Saturday, September 17, 2011

"Here to go."

"I remember first learning about death quite vividly.
I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me.
'Sometimes, when someone gets ill, and they're very very old, they don't get better again. They just get iller and iller and then... then their body stops working.'
'I don't understand.'
'What's in them just goes away, and doesn't come back.'
'Grandpa isn't coming back?'
'No,' she said. 'Not ever again.'
'Grandpa said he was going away and not ever coming back after he held Grandma's head in that cotton-dump outside of town and kicked Skeeter seventy-three times.'
'Grandpa was very drunk. That's not the same as being dead. Grandpa's dead, son. He's not there anymore.'
And I remember saying, 'Hold everything right fucking THERE.'
'You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and feeding me and clothing me and all -- and, YEAH, whipping me from time to time, and making me live in a house that's freezing fucking cold all the goddamn time -- and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to do and sometimes I just want to scream-- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head -- I go through all this -- and then there's death?'
'What is the motherfucking deal here?'
I wasn't having this.
This was not fair.
There was no way you expect me to put up with all that daily shit and know that at the end of it all when you presume things have to get better, you just die.
It was explained to me that this wasn't so bad. I mean, I could expect a century or so of life span. There was a time when a guy who died at forty was revered as the toughest and most doggedly ancient son of a bitch in Cow Ass Clearing, Shitolshire, Engalond, back in the year Dot.
So, great.
Happy HAPPY.
After countless centuries, things had gotten to the point where I'd outlive Fred of Nostril, official sheep-jerker-offer to the king in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
I was unthrilled.
To say the least.
I'll never forget that day. It was like being stamped on.
It was the old joke, told to a kid for the first time: life sucks, and then you die.
Here just to die.
Here to go.
Damn."
- Spider Jerusalem, via Warren Ellis.

No blogging 2-3 weeks.  On the other side, then.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

So. Much. This. - Dan John on "The Secret to Nutrition."

T NATION | Eat Like a Warrior King: "Someone recently asked me about "the secret to nutrition." Seriously, you don't know what to do about food? Here's an idea: eat like an adult.
Stop eating fast food, stop eating kid's cereal, knock it off with all the sweets and comfort foods, and ease up on the snacking. And don't act like you don't know this: eat more vegetables and fruits.
Really, how difficult is this? Stop with the whining. Stop with the excuses. Act like an adult and stop eating like a television commercial. Grow up.
It reminds me of what they tell students at top universities: "Look to your right. Now, look to your left. Every person around you was a straight-A student in high school, class president, and valedictorian. Get over it."
Every success in your life doesn't call for several extra rounds of beer, a salutary doughnut, and high fives from everyone. You're an adult now; you don't need a cookie every time you do something special."

Monday, September 12, 2011

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders..."

We never learn from history, do we?


"Without deviation from the norm..."


"When I was your age, you didn't get fucked in the ass by an unsympathetic stranger before you were allowed on a plane." - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

True story.

"Addiction Is Not A Disease Of The Brain" - NPR

I've never bought into the addiction-as-disease model, and that's speaking as somebody who's exhibited a long history of addictive behavioral tendencies and coming from a family with a history of addiction.  All behaviors have at least five factors [and I know I'm stealing this from someone, but can't remember who, probably either Leary or R.A. Wilson] - genetics, imprinting, learning, environment, and happenstance.  Claiming 'disease/addiction' strikes me as a cop-out.  And it doesn't help me that the disease model is most touted by that cult-y, pseudo-christian, 'we're all sinners who need god' at AA.  Choice and will, in all things.

Addiction Is Not A Disease Of The Brain : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR: "...we haven't discovered, in the reward reinforcement system, a neurochemical signature of addiction. We haven't discovered the place where addiction happens in the brain. After all, the so-called highjacking of the reward system is not itself a neurochemical process; it is a process whereby neurochemical events get entrained within in a larger pattern of action and decision making.
Is addiction a disease of the brain? That's a bit like saying that eating is a phenomenon of the stomach. The stomach is an important part of the story. But don't forget the mouth, the intestines, the blood, and don't forget the hunger, and also the whole socially-sustained practice of producing, shopping for and cooking food.
And so with addiction. The neural events in VTA clearly belong to the underlying mechanisms of addiction. They are necessary, but not sufficient; they are only part of the story...
Is addiction a disease of the brain? This strikes me as a dubious falsification of what is, really, a phenomenon that can only be understood in terms of the life, choices, needs and understanding of the whole person."
'via Blog this'