Flying The Unfriendly Skies

What used to be the experience of a lifetime-- taking a cross country flight--has become the biggest nightmare off of Elm Street. Anyone who's flown knows the sad, lamentable tale: missed connections, extended layovers, three stops to go 500 miles, crabby TSA people, no snacks without paying for them, and, yes, lost and/or destroyed luggage. I finally got so fed up with it that I go absolutely nowhere with any bag that I have to check. If it can't be carried on, it won't go. Travelling Asia for two weeks simply meant washing stuff out in the sink or smelling like the surroundings when the temps were over 100. Just recently, I madea trip to work my son's basketball camp in Pittsburgh and carried one bag with the equipment needed to do the drills I had planned, and I carried all my clothes and laptop in a backpack: four days' worth...one pair of shoes and flip flops...Tshirts and shorts...underwear and socks. While it gets heavy lugging it around, perhaps, I know that it will be with me wherever I go. Too bad Dave Carroll could not have done it that way...but then, a guitar probablky won't fir under the seat anyway.
I cannot tell you the story nearly as well as the media can, so I will simply include the URL. The YouTube video is MUST SEE!

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/United-Breaks-Guitars-a-Smash-Hit-on-YouTube.html?yhp=1

Still Scratching My Head Over...

Every now and then, I think the moon affects more than tides in the world. Sometimes it just seems that things are just getting too wierd for words...and that's saying a lot when we look at the seeming total collapse of energy, food, water, air and good sense which occur with too much frequency. I searched and searched for something "normal" today, but even relaxing in the hammock didn't do it: damn telemarketers who must have found out that I was home! I refused to watch the obsequies for Michael Jackson because I just knew it would be a circus; there was probably a red carpet for celebs to pose before entering the Staples Center...and you KNOW Al Sharpton and JJ got their 156 minutes in. Anyway, a list of the unnerving wierdness lately follows (as I see it, of course. This might be totally normal to you):

Remember Mark Sanford, the governor who sought permission from his wife to visit his mistress? He's still governor, but admit it, THAT whole thing was skewed from the outset. Now, he's apologized to everyone but me and determined to win back the trust of South Carolina. Want to bet?

You've probably also heard of Rick Strandlof, aka Rick Duncan. He's the guy who for the last few months has been masquerading as an ex-marine captain who had served three Iraq tours and been wounded. He stumped for congressmen, advocated for veterans publicly and spoke about opposition to the war in Iraq...a LOT. Turns out, he was none of the things he purported to be. It's one thing to dress up and play make-believe in your own home, but this guy deceived lots of people, and many of them were vets...probably not the group one wishes to antagonize.

Sarah Palin, love her or hate her, she knows how to get an audience. However, when Kathleen Parker, my absolute favorite conservative columnist, rips her...that's wierdness personified. Let's go slay some salmon!

Michael Jackson was, perhaps,as much of an innovator as Elvis and the Beatles. He certainly defined pop music, dance moves, and, face it, wierdness on occasion. In a twist that NOBODY thought odd, a line of circus elephants wound its way toward the Staples Center today prior to the funeral "performance." Trouble was, it was totally unrelated to MJ, but people totally bought into it. Seems that Barnum and Bailey Circus is performing soon, and the elephants were simply being moved to their new quarters. Leave it to MJ...nobody thought a line of elephants was unexpected. Is this what entertainment's become today? Perhaps. I'm going to work on mastering the "Thriller" dance.

Finally, the Steve McNair saga has left me totally speechless. EVERYONE has been carrying on, eulogizing him for his great ability and his community work, both of which were prodigious. However, they pooh pooh the fact that he was a married man who was practically living with another woman: people in the condo thought the two were a couple, he was there so often. How can we lionize a person while his widow and kids get no mention? Even the iconic Brett Favre made a comment sending condolences to McNair's MOTHER but NOT his wife and kids! What the hell? That's wierd, if you ask me. Call me Puritanical, but passing off adultery as "we're all human and we make mistakes" is just wrong.
I'm sending my condolences to McNair's poor wife and kids who have to live with this for the rest of their lives.
Sometimes, the wierdness becomes stifling.

Not Exactly A Meyers Cocktail, But...

The imperviousness of youth has long since been replaced by armor plating made of...say, something the consistency of peanut brittle. As I walked, bent, stretched and otherwise contorted myself today in a session of physical therapy, it occurred to me that I might never be the same...might never be what I used to be...might never be what I want to be in terms of physical health. Maybe this means that I have to learn to accept that the downhill slide of my physical self will go much more quickly than the downhill dropoff of my mental self, which, to all accounts, began some time ago. I mean, if Michael Jackson couldn't make it with all the holistic (and otherwise) medicines and remedies that he imbibed, what chance do I have?
"Eat your fruits and vegetables," I hear you say. Yes, I should, and here's why, according to the lates news from the friendly (potentially senile) folks at AARP:
Eat beets...they are great brain food.
Grapes and grape juice are excellent ways to refresh the memory.
Green iced tea is also a boost to memory, while black tea has ramifications for aiding Alzheimer's patients (as noted yesterday).
Eating blueberries will help avoid the accumulation of belly fat...probably in addition to a cessation of beer drinking.
Noshing on broccoli provides good stuff for the heart.
Bananas, long a source of "good" things, will help provide potassium and allow 3-6 additional pounds of muscle instead of fat.
Watermelon is supposedly good to maintain strong, healthy bones, and mushrooms are a source of antioxidants. Who knew?
Garlic is an infection fighter, probably because nobody will want to get close to you after eating a clove or two...and not just vampires, either.
In all of this, no mention of bacon, Cheetos or beer.
The rest of my life (until I don't recognize it) sounds miserable.

Good for Me? Bad For Me? Decide Already!

If one is approaching middle age and is male, there are certain conditions he hopes to avoid: of course, the embarrassing ED is one of them but hardly the most serious. If one is to believe the television commercials, most of us will be affected by the horrifying condition that develops as the prostate glad enlarges, creating a myriad of problems, not the least of which is the constant urgency to urinate. Of course the real issue is not so much that it is a constant need which interrupts biking and canoeing trips, baseball games and meetings (to cite the TV ads) but the fact that the need is IMMEDIATE, as in "If I don't get to the bathroom in the next 20 seconds, it will be embarrassing." Well, yeah, I can see how that might be problematic. One thing doctors seem to suggest with frequency is that men limit the intake of caffeine. I understand the diuretic nature of caffeine, and we have, as a nation, decried young people's fixation on soda, energy drinks and all sorts of caffeine-laced beverages. Turns out that we might have been wrong.
Dr. Gary Arendash of the University of Florida recently conducted a study on the benefits of caffeine as a method to REVERSE the effects of Alzheimer's Disease. Seriously. According to a report in the BBC, Dr. Arendash's study was conducted using 55 mice who had been specifically bred to have the issues with memory that are similar to Alzheimer's patients at age 70.
Half the group was given caffeine in its water while the other half continued with plain water. The serving of caffeine amounted to the quivalent of 500 milligrams of caffeine (roughly 2 lattes from Starbucks, 14 cups of tea or 20 soft drinks...eek!) After two months, the mice on caffeine not only failed to get worse, their memory improved markedly while the mice getting only water continued to deteriorate with regard to memory functions. Caffeine is thought to have been responsible for a 50% drop in the levels of beta amyloid protein which forms destructive lumps in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.
In a related study, younger mice that were fed caffeine failed to develop the memory problems associated with older mice in the study...no word whether they were also subjected to MTV programming or text messaging.
Yes, I get the fact that it was mice, and we're men not mice, but a protein is a protein...I think. Obviously testing must be done with human patients before anyone can rush to judgment on this.
All I know is that coffee makes me go to the bathroom far more often than I want to and there are elements in soda that will positively do me in. Still...a good memory will enable me to remember which of my kids was nice to me when they all put me in the home!
Drink up!

LOL!

Go here: http://www.someecards.com/

Either Way, You're Dead :(

People are unceasingly lazy...we look for short cuts to solve just about anything. I usually refer to this as 'McDonaldization" but that's not to denigrate the fast food giant. After all, I DID rush to have some fries in Thailand after weeks of vegetables and rice. It's just that we always get ourselves into situations and then look for ways to get out of them with less pain and travail. For example, just yesterday, a student with whom I have been working indicated that he was having difficulty with some test questions on an online program. His suggestion for success? Read the book? Take notes? Nope...he wanted me to sit beside him when he took the next test and help him with the answers! (I hope you are as stunned as I was).
Anyway, we sometimes find ourselves in need of help to escape those jams we've gotten into; this has resulted in a plethora of support groups, 12-step programs and other artificial aids like hypnosis to get us through the battles we face. More often than not, the golden bullet is a drug of some kind. It is, many times, a drug that people turn to when attempting to quit smoking.
My parents both died as a result of smoking too much over too long a period. When both my brother and I demanded they quit, my father's response was twofold: "I'd rather do something I enjoy and die than live and be miserable." "Quitting is easy, I do it every day." The simplicity of his "logic" defied any explanation I could offer. He did manage to finally quit by simply stopping: no drugs, no patch; he just decided he had to do it: six months before the effects of smoking killed him.
Not being burdened with this kind of addiction, it was always hard for me to understand how people could continue when they KNEW that it was a potentially deadly addiction...but continue they did, until drugs like Zyban and Chantix came along and the FDA approved them for use in cessation programs. Only, the FDA missed something.
It seems that both of these drugs are great at helping peole quit smoking, but they often leave people with changes in behavior and mood, including hostility, agitation, depression and visitation of suicidal thoughts. The temptation of suicide seems to be so prevalent among users that the FDA is now requiring a special warning with each drug indicating that suicide and depression can be real side effects.
Wow! It's like all the other "cures" I see on television for ED and other malfunctions: the list of potential side effects is so scary that I'd be satisfied with a basic bodily dysfunction!
Smokers, it seems, have found themselves between the proverbial rock and hard place.
Here's a potentially helpful web site:
http://whyquit.com/
Good luck. I still miss my parents.

Not For The Faint of Stomach

I don't know if you've seen the movie "The Bucket List" in which two men played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman decide to take life into their own hands and do the things they've always wanted to do prior to "kicking the bucket." It's Nicholson's idea, and his money so the adventure begins. I actually thought the movie was just OK, but, like many things, it did start me thinking about the things I've always wanted to do but failed to do because of time, money or permission from my sweetie. Topping the list would be playing shortstop in a fantasy baseball camp for the New York Yankees (which might happen if the economy ever gives me back the money it took last year). I suppose there are places to see and things to do like falling out of an airplane with a parchute attached...hey, if George Bush, Sr. can do it at his age, I can handle it. Heights have always fascinated me, and standing atop the Empire State Building was very cool, "Sleepless in Seattle" notwithstanding. I have to admit that going to the top of the Hemisfair Needle in San Antonio was a little scary. Designed like the Space Needle in Seattle, there's only the floor between spectators and a spectacular fall...it's not like there's a building there underfoot. I'll admit to a little nervousness and give major props to my sweetie who wanted NOTHING to do with it but agreed to go up because I wanted to.
Now, there's a new vertical thrill, and it's relatively close: "The Ledge" located on, I think, the 103rd floor of the soon-to-be-renamed Sears Tower in Chicago opened today, and it looks fabulous. Basically, it involves glass-enclosed boxes which jut out 4.3 feet from the Skydeck on the Sears Tower. The walls are glass, and the floor is glass, offering a relatively unobstructed view of the Windy City (on a clear day, you can see Sheboygan). Each glass panel weighs 1500 pounds and is comprised of three layers of 1/2 inch thick glass. At $14.95, it is a cheap thrill at its best, offering a slack-jawed look straight down 1,353 feet where, no doubt, the people really DO look like ants.
However, for the larger thrill (and longer drop), one has to go to the Grand Canyon, where the Hualapia Indian tribe has constructed a U-shaped glass walkway which extends a death-defying 70 feet out over the west rim of the canyon, providing a stomach-churning look 4,000 feet straight down toward the Colorado River. As Paul Newman said to Robert Redford as they prepared to jump off a cliff into a river, "You can't swim? Don't worry about it. The fall alone will kill you." Of course, with greater thrill comes greater cost: the trip out on the walkway will set you back $75. Still up for the thrill? Put that on your bucket list.
Me, too, but I'm heading to Chicago first chance I get.
I've included a URL of a reporter's-eye view from The Ledge for the not-so-squeamish (Mark...look away)
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/07/skydeck-heights-sears-tower-chicago-tourist.html