from Tripadvisor that will save us several hundred dollars while giving us four nights in a beachfront suite at the Playa Grande hotel.

Neither of us have been to Mexico since 1992, and that was to Yucatán, where Martine encountered the predacious Caribbean mosquito. This time, we are going to visit the Southern tip of Baja California, which is all mountains and deserts swept clean by Westerly winds.

It appears that Martine’s traveling muscular aches are less of a problem which she is exposed to sun, of which there is plenty at the Capes. I will get a little sunshine myself, as well as reading even more books.

During that time, I may or may not post to this blog depending on the availability of computer resources as well as free time.

 

A Christmas Card from Iceland

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The Jökullsárlón Glacial Lagoon

The Jökullsárlón Glacial Lagoon

Ever since I first went to Iceland in 2001, I’ve loved The Iceland Review. This year, their talented photographer/editor Páll Stefansson and their ace writer Benedikt Johannesson came up with a holiday slide show accompanied by original music. I thought I would like to share it with you.

As we say in Hungary, Boldog Karácsony!

Ho³!

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The Grand Old Man Himself Drinking a Coke

The Grand Old Man Himself, Here Drinking a Coke

Christmas does not play a large part in my life. The reason goes all the way back to my childhood. We were poor when growing up, so every Christmas Eve, we drove out to Novelty, Ohio to visit my Uncle Emil (my father’s identical twin brother) and his family. From my uncle, I usually got a twenty dollar bill, which I appreciated. From everyone else, I got … yechhhh! … clothes—mostly middle-aged people’s notions of the then current fashion. Sensible things. We ate the usual chicken dinner prepared by my Aunt Annabelle (I hate chicken!) and then repaired to the living room for the gift exchange. By this time, the dander from my cousins’ pets was starting to get in my lung and eyes, and I was trying to keep myself together without a family argument on from what side of the family my many allergies came.

Aside from the money, the only presents I liked came from my Mom’s friend Edith Antal. She had actually asked me what I wanted. When I told her I preferred comic books, her eyes lit up. All well and good, no expensive clothes for this boy! So every Christmas, I got fifty cents worth of comics, which I treasured until my mother threw them out.

To be completely honest with myself, I do not really care for Christmas. Come to think of it, I don’t care for holidays. Other than getting some time off from work, there are no real attractions for me. I try to do a few Christmassy things with Martine, but it is from no real love of the season.

The only exception is that I try to get nice things for my brother’s children and the children of my best friend. Since I cannot have children myself, I use Christmas to show my appreciation for the role they play in my life.

Also, with all sincerity, I wish all of you a Merry Christmas or whatever religious equivalent is appropriate. Life is hard, and it is good for the soul to kick back and celebrate once in a while.

Fifth Graders Against Communism

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Back in Fifth Grade, We Knew All About the Red Menace

Back in Fifth Grade, We Knew All About the Red Menace

When I was a grade school student at St. Henry’s in Cleveland, we received a weekly newsletter reporting on the news of the world. Most particularly, we learned how the Communists who had recently taken over Eastern Europe were persecuting Catholics and suppressing the God-given rights of the people. At no time were we ever told that Hungary and several other of the Russian satellites fought on the German side in World War Two. And now the communists were threatening us! Several times a year, we had to do drills instructing us what to do in case of a nuclear attack. If you don’t already know, this 1951 video will explain it all to you:
 

(Those school desks were marvelous at protecting students from radiation and falling debris.)

At home, several times a year my mother put together bundles of used clothing she got from church sales to send to our friends and relatives in Hungary. After she’d accumulated about twenty or thirty pounds, she would wrap them in sturdy white cloth and write the address directly on the cloth with indelible ink. Then off it would go. With luck, the jackbooted thugs that worked for the Budapest Post Office would let selected items be delivered to the addressees. The rest, of course, was a perquisite for Communist Party apparatchiks.

Things came to a head during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. When, after a few days of freedom, the Russian tanks rolled into Hungary and re-established Soviet rule, our family was appalled. Naturally we did what we could to help some of the refugees that made it across the line before the axe fell. (As it turned out, they were not nice people. How could that be? After all, they were Hungarians.)

And Now America Was Threatened, Too

And Now America Was Threatened, Too


Somehow, we made it through those dangerous years. We listened to the Civil Defense alarms that sounded a test on Fridays at noon. And we tuned in to Conelrad at 640 and 1240 on our radio dial. There was so much else, too, bad we licked Communism in the end. Or did we?

Take Your Pet Everywhere

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This Is Going Too Far!

This Is Going Too Far!

Before I write another word, I want you to know that I am against this trend. I think there is an implied threat of legal action if one’s beloved oochie-woochie poochie is denied admittance anywhere. It’s a nasty trick to play on someone who is probably earning minimum wage and is afraid of repercussions if he or she is responsible for making a bad decision.

In the October 20, 2014 issue of The New Yorker, there is an article by Patricia Marx entitled “Pets Allowed.” It discusses the trend of people who have applied for an emotional support permit for their animal. We are not talking about legitimate service animals, such as seeing-eye dogs, but of a quasi-legal form of “permitting” pet owners to take their animals wherever they go. Your “permit” comes with a letter attesting to your emotional need to be always close to your pet. The article contains one such letter:

To Whom It May Concern:
RE: Patricia Marx
Ms. Marx has been evaluated for and diagnosed with a mental health disorder as defined in the DSM-5. Her psychological condition affects daily life activities, ability to cope, and maintenance of psychological stability. It can also influence her physical status.

Ms. Marx has a turtle that provides significant emotional support, and ameliorates the severity of symptoms that affect her daily ability to fulfill her responsibilities and goals. Without the companionship, support, and care-taking activities [?!] of her turtle, her mental health and daily living activities are compromised. In my opinion, it is a necessary component of treatment to foster improved psychological adjustment, support functional living activities [?!], her well being, productivity in work and home responsibilities, and amelioration of the severity of psychological issues she experiences in some specific situations to have an Emotional Support Animal (ESA).

She has registered her pet with the Emotional Support Animal Registration of America [sounds real, don’t it?]. This letter further supports her pet as an ESA, which entitles her to the rights and benefits legitimized by the Fair Housing Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It allows exceptions to housing, and transportation services that otherwise would limit her from being able to be accompanied by her emotional support animal.

You can buy cloth ESA badges from Amazon.Com. Does the buyer have to provide proof? Nope. Are you interested in getting into this scam for yourself? Just click here or here. You might have to fill out a questionnaire, mail a check, but you will not find yourself in front of a real psychiatrist diagnosing your actual mental health condition.

This brings me to one of the more squirrely elements of our culture of fear. We know we must not discriminate against the disabled, whose rights are indeed protected by law, but mental health is a big gap in our healthcare system—one you can drive an eighteen-wheeler through. There exists in general a thriving industry aiding people who want to take advantage of the rights of the disabled without themselves being disabled. You can see the disability stickers on cars driven by perfectly healthy young people who just happen to prefer close-in parking spaces.

What bothers me about the whole ESA thing falls neatly into three categories:

  1. Landlords will rent apartments to tenants with an ESA, regardless how phony, and even if there is a no pets policy. Martine and I are currently being victimized by one such dog who barks and whines for hours on end because her owner has decided to dispense with her “care-giving” services for an evening.
  2. If the trend gets even more out of hand, people will refuse service animals, which are in fact legitimate and certified.
  3. People’s pets can cause inconvenience to others, such as when an airline had to call in a hazmat team to clean up a particularly noisome pile of dog do left in the aisle of a flight.

 

 

 

 

The Man Who Wanted to Change the World

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Aldous Huxley Pictured on Cover of One of My Books

Aldous Huxley Pictured on Cover of One of My Books

When I was a young man in my twenties and thirties, I regarded Aldous Huxley as one of my gurus. I read his novels and essays and treasured quotes from him, such as “I wanted to change the world. But I found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.” Then there was this one: “A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.”

In time, I found that Huxley was a very good novelist and an even better essayist. But he was a human being like all of us and, as much as he tried, turned out not to be the universal guru. One of the fun things about going back and re-reading his works is encountering my young self when I was most vulnerable: after my brain surgery in 1966 and in the twenty years that followed.

Last night, I finished reading Huxley’s short novel The Genius and the Goddess, about a young man, himself a scientist, who joins the household of a Nobel prizewinner, as I described in my Goodreads.Com review:

John Rivers is a young scientist who idolizes Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Dr. Henry Maartens, and jumps at the chance to not only work with him, but to join his household, including his Goddess-like wife Katy and children Tim and Ruth. Rivers puts Katy on a pedestal, but circumstances bring her to his bed when Maartens is ailing and the children are staying with a relative. Alternately crushed and ecstatic, Rivers finally comes out of his funk; and circumstances take an odd turn, leaving him to wonder at this early encounter late in his life.

I concluded my review:

I will continue to read Huxley and like him, but he is no longer the guru I once thought of him as being when I myself was equally torn and conflicted about love, wondering whether it would ever “happen” to me. It did, and continues to do so; but the experience is much more complex and mixed than I would ever have predicted.

On an entirely different note, I noticed a strange “separated at birth” coincidence based on the photo above. In it, Huxley looks almost exactly like George Bancroft, who played Marshal Curly Wilcox in John Ford’s masterpiece Stagecoach (1939):

George Bancroft

George Bancroft

The only difference is that Huxley was a bit thinner, but the faces are amazingly close.

Happy Halloween!

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It’s the Most Boo-tiful Time of the Year!

It’s the Most Boo-tiful Time of the Year!

I know that all of you are either getting ready for some serious cosplay or stockpiling candy for the ravenous hordes preparing to descend onto your doorstep. Be sure to read some scary books (see my post entitled Thirteen More Horrors for a reading list) and see some scary movies (see my post entitled Thirteen Horrors for a list of my faves from last year).

“Are You Comfortable in Bed?”

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I’m More Comfortable Than HE Is, As I Don’t Sleep on Rocks

I’m More Comfortable Than HE Is, As I Don’t Sleep on Rocks

In my last batch of spam e-mail, I got one entitled “Are You Comfortable in Bed?” As my answer is yes, I did not see fit to open the e-mail, which probably sold vigara [sic] or cialas [sic] or something like that. Thankfully, I am not suffering from electoral dysfunction. Which is to say, I usually vote Democratic.

Getting eight hours of sleep a night is important to me. That is challenged by my massive intake of iced Baruti Assam tea this time of year, but I usually manage to sink back into sleep quickly after draining my lizard. Occasionally Martine and I make like buzz saws, but curiously it doesn’t bother us much. I actually feel reassured that Martine is asleep next to me; and she graciously refrains from kicking me when I start sawing wood.

Every once in a while, I have a difficult time dropping off to sleep because my mind is racing in an infinite loop. I find that the only way to deal with that is to get up and either a bit of a TV movie (the only time I watch TV) or read a book. That somehow closes the infinite loop and allows me to doze. The one thing that does not work in that case is to twist and turn for hours. Better not to even try!

I am appalled when I hear of people getting by on five or fewer hours a night. Sometimes Martine can’t sleep because of her back pain. Frequently she wakes at five in the morning and twists and turns until morning light (or later).

We have an extra firm mattress which helps Martine somewhat. And our living room sofa is similarly firm. These things help (and they don’t bother me at all), but I would be happier if Martine’s back pain abated to the point that she could accompany me on my travels. It’s a lot more fun having her with me.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

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A Particularly Persistent Superstition

A Particularly Persistent Superstition

If you’ve never heard this Latin phrase before, you might want to remember it. It describes a logical fallacy which, translated into plain English, is “after that, therefore because of that.”

Let me give you an example. You are a little boy who, for the first time in his life, kisses a girl the in school playground. That same day, your teacher decides to land hard on you—even though she does not know about the kissing incident—and makes you sit in the corner all afternoon with a dunce hat on your head while the whole class taunts you. Using a very common form of magical thinking, you blame the punishment on the kiss, even though it is totally unrelated. Because the punishment came after the kiss, you assume it is because of the kiss. Result: you think that girls must not be kissed, or else terrible things will happen.

In September 1966, to give an example from my own life, I had a terrible headache. I was during my summer vacation just a few days away from starting graduate school in film at UCLA. I managed to cook a hot dog for myself as well as a can of corn. On the hot dog, I smeared some ketchup. Within an hour, the headache became unbearable. I managed to crawl into bed, but the pain kept ramping up. I realized I had to contact my parents and tell them that something was wrong. It took me over an hour to crawl to the kitchen phone, blacking out from the pain several times in the process. Finally, I managed to get my mother at work. Having told her what was happening, I collapsed on the kitchen floor.

And Then There Was the Canned Corn

And Then There Was the Canned Corn

The next thing I knew, I was in the emergency room at Fairview General Hospital in Cleveland being asked questions by physicians. Within minutes, I fell into a deep coma. Somehow, my doctor figured it was a pituitary tumor; and, when I came to after having been wrapped in ice to keep my temperature down, I was operated on. I might add the operation was a glittering success.

However, gone from my diet were hot dogs, ketchup, and canned corn. The one time I had that lunch, terrible things happened. It is only forty-eight years later that I can now eat those three items—though not together. And I put mustard on my hot dogs now instead of ketchup.

In a smaller way, I still see the same logical fallacy at work in my life. The last time I ate at the Yamadaya Restaurant, I suffered what looked to be (but wasn’t) a stroke: It was a transient ischemic attack (TIA). Only today was I brave enough to go back. Somehow, at the back of my mind, I still fear something bad will happen to me today. And I didn’t even get to kiss a girl this time!