Mixed Reviews

Mixed Reviews
Exploration Nation- taken by Colby Rabon

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Did you know Butter cures Diabetes?!?!




My parents are all about diets. In their case, diets don't consist of excersice or point-counting. Instead, it just means that they obsess about various theories about nutrition. These obsessions take on a life of their own, so that any recognizable scientific basis for these theories has been twisted and skewed into a set of uncohesive dietary rules which end up clashing.

Of the two parents, my father takes the cake (ha!) for being the absolute king of obsession and deformation of views. That is to say, as my father is reading a passage out of The Schwarzbein Principle the meaning of the words changes in mid-processing and gets crushed within the squishy folds of my father's very demented brain.

Now, he has very good reason to start worrying about his health. This year he was diagnosed with diabetes. He also happens to bathe rarely and rides his motorcycle aggressively, probably not considering the physics of a fat man taking sharp turns very suddenly. In addition, my dad doesn't excersise. If he wants to go down to the garden from the back porch (approximately 400 yards) he will drive his tractor there.

He tells me how horrible carbohydrates are and that they will kill me if I eat them. Sugar is what killed his parents. "If only he'd known sooner, they would still be alive" he says.







Anti-carb diets are not new and definitely not discovered by my wannabe-genius father. The South Beach diet and the Atkins diet all claim that sugar and carbs are what make you fat/unhealthy.
My parents adopted a lot of ideas from Dr.Sczwartzbein and from a Polish Dr. Kwasznieski, who I actually visited several years ago in Czechoczinko where he has a practice.


Now, Kwasznieski and Sczwartzbein actually make a lot of reasonable claims. Over all they say that artifical and hydroginated fats are really bad for you, as are high amounts of sugar and carbs. All these things are not natural and are high in calories and chemicals, etc. They claim that you should eat healthy fats (nuts, fish, blah blah) and veggies and fruits, and above all, small portions. The important thing is to get a good balance of fiber and grains with healthy proteins, etc. Yeah, sounds pretty reasonable. Kwasznieski's diet is a little harder to wrap the mind around because he isn't so much about balancing a diet. He claims we need to cut out all carbs and sugars, including a lot of vegetables like carrots or even things like ketchup. He endorses eating a lot of fat, not necessarily meat. Just a lot of oils. Which feels disgusting even to type- anyway, I'm no expert on this I'm just summing it up. But he does say that nuts and berries are good for you and once again, eating small amounts is good.



My dad, however, loves to scramble any reasonable information to fit into his "the more the merry-er" formula. So instead of eating reasonable amounts and balancing your diet and not drinking artificial sweetner.... suddenly apples are poison and eating eight eggs for breakfast and shit tons of butter will CURE his diabetes. My father drinks about a carton of heavy whipping cream a week. He likes to call this diet (in Polish) "DIETA OPTYMALNA" Needless to say, if I don't get to the kitchen fast enough in the morning to prepare my own coffee, I get a cup of heavy whipping cream with a dash of diluted coffee in it. One sip of that feels like eating icecream during a marathon run.


(milk was a bad choice)










My father also insists on adding lard to pretty much everything. He likes to tell me about the wonders of this diet only every SINGLE FUCKING DAY EVERYTIME I AM WITHIN EAR SHOT. I also love the way he accosts the employees at Sam's, librarians, neighbors, and random people in line at the grocery store about how they should eat. Recently, he informed a heavy woman at the library that she was fat and that he could help her by teaching her about his DIETA OPTIMALNA.
He was, of course, insulted when a letter arrived telling him he will get banned from the library if he talks to anyone that way again.
He loves, most of all, to tell me about it again and again.
This is nothing new of course, because both my parents love to talk at me and shove different food at me all while argueing with each other. And they wonder why I have stomach problems. I have become accustomed to nodding and picking through my food past the butter to salvage whatever normal food is still hiding in there.
Now, my mother, of course, is far more reasonable than my dad. She knows he's full of shit and a psycho but she has her food eccentricities which are equally obsessive. My mom is much better at understanding reasonable diets and limits and what "balanced" means. Her problem lies with picking up on trends too quickly and too enthusiastically.

All it takes for her is 1 article. I remember when she thought coconut oil was going to cure me of my polycystic ovarian syndrome and depression. When packing up my last apartment, I filled an entire box with vitamin bottles along with many herbal and "asian" supplements which always taste like unbrushed teeth. I've actually had my mom chase me around with a spoon of fish oil. I remember when she discovered noni juice just as she recently discovered (in an article) the WONDERS of pomegranate (which she cannot pronounce).
As a matter of fact, today she read about the amazing truth about horseradish and its cancer-killing power. She also dragged me all around walmart to by Sobe Life water just to take a triumpant sip followed by a vehement "that's disgusting!"
My mother's obsessions are far more endearing than my father's but also wear me thin. The thing is, I'm sure there's some truth to a lot of the things my parents say but since I know how much they love to selectively choose what they want to believe, it's hard to trust them. Not to mention that throughout getting my psych degree, all we ever did was talk about research and statistics and how it always gets misread as "proving things". The purpose of research trials is merely to measure the relationship between X and Y. And whatever all those dieticians and researchers have discovered about things usually comes from a few trials on random subjects- usually without being able to control other factors. So essentially, all sorts of research doesn't mean anything. And what works for one person doesn't work for another. And for god's sake, eating lard daily isn't going to cure diabetes.
And so, my brief stay at my parent's house is over. I can't take the slabs of butter and the little piles of vitamins. Not to mention dietary obsessions are only one of my parents' eccentricities which I just cannot handle after 4 years of freedom from them.
moving out.
wish me luck.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Big, Cool, Echo-y Spaces



Bullies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

So the other day I ventured out into the city, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had never been. Three hours into standing and being bombarded by images and thoughts that spiraled down every possible path of wonderment and I still had not seen the whole place. My feet ached and at one point, sitting in a massive open hall with a chunk of an egyptian tomb on a platform surrounded by water, I felt the urge to cry.
Not out of the "omg art" type of emotion. On the contrary, it's really museums or big buildings (especially with high ceilings) that overwhelm me with a sense of calm. And I feel a sense of compression, of containment.

There's something about a "restrained" big, open space that differs in feeling than, say, being out in a meadow or some other romantic, big-sky place. There, you feel like the sky is endless and you feel small and amazed. Or the ocean, (fuck, how I love the ocean!) that swarms you with environmental stimuli till you're raw from being beaten with waves and wind and sand. And the blissful exhaustion and purity you feel afterwards...
But big, open human-made places with walls have an effect on me like no other place. It was cold at the MET, carefully temperature-and-moisture controlled. When I left I felt thoroughly chilled, but clean because of it. And all those murmurs of people echoing and those vibrations bouncing off the walls, it's like they created a hum. A hum that pushed out all my worries and insecurities.
It's funny how meditation happens when you're not even aware you're meditating. And you know you've entered some other, clear compartment in your brain because later, every thought you had there you can summon forward as if an event occurred...for example, while at the MET, I caught myself seething over some past event and I told my self "That doesn't matter, it's all over. Leave it behind." And for once, there wasn't the other side of my conscience whining back with some cynical retort. A few days later when confronted with similar thoughts I remembered the moment in which that voice larger than myself had resonated off the museum walls. And it soothed me and made me remember "you've already resolved this."

Do I sound like I'm instructing you through a yoga session yet? I know, I know.

And when I stand back and look at what I'm saying I'm also flooded with this awareness that whatever "meditation" means in the modern world, or whatever books are written about spirituality or "knowing yourself" are all so untrustworthy and I scoff at them. Or, I have scoffed at them. I think of those magazines where happy, fit women sit indian-style on yoga mats advertising stretchy clothes with some line about "breathe, love yourself."

I also look back at my experience at the MET and remember the whining children, the expensive cafes, the bored looking exhibit attendants, the endless advertising, the guy playing really bad trumpet outside on the steps for money. It's a tourist trap, right? The hot spot for hot dog vendors. And it's all commercial, right? Everything is ruined and you can't possibly have a spiritual experience at a God damn tourist trap in the middle of vulgar, concrete, sinfuly New York City, right?

Right.

I guess.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I BELIEVE....in Netflix Instant

Today I'm glad I didn't post yesterday because it would have been an emotional spewage of worry and apathy and the like. Although the office at which I'm interning is the most laid back possible arrangement of kind people and moderate work, it still causes me stress. Yesterday I felt stressed and with so much time spent making spreadsheets, my mind wandered too far. Usually, it wanders down dark paths, where images of myself as a homeless, careerless, loser blur reality and reasonableness like getting dosed in the face with pepper spray (I imagine). So, yesterday was not a good day for expressing myself because it would have been a depressing mess like the doldrums in The Phantom Tollbooth...sucking everbody and everything down into apathetic, oozy, nothingness.



Instead I escaped into my safe place: Netflix Instant & unhealthy food (this time, noodles, doritos, and half a Skors bar...today that sounds disgusting)

And so, I gave up my evening to the X-files and the lovable duo of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder and their delicious sexual tension. When I first revisited the X-files this past semester, I invited a friend to watch it with me and we played a drinking game where we'd drink at every awkward sexually-charged/suggestive interaction between Scully and Mulder. Suffice it to say, we got drunk. Not as drunk as all the times I've played the Big Lebowski drinking game where you ingest alcohol at each "dude" or version of the word "dude". Let's just say I still haven't gotten to the end of that movie.


Anyway, mixed feelings come in about watching shows and series because I know so many people who don't know about anything else except their tv-lives. What I mean by that is that lots of people spend their time focusing their attention and building knowledge about fake stories and getting attached to fake characters and developing big, fake perceptions of relationships/events/violence/sex, etc. But, shit, I can't think of anything better than sucking drama in through my face when the drama is detached from me. When all I need is a reason NOT to have to focus on my life there's no amount of "going to the gym" or "taking a walk" or "taking a bubble bath" that will cleanse me of my sins and anxieties like eating nachos/sandwiches/spaghetti/whatever and watching Dexter, the X-files, Twin Peaks, The Office, 30 rock, etc.


Of course, the other issue is that I am not even good at being one of those tv/pop-culture nerds. People who really love shows and tv can always remember actors' names and details and can watch the show over and over again. I lack that type of attention to detail (although in other areas of my life, detail is huge) because I am rather a get-caught-up-in-the-plot-then-reach-a-climax-then-lose-interest kind of movie/show watcher (and incidentally, the same thing happens when I read books, which is why Anna Karenina is glaring at me, unfinished, from the book shelf)...(and incidently, the same applies to my recent relationships).

I love getting to the next, to the next, to the next episode/part/page. I love the tumbling sensation of accelerating emotional/action moments which is why, I cannot stress enough, the new Karate Kid with Jaden Smith absolute ripped my heart into shreds (in a good way). So, it's hard for me to remember quotes or watch things over again beacause the whole passionate part is gone. The same does not apply to movies for some reason.
So. although I'm an avid series watcher, I'm no expert. Many shows, like Lost, suffer the fate of not keeping up with my desire for blood/tears/the "next" thing or get too long winded and then I just drop them forever, never to return. Sorry, Lost. Sorry, Curb your Enthusiasm.
Sorry, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (I loved you for so long, why did you have to start trying too hard?)

Although, of course, many shows I become addicted to are very long-winded but because I've fallen madly in love with pretty much all the characters, or just the general feel of the show, I keep watching. And becasue I'm already writing this entry at work instead of...making spread sheets, I might as well indulge in a random oozing of girlish love at this random set of hot agents/law enforcement/detectives/main characters that have been fluttering in and out of my thoughts as I avoid thinking about my future or the empty wallet that keeps haunting me:
1) Agent Cooper of Twin Peaks. Truly, my first series love and still the sweetest of them all.




2: Agent Fox Mulder. Enthusiastic, flighty, crazy, moody, suspicious, loves dark and mysterious things...basically, my soul's counterpart. Also, hot.

3: Dexter Morgan, he doesn't "fit in" and feels like he has to pretend with people all the time. I identify with that. He incidently also kills people, whatev. My most recent crush, and wow, I fell hard for this one.


The one I can't wait to fall in love with:


Jonathan Ames of Bored to Death. How will I watch this? This may be one of my goals...to get a tv (maybe Netflix ISN'T ENOUGH, GASP!?). Which means I have to get my own apartment in which to fit my tv, right?. And...I can only afford an apartment in the south! Boom, decision made about my future. See? That's much easier a future to work towards than the whole job/boyfriend nonsense. Thanks, Jason Schwarztman for coing to my rescue again.

So, after yoga and some frozen yogurt tonight (it's one of those "healthy days") I will blissfully let Agent Mulder drug me with alien conspiracy theories. Even abductions where they test you with those razor drills sounds better than facing my resume right now.

Holla, the talent of television.


Sunday, July 25, 2010

Couldn't be a better/worse day



This all started when I, confronted at work with having to practice "customer service" skills when faced with awkward interactions, suggested to a man he should try all the egg cream flavors we have at The Candy Shop and make a blog about it. This was meant to be a wry joke that would end all further conversation since there's about 15 flavors you can choose from, and egg creams are weird anyway. Unfortunately, instead this led to a conversation about "do you have a blog? why don't you have a blog? what do you mean you have nothing to say?" etc.




So, feeling a sense of fateful urgency, I'm making this blog to prove to this egg cream man I may never see again that I do have something/nothing to say. Of course the problem is, is that I have an awful lot to say but everything I have an opinion about has all sorts of positive and negative aspects, few of which are enlightening or memorable. Not that I think it's unusual to have varying opinons. Nor is it unusual to approach life with the "pros & cons" list immediately tallied in one's brain...but sometimes even I am amazed/disgusted by just how quickly I can see-saw from gloomy to oozing-love-at-everything.




To keep the first blog short and interesting I will briefly describe today's mixed-review feelings:




About my future: Stay in New York or move back home?


Plus side of staying in New York:


1)Falafel


2) All bands will inevitably play here




3) Interesting shit happens. After work I stopped at an Italian restaurant/bar in St.Marks just so as to delay the routine homeward bound subway ride. Here, I got an extremely strong whiskey drink, met a nice couple who chatted with me about the cost of living in new york (the girl had tiny hands!), and a waiter with sketchy intentions brought me a free plate of decadent chocolate-dipped strawberries with whipped cream. My love-at-everything feeling sky rocketed.










(pic taken at the 23rd street station (C train))




Down-side


1) The inescapable smelliness of people on public transit


2) Trendy people making you feel fat and unfashionable


3) When you're poor, you can't do all the fun things available to you


4) The lack of real nature
Going home (The south- where everything's gentle)
Pros:
1) False friendliness that lulls you into false sense of security...mmm
2) Driving long distances with music and enjoying spooky forests and fireflies and such
3) Family
Cons:
1) Family
2) Confederate Flags
3) Too many fat Christians
That's all for now.
Let's see what I feel like tomorrow...will it be a mostly pro day or a mostly con day? Or balanced (gasp!)?