Supernatural Solutions to Real World Problems

I consider myself a pretty far cry from being an official, card carrying sci-fi “geek”, Trekkie or otherwise. Although I’m a pretty big Harry Potter fan so I just might be a closet pothead. Other than that, I would consider my sci-fi/fantasy affections fairly scattered. I do, however, know enough about enough show premises to present this – my guide to fixing real world problems with ideas from supernatural shows (in no particular order).

Afghanistan: Lots of tribal factions, Taliban making friends with anyone for the right price, foreign soldiers just kind of… there… why again? The solution? Let’s go ‘Harry Potter’ on their Afghani asses, sort everyone into houses (Griffindor, Ravenclaw and such) and turn the entire country into Hogwarts! Then Bin Laden would be Voldemort and everything already happening would make a lot more sense and at least better organized.

The rest of the entire Middle East: They never really all got along like B.F.F.’s Canada and U.S. But we like hanging out there for the oil and such, plus wouldn’t it be nice if all those countries were like mini-me’s of America? And then there’s the matter of – gee I hope they don’t blow us up. Seems like a ‘Charmed’ solution may be in order. First Piper freezes the entire region, then Paige & Leo orb all the bad guys (you know, the ones that make the good citizens look bad) to another planet. And just for good measure, plant some avatars all over the place to take out anyone who decides to cause trouble in utopia. That’s right – I just called the Middle East utopia.

Health Care: Getting it for free seems to be a greater personal priority for many people than actually caring for their health. How can we point out that there’s not enough free money in the world to care for our bad habits? I’ve never actually seen ‘Twilight’ or any of the other vampire movies/shows, but maybe we could replace modern medicine with vampires who could just suck the disease/illness right out of us. Much easier and cheaper than surgery with no co-pays or long wait times.

Illegal Immigration: Well, Pat Buchanan’s magical big wall didn’t happen. So how about setting up a ‘Star Trek’ beaming machine thingy (clearly not a Trekkie) on the entire span of the border so that every time someone runs over they end up “beamed” back home.

Climate Change: Yeah, it’s changing, but the debate is on about how fast and what exactly we should be looking forward to. This has ‘The Jetsons’ written all over it. That’s right – big raised pod homes over what is left of the flooded, toxic earth below.

Washington DC: Yes, our political system is a real world problem in itself. There’s a legitimate chance that our politicians are actually aliens so… we turn our entire political system into a giant, hilarious episode of ‘Third Rock from the Sun’ – all hilarity with only light-hearted plotlines that don’t really go anywhere and certainly don’t lead to yelling or drama.

War on Drugs: What we need is a healthy way to escape that doesn’t addict us to an Rx notepad of side effects (do all drugs lead to toilet related problems?) or endear us to dangerous international drug cartels who aren’t exactly card carrying members of their local chamber of commerce. Let’s find out what Mork from ‘Mork and Mindy’ was taking. Oh yeah, it was Robin Williams and it was cocaine. Bad idea.

Poverty/Unemployment: What we need is to magically print more money… oh wait, we’re already doing that without supernatural help.

So there you have it.

Oops! I almost forgot to mention that this isn't the most politically correct blog in the world. But you probably figured that out by "Afghani asses" right?

Imperfect

Sometimes it seems like I am an imperfect person in a world where perfection is perennially pursued as the norm.

If perfection were the norm it would be called normalcy and there would be no perfection.

Nobody really knows who established these standards or if there even was such a person.

Yet people spend a lifetime beating themselves up and oftentimes even killing themselves in pursuit of this mirage.

For instance…

I don’t always keep a set sleep schedule and wake up with the sun, ready to begin a productive day as a productive, industrious member of society.

When I drink, it is not with a measuring cup and a CDC dosage chart, as if I am taking a chemistry final. Life is not an exercise in precision and to pretend it is makes me giggle inappropriately and out of turn.

I do not engage in appropriately moderate exercise for exactly 30 minutes every day, as is recommended. I do not live the life of a caged rat, available to be let out at exactly the same time every day on command.

I don’t plan my meals with a calculator, a pyramid and a sense of dietary superiority. In the battle of common sense versus regulated perfection, score one for common sense.

When the new awesome, can't-live-without-it gadget 4.743.81 is about to come out, I don't sleep in a tent outside the store because my life will be imperfect if I don't possess this piece of technology. That's ironic really - sleeping in a "back to basics" tent for a piece of technology.

I don’t have an orderly, comprehensive, and financially sound portfolio that will establish my personal lifelong security and therefore make me sleep better at night. I wonder how many of the people who have watched their carefully choreographed portfolios go up in flames in the last couple years, now need an Ambien prescription to sleep at night.

I talk fast, I listen faster (but people don’t care about that part – just about the talking fast part), sometimes I get so giddy and excited about a conversation that I talk over people, I have a crooked spine held together by metal screws, I am bow legged, I have long arms and legs, I have imperfect gums and I’m flat-chested. And that’s just the beginning of the list. And I love it all because it’s me!

If there’s something about me that personally irritates you or makes you feel threatened or brings out your own securities…. that’s your stuff, not mine.

Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m angry, sometimes I’m exuberantly dorky, sometimes I’m sad, sometimes I’m worn out and sometimes I don’t feel like being the life of the party. But that doesn’t mean I need to pop a pill to eliminate the problem of being human with human emotions.

I refuse to agree exclusively with one religion, one political party or one school of thinking just because it’s easier to sort us all into mutually exclusive herds of thought. The more they try to simplify me, the more questions I ask and more contradictory thoughts I intentionally raise – just to be generally annoying to “them” – whoever “they” are.

I don’t routinely sit and stare into space, dutifully establishing goals, dreams, objectives and missions and then putting them on paper like a carrot in front of a donkey. When it occurs to me that I want something, I go and get it. No ideology, no self-help, no charts, grids, mantras, writing on mirrors, guru ramblings. It’s amazing how the world was established, buildings were built, inventions were invented, immigrants emigrated and formed countries and things got done before Tony Robbins told them they had to believe in themselves. Seems like they were too busy actually getting things done to talk about it all day.

People used to get by just fine without shooting radiation into every body part on a regular basis to make sure nothing is growing there that shouldn’t be. They didn’t inject diseases into their body in hopes of preventing variations of the same disease if it should happen to come along. They woke up every day, hoped to make it back to bed every night, did what needed to be done, and hoped for the best.

The world is turning. Time is ticking. The sun is rising and setting, the waves are crashing and the scenery is transforming – and beautifully. By time we all finally “get it right” in each of our own little snow globes – it may be too late to enjoy it. Let’s stop looking for a perfection that does not exist. Let’s embrace our imperfections and learn to laugh at ourselves, at the people chasing perfection who will never find it, and at the people telling us to chase it. Seriously – it’s a pretty funny concept if you think about it! Once you push all the manufactured crap out of the way, like windshield wipers pushing away sopping leaves, life can be pretty fun.

P.S. I tried to find an image of “perfect” on google images. But when I searched for “perfect” – there was no such image depicting it.

Unplugging from Cable News

I feel slightly more sane since unplugging from the cable news recently. I'm sure someone will alert me if Armageddon grows near. I've realized that cable news is about 90% drama & theater and 10% actual useful info - and I'm being generous.

Without cable news... Imagine if we still watched a one hour consolidation of all the day's news over dinner every day on NBC, CBS, or ABC - the way it used to be. I think the conclusions we would come to as citizens, regarding the day's events would be dramatically different than they are now - even with the exact same actual events occurring.

The cable news networks - all of them, so let's not start some kind of "my cable network is better than yours" childish pissing war - have become kind of A Clockwork Orange. Drowning us in so much URGENCY! DRAMA! EMERGENCY! YOU HAVE TO KNOW THIS OR YOU'LL SURELY DIE NOW! that it's a wonder we're not all duct taped in our houses like after 9/11. Not to mention the childish little junior high bickering between the individual cable news personalities (really - what does this have to do with actual news? - grow up boys). But we get sucked in because it's in the little glowing box with loud noises and pretty flashing graphics so it must be important. Right?

I've made the choice to unplug - for my sanity and for a clearer perspective on things. Unplugging isn't boycotting and I'm not trying to start some sort of zen social movement. Just thought I'd share. But please be sure and let me know if Armageddon is imminent so I can get my own roll of duct tape. Thanks.

If the Aliens Saw our Drugs

I learned about a lot of different drugs as an RN. It apparently takes a lot to keep us fragile humans ticking along, healing and feeling better. I imagine that “if the aliens landed” (as goes the popular imaginary hypothetical) they could learn a lot about we earthlings just be reading a drug reference book.

They would find out that sometimes our bodies attack ourselves with infection. Most of the time our own blood protects and heals us, but sometimes we need forms of fungi and chemicals to attack the problem head on.

The aliens would learn how most of the time we can nourish ourselves without any problems, putting the food in and not hearing from it again until what’s leftover is ready to come out. But sometimes there are problems in the food tube – sometimes towards the top, often in the middle and frequently at the end of it. The drugs we take for tube problems get things unstuck and moving again and smooth over the problem areas along the way.

As the aliens flipped through the pages of our drug reference manuals, they would then happen upon the heart section. They would deduce that this heart thing must be delicate and extremely important based on all the things that might come to ail it. It can lose its rhythm, become clogged and hardened or sprout a leak. Although they wouldn’t find any indications of how it can also be filled with joy, euphoria and heartbreak. These kinds of things aren’t included in a drug book.

And then of course there are the sections that address other ways we can hurt, itch, bleed, ache and otherwise malfunction, and all the drugs that fix such things.

Finally, the aliens would come across the biggest and most thorough section of all in the drug book: the mind. The aliens might be taken aback by all the different things that can go wrong with our “big, big brains” (as Kurt Vonnegut would say). It is the epicenter of everything. It is soft, mushy, tangled, electric, and warm and it never sleeps. It makes us breathe, keeps our heart beating, and keeps us moving. It collects knowledge, gives us direction, makes us wonder if we know where we’re headed and generates more questions than answers. While reading the mental drugs section, the aliens would find a paradox. The drugs are seemingly meant to repair all our confusions and mental misfires. Yet for the majority of them the action is listed as “unknown” and “probably…” does this or that. They might wonder if even we know what we’re drugging our brains for.

What would the aliens learn overall from reading our drug manuals? They would see that we are fragile, but self-repairing for the most part. They would learn that the main purpose of the drugs is to ease the aches and pains of being human and help us find our way when life nudges us off course. Most of all, I think they would say to one another: “Well no wonder they can’t come to an agreement about us with all the drugs they’re taking!

What They Imagined They Knew

Did it take an overactive imagination, a little common sense foresight or both to see how the world would progress?

It seems Rand was Right when she predicted an arrogant, mighty capitalist empire which would turn toward punishing those who created it for their accomplishments.

Orwell may have had a point when he spotted Big Brother on the wall, watching our every move and helping us distinguish right from wrong and informed from ignorant.

Vonnegut’s Galapagos pointed out that just because people, with our big big brains, change our opinions about the value of the paper money it doesn’t mean the world we live in is any less resourceful and survivable. In his 2BR02B, Vonnegut crafted a world where if you wanted to bring a life in, you had to find one who wanted to leave, to control the world population. The story ended with the end of the leader whose job it was to enforce this government ordered euthanasia. I could go on about Vonnegut’s other prophetic tales but you’ll just have to read them for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

In the Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck pointed out that Stalin and Marx on one side and Paine and Jefferson on the other were results, not creations. Current events make me wonder what we have created, what it will leave us with, and if we’ll ever learn our lesson about the perceived beauty of instant gratification.

What other lessons have we learned from wordsmiths of the past? And what have we really learned from them?

Metaphor In Chief

If a lie becomes so overwhelmingly obvious to such a large number of people that the reality of it all is surreal, shouldn’t the lie and all its associated illusions, simply cease to exist?

This was my hyperaware reality of America – somewhere between the promise of change and the sobering understanding of what that change really entails. The vehicle for that change was little more than a metaphor with the ability to read the words that people want to hear at the moment they want to hear them. This metaphor was manufactured by the grievances, distresses, ideology and conflicting desires of a people who cannot distinguish between what is real and what has been manufactured to appease them. The metaphor they elected promised to end a war on an emotion but instead waged war on the foundation of his alleged country.

The conflicted people, desperate for an end to what they were told were the worst of times, checked the box they were told would lead to the best of times. Once elected, the metaphor for all the things they thought they wanted used the power they bestowed upon him to lead them into the worst of times. But even as he spent their money, vaporized their jobs and earnings and escalated the war on an emotion, the people remained silent. Nobody had yet told them that this metaphor had changed from the solution to all their problems into the cause of a whole set of new ones.

As the metaphor continued to spend their money and doom their future, what would happen next seemed inevitable, but only to those who were paying attention. These were the people who had been paying attention all along. They were not waiting for cues about what to think and regarding the appropriate level of optimism they should feel about their lives. They saw what was happening from the beginning and were astounded and lonely in this realization.

And then, suddenly, at a random point in the middle of the storm, all the people, even the ones paying attention, were informed that the storm was over and that they should leave their shelters and celebrate the end of the storm. So everyone, including the ones paying attention, ventured outside of the shelters into the street. First out came the ones who still believed in the promises originally recited by the metaphor, as he stood facing his word monitors with what he thought was an appropriate facial expression. They were the ones who whooped in delight, dancing and celebrating in the stormy streets because they were told that the storm was over. They continued to celebrate, even as many of them were struck down by lightning and drowned in the rising rain waters. The storm was over because the people who convinced them to trust the metaphor had also convinced them to believe that they were celebrating in sunlight.

Next out of the shelter, came the people who had been paying attention all along. They gazed in amazement at the celebration while shielding themselves from the gale force storm winds, dodging lightning and trying not to drown in the rain waters. They began to wonder, at that point, who the crazy ones really were.

Last out of the storm shelter, were the orchestrators of the whole confusing mess. It’s not that all of the national destruction they had caused and havoc they’d reeked was on purpose. It was like an overly ambitious but not exactly trustworthy teenage chemistry student who breaks into a lab after hours and starts mixing chemicals together in hopes of coming up with something that makes great noises, looks impressive and gives him some notoriety. His intentions aren’t that good, but aren’t that bad either. He is misguided by arrogance combined with ignorance and roaring ambition in need of an outlet. It is only as the arrogant little shit is standing there in the midst of the toxic, smoking wreckage that he gets an inkling that maybe his chemistry experiment wasn’t a good idea after all.

My Health Care Reform Manifesto

1. The health care reform we need is a model that will reward people for taking accountability for their health and wellness (while of course allowing for genetic inevitability, trauma, etc.) rather than blindly doling out free care in a way that rewards personal irresponsibility and greed and takes away the freedom and financial stability of America in the process. That is not "health" nor is it "care."

2. What Obama and Congress have packaged as “humanitarian” really is, if you read the bill line by line, nothing but an Orwellian nightmare that would strip ALL Americans (those who support the bill as well) of our personal freedom, financial security and future. Every American MUST read this bill!

3. Why on earth would America follow the failed lead of countries who have already implemented socialized health care? Do the research – in those countries, cancer rates have skyrocketed because citizens do not have access to the wellness checkups and preventative care needed to make an early diagnosis and stop the cancer in its path. Socialized medicine has also resulted in HIGHER health care costs (passed along to the well intentioned citizens). Hmmm… higher health costs with higher mortality and higher rates of preventable illnesses. Sign me up!

4. For the reasons above, and especially clauses like the following that are included in Obama’s health care bill, I am convinced that this “health care reform” is simply an aggressively and manipulatively packaged form of government control that we the people must prevent from coming to fruition.

Links:

Contact your representatives: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

READ the bill: http://rightsoup.com/twittering-obamacare-horrors-in-the-bill/