Diet Bore Digest

1300 calories down, my appetite remains. But it is surmountable. I have stopped eating. I'm still at a low weight, almost as low as I'd like, and way lower than my top weight. So I'm cool. Writing about not-eating sometimes takes the place of eating, on an emotional level.

When Do You Binge Eat?

Lately I've been out of control in the evening. I found this poll interesting: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/pollresults.php . Do people need a certain blood sugar level in the evening in order to be comfortable? You know, it's weird. I just remembered that "going to bed without supper" was supposed to be a classic naughty child punishment, like from Grims Brothers or something. Apparently many people have a tendency to want a lot of food in time to digest it before bedtime, yet have a sufficient blood sugar level throughout the nighttime fast. Incredible. But I don't want that to happen to me until I lose ten more pounds. I want to sleep with blood sugar on the low side so I'll burn a little fat overnight.

To Make Progress, Stop Making Unnecessary Problems

Stress has been my portion, especially for the last few days. But also too often in the past there has been unnecessary, unproductive stress that I couldn't do much about. I think Thoreau was right about the whole Walden attitude.

There are attitudes some people have that seem to be keeping humanity from moving forward, away from slavery and duress. For example I heard someone say that she worked hard and she wished the same for her children, not better. I heard someone pose the question rhetorically, "Why should [starving children abroad] be exempt from the law of starvation?" (Obviously, the answer is that, the sooner the most vulnerable people are freed from starvation, poverty, slavery and duress, the sooner the rest of us will be!) I heard someone say that his father had not shared his fortune with him, in hopes that he would learn how to make his own fortune. That family is poised to stagnate. The energy wherewith the son will now pull himself up by his bootstraps (or die trying) could have been used to help humanity move forward -- with the help of a substantial amount of money, I might add. There are too many real problems in this world for people to go around inventing problems and hurdles for one another.

No Intelligible Explanation

My Art Portfolio IV

Star Trek and Star Wars Jokes

Sometimes when you see a bandwagon it's too late to get on board. Some of us have been watching Star Trek forever, so we get the running inside jokes. Some people are glomming over to see what the fuss is about because our guys just had a hit movie or because Trek is continuing to morph into ever more of a cultural phenomenon. Well, the johnny-come-latelies of cinematic criticism and cultural anthropology have a lot of catching up to do.

I've been saying this for a while of course, but today something different happened -- I remembered something. I remembered some of the actual jokes put over on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. You know how it usually goes -- you remember how impressed you were by a joke, or how hard you laughed, but you just can't think of a joke when you need one. Well, today I was vacuuming the floor and a few of them just floated back to me. (I wonder how many I can still crank out six hours later.)

For one thing, tall, beautiful Jadzia Dax channelled the ladies from children's shows like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when she spoke to two little Ferengi in the manner said ladies reserve for little puppets on their shows. The directors really drove this home by making Dax appear even taller in relation to the Ferengi than she might normally.

Let's see, what else? Oh, the Ferengi have this habit of re-discovering human proverbs in telling ways. "The more things change, the more they stay the same," said Quark, in a beautiful context in the final episode. "It's not set in stone; and even if it was, so what?" says a dream vision of a deceased Ferengi Grand Negis. And then there's my favorite: As three Ferengi hurtle towards Earth's 20th century (itself an old Star Trek joke)one of them picks up a 20th century news clip featuring a black man who resembles the station's captain. When he points it out to the others one replies, "All humans look alike." Oh, it just cracks me up. Nb. I think it was in the 20th century that some wise-crackers liked to joke, "All blacks look alike." (That's for those of you who haven't visited the 20th century lately.)

Those were the ones I remembered. I wish I had more, because Star Trek is alive with this kind of humor that turns on itself and on us. Oh, wait. Another example is coming to me now.

Here it is: Vic Fontaine is a holoprogrammed character on DS9 that has a running club show in a 20th century setting, singing in the style of Frank Sinatra. It's very funny to see an alien(Odo)snapping his fingers to the music and being hip. Because it makes the audience reflect on what it means to be hip -- it means the opposite of being an alien. When we all sat around in a circle digging groovy music and nodding to the beat, we were saying that the music resounded with us -- that it was part of us or we were part of it or both. We grooved to identify with a group. It was the opposite of being an alien. So the alien hipster thing was very funny. The scene also recalled a joke from an old radio show I heard once:

ALIEN: Be-bop? What's that? Is that some kind of music?
TEEN GIRL: Music?!?! It's out of this world !!
ALIEN: Well, that's where I've been and I haven't heard any.

Oh, man, Star Trek is a riot. Star Wars episode II isn't too far behind in the joke department, by the way. I'm amazed that critics didn't have more to say about the jokes in it. My cousin and I, who complete one another's thoughts, totally keyed into that material. I found out that my cousin thought the same exact things when I told my impressions to my Aunt and she said that Charlie had said all of the same things already. This wouldn't impress me so much except that she only heard these things from the two of us and not from any journalists or critics. In fact, I never heard it from any journalists or critics either and it was right there under their noses.

To wit (since I've already opened that can of alien larvae,) Star Wars Episode II gives witty answers to some of 1977's Star Wars'(Episode VI, A New Hope's)urgent questions, like, why do all the vespin guards resemble one another and Boba Fett? (Probably a matter of uniform sized costumes and interchangeable actors, but the clone thing works, too.) I wish I could remember some other questions and answers right now, but I do remember this; Send in the clones. It sounds like "Send in the Clowns," that old song that fit that love scene between the heroes so perfectly. Ah, yes, they were dying and finally admitting their love. Send in the clowns. "No, wait," thought the audience, "Send in the clones!" And they did, right on cue.

Thank You for Being So Quick About it, Senator

In reference to my recent post, "Attention Senator Mikulski," yes there is Student Loan relief aftoot (see http://www.ibrinfo.org/) Moreover, I spoke to one of her aides on the phone and more relief may be on the way for people with antique notes like mine. And then -- wonder of wonders -- I called the bank and found out that participating in IBR does nothing to the issue date of my note. I keep the same note. I remain in the running for the Student Loan relief in the works for middle-aged paupers.

Thank you, Senator Mikulski. So many of us just couldn't have done it without you!

About Huckabee's Latest Groaner

From a letter I sent to a friend tonight:

Mike Huckabee is so annoying. I can't figure out if he's trying to dupe people or if he's just that stupid. His latest groaner is attacking the greenhouse emissions cap-and-trade proposal on the pretense that it punishes the companies that might otherwise be able to provide much-needed jobs. Frankly, I think said companies will need more manpower to figure out how to cut emissions and then implement their new green strategies. But the jury is out on that; only time will tell. The real issue is this:

Fifty years from now nobody will care if I spent the 2010's on welfare or if I had a job. But they will be pretty mad at me if I helped to sacrifice wild species to my need to make money, by opting to allow everyone and his subsidiary to pollute as much as he pleased. Moreover, if our president has succeeded, a healthy, labor-based inflation will have overtaken the national debt and made peanuts out of the payments, relative to the robust salaries afoot in tomorrow's dollars. These tea-party rubes have no concept of Keynsian economics but they arrogantly use the same style of rhetoric used by those who have done their homework. That pisses me off ('cuz even I can tell the difference, even with a mere 9 credits of economics under my belt and half an eye on the news.) It would be different if they addressed all the facts and the arguments, but they don't; they invent their own and dupe the ignorant masses. I keep an eye on Huckabee because he's such bad news. That's the only reason I'm on his mail list. Unfortunately, some people are on the list because they really want to heckle the US government. That pisses me off too. If I ever need a jolt of venom all I have to do is open one of Huckabee's letters (I don't always.)

Attention Kindergarten Teachers

True, I believe I've covered this topic before. But it came out so nice this time and I figured it bore repeating. Now, I don't know how kindergarten teachers would address or circumlocute the idea of menses, but they're smart; they'll find the right note to hit. Here, then, is a letter I wrote to a friend about chivalry:


Hi [buddy,]

Just a heads-up. I think I'm scheduled to be on the rag on the weekend of the shindig. I'll tend to be bloated, thirsty and uncomfortable. I'll be running to the bathroom a lot. And if I'm bleeding too heavily or if I don't feel good, I can't spend the night, even though the accommodations you're making sound great. Just so you know. I'll do my best. (Try to make it easy for me to make my own decision, because I'm not a fighter.)


It's funny. When my kindergarten teacher taught chivalry I thought it was a stupid idea. But more recently I've come to understand -- women are hard put by our own biology, for everyone's sake, whether we actually reproduce or not, just so that the potential for reproduction can exist in our species. Chivalry is a way of giving the ladies a break for all that. But try telling that to a five-year-old. I don't know what that teacher was thinking.

But I know what Carol Brady was thinking with that high-maintenance hairdo wherewith she started her show. She was saying she belonged on a pedestal so high that even her fancy hair would stay put. It was the equivalent of painted nails and white gloves. It said, "Don't ask me to fix the roof or move heavy furniture. I'm a lady."

Personally I'm not doing the high-maintenance hairdo or avoiding all the grunt work, but I really respect the chicks who do. I may never be entirely comfortable with the door-holding thing either, but I can appreciate where it's coming from. Just interesting, isn't it? Maybe I'll send this letter to some kindergarten teachers.

See you in a month.

Kitty