Be lean and mean it

Warning: the following contains a confessional diatribe in which I castigate myself for inviting a cold virus to take me hostage, which it did.

It has been a couple of years since my last confession - and a couple of years since my last cold. I say this, not to brag about how healthy I am (the good ole boys used to say if it's true it ain't braggin' but that's bullshit), but to make the observation that these things aren't random. I brought it on myself. I have sinned, and when one strays from the path of righteousness, clean living, and daily workouts, one pays the price by reaping a harvest of head congestion, runny nose, frequent fog-horn blasts into a soggy handkerchief, and horribly mixed metaphors.

I sowed the seeds of the first cold of the year by spending the time I woulda coulda shoulda been moving around out in the fall weather but instead sat at my desk hunched over an editing project that was due. Make that overdue. I consciously chose to do the sedentary yet profitable task of vigorously moving a pencil around a two-dimensional surface instead of going outside, riding my bike, tai-ing my chi, walking the dog, balancing the internal energy - and instant karma's gonna get you.

And so it did come to pass that my body welcomed the ever-present virus, which made itself at home in the warm, moist cellular environment of my weak, vulnerable mucous membrane, where the virus and its progeny lived a long and healthy one-week lifespan disrupting the normal healthy functioning of my upper respiratory tract, making me blow my nose every hour on the hour. All because I skipped a few workouts. Like I needed further evidence that nobody gets away with anything in this life.

My body (and probably yours) is like a small but complex ecosystem, in which organ systems, like little cell cities, take in nutrients in order to do their work. Some of what they produce is toxic sludge that must be disposed of or it will poison the environment and make the system break down. The thing is, once the organs are conditioned to a certain amount of internal cleansing through daily exercise, fresh air, water, and the occasional habanero pepper, any interruption of that cycle causes a bad reaction. Ergo, if I don't work out, my usually clean system reacts more than one might expect, because it expects the toxic sludge to be gone.

It also happens to be getting colder outside, but that's not why I "caught a cold" - the misnomer that keeps people inside in the winter. On the contrary, my experience is just the opposite: I'm less likely to get sick if I go outside every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, and condition my internal ecosystem to adapt to the external elements. Typically I'm a little chilly (hands, feet, nose) for the first ten minutes, and then the internal furnace kicks in and I warm up.

The warmed-up body, pumping blood and breathing deeply, brings energy to the limbs and releases toxins to the atmosphere (thank you, trees and other flora for taking over the clean-up at this point). Voila! Mobile immune system in action, warding off bad karma by playing outside.

Just for the record, I'm feeling much better now. My message to the universe: wake-up call received, will not skip any more workouts than absolutely necessary, whatever that means, because the margin for error is as thin as the insulating fat layer on my skinny body.

I'd like to thank...

"...God and my family and my teammates." That may not be an exact quote, but that's the gist of what the young man said to the TV announcer after leading his team to victory. He went on to describe what went right for Illinois and what a long way they've come since they lost to Ohio State a year ago.

As postgame on-field interviews go, it seemed harmless enough. The kid, Juice Williams, had played remarkably well, making smart plays at crunch time in a huge win against the number-one-ranked team in the country. Considering that he is a college sophomore, probably 19 years old, playing quarterback in the Big Ten, getting this kind of attention on national TV, I thought he conducted himself well. Rather than acting like God's Gift to Football, he gave all the credit to the people around him and his notion of a higher power. What's not to like?

I was somewhat stunned the next morning in church when Rev. Susan, whom I like and respect for her depth and humor, voiced her superficial and humorless objections to the young man's remarks. What she heard - that he thanked God for His help in defeating the other team, for blessing the Illini instead of the Buckeyes - was quite different from what I heard - that he credited others for his success, that he was grateful for being able to play so well. I guess it's a fine line.

Back in the days when the Boston Celtics ruled pro basketball, their center was an enlightened being named Bill Russell. Besides being an extraordinarily quick and strong six-foot-nine, Russell was a defensive genius and a team player par excellence who had a knack for raising the performance of everybody on both teams to another level. After his retirement he wrote an article describing the fleeting joy of taking part in the kind of competition (LL "seeking together" according to Web10) where who wins or loses is almost beside the point.

Almost - not quite - because everybody is trying; otherwise they wouldn't be "seeking together" or raising each other to a higher level of performance. Dig?

Blessing and being blessed are complicated, and to Rev. Susan's credit, she went on to unpack some of the complexities of giving thanks, and it is that time of year. What I find irritating is the assumption that the big jock sure can run, he sure can throw, but he's too simple-minded to conceive of anything more subtle than "Please God Help Us Win" - the sports equivalent of "God Bless Our Troops." Righteously indignant nonathletes are quick to judge those who actually play the game (rather than sitting on the couch) and quick be appalled at the silly tribal behavior of both players and fans.

To be fair, I too rage at some of the gifted assholes who get rich and famous while abusing their bodies, their opponents, their peers, the public, their spouses, and their drug of choice. The sports section of the paper is full of their names and their egos. I also have major theological differences with the Illinois quarterback, which I hope to discuss with him while we throw the ball around.

But it's not the theological question of where the blessings come from that has me steamed up. It's the distribution of blessings. When warmonger patriots proudly plant "God bless our troops" in their front yards, they are explicitly directing their pious request at the armed forces attacking and conquering another country, implicitly excluding Iraqi troops (evildoers) from that blessing. When liberal intellectuals decry the sophomore quarterback's thanking his god for a good game, they can't conceive of a universalist deity showering strength, speed, and agility on 22 undergraduates at one time and enjoying the game.

Thank you, earth and sky, wind and water, birds and beasts, flowers and trees, all cells of one body.

gang colors

Yo, where's your gang colors?

Sorry, I'm not in uniform today. My OSU hoody shrank from XL to M ten years ago, and I last saw my only remaining Michigan T-shirt when using it to wash windows some time in the eighties. My old Oberlin T-shirt is a threadbare shadow of its former self, and it's too cold to wear a T-shirt anyway. I still have some Kent State gear, but I wore that last year, prompting one compassionate conservative co-worker to inform me, "That's where they kill students."

Thank you, B, I didn't know that.

That covers most of my college allegiances. So I chose to wear a dark green plaid in honor of Oregon. I never went to school there, but I have a friend who did, and one of my Ann Arbor roommates now lives in Eugene - does that count?

I'm tempted to wax philosophical about the significance of adorning our bodies with totemic symbols of group affiliation, but I don't have the energy. I guess the warrior archetype got beat up in the parking lot by the worker-drone archetype, and the shaman archetype just looked the other way. And no, I'm not packing heat, unless the Swiss Army knife in my briefcase qualifies as a weapon and is therefore banned on school, um, company property.

Hey, where's your school spirit? (I left it at the office.)

Parker

I have a secret crush. Promise not to tell anyone? She is the cutest, funniest, strongest, smartest, most adorable, honest, fearless, clever...

Actress.



I realize it's not the same to have a crush on a movie star as it is to have a crush on your ninth-grade Spanish teacher (remember Mrs. Forrest in Garden City? Woo-hoo!) or the co-worker half your age (doesn't everybody over a certain age?) or the debutante-dancer-Platonist of the first midlife, um, event (which is another story), but still, crushes are harmless infatuations, right? It might as well be Parker Posey as Mrs. Forrest. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely a figment of my overactive imagination.

The fact is, I am now able to declare openly that for several weeks, in the privacy of Om Shanty, in the company of the mostly-tolerant Gven Golly ("He's going through a phase"), and under the bemused gaze of Zelda Golly ("Whatever"), I've been staging, attending, and enjoying a Parker Posey Film Festival. A brief, critically annotated filmography of what I've seen of her oeuvre so far:

Adam & Steve - Slightly gross (to get your attention) and well-intentioned coming-out story about oddly matched gay couple, with Parker as supportive friend.
Best in Show - Hilarious send-up of dog owners with Parker as yuppie control freak.
Blade Trinity - Live-action comic book action hero Wesley Snipes and mod squad fight archcriminals, including Parker as twisted villainess.
Broken English - Probably her best work to date, as a grown-up urban sophisticate learning to deal with jerks, idiots, nice people, and the difficulty of all relationships.
Clockwatchers - Cute, ironic tragicomedy of alienated office workers' loyalty and spite, with Parker as spite.
Daytrippers - Remarkable ensemble cast as urban family with issues, with kooky sister Parker alongside Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Ann Meara.
Fay Grim - Sequel to 'Henry Fool' with aging actors reprising roles with remarkable finesse, but you should see 'Henry' first if you want to follow a narrative.
For Your Consideration - Over the top movie-making character types.
Frankenstein - Strong role as police investigator in weak movie that's mostly dark, damp, industrial atmosphere.
Henry Fool - Oblique drama of family dysfunction, outsider art, domestic violence, survival, and coffee, with Parker as brittle sister.
Laws of Attraction - Never mind, Parker typecast as crazy rock and roll girl.
The OH in Ohio - Brilliant, how you say, coming with age comedy with help from Danny DeVito and other devices.
Party Girl - Delightful urban coming-of-age comedy in which Parker has an epiphany with the Dewey Decimal System.
Personal Velocity - Three short films of great power, with Parker in the middle as a conflicted editor working through tough father, mother, and other issues.
Scream 3 - Never mind, Parker typecast as superficial Courtney Cox wannabe.
Superman Returns - Disappointing in so many ways, even Kevin Spacey's Lex Luther with Parker as sidekick can't salvage it.
Waiting for Guffman - Forgetable, forgotten.
You've Got Mail - Never mind, Parker typecast as teddy-bear Tom's evil girlfriend and foil for good-girl Meg.

There's even a decent interview with her in the current issue of Bust, in which she says "Hi" to the man staring at her in the restaurant, and gives the following enlightened answer to the age-old professional woman question of whether she wants to have kids: "If it happens, it happens. I just want to have interesting experiences."

STRIKE

A writer friend has brought up a subject I haven't heard mentioned in a long time. I also haven't read Harper's in a long time, so maybe it's just my being out of touch. And to many people just the words general strike sound very Sixties French New Left. Anyway who has the time? Who hasn't bought into the the neofascist security state, if only by silent submission? Can they send all of us to Guantanamo?

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? (Garret Keizer, Harper's, October 2007)

Correct me if I'm wrong, history geeks, but my understanding is that groups of people go on strike when they are excluded from other means of influencing policy, either public or private. When workers have no leverage because their interests are not represented, when prisoners are silenced or otherwise treated as objects, or when students without rights are herded like livestock through the diploma mill. Everyone can draw their own conclusions about whether voters fall into that category.

An Election Day general strike would set our remembrance of those people free from the sarcophagi of rhetoric and rationalization. It would be the political equivalent of raising them from the dead. It would be a clear if sadly delayed message of solidarity to those voters in Ohio and Florida who were pretty much told they could drop dead. (Keizer)

Tell me to get over it, but is anyone really convinced that the electoral process was served in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004? And remind me again how it helps the general public to accept unquestioningly the results of a rigged election. (Chorus offstage: It's a terrible system and far better than European multiparty chaos or any other current system. It isn't perfect, but it's stable, and changing the election process would be too disruptive. Elections and the illusion of majority rule have always been corrupted by money and influence, so how is this any different?)

But we don’t have to do it, you will say, because “we have a process.” Have or had, the verb remains tentative. In regard to verbs, Dick Cheney showed his superlative talent for le mot juste when in the halls of the U.S. Congress he told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. He has since told congressional investigators to do the same thing. There’s your process. (Keizer)

Maybe what I should do it let other's make their case. Here are some other voices on this issue

My frustration shows whenever I speak about this maimed democracy, as it did the other night in an otherwise calm conversation about the ghost of stolen elections past. I think what is most damaging is the complicity of the losing parties - both the political party that loses the election and the voters who vote against their own interests, e.g. tax cuts for the wealthy - in this perversion of "free elections."

Grant me the energy to do what I can do, the serenity to sleep at night when it doesn't work, and the wisdom to wake up and smell the coffee. Or something like that.