Quote of the Day #15

And I thought John McCain was mentally shaky before this comment:

"You know, the other night in the debate with Senator Obama, I said his eloquence is admirable, but pay attention to his words. We talk about offshore drilling and he said he would quote, consider, offshore drilling. We talked about nuclear power, well it has to be safe, environment, blah, blah, blah."
-John McCain, at Northern Iowa University, 10/26/08

In all seriousness, the Republican presidential nominee is mocking his opponent's concern about the safety of atomic energy! After Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, to characterize nuclear power as needing anything less than the utmost in caution is beyond reckless. We must do better on November 4.

My Drug of Choice

I drank coffee for about 10 years, on and off, and then seriously on (think working as a barista and swigging five cups a day), until about age 22. At that point in my life, I became convinced that caffeine was, if not a driving force behind my high levels of anxiety, then at least an exacerbating one. Never did it occur to me that maybe the sheer fact of being 22 and on my own for the first time in my life might have been more anxiety-inducing than some roasted beans, but that's water under the bridge, I suppose. So I quit cold turkey (and hot coffee) one day, and though I would very occasionally grab some decaf here and there, I even felt the trace amounts of caffeine in that were too much for my sensitive system. When I quit eating chocolate, I think it was safe to say I had developed what a mental health professional might deem cafephobia.

Things pretty much stayed this way for about another decade, until one day when a well-meaning coworker picked me up a "decaf" that turned out to be a "caf." Amazingly, my head did not explode in a supernova of stress. Sure, I felt jittery and a little edgy, but there were no lasting repercussions to speak of, obviously. Nevertheless, I pretty much avoided the black stuff for the next few years, up until a few weeks ago.

It's funny, during the toughest moments of my son's newborn period, as he slept all day and saved his waking (read: screaming) hours for the dark of night, I never ducked into a Starbucks, even through those deadly hours from about 2 to 4 p.m. on weekdays—when my eyelids were as heavy as sandbags in the back of a Vermont pickup truck straining up an icy hill in late February. (Yes, Virginia, it is possible to overdo a metaphor.) No, it wasn't until almost a year and a half later, just this summer, when I dipped my proverbial toe into the water of life once again.

And while I haven't taken up java as a daily habit, there are typically three days or so per week when I do drink it. Maybe it's because my body/mind has such a low tolerance for caffeine (ever hear of a coffee lightweight? That'd be this guy), but it is a total high for me. I feel amazing. I can feel the surge of energy in my blood. Yes, I'm jittery, but my eyes are wide open, and I can create. Hell, writing blogging "under the influence" is much easier than it would be in my normal torpor. When I listen to music, it sounds better, dramatically so. I like people more. Could it be that someone has been spiking the coffee grounds with ecstasy? I can't imagine what kind of mischief I would get up to on that drug, or anything more hardcore than a cappuccino. Which of course leads you to ask if coffee is my gateway drug? Hmm. I kinda doubt it. Considering that I had to take two Maalox tablets on Sunday to cope with the effects of 1.5 mugs of regular coffee, I think I'll get my drugs from the local cafe, not the alley behind it.

Please leave a comment below if you have a minute or two. I'd love to hear how coffee makes you feel and if any drugs (legal and otherwise) "do it" for you.

Song of the Day #1

Arcade Fire's Funeral

I don't know what it is about Arcade Fire, because I didn't like them at first. The lead singer's voice comes dangerously close to a whine pretty regularly, and they seemed inscrutable (and therefore not appealing) the first few times I listened to them. But they grew on me, and I keep returning to them again and again. As for today's song, Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), I have no idea what the lyrics are all about, if anything, but the music is incredible. Understated, mostly acoustic, yet intensely dramatic all the same. There's an organ in the song that drives it through and makes me want to listen again and again. I'm even digging the vocals now. You can download it from Amazon for $0.89.

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

And if the snow buries my,
my neighborhood.
And if my parents are crying
then I'll dig a tunnel
from my window to yours,
yeah a tunnel from my window to yours.

You climb out the chimney
and meet me in the middle,
the middle of town.
And since there's no one else around,
we let our hair grow long
and forget all we used to know,
then our skin gets thicker
from living out in the snow.

You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head,
as the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn.
Then we tried to name our babies,
but we forgot all the names that,
the names we used to know.
But sometimes,
we remember our bedrooms,
and our parent's bedrooms,
and the bedrooms of our friends.
Then we think of our parents,
well what ever happened to them?

You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I've been trying to say.
Purify the colors, purify my mind.
Purify the colors, purify my mind,
and spread the ashes of the colors
over this heart of mine!

Quote of the Day #14

"A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful"
-Warren Buffett, October 17, 2008

Quote of the Day #13

“Debate is the death of conversation.”
-Kitty O'Neill Collins

Quote of the Day #12

In honor of the holiday:

"But the funniest thing was
When I was leavin' the bay
I saw three ships a-sailin'
They were all heading my way
I asked the captain what his name was
And how come he didn't drive a truck
He said his name was Columbus
I just said, 'Good luck.'"
-Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's 115th Dream

Liberal Media Watch, Part 3

There's an interesting column written by Ed Siegel for today's Boston Globe on the subject of Fox (aka Faux, Fixed, and various other F-words) News. Siegel's contention is that, "If you look at Fox News as part of that corporate Murdochean empire, the prevalent aesthetic isn't conservatism, it's an in-your-face, irreverent attitude that can swing as far left ("The Simpsons") as it does right ("24"). The guiding principle of the Fox Broadcasting Network since the beginning has been to thumb its nose at the rest of the media while appealing to a younger audience."

And here's a comment on the column that I think is worth adding, since it sums up the typical conservative critique of the media:

“Your basic premise/assumption, posted in your next to last paragraph, that CNN and the broadcast networks cater to the center is at best niave and at worst, intellectually dishonest. It's that kind of left-centric view of the 'world' (at least in this article, the journalistic slice of the world) that makes me come to accept that this election will be won by the Democrats largely due to the 'Jaywalking' effect: voters who haven't a clue as to the real world, real life and in most cases, who their elected representives (at any level) are. God help us!”

At this point, I think how you see CNN says much more about who you are and your values than it does about CNN. I personally believe CNN is a centrist operation, but I’m at the left edge of the Democratic Party. I have even more leftist friends who would describe it as “right-wing corporate propaganda” whereas the commenter above thinks it’s left-wing, but s/he is probably very right-leaning.

I like watching MSNBC just b/c for so long the only opinionated voices in TV news have been on the right. But I can see where Olbermann, Maddow, et al are presenting a slanted view, especially in their unwillingness to ever criticize Obama (even if they personally disagree with him) for fear that they might hurt him electorally and/or piss off their partisan audience. It’s not really journalism at that point, more of a PR office for a particular candidate/party. But really, like Fox, I think MSNBC is about entertainment, politics as sport. And that general lack of public seriousness may be one of the biggest problems facing the country right now.

Quote of the Day #11

"Sooner or later people are going to figure out that if all you run is negative attack ads you don't have much of a vision for the future, or you're not ready to articulate it."
-John McCain, 2000

In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Any discussion of In Defense of Food must of necessity start with the author's beguilingly simple summation of the book's central message: "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." These seven words connect in both tone and content Michael Pollan's follow-up to his stunning expose of the American food landscape, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Their simplicity belies a number of challenges readers may face in striving to abide by them, but the words themselves are still a precious gift from Pollan.

The skeptical may ask why changing the way we eat is so important. Well, as Pollan notes, those peoples not wedded to the Western diet have "thrived on seafood diets, diary diets, meat diets, and diets in which fruits, vegetables, and grain predominated." The key to optimal health has been "a traditional diet consisting of fresh foods from animals and plants grown on soils that were themselves rich in nutrients."

So our challenge isn't, contrary to what we've long been told, to consume the perfect balance of vitamins and minerals, fats and carbs. This prevailing logic, which Pollan dismisses as "nutritionism" and the result of an unholy alliance of food scientists and food marketers, has bestowed on us precious little but the misery of "a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer." Our challenge is how to break free of a diet that while it may be killing us, is also as American as Hostess Fruit Pie (Apple).

This is where readers may feel Pollan's book is somewhat lacking, since its relatively short length (201 pages) doesn't allow for an in-depth discussion of just how to implement such a wholesale change in the way we eat, particularly given how surrounded we are by what Pollan terms "edible foodlike substances." The facts alone, as compelling a case as is made here, don't diminish the cravings we may have for that Snickers bar or can of Diet Coke, even if the facts do increase our level of guilt.

In fairness, Pollan's "Eater's Manifesto," as this book is subtitled, doesn't claim to offer a prescription for how to eat, much less a rigid diet. Pollan is a journalist, not a preacher, so remaking our own diets may just fall to us. Fortunately, Pollan does help us figure out how to interpret the essential message of the book by offering guidelines which are as useful as they are pithy, and include the following:

• "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." This means you, Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt tubes! Jeez, have an apple already.
  
  
• "Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number, or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup." You really don't need 41 ingredients (certainly not azodicarbonamide, whatever that is) to make bread, but that's what Sara Lee uses to create Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread.
  
  
• "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle." You could also put it this way: Food on the outside, fake on the inside.
  
  
• "Pay more, eat less." Sounds backwards, but if you want good, real food grown in healthy soils, you're gonna hafta pay for it. And while no one likes the latter piece of advice, if we all just took a little less on our plates and avoided seconds, we might just be healthier.

I, for one, am greatly thankful for Michael Pollan's efforts in defense of food. To celebrate, I think I'll go have a salad.

View all my reviews.

That Coincidence Thing Happened Again

I had just finished typing the word "Atlantis," which in this case referred to the man-made island off Dubai, when I scrolled up the page to see an ad for, you guessed it, Atlantis (this one being the mega-resort in the Bahamas. Careful readers of this blog will recall my previous experiences with this word-coincidence phenomenon.

I'll keep you posted as more occur.