Category Archives: Happiness

Foodie Tuesday: The New Miracle Diet that will Give You X-ray Vision, Eidetic Memory and the Pheromones to Attract Every Sexy Human You can Possibly Want!!!

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If the Perfect Miracle Food were the food you despised most, would you eat a barrel of it anyway?

I’m beside myself [Ed: yes, right over here] with ecstasy that we live in an age where we’re constantly receiving updates apparently teleported, straight from God’s lips, on new life-saving Superfoods and diet strategies that will bring about world peace and end the shortage of sporty convertibles in our time. I realize that as long as there have been hucksters and hyperbolists that could spell Snake Oil there have been such claims filling the air and jamming our brainwaves with unrealistic wishful optimism. Purveyors of serious science and common sense have both long since given up on the possibility of coming to a definitive answer to the perpetual question of what’s good for us to eat, at least one on which all sentient beings can agree. That never stops anyone from trying either to discover it or to convince us (with our remarkably flexible wallet-hinges) that they have.

But the modern info-bombardment wherein we swim encourages us to see, hear and believe an ever-noisier, ever more enthusiastic and far-reaching set of claims to this Truth. Amazing! Astounding! and the ever-popular exclamation that I so love, Incredible! (As if I can’t tell just from the obnoxious typography of the advert and the hilariously awful before-and-after unretouched photos that there’s nothing remotely credible to be found in the accompanying claims.) Scientists are almost as guilty of outrageous claims as anyone, in this environment where every research program has to compete for every dime with not only every other genuine researcher but also the whole phalanx of false prophets and their wonderful platinum-plated products. It takes only a tiny effort for the completely uninformed amateur to sleuth out at least two diametrically opposed studies on any given dietary claim that have produced what looks and sounds like fairly convincing data, so I am loath to do anything more dramatic than take it all with a grain of salt.

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. . . and how do you prefer your sodium chloride: hickory smoked or deep fried?

Which, indeed, is what I will likely do. Hey, there are enough mutually exclusive authorities regarding how much sodium is permissible in whose diet and in what forms to keep a whole herd of elk dying in wait for the salt lick. I’m fond enough of being alive and not feeling like, say, I’m in imminent danger of keeling over with toxins squirting out of every pore of my body while I disintegrate to dirty swamp water like the alien in a 50s B-movie that I do try on the average to put things into my mouth with a modicum of moderation and thoughtfulness. I look for what seems to make me feel my best and work to include that in my meals rather than always succumbing to the lure of the luridly unhealthy.

It just seems to me that we have actually been living for a bit right in the middle of Woody Allen‘s Sleeper. Regardless of your view on Woody Allen movies, I’m nearly at the point where I think all school health classes should be required to see that film at some juncture in their studies just for the scenes where hero Miles Monroe is brought out of his cryogenic sleep and is coached by his attending doctors on how the understanding of health has changed in the two hundred years while he was snoozing on ice. There’s something almost eerily familiar nowadays when reputable researchers and doctors from every corner are admitting that perhaps not all of our longtime religiously held convictions about sugars, fats, proteins and all of those other pesky elements of edibles we fear and worship are exactly the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. That perhaps there is a bit more difference in how one person or another is affected, and how good or evil that might be.

All I can say is, it’s kind of a relief to think that I don’t have total control over my destiny through what I ingest, so I’m going to continue to consider myself a so-far live experiment subject willing to undergo certain tests to see what can be most deliciously survived in my lifetime. Come on over and chow down with me, and don’t get too hung up on it, okay? There’s too much edible, drinkable goodness of every kind just hovering on the edge of my ken for me not to show it some respect and appreciation. Amen, let’s eat.

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So many tasty choices, so little time . . .

Surely ‘Tis Better to be Bombastic than Merely Bumptious

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As my music teacher once told me, "if you make a mistake, be sure to make the same mistake again, and with real conviction, when you get to Verse Two."

No one will be surprised to hear that as a kid with no sense of direction, space or straightforward western left-to-right/top-to-bottom reading I never did master reading music. Apparently I was a pretty decent prevaricator and persuader, though, because I faked my way through my five years of piano lessons by conning teachers and friends into playing my assignments for me up front ‘so I could get a feel for how they worked’–so I could phony them up by playing primarily by ear when lesson time came around again. Not to say that this flim-flam actually made me a good player. I had the decency to stop taking lessons when I was old enough that the act was wearing as thin as a starlet’s underwear. My teachers deserved to work with students with a certain amount of potential, after all. But I learned lots of fun and useful things from them in spite the inevitable moments of frustration and drudgery inherent in beginner’s practice. Not least of which was that the root not just of learning, but of potential innovation and variant excellence is the Mistake.

This is not meant as license for licentiousness–free rein to make egregious errata just for the lazy-ass or mean-spirited fun of it. But there’s a great difference between tripping on the invisible banana skin and bounding around boisterously without regard to the laws of gravity just to see how much I can liven up a dull funeral service. There’s a yawning gap between plonking a wrong note in the heat of a performance and sabotaging a poor defenseless deceased composer because I don’t care enough to learn her work properly. Despite my inability to make head or tail of those dots on a score, I did earnestly try to learn the proper notes right through by however devious the means.

I can neither confirm nor deny that the keyboard biff-ery that inspired the above gem of guidance regarding consistency of form used to disguise a melodic pratfall in any way improved upon the intended character or direction of the piece. Can’t even remember what I was playing. But you can be sure that the technique offered was a face saver, if not a life-saver, many a time after. Sometimes it’s just best to own up to my impressive capacity for fallibility right off, and enjoy a good horse-laugh at my own expense along with all of the other merrymakers in the room. Sometimes, though, I would rather take a page from the Bluffer’s Guides and adopt a meant-to-do-that nonchalance. There’s only so much I can take of being the unintentional class clown. Part of me dreams of Emma Peel sang-froid, a fantasy that however insanely unreachable is yet not easily quashed.

After all, it has served as the inspiration, time and time again, for all sorts of larger than life ideas, stories, poems, artworks and practical on-the-spot excuses, and who among us does not need those! Dogs, however voracious, can’t be expected to digest every available hunk of homework; traffic cannot account for the vagaries of my inspired life behind the wheel at every moment; and certainly the good taste and etiquette handbook, no matter how comprehensive, simply doesn’t have the capacity to cover my every gaffe and blunder in thought, word and dork-dyed deed. So thanking my lucky stars, and my long-ago mistress of pianistic peregrinations, I will continue on my hapless yet happy way, pretending to know what I’m doing in life while covering my blunders with bluster and the best imitation I can give of correctness. Whatever that is.

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What I MEANT to say was . . .

Best of the Very Worst, or How I Rose Above Personal Mediocrity to become a Self-Made Above-Average Character

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”]digital drawingThe ever-inspiring Nia, photojournalist of all things sweet in Istanbul and wherever her travels have taken her, has tagged me with the honorable task of reviewing my short (thus far only, I hope) history as a blogger and passing along the challenge for such introspection and resurrection to some fellow internet trapeze artists as well. As one who has always prided herself, if that’s not too extravagant and approach to it, on being comfortable with her place in the middle of the pack, so to speak, in the universe, it is a tingly and cheering surprise when anyone tells me I’m otherwise. I mean, I knowI’m special, wonderful, and adorable and all of that since people I love and respect tell me so in my real life, but I am also fully aware that the rest of the planet is absolutely brimming with equally special-wonderful-adorable creatures in that sense. I’m also well aware that nothing I have done, made, said or been has shaken the foundations of reality or made me rich or famous, nor is likely to do so–and I really am okay with that!

So to be singled out as worthy of mention in this my new endeavor is flattering, frightening and flummoxing all at the same time. But mostly it feels really nice! It is a fine affirmation that my ego, smiling broadly at me in the mirror, is not so far off-kilter that my average-and-ordinariness cannot be seen by others, too, as maybe something a little shinier and more compelling than they actually are–or perhaps even edging upward over the years and efforts somewhere a tiny bit closer to excellence. Complacency, no, never, I hope. But isn’t it nice to get that sore shoulder once in a while that comes from cheerily patting oneself on the back?

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Buckets of bouquets to us all!

I would like to offer the same supportive and enthusiastic back-pats to the following fellow toilers in the fields of blogdom:

Ted Griffith, who braves the blogosphere with wonderful photographic art despite frequent disclaimers of intimidation and inexperience apparently quite similar to my own;

Madeline of ah-lum-dahp-dah, daring adventurer and journalist (with great humor and compassion) of her experiences around the world at an age when I still thought it was incredibly gutsy to say Hi to a stranger at a boring reception;

Fellow unreasonable optimist Jared at Lexidelphia, poet and commentator on such useful things as mustache characteristics and the importance of being an impertinent little upstart when questions ought to be asked;

Milady Hannah-Elizabeth of The Last Classic, writing a remarkably insightful and thoughtful rumination on life with all of its ups and downs;

Beautiful Desi of The Valentine 4, whose ability to calm the stormy seas around her with wisdom and humor and passion are a great example to us weaker-willed souls;

Aaron Leaman, who like the rest of us hard-working arty types, starts with Nothing and makes Something–in his case, artful and thought-provoking photos, vids and texts.

Jack Campbell, Jr, of This Average Life, a guy that just happened to post today on the selfsame theme I had chosen for the day, with a unique twist. I think that qualifies as good taste in ordinariness!–or something like it . . .

My Fellow Bloggers: Should you choose to accept this mission, you will only need to revisit and link to 7 of your all but forgotten posts, linking to them, and then pass this mission/challenge on to 7 other bloggers . . . here are my own responses:

#1 Your Most Beautiful Post (in your opinion):   Another Kind of Safety (or, better yet I hope, something yet to come)

#2 Your Most Popular Post (per stat views):   The Supercooled Liquid that is Far More than Smoke and Mirrors 

#3 Your Most Controversial Post (per reality):   As American as Whaaaaaa . . . ???

#4 Your Most Helpful, or “How To” Post:   Happiness may be Ephemeral, but It’s Sure Worth the Effort

#5 Your Most Surprisingly Popular  Post:   I Hereby Crown Myself Mistress of the Mess-ups and Guru of Good Intentions

#6 Your Post That Didn’t Get the Attention It Merited:   Be Still and Listen, Thou Big Dope

#7 Your Magnum Opus (post you are most proud of):  I’m hoping like crazy that if there’s an individual post that’s “best” it is yet to come. What I’m really proud of is finally getting up the nerve and the gumption to actually join the blogosphere and persevere at it. And all of the rest of you that commit to this humbling and exhilarating and inspiriting task should be equally pleased to be in this weird and wonderful company!

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This little piggy cried, "Me! Me! Me!" all the way home . . .

Please pardon my wallowing in self-congratulation for a moment. Whee! Whee! Whee!