Monday, December 28, 2009

Father

My father's absence, perhaps, has affected me as acutely as the presence of some other fathers affects their children. Not in a good way.
Through the alcohol-burned hole he left in his wake crawled an assortment of characters who might not otherwise have gotten such passage. They were opportunists of a predatory nature, no doubt trying to satisfy some cravings of their own.
They are at fault, but it was at least partially my father's absence that made me vulnerable to such approaches. The passive-aggressive priest, the overly tactile teacher. I was receptive because, as I can see in retrospect, I was searching for a father figure. A cliche but nevertheless true. And they observed few boundaries.
Such vulnerability brings home the point that we live in a world in which the predators will prey and has shaped my perceptions. So, father leaves, teacher/priest step in and interaction indelibly influences kid's perception of human nature. In other words, the world is full of fuck-wads trying to satiate whatever it is that nourishes them.
Now, maybe they're just too stupid or lack the introspection necessary to recognize that what they were doing was inappropriate. When priest ignored me or took my friends on outings from which I was excluded, that hurt. And I didn't know why he was doing it. Was it because I quit the fucking altar boys? Sorry. Adults shouldn't be trying to satisfy some kind of emotional deficiency through relationships with children not their own. And no adult should be trying to mold a child into someone for their benefit, as opposed to the child's, except for rearing a productive member of society. Priest wanted to be a father, as evidenced by his subsequent desistance from the priesthood. He got married, sired progeny and then divorced. Unless he had an epiphany, surely he has fucked up his biological children.
Teacher should not be taking grammar-school kids to movies and on trips to Washington and Gettysburg. Those were educational, in ways some people might not suspect. These men sought validation from children, but I think the impact was less corrosive on the children who had fathers, probably because the perpetrators knew the fathers wouldn't tolerate certain behavior. We're supposed to believe that teachers and priests have our best interests at heart. I think that myth has been discredited.
Beyond them, there were my mother's boyfriends. Had she still been married, she may not have had boyfriends or, presumably, wouldn't have brought them around. Tony is the first one I remember. He hit me more than once. One time was on the butt, I think, but another time, while I was in the back seat of the car (not wearing a seat belt and leaning over the bench seat), he hit me in the face and caught me in the eye. I wish I could hit him now, but he's old or dead, so I suspect it wouldn't be especially gratifying .
I might be reinventing history with the chronological order, but I think Joe was next. And I pale in comparison to others when it comes to historical reinvention. Joe was a nice enough guy. Union man. Auto union. Helped me out when I had to prepare for a school debate in which I would be advocating for Jimmy Carter to be elected. Joe's proclamation that Mr. Carter was "for labor" is the one nugget I remember from that conversation. He also showed me how to test the life left in an automotive battery.
Russ was in there somewhere. Nice guy, also. Played the piano. Sent Christmas cards even when he didn't come around anymore. Then there was Dave. A steelworker. Told me if I went to the exclusive high school to which I was accepted, I'd be able to "write my own ticket." Not quite true. He told my mother they were going to get married, and she said they weren't. They didn't.
I liked George. Auto-insurance guy. We shared fishing as a common interest. He bought me a fishing book that I still have. He wrote a nice note inside. Once we went fishing down the shore, and we were driving on the beach, and my mother asked him why insurance was so expensive. "Because there are 26,000 niggers riding around without insurance," was his reply, meaning that those who paid the car insurance essentially subsidized those who didn't. At least I think that's what he meant.
She went out with Dr. Fasullo (don't know if I'm spelling that right) a few times. He pursued her, but she demurred. Probably had money--he was a medical doctor. Wasn't horrid-looking. Spoke with what I guess was an Italian accent. He was widowed or divorced. I don't know if this is apocryphal, but he apparently was driving home one night and saw the flashing lights from a police car or ambulance stopped at the scene of an accident. He stopped and went over to help out, and the victim was his own son, who had been struck by a car while riding his bicycle. The kid was 13, I think, and he either died on the spot or later as a result of his injuries. Probably nothing worse than that.
Soc was last, as far as I know. He used to own a small plane to which he still had access, and he and I flew. He told me how to bank the plane out over the ocean, and I stepped on the left petal as if it were a clutch, trying to depress it abruptly. If you ever find yourself trying to turn a plane around, don't do that. He righted the ship, so to speak, or we would have had to use that plane as a ship when we landed in the fucking ocean. My mother told me Soc's son moved him down to Florida last year, took his money, put him in a room and didn't allow him to have any contact with the outside world. Then Soc died, she said. Don't know if any of it is true.
Except for Tony, I think, they all had blue balls unless they were having sex with someone else. My mother told me she would end it with Soc if he tried to "put the moves" on her.
This rotating cast of characters didn't exactly foster stability or quell my insecurity. Father out, boyfriends in.
I got to know these guys relatively superficially. I remember being disappointed having nobody with whom to attend some kind of school-related father-son activity. He took me to a movie, I think, to compensate. It was one of the few things we ever did together. He told me in the car that he would always be my father, no matter what happened. I was 6 then, and it may have been the last time I saw him. He died when I was 12.
My father's absence also caused some role confusion; my mother doing what a father should have been; my oldest brother assuming some of those responsibilities and then relinquishing them, leaving me to wonder what I had done to cause his pullback; eventually my workload around the home mirrored that of a husband. These experiences helped build the foundation upon which my abandonment fears rested.
Another aspect of the turn of events is that I didn't really know my father. What I do know about him has gone through other people's filters. Here is what seems indisputable: He was an alcoholic who drank himself to death at age 49; he left his wife and five children. These actions raise some questions. How could he have skipped out on the kids? Perhaps it was the alcoholism that made him relinquish all responsibility for us. I've had doctors tell me that alcoholism is a disease, and here's how the dictionary defines disease: a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.
This makes me wonder what the incorrectly functioning parts are that incubate alcoholism. I agree that there's a genetic predisposition to drink more (and more) after having taken the first drink. But is there a malfunction that makes a person take that first drink? Maybe I'm missing the point; perhaps alcoholism is a latent disease that you manage by abstaining.
So, for the sake of argument, I'll say it's a disease, and my father had it, and so do at least some of his kids. Can I then fault him for abandoning his children, considering he had a disease? There seem to be few other diseases that prompt that kind of behavior. Cancer is a disease, the manifestation of which appears to be vastly different from alcoholism. But my father's disease was particularly severe, so much so that he's dead as a result. My mother probably refused to use birth control, because of the Catholic thing, and he was probably like, "What the fuck? Five kids? Get me a drink."
Anyway, a pivotal difference between alcohol and, say, cancer is that cancer patients appear to have less control over their convalescence. With alcohol, if you stop drinking, you can reverse the effects of the disease unless you've gone so far overboard that it's too late. The alcoholism helps to explain his departure but doesn't excuse it. Did he not love his kids? Was the alcoholism too overwhelming? I can't fathom leaving your kids no matter what other issues there are. But everybody is different, and I don't have the answers. I won't get them, since he's gone. Maybe if he had been able to provide some of the answers personally, I wouldn't have found myself fruitlessly groping. I wouldn't have been as vulnerable. My mother discouraged me from going to his funeral, but she later denied having done so. When I was able, I tracked down his grave. Standing there among the markers, and his being modest, chilled by the wind, was part of the process through which I was seeking answers,. They didn't come, and the confusion didn't surrender its grip.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Night at the Nursing Home

Scene: the nursing home into which I walked two nights ago. Three people seated in the hallway in wheelchairs, Claire (my mother), Marge and unknown man.

Claire: Did you talk to Michael?
Me: My brother?
Claire: Yeah.
Me: No.
Claire: You didn't? He was just here. I told him to get me out of here. He was talking to someone right over there and just looked over his shoulder and smiled and left (she gives a dismissive shrug).
Me: Hmm (not mentioning that he works at night).
Claire: You have a coat for me in your car.
Me: No.
Claire: You don't? I just want to inquire about my clothes.
Me: They're probably in your room, at the end of the hall. I'm sure Patty (my sister) brought them here from St. Lawrence (the rehab facility).
Claire: I don't know if that room is open.
Me: Where'd you get the clothes you have on?
Claire: I wore them from home. Yesterday.
Marge: You don't have a coat. That's the first thing I look at before I leave the house. If you're going out tonight, you need a coat.
Claire: It's an old sweatshirt.
Marge: I don't have anywhere to go tonight.
Claire: You could go to jail.
Marge: I don't know about that. My brother used to be in charge of the police. In Trenton. Trenton, New Jersey. You know the circle?
Claire: White Horse (a traffic circle, not in Trenton)?
Marge: Yeah. I used to live by there. My daughter don't live there anymore. She's married and lives with the husband. That's what ladies do. At least the ladies I know.
(Claire looks sideways at me and laughs, as if she and I are the ones in on the joke and everything she has said so far has made perfect sense. If I recall correctly, it's like Danny DeVito laughing at his fellow institutionalized patients in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Claire: We were talking about cats, and a big one walked right through here and went right up there.
Me: Right there (in the hallway by the nurses' station)?
Claire: Yeah. I think I'm the only one who saw it.
(Elderly man sucks his upper lip into his mouth again, making a Rice Krispies sort of sound.)
Nurse to elderly man: You want to go to bed?
Elderly man: Uh-huh (it's 7:25. Someone wheels him down the hall, and I reposition myself away from the break-room door, next to Marge, so as not to be in the nurses' way).
Marge: I'm trying to see in there (bathroom door behind me). You've been standing in front of me for fifteen minutes.
Me: I'm not in front of you. I'm on the side of you.
Marge: Yeah, I was over there.
Claire: A girl walked out of there yesterday (the bathroom), took her jeans off, rolled them up and threw them against the wall.
Marge: Right there?
Claire: Right between the two doors.
Marge: You might have seen that. I didn't.
Claire (to me): Is my suitcase in your car?
Me: No.
Claire: No? I thought Patty said it was.
Me: I'm sure Patty put it in your room. I brought it up to St. Lawrence.
Claire: So what'd Michael have to say?
Me: I didn't talk to him.
Claire: You didn't? He was just here. Where'd you park.
Me: In the parking lot.
Claire: Yeah? Geez....
Marge: If you're gonna stay, you need somebody to call because you don't know the people. That's my problem. I don't know the people. I used to. Until I turned 80. I know the dogs (she barks twice, and Claire gives me the sideways-laughing look again. Nurse calls housekeeping to clean up spilled milk.).
Janitor: You have a milk spill?
Claire: There was a big blob of it right there (makes a circle about the size of a baseball with her fingers).
Janitor: Where is it?
Nurse: In there (the break room).
Claire: No, it wasn't there, it was in the chapel.
Me: Ma, I'm going.
Claire: Let's go. (She starts to get up out of the wheelchair.)
Me: No, you're staying. See ya later.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Mother

My mother had a stroke about three weeks ago, and the turn of events has driven home the notion that we come full circle, with the role reversal rendering kids as caregivers and the infirm parent regressing into the lack of self-sufficiency that is one of the hallmarks of childhood.
Along with this descent into dependency comes the inevitability of emotions surfacing that I had segregated and mostly controlled for much of my adult life. My first reaction was decidedly ambivalent but weighted toward pity. To see someone who was previously a robust 81 years old in such decrepit condition elicited that pity. Tempering the pity has been a long-held survival mechanism that I installed to protect myself from my mother's manipulations.
The initial physical toll on her has receded somewhat, but cognitive impairment has remained. When I sit in the rehabilitation facility and watch her attempt to sort out her thoughts, it's disturbingly similar to watching a child attempt to grasp complexities. I've never felt understood by my mother or that she ever considered my feelings to be as remotely as important as her own, but now she literally doesn't understand me. When I walked in her room a few days ago, she asked me if she heard me discussing Gus a few hours earlier. No, I hadn't been there a few hours earlier, let alone discussing my late Labrador.
She has to relearn how to eat, and some of her visitors are inclined to feed her to expedite matters. I can't bear interaction of that nature with her. In feeding a child, you're providing nourishment for someone who has yet to arrive at his full potential; feeding my mother is the equivalent of sustaining a life that is far down the other side of the mountain, but also a life that long ago surrendered its innocence and involved exacting a particular toll from me.
This is the distillation of a life. The innocence of children gives them extraordinary license. The machinations of adults do not.
When I consider her self-serving undertakings, especially as viewed through the prism of the parent I have become, I try to control the flood of emotions. First, I suppress the initial burst of anger, hurt and shame, and allow my rational self an opportunity to reason. She behaved like she did because that's what she knew. She turned around and repeated the cycle instilled in her by her own upbringing. She was just incapable, perhaps, of sorting through her experiences and discarding those that were detrimental. I don't think she had the capacity to acknowledge that there was anything amiss about her upbringing. Her life was idyllic, and her parents were deities. Somewhere along the line, she shut out the realities of fallibility. Her preoccupation with her parents was obsessive, and she provided her own father with end-of-life care that included enemas. So, she was a victim of her own upbringing.
Sometimes the rational self gives way to the angry self. How could she have done this to her own child? How could she have saddled me with guilt that has taken a lifetime over which to gain a measure of control? Why did she never reach a point where her kids' emotional needs were more important than her own? She put an inexcusable amount of pressure on an 8-year-old when she told me that she would kill herself if I turned out like my brothers, for I believed her. She charged me with being responsible for her survival. She denied me a childhood, because she wanted me to be the husband she lacked, without the physical intimacy.
Then there's the undeniable familial bond tugging me in the other direction. This is my mother. She read to me before school when I was a child. She sang to me. I used to call down the hallway, telling her how much I loved her when she put me to bed. More than all the stars. She bought me a dog when I graduated from eighth grade.
But that dog may have been to assuage her own guilt. To make up for the dog she took from me and dropped off in a neighborhood when I was younger than that. That was her solution to my not caring for the dog in the manner she would have preferred. Denying issues, pushing them aside, served her well.
She used to go out at night or on vacation and leave me in the care of my siblings, just kids themselves with too much responsibility thrust upon them. I recall, as a boy of about 9, phoning her preferred social establishment at 1 a.m. trying to track her down. I was in tears, terrified. I was in fear of losing my one remaining parent, and the pit in my stomach threatened to swallow me. I cried when she went on vacation, again out of fear that she wouldn't return, as she sometimes threatened. I hadn't yet gotten to the point at which I didn't want her to return.
She wanted me to go to a particular high school, and when I balked, she shunned me. Same thing with college. She made it appear as if my worth was a direct result of the school with which I was associated. But her sense of worth was at issue. She was unapproachable when I wanted to discuss my reservations.
She was a child of the Depression and seemed to take pride in retaining the habits instilled decades earlier. Money was an overriding factor. I attended school with holes in my shoes. I bore the ridicule of coaches for having worn-down spikes. We could have afforded better, if she hadn't been hell-bent on clinging to that house like a drowning person to a life preserver. Study the practical disciplines. Go after the job with the benefits. Never did she encourage me to follow my heart.
She turned her head the other way. I needed shelter from the violence and drugs, but she allowed my exposure to them. So I smoked the pot and drank the booze. Why wouldn't a sixth-grader? I was collateral damage in her war to satisfy her own needs.
She has enabled my 50-year-old, alcoholic brother to continue that way of life, without having to hold down a job or otherwise pursue assistance. That has mattered more to her than trying to improve relations with her other three sons. As long as she was satisfied. She would still put me in situations that would be damaging if I allowed. That's a source of enormous frustration, that my mother still doesn't care enough, or isn't capable enough, not to put me at risk.
Her mortality, like my own, always seemed so distant, often too distant. I knew intellectually that she was elderly, but there appeared to be little difference from what I had always known. I tried to explain some of this to her while her faculties were more intact, but I failed to break through. She's gone now, and I don't know if she's coming back, but I accepted years ago that an epiphany would never be forthcoming. Maybe it all boils down to there having been too much risk for her to put anyone else's interests above her own, even her children's.

Monday, December 7, 2009

The Last Resort

I'm going away to the last resort in a week or two real soon....
--John Prine
I would have killed myself, but it made no sense, committing suicide in self-defense....
--Butch Hancock

When the medication doesn't work and the therapy doesn't work and desperation is at hand, don't fret, you still have options. Foremost among these is suicide. Granted, it's extreme, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Sometimes life is a task, and I look forward to its conclusion. No more of the trials and tribulations. Unless, of course, purgatory is real. Then I guess it will just be more of the same, and who needs that? Anticipating the relief that will accompany my earthly demise is akin to looking forward to summer vacation at the end of the school year, just on a grander scale. But killing yourself is a mortal sin, so I guess you don't get into heaven. Do people who accidentally overdose get into heaven, though? What about alcoholics who kill themselves slowly over a number of years? People who commit suicide are merely attempting to mitigate their pain, just like substance abusers. If drug addicts and alcoholics get into heaven, so too should people who commit suicide. And are there drugs in heaven? Because heavenly detox could be in store for the substance abusers.
Just as alcoholism is characterized by medical professionals as a disease, a predisposition toward suicide appears to have been hard-wired in me, accompanying the depression as far back as I can remember. I threatened to jump out the window when I was four years old. I would think that might have set off alarm bells, but apparently not. So, I've been thinking about suicide longer and more consistently than anything else.
I've come close but also felt constrained by the finality. I have envisioned the cold steel blade of a knife liberating blood from my veins and bathing in its warmth. I never thought of a half-measure, the suicide attempt that's really a cry for help. Because if you really want to kill yourself, how can you screw that up? I've held a gun to my head that I didn't think was loaded. I didn't squeeze the trigger, and it turned out to be loaded. What made me not squeeze the trigger? I've wished many times since that I had.
I've always considered that it might be selfish, also. What would the people left behind think in its wake? Although I also have thought that if the people who cared for me knew the pain, they would endorse the decision.
The suicide-prevention brigade, for all its good intentions, could be off the mark. Don't kill yourself. It's not that bad. Things will get better. There's help. You're not alone. How do they know things will get better? Maybe they'll get worse. And you most definitely are alone. Anyone seriously contemplating suicide has to feel that the suicidal pros outweigh the cons. Probably in some cases, preventing a suicide is noble. Maybe a person has had a considerable moment of weakness and isn't really a suicide devotee.
It is reasonably popular, though. In 2006, suicide was the eleventh-leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 33,300 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That year, suicide was the third-leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24. There are even statistics regarding the suicide rate for children 10-14 years old. Either these kids have incredible insight into what the world holds in store, or they're misguided. In these cases, intervention should be a duty. Children this young are too inexperienced/uninformed/stupid to recognize that perhaps there are alternatives. The same is likely true of some adults, it's just that there are other adults who have come to reasoned conclusions that suicide is a viable option. And I know that there are people who will say that that kind of reasoning is warped, but what do they know?
According to the Web site suicide.org, more than a million people annually die by their own hands. Cancer deaths globally were about eight million in 2007, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
I knew someone who killed himself within the past few years. Left behind two little boys. And I thought that was incredibly selfish. And when I see those boys, I think of the ramifications for them. His legacy is anguish for them because he was incapable of enduring his own anguish. He passed the buck to two children.
I used to have so much more to say about the subject, but suicide no longer offers the solace it once did. Sometimes I find it disconcerting that I no longer have the comfort of suicide as a fallback option, like a safety school. Instead, it's just wearying and doesn't arouse the same passion it once did. And I know two kids who wouldn't understand.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Electric Slide

When the antidepressants haven't worked yet, and you haven't killed yourself yet, the options start to narrow. I mean, what's a guy to do when he has crossed the border into breakdown territory, when a wife's departure is the straw that broke the camel's back, when the cumulative weight of a lifetime has become more than he can bear? Electroconvulsive therapy, of course. ECT. The measure that some consider draconian. The undoing of Randle Patrick McMurphy.
It really is a measure of last resort because, well, it's pretty fucking inconvenient. Expensive, too. So I guess I should be thankful that I was able to afford it. It also fucks up your memory, so my reconstruction is necessarily somewhat patchy, but it's mine, and at no time have I ever felt as alone as when the wires were attached to my head and the anesthesia was injected. Counting down from 100, I considered that those might be my last utterances, and I could see them informing my mother, "We're sorry, but his last words were '100, 99, 98, 97...."
Now, if I remember correctly, there were seven treatments over two weeks. I remember the gurney, and the institutionally white walls. I had an invasive physical exam. I was treated like a child. I was accused of being a drug user because of my perforated septum. I was more exposed and vulnerable than at any other time, a denuded, lightning-struck tree buffeted by the elements and whose roots held only a tenuous grip on the ground. I stood outside and smoked, in the middle of March. The ides of march, when spring hadn't arrived and winter hadn't departed. A brackish season of windy transition that left me feeling even more desolate and bereft of any justification for existing. The translucent and twisting cigarette smoke floated ethereally until dispersed by the chilly breeze.
When one has to resort to being strapped down, anesthetized and electrified, the bright side of life, a locale I never inhabited, becomes that much more dim. It might be lonely at the top, but it's pretty lonely at the bottom, also.
I attended group-therapy sessions that seemed to be a way for them to soak me for more money, though perhaps I'm being too cynical. Mostly I sat with drug addicts. I played the piano and played ping-pong. I received visitors and cried. I looked at my comatose roommate, also in for some ECT, and thought, 'Well, I guess I'm not as bad off as that motherfucker.' I drank the institutional fruit drink and ate the institutional food and conversed with an elderly lady who was in for her maintenance ECT. Every five years. She highly recommended it. I read a book and later had to read it again, because I remembered nary a detail.
And I wrestled with the aftermath. Someone showed up at the hospital whom I didn't recognize, even though I had known him for years. Flashes of recollection peeked out from behind the shadows on my brain. I would think I knew someone at the 7-11 and then doubt that I did. But I thought that they knew me, that they saw through me for who I was. I needed about a year for my memory to recover. A sharp memory is both a blessing and a curse, but I was accustomed to retaining information easily.
ECT, nevertheless, perhaps saved my life, a stopgap measure that helped to provide a bridge to a more effective treatment regimen.
I swore I wouldn't do it again and, to date, I haven't. The trauma leaves a lasting impression, even 15 years later, and the medication has been enough to stave off the most imposing demons. They lurk, though, in pursuit of a crack through which to slip, reassuring me that there's no escape from my own charged brain.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Therapy

There exists what some people consider an alternative to antidepressants, and what other people would call an adjunct. I fall into the adjunct camp, because cognitive therapy alone didn't cut it, with any of the multiple therapists. I could have spent much less, but more productive, time in therapy had medication existed when I first started.
That was in high school. The school I attended had a psychiatrist from an Ivy League school come once a week. Now, I recognize that there's a difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist, with the former primarily being concerned with the underlying physiology and drug dispensing and the latter with your thought process. The lines then, however, were more blurred then, since Prozac hadn't yet revolutionized treatment and made it easier on psychiatrists.
This guy had no empathy whatsoever. It was like I was speaking Greek. I was ready to jump off the library roof, and this guy was like, "Why would that bother you?" after I expressed a particular concern. If my thinking was in fact misguided, I thought that it should have been incumbent upon him to offer insight and perhaps remedial steps. No chance.
The next guy I saw was while I was in college. He was into diagrams.
Because you grew up without a father, your mother assumed this responsibility (circle overlapping circle). Because your mother had no husband, she turned to her sons to fulfill his responsibilities (more circles overlapping).
I felt like I was in math class. And understanding the situation didn't necessarily help with coping. Perhaps we would have gotten to that point, but my mother, who controlled the purse strings, called him up and told him I was behaving worse. To his credit, he wouldn't tell her anything, since he was treating me, not her, but she badgered me to such an extent that it was easier for me to stop going.
The next guy, whom I saw when I was out of college for a few years and in the working world, liked to talk a lot about himself. Not that I mind a therapist relating his own experiences to demonstrate similarities between those situations and my own, and also perhaps to offer potential coping mechanisms, but he ran on too long, and I was paying him. Toward the end of my time with this guy, I started to be more honest, since I hadn't really been candid with a therapist following the response I got to my candor from the guy in high school. It isn't easy to be honest when what you are conveying cast you (or so you think) in a negative light. Anyway, it was at this point that he told me that smart people sometimes don't do well in therapy because they can outsmart themselves. That is, they convince themselves, in a highly reasoned way, that A is the cause of B. But it might not be the case. So, to make any progress, you have to be honest and willing to accept that your perceptions might have been wrong all along. You probably wouldn't be in therapy in the first place if you didn't have a problem with those perceptions.
The next person, about five years later, became my enduring relationship. We were together about 10 years before she moved to a distant state. It took me about five years to decide I had the energy and could summon the candor to re-enter therapy. And sometimes I would go see her and tell her right off the bat that I didn't want to be there. There were, in fact, times that I didn't have the energy. Maybe that was my way of pushing her away. I had decided that I wanted a female perspective, but then I didn't want any perspective at all. But I persisted, and the medicine helped, and out of our honest exchanges arose a turning point. It was as simple as her telling me that she agreed with my assessment of a situation, when I had been so conditioned to think I was wrong. This was a woman telling me I was right. This was an entirely new situation. It may seem hard to believe that that was a turning point, but when you're conditioned from childhood to have no opinion other than your mother's opinion, it's only natural to fall into the same trap over and over. My mother didn't encourage independent thought. This therapist and I had our peaks and valleys. We tried EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which involves watching dots of light move across a panel. The eye movement is supposed to facilitate the release of bad thoughts, as in you're letting them go. We did it here and there but I suspect never gave it enough attention. We did make some significant progress, the most pivotal being the adjustment of my thought process so that I didn't translate everything as potentially catastrophic. Self-talk. I talk to myself too much, and it's a constant struggle to overcome myself, so to obtain a tool that would help me toward that end was invaluable. It was worth the 10 years, but we eventually broke up. We were getting stale, anyway, familiar with one another, comfortable, but not making any real progress.
She left me in the care of a colleague, who I like but don't see anymore. She was pleasant to talk to, supportive, but maybe not tough enough on me. She's the one who referred me to the holistic-medicine practitioner and some Buddhist-like schools of thought, though she didn't try to push an agenda. To their credit, neither of my latter two therapists were opposed to medication. The two earliest probably wouldn't have been, either, but the pharmaceuticals then just weren't what they are now. And I probably wasn't conveying forcefully enough to them the distressI felt, anyway. The middle psychotherapist, the one who talked too much about himself, didn't seem to have a problem with drugs.
When I think about it now, there were earlier therapists of sorts, as well. Priests, I guess, who were the people to whom people like my mother turned. Ok, so that was misguided. And there were friends and friends' parents, and I cringe to think about how I must have come across as groping for something to fill a void, even though I was. All in all, therapy has been a good thing. It takes time and persistence to find the right match, though. And it takes energy and commitment and a willingness to feel vulnerable. Not an easy recipe for success. And sometimes it all seems so pretentious. Why should it matter if I'm depressed? There's a lot worse stuff going on in the world. There are people who say you shoudn't take medicine because when you hurt, that's when you're really feeling and really living. If that's living, then I don't want it. In the end, I have to live in my own head, and I'd rather make it tolerable. To that end, therapy helps, but the drugs are good, too.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Parakeet

If you go to Google, at least today, and start typing in why won, the autofill function that gives you possible search terms in the dropdown window, as your first choice, offers why wont my parakeet eat my diarrhea. So, let's speculate as to why, at the risk of sounding like a less-than-top-10 list:

Because he's full after draining your boil.
He's too preoccupied with his own diarrhea.
The dog beat him to it.
E. coli.
He's just starting to feel better since the last time he ate your diarrhea.
He wouldn't dream of depriving you.
Because you don't eat diarrhea, you drink it.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Courtship

Finding the appropriate antidepressant is like a courtship, you know, playing the field before you settle on one that works, looking for your pharmaceutical soul mate. You flirt with one, it seems great at the beginning, your heart races when you see that little amber bottle, you get that thrill when pop off the lid, you drink in the shape, you taste it as it settles on your tongue, bitter and foreign at first and then bitter and familiar, and you swallow, visualizing the path that medication traverses before it settles and starts to disseminate throughout your system. It infiltrates your pores. A chemical caress. You feel a warm glow. You feel safe. You start to look at the world in a novel way. You start to understand how people can make small talk. You wonder if that's how you're meant to feel, even though you're different from everything you've ever thought you were. But maybe who you have been hasn't been who you have been meant to be. Then the honeymoon ends, and your dance partner turns out to be different from how you thought it was. Imperfections arise, cracks in the facade. But you stick with it. It's what you know. You dabble with others, lured by the promise of something new, but you return to it. You can't escape its orbit. It's imperfect but nevertheless a balm of sorts.
Some of these relationships are bad from the start, and they make you wonder how you ever came to be involved in them in the first place. What was I thinking? You notice, but ignore, troublesome signs right from the beginning. You give it time. You persist even after you've overcome the illusion that it will work out. But eventually you come to your senses and return to the familiar, sometimes begrudgingly.
Other times, when the routine grows tired, you invite another pill to join in. A threesome, if you will. Then you open the door to your other mistress, a bottle of a different type, to further spice up the interaction. No jealousy. No obligations the next day. Kick any one of the components out at will. Not so simple, though, really. They're all demanding in their own right, not to be abused or regarded casually. Alas, there's no easy solution, but the magic bullet could be lurking right around the corner.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Guilty

Is guilt the seed from which depression springs or the offshoot of depression itself?
I favor the latter.
That's not to say that nondepressives don't feel guilty. But the extent to which guilt affects them and the manner in which they process the guilt differ. Guilt can run rampant, even turning ostensible trivialities into gut-wrenching, sleep-obstructing, middle-of-the-night, tug-of-war opponents. Guilt takes hold in your stomach and gains rolling momentum like an avalanche, burying you in its path, smothering you, the pressure building in your head as you assume a fetal position in an attempt to strangle the pain like a constrictor as it constricts in kind. It's leprosy of the soul, eating from the inside out.
And the cycle can be vicious: Guilt induces a feeling of contrition, for example, even if unwarranted, precipitating yet more guilt, without resolution. The body seizes, like an engine bereft of lubrication.
Passive aggression is an attempt to induce guilt, and it's all some people apparently know. When the pattern is established with a child, as in a parent deliberately manipulating and making a child feel guilty, it becomes poisonous for the child and difficult to overcome. Poisonous in that it infiltrates the thought process at every turn and wields undue influence and taints decision making. Guilt courses through the body like venom circulating through the bloodstream, leaving paralysis in its wake. Guilt, a constant companion. Rational thoughts and prayer don't help to heal the wound, even for the blameless child.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Heal Thyself

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink. ~Mark Twain, Note-Book, 1935

There's another kind of antidepressant, one that you can get over the counter and use as part of a home-treatment program. It's called alcohol.
Like other ADs, this one has side effects, but they're typically more fleeting and often less severe. You can even mix this one with more traditional antidepressants and get a heightened effect. And it works quickly and is out of your system more rapidly than the other ADs.
Depending upon your drink of choice, this can be a relatively inexpensive route. Alas, I don't think insurance will handle any of the costs, so you probably can't just get by with a co-pay. It would be cool if you could: Budweiser would be generic, craft beers premium; single-barrel whiskey would be more expensive than Jack Daniel's. Insurance might have a place after all. Someone would have to come up with a formula for the appropriate co-pays, dosages, etc. It would be complicated, but I think it could be done.
Some people would even make their own at home, as evidenced by the popularity of home-brewing. And I hear tell of distilleries in Appalachia, so it seems as if people have been self-medicating for a while. I wouldn't know the first fucking thing about developing a serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor at home. Grab some hops, yeast and barley, though, and you could be on your way.
Like any other kind of medication, alcohol holds abuse potential. My father medicated himself right into the grave at age 49. I found it perversely interesting when my mother gave me a measuring glass (a jigger) that my father used to use. "Here, son, this is the the gun your father used to kill himself. Enjoy."
According to a recent study, antidepressant use in the U.S. doubled from 1996-2005.
The study found that 5.84 percent of U.S. residents aged 6 and over were using antidepressants in 1996, compared with 10.12 percent in 2005. That's an increase from 13.3 million people to 27 million people. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_87676.html
According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics for 2007, 61% of adults drank alcohol within the past year and 21% had five or more drinks on at least one day. According to a Census Bureau survey done from 2006-2008, the U.S. adult population (older than 18) was 227,431,128. So, 61% of that would be 138,732,988 people using alcohol. That's clearly more than 27 million. People consuming five or more drinks amounted to about 47.8 million, again more than people using more conventional antidepressants.
So let's say that those who don't binge have it all under control
and imbibe casually, don't encounter any problems, etc. That still leaves nearly 48 million consuming five or more drinks. College enrollment in 2006 was 20.5 million, the Census says. So if we factor out the college kids, we have about 28 million people who consumed five drinks or more on at least one occasion, about the same as people who use conventional ADs.
So, why so much alcohol use? Probably not because people feel great to begin with. If you already felt great, would you drink? This is to some extent conjecture, but I suspect the widespread abuse of alcohol points to a broader feeling of discontent.
Aside from being readily available, alcohol (especially in the circles in which I travel) has fewer stigmas attached to it that antidepressants. No lie, I've heard adult alcoholics say they wouldn't take antidepressants because they didn't want to be drug addicts.
In fact, we create community events that have drinking at their core. Weddings, birthdays, going to the game, holiday parties, funerals, just sitting around in bars.... It's a cultural phenomenon. We couldn't do the same with other antidepressants, since they often take weeks to work, but it could be kind of cool to have a smorgasbord of such pills to choose from. Start out with a Prozac, switch off to an Effexor, cap off the night with a Remeron, of course.
Alcohol has its charms, more so than the pills. Its insidious nature, though, for some people, is that feeling of never being sated. Conventional antidepressants don't carry the same allure (I've had two of these pills, let me pop a few more). Alcohol, on the other hand, can create a feeling in some people of never being enough. Generally, one drink must lead to eight. So that gets more expensive and can create a host of other issues, especially if you want to drive. At least you can drive with the pills. Alcohol also can be toxic to the liver, as evidenced by my father, so that's another disadvantage, compared with the pills. And, generally, alcohol can really make you feel like shit the next day. The ADs don't typically do that, above and beyond the way you normally feel on them. If you get used to that side-effect feeling, then you don't wake up expecting something different. But maybe that's what people are like who use alcohol all the time. There's a quote attributed to Frank Sinatra in which he said he felt sorry for people who didn't drink because the best they would feel all day was when they woke up. I guess drinking is, though, like other antidepressants--you should use it consistently instead of going on and coming off. So stick with it, drinkers, and, if you're not already, you'll be feeling A-O.K. in nothing flat.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Odyssey

In clinical studies, the most common side effects with a particular antidepressant (reported in at least 10% of patients and at least twice as often as with placebo) were constipation, dizziness, dry mouth, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, nervousness, sexual side effects, sleepiness, sweating, and weakness.
Well, if those don't make you feel better, what will?
The above-mentioned drug happens to be Effexor, or venlafaxine, an antidepressant that falls under the SNRI class, for serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. This class of medication succeeded the SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, like Prozac. Selective is probably misleading, since these medication work with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Which is why, in conjunction with some remedial activity, there is all the collateral damage. In other words, you might start to feel better after a month or a month and a half or two (please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery), but you sweat your ass off, can't ejaculate, become irritable, gain weight, have dry mouth and difficulty defecating, urinate frequently, can hardly urinate, can't sleep, sleep too much, and have outlandish dreams. Asthenia, also. That basically means you feel like you have the flu. Let the good times roll.
Then, if that particular medication doesn't work, you go through a "washout" period, during which you wait a few weeks for the drug to leave your system before you can start the next one (please allow another 6 to 8 weeks for delivery...if you haven't already killed yourself). Some instances aren't so extreme, and patients can start the new medicine without a prolonged washout period. You also have to build these drugs up gradually in your system, so it's not like taking an Advil and getting prompt relief.
Then there are things called myoclonic jerks, which aren't necessarily unpleasant, just sometimes inconvenient. Myoclonic jerks essentially are involuntary movements, sort of like twitches on steroids. Not too disruptive if you're alone in bed, but perhaps unseemly when seated next to a stranger on a plane. Imagine yourself dozing and then convulsing and the startled reactions.
Not all antidepressants are created equal. Wellbutrin, or bupropion, can be helpful in losing weight and can serve as an aphrodisiac of sorts. It can also simultaneously induce insomnia and anxiety. Apparently there are some people who separate anxiety from depression, but that seems to me to be parsing it too finely. For me, they go hand in hand, and anything that induces what it's supposed to alleviate seems counterproductive. Bupropion, marketed as Zyban, also is used as part of smoking-cessation plans.
Older antidepressants are another breed, but I don't consider them nearly as crude as modern-day drug-marketing powerhouses would. The idea was that Prozac would do all the good stuff that the other antidepressants did without the collateral effects, but I don't think the argument is valid. Tricyclics, like desipramine, have roughly the same side-effect profile as the modern-day happy pills, but they're supposed to be more toxic. So when you want to kill yourself, which some antidepressants in and of themselves inspire you to do, the desipramine is a handy way. That's a funny thing about some antidepressants: you start out wanting to kill yourself, the pills reinforce the notion that it's a capital idea and, since you have them, you can gobble some handfuls to accomplish the task.
MAO (monoamine oxidase) inhibtors, like Nardil and Parnate, are a class unto themselves. To say that they can inhibit urination and ejaculation is like saying Tom Cruise is a little annoying. You can literally stand at a urinal and try, to no avail, to go to the bathroom for 15 minutes. Ejaculation is out of the question, so take heed, sperm donors: avoid the MAOIs. Oh, and you can't have beer. Or Parmesan cheese. Or some kinds of chocolate. And you run the risk of your blood pressure rising to dangerously high levels. And they can make you feel spacey, but that's preferable to depressed. The real ballbuster, though, about these drugs is that they can help. They help you not want to kill yourself until you gain 30 pounds, can't piss and can't have an orgasm. Then you may as well kill yourself. So much for MAOIs.
Remeron, or mirtazapine, is another kind of medication. It's called a tetracyclic, as opposed to tricyclic. Whether a drug is a tetracyclic or a tricyclic apparently depends upon its chemical structure. That's about as much as I know about the technical aspects. What I do know, however, is that Remeron can make you sleep the sleep of the dead, and that's a good thing. Go to Starbucks, get whatever big, fancy, caffeinated bullshit drink you want right before bed, then take some Remeron and fall asleep. Alas, Remeron will make you fat. If you're already fat, it will make you fatter. And it's probably not a great idea to drink.
There are "natural" alternatives, such as St. John's wort, 5-HTP, SAM-e and some kind of extract I don't even recall the name of from a holistic practitioner. You'll try anything, attempting to be optimistic and to maintain an open mind.
So, your choices pretty much boil down to these. Of course, you can try all kinds of mix and match, such as Remeron with Effexor, Wellbutrin with whatever, lithium with something. In case the side effects from one medicine aren't substantial enough for you, try a cocktail. Don't fret, though, because the drug companies are striving to come up with something new and improved. They care about whether you're suffering from side effects, sonce you might stop taking the drug, and thjey would lose money. They really care about coming up with something new and better when patents are about to expire. They care so much that they repackage the existing drug, call it something different and tell you how much better it is. That's easier than actually having to come up with a novel approach.
They'll say that it costs a lot of money to develop new treatments and the regulatory requirements are onerous. There's some validity to that argument. On the other hand, when you have to satisfy shareholders, it's also important squeeze what you can out of what you've got.

It's a dirty business, and patients' options involve gravitating toward the lesser of many evils. Those are, however, better than no evils at all.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Wal-Mart & Assorted Items

So I go to Wal-Mart the other day, and there's a guy and a lady in the front of the line I'm in, and he's wearing a T-shirt with a naked lady on the back. Now, I'm all for seeing naked ladies, under the right circumstances, and generally not those who go to Wal-Mart. This guy is about 60 years old and has tattoos on his arms, and the shirt says Choppers Inc. or some bullshit like that. I know, he's Mr. Outlaw. And to prove what a badass he is, he has to wear the naked-lady shirt so that all the kids at Wal-Mart see it. Impressive. Granted, this isn't the upper-crust Wal-Mart, and most of the kids in there already have the decks stacked against them, judging from the parents, so I guess I have to relinquish my naivete and accept the fact that I can't have a pleasant trip to Wal-Mart.
The same trip. there were two woman in between these people and me in line, and they had a baby in the cart. Whatever snack the baby was munching on soon ended up all over the floor. So the one lady sweeps it aside with her foot. I guess that's something, but why didn't ths lady pick the stuff up?
It all just brings this to mind: http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

But it also begs the question: Why don't people do what they're supposed to do? Clean up your own fucking mess. Don't wear naked people on your shirt in front of the kids, or ever. In my case, don't go to Wal-Mart. Although it didn't matter so much that day, since, after Wal-Mart, I went to the convenience store. When I came out of the convenience store, a car was parked so fucking close to mine that I could hardly open the goddamned door. How far up your ass must your head be to not recognize that the person next to whom you are parking won't be able to open his fucking door? Or do you just not care? And the flag-football guys playing next to the soccer games for the 7- and 8-year-olds were profane, and they left their trash strewn all over the place. Profanity, like naked ladies, has its place, just not next to the little kids playing soccer.
Someone recently shared his consternation with me that a customer-service representative hadn't responded to his email after several days. "They say they will," he said. I asked him what planet he's been living on. Because you should always expect people not to do what they're supposed to do. It's like driving defensively. Then, your expectations will be fulfilled a majority of the time. You can be pleasantly surprised when someone actually does do the right thing, or the considerate thing, or the responsible thing. In the meantime, if you expect any different, you must have your head up your own ass.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Whee!

I recently had occasion to pay my first visit to the videogame retailer GameStop, and I felt like I could have been in a Saturday Night Live skit, except this was funny.
First there's the teen-something kid in the green gym shorts with white piping, looking like he walked out of the '70s. These are the shorts with no pockets, and he had on a T-shirt, sneakers and tube socks reaching to the knees, not to mention the glasses. The only thing missing was the terrycloth headband. As if he weren't already the stereotypical geek, his mother called him on his cellphone while he was standing in line. But he did have a decent set of tits.
He was in back of my son and me in line, while his female counterpart (almost, except her tits weren't as big) was in front of us. She was borderline porcine and probably couldn't have been more nondescript, but perhaps I'm selling her short. She's talking to the clerk with the underdeveloped beard, and he's holding forth with the zeal of a '60s radical, but not about peace, man, about videogames. In particular, he's pontificating about the merits, or lack thereof, of a certain game and how he would never play it on a certain platform again. She sort of has the star-struck look in her eyes, and they're apparently discussing some kind of magazine that serves as a playbook for a particular game. I may have this wrong, but it looked like this playbook cost $24, on top of the roughly $50 price tag for the most popular games.
Anyway, what was particularly staggering was the apparent lack of technological proficiency when it came to ringing somebody up, because I could have composed this post longhand while standing in line. There were two other ostensible employees in this place, and they moved with the grace of a sloth, and not toward one of the other registers. And when someone did wait on me, they had to type in the gift-card number, since the swiping device wasn't working. Peace, man.

The Sunny Side of the Street

People are stupid and/or deranged:

10/06/09

The big Fox News story of the day appears to be concerning a group of hostile raccoons in Florida who had the temerity to attack a grandmother. A grandmother! Seriously. Residents are on edge.

8/14/09

According to the Associated Press, police say a 61-year-old Savannah, Ga., woman chopped her 63-year-old boyfriend 20 times with an ax as he lay in bed. He's dead. A detective said the woman told police she was tired of being abused. Not sure who's at fault here, though 20 ax whacks might have been overkill.

8/11/09

A man died when he was impaled on a large shard of glass after throwing a woman through the window of a shop in the West End of London early Tuesday morning.

So says the Times of London. This guy banged the girl up against the Banana Republic window three times before cashing it in.


8/6/09

The Daily Mail reported this week that officials at a U.K. crematorium fined a woman whose baby died at 5 weeks from SIDS $173 because her grieving at the funeral ceremony pushed the service over the 30-minute time allotment. "The vicar had asked if I would like to spend a bit more time saying goodbye," the mother said. "I sat by the coffin for 10 minutes, telling my son how much we loved him and begging him not to be scared." By the way, the woman isn't the stupid one here.

Jennifer Frederich went to a Burger King on Sunday, Aug. 2, in Sunset Hills, Mo., according to news outlets. She had her 6-month-old daughter, Kaylin, in tow and also was accompanied by her own mother. Workers told them to leave because of the shoeless baby, citing a health-code violation. Burger King apologized the following Wednesday. It's a fucking baby, morons.

Monday, September 28, 2009

The Public Option

Insurance seems a lot like legalized extortion. The insurers take your money,ostensibly to protect you in the event of an accident, and use the money as they see fit in the meantime. And much of this insurance is required by law. Take auto insurance. In New Jersey, we have to carry liability coverage. If you finance a vehicle, you have to carry comprehensive coverage. And you have a deductible, also, so little things aren't even worth trying to get insurance to cover. Or, if you do have an accident and your insurance company has to pay something, they then drop you as a customer. So, the lawmakers require that you buy insurance, then the insurance company basically says "fuck you" when they have to hold up their end of the bargain. Give us your money so we can invest it and make money off of it, but don't expect much in return. Warren Buffett thinks it's the greatest thing going. He gets to play with the money that policyholders pay in premiums.
Now, you don't have to have health insurance, but you're really disadvantaged if you don't. And those jerk-offs don't want to pay for anything. And mental-health issues aren't even treated like problems. How did this get so out of hand in the first place? I mean, medical care is basically unaffordable if you don't have insurance to cover the outrageous cost of treatment. Why is it so expensive?
I've been trying to understand the Obama administration's health-care proposals. The public option, from what I can gather, is a government-run insurance plan. Some of these proposals require people to have insurance. Why is it all about the insurance? Why can't the government set up hospitals that are well-run and free? Pay the doctors. Take some of that war money and use it to furnish medicine and other health services. Why are people so scared of this? Good doctors, good hospitals and free. Or go to your own fucking doctor. Whatever. Or, if the public option is a government-run insurance plan, what is the problem with that? No doubt there are people who would say that I don't have a clue. But those people are probably the ones who have a vested interest in maintaining the system such as it is. I don't understand it all, but is there something wrong with the basic premise that we should take care of more people? I guess, if you're going to make less money, there's something wrong with it.
I know, the government has to pay for this. But it seems to come up with money for all manner of other programs. And, really, if we ever get out of Iraq, won't that make a lot of money available? Goldman fucking Sachs should have to set up a free hospital, since it got money from the government and now makes billions by creating very little of value. General Motors, if it ever gets its shit together, should have to establish a hospital. And when you go to these hospitals, you can actually get someone to pay attention. You could fucking die during the time it takes them to get your insurance straightened out if you go to a hospital now.
As part of these proposals, plastic surgery should be restricted to people who have disfiguration from an accident or a birth defect or something like that. If these doctors are talented enough to perform these operations, they shouldn't be for vanity's sake. They never seem to work out well, anyway. Look at Michael Jackson and Joan Rivers and all these other synthetic motherfuckers.
There would be people who abuse the system. Overdosing drug addicts, pregnant teens, etc. I don't have a solution for that. You take the good with the bad. But making an attempt to provide affordable health care for everybody seems like s step in the right direction. Sitting Bull, the Sioux Indian (yeah, yeah, Native American), was appalled by the destitute people he encountered when he visited American cities, according to the historian Robert Utley. Indians would never allow their own to be homeless and hungry, and both Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were known for their charity. These are people who stole and scalped as a way of life, yet Sitting Bull gave money to beggars on the streets of Washington.
The system is a monstrous morass, and drug companies and medical-equipment manufacturers help escalate costs. Drug makers, in particular, will talk about how much it costs them to develop medications. Bottom line, though, is that they're trying to make money, so they maneuver in an effort to prevent generic competition from reaching the market. Drug companies have paid off generics manufacturers to prevent the generic version from reaching the market. Better that they make more money than people have access to less expensive medication. It's depressing, but I hear there's a drug for that, if you can afford it.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

My Soul To Take

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

This is the prayer my mother and I used to say before I went to bed each night. The way I remember it, this prayer provided me with a measure of comfort, since I was terrified of going to bed. The notion that God was going to protect me alleviated at least some of the anxiety associated with, in part, my anticipation of night terrors. In later years, I would derive no such comfort from this prayer or any other, but I digress.
In retrospect, I question the wisdom of instilling in a child the idea that he or she might die before waking. I can imagine the scene if I were to teach this to my son:
First of all, he never lays himself down to sleep, but let's suppose that he does.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep

"Dad, what's a soul?"
"Well, a soul isn't anything material, but it's your spirit, the essence of who you are, or so some people believe."

If I should die before I wake

"Dad, could I die before I wake up?"
"No, no, no. Not really die, but you're just asking God to look after you while you're sleeping."
"Who's God again?"
"Well, like your soul, God isn't a physical being so much as a spiritual one. People believe he's everywhere, especially up in the sky, looking down upon us."
"Like Santa Claus?"
"Kind of, yes. Sees you when you're sleeping, knows when you're awake."
"I don't want anyone looking at me while I'm sleeping."
"I don't blame you"
"What's spiritual?"
"Beings that don't have bodies."
"But they're alive? Like ghosts?"
"Sort of, yes."
"I won't be able to sleep if there's a ghost watching over me."
"Good ghosts."
"I thought you didn't believe in ghosts."
"I don't. I just want you to go to sleep."

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

"If my soul isn't real, like a thing, how can he take it?"
"Good question."
"And why would he want to take it."
"So it can be with him. For safekeeping."
"Like a bank?"
"Yeah, the soul bank. Some people call it heaven."

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Self-Aggrandizement Project

So there's this show called The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo. I've only seen it once or twice, and, hey, I was on vacation, when the different latitudes skew the normal TV-watching compass.
Anyway, from what I can gather, this lady serves as an intermediary for actresses who want to buy dresses. She's like a real-estate broker, except she's a dress broker, because, well, I guess Demi Moore and Anne Hathaway can't buy dresses on their own.
And these apparently aren't run-of-the-mill dresses, since they cost more than my house. They must be worth it, though some of them are the ugliest fucking things I've ever seen, or at least no more appealing than what I've encountered at Wal-Mart. I must be unsophisticated, since I can't fathom how one would come to spend so much money on a dress and need a go-between to facilitate the acquisition.
Nevertheless, this is happening, and not only that, it's on TV. So I'm wondering what douche bag decided this should be on television. And why would anyone give a shit about this lady and the process through which the actresses apparently have to go to get a dress? And about the furniture this woman is considering buying for her house? The same people who wait outside the Academy Awards for hours to get a glimpse of the poseurs must be the ones who watch this show. Or maybe it's a reflection of there being too many channels.
There's this one episode in which there's a flood or a broken pipe or something, and the drama is over the top. This lady and her assistant and the token gay guy act like it's Armageddon. It's actually funny, and maybe that was the point all along, but somehow I don't think so.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

I Swear to God

Catholicism is based to some extent on the premise that a crucified individual came back to life. Said individual's mother conceived him without having intercourse.
Mormons believe that God and Jesus appeared before one Joseph Smith in New York in 1820. Then, "some years after his first vision," Joseph was led (not sure by whom or what) to a hill near Palmyra, New York, where he received an ancient record from an angel known as Moroni (slice off the "i" here). The record, which he apparently found under a rock, was engraved on metal plates and gave the history of a people who lived on the American continent during the time of Christ, including the appearance of the resurrected Christ to them. Joseph translated the record, and the resultant Book of Mormon was first published in New York in 1830.
This is all according to Mormon.org, which bills itself as "The Official Web site of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints."
The Web site also says: "Heavenly Father loves you and wants you to be happy today and forever. He has given commandments that, when followed, will benefit your life. These instructions from God help you live a happy life."
These include such dictates as pray (and pay) often, don't have sex with anyone except your spouse and the recommendation not to drink.
This doesn't exactly seem like a recipe for happiness. They want to make you pray, take your money and have you abstain from alcohol. I'd be much happier keeping my money, having sex and drinking. Although some people drink and then pay for sex, thus losing some money while still drinking and fornicating. I'd rather lose the money and get the drinking and the sex instead of losing the money and not having the other two.
And there are other religions, with other premises. Reasonable people would be skeptical in this day and age if they were told someone rose from the dead. I would run the risk of being dismissed were I to claim an angel appeared before me and then I found inscribed tablets under a rock telling me how to go about my life and proselytizing for others to do so. Somehow, though, these things got legs. There are plenty of Catholics and Mormons and Protestants and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Shintoists and Sikhs, etc.
To believe in a religion is to suspend disbelief. So, is religion a rationale for coping with this existence? There's gotta be something better in the afterlife. That's what we're shooting for, to get into heaven, Nirvana. This world is so shitty that it's inconceivable there isn't a more appealing one. But why is this world so shitty, when there's a benevolent God (who, by the way, you should be scared of and shouldn't cross)?
I'm confused. I mean, religion often has been the basis for war. And everybody's god is the best. How can that be? Well, I guess it can't, so let's fight it out to see who's the top god. You have the Crusades. The French Religious Wars. The Mideast. Northern Ireland. The Turks and the Armenians. Kashmir. Iraq. Sudan. Ethiopia, et al. Some gods, apparently, sanction genocide, decapitation, the severance of limbs and rape. Now what kind of god is that? And if it's not true, the where is God when this stuff is happening. And who's protecting the children? Some people who advocate war adamantly oppose abortion because, they say, it's taking a human life. Doesn't seem to be any gray area there. Such clearly delineated morality is perhaps disingenuous, or, if not, perplexing. How can they be so sure that wartime killing is just while abortion is not, under any circumstances? Some killing is all right, as long as its suits the world as viewed through their prism. These people support cannibalism, for Chrissake, with all that eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood.
Well, for Catholics, God granted free will. With that license, we apparently can steal, cheat and kill. No, because the Commandments say not to. Well who is enforcing these Commandments? It doesn't appear to be God. And it seems like a disproportionate number of priests are molesting little boys. Hmm, that's strange. Why wouldn't someone want to be a priest? It's perfectly natural to embrace chastity and lecture your congregation about how they should conduct their lives. And you do this under the authority of someone who rose from the dead, turned water into wine, helped part the Red Sea, appeared as a burning bush, brought on the locusts, blah, blah, blah. Naturally, a priest is eminently qualified to serve as a marriage counselor.
But these people have a few escape hatches: God has a plan; He has called the little girl who was sodomized and killed because he needs a new angel; the Lord works in mysterious ways; ya gotta have faith, with apologies to George Michael, who, in all likelihood would either be scorned by the Catholic Church of embraced as a priest.
Faith is the biggie. We know this stuff because, well, it says so in the Bible and we have faith. We don't have to prove anything, 'cause we have faith. You can't win an argument when faith is on the other side, so don't have faith that you can. People have so much faith that they come in droves to see the image of the Virgin Mary in a piece of French toast.
At least Catholics aren't hypocritical. There are the aforementioned priests, of course. Then people like the devout co-worker looking at Sports Illustrated swimsuit models on the Web during the workday. Or my mother, who sorted through coupons during sermons at mass when I was growing up. These congregants get to pick and choose, even though the Church says you can't be a selective pilgrim. For them, going to church is like an insurance policy against, well, hell, or purgatory, where you have to try to prove yourself worthy all over again. Catholicism, like other religions, is a denomination of superiority. Therein lies the problem: Those who ostensibly are tolerant are anything but. And where else would somebody like these priests, these pedantic blatherers, have a forum like they do on the Sunday pulpit.
Suffering is another thing. Apparently, we're meant to suffer on this Earth so that we can assure eternal life. If that's the case, then plenty of people must be in line for their version of eternal reward.
But take comfort in the platitudes: My boss is a Jewish carpenter (there must be some Jewish carpenters, because they build shit in Israel, after it's blown up by the Palestinians or Hezbollah, but I have yet to meet one). And the stupid fucking Jesus fish sported on automobiles. And the "JC" bumper sticker I saw on a vehicle this very morning. No ambiguity, it said "Jesus Christ" right under the "JC." It ain't the Yankees or the Jets, but, hey, everyone has their own thing, and if you're into JC, why not shout it out to the masses?
Now, the church as a community gathering ground isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it looks nice at Easter and Christmas. There was something moving about being in church on Christmas Eve, the lights, the chill, maybe snow, Santa coming around on the fire engine and the anticipation of all those presents. That, after all, is what Christmas is about. And the Passion Play at Easter was entertaining, though it required an inordinate amount of standing, which, all things considered, is preferable to being nailed to a cross. But there also was a sinister subculture playing itself out. Mass offered the opportunity to criticize. The charitable people going to church to haul off on the other charitable people. It's like multitasking in church; you're fulfilling your obligation while not wasting the opportunity to cast aspersions on the rest of humanity. That's a much better use of time than actually doing something constructive, like teaching some poor shit to read or something.
I can also understand why people want to believe there's something more, a peaceful existence without the weight thrust upon us by daily living. Or the belief that we'll meet up with those who preceded us in shedding this mortal coil. Hell, I want to see my dogs. I also know and like and admire some exceptionally bright people who, without reservation, believe in God and go to church, and I have a hard time reconciling their intelligence with their lack of skepticism on matters religious. At what point do your beliefs collide with some else's to such an extent that you have to conclude they're not as intelligent as you once thought? Does one even have to get to that point? Or is it more reasonable to conclude that piety derives from some inexplicable region of the brain and that its manifestation and intelligence are not mutually exclusive?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Russia

I always knew whiskey had a virtue beyond the normal alcohol-related benefits, and the Russians have substantiated my suspicion, as reported by Reuters:

Russian soccer fans have been told to drink whiskey on their trip to Wales for next month's World Cup qualifier to ward off the H1N1 swine flu virus, the head of the country's supporter association (VOB) said Monday.

"We urge our fans to drink a lot of Welsh whiskey as a form of disinfection," VOB head Alexander Shprygin told Reuters.

"That should cure all symptoms of the disease."

Now, I have a predilection for American whiskey, so I'm hoping these properties aren't unique to Welsh whiskey, whatever the fuck that is.

In a similar vein, the Moscow Times earlier this year reported that passengers pleaded with the crew of an Aeroflot flight to intervene when the pilot appeared drunk during his preflight announcement. Then this:

An Aeroflot representative sought to assure them that "it's not such a big deal if the pilot is drunk."

"Really, all he has to do is press a button and the plane flies itself," the representative said. "The worst that could happen is he'll trip over something in the cockpit."

The airline later said there was something amiss but that the pilot wasn't drunk. Here's one passenger's take:

"I don't think there's anyone in Russia who doesn't know what a drunk person looks like," said Katya Kushner, who, along with her husband, was one of the first to react when the pilot made his announcement.

God bless 'em.

Mark Twain, after all, said this (from twainquotes.com):

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Overheard

Guy No. 1: "How do you like the new SmartLink card?"
Guy No. 2: "I love it."

A SmartLink card is a plastic, credit-card-size train ticket that users refill by inserting it into a machine and providing payment. So, this guy was saying he loves a train ticket. What the fuck?

However, on the scale of intolerability, he pales in comparison to this lady, as reported by the Associated Press:

SAN ANTONIO — A woman charged with murdering her 3 1/2-week-old son used a knife and two swords to dismember the child and ate parts of his body, including his brain, before stabbing herself in the torso and slicing her own throat, police said Monday.

Or this guy:

CHINO HILLS, Calif. — San Bernardino County authorities say a Chino Hills man apparently killed his 7-year-old daughter and himself.

The bodies of 50-year-old Carl Jacobson and his daughter, Katie, were found around 9:30 p.m. Saturday by the man's wife when she returned home after visiting other relatives.

People are funny; one guy loves a train ticket, and some lady decapitates her baby. Next thing you know, some white singer, who used to be black, will be mourned as a victim and feted with a
Staples Center gala.


Tuesday, July 21, 2009

They Can Have Their Cakes

Do people deliberately try to smell like urinal cakes, those porous-looking ostensible deodorizers found in men's bathrooms? I don't know if they're men or women, but if you ride public transportation enough, you're bound to encounter the aroma.
Women presumably wouldn't know what urinal cakes smell like, so they could catch a whiff of a similar fragrance, decide it's appealing and use it, even though it makes me inclined to piss. I don't know what would make men smell that way. Perhaps there's a black market for urinal cakes and people are concealing them in their pockets. If there is such a black market, I wonder if the hot-pink ones fetch a premium. I suppose there would be a pro rata system, since many of these urinal cakes would be used and partially eroded.
If people are deliberately making themselves smell this way, perhaps they should just do away with any pretense and wear them like medallions around their necks. It could start a trend and fortify urinal-cake makers.

Monday, July 20, 2009

North Jersey

North Jersey, as in New Jersey, not the Channel Islands, has a certain charm, as the apparent graveyard for aging tractor-trailers and repository for dumpsters, juxtaposed against green (at least in the summer) marshland. Graffiti is no small part of the aesthetic, a personal favorite being DETOX THE GHETTO, painted on an overpass's concrete abutment. Not to mention SAPIENS.
The color scheme is pleasing, ordinarily rust brown (the kind that results from actual oxidation) against the aforementioned greenery against a typically gray sky (which could be smokestack-related). And there's wildlife, or at least a mutt that sits outside of a warehouse door (rusted aluminum) and a forlorn pony who seems to have more or less adjusted to his ironbound sanctuary.
Occasionally the wetlands yield the concentric circles indicative of a rising fish. Kind of like life on Mars.
The vista can simultaneously yield ostensibly lush growth; airplanes; a cellphone tower; water; trucks; asphalt; billboards; unidentifiable, twisted, rusted-out heaps; power lines; barbed wires; railroad tracks; windowless buildings; pillars supporting invisible structures; and piles and piles and piles of concrete. This stretch of the so-called Northeast Corridor must be the concrete-slab capital of the world. Who is responsible for this shit?
No matter; with features so varied, only Yellowstone offers as much diversity.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Golf

Golf is my salvation. Hallelujah for all those jerk-offs out there playing that stupid game, because otherwise they might be clogging up the places where I like to fish.
And what's up with all these recreational golfers who ride in carts? Not only are you participating in something that can only loosely be defined as a sport, but you're not getting any fucking exercise. Get out and walk and carry your goddamned bag. At least those guys on TV walk, even if they do have someone else carry their clubs. And even if they do wear stupid-looking sweater vests. And the colors. And the patterns. And knickers.
Not like golfers are pretentious or anything.
At least golf courses are nice looking, and they sometimes forestall further sprawl. If only those pot-bellied fucks weren't out there spoiling the view.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Right-Hand Lane

Just a few thoughts about driving:
I know the cops don't give a shit, but slow the fuck down in residential areas.
I don't want to hear your fucking music.
Use your blinker, you douche bag, so that I don't have to read your mind and try to glean what you're doing.
Get off the phone, goddamnit. How many times do I have to say it? If i had your number, I'd call you to tell you to put the fucking phone down.
Go when the fucking light turns green,
I'm impressed, you have a Porsche. I'd be more impressed if you went when the light turned green...and got off the phone.
I'm stupefied when other drivers do something completely contrary to the rules of the road and then behave indignantly because I have the temerity to take issue with it.
If you're old, it's bad enough that you drive, but do you have to do it when you most get in the way of people who work and have limited opportunities to get shit done?
When you want to go five miles an hour under the speed limit, please get out of the left lane. That's the hammer-down lane. You copy? 10-4?
If you're going straight after the light turns green and you can do so from the left lane (there's nobody there waiting to turn left who would hold you up), why would you get in the right-hand lane and prevent me from going right on red? Because you're an inconsiderate jackass.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Bicycles

People who ride bicycles are assholes. On the asshole scale, they're only slightly less offensive than people who park right in front of the convenience-store door, where there are no parking spaces but an apparent entitlement exists granting them dispensation to occupy that real estate and inconvenience the people who park in designated spots.
In a similar vein, bicyclists evidently believe that they're entitled to the paths in the woods where I run. Come to think of it, they also appear to think that they are entitled to ride out in the middle of the fucking road. Either that or they think spandex is some kind of armor plating that will shield them from harm. Because they apparently feel entitled to wear such clothing, too, and is there any reason to other than it affords them protection and the opportunity to be an asshole? Especially in their yellow Lance Armstrong jerseys.
Now, my son rides a bike, and he's not an asshole. But, then again, we've taught him to be mannered and we haven't instilled a sense of entitlement into him because he can ride a bike. So he's like the exception that proves the rule, whatever that means. And he better not ever park his bike in front of the convenience-store door, where, obviously, he would have to watch out for the jerk-offs parking their cars there already.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Gitmo

I have a solution for the Guantanamo problem that only the bloodiest of hearts would find unpalatable. President Obama, are you listening?
I propose that we allow the prisoners to build rafts, a la would-be Cuban refugees, and have them launch those rafts into the Atlantic Ocean. The Army could even furnish them with materials to construct their makeshift vessels. There should probably be a pecking order to determine who gets to choose raft mates, and to determine where each detainee ranks, they could participate in a spelling bee, which would be educational and entertaining:

Moderator: The word is "infidel."
Detainee: Could I please have the etymology? Could you use that in a sentence?

Which is just a stalling tactic, of course, since they know damn well how to use infidel in a sentence. The spelling bee could be broadcast on Fox.
Speaking of which, the whole thing could be a reality show, from the start of raft construction to their journey (a few shark attacks wouldn't hurt ratings) to their arrival on the Florida shores, when it would get really interesting. For I also propose that those who reach Miami then be transferred to Ground Zero. The construction crews at Ground Zero could affix prison-style bars over the top of the pit where the twin towers stood, and the surviving detainees could take up residence in the pit itself. This holds myriad opportunities.
Visitors to the site would have the chance to purchase ball bearings from machines, like the ones that dispense gumballs at supermarkets, to throw at the detainees. The catch, however, is that they could throw them back. Fair is fair. The detainees also would have protection behind which they could seek refuge, like on American Gladiators. Along with that gladiator theme, I have another possible diversion, though some people might find it in poor taste: that we occasionally unleash German shepherds in the pit to interact with the two-legged inhabitants.
So this is just a winner. The purchase of the raft materials and ball bearings provides an economic boost, not to mention the tourist influx to New York. And the reality show offers entertainment and generates advertising revenue. Aside from which, it's clearly a politically palatable solution that likely would garner bipartisan support.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Canada Geese

New York recently said it would euthanize 2,000 Canada geese that frequent the vicinity of Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. The decision comes in the wake of U.S. Airways Flight 1549's January landing on the Hudson River. Federal wildlife officials also are in the process of exterminating potentially thousands of birds in New Jersey. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Carol Bannerman told the Associated Press that a single bird excretes about a half-pound of feces daily, rendering some public parks unusable. N.J. has 80,000 resident Canada geese, about twice the density wildlife officials consider manageable, the AP reported.
Hallefuckinglujah.
I was going to suggest, at the very least, that they be deported. Back to Canada. A few years ago, some hockey-stick-wielding local kids annihilated about a half-dozen Canada geese. I wonder if anyone appreciated the poetic beauty.
Geese defecate indiscriminately. They foul lakes, soil biking/jogging/rollerblading/walking-the-baby-in-a-stroller paths and bury soccer fields under layers of excrement. Or, to put it more eloquently, they're just dirty fuckers. And I've met a number of dogs, including my own, who consider goose shit a delicacy.
And it they start bringing avian flu around, well, better if we already have begun to thin the ranks. Because then it won't be some Asian farmer living in close proximity to chickens, but it could be you at the park. Maybe Jeff Daniels can lead them away in a fucking airplane.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Helmet Law

Here's a modest proposal, and it doesn't involve eating babies: There should be a helmet law in New York, or maybe even a federal regulation, for people who walk and text simultaneously. The reason those people should be required to wear helmets is because that same law would allow me to kick them down the stairs when they're walking and texting in front of me and slowing me down. If we're going up the stairs, I should be able to grab them by the shoulders and pull them down the stairs. On the street, a kick in the back of the knee.
And there should be variations. For example, a cluster of people standing at the top of a stairway taking pictures also deserve to be kicked/thrown down the stairs. It's only right.
In a similar vein, talking on the phone while driving merits punishment. And who the fuck are all these people talking to, anyway? You are endangering yourself and, more important, me. So I wish I had a car, like Speed Racer, from which saw blades emerged. As part of this law, I would have the right to saw their fucking cars in half.
People on the train, same thing. Shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear your side of the conversation. And if you're hacking your guts up, take it somewhere else, or else...I don't know, because I don't want to get too close. Maybe Mace.
Umbrellas are another matter. If it's barely raining, put the fucking umbrella away. And when you're under cover, there definitely isn't any rain, so the only purpose the umbrella is serving is to imperil my eyesight because, when you spin around or stop abruptly, the point on the umbrella ribs swing right by my face. Punitive action for such an offense should include, but not be limited to, forced sterility. The world doesn't need any more geniuses in the gene pool walking around with umbrellas, with the possible exception of Russian operatives.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Don't Shit Where You Eat

Don't shit where you eat. I'd like to meet the genius who first held forth with this pearl of wisdom. I mean, what the fuck? I don't even think I know what this means.
In a literal sense, it should be self-evident that these two activities aren't conducive to common ground.
If you shit in the kitchen or wherever else you routinely eat, well, that would be a mess. And you could slip on the tile floor and crack your fucking head open. But what if you're eating at a restaurant? Granted, you shouldn't shit on your chair or in the booth or even under the table, but can you not use the bathroom there? If you're having a picnic in the park, you definitely shouldn't shit on the grass or in the sand or even in the water, but you could use a port-a-potty, right? Not that anyone really wants to use one of those fly traps. So you sort of are shitting where you eat. And you definitely shouldn't shit where you eat if you're at a party at somebody's house or something. If you pick up a carrot stick off the vegetable tray, get some dip on it and take a shit on the dining-room rug, well, bad manners.
And if you shouldn't shit where you eat, the converse should be true: don't eat where you shit. First of all, there are practical considerations. A toilet isn't the most comfortable accommodation, especially for having a meal. After a while, the discomfort, especially the pressure on the back of the legs, would likely make the experience less enjoyable. Combine that with having to balance a plate, utensils, napkin and drink, and the challenges multiply. You could use a tray on your lap, but if you have your napkin on the tray, instead of your lap, that could be considered a breach of etiquette. And using toilet paper instead of a napkin is just gauche. And how do you hold your reading material if there's a tray full of food on your lap? The complications are myriad.
All of these situations apply to the port-a-potty, also. Most people I know don't even want to shit in one, let alone eat in it. There's even less room than a regular bathroom, they smell worse and they're sweltering in the summer and cold in the winter.
Now, let's look at this less literally. I've heard "don't shit where you eat" most often in reference to interoffice romances. It might make some sense in that context, if shitting is having the affair and eating is collecting a paycheck. But then why is it not "don't fuck where you make money"? Unless you're a prostitute, of course, in which case you have to fuck where you make money.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Not for Nothin'

Not for nothin', a phrase for which Italian-Americans seem to have a particular affinity, probably ascended into the consciousness of more people because of The Sopranos. Like, Tony would say, "Not for nothin', but I'm gonna rip your fuckin' head off." Not verbatim from the show, but you get the idea.
I first heard it years before The Sopranos. A hairdresser I knew prefaced statements with it, and I found it perplexing. "Not for nothin," a double negative, means it's for something. So if you need to preface your statement with it, does that betray your insecurity? If you have to tell me that what you're saying is for something, you're diluting your credibility right off the bat. Maybe you should just keep your fucking mouth shut to begin with.
I guess it's idiomatic, and perhaps it helps to soften whatever is coming next. Sort of like, "Don't take this the wrong way, but...." Because it's always, "Not for nothin', but...." Maybe I should try it out when I'm on the subway: "Not for nothin', but you stink to the point where I'm on the verge of passing out." Would that absolve me of the political incorrectness associated with telling someone directly that they're an olfactory affront? It's better than, "Not for nothin', but I'm gonna rip your fuckin' head off."
Such logic could be applied in any number of situations. To wit:
"Not for nothin', but that was the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen anyone do."
"Not for nothin', but your ass has gotten really big."
"Not for nothin', officer, but I can't believe who they let carry guns."
"Not for nothin', but that bride ain't beautiful."
"Not for nothin', but that actually happens to be the ugliest fucking baby I've ever seen."
"Not for nothin', but I'm pretty sure your God doesn't exist or is, at the most, second-rate."

You see what I mean? It's a real conversational lubricant. Not for nothin', but try it for yourself. See how it goes.