You know the feeling. You are awake, or not, and your mind is a blank, but it is casting about for something to think about. And for some reason it seems to want to think about something that will cause you to worry yourself to pieces while sitting inert, rather than find something useful to ponder about, or something to actually fix, that is within your ken.
Patrick McManus, who wrote many an hilarious tale, with titles like They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?, and Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!, had a piece somewhere in his prolific writing about having a worry box in his head that could only hold 7 worries. So if he had a really bad one in there, he would replace it with a much nicer worry, and effectively evict the problem worry. It fits in with Dr Covey’s theory, he of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective [and therefore annoying] People, about your circle of concern compared to your circle of influence. If you focus too much on your circle of concern, your circle of influence will shrink or atrophy. And vice versa, being the whole point.
Focus on what you can do, and your circle of influence tends to grow. Also, you worry a lot less.
I really got the lesson a few years back when an intractable family problem flared up, and it got me … pointless worry and circular worry. And one morning, as cortisol shot through my body, I was acutely aware of what a dangerous hormone it was, causing heart attacks and being associated, vanity never lets me forget, with hard belly fat. And what if my hair went grey [er, ed.] because I was thinking about what someone had done that I could not fix? Or they killed me from a distance because I was stupid enough to fret at 3 in the morning when I could be getting high … er, I mean … having some Ovaltine? That would be classic. So I started to think about all the things I couldn’t fix in a different way … that they were out to kill me.
And thus began my list of things I cannot fix, at the moment, and which I will not allow to ruin my day. Not because they are things I don’t think should be fixed, don’t get me wrong. I am not an uncaring callous old coot. I am caring. About starving babies and species loss and the sun slowly going out. But there are so many immediate problems not to think about too that it really can be quite the list at times. I should really have stuck to only 7 like Mr McManus, who I might add [and did, ed.] always, and I mean always, referred to his sister as The Troll throughout his writings, which endeared him to me greatly. He also explained that if you are lost in the woods you can easily be found if you just take off your clothes. I believe he even has instructions on how to get lost in the woods.
So there you have it. Don’t let cortisol be the agent that gets you through pointless worry. Either worry pointfully, or don’t worry at all.
And please excuse me while I go get myself some more of that Ovaltine …
DN- post for you on previous.
I’ll call your four brunettes and raise you Robert Palmer.
Here’s something I can’t fix. As surely as the situation itself is raising my cortisol levels, Stewart’s treatment of it, and the resulting big-ass grin on my face, are surely lowering it. So, it’s a horserace here at Casa Originale’ this morning, as usual.
The Daily Show quizzically mocks Sean Hannity for siding with cattle scofflaw Cliven Bundy
I think I’ll go out and start turning over the soil in the popcorn patch, a surefire cortisol lowering device if there ever was one.
DN’s sweet ride, resized with Preview on my mac, but Dude Stacker has good PC advice on the previous thread, to 800 x 451:
And yes to gardening lowering cortisol – after raising it, because I left a big wet pile of leafs on the front lawn yesterday and today it is raining softly, so I went and raked it all off around 8, but after worrying about it for a good half hour. And it only took ten minutes to rake. Math even I can do.
But just to moan, my side really does hurt and it is a constant battle not to do things that need doing but injure me. However my goal is to pretty much annihilate the lawn and turn it into a perennial world, but with places to sit, and it is impossible not to fiddle with it and work slowly to that end. I have eliminated weeding almost completely by strategic container gardening, and tacky other elements that I have slowly inherited or mistakenly kept.
And yesterday when I was raking up where the bergamot grows, it was all so worth it as the fragrance filled the air. And my alliums are coming up beautifully, but strangely drifting to the north end of their space. We can bore each other silly with pictures as the season progresses.
A strategic container from last year, slowly eating lawn, resized to 700 width just to play around. The zucchini plant beside her flowered and ate lawn all summer, but some darn bunny, and I really think it was the bunny, came and ate every flower after it bloomed, so luckily we didn’t end up with any actual dreaded zucchini, which is what I call it when I dress it up with breadcrumbs and parmesan and tomatoes.
Strange bedfellows indeed. Unfortunately I can’t watch the Stewart clip because it will only play in the States. We used to watch him a lot, and then he sort of lost his sense of humour for a bit, understandably. But he seems to be back.
Maybe via youtube?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1SUt7Y7FSA
Light Bulb Bunker update:
Ok so I updated my light bulb inventory this morning. Something fundamental has changed in the past few years. I have two theories, both of which might be true.
1) Maybe we are being more conscious of light bulb use, and not leaving them on for hours a day for no reason. I.e. going around turning off useless lights.
2) I think there have been some upgrades to the power grid in our area in recent years. Less fluctuations, fewer surges etc. It just seems like we don’t blow out near the amount of light bulbs that we used to.
The end result is that what used to be a 10 or 15 year supply of incandescent bulbs, has now ballooned into a 66.4 year supply. Oops.
Yes, I have a spreadsheet for everything. I know, it’s sad.
A third contributing factor could be that the eldest left for college shortly after the light bulb supply and spreadsheet were set up. That’s a 25% reduction in people in the house, less lights, etc. But still, he’s been home in the summers and holidays. No way it can account for all the drop in usage.
full screen, and turn it up to eleven.
Thanks Xty, and Dude for the advice. Will try and do better.
EO- You remind me of one of my uncles. Almost exactly. He’s a CPA, always kills himself doing tax returns, etc.. He used to keep a spreadsheet on how much money he spent on his wife and each of his three children. Then at Christmas, during the otherwise ‘normal’ family activities, he would set them down and go over “how much money they cost him” in the last year.
And he also likes to come across as a cynical old s.o.b., but only if he really likes you. He’s the coolest!
Yes to Youtube. That was really funny. I think the rancher might be a turdite: all government is evil and I do not recognize it; where is the constitution, I want to wrap myself in it. That in a nutshell is the nutcake argument I kept getting into.
No government! Thank God for the Constitution!
Now where is my tinfoil hat so I can keep it tight to prevent my head from exploding.
One of my siblings is an economist and he has spreadsheets for everything and cannot believe that I do not. Hubby, the engineer, also likes them and does not understand how the two dimensional space fails to represent the data to me in a way that apparently is either because I am super intuitive and about to create an n-dimensional spreadsheet programme, or I am just a tad slow. I also don’t really like the number 7, by the way, just while I am complaining about numbers again.
And I think that when you are in your bunker, EO, the power supply might get a little iffy again, and those bulbs will be a popping, just like the popcorn you will have saved up, so you might want to hang on to them. And they could become valuable after the ban so you could barter them for food, or after the societal collapse that seems to be on hold.
the best part was Bundy on horseback, waving Old Glory in the wind. that was fake right? how can anybody be so hypocritical? and Hannity? i feel stupider after even a few minutes listening to that jackhole. at least with Limbaugh, you can blame it on years of prescription drug abuse.
i’m stacking candles. i will be the last one laughing. i will trade them for canned bacon, and hams, which i know you have EO. but your light bulbs won’t work too well after the EMP attack takes down the grid.
DN – you should trade that Jeep for an old Willies. they are much simpler to repair!
hopefully i have pissed off everyone now, so i can go get dinner going. i have some dough to punch down. homemade pizzas tonight. total all wrapped cost probably 4 bucks per pie. being poor doesn’t have to suck if you keep your whits about you.
Hubby’s old Range Rovers were surprisingly easy to fix, which was good because their British engineering called for some clever fixes. But the early ones were designed so you could basically fix them with a screwdriver. Of course it helps if a mechanically minded engineer is wielding the screwdriver. I know one time when the gear box had come disengaged, or at least that was the symptom that I recall, he fixed it with a coat hanger and a pair of pliers.
And he rigged up this box so you could raise and lower the wheels independently which proved exceedingly useful.
DP – you forgot to piss me off. I’m waiting.
I love the part about putting the women out front, to get shot first for better PR purposes. Yup, some real manly men out there in the “Liberty Movement” I tell you what.
Pussies.
DP you canny devil- I had thought like Xty, that you hadn’t really pissed me off- then I realized you said whit instead of wit just to get my goat.
(Xty- do we have a problem? Last thread you said to instead of too in replying to me. Was that supposed to piss me off as well?)
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Canny is a form of ken. (I forgave you, will you forgive me?)
i forgot to piss you off Dude, which should really piss you off. but in reply to EO above, and pertaining to the subject of placing women in the line of fire, … any proper wing-nut PR team would stage both Sarah Palin and Ann Barnhardt on the front lines, wielding pink AK-47’s.
and that surely just has to piss someone off.
All is forgiven. It is to much to bare.
And that guy puts a whole new spin on women and children first. Maybe they will all just shoot each other and be done with it. Like that video where the two boxers knock each other out simultaneously.
Dang I hate it when artists pull their stuff from Youtube. I own lots of the songs I play and I might buy the ones I don’t, but not if I can’t hear them! Arg.
But playing Simon and Garfunkle, whose hare I have recently insulted, is enough to piss any one off.
Ann Barnhardt should be on the front line, no question. In an American flag bikini. Or maybe a Budweiser one, classier.
She was one of the things that really made me question where I was spending my time.
And speaking of hares and hair, here is a joke my dad made up, about a distressed hare after an intensive grooming session:
I’ve just had my thing done and I can’t do a hare with it.
My dad wasn’t often crude, but like that guy in the beer ads, when he was crude, he was whittely crude.
uncanny.
more fish
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/whats-that-fishy-smell-the-feds-corrupt-policies-2014-04-23?pagenumber=2
piscine redux
Xty, you may have to forgive me all over again, but this is one of my all time faves:
A blind man taps his cane down the street. Upon reaching a fish market, he tips his hat and says “Hello Ladies!”
but tastes like chicken …
I just have to say, the most entertaining thing I’ve read this morning* is catching up on the action at Pailin’s Trading Corner. Turd has lost his marbles (again), and continues the process of blowing up his own site.
It’s a great day to be alive, ladies and gentlemen!
In other news, the “leaderboard” has not a single character over the 1000 mark. Additionally, in the old days it almost uniformly took about 800 tips to take the #10 spot. Currently, only three characters would make the grade. The rest are a motley collection of paid shills and psychotic also-rans. Nowadays you can grab the #10 spot with little over 400 tips.
The trend is clear, the end is near, this calls for a beer.
*with the possible exception of “Hello Ladies!”
Continuing in the spirit of gaiety brought on by the PTC fireworks, follows an informal epistle on Freudian slips.
I had thought the best all time was from Biology 101, fall of 1967 when a questioner said orgasm instead of organism.
Enter Mrs Dude last Saturday, who obviously doesn’t know the ingredients in a Margarita. She told me she was going online to look up recipes for Sangria. A few moments later…………(one of them apparently used Triple sec)………..”Jerry, what’s Triple sex?”
“I think we can probably figure it out, but we’d better get started ’cause it might take a while.”
Especially at our age!
Here’s a nice triad
When your mind makes a promise your body can’t fill …
I’m always………
But truth be told
I guess you’ll just have to keep your
that is one band that i wish i had gone to see when Lowell was still around, the remnants tried to carry on but he was the spirit and force, impossible to replace. from his daughter.
yes, nice to see JB credit him in EO’s above.
btw, i usually don’t like tribute cd’s and stuff but that is a really good one.
I thought Xty was going to tell me I’d have to…………………. (I think I’ve told you that the drummer, Mauro Magellan, is my neighbor)
i too remember a funny Freudian slip, though i’m pretty sure that it was intentional, from first year biology, though i was yet in high school. the teacher had asked the class for characteristics in common between class Mammalia and class Aves (birds), and the class clown who made sure he got called on said, “well, don’t they both have peckers.”. the class busted out laughing, probably saving that student from detention after school.
i too am experiencing some “Schadenfreude” watching the all powerful Turd destroy the wonderful site he built all by himself. what is really pathetic is reading the last of his loyal minions defending the idiocy. it’s like Kool-Aid day at Jonestown. those who refuse to drink the juice will be shot instead.
i caught another comical exchange also, that between the site’s wing-nut bigot drunkard, and the nut-job Canadian female with balls the size of Texas, and the vocabulary to match. i like the analogy above from Xty of the two boxers that simultaneously knock each other out. we can only hope.
I think you were “that student”.
my lips are sealed.
Not a Freudian slip, but a student story. Once we were on a field trip to a pioneer village and we stayed over night and the kids wore period clothes. One of the activities was a pretend school day and the teacher was being a real b….ossy person, and as she went around the room asking the kids their names (Grade 6), she gets to the class clown who says his name is Patty, Patty O’Furniture. I bust a gut and he got sent outside to stack wood and I got to go and supervise him. He turned out terribly, but he sure was a funny kid. And he got me out of that classroom.
Well, Piketty’s book is the talk of the town. Here are two reviews, one from the left and one from the right. It will save you (as it did me) the toil of plowing through 500+ pages of small type.
Just in case anyone was unclear about where I stand, the greatest thing about Obamacare is the extra taxes on the wealthy. Extra taxes for wages over a certain amount, and extra taxes on investment income over a certain amount. For all his failings, Obama will go down in my history as a hero for pushing this through. In my view it wasn’t nearly enough, but given the practicalities, half a loaf is vastly better than none at all.
And don’t be fooled, these taxes are the real battleground. Why would the GOP be so dead set on denying people health insurance? Because at their very core they know they have to find a way to repeal these taxes. It hits their paymasters where they live. And on the left, we all know these extra taxes have to be defended at all cost. Nobody talks about it. Everybody will argue about every peripheral issue under the sun about Obamacare, but it’s all a sham. It’s about those taxes.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303825604579515452952131592
OT post, but we all do it here. anyway, i thought this was good for a chuckle.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/
Uh oh, I’m on moderation. Oops for waging class war. 😛
DP, how about a tinfoil hat in the shape of a Klansman’s hood? Might as well insult two whackobirds with one stone.