Buddha and the haircut

A friend of mine is going to Chang Mai to get her hair cut.

OK.  She’s going for bigger better reasons than that.  She already went once all by herself, to study Buddhism.  For a year!  By.  Her.  Self.

So. 

I’m working hard to think of anything I have ever done in my lifetime that can be held up alongside that.  I got nuttin’.

Oh, once I went to Cuernavaca for a two week language immersion school.  By myself. 

All my fair weather language learner wannabe friends punked out on me as the trip got closer.  One by one they fizzled on our red hot idea to submerge ourselves in the culture and come out fluent. As each one became wan and apologetic I held my head up knowing that the next one would go.

Until finally, I had to actually go – by myself.  I had to do what I’d talked so big about – or shut up and slink away, credibility tattered.  Never talk about it again.  And let’s face it, shutting up is not in my nature.

So I signed up for classes and booked a flight.

But I was terrified.  I stood on the curb at San Francisco International Airport and cried after my husband dropped me off.

At the other end of the flight, I got in a shiny red car with the smiling man who held a placard with my name on it and had visions of his being a kidnapper who would spirit me away into the labyrinth of Mexico City instead of delivering me to the doorstep of the family who did everything for me except run my bath. 

And I was so homesick my stomach hurt! 

Then, when it came time to come home, I cried again for leaving such lovely people.  Muchas gracias por todo mis amigos. 

Now we’re Facebook friends.  

So I suppose I can claim to be a person of conviction.  I don’t spout off about a value-driven life and then go on about my merry business without a value-driven bone. 

But dang.

How’d I get to be her friend anyway?  She has that Buddhist patience thing you hear so much about.  She doesn’t butt in when you talk or anything. 

I hope I don’t prattle on.  She looks serene no matter.

This trip must be a refresher course.  Five weeks.  A touch up you might call it.  Maybe Buddhism’s like a haircut – gets a little shaggy after so much growth.  Needs to be shaped up.  Add some highlights.  Cover up the roots.

So it makes sense she will get her hair cut while she’s there.  She said she is looking forward with happy anticipation to sitting down again with Vera, the stylist who managed her minimalist coif when she was there before.  Vera, she says, understands Western hair.

Wow.  That’s deep.

I wish I understood Western hair.  And Buddhism, for that matter.  

My training in the Southern Baptist tradition did not take, much to my grandma’s dismay.  I let go of all that hell’s fire back before I cut my own hair from sit-on-it to shoulder length.  Truthfully, it was harder to give up my hair than it was to turn away from all that judgmental-ism. 

I love to sing those hymns, though. 

Do Buddhists sing?  Oh I know they chant.  And hum.  You know – resonate – with the Om.  But that is not the same as a good old Bette Midler belt.   Cathartic!

But I digress.      

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          When a person finds a hairdresser who understands her hair, who can make her hair perform – her hair whisperer – well, desire for worldly things falls away.  It’s a Buddhist thing – like the 3^rd Noble Truth. 

A person will go to extremes – even to Chang Mai – to be in the presence of such a Master.  Because after all, a bad hair day creates anguish for the wearer which may be projected outward onto the unfortunate world she encounters. 

And, it follows, the converse is also true:  Good hair = good thoughts.  A noble path to true happiness.

It’s a Buddhist thing.

If you have the courage of your convictions, you get on the plane and go.


Nirvana.

Senior sleigh ride

After a couple of weeks of being obliged to deal with minor – but extremely annoying, persistent and impossible to ignore – physical nuisances, I am put in mind of Zeus, the father of the Gods, and the shenanigans of King Sisyphus.

You know the punchline in the story of Sisyphus:  He’s the guy Zeus condemned to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeating this frustrating and meaningless action forever. 

His days at stone rolling can be likened to those of unnamed persons, working at the futile task of staving off the siege of years.

The truth of it is Zeus got sick of Sisyphus’s scheming and deceitfulness.  So, he designed that particular punishment for King Sisyphus to match the hubristic belief that he could outsmart Zeus himself.  

Yeah.  Ole Mr. S. was a tricky and slippery dude.  Back in the day.  But not that clever: So far as we know, he’s still rolling the rock. 

And I was wondering if there are any parallels in the real world today.  Like for other people who try to deceive – not Zeus, or God or Morgan Freeman – but themselves. 

Not that I know anyone like that.

But let’s say there is a person who has taken up residence in Denialtown, right down the road from Who-do-you-think-you’re-kidding.  Around the corner from Getreal.com.  Maybe you’ve visited that neighborhood.

Let’s pretend that such a person could never admit to herself certain things that she does not want to admit.  Why should she?  What is the value?  Who benefits from such confessions? 

No one that I can think of except maybe the I-told-you-so crowd that insists on being right all the time and gloating.  Who needs ‘em?

You can speculate on what such a person might be pressured to acknowledge if you want to.  Go ahead.  What could it be?  That she’s been coloring her hair since 1998 not because it’s the cool thing to do, but because it would be white – white! – without her steady commitment to color and chicanery.

She dyes her eyebrows. 

She wears athletic shoes!  O.M.G.  And skinny jeans!  Hahaha!

She maintains a Facebook account and even Instagram in what some might call feeble and grasping efforts to be ‘with it,’ though it’s fairly certain that she doesn’t know what ‘it’ is. 

She tweets for goodness sake.

(She has the niggling feeling that all those followers are perfunctory.  Most likely they are following her just in case she has something they might want some day.  They will say they knew her when.)

She’s rolling her own rock up the mountain of inevitability!  She thinks she’s fooling Father Christmas.  Or someone.

But let’s say Sisyphus overcomes.  Yes!  Let’s say he reaches his goal and pushes that boulder up to the top of the incline.  Then what? 

He finds himself at the top with that big ole rock under his arm by his side, like a pal.  He surveys the landscape with a sense of accomplishment and exhilaration.  He inhales deeply.  Cool at last!

Here’s what our protagonist fears:  She fears that just then, when she, er, Sisyphus has had only a moment of glory, when he’s only just begun to take in the panorama before him, he will feel a tremor.  A faint wobble.  Was that a tiny earthquake?  Maybe it was a gust of wind.

Poor King Sisyphus doesn’t know that Zeus employed his fiendish wit by enchanting the boulder to perpetually roll away.  File it under You Can’t Win, old Buddy! 

That rock will lean; then it will strain in place, pause for the briefest moment, perhaps drawing a breath before lurching and throwing itself down the other side. 

It’s all over now for Sisyphus, right?  He can never catch up to that rock.  And what if he could?  Is he going run around in front and stop it in place midway down that slippery slope?  Spoiler alert – no, he’s not.

And even if he did, what could he do but start trying to push it back up the hill! 

I’m beginning to see as I near the crest of the mountain, I need to outfit myself with a toboggan.


It’s downhill from there and I want to enjoy the ride.    

Mind your own guilty pleasures

OK.  So I eat peanut butter out of the jar. 

Sometimes!  Not every time!  I admit to taking my spoon and dipping into the Skippy.  Yum! 

I don’t even sit down.  That’s right.  I stand at the kitchen counter with the pantry door wide open.  After a couple of nibbles, I bring out the apricot preserves and go full-on decadent:  Peanut butter residue in the jelly jar. 

It’s crucial to be able to explain yourself if you’re caught in such instances, so I can rationalize it:  Even though it’s gauche, it constitutes fewer calories than a straight-up, socially acceptable peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Yeah!  Never thought of that, did you?  And, it’s gluten free!  Take that!

You didn’t consider the possible benefits of my guilty pleasure because you were too busy judging me!  Oh yes you were.  No use denying it!  You got all uppity.  You would never eat Jiff out of the jar!  Or, more accurately, you would never fess up to doing it. 

Tell the truth now – you have a secret treat of your own.  Maybe you eat your peas with honey – I’ve done it all my life.  It makes my peas taste funny, but it keeps them on my knife!  Sorry.  My Asperger’s kicked in.

Still, most of us maintain an underground extravagance.  Perhaps you read romance novels under the covers at night and cry every time over lost love – it’s so beautiful!  Or, you can never drive past Krispy Kreme so you dispose of the incriminating wrappers before you get back to the house. 

I knew a woman – a weight loss consultant – who confessed she hid the evidence of her binge ice cream eating in the washing machine.  No one else ever looked there! 

Maybe you Google all your old flames and follow them on Facebook.  What’s that alternate email account for?  Or when your spouse comes into the room, you have to switch channels away from the Kardashians.  Really. 

For me, it’s “Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda.”  Well my, my, my.  I like watching this crusty old detective.  Mostly I love seeing the bad guy get what he deserves.

That also explains my indulgence in back-to-back episodes of “ForensicFiles,” the no-nonsense crime solving series proves time and time again that no matter how “highly intelligent” felons are, they cannot account for every insect wing or area specific weed pod or thread or fiber or eyelash!  Haha! 

My husband finds it macabre.  I say it’s no more graphic than Shark Week.

BuzzFeed describes a guilty pleasure as something one enjoys and considers pleasurable despite feeling guilt for enjoying it.  The "guilt" involved stems from a fear of others’ discovering one's lowbrow or embarrassing tastes.  Harmless, but awkward.  Borderline mortification.

So yes, I’m fearful.

I imagine my erudite friends would find it difficult to appreciate my weakness for the decidedly lowbrow adult cartoon, “South Park.”  I don’t want them to know I watch it and I certainly cannot recommend it to their genteel selves.  Cartman is so hilariously reprehensible!

They might not understand Kenny – neither do I for that matter, but that’s his appeal.  And how can I explain his gruesome death every episode – those bastards!

Oh yes, if I’m found out, there could be consequences.  So, if South Park ever comes up, I feign ignorance, or shock and revulsion.  I don’t want to be expelled from their book club!

According to that pre-eminent source of cultural wisdom, Wikipedia, “guilt·y pleas·ure” means “something, such as a movie, a television program, a piece of music or fashion, behavior, certain foods – or eating habits – that one enjoys despite feeling that it is not generally held in high regard.

Say, for example, Elvis.  Elvis is held in low regard.  Pretty sure dying on the toilet did it.  That, and the hair and the bloat and the sweat and the jumpsuits. 

But I cannot forsake the King.  Since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell, down at the end of Lonely Street, at Heartbreak Hotel… with my Teddy Bear and the volume up high when everyone else is out of the house.  Air guitar.  Swivel hips.  Sneer.

Please – don’t tell anyone.  Uh…thank you.  Thank you very much.

Thank you so very much

1.       Bushy eyebrows are back in.

Thank God.  Or just thanks.  Or gee whiz!  No more tweezing! 

When I heard that news, I wasted no time tossing the hot wax.  Going back to my Brooke Shields!

Even though I have only a few faded eyebrow hairs left, I do appreciate that piece of retro styling.

2.      Now, let’s see…parsnips!  Gotta love parsnips:  Parsnip fries.  Mashed parsnips.  Can’t forget parsnip-carrot salad.  Mm mm!  Yummy!  Makes life worth living!

OK, full disclosure:  I’ve never eaten a parsnip.  Not sure I’d knowingly seen one until today – this picture.

 

Parsnips look like albino carrots.  Just realizing in this moment that parsnip-carrot salad would be a sort of orange and white affair made by shredding the fraternal twins of the root vegetable world.

Man oh man!

3.      And what’s this?!  A filtered water pitcher that’s nice enough to put on the table?  How long have we waited for just such a breakthrough?!

Shatter proof glass.  Coconut and silk filters.  And only $59.  Wow. 

Up until now, I’ve been pouring tap water into drinking glasses, never even dreaming of the possibility.  We live in an amazing world.

OK.  So.  That’s it.  Those are my entries into my gratitude journal today.  I have to give credit to Oprah for helping me out with this.  I took those items directly from her magazine’s latest edition – an article entitled “25 Unexpected Things to be Grateful for Right Now.”  Really.

See, I’ve been living gratefully for quite a while now and I had begun to have trouble keeping up the pace.   I had a lot of repeats – wonderful husband, great kid, blue skies, raindrops, blah ditty blah blah blah.

Years ago, on the advice of Reader’sDigest, I made notes on a calendar each time something happened that lifted my spirits or made me smile.  The idea was to fill the days up and then, when a bad day came, I could flip to that date on my gratitude calendar and feel good again. 

I was a classroom teacher at the time, so it was easy.  Young people are like slot machines.  They pay out good feelings like cherries.

I kept that calendar for years, starting over each September.  I clipped school pictures to its pages – notes, even a packet of sugar – any token a student offered.  Soon, most weeks had two or three entries, so if I had a dismal January 10^th and found it empty in the calendar, I could just look at the 9^th or 11^th and read something sweet that a teenager had said to me.

It worked.  I always felt better.  Noting those tiny gestures kept me mindful of the beauty in my life.

These days I just look around myself and sing like Lois Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World!”

But lately, gratitude’s become mandatory.  Wherever you look, someone’s wagging a finger and admonishing appreciation.  You’ll sleep better.  It’s good for business.  Your breath will be fresher.

And I’m beginning to resist the whole gratitude thing. 

Just back off telling me to be thankful, OK?  I’m thankful already! 

How could expressions of appreciation have become annoying?  Yes, it’s a beautiful day.  Yes, yes, the sunrise, the sunset, the twilight, the moon.  Children playing.  Puppy’s breath. 

Yes, it’s all lovely – and you’re starting to tick me off. 

We are reaching just a bit, don’t you think?

I mean really:  The mandate.  The minutia.  Bushy eyebrows?  A filtered pitcher?  Parsnips for Pete’s sake!

Nowadays, you can be living your oblivious, thankful life and if you’d don’t maneuver fast enough someone on Facebook will challenge you to an Appreciation-Off whereby you must declare publicly five things a day you’re glad about.  Or else.

I’ll tell you what I’m glad about:  I’m glad no one has tagged me on that one because I might appreciate poking that person in the nose!

I know, I know.  It’s a good habit.  It’s worthwhile.  But how do you think curmudgeons are born?
 
Forced appreciation! 

Don’t try to make me grateful!  It takes away the impetus – the sincere up-welling of emotion in the face of beauty, or kindness, or generosity, or grace.


You can’t over water a plant.  And too much sunshine makes a desert.

A fool and her internet

I’m a sunflower.

Yep.  Oh yeah.  I am a regular ray of sunshine.  Facebook told me so.

The social media giant’s newest package of postponement is delivered as, “What kind of ________are you?  Take this simple quiz and find out!”

I found my floral identity this morning shortly after reading the DailyGood’s article entitled, “How to eliminate procrastination.”

By the by, according to another Facebook/Quiz Social questionnaire, the best tattoo for me is …wait for it … a human skull!  Yes, that’s right.  This little sunflower has a dark side.

Quiz Social zeroed in on my shadow personality and matched me perfectly with that symbolic representation of my cranky alter ego. 

The skull is suited to me, says Quiz Social, because it’s “bold and powerful.”  That is so me! 

I am the bold and powerful sunflower who declares her “opposition to the natural order of things and her unwillingness to be limited by anyone's rules or expectations.”

This nonconforming little blossom cannot be repressed. 

And this:  In the yin and yang yoyo of things, if I were a super hero, I’d be none other than Superman, the Goodie Two Shoes of the super hero set! 

And here’s how they reconcile the skull tattoo with the embodiment of truth, light and the American Way:  “Sometimes you are tempted to use your powers for evil, but lucky for the rest of us, you have a heart of gold.”  It’s me!  So very me!

                                                                       
In a past life I would have been an Egyptian queen, states the Department of the Obvious.

In the next life?  After I answered their quick quiz, the pronouncement came down – I’ll be reincarnated as … a single grain of sand?! 

Not sure I’m looking forward to that in quite the same way I was anticipating my return as a mountain lion or even redwood tree, or Empress of the Universe.
                                                    
But Quiz Social trots out none other than William Blake to make life on the beach with the masses seem Zen: "To see a world in a grain of sand ...  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand…"  OK…

Sensing the lack of enthusiastic response to such a gritty future, the quizmaster extrapolates, “There is nothing that separates us from the sand.  Nothing separates the sand from God.  We are all here.  We are all everywhere.  We are all forever.”

Oh brother!

I’m beginning to see the wisdom of Fred Stutzman, a 2009 graduate student at the University of North Carolina.  DailyGood reports that Fred had trouble concentrating long enough to finish the work for his thesis.  He blamed access to the internet.

Stutzman, like other people I’ve heard of, found himself distracted by the endless supply of sappy pastimes and useless but fascinating crapola at his fingertips — even when she, er, he really wanted to get something done.

Like any addict, he told himself he could disconnect any time he wanted to.  But it wasn’t that simple.  He tried aversion therapy and the ‘step down’ method.  He went cold turkey.  He wore the patch.

OK.  He didn’t do any of those things, but it was hard for him to look away from the screen.  No.  It was impossible. 

So he did what any red-blooded, skull-tattooed sunflower would do:  He went home and created a software program that would solve his problem.  Oh, I should have mentioned – Stutzman was a computer programmer studying Information Science.  

His creation, called “Freedom,” is simple.  All you have to do is turn the application on – after you pay your $10 – tell it how long you want to focus on something, anything other than the electronic pabulum you’re Jones-ing for and it blocks your computer from going online for that amount of time.  

If you have to have a fix before your time is up, you have to turn your computer completely off and reboot, which, in theory, is so much trouble you’d actually rather accomplish something you’re not ashamed of or embarrassed by instead.

I’m thinking of getting it.  Right after this last quiz:  What Tarot card are you?

Seven quick questions and…The Fool!?  I beg your pardon!

Multi-taskers, beware!

 If nothing else, the Rain Man could focus. 

Turns out, multi-tasking is a bust anyway.  Research now shows that multi-taskers get less done, are crabbier and frequently irritate those around them.

That was me back in the days of my employment.  Or as we say in English, “That was I.” 

Now, in my leisure, I’m a ray of sunshine.

When I was working I felt tremendously important to be so extremely busy.  Oh, the hectic life!  Don’t you wish you were like me?  Look!  Look how harried I am!  So sorry you aren’t stretched like the elastic in your grandma’s underpants. 

On any given day, I switched between making to-do lists and crossing items off again, to checking email, writing memos, running meetings, having impromptu phone consultations and just generally ping ponging around the joint.  

To a detached observer – say a white-coated lab geek with a clipboard – I might have looked like Groucho Marx in that movie where he and his brothers go in and out of doors in a common hallway, knocking skulls, creating a commotion, honking horns and meeting each other coming and going.

Thank goodness those who worked with me bought into the multi-tasking = efficient myth!  Or at least I think they did.

Now the word is out – that frenetic MO is more mentally draining and less effective than rearranging one bureaucratic piece of paperwork at a time.

In her book Overwhelmed: Work, Love,and Play When No One Has the Time, Brigid Schulte reports that today, people in the workplace say they’re too busy to do pretty much everything including eat lunch, make friends, date and sleep – they’re even too busy to have sex!

Now wait just a minute!  Some things are sacred!  When’s the last time you went without a little shut-eye?

A niece of mine is still in the workforce and moving up the ranks in her company.  She posts her corporate life on Facebook and recently mentioned that she’d had a sleepless night.  I was about to express sympathy – I used to wake up routinely at 2:36am and thrash through the agenda for my upcoming day until the alarm went off at five. 

But before I could formulate my comment, one of her friends retorted, “Sleep is for the weak!” 

There it is.  No sympathy.  Keep up or die!  Multi-taskers have the mentality of predators.  Or self-preserving prey animals that panic and leave their co-workers behind to be consumed by god-knows-what if they slow down or show vulnerability.    

Schulte cites psychologists who write of treating burned-out clients who can’t relinquish the notion that the busier you are, the more you are thought of as competent, smart, successful, admired and even envied.

But in fact, multi-tasking makes you dumber — dumber than being drunk or stoned.  Studies have shown that no two tasks done simultaneously can be done with 100 percent of one’s ability.  

It’s true – I had to quit looking at my cell phone in the car, even at a stop sign, the day I realized that each time I picked up that glorious gadget, I also relaxed my foot off the brake!

Furthermore, the distractions from too many things going on at once hamper a person’s “spam filter.”  Multi-taskers lose the ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information.  Put bluntly, multitasking makes you stupid.

And worse, neuroscientists have found that so much distraction shrinks your prefrontal cortex!  That’s the seat of human intelligence!  When a human being feels pressed for time and overwhelmed, that part of her brain curls into a fetal position and cries, “Mama!”

Uh oh.  You don’t suppose that’s irreversible, do you?  I mean, all those years looking smart but getting dumber?  My prefrontal cortex withering.  

Or is this just it?  Am I done with the gray matter?  Gone, gone, gone?  Like tooth enamel, irretrievable. 

All those Words with Friends to no avail.  Games on Lumosity…?  Just getting good at the games!? 

No worries.  Smaller brain, fewer demands.  And I’m pretty darn adept at the short list of tasks I approach on any given day, one-by-one, in sequence.


First I wake up and read my book.  Then I have a cup of coffee.  Next I might take a walk.  And before you know it – one minute to Wapner!

Facebook made me inane!

Evidently, I’m in favor of animal abuse. 

You see, I just can’t bring myself to re-post the picture that came up on my Facebook news feed this morning.  It shows an orange ribbon with a banner that reads:

“I’m against animal cruelty.  Share if you are too!”

I’m not going to click the button!  Of course, I’m not going to pinch my cat either.  Or tell the dog he’s ugly.

But you can’t make me share!  There it is.  Deal with it.

It’s stupid anyway.  Who’s NOT against animal cruelty?  It might be more important to identify those people, don’t you think?  Why doesn’t someone create a post that says “Share if you want to kick the dog,” or, “How many ‘likes’ for Michael Vick?”

I will confess to a twinge of guilt for not re-posting.  It’s only a click after all.  What kind of misanthrope am I?  Why won’t I take two seconds to stand with the masses of decent people against meanness to our fuzzy buddies?

A person can only take so much manipulation, that’s why. 

“Share if you wish there were no cancer.”  Well, duh. 

And if I don’t share does that mean I’m OK with cancer?  If I do share will my wishes be joined in the cosmos with the wishes of all the other really nice people and thereby eradicate that foul disease? 

“Keep this going if you miss someone in heaven.”  OK…

And then there’s, “Re-post if you love your kids with all your heart NO MATTER WHAT!”

Why?  Why would I re-post those pink hearts and balloons? 

Wait a minute…Are you saying I don’t love my kid? 

And if I do re-post (which I do not) – who is my intended audience?  Who am I trying to persuade of my motherly love?  That woman who overheard me threatening my son in the candy aisle of Safeway all those years ago? 

Listen Lady:  #1 Mind your own business!  You weren’t there that morning when he ate an entire tub of chocolate cake frosting on the day we were supposed to take cupcakes to his soccer team.  And #2… Oh I don’t know!  Just leave me alone with your eye rolling and your sharing.

I love the kid, all right?! 

The only logical conclusion in the midst of all this schmaltz is that there are a bunch of miserable posters on Facebook and they’re looking for company.  That’s gotta be it. 

Of course, they’re all my friends…

“Thousands of pictures of babies and puppies and I’ll bet only 10% of you will re-post this picture of a brave soldier.”

OMG.

And the grammar!  Old English teachers cannot be at peace on Facebook:  There are dozens of aphorisms, witticisms and words to the wise – just the kind of sappy stuff I thrive on – but cannot in good conscience like or share because they’re chock full, chock full I tell you, of misspelled words and poor punctuation.  Damn you, Standard English!

But in fairness, if I’m going to wax curmudgeonly on the posts I peruse every day –
if I’m going to be all uppity about the sentiments of others – I should probably complete an objective review of my own shares and posts.  And who better to do it than me?

So here we go.  Here are samples from the timeline of an erudite contributor to the collective conversation:

OK.  Choosing randomly:

Here’s a cartoon of a pig in a hospital room staring in shock at a ham on the bed.  The pig doctor stands by proudly announcing, “He’s cured!”

I love this one:  It’s a photo of a German shepherd trotting happily toward the camera, smiling, wearing sunglasses, and there’s a cat riding on his back!  And the caption says, “You might think you’re cool; but you’re not a cat riding on a dog wearing sunglasses cool!” 

Cute, huh? 

And here’s that “Stealth Kitty” video.  Priceless!

Oh, I love this line drawing of a young woman gazing into the eyes of her Prince.  The caption:  “You had me at your proper use of ‘whom.’”

And this is classic:  “It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.”  Hahahaha! 

Come on!  You loved it!!

Seriously!  Like and share!  

Mars, we have a problem!

OK this is weird.

I went to check out a link in an email I received because I’m in the running to go to Mars.  But that’s not what I meant about weird.

I mean you knew that already, right? 

I have my application in with Mars One, the non-profit organization that’s raising $6 billion to fund a one-way colony-building mission to the Red Planet. 

My application’s not quite finished.  I haven’t submitted the requisite two-minute video explaining my sense of humor and why I want to go to Mars.  It’s due the end of the month.  That and the essay explaining why I’m an ideal candidate to leave earth and never return.

But other than that, I’m good to go. 

So, I’m on their email list.  They’re keeping me posted.  I’m in the loop. 

But, to be honest, I’ve been ignoring their reminders. 

Anyway, today’s message was titled “Packing for Mars,” and I just had to look.  If I’m selected from among the anticipated one million applicants, will I need sunscreen?  Aluminum foil?  Can I take my cats?

There’s no urgency of course, since the blast off isn’t until 2022, but I like to think ahead.
 
To my dismay though, no packing list was included.  But there was the link that I followed to check out two “local Martians” meetings coming up this month.

One is in Darmstadt, Germany, and the other at Cloud Gate in Chicago.  So.  There’s that.  If I want to hang with like-minded Martians-to-be …

I’ll admit the notices for these gatherings raised some concerns.  I’m thinking some folks might just want to make fun.  Flash back to that Star Trek convention sketch on Saturday Night Live when William Shatner broke character and told the Trekkies to “get a life!”  How demoralizing! 

Mars is serious business!

Then, in the margin of the site I noticed a “People You May Know” sidebar.  Hahaha, I thought.  Wouldn’t that be something if oh my GOD!  Other people I know have applied to go to Mars!?!

Here’s a guy from my high school class back in Tulsa.  No way.  We had nothing in common back then.  He made bad grades and wore 27 rabbits’ feet on his belt. 

Oh.  Well.  OK.  I get it.  Here we go to Mars together.  Me and Mr. Lucky.

But that was only the outer edges of the bizarre.  My eyes drifted upward, to the corner of the screen.  And now spine tingling and hair standing – I swear I could hear the Twilight Zone theme song playing ever so faintly in the background – there are pictures of MY Elvis party on the “Aspiring Martians” webpage with the caption, “Where were these pictures taken?”

Mind boggled.  I rubbed my eyes.  But yes.  There’s the picture of the life-sized cardboard cutout of young Elvis in his gold lame` suit with that one sprig of black hair broken free, resting just so on his forehead … in MY entry hall. 

And THERE I AM!  ME!  In my gold lame` suit and ridiculous black wig and my ludicrous attempt to look cool while sneering like Elvis.

For a moment I thought – is Elvis alive ON MARS!?!  Of course!  Dominoes are falling.  It’s all coming together!  The universe makes sense now!  Hallelujah!  Whoop!  Whoop!  Whoop!

But then reality crashed in – the loud clang of a face-slapping gong – Of course:  “Aspiring Martians” is a Facebook page. 

Mortification.  Sadness.  Dismay. 

Mars One isn’t serious business.  I’ve signed up to be a space cadet.  Aspiring Martians must have used Facebook’s new “graphing” technology and found me because I dressed up like Elvis.  Mr. Lucky and I are just the sort they’re recruiting.

But on reflection and more humbling still, I had to admit, that’s not it.  They didn’t find me.  I found them.  I started the process and then they rooted around in my photos and put them on their page! 

All I can say now is that my world has shifted.  My commitment to the mission is in question.  I won’t ride seven months across the cosmos with a hodge-podge of peculiar people who have no place better to go. 


And I won’t leave earth only to be mocked by those who deny the King.

Helmet Head at the Bates Motel

I don’t want to wind up looking like Norman Bates’s mother.

You remember that scene.  The one in “Psycho” where Vera Miles has found her way into the basement of the house on the hill behind the Bates Motel.  Vera sees Mrs. Bates sitting there with her back to the door. 

“Mrs. Bates?” says Vera tentatively, thinking she’s looking at the back of just about anyone’s mom – at least anyone’s mom who hangs out in a fruit cellar, facing the corner in a rocking chair, and who doesn't turn around at the sound of someone coming into the room. 

No answer.  So Vera reaches for her.  Just to get her attention.  You remember. 

Then, when the chair swivels, shrieking music and horror of horrors!  Mrs. Bates has lost her youthful glow!

That’s kind of what happened to a person I admire – Connie Schultz.  She’s a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and cool person.  She wrote recently about racing through the airport not realizing a young man was trying to catch up to her.  When he finally did reach for her, she turned to meet his startled expression.

“Oh!” he said.  “I thought you were someone else.  You look younger from behind.”

OK.  Less dramatic than the revelation in “Psycho,” but profound nonetheless.

Connie wrote about it in her blog in which she was musing about turning 56 and choosing not to cut her hair.  She said even though she’s middle aged (planning to live to 112, I guess) she didn’t get the “helmet head” memo.

Now gosh darn it that hurt my feelings!  Especially coming from someone whom, in my happiest flights of fancy, I emulate.

It wouldn't have bothered me a month ago, when my hair was still long, as it had been for years and decades. 

But now I've cut it.  Really short!  OMG.  Do I have helmet head?

I've always had “good hair.”  Thick and healthy.  Shiny.  In fact, I was kind of known for my hair.  I’m sure I was invested in it.  If all else failed, I could trump you with my hair.  In some ways, I sort of was my hair.

But I had to acknowledge the incongruity between my hair and my face was becoming more and more pronounced.  I had the sense a couple of times that I was in the midst of a Connie Schultz moment.  But when I swiveled in my rocker, the young man standing there, whose eyes met mine with a question and a wary realization, was at least courteous enough to keep his trap shut.

Still, there’s no denying it.  Once you have read the “you’re getting older” memo, you cannot unread it.

Oh you can walk around oblivious to its arrival like the clueless ones who exit public restrooms trailing stretches of telltale TP. 

Or maybe you can frown and squint at the envelop front and back – this can’t be for me!? 

Some of us walk around like Cher with big hair and big lips, in a sort of “age-related anorexia,” only recognizing the lipstick, and not the pig we have smeared it on.

True, I can’t say I got the memo and cheerily skipped off to the salon for a snip. 

No.  I stewed and stressed and anguished over who I’d be and how I’d look so many times over the years that I could easily have been mistaken for immature, if not young.

Then, right in the middle of the throes of the contortions of the pangs of the anxiety and indecision, I saw a post on that great dispenser of wisdom: Facebook.  It said, “Quit over-thinking, Carolyn.  It ruins everything.” 

All right, Facebook didn't really use my name, but I felt like it was directed at me, a grown woman thrashing around like an infant over a HAIRCUT!

So I did it.  I took the pixie plunge.

And I must say, I look good.  Maybe even better.  Instant face lift.  Grown up, and kind of glam. 

I danced the happy dance in front of the mirror as I made my adjustment to the transformation.  Oh yeah!  I’m rockin’ the short hair.  I’m Sharon Stone.  I’m Helen Mirren at the Oscars.  I’m… a helmet head!? 

I could be deflated.  But no ~ at least I’m not Norman Bates’s mother. 

Aldous Huxley got it right

Item:  Man uses mind to control rat’s tail. 

OK.  Set aside your common sense reaction:  A man decides to use his mind and he uses it for that?  To control a rat’s tail?!   

What about the rat’s breeding habits, or his choice of residence, for example.  Why not use your mind to control one of those more pressing rat proclivities? 

Or how about a man controlling his own impulse to browse the channels for hours on end while the cable guide obscures the picture from other viewers in the room?  What about that? 

Or what if such a man used his mind to remember someone’s birthday, as a suggestion, or her ring size? 

But I digress. 

The point of the news out of BBC Future is that a man in the United States has successfully used his mind to control a rat’s tail in Brazil.  It’s scientifically documented. 

Yeah, me too.  I’m still hung up on the why of it all, but let’s press on. 

It’s a breakthrough, you understand.  The man wired up in a lab here thought “twitch” into an internet connection with the rat’s brain in South America, and voila!  That rodent wagged his hairless appendage as though he thought to do it himself. 

Still feeling a little underwhelmed. 

And they don’t mention any concern regarding reverse signals, from rat brain to man brain.  Nevertheless. 

Very serious grown men with clipboards and grant money, neuroscientists at Duke University, Harvard and the Pentagon, are focused on such brain-computer interfaces.  They are hell-bent it seems, to take steps beyond the already established ability of human brains to commandeer computer cursors, artificial limbs and virtual drones. 

We can extrapolate with confidence that they want that rat to dance to whatever tune is stuck in their heads.  It’s a small world after all.  (Sorry.)  Achieving that pinnacle they most certainly will move on to bigger and more bizarre brain-to-brain interactions. 

Hold that thought.   

Item:  Researchers at the 2012 conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams report lucid dreamers sending signals to each other over the internet while in the dream state. 

These guys strap on their brainwave headbands and when the EEG recognizes they’re in the dream state via rapid eye movement, it alerts them.  The first one to get that signal becomes lucid - self-aware in the dream state - and signals his pal who’s sleeping in another room, or another state.  

These Avant guard techies even created a rudimentary competition in which the dreamer who signals his counterpart first, wins.  Now they’re exploring dreaming-brain-to-dreaming-brain connections via social media.  What a time saver!  Find your perfect mate while you sleep. 

The dream guys jumped ahead of the Pentagon guys and their pet Brazilian rat.  They established a conscious - at least lucid - contact between two human brains in remote locations.  The difference is that the dreamers aren’t trying to control each other, they just want to play. 

And finally:  

Item:  Google has opened a new service to let people control their email, blog posts and online photos posthumously, as concern grows over what happens to a user’s "digital life" when he dies. 

This service allows living Googlers to set up binding instructions for what happens to their electronic legacies when they pass into that great Ethernet in “the cloud.”  It heralds a common clause in wills of the future.  

And it’s worrisome for those of us who’ve had this experience:  One of my LinkedIn connections died a couple of years ago but he continues to ask for my endorsements.  “Does ‘John’ know about project management?” the screen prompts hopefully.  “Does ‘John’ know about Microsoft Word?” 

It’s creepy.  And by the way, “John” was creepy when he was alive.  I didn’t like him in the first place.  We started out as Facebook “friends” because we worked together and I didn’t want to draw his attention by declining his request.  Twisted, I know.  Then, he never even “liked” my posts or LOL’d one time!  I guess he wants sympathy endorsements now! 

In summary:  Mad scientists work feverishly toward methods of controlling us from afar.  Fun-loving researchers develop dazzling means to connect and entertain us.  And search engines allow us to communicate from beyond the grave. 

We have, indeed, a Brave New Electronic World.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

Take a pill!

I saw a post on Facebook this week:  “I've been pleased to find that I can pretty much hide the ‘greens’ taste of kale in my morning juices.  No more ‘squinchy’ face!”   

It’s the little things, isn’t it?  Doesn’t take much at all to make most of us happy, even if we do come across as a bit simple-minded. 

But really, her day seems to have been made.  She can gracefully navigate the vicissitudes of life having beaten the squinchy face.   

More power!  And by all means, keep us apprised! 

Of course, some of us beat the “greens” thing a while back by leaving the kale entirely out of our morning juices.  It’s another way of looking at it.  A new perspective.  I call it the “take a pill” approach. 

You could take a kale pill with your morning juices.  That’s an idea.  I’m sure there’s a kale pill available at GNC.  Look for it alphabetically on the shelf right next to the Krill Oil, between the Horny Goat Weed and the L-Tryptophan.  

What?  Not familiar with Horny Goat Weed?  I’ll confess; I just found it myself when I was shopping online for this column.  Suffice it to say that Horny Goat Weed can be found in the Men’s Health and Vitality section. 

And there’s the L-Tryptophan, available in a tablet or capsule so you don’t have to eat a Thanksgiving turkey to get a good night’s sleep.   

It begs the question as to why anyone would put kale in her morning juices to begin with.  In fact, let me just come right out and say it:  Enough with the kale!   

According to World’s Healthiest Foods, you’re going to need to camouflage two cups a day, five days a week to achieve the maximum, though admittedly prodigious health benefits of this invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-looking plant.  It doesn’t form its own head; that’s why it wants yours! 

I say consume your cruciferous vegetables the way God intended, steamed until limp and smothered in cheese.  That’s the most effective method for cloaking that “greens” taste and to avoid the “squinchy face” which could last all day.   

Or, you could take a pill. 

And while we’re here, what, pray tell, are “morning juices”?  I have a sneaking feeling this a concoction akin to a martini – that combination of unpleasant liquids dressed up in a groovy glass so the consumer can pretend it’s fun to drink even though it produces a squinchy face all its own.   

I’m thinking “morning juices” comprise a Molotov cocktail of murky stuff that’s “good for you” but so unpleasant as to need dim lighting, costumes and makeup before it’s approachable.   

I speak from experience on this:  In the ‘70’s a cousin of mine took up selling supplements in hopes of building a pyramid of personal wealth off his family.  I had a job and so felt compelled to help him out and buy something.  That something turned out to be a jug of aloe vera juice.  He pitched it for its soothing, healing, restorative powers.  Why it would flow through you and right all your internal wrongs. 

And all it took was a capful!  Keep it in the fridge.  Shake it up first thing in the morning; pour it into its own plastic shot glass and slug it down.  I envisioned myself glowing with a sort of fluorescent green well-being.  (He was a pretty good salesman, my cousin.  I wonder where he is now?) 

Day one:  Shake it up.  Drink it down.  Say, that was kind of thick.   

Day two:  Shake it up, swirl it around the cap, drink it!  Hmmm.  Not so much thick as slimy.  Bleach-like.   

Day three:  Pinch your nose and think of the Queen.  Eeeeyah!  Oh!  Oh!  Oh!   

Day four:  Cue the soundtrack from “Jaws.”  Open the fridge.  Bright light in a dark kitchen.  And as God is my witness, when I picked up the bottle the hair on my arms stood up.  

Enough with the aloe vera! 

In retrospect, he did say I could mix it with my orange juice.  But it would take more than an innocent orange to wrestle the healing powers of aloe vera to the ground. 

Don’t do it, I say!  Step away from the kale!  Take a pill.

Don't Worry! Gotcha covered!

Here it is, a public service round up of current news items for your edification and financial benefit: 

In the category labeled “Neener!  Neener!  Neener!” more commonly referred to as “I Told You So,” we find today’s headline from the Associated Press:  “Pentagon project aims to strip satellites for their spare parts” or as the AP dubs it: ‘space grave robbery for a cause.’ 

That’s right.  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), that quirky, fun-loving exploratory wing of the Pentagon, is about to spend $180 million to test technologies that will soar into space and scavenge valuable parts from the orbiting junk yard above our heads.   

(In their kinder, gentler Pentagon vernacular, those inoperable clunkers are denoted by a politically correct euphemism – “retired satellites.”  Being retired myself, I now feel compelled to watch my back, as it were.) 

Here’s the plan:  First, they’ll identify a functional antenna or solar panel from the revolving rubbish overhead and send a robotic mechanic with a toolkit to salvage it.  Then, they’ll launch a bunch of mini-satellites.  THEN, the robot will string together the mini-satellites and hook them up with the old, but perfectly good satellite parts, thereby creating a new communication system right there!  In space!   

It’s recycling!  It’s a time saver!  It’s a money saver!  What could possibly go wrong? 

Here’s the part where I gloat and rub it in:  If you had only listened to me you would already have known this.  You could have invested a wad o’ cash in the project two years ago and be poised right now to rake in the dough.  Oh yeah.  I told you so ‘way back in September, 2011, in my column titled “Your mother doesn’t live in outer space.”   

OK.  Mostly I ranted about the folks at NASA who, like a bunch of sullen teenagers, have to go back into space to clean up after themselves.  But no matter!  DARPA awarded contracts to several companies to develop these new technologies.  And, it is seeking fresh proposals from interested parties now.  Eh?  Eh?!!  

So what do you say?  We could get everyone together, buy a bunch of intergalactic lotto tickets, and chant:  DARPA!  DARPA!!  until our numbers pay off. 

All right.  In other news, Beyonce` lip-synced the national anthem.  

I’ll give you a moment.  I know.  There, there.  

Evidently it was a conspiracy.  She moved her lips and emoted without having to draw a breath (I thought it looked effortless!)  AND the Marine Corps band members pretended to blow into their instruments while the director waved his arms in an impressive display of faux conducting.  

Wow.  They can assemble a transistor radio in outer space, but they can’t master the acoustics on the steps of the Capitol.   

What else?  Lindsay Lohan declined multiple offers topping out at $550,000 to appear on the next season of Dancing with the Stars.  Me too.  Like Lindsay, I like to be selective in my career and lifestyle choices.  Wouldn’t want to lose my credibility. 

OK.  Let’s see.  What’s this?  “Good-cop” brain cells are turning bad and causing Alzheimer’s disease.  Seems these microglia go rogue and prune away necessary synapses causing the cognitive decline so evident in Alzheimer’s patients.  That sucks. Who can you trust anymore if not your own brain cells?   

“Fear of estrogen is needless.”  That’s a relief.  “Ducks and geese can find their own chow.”  Again, relieved. 

Oh, here’s a good one:  “Facebook sparks envy and misery, researchers say.”  OMG!  

According to two studies to be reported at a February conference on information systems, one in three Facebook users reports feeling worse about themselves after viewing vacation photos of their friends on the social networking site.  With its 1 billion users, the researchers characterize Facebook as the largest social comparison site.   

Miserable users also reported feeling envy when they didn’t get as many birthday wishes as others.  That’s right.  Facebook has created one billion 12-year-olds.  Or, I guess technically, it’s only 300 million. 

So what do these envious adolescents do to assuage their jealousy?  They exaggerate their own achievements and post more self-promotional content to make themselves look and feel better.  Of course!  That’s what I do. 

That about sums it up for the week.  Rest easy.  I’m on it!  And, as always: you’re welcome!

This grid makes me itch!

OK, that does it.  Who do I talk to about getting off the grid?

 Oh wait.  No action needed.  Now that I’ve written the phrase, “getting off the grid,” someone will contact me!  Men in Black tapping on my windows with smart phones and flashy thingies in their hands ready to scan me, diagnose my disgruntlement, prescribe and deliver just the right thing to make me feel all better.
 
Most certainly I’ll be seeing ads alongside my Facebook newsfeed touting log cabins, the joys of solitude, composting, and raising worms for pleasure and profit. 

That’s right.  Before long now we won’t have to say much of anything to prompt the newest savvy search engines hovering in “the cloud” overhead to send down a lightning bolt of customized ads catering to our every divergent thought. 

Here’s the deepest darkest news:  If Verizon has its way, your TV’s about to become a two-way mirror.  

That’s right; soon what has been a joyously stress-free passive experience, an evening transfixed in front of the flat screen complete with bad posture and dribble spots on the fronts of our shirts, will be transformed into a self-conscious job interview with Big Brother:  As we gaze in, the plasma will peer back out at us.  Sizing us up.  Playing that game.  You remember the game that used to be innocent whereby you sit in the mall and make up lives and professions for the people you see.   

Technology exists now that enables our TVs to look back at us and say, for example, “butcher,” then send you an ad for an apron with that chart showing shoulders and rump roasts and loins.  You know the one.   

Oh yes.  Verizon, jointly with Comcast, Time-Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, has applied to patent technology that will enable TVs to see directly through into people's homes in order to sell them stuff.  It’s listed under “Dangerous Ideas” on Big Think. 

Get this:  Verizon wants to create a "detection zone" around your TV.  In that zone, sensors built into the TV would catch "ambient actions" taking place in the room and use that information to display relevant advertising on the screen.   

Oh.  My.  God.  If that isn’t the creepiest idea ever to slither its way into the baskets of the snake charmers.  It makes MarkZuckerberg look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. 

FYI – under the watchful eye of your service provider your unguarded behavior is defined in the patent application as “a wide range of activities, from eating to arguing to playing with a pet.”   

If that’s not a hacker’s field day!  You know you’re going to wind up in a video set to music on YouTube, struggling with your Schnauzer over that last bit of strudel. 

The area around the Plath TV encompasses an array cat toys in various stages of mutilation and dismemberment.  It might actually be interesting to see what the commercial response would be to such a crime scene.  Would they alert authorities, or send me my own CSI amateur mystery detective crime-solving kit? 

And what might happen if two people are observed to be “snuggling together” with the TV on?  Included in the patent application is an example of how the technology would work in such a situation:  Ads could appear on screen showing a romantic getaway, a commercial for flowers, [or] a commercial for a contraceptive.  They actually said that.  Like it’s a good idea.  Something people might be glad about.  

In the same vein, Google’s trying to discover our “unmet needs for information” via GPS chips and “other sensors” built into our mobile devices.  Google Now already offers unsolicited directions, weather forecasts, flight updates, and other information when it thinks you need them.   

Contextual data can provide clues about a person and his situation, allowing Google to guess what that person wants.  “We’ve often said the perfect search engine will provide you with exactly what you need to know at exactly the right moment…without your even having to ask for it,” says Jon Wiley, electronic stalker, er, User Experience Designer for Google.  

Ha ha ha!  Thanks Jon!   

Psst!  Rather than getmyself off the grid, I want to get the grid off me!