August 2014 – Sharing the World with the Undead

Not much for alternative medicine here

August 16, 2014July 1, 2016Jocelyn the PlaidBrainstorming, RecommendationsLeave a Reply

The biography jar offered up the following topic: Tell about home cures or old wives’ tales for curing hiccups, warts, toothaches, colds, earaches, birth control, arthritis, etc.

Ummm… The jar strikes again. What kind of a silly topic is this? We don’t have many such cures here. I suppose I could record a few:

Professional development meetings can be cured by massages that last at least one hour.

There are no cures for colds. Drambuie may nevertheless seem medicinal. Saline nose spray never hurts.

No one should ever try any old wive’s tale for birth control. The best cure for curing birth control — if you want to read the sentence above literally — will be pregnancy although menopause serves equally well.

Directly applying Selsun Blue to a fungal infection caught from a cat will cure the infection after doctors have failed you. I remember this one from my twenties. I did not want to pay for a culture so my mom suggested the Selsun Blue plan first. I will recommend this unusual home cure. It saved me a lot of money. You end up with red, irritated skin for about a week but eventually that passes and you are cured.

Need a home cure for anxiety? Meditation alleviates anxiety. So does hypnosis. Spirit animals and animal manifestions of your inner child can also prove useful.

Readers: What does your inner child look like? The toddler-you has a great deal of wisdom. She/he knows when you are doing things that are not fun, for example. The toddler-you will naturally steer you away from tedious obligations and toward hot fudge sundaes. If you think life is not enough fun lately, you might try visualizing the toddler-you. Find yourself and have a conversation.

You don’t need to listen. If she says, “Quit that job now!” you might want to reason with her. But older is not necessarily smarter. Wisdom can be learned. Wisdom can also be forgotten.

Readers: Do you have home cures? What are they? Feel free to journal on this topic.

Having merged the blogs, I will make one zombie observation: That idea where you cover yourself in zombie blood to avoid attracting the zombies? Ummmm, do the words “blood-borne virus” sound any of the cymbals in your cortex?

For zombie fluids management, I offer one word: Bleach.

Or even better, as mommy used to say, “Don’t touch!”

What is your favorite soup?

August 8, 2014August 8, 2014Jocelyn the PlaidFavoritesLeave a Reply

My soup favorites change with time. Clam Chowder has always been a contender. Various squash soups run high on the list. My current favorite is pozole. I liked the Panera Bread version so much that I bought a couple of cups to go and told Albert to reproduce the contents of those paper cups. He has become much better at pozole than Panera ever was. He still can’t reproduce Popeye’s Red Beans and Rice, but I’ve enjoyed eating his progress. It’s fun to hand Albert a challenge.

We have this perfect system here. He cooks. I eat. He never complains either. He’s watched me destroy eggs and other simple ingredients often enough to know that he should man the frying pan. Years ago I cooked an over-easy egg that I photographed because of its uncanny resemblance to a razor clam. The pic above is a real clam since the other clam rests in a box somewhere but, except for the fact that one clam sits in a frying pan, the two look pretty much the same.

Favorite family places

August 6, 2014August 21, 2016Jocelyn the PlaidCharacteristic, FavoritesLeave a Reply

The slip from the jar asks a disquieting question: What is a favorite family place to go with your spouse and kids? This question ought to be a no-brainer. When I was a kid, the answer for my parents would have been camping at the Pacific Ocean. We pitched our tent regularly and those cold ocean beaches remain my favorite places on the planet.

My family cannot provide a clean answer. Albert seldom ventures out of his man cave and favors museums. Albert, Sam and I have enjoyed multiple trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, for example, dragging poor Abby along most of the time. Abby does not like museums much, especially those filled with two-dimensional art. She has more tolerance for science and industry, natural science and modern art/sculpture, but if we gave up museums altogether, I doubt she’d mourn their passing. Sam and I enjoy European churches. Abby likes them about as much as she likes museums, maybe less.

When the children were young, they attended many science fiction conventions with me. Sam went to Windycon because it was across from Woodfield mall, I think. Abby got dragged along. She sometimes seemed to be enjoying herself, but a desire to learn Klingon has never manifested itself.

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The girls and I like festivals. We have seen numerous strawberry, chocolate and apple festivals in Long Grove. We eat, shop and wander. They used to ride the ponies. We have been to the Renaissance Faire annually for many of our years. Will we make it this year? Maybe not. Abby has begun putting her foot down. She will not go if the temperature runs much above the low seventies. Outdoor heat wipes her out.

The girls and I love visiting grandparents and many, many miles have been logged between O’Hare and SeaTac airports. Albert has not gone for years, though. The clutter upsets his OCD nature and parent houses are about 2 for 10 on the accessibility scale. Still, for the three girls in the family, trips to the Tacoma waterfront, to Mineral Lake, to Mount Rainier and Seattle probably rank as the family favorites.

So we’re a bit dysfunctional here. Sam and I enjoy travel to far places. The train shot at the top of this post shows a German countryside out the window. Abby does not share our enthusiasm, but has seen Korea and some parts of Europe in spite of herself. We fragment our activities into threesomes, twosomes and an occasional foursome for dinner. Everybody loves food. We all like to go to Kiki’s Bistro or Miller’s Pub in Chicago. The other semi-regular, foursome activities are family dinner and watching British mysteries in the front room after dinner.

Readers: Are you writing your journal yet? This topic might be a great place to start.

What political party comes closest to expressing your own point of view?

August 5, 2014August 5, 2014Jocelyn the PlaidFavoritesLeave a Reply

The biography jar threw out a tricky topic, one I tend to stay away from in posts and daily life. Among other considerations, I believe that political oratory becomes largely wasted by the late twenties. By middle-age, nobody changes nobodies mind no how. I can put all the cogent arguments in favor of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party together, express them perfectly and I will still get exactly nowhere if my goal is to change someone else’s mind. I may clarify my own thinking, but that’s another issue.

Our minds are made up. That’s part of the problem today. We reject the facts that don’t support our views as mistaken and may even classify these views as malicious propaganda. We latch on to facts that support our views, often without reviewing sources and agendas. Americans have become polarized and, unfortunately, the best strategy I know for dealing with this clustering at the poles seems to be avoidance. You go your way, I’ll go mine.

That said, perhaps it’s time for America to reject the “wasted vote” argument. The idea that we have to vote for a democrat or republican because any other vote is useless has led many people to implicitly support a system that may not deserve our support. If we all vote repuplican or demoprat, how will we ever truly protest our leaders’ failures? These last few years have shown an appalling inability to compromise on both sides.

Next time, I think I will vote for Gary Johnson or his successor. I am more Libertarian than anything else. I want to suck a lot of government out of education and business for the sake of students and small business owners everywhere. I want my doctor friends to be able to practice medicine without losing hours and hours to paperwork each week. I want less government intervention and more personal freedom. I encourage others to vote for the Green Party, the Justice Party or whatever party most meshes with their personal views.

We are overdue for a protest vote. The problem with picking the lesser of two evils is that the lesser-evil may view their “win” as a mandate, and that mandate as an excuse not to work with the other party. I’d like to send both parties a message: We don’t want these extremes. We want our parties to communicate and work together.

(Actually, I’d like a Libertarian government. But I’d settle for a more functional one that listened to what the electorate wanted — all of the electorate — and acted accordingly.)

Do/did you have a favorite magazine? Describe what you enjoy about this magazine.

August 2, 2014August 7, 2014Jocelyn the PlaidCharacteristic, FavoritesLeave a Reply

Artist unknown.

Another slip has been drawn from the biography jar. Favorite magazine? I’ve subscribed to a few, neglected many. My magazines mostly become end table décor. I appreciate “The Economist” because of its global perspective and regular attempts at objectivity. Bias in the news has reached levels that mostly keep me away from domestic news sources. Liberal or conservative, local pundits bring too many axes to bear as they hatchet away at their subjects. For example, I love Charles Krauthammer, but let’s be real: Is it really possible that Obama has never done anything right during his entire term? I did read Entertainment for awhile. I like to keep up on my Who Doctors and other favorite TV characters. I did read Analog. Science fiction short stories delivered to the house are always a win.

All told, I prefer comic books to news magazines. I avoid entertainment magazines because I never have enough time for my to-do list as it is. When I read, I read books. I also surf the net, link by link tracing Ebola’s progress. The net has subsumed my magazines, I suspect. Readers: Are you reading magazines? Are you reading more or fewer magazines? If you are not reading magazines, why not? This could be your journal topic for the day. Or not.