The Biggest Loser

The smoke is almost clear, well more clear than most of what is in my head. This time the smoke wasn’t the voices burning popcorn up there. I stride up to my makeshift podium.

This blog is going to be great again. It is going to be SOOOooo Great. There are so many ways I can go with it. Mark Twain and Will Rogers are spinning in their graves because they can’t be here. Eat your hearts out fellas. I am though I can’t really carry your torches.

There were three really great events this year; in Cleveland, in Chicago, and in the presidential election. I predicted all three incorrectly so if you are looking for wisdom you might as well click another link. I’ll give humor my best shot since that is what this blog is supposed to be about. By the way, the devil got at least the last one right but he cheated. He owns the top three horses in the race.

The departing democrats might do us a favor by swiping all the computer keyboards instead of just the “W” keys as they leave.

Pennsylvania really was the “Keystone State” as they put the Donald over the top. It’s going to take at least a day or two to clean all the crap off of the floor where the democrats’ victory party was supposed to carry on through the night. My wife thought she had it rough with the new puppy … Hillary may yet show up to thank her supporters … or not. That reminds me; I have to phone a friend in Pennsylvania today to thank him for his vote.

Reality TV has become real life. This one is the Biggest Loser season finale. The real biggest loser might be the audience which I have been pointing out for years now. Of course, also like the TV reality shows we were given plenty of drama over the past year and a lot of viewers don’t like the final result. Hillary probably won’t be invited back for a third shot, thankfully.

The only real winners were the humor writers who are probably going to have plenty of fodder for the next few years. This event reminds me of the elephant that has been eating junk food for quite a while but has a large cork in his butt. The voters just pulled the plug. It’s going to be pretty messy for a while but it’s going to get better soon. It has to.

Then again, we haven’t heard the punch line yet. With a new President in Trump and a republican congress it’s coming soon. It could be really great or fall flat. The professional writers haven’t written this one.

We are about to find out how much Donald likes Putin, if Trump really knows more than the generals, and maybe witness some grade school play-yard negotiations. I wonder how many great looking women will be offered spots in his cabinet and how many will accept. We know there will be one in the white house, though probably not as many as there were during Bill’s presidency, not counting Hillary of course. The fun is just starting.

 It may not be just the evangelicals calling Dial-a-Prayer now.

   Yes. The democrats have been kicked out of the house and they are taking their trash with them or it is about to be tossed out. I have to wonder if Obama’s portrait will hang in the hall of presidents facing out and, if it is, will it look anything like him? Why be honest now? I might be saying the same about Trump in four years. I know I’d be saying it about Hillary if she had won.

Gary Johnson is the only one of the top candidates who got any sleep last night, probably with the help of a good joint. I know I didn’t until the iron wall of the rust belt disintegrated before the eyes of the Clinton family.  Of course, this frees up the Clinton foundation to wreak havoc, though the donations might dry up fairly quickly with neither the Godfather nor the Godmother soon to be wielding political power any time soon. Someday soon the thesaurus is going include “regime” “conspiracy” and “connivance” after “Foundation”.

Right at the start the employment picture should get worse. A lot of pollsters and prognosticators have failed at their jobs. The picture might get brighter for the airlines fairly quickly though. A lot of people said they would leave the country if Trump won. I think one was a Supreme Court justice. We’ll get a good picture of his her its honesty now.

Reading back over this … it’s time for me to take a nap but then again it usually is.

Pardon the delay

I’m back. I’d apologize but it really wasn’t my fault I was gone so long. I was abducted by aliens. The experience was out of this world. Before I get back to the search for the root of all disease which I may have found on the trip, I’ll give you a quick rundown in case I die before I can write a book or two about it, or anything else.

While I was busy rummaging around in my wife’s meds looking for something to ease the pain of my paper cut I set aside a few pills that looked pretty. It was shortly after I took those the aliens arrived. The paper cut was then the least of my problems.

A whole herd of little gray-greene creatures with oversized heads like I used to draw in art class showed up about the time I blacked out. The last thing I remember that made sense was the display on my bedside clock reading 11:14 PM. The next time I looked it displayed 11:15 PM but I’m pretty sure it was not the same day because all of a sudden I was very hungry even after the aliens took me to dinner.

Not that they went to any great expense to do it. As I recall I was at a greasy spoon joint in the worst part of rural Maine which most people avoid. The place served grits as a side for all meals and rather than salt and pepper shakers they had weird looking jars with really big holes in the lids to serve cilantro and anise seed. It was food hell with Moxie being the only thing to wash it down with. The only desserts they had left were a couple large slices of strawberry-rhubarb pie. Reading back, I can see why I am still so hungry.

Most of the details from my trip with them are kind of foggy like algebra class was only worse. I remember falling asleep sort of … and then waking up with cat hair all over me. I’m glad I wasn’t awake for whatever they did. This morning I woke up with a mole on my butt that I’d never seen before. I went to examine it more closely when I finished my shower but it was gone.

My biggest worry is that they might have tagged me for follow up examinations or, even worse, to see where I go. The first place they are going to see is the VA emergency room where I am going to ask them to scan me to see if the aliens really did insert tracking devices. They probably won’t keep me there very long.

Tonight and all the nights in the future I am going to start locking my doors. I’d close the windows too but I’m not going to let fear of aliens keep me from enjoying the fresh Maine breezes this winter. That would be crazy.

I hate to leave you abruptly but if I am going to get there before the emergency room closes I have to get going before the last saucer takes off.

Still Stumbling Around in the Mind ...

It occurs to me I might be conducting drive-bys without giving these folks a fair chance. A lot of things occur to me but I’ve learned to ignore them. Usually it’s just the voices pulling pranks on me. This time, during my visit with Phylameana Lila Desy, I’m going to follow at least some of the paths on her web site.

Phyl is a holistic Healing expert. My first guess is she doesn’t limit herself much in tackling your problems (I have none). She’s the kind of expert who can start you off by telling you healing can take months, years, or a lifetime, so she does. That’s probably about what my doctor would tell me and I’m betting he has spent a lot more time in a big expensive medical school than she has. That puts her way ahead in the game, right?

Looking at that simple (in the nicest sense) statement, I can’t find anything wrong with it, or any other options either, unless there is somebody even better who can clean things up in minutes or hours. There’s probably not enough profit in it for many to take that road. I mean people would really like it but when they got a bill for five hundred dollars for a ten-minute session, they’d look a little askance at it. They might complain to their friends.

The word dis-eases is import-ant to her, She uses it off-ten, encouraging me to take an-other look at the words I have been spelling in the convent- ional way (changing them doesn’t always work).

Anyway, she advocates treating imbalances (we’re back to the mind again, not the inner ear) of Hereditary dis-eases, childhood imprinting, and earlier life Drama and Trauma. I sort of thought I had a handle on these things thanks to my recent reading in researching these blogs (yeah, right) and, in general living over six decades or so. I feel especially close to the drama thing just about every time I turn the TV on. Are there any healthy minded people, other than me, left on Earth?.

I’m was still a little befuddled by the law of attraction that has popped up in every investigation so far. She cleared all that up. “People who are efficient in attracting positives have trained their minds to focus on their desires. Abundance comes to them naturally. They wouldn’t blink an eye if someone suggested they don’t deserve something. It isn’t part of their reality.” Should I read that “I’m getting mine. The hell with anyone else”?

I guess the next step, which is writing a gratitude journal, should come pretty easily for those law abiding folks. In fact, it seems logical they should be able to get someone to write it for them. She gives me a lot of help in what a gratitude journal is. That’s a large enough subject to earn its own blog, or at least attract one. I’ll tackle that later.

Following her path, I took a chakra test. There are seven chakras within you, or at least eight if you keep going beyond the traditional ones. They come together in that eighth one she calls the foot chakra located, surprisingly, under your foot.  To sum up my results my foot shakra is closed (not a good thing) and God hates me, but Everybody else admires me and I am having great sex. Sounds about right.

If I really want to fix my weak shakras she links me up with Carol Tuttle who will send me some CD’s, a manual and instructions for a couple hundred bucks. If I sign up right away, there are some bonuses I’ll get. I wonder if she was friends with Ron Popeil.

She lists a lot of other people I should probably get to know on my journey to good health, but after stopping by Carol’s place, I probably won’t. About the only one I’m pretty sure I can trust is the Dalai Lama.

Another tip which should help me is to awaken my creative muse. She wouldn’t dare to suggest it if she was more familiar with the voices. I let them sleep as much as they want to in hopes I won’t see much jail time. Besides, when they are awake they like to make popcorn but are pretty bad at it. That burnt popcorn smell sticks around for days.

Another of her references is Julie Cameron, who thinks it’s a good idea to fill three pages with words and then shred them without reading them, an appalling piece of advice. I write more than that and let other people shred them. It makes at least two people more joyful. Remember that law of attraction?

It's the Mind's Fault part II

Google led me to Mary Ann Chase and the next step in pinning down the root of all health problems. I followed the links and learned that Mary Ann Chase, whose site is the evidently about the healing whisper or something, also thinks the root of all illness is in the mind. I could only follow her so far down that road for health reasons. Apparently dizziness is contagious.

Let’s start with the concept of a program designed to help you reach wellness that begins each episode with a disclaimer stating the show should not be used to attain anything like that.

I’ve got to admit she is pretty clear with some of her explanation like not trusting God, yourself, or someone else being a lack of trust. If you don’t trust, that is a lack of trust, she further explains. That shivered my timbers almost as much as information telling me if you don’t trust your partner, your reproductive system may or may not work. I knew there was a good reason I should merely use her show for background noise.

Mary is a nice Oklahoma country girl who has managed to shake most of an Oklahoma country girl accent, assuming she had one. She escaped the country and got her bachelor degree, along with a bachelor, at Oral Roberts University. She and her new husband moved to Colorado where she finished a DDS degree and spent the next twenty years exploring and improving mouths. That alone should get her past the pearly gates but she has since padded her resume.

Tired of the stress inherent in the tooth repair industry, if nothing else that would have driven me a little closer to nuts, she did whatever she had to and collared a certification, or permission, or something to become a practitioner of the healing code. To think, I stopped after conquering the Morse code. This lady is a real go-getter, but I’m not sure what she got.  

I won’t be getting any closer to finding out as the pace of the show and a few other things are more than I can handle. Perhaps if I take up dentistry for a couple decades I’ll be ready.

Early on she explained that when you have conflicting thoughts to deal with, it triggers the adrenal gland to get busy. If you don’t handle the resulting adrenaline properly it will attack the weakest point in the body (out of spite?) creating illness. Soon after, she gave some clear examples of energy. About the time she added chiropractic tapping and rakki to the list I ran out of ink. I think there was some continuity to her guided tour to wellness but I wasn’t able to keep taking notes.

I do remember she had an unconnected quote from Albert Einstein. I wonder if that is a requirement of the explanations I’m going to encounter. It’s two for two so far. Also true, the root of all illness has been loaded on the mind with the same consistency. Maybe I’m going to find out it’s all Al’s fault.

I’ve probably said enough about this stop on the trip and most likely won’t be gathering any more intelligence here, for number of good reasons. Besides, I have to go fix the blinking “DINGBAT” alarm over the door that must be malfunctioning, evidently. Remember, this is a humor blog and is not intended to make anyone laugh.

To your health ... or not

I stumbled onto this blog recently and decided to wake it up … for a while. Since there are several followers who may also wake up, I need to do something to resolve that. Perhaps if I alienate all of them I can just let this thing die and not disappoint anybody.

After a whole lot of thought I thought I’d set sail on the Interweb and see what was going on that I could disparage and upset those still willing to read on, even if only one of them at a time. I found it.

While far too many people like to talk about their health if you make the mistake of asking them how they are, most don’t like to talk about their prospect for living. Many, if not most, assume they are, or will, or won't.

To do that much beyond the age of four, most people eventually need medical help, or intervention, or insurance. That insurance thing sometimes determines what kind of the other stuff you will get. If the current trend continues nobody is going to be able to afford it much longer. With that in mind you can cross medical help off the list. Since many alternative medicine proponents cite part of the problem with modern scientific medicine is that doctors are in it for the money, many of the alternative options must be free or within the bounds of out-of-pocket change. Time to look at the intervention alternatives is fast approaching.

There a LOT of those and I’m here to discredit them all. In other words, you might as well face it; you are all going to die. Why fight it?

Self-described skepdoc Harriet Hall says there are over 67 individual single causes for all illness revealed on the internet. That makes at least as much sense as some of the discourses. Though her ability to discuss some of them via youtube might be better researched than mine and actually make sense, they take a lot longer to get through than my attempt, unless you last through all the 67 plus blog postings I’m going have to write. I’m betting I can probably stop after 32 or so if I live that long. My chances are pretty good. I have the VA.

Best case, everybody is attached to at least one of these beliefs and cures and will abandon me as I shoot across their bows. Like each of those, I have offered you nothing worth hanging onto yet, Isn’t that ironic? At least you have idea what is, or at least might be, coming, which is better than what you will get from these choices.

You could, but probably won’t help me on the chase and quest if you just tell me what you subscribe to but I probably won’t pay any attention to you, a reaction you might do well to have in regard to any alternative medicine.

In keeping with standard practice around here, I’m about half way through researching the following, posted on the internet via a now defunct site, once again for sale, by Lorenzo P. If the mood hits me I’ll find out who he is and what his credentials are, not that they are likely to amount to much.

Lorenzo’s article is about as well edited as my novels are before I submit them to a real editor. That disturbs me. This guy who might be out to save my life obviously cuts corners.

He begins by eliminating the competition. He tells me scientific method is unable to find a cure to all illness, comparing doctors to auto mechanics. If he is right, CRAP! He uses unrelated quotes from genius Albert Einstein and the sage efficiency of Shamans to buttress his conclusions in a really round about manner. It only bothers me a little that the shamans had a bit of a tussle with smallpox. The one case he uses to set the scene for HIS success is introduced as fictional. I guess the real survivors don’t want to be bothered by an interested press siege.

He offers an understanding that all illness stems from the mind housing two or more conflicting beliefs with those eventually coming to the fore at the same time. Those with a one track mind might be the only ones to last on earth as long as cockroaches. That last is my conclusion, not his. When his scenario occurs there is stress, which causes all your health problems.

There is a solution though. Just follow these instructions.

Number one is to be happy all of the time. I suppose that could limit a lot of things you do now, like sports betting, marriage, using grits as a side dish, and eating at sushi bars. There might be others. He suggests starting a gratitude journal might help you in this effort. I don’t.

Next comes discovering your conflicting beliefs that might someday face off somewhere in your mind and kill you along with the loser of their fight. This is going to take some time if you are over seven, which is the age by which most of them have been implanted. There’s a lot I don’t remember about those early years, or even last week, so your failing this is his most probable reason why you are going to die. But if you are a believer, what the hell, go for it.

Then he says “STOP THE WAR”. Unless this is a sudden display of pacifism I suppose you should do something about your mental conflict. No clear set of instructions is presented, but you better do it at the peril of your life.

To clean up any failure in obtaining peace treaties you should next analyze all of your health shortcomings and figure out which conflicts are behind them. Resolve those and you can be happy again, I suppose.

Lastly, while you are doing all of this remain active. I guess you are going to have to think on the move. What you can do to accomplish that without violating rule one leaves me wondering if you might not be right back there struggling to be happy any time soon. I’ll schedule the coroner for you.

Time to change the time again

  Endlessly, year after year, twice per annum, at least since I’ve been charge of the job, I have faithfully picked up time pieces, wrestled alarm clocks from deep under the bed, tugged clocks off of walls, and punched beeping buttons on all sorts of newfangled things. All of this because some idiot thinks we can save time by resetting clocks.

 Last I checked, there are still 24 hours in a day, or there about, depending how picky you want to be. I’ve wasted a whole lot more time than I’ve saved in this process. The idiot owes me a whole lot of time, but I’ll never have enough of it to wait for him to pay me back. On the other hand, I’ve been told I’m living on borrowed time more than once, but we’ll leave that discussion and balance sheet for another day.

 All of that twisting and turning and pressing has led to it being pretty hard to tell what time it is to do what around here. It’s led to disregard, if not disdain, for schedules by me. Being retired helps and lessens the pain from doing that, mostly anyway. The cat is not all that happy with meals schedules and is willing to discuss the problem with me.

 Most of my angst stems from that silly “spring forward, fall back” or “fall forward, spring back” thing. Problem is, I can never remember which one it is. Neither one makes as much sense as they both do. The trouble began with the solution I came up with quite a few years back. It seemed sensible at the time.

 Not being sure which it was, I figured I might as well turn some of the clocks forward, some back, and leave a couple right where they were, especially the ones I couldn’t find. As far as the car goes, who knows how to reset that damned thing anyway? Something had to be right. Being married, this didn’t bother me as much as it did my wife. I was used to being told what to do when anyway. She seemed to be annoyed by the arrangement. I never could figure out why. I keep meaning to write her and ask her why.

 To further complicate things, right after I started caring which clocks got which treatment, I forgot which clocks had gotten what in the past. Random chance didn’t seem to be working all that predictably. I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to get much better considering I forget where I put my glasses ten minutes ago or my car keys a few hours ago. I’m told it matters which clocks to do what to. I’m still waiting for the final decision.

 Anyway each of the past three or four years I have faithfully done all of that resetting stuff, alternating which time thing I do, the forward or back thing, as I discover where all the time  thingys are. I can’t remember where I started or which route I took around the house last year, but I’ll mark it down somewhere this year. I might have done that last year but I can’t find the note.

 A tour of this place might amaze a dedicated clock watcher. None of the clocks, even in the same room broadcast the same time. While that makes it difficult to figure out which ones need new batteries, there is something somewhere there to please anyone who has a particular favorite hour of the day. It seems a shame I have to get about upsetting the balance again. But the idiot and the television tell me I have to.

 Then again maybe I’ll just leave things the way they are. As it is, it’s happy hour somewhere in the house all the time.

Porter and Gigo

Nope, I’m not writing about a puppet show.

    It’s about time to get serious about becoming one of America’s great writers, right along side of Simon Perot and Casey Bowers. The only things holding me back, as far as I can see, are a little better PR campaign and submitting something for publication. In way of an early new year resolution, I am beginning to start the commencement of doing something to make a possible move in that direction, at least as far as the PR is concerned.

    The key is doing it in an economically conservative (cheap) manner since I don’t want to invest any more on the project than the result is likely to be worth. To proceed with a bolder effort would be folly and economically unwise and a real bad idea. I’ve had enough with bad ideas, especially in my recent experience.

     Could I do better than adopting a couple miles or so of highway to keep the litter cleaned up? There would be signs, perhaps every couple hundred feet or so, reading something like “This is section of Maine highway 231 maintained by Porter Starr Byrd – Author”. Something like that would make me famous in eastern Massachusetts and points south. Could there be a better start? It could easily add to my advertising campaign funding, a nickel or so at a time, and contribute to my collection of possibly valuable someday ‘stuff’ too.

     While the deal with the milk carton people is not progressing well (They seem to work with the missing, rather than the unknown), I still have hope that I can work something out with the folks behind labeling Jim Beam, Ripple and Frothingslosh. While each of those attracts a different crowd, any of them would enhance the experience of reading one of my books. One of them is bound to answer my letter soon. Wheaties has replied to my offer, but it seems I am not what they are looking for, though they promised to reconsider if I ever break a world record or something like that.

     I researched the opportunity to get my picture on Post Office walls, but have abandoned that since they would probably not be highlighting my work as an author. It’s hard to work with the government and just doesn’t seem it would be worth the time, especially if it is hard time.

     The thought of negotiating with amateur critics is scary, at best, but I suppose if I let some book reading clubs have some copies of my manuscript to read, they might set up fan clubs or something. I hope they can handle used three ring binders from flea markets and garage sales and refrain from mulling over what is on the back sides of the pages, thinking it is part of the story.

     I’ve tried writing to established writers to get buddy-buddy  with them and have them offer endorsements but so far they have all replied as if they thought I was interested in THEIR work, as if I had time to read right in the midst of promoting my own fame, or are dead. I don’t remember reading their obituaries but evidently Mark Twain and John Steinbeck are no longer with us. May they rest in peace.

     A bit more expensive, I may have to consider sandwich boards and inflatable Porters outside of book stores and coffee shops. That, of course, would only become an option if my other efforts fail.