Insert Pun About Blindness or Sides Here

I watched the movie Blind Side. It was okay. (I hated a few moments of it here and there. Gag me with a spoon full of sugar.)

It was a movie that walked the thin line between gritty documentary and fairy tale. The writers did a good job of going back over the stereotypes and coloring them in a little bit. Except for the husband who didn't exist. Hey, Mr. Moneybags is home!

I learned one new thing about football. What a left guard is for, to protect a quarterbacks blind side.

Mostly I'm intrigued. Michael Oeher says he's going to write his own book. I'd like to read it.

I can see why members of the Academy voted for this character, an appealing amalgamation of traits because in real life nobody is just a little bit of a bitch or a slight control freak.

I wish instead of a movie this had just been an episode of Trading Spouses. But I am glad I saw it. Pop culture, something to think about.

Tails

Uh... Do animals really "crawl away to die"?

I remember my Dad told us to search the woods behind our house, which we did for a week. We never found our dog, King, but we came to believe he was just gone and hid real good because wanted to spare us the tragedy of finding him dead.

Um, woke up suspecting that maybe the truth is that Santa Claus takes them away. And I think my Dad may be even more awesome and strong and loving than I realized.

Ask Not, Tell Not

Considering the issue of dying for my country as raised by Nick:

I just literally can't think of a scenario where my death would make a difference for my whole country. It would have to be a really complicated situation where I was like James Bond and they wired my heart into the biggest nuclear bomb ever and if my heart beat one or two or three more times the bomb would detonate and take out not only the state of Ohio but the whole East coast and continue west over the Mississippi and on over the Rockies destroying the entire West coast. And Alaska. And Hawaii.

I don't know. Seems pretty far-fetched. But yes, I'd be honored to die for my country if it came down to all that.

Jumping for Sharks

I was eating with my kids yesterday and conversation turned to how to fish from a submarine. We decided a net would be most efficient, but a harpoon would also be effective. (Okay, "more fun". Sorry, I have teenage boys! : )

Then we talked about TV shows. Wasn't it great when "Survivor" was more about survival. When we got to spend time in the ocean next to the guy with the spear. That was cool. You think you might learn a useful skill by watching. Now, it's all gossip and drama.

Another show that fell downhill: "Heroes" used to be about heroes. We would find new heroes and they would have cool and interesting powers. They would be captured by, and escape the bad guys. Now it's all drama.

Another show that went to pieces: "Numbers". You used to be able to at least hear about an obscure math topic that maybe you didn't know about, or even better say yes I know about combinatorics, I use a little VBA script in Excel for my Bank Recs. Now, Charlie practically says "I mathed it." and they send in the goons with the guns. And have some drama.

Anyway... Need to keep the essence of my life, not drama...

Tribal Values

Thinking of a company as a family doesn't work as well as thinking of it as a tribe. It's hard trying to figure out why there are three dads, what happens when you have to vote your daughter off, how to feel when your uncle joins the competition, and why the guys out back would like to date their sisters.

iFriends

Friendships between women include emotional support. Romantic relationships are love and sex and expectations. Internet and platonic friendships are pretty much just about "You are an interesting person." Which kind of rocks.

Sad Baby Love

Sad news. A girl I am aware of from the internet had a miscarriage. I feel bad for her but we don't really communicate so it wouldn't be appropriate to delurk now. But I don't feel too bad that I know. The TMI-ness is okay with me. It's an issue people should be aware of. As much as breast cancer. If we're not going to have an actual village, at least there's a virtual village. I know a lot of people who have had trouble with fertility and felt soul-crushing shame over it. It's good that people are aware that it's hit or miss. Even in this day and age, this is how life is. Procreation is a humongous life issue. I've had a sneaking shadow of babylust stalking me for months. Good times.

The Better to Hear You With

I got some advice from a new friend: Try to pay attention. Pay special attention to anything that strikes you as interesting, anything that strikes you as wrong, anything you get judgemental about.

Really try to listen. Especially when anyone makes an effort to tell you something, it's because they think you need to know. Try to play angel's advocate and see how those ideas fit.

I'm supposed to meditate on things but that sounds complicated so I'll just think about it. : )

Not So Jung

It's kind of interesting, Carl Jung has come up a lot in the last several months. Someone was telling me about Jacque Lacan's mirror theory and I ran into a Flickr set about (obscure psychologist, I can't find her name) and the theory about the beast came up in a book on writing and then last week my new freind (sp.) was telling me about him...

So I got out a book... [Tangent: During my karaoke year, I spent so much money on books that Thackeray's actually expanded three of my favorite sections. Sad but cool.] I've been reading "Modern Man's Search for a Soul". I am still in the first section. Ugh, if I even tell you what it's about, it sounds like it belies my point, which is, from what I'd heard of Jung, the collective unconcious and also archetypes (which is not intrinsically bad I've just seen it twisted into a defense of astrology), I thought he was full of mumbo-jumbo, but he's really rock solid.

The first section is about using dreams in analysis and it seems to be aimed towards his peers and it's very common-sense and careful. This has nothing to do at all with the dream books my best friend and I read in Junior High which list keywords "If you dream about snakes it means... you know. (Sorry, that's the only example that has stuck with me.) It's actually more a warning against transference and a reminder that it is more important that the patient understands than the doctor understands.

Then it talks about how the unconscious compensates for things lacking in the conscious and you should try to understand these things and accept them or actually "assimilate" them, like Borg. Repression only gives things more power and it seems to me makes them kind of whats-the-word.

PBS has been running a series all week about emotions and how they work in the brain, etc. Last night they explained the fight or flight response and how the amygdala sends out these powerful chemicals, emotions, whatever to the prefrontal cortex but it's a one way street. There is no direct way to send messages the other way; It's much more difficult for the logical part to control the emotions.

I have often thought about the "part of the brain that doesn't speak English". I've always had problems with watching the news and feeling sad and wanting to save the stupid people in the horror movies and wanting to comfort crying toddlers at the grocery store. Yeah, lady, I'm smiling at your baby, try it.

It doesn't speak in words, so how to talk back?

Thought of a good analogy for repression: Thinking about all the different places you would not eat green eggs and ham.

For the Best

Wow, I really need to hurry up and finish reading "Candide". I've been reading it a little bit at a time for weeks and it's starting to affect me. Everything is "For the best". Arguing is "For the best" because it highlights relationship issues and will lead to improvements. Having no money for christmas is "For the best" because it's money I won't be spending... (?) Anger at work is "For the best" because it reinforces home relationships and strengthens "us vs. them" alignments and helps work-life balance. Acting like an idiot and become a parody is "For the best" because I can't have a serious issue if it can't be taken seriously. If my mom loses her independence it might be "For the best" because she's lonely. I can't think of much about my Dad's situation that's "For the best". Except for maybe that he's very loving now. It was kind of business-y before. Love is all we have left...

Books I Don't Get

There are some books that are classics, but after I read them I just don't understand what the fuss is about. Here are my thoughts on some of those:

"The Stranger" by Albert Camus - He was a sociopath. So?

"Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka - Dysfunctional family. I read the graphic novel and then I read the whole text just to be sure and the only thing that didn't come across fully in the graphic novel was the whole sense of him forgetting his humanity.

"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte - Heathcliff was a jerk and so was Cathy and I'm pretty sure there was a little something going on off-page.

"Flatland" by Edwin Abbott - One of the most classist, sexist things I've ever read. Worst of all, it has virtually nothing to do with math!

It's almost like in the past people didn't understand mental illness or have "Grey's Anatomy" or grocery store tabloids to keep them amused...

The Boy Scout Myth

Just thinking about how unprepared I am to raise a teenager and deal with the forces of nature unleashed upon my family. : )

Of course I was unprepared for babies too. I mean, you buy the books and the furniture and the diapers and get ready but you don't know how things really are. Once when I was a teenager I got to bottlefeed a baby raccoon. It scratched and clawed at the bottle and was kind of scary. It was good training for newborns. No one tells you they're feral.

And the thing with toddlers is all the control issues. Other than bribery, the secret is trickery. You never say, "You need a bath." You say, "Would you like a bath with bubbles or no bubbles?" "Bubbles!!!"

Everything is coiled up with so much emotion. Is everyone like this? Who knows?

Anyway. We can get ready, but we can't be prepared.

Moderation of Discombobulation

Last week I found out there is a TED event in Detroit coming up. It sounds really exciting and it's totally affordable but attendance is by application: Tell us about yourself and your good idea for the future of Detroit and the world.

Can I just say "Well, I don't have any ideas but TED looks really fun!" Would that work? : )

I think I do know why things change. Things change because they are broken. Things bruised, dented and limping do not really change, they just find a way to get by. But when pieces are hanging off and swinging back and forth and you say "Gosh, I don't think it's supposed to move like that." That's when you say, "What pieces can we salvage and what can we build with them?"

People don't want to spend right now. I think we either spend small amounts that add up to something or our hearts totally override us. When I think about things I love, sure I can spend a little on that. Being part of the community is worth something too. (Thinking about Detroit, I think of the music community and going to rock shows.)

I think I know how things get simple. When you throw in one last monkey wrench and the overcomplicator gets discombobulated and completely jams up. THAT's how things get simple. Not because you've figured it all out but because you can't. And you go back to basics and work with the obvious.

When You're Looking, You're Seeing

Have you ever had a feeling like "reverse deja-vu"? You hear about something and suddenly it's ubiquitous? You get a new car and now you see the same exact car everywhere?

You're writing songs and lyrics pop into your head 3 times a day. Your son is writing a comedy routine for the talent show and now everything he says is funny. Everyone is talking about Burger King today...(?)

I learned on the internet that this experience of sudden ubiquity is called the "Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon". Scientists explain it as the brain's form of pattern recognition. Here's the article: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=417

So, there are a couple of different ways of looking at this: The statistics of probability working through brain chemistry? The synchronicity of the Jungian collective unconscious?

But on a day that is so tough you're not sure you want to go through any more days, and on top of that you have to go shopping, when you see three different people at the store who say "Hi! How are you?" and give you a hug... You realize that all these little things are just priming the pump so you can see the signs when God shows you that he loves you.

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Superpower of Marginal Utility: Being able to distinguish between colors that are really, really, really close.
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(New Category!)
Touche, Cliche: The pot's not boiling because you don't have the lid on, silly!
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Mashup I am not going to make: "Figlio Perduto" and "He Needs Me, He Needs Me"