Here we are starting a New Year and it seems it is the same old same old.
The libertarians are still complaining about government spending money..unless of course it is spending it on them or someone or something near and dear to them. Pork is in the eye of the beholder.
Politicians from Texas to Turtle Bay to Paris to Baghdad are still being accused of corruption.
McCain is still running for President. Considering the effect that McCain/Feingold had on money in politics I expect his antitorture Bill will back fire the same way. same old same old.
The liberals are still comparing Bush to every bad guy from Dracula to Hitler.
Hollywood is still making bad movies as if their audience was not steadily shrinking.
And in the Middle East the jihadis welcome the New Year the same way they do evey other holiday...they blow people up.
The NYT and WaPo are still acting as if someone voted for them and they have the right to make policy decisions.
And I am a year older. Damn the luck.
Now for resolutions.
Lose Weight. Like I said the same old same old.
86 comments:
Terrye, I weighed 200-210 from high school until i sold my biz in 2003. I sat down for the first time in fitty-someodd years and instantly went to about 250. I either gotta get some new jeans and shirts or move outta this place with the refrigerator. Self-discipline? Hey--how the hell old do ya have to get before you can RELAX a little bit? I think it's this damn computer. Maybe I oughtta eat *it*. I'm sure I'll get around to it sooner or later. Gotta finish the sofa first.
I recently had to create the learning goals and objectives for a continuing education program, so that my colleagues in states that have mandatory continuing education could get credit for a program I am organizing and thus prove to the government that it was an acceptable thing. I wished they had included this activity in the anti-torture legislation. Forget waterboarding. If we catch an al Qaeda operative, we should give him a paper and pencil and make him write out the learning objectives and goals for CE. I guarantee that within 10 minutes, he'll tell us everything we want to know rather than continue to do that.
David,
I suck at html too, but I did find the blogger help menu actually helpful and was able to put up a link using the phrase I wanted with the code hidden. I still need to create a cheat sheet though, since I regularly forget how to do something like that.
Ha--at least you two can figure how to post on this blog. The last time I tried it, some lady in Italy called and asked me to turn her hair dryer back on.
Peter, if that ain't an English gadget, NOTHING is! why am I thinking of that autogyro pilot from Mad Max?
you mean jumping to conclusions and running off at the mouth isn't exercise enough?? ;-)
Now that you mention it, I don't think my brain has been gaining any weight at ALL.
No, the computer-to-refigerator distance is simply intolerable, I'm going to build a walk-in cooler, put the computer and the vittles side-by-side inside it, and finally get some use out of that several tons of un-worn Christmas sweaters.
Well I quit smoking and thanks to the computer my activity level is down.
So unless I want to end up on TLC on one of those '600 pound woman can't get out of bed' shows I had better learn to just say NO to food.
As for html. I can do some links, but I have a hard time with linking to one page, which explains why you guys sometimes have to hunting when I link something.
Today I have a cold. A nasty snotty snarling leave me the hell alone cold and what did my feller do?
He invited the 4 year old over to play. Are all men insensitive brutes or just mine?
This might be difficult to believe but I was none too nice about the whole thing. I went to bed and left him alone with the kid.
Serves him right.
Quitting smoking is a helluvan accomplishment. That should be your first thought, when contemplating the road ahead.
I tried those dermal patches, to quit smoking--but ended up in the burn ward trying to keep 'em lit.
Get an exercise bicycle,attach a generator to it,connect the computer to that,mount the keyboard on the handlebars and pedal like crazy.
I've been a long time advocate of treadle operated computers. Hey, it worked for sewing machines.
I'd like to have a steam powered model--watching the Democrats would be the fuel. That'd give them a practical application, too. A virtuous circle!
Peter, that ber is great for when you've had too many cups of cfofee.
glenmore:
Figure of speech.
I am afraid we have but two choices, grow old or die young.
I don't share Glenn Reynolds in the ability of science to change that.
David:
It's like this:
Pick out a URL you want to link. Say, "http://www.instapundit.com".
Type < a h r e f = "
followed by the URL
followed by " >
Put in what you want to see as the link
follow that with < / a >
Thusly:
<a href="http://www.instapundit.com">a link to Instapundit</a>
becomes a link to Instapundit.
Terrye --- it's not growing old that bothers me; it's getting frail and sickly and then dying.
"Some people want to become immortal through their children, or their work. I want to become immortal by not dying."
My resolutions are exactly the same as last year's. And the year before. And...
I think next year I'm gonna get me some new ones.
...and toss out THIS year's, which will still be good as new?
Happy New Year to all....I actually went away and stayed off my computer for an entire week....I think I was going through withdrawal! But my resolution is to figure out how to mount another computer on my treadmill...
Terrye,
Great post!
When I bicycled across the continent, I could eat 5,000 calories a day and still lose weight!
Those days are gone. But for the past month I have disciplined myself to exercise every day to the tune of a mere 400-500 kcal worth, and have started to lose weight.
It...can...be...done!
Buddy, you're supposed to roll up those nicotine patches and fill them with tobacco before smoking them! (Just a bit of medical advice...)
Jamie Irons
I've read that a lot of the addiction is in the artifacts, the hand-to-mouth activity. It's true, really, they become parts of you--the little palm-sized bright boxes wrapped in cellophane, the friendly old ashtrays around to catch ash and butts and various crumbs and small trash items--and to keep the place from smelling like, well, you.
And the reliable old boxes of general-store matches ("...eh? matches, sonny? ...they're next to the pickled hog jowls, over behind the corn-likker jugs") with their little jewel-like tiny-volcano explosions, and--best of all--the hard & shiny, small & heavy, clicking chromium, steel-wheel & flint, wick & strong-fueled Zippo (and even the one-dollar miracle-of-manufacture propane 'disposable'); they're all here to please the ancient memory of pagan ritual, wherein the Elect scatter through their days quickly & furtively, practicing in shame the taboo smoke-and-fire ceremony.
And the art in the name "Zippo"! "...life ain't such a big deal--in fact, it's only a 'zippo' kind of thing...."
(hell, who wants to live forever?) Zippodee, zip-oh, zippodee-daid, we ain't skeered and we-ain't-afraid!
All such things, along with the charmingly-wrinkled noses of loved ones as they strive to demonstrate a difficult mix of love and disgusted contempt, and the rotten teeth that dislodge and splash into the oatmeal bowl (like little yellow bricks guiding the grave woodsman to your Emerald mouth), and the drop-down oxygen mask hanging over the computer, and the handy defibrillator slung 'round your neck with the ash-clogged stethoscope, and the 50cc of emergency adrenaline in a cardiac syringe duct-taped to your forehead--all beautifully-designed modern totems to the warm amber richness of earth, an Earth that labors and sends forth strong young tobacco plants which shoulder their way up and out and then run wild on the plains, zapping distracted bipeds back into fertilizer.
Yes, it's a story of metaphor, of the great spiritual question--is anything greater than life and the health that gives it meaning?--answered not by airily abstract philosophers but by intricately-involved humans, skilled artisans of the hand, manipulators of the physical, guildmasters of the coughing stainimati, telling by their very being a simple story of lunacy, wherever soothing blue curliques of smoke (from cigarettes as well as '79 Montegos) rise up into the waiting air.
buddy:
Puhleaze poetic license is one thing, that was just... just.. I dunno.. scary.
I quit because I had to chose between smoking and breathing. I am proud to say I was such a dedicated smoker that I hung in there until the nagging cough came along.
As for exercise, those of us who have actually done physical labor have a different way of looking at it, it is called punishment.
[violen music please]
I used to walk miles just to get the cows in. I would milk in a barn so hot that I looked like I had been mud wrestling thanks to the sweat. That is exercise. The treadmill is just some silly person pretending they are walking.
I tell you what, pretend you are milking cows...do it as a group. That way we can all take turns kicking buddy.
Happy New Year everybody!
Sorry, Terrye--it was a late-night flight of fancy. Pretty repulsive in morning light--you're right.
But fun to write last night!
\;-)
http://encarta.msn.com/column_willpower_tamimhome/Can_You_Increase_Your_willpower_tamimhome.html
Buddy
Once the physical craving is gone, the paraphernalia are meaningless. I smoke because of the physiological and psychological panic of withdrawal from nicotine.
72 hours is all it takes. I can't get through 24.
When I quit, it wasn't because I tried. It was because I was so sick that I didn't even know I smoked. Going to a doctor didn't cross my mind because I was too sick to even know I was sick.
When I recovered enough to realize I needed some help, I also realized I hadn't had a cigarette in over 4 days. The physiological craving had passed so I didn't pick up another cigarette...
for an entire year. And it didn't bother me at all not to smoke.
Until I had gained over fifty pounds and finally a doctor discovered that my thyroid had stopped working. Started on synthroid but the weight didn't come off (it won't, but I had thought it would). So I started smoking again and immediately lost 15 pounds.
I cried when I smoked that cigarette. I knew what it meant. But I was so traumatized by the weight gain that I did it anyway.
Be sure and read that article, Syl--it's light but dense--& gets the mind focused on the questions. The writer, Tamim Ansary, looks like a special sort of person.
Mercy, these are GOOD 5 minute reads! Along the left margin in the link above. Reader's Digest length, with some chewy info.
Tamim in Your Head
Explore the wonders of the human brain:
• Can You Increase Your Willpower?
• How Your Memory Works
• Inside the World of Dreams
• Making Sense of Dreams
• Many Kinds of Smart
• Power Learning: Can You Beef Up Your Brain?
• What's Your IQ?
Talk about physical cravings, any other real men out there able to put that picture of young terrye all warmed up in the barn out of their mind?
Wrestling was good excercise, indeed!
...don't forget the cows, Doug!
Buddy
Does what Jamim is saying and giving you examples of remind you of anything? Like, whoops, the brain is a complex system?
In the end, all I can see from his article is that willpower is, wait for it, concentration.
When your brain is controlled by something else, and it is with physical addiction, the difference between people has little or nothing to do with willpower. The brain is dependent on the substance it's addicted to to be able to concentrate.
So, in the case of physical addiction (note there are other types of addiction), the first thing to go is the means to overcome that addiction. Whether you call it willpower, concentration, motivation, or whatever, it's simply removed from your arsenal of tools to fight with.
Jamim is totally disregarding the above, as if the state of physical addiction has no effect on willpower itself. One should not conflate desire or preference with physical addiction and take the results of experiments with one and apply them to the other.
BTW, set a plate of cookies and a plate of radishes in front of me and I have no problem at all choosing the radishes.
That's a very subtle, and very good, point, Syl. I knew it already, unconsciously, in that I can feel my brain going chaotic without nicotine. In no time at all, the actual memory of why you're starving the receptors of their alkaloid, is--GONE!
OTOH, people do quit addictions, so there must be something to the willpower/discipline bit (which bleeds uncomfortably into a character issue). I mean, I have some accomplishments, but contemplating the smoking self sweeps them away, and leaves me being just some muttering jello.
Sounds like you bought some of James Bond's--no surprise, England and all--faves, the French "Galoshes" I believe it's spelt.
"The brain is dependent on the substance it's addicted to to be able to concentrate."
---
What if you're not addicted to concentration?
Then you'd be "Doug".
...or ABLE, even.
Able to what? Remember connecting words?
Give me a minute,
I'm COCENTRA...
nope, can't do it.
What kind of a fascist view of life asserts that words should be *connected*?
Actually, you lost it right after the "o" in "concentra".
BuddyLarsenArseholeSupremo.
Or is it just me?
Oh, bother!
Bother whereforeth art thou?
Wlel, ulesns popele cnrofom to ceritan rlues, thye fnid it dufifcilt to cumtomniact.
cumeomniact
You got that, Jack.
A lifetime of practice don't hurt, neither.
cumomniacte
There! Found the rule--no matter how badly misspelled, as long as the word starts and ends correctly, it will be perfectly readable. So much for rules. Doug, you are a true subversive.
I've got ADD,
It keeps my mind off of my coffee addiction.
Also the Subvertee.
Amend that rule--the word has to have ALL the correct letters and NO extras. But so long as the arrangement puts first and last properly, the others can go anywhere. Pretty cool.
So if I end correctly, they won't misread my life?
Of course, left-wing bloggers figured that out, long ago. Judging by the edivnece.
For me, that might be a reasonable stand-in for the afterlife quest.
"So if I end correctly, they won't misread my life?"
Almost right. If you live correctly, they won't end your misread.
Did you like
"The Fugitive?"
I think we've analyzed me.
Ipset re loquitorum,
or whatever.
...pardon me, I'm programming the New Rule in my ellsp-eckerch.
"Q U I R K Y"
qwerty
Buddy
OTOH, people do quit addictions, so there must be something to the willpower/discipline bit (which bleeds uncomfortably into a character issue).
Bullshit. Your assumption is that people quit because of willpower/discipline. I reject that. One may stay quit by using discipline but that's after the physical addiction has already been dealt with. And don't forget there are different types/levels of addiction.
Sharon kissed Cindy and whispered "I love you" in his blow hole....
"I made a dream come true, and I am not a pervert," she stressed.
Why is *he* named Cindy?
But, Syl, you're too close to the naked truth for humans to contemplate. Think of the guy on 5th avenue with the "end is near" sign--for him it's TRUE, and it's also true for many others who try to not see him or his sign.
To look at your sign is to have the family addicts taken away at gunpoint, to camps, where a few days later, they'll be 'free' and will come home grateful to you.
I mean, we both know that such rough-handling is probably a good idea except that it would cause an awful lot of family murder.
So, since the topic WILL brute its way into every life, we read the self-help lit and toss anecdotes about the time in the 70s when the wife wanted me to quit so bad, we rented a vacation cabin on an isle in Rainy Lake and she tossed my cigs in the lake and hid the boat motor's spark plugs (the store was 10 miles away by water). Without the gory details (I'm STILL trying to convince her I knew exactly how long I could hold her underwater without her drowning), I had my hands on some smokes about 12 hours later. Which was a consolation for what turned out to be a rather frosty vacation, even tho it was July.
:-(
Buddy,
Have you seen this flick? Wretchard has.
Place sounds like it's near your digs.
---
Tagline: The King of Rock vs. The King of the Dead
Plot Outline: Elvis and JFK, both alive and in nursing homes, fight for the souls of their fellow residents as they battle an ancient Egyptian Mummy.
Plot Synopsis: Based on the Bram Stoker Award nominee short story by cult author Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba Ho-tep tells the "true" story of what really did become of Elvis Presley. We find Elvis (Bruce Campbell) as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his "death", then missed his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with Jack (Ossie Davis), a fellow nursing home resident who thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy, and the two valiant old codgers sally forth to battle an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term care facility as his happy hunting grounds.
that fricken Lansdale--that was MY script!
\;-)
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Happens to all of us, one time or another.
Leave it to Doug--here we are, all lamenting weight-gain, and Doug has to start posting whale stories. I'm half a mind to join the Anti-Coconut League.
Peter,
I just heard they had to make needles longer because women's buts are larger than they once were and the old ones stop short of the muscle.
Peter, 5:10 PM
Why no, it's a Male Dolphin that some "lady" from England married in Israel.
Why do you ask?
Any idea why he might be named Cindy?
Buddy, 5:17 PM
I recently lost 20 pounds, back to college weight, but if you knew how you would remain unenvious.
(That's a pretty cool self-depracating style, don't you think?)
That explains it, wonder if he's Aussie?
Sharon kissed Melbourne and whispered "I love you" in his blow hole....
Yes, that works.
Maybe the groom is Mr. Melbourne Sydney, palagic, nectonic, mammalian, resident of the Bounding Main, and honorary member of the Fish & Human Club.
Maybe on the wedding night he'll Flipper a few times.
...and a Hale Fellow, Well Wet, he is, indeed.
Members of the club are reminded to keep Sharon and Sydney Melbourne in their prayers for the loss of their only begotten love-child, Sydney Melbourne Jr the First, who was stillbourne.
We wish him Godspeed on his journey into Transpecied Limbo.
"Hard for the man really,sat on his island throwing messages into the sea,look at all those bottles he has to empty first."
Turned him into a blubbering idiot, it did.
Whale fellow's all wet.
Hale Othello, well-met, and his bride, Sandy Desdemona-Loa.
Hello Othello, poor fellow,
Desdemona-Loa's gonna
leave ya
for Kiluea-Whale Slayah.
You wrote:
The libertarians are still complaining about government spending money..unless of course it is spending it on them or someone or something near and dear to them. Pork is in the eye of the beholder.
What a load of crap. The libertarians don't even take the gov't money when it's offered to 'em.
Not the true ones--but there's an awful lot of poseurs--the tag being currently popular.
Desdemona-Loa's a fake as well as a two timing whore?
Girl said she'd be true,
who knew?
TransPacMicroBrewMauMauing
Caught between the beach and the sea, he wavers.
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