State of the Blog

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow bloggers, I am here to report that the First Lady of the Blog is still sick with strep throat, but other than that, the blog is in fine shape. This will be the 103rd post. In September, I couldn't imagine where I would get enough ideas to write 20 posts. It's a good thing I have all of you to pick on, otherwise, zeflufficated. So, in closing, let me wish you all a happy and healthy New Year. Drive safe, and be sane, please, I need you all back.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World

Go Figure

The Decision Maker has decreed that this week we are on vacation. I hope you can see the mockery and derision dripping off of the words "Decision Maker" because she is the one that has come home with, wait for it, strep throat. I just brought her back from the doctor's and I have the antibiotic which I have inserted into her throat and then closed her jaws and tickled her throat, taking no chances. And it worked. Now, if it would just work on the cat, who watched the entire process.

Needless to say, we are not taking a leisurely drive down the Shenandoah Valley, or anywhere else for that matter. We're home.

So far, she has spilled my coffee all over my desk, my phone, and two books when she decided I needed more water. I tried to get her to sit down, and then she decided to make soup, where she promptly poured two quarts of water onto the kitchen counter.

I handed her a note saying that I had failed to communicate properly and that she should sit down in the recliner while I made her soup, and she should concentrate on getting better. I underlined concentrate for emphasis. One takes extreme measures when one's spouse is sick. I then escorted her to the recliner and helped her to sit down. I also asked the cat to sit and guard her and not let her get up and walk. The cat understood me perfectly, naturally. I put a blanket over her, and she was asleep before I got to the kitchen.

She is still asleep as I write this, and I can heat her soup up in about a minute whenever she wakes up.

Today was my Grandmother's birthday. It's the day I decided to get engaged oh so many years ago. It is one of my favorite days, falling between Christmas and New Years, as it gives me the opportunity to take stock of where I have been, and where I am going. Glamourpuss just wrote a post about the very same thing, and it is one of the best I have ever read. It is short and quite profound. Go see for yourself! Tell me what you think.

In Memory of Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford (1913-2006) died Tuesday. The 38th President of the United States, President Ford has the distinction of returning dignity, honor and respect to the Presidency after the disgrace of the previous administration. In Ford's own words, America's "long nightmare had ended."

Mr. Ford ran the country out in the open in contrast to the previous administration. Mr. Ford probably cost himself the election by pardoning Richard Nixon of all crimes, thereby ending the Watergate Affair for the nation, once and for all. It was an act that required enormous heroism on Ford's part, and he has gone down in history for making the decision to heal the country at his personal expense. Mr. Ford remains the only unelected President to have ever served.

'Twas The Night Before Christmas ......

For my 100th post, we have something that you can play for the kids. Here are all four parts of Richard William's Oscar winning animated version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and WKRP - Christmas Carol. Enjoy!

A Christmas Carol Part 1 (7:38)


A Christmas Carol Part 2 (5:35)


A Christmas Carol Part 3 (3:52)


A Christmas Carol Part 4 (7:43)


And for those of us slightly older......

WKRP - Christmas Carol (9:21)

Happy Holidays

Not to start with something alarming, but we lost two more of our 'older' friends since I mentioned my neighbor. The last was the father of the lady who lives with my brother -in-law, so the family has pulled together as it does in times of 'trouble' and I have been largely absent. My apologies, but I don't want those of you who come here regularly to think I am ignoring you.

Miss Britt recently made a very challenging post where she attempted to explain in her own humorous way, and I mean that in sincerity, why she blogs. You can't write about all the crap I have written about for the last couple of weeks and just watch that pitch go by. It's not in my DNA, sorry. ... (hint in mathematics the ... means and after a while of doing that we suddenly switch to this and that's what follows the three dots) and then I realized that I didn't have the faintest idea why I blogged. I'm still working on getting the entire East Coast franchise for Britt's Master Plan merchandising and distribution rights. Blogging is getting tough I tell ya.

And then Mist cleaned up. She got the second highest recorded score at BlogLaughs nosing out other well established blogs with names I have never heard, like Dooce, Ken and Ariel, Go Fug Yourself, all seem to be somewhat lacking compared to Mist. She hasn't returned any of my contracts or phone calls, and rumor has it she dropped Bruce Willis too. C'mon over Bruce, we'll drown our sorrows in water. I mean really, shouldn't she be writing for David Letterman?

If you haven't dropped by MJ's "A Day In The Wind" lately, you have got to see her new look! Between her site and Mist's new site, I was really impressed by the design work, and the execution. Both were done by someone I don't know, but if you are thinking of redoing your blog, I'd consider Dawn. You might start by writing to Mist and MJ, but when MJ posts "Dawn You Rock" I'd say you had a good start. And no, she doesn't have a clue who I am, or that I'm writing this. This is unsolicited.

And last, the business is just getting off the ground! The Wife has decreed that we are taking next week off and spending time together. Expect shorter posts, less intellectual material, and let's see how long the work-a-holic can pull this one off. I'm betting that by Tuesday.....

Merry Christmas

We See The World Through A Lens Of Self Perception

We have been struggling for a week now, and part of it has been a few untimely events in my real world, with small exercises in perception. In trying to describe each other, if you didn't know each other before hand, you may have gotten the impression that no one knew what you looked like. Unless you were physically pretty close to the national averages.

This has been a series where the vast majority of the action has been in the comments, and you really do have to keep going back to see where people have added to the comments. Crankster noted that he stopped describing people when he realized that he was using the same preference over and over. More interesting, no person was described as heavy. I will tell you all that I am 255 lighter than air pounds this morning, down from 270. Being heavy is the last great area of discrimination in the American culture, and that is well supported by research that you should be able to find yourself.

Just as interesting, no one conceived of me as being Asian, or any other race. I did grow up here, and I was a quarterback, and I do have a game face to scare other players with their game faces with. Lee, who has mentioned that she has Korean parents, and a miserable ex-husband, etc. really is a female, I believe. No, ma'am, I am not Korean, I was born in Queens, NY.

This is not an inquisition. Call it self-awareness. Please laugh at the craziness that has started.

I then asked about relationships, and how they ended. Here's what I was after. I left it vague. Unless it's a bizarre relationship, and they happen in high school all the time, most of the time longer term relationships end when one person stops working on the relationship. That's all it really takes. It's hard to see. It's hidden. It happens inside someone's brain, there's no flashing sign. There's some proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. It may be large, it may be small. But when it happens, no one ends up happy. The communication has stopped and one person has cutoff the other. That act leaves the former with a lot of pent up emotion and anger. If it wasn't anger, it becomes anger.

You can go to the NIH site and read all about the research that has been going on since the 60's. I picked out a particular piece because you can read various summaries. If you need to see how to deal with children, or how you should have been dealt with, it's there briefly. It's in the Patient's Database, not the Heath Professional's so you can understand it. The entire Grief Cycle is there. And it's clinical enough that you won't get emotional. Very important. I am not ever going to be a therapist. I cannot maintain that 'distance' that is so critical to the process. I'm a coach-type, "go get 'em" is not recommended, in fact, contraindicated. A no-no.

The anger can turn into depression, or you can dissipate it. But, you will remember how you were treated. If you were a woman, and it was a man that treated you badly, you might start seeing the worst in all men. You'd look for it. And in looking for it, you'd confirm your suspicions, reinforcing those beliefs. Everytime you see a man, you are going to see a person with those beliefs attached. And you have just colored another person with your self perception. Over time, you won't even realize that you're doing it. Most time, it won't be bad.

I still believe that Claudia is tall. She laughed when she read that, so i dropped her from 5'11" to 5'7". And since she's Italian (self-reported) and from Florida, I originally thought she might be blond being from Florida, then I made her a brunette being Italian. I am using a friend of mine, Terri Valentini, as my model for Claudia, so I had better drop her another 2 inches to 5'5".

But, if you have just been through a nasty divorce, and now you want to remarry, and let's say you're a guy, and your last wife raked you over the coals, consider seeing a therapist first, and make sure you don't carry any baggage into the new relationship about women.

And that was what the second exercise about relationships was about. Describe the end of someone else's relationship. If you make it too obvious, you get nothing worth looking at. Keeping one's mouth shut lets those who play decide for themself if they have internalized a problem. You just look at the similarities and differences.

I'll point this out explicitly, where I was implicit before. Gottman is a therapist in Seattle who has published some self-help tips for couples. Of the nine he published, one goes into some detail about men needing to accept influence from women. In the original comments on CMHL's board where this came from, the anonymous poster focused on this point and embellished on the reasons for its existence. This is a difficult point to make. A lot of things happened to get to the point that you could say that the problem was that the male in a relationship had failed to allow the female sufficient influence in the relationship. Look at Rebecca's comments on her folks, she says that they don't do everything together. They have separate hobbies that they each pursue. I promise you that there are a large number of things that they do together too. I cannot stress this point enough, Gottman put nine items in his self-help guide for a reason, not one. The other eight apply to everyone. They are worth looking at. In other words, if Judy and I broke up after 991 years, and the cause wasn't death, it wouldn't be 100% my fault, even if you asked her.

If your parents divorced, did it affect you? First, let's separate out death and divorce. Two very separate issues. Odat, write me anytime you'd like to discuss this. I'm taking non-anticipatory death of a parent off of the table now. Children do not understand divorce. There is no way that they can understand divorce until they are old enough to have children. Until then, your divorce is a threat to their well being, unless you handle it well. Both of you. Everything is age dependent. The children need to know that they didn't cause the problem. Even if you think they did, they really didn't.

We see people have reported that one parent was not such a good person and that the other was better off. Others have reported that the two were better off not being married, but were better friends afterwards. Playing it straight seems to do little if any damage to the kids. This was not my area, but I do know the other side a little better. I know a kid whose father took off when his mother was four months pregnant. The kid is now 16, and very angry. He wants to know why his father has rejected him, has never bothered to meet him, or see him since he has been born. He wants to know what he did to deserve this kind of treatment. Telling him that he didn't do anything to deserve what has happened has not mollified him at all. He has, in fact, turned out to be a carbon copy of his father as we remember him. This child sees the world through a set of eyes that sees things very ugly.

Does that tie the last couple of weeks together for you?

One More Time

Remembering that we're talking about perception here, and that you have answered tow questions about relationships so far, I am now going to ask you one more series of questions. Were your parents divorced during your childhood? Have they divorced since? If your parents did divorce, what effect did it have on you?

We'll see what you all reply to these questions.

You Have To Keep Playing

As things are starting to wind down for folks, we have a pretty nice sample going so far about what you think would cause a relationship to end. The vast majority described a personal experience. You can describe a relationship, but it must be someone else's relationship. Less personal.

End of a relationship. Two people may not be able to divorce because of their religious belief, but I can assure you that the relationship is over. We have all been in relationships that have ended. Some of us knew it, some of us didn't. That's part of what we're looking at. I'll put this up now, and leave it over the weekend. Please make sure you have commented in the previous post, and this post for comparison.

Here's Gottman's self-help tips if you want a reference point.

Thanks, and have a fabulous weekend!

Your Opinion Counts Here

CMHL has asked a very pointed question on her blog dealing with when do you give up on a marriage. With all that we have seen about philosophy, and particularly communications, when do you think that a relationship is over and why?

If You Haven't Switched To Beta Yet

Old Blogger accounts that haven't switched to Blogger Beta are having problems commenting. You can't login. If you are logged into your blog, you won't be able to comment. Your password won't be found. Logout of your blog. Make a comment, and select "Other". For name, put in your name, and for URL, put in the URL of your blog. It works fine. And now back, for more angst, mirth, and meaning of life shtick.

I Believe In Tai Chi

Last Friday, I went to the ophthalmologist to have my eyes dilated and checked. This is a big deal. He came back and said the magic words to me, "NO DIABETIC INVOLVEMENT". It's not like I need a reason to hug and kiss my wife.

Today, I was supposed to have a small procedure where they put a form of Novocaine into the facets in a section my spine. I had tai chi yesterday. I was asked to rate my back pain from 1 to 10, and i said a "1". The male nurse, who in September had seen me almost carried in asked me to touch my toes, and then bend over backwards. Then I did a bunch of big hip circles, and I picked my knees up just about to my chin, while I was standing. They wanted to know if I could tell the difference before and after the injection. I stuck to the truth and told them I didn't know. So the procedure was canceled because I wasn't in enough pain.

The nurse walked me to the waiting room so the lady at the computer wouldn't bill me, and he announced to everyone, including my startled wife who was going to drive me home since I wasn't going to be able to drive myself, that I was being sent home because I wasn't in enough pain. I was sooooooooo bad, my wife just looked at me like I had committed a crime. She said, you have screwed up my entire day, and this is going to cost you. I immediately blamed the doctor, and the physical therapist. Nothing doing, she was getting dinner out no matter what. All of the way out of the waiting room, I kept saying, "Really, the doc is way too good...."

Somewhere around the car, it dawned on me, and i started laughing. They cancelled the procedure because I DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH PAIN.

Does this happen a lot to you all? Or I am living in the Twilight Zone?

Selective Perception

The environment we all live in generally has too many stimuli in it for anyone to process all of them. That simple. Fortunately, we don't have to process all of them to survive. If we miss a fly, we're probably OK. Miss a truck speeding down the highway. not good if we're standing in the highway, maybe.

You can see when we ask people to describe each other on the Internet that we got different descriptions of the same person when we had no idea what they looked like. No reason for them to be the same. Where did they come from? There's really no way to answer that question in general.

A really fascinating piece of research was done at Dartmouth in 1960 around the Presidential Debates. There were four, one was radio only, three were televised. Dartmouth took there Debating Society and only allowed them to hear the debates. Their job was to determine who won the debates. Then stratified samples were constructed, so that there were both Republicans and Democrats in each group, and one group watched the debates on TV, and the other listened to the debates on radio only.

After the debates were over, and the groups were all interviewed and the results tabulated, the researchers were astounded. The Debating Society had clearly scored Nixon the winner of the debates. So had the group who had only heard the debates on the radio. But the group who watched the last three debates on TV gave the debates to Kennedy. The election in November of 1960 also went to Kennedy.

Nixon had looked haggard, tired, he had been on the campaign trail. Kennedy looked like he had just come from a Bermuda vacation. He was young and tanned with a wonderful smile.

Subsequent research has shown that in a visual situation, tonality accounts for approximately 55% of what is 'heard', appearances account for about 30%, and the actual message itself, the so called content may rate as high as 15%.

I don't suppose that anyone here ever thought that someone wasn't listening when they were talking to them recently? Or that people just weren't getting what you were talking or writing about?

Putting A Toe Back In The Water

It has been a nasty week. I thought I'd stick a toe back in the water and see if I remembered how to work the machinery here. The latest Zogby Poll, a telephone survey dated 12/5/6 through 12/8/6, finds that the President's approval rating has dropped to 30% as key demographic groups jump ship. Now you too can read what Zogby, probably one of the best pollsters out there, has to say. Get it from the horse's mouth, so to say. Have some donuts with your coffee or tea! And, if it's after 12:00 pm, a little cognac.

An Announcement

I will be gone for a day or two. We have had a death on the block where I live. A long time resident has passed away in her sleep. Friends who have lived on this block are coming back for her funeral. I will resume publishing in a day or two.

I left a comment in the last post. Here it is:

I can go anywhere. There is some desire to look at perception. Perception is not a huge field in itself, it supports everything else. I'll touch on it because so many people are suddenly writing about their self-perceptions, and others are talking about anorexia and bulimia, which are diseases where typically women starve themselves so they can be so skinny to live up to some societal norm they perceive, being skinny. You can't be too thin.

These perceptions can be lethal. Typically anorexia and bulimia are diseases, like alcoholism that are symptoms of underlying problems. You need to get to the root issues. Now, I am not being formal here, so any real psychologist can nit pick. That's not what I am after.

Personally, I was going to head to the Communications Model, how we communicate when we are face to face. And look at the differences between there and how we do it on the Internet.

I should make this comment a post, shouldn't I?
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A little editing on my part, and I hope you might keep commenting here. I'll be in and out as events dictate. Thanks for bearing with me.

A Summary

I am feeling like I almost need a break so some of this settles in. I have picked a line through existential philosophy into psychology through Zen and into perception. I tried to tie it back in an easily relatable way to things you can relate to and even participate in. Participation really counts, as you may have noticed, as it really adds to what is going on. A lot more action happened in the comments than in the posts.

A weakness I have let stand and should rectify is the I-R model To make this as easy as possible, I am going to skip a lot of the thinking that precedes it, namely Transactional Analysis by Eric Berns, which is an interpretation of Freud. When a child is born, that child has potential that can be developed into almost anything. It's almost limitless. The environment we put that child into and the training we give that child contribute to what the kid becomes. This is the "I" in the I-R model, that potential that the human being possesses.

As we grow up, we are socialized by our parents. If we are scolded for doing wrong, and rewarded for doing good, we start developing an 'image' of ourself. I'm a good boy, I ate all my green beans, regardless of how they tasted. I leave the craziness of the mixed message to your imagination.

We go to school, and we get evaluated, and we get grades. We get report cards. A role, and we're being evaluated at it. We grow up, we go to work, we volunteer, and all of the other things that fill our lives. We are seen as the sum of our roles. But, as CMHL so succinctly stated, we are so much more than that. The "R" stands for roles in the I-R model. It gives us a view of how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. It's also a way of seeing how our self-esteem comes into being, and ought to be a starting place for goal setting. Just a thought.

Returning to the major theme, a nice summary might include that time is precious; we all live under uncertainty; the best we can do is to educate ourself and to try to take advantage of the best opportunities available to us; that everyone struggles, no matter who they are, or how good it appears they have it; the journey is the whole thing, and that trying is everything.

Eastern, Western, ancient Greek or Roman Philosophy the bottom line really is Know Thyself. Sounds simply, it's about as difficult to do as anything on Earth. It is an Ultimate Life Goal.

Finally, we started looking at perception. The Internet many of us the ability to communicate with each other yet to remain anonymous. When we do remain anonymous, others view us with the viewer's idealized view of us, which tends to follow national averages. Some traits about us are deducible from what we write, the majority of the traits that make us who we are, aren't discernible. We tend to focus on the content of the message we write.

That concludes the summary. I have cut out an enormous amount to keep this as simple and straightforward as I can. If I continue this, you will never believe where we go from here.

But why make the journey this far? Remember the initial challenge about writing a story about a woman and her struggles? Have you read about Pickled Olives struggles with her house, and the painting of the house? There's more to come. Have you read about Cindy's affirmations in an attempt to deal with her huge workload between school and work, and how she's going to handle it? How about Claudia's struggles with a woman on her team who screwed her around about a deadline on a class project? That never happens to anyone else, does it? I was going to describe Lee as an artist with both hands intact. Go read her story about trying to help a kid who had caught his hand in a print maker, while waiting for an ambulance. Spoon had a piece about men not understanding what happens to women. CMHL wrote a pensive..........

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What do you think, is this a worthwhile exercise for us as bloggers to see, and think about? Should I go on?

A Busy Sunday

I have been sitting here writing a summary of this week's post, and I doubt I will finish in the next several hours. I hope you all think it was a snap to thread my way through as much philosophy as I did to end up where we did, and that I did it in my spare time. Right.

I started the summary last Monday when I started the first post. I have blown the editing a few times, my bad. Is there anything you'd like me to include? I'd appreciate hearing from you below! Look for the summary tomorrow. Thanks.

In the meantime, enjoy this:

FYI: Cindy

Cindy is a regular here, and you may have noticed that she has been here once in the last few weeks. She has been posting irregularly on her blog. She is a full time employee at a place in Wisconsin that makes snow plows, so she is in their prime season. she is also a full time photography student at Milwaukee Tech. She just posted her December 'resolutions, which are really positive affirmations. Along with a beautiful piece of scenery from Wisconsin.

If you're so inclined, this is a nice time to say a nice word and support an over-worked blogging friend and artist in their formative, struggling years. I remember when it was me, only yesterday......

What did you think of her photo?

An Interview With The Real Person Behind The Mist 1

WARNING I DO NOT KNOW THE REAL PERSON WHO CREATED MIST 1. THIS IS A WORK OF PURE FICTION. PLEASE BE ADVISED

The setting is an island in the Indian Ocean where the person who would be CEO
was sitting having a beer with the person who would be Mist 1.

1: So what brings you to my island, 0? Why the interview?
0: You bring a certain genius to comedy in the way you write. I just had to meet you.
1: Genius, that's a pretty strong word, don't you think?
0: No, but I don't want to give away any trade secrets. Where do you get you humor from?

1: Shhh, before I feed you to my cats. This is a tiger preserve.
0: I didn't mean to suggest.........(laughing)
1: My dad's the funniest man alive, and so is my mom.
0: ...................(holding up hand)..................
1: Are you OK? Seriously, are you breathing?
0: It's in your delivery............

0: Why haven't you put your picture up on your blog?
1: Why should I? People laugh at me without seeing me. I might intimidate them if they saw me.
0: Why would you say that?
1: Well. like my step-sister, I'm taller than most guys at 5'9" and even when you look this good, the purple color mystifys too many people. That's why I live out here, near Sri Lanka. I have everything I want here. I'm working on my fourth degree, and I have all the men I want, not to mention well-trained house boys. What else could a girl want?

0: I never knew.
1: That's because you're that blechy color.
0: Are you going to hold that against me?
1: Not if you bring begals next time.
0: Next time?
1: Yeah, if we're going to keep this up, we should start working out Burns and Allen routines, the way you laugh, it'd be a monologue anyway, but at least we'd both get paid.
George: Say good night, Gracie.
Gracie: Good night, Gracie.

SO what do you think of my vision of Mist1?

Ideas I Got From This Exercise

I never used this word once, but we develop expectations. By expectations I mean, we hate vacuums, and we fill in gaps. I was going to write a dialog between me and Mist1. If you think that I actually know Mist you'd be wrong. I know her just as well as I know you, whoever you are who is reading this at the moment. But, some of you aren't quite as anonymous as others of us. Take my bloggy sister Alison. You can go to her blog and see pictures of her, videos of her, and hear her talk. Not me. Not Claudia. I don't know what Lee looks like, or Mist, or Pickled Olives, or Glamourpuss.

Yet when I write about Mist, I have filled in a picture of her in my mind. I have expectations of what Mist looks like in my mind. Same thing for Lee, and Odat, and Glamourpuss. 123Val has pictures of herself on her site so I know what she looks like. So, pick a few of the people that you read on a regular basis, and have never met, and write a description of them in the comments section. Include me. I have my description of Mist written, and I'll put it into comments tomorrow towards late evening. Something is wrong with blogger at the moment, so I can't put any of your links in.

The Zen story is about expectations and discrimination, as you have probably guessed by now. I'm looking forward to this. It's very zen you know.

Clare From London Did This One

This piece comes from Claire in London, and follows the same them of a female cat dealing with angst. Even Kafka had a little humor in his most depressing pieces. You too can be a brilliant philosopher on your blog, just takes a little insight!

Tao Te Ching: #33

I am trying to put up a few little story ideas today, but when Lee mentioned the "Tao Te Ching"....and seeing as how someone has borrowed my copy of "Zen Flesh:Zen Bones", well, I just couldn't help myself, honest Officer, it was this or the chocolate.

#33

Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough,
you are truly rich.
If you stay in the center
and embrace death with your whole heart,
you will endure forever.


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When you meet someone that's into philosophy, and you say can you reconcile Western and Eastern philosophy? you can see smoke coming out of their ears. First, they can't decide which Western philosophy to pick, existentialism, phenomenology (American School) etc. and please don't worry. Same problem with Eastern. The really smart ones suddenly seize upon a realization, Western philosophy focuses on the individual and his relationship to the environment and society, and the differences. Eastern philosophy tends to focus on the environment and making the individual part of it. Any thoughts?

Idoiotic Human Moron

She sat on the floor of the bathroom and looked at him in the shower, with utter disdain. No matter what she did, no matter what she tried, the moron kept insisting on getting into that damn torture chamber every day, and ruining himself. What did she have to do?

Wait, the door was opening, and there he was, dripping wet, again. Don't touch me, you moron. At least get dry first, you helpless idiot. When would he ever learn not to get into that insipid contraption. Humans were such idiots, and this one kept doing it over and over again. She really deserved better. She really ought to leave. At least the food was good, even if he didn't appreciate her. Maybe she'd feel better after a nap...