Life happens February 25, 2008

Back in November, I started coughing my brains out, so I went to the doctor.   He said upper respiratory infection, gave me antibiotics, and sent me on my way.

In December I went back because I was still coughing my brains out.  The doctor looked  disturbed and said chest X-ray.  Fortunately, there was no pneumonia, just particularly evil infection, so more antibiotics, some steroids, and I went on my way.

A couple of weeks ago I started coughing like mad again, so I went back.  As it turns out, I have a long-lasting (like months) para-flu virus which, by itself, isn’t too bad but it wears down the immune system so that secondary infections can take hold, which explains the repeat respiratory infections and the general crappiness of the last four months.

Three weeks ago I had a death in the family.

I have a show opening in 2 weeks.  Not a play (sigh), but a little fund raiser show that could definitely be going more smoothly.

I am exhausted, and stressed, and sick.  I am not feeling any tremendous insight into anything, therefore no writey on bloggy.  No writey at all, actually.  I am basically at the “fire bad, tree pretty” mental stage.

Thank goodness for Buffy DVDs.

Bang Head Here February 9, 2008

The sky is green.

 

 

No, really.  You may think the sky is blue, there may be so much experimental data showing that the sky is blue that the scientific community accepts it as near fact, 99.7% of people may testify that the sky is blue, but that makes no difference, because I say the sky is green, and nothing is more important than MY! OPINION!, and MY! OPINION! is unchangeable.

 

People like that infuriate me.  Obviously, I have no issue with people who hold strong opinions, I hold pretty strong opinions myself.  The issue I have is with those people who are so invested in their opinions that fact and logic cease to matter.  These are the people who, when confronted with information that contradicts a previously held belief, refuse to amend their belief system but instead discard the information, like someone driving 100 mph toward a cliff, staunchly believing that the road continues on. 

 

I enjoy a good debate, and I am reasonably good at it.  Unfortunately, lately I have encountered more people like this than those interested in an actual conversation about an issue.  I encounter this thinking all over, like the women who insist that all fat people are only fat because they are lazy and eat twinkies all day, who dismiss evidence to the contrary out of hand, or the Huckabee fan who insists that Obama is Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, actual biography and statistics be damned.   Attempting to debate with such a person is like trying to punch Jello.  With glass shards.

 

My conclusion:  I have to learn to let people live with their own ignorance.  I expect others to respect my right to choose to watch Buffy the Vampire slayer or eat chocolate, so I need to respect their right to choose to remain uninformed and closed-minded.  It’s a good thing I teach, so I can have some relief of that urge to impart information, and to a captive audience, at that.

 

 

Muahahahahaha.

It’s just food February 4, 2008

Really, I should have own better than to click the link. Anything on featured on Yahoo about “Eating out without the fat” was bound to be insipid at best, and this particular article didn’t even manage insipid. Broken down by food types, it doled out the same advice that anyone who has ever been on a diet awake has heard; avoid high-fat things like sour cream and cheese when you go Mexican, order steamed vegetables instead of fries, blah blah bitty-blah. There were a few others I had never heard, like to order first at the table so you won’t be tempted by other people’s oh-so-delicious high-fat foods, since eating those french fries will undermine your whole weight-loss plan.

The thing that struck me about the article wasn’t the over-repeated tips, or the ridiculous statements (for example: “Let’s face it, sour cream is pretty tasteless”), or even the prevailing assumption that everyone is, of course, on a constant crusade to be thinner. After all, these things have become so commonplace that you hardly notice them unless you are looking for them. The thing that struck me was one particular suggestion about giving up some food item, followed by “Now that’s virtue!”

But… it’s not virtue. There is no particular moral value in giving up sour cream, or cookies, or broccoli, solely for the purpose of meeting a societal aesthetic ideal.

Once I started paying attention, I realized that the language of dieting is all about moral value. Every Monday I sit at a lunch table full of women and listen to them describe their weekend in terms of whether they were “good” or not. They aren’t talking about whether they contributed to mankind or pulled the wings off flies, they are talking about food. People, women in particular, have been conditioned to view their own moral behavior in terms of what they eat. The diet culture has appropriated the language of religion and used that language, combined with the Puritan/ Calvinistic heritage many of us come from, as another tool to convince us to conform to the “fat is bad” concept.   How many times have you heard a dessert referred to as sinful, as if enjoying something for its flavor and texture is contrary to the will of God?

If there is moral value inherent in food, I would argue that it is virtue, not sin.  All foods, from spinach to Twinkies, have the potential to nourish life.  There are certainly arenas where giving up certain food may be virtuous, like giving your lunch to a homeless woman or fasting as a religious discipline to draw closer to God.  But sin is far too big, and too damaging a concept to be thrown around and associated with those things that God created to be good, particularly just to make someone feel guilty about eating them just to look “good” in a bikini.