Month: May 2017

How a vegan ingeniously declutters rooms

Subtitled: Picking up a disorderly living space through areal topology, using vectors learned in high-school physics, and a little game- theory (to fun it up).

Areal Topology — a hokey term for tying multiple rooms together

bib.lebowski

Why, Mr. Bill, do you invite us to your silly moments? Our time is valuable, my friend; in other words, what’s in it for us?

Nothing, of course. You simply remind me of nastyish overlords I’ve met, demons exorcised and ilk like that.

Get over yourself and get on with it, so that we might get out of here.

There’s a mathedness to my madness though. Chunks and bits of physics too. I’ve written much computer code in my life and times. Not a single iota do I kid you: I enjoy sporting my code-monkey T-shirt.

There’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things, Bill.

No. There isn’t. Control freaks vex the frack out of me. They really do. Out damned control freaks!

We’re already gone.

At the end of this lesson you should be able to pick up the clutter — with confidence, self-reliance and vigor.

I’ve heard that it takes 9 and a half days to slip into a good habit. Rome wasn’t sacked in a day. How many sacks did it take to hold all that plunder?

rome.sacking

Stage stuff. To borrow a programming term, set up some working storage areas large enough to fill two armloads.

Scan a room. Do you see things that do not belong, such as a dirty fork on a coffee table. Create staging areas as you maneuver the mess. Stage bathroom items, stage bedroom items. All the room is a stage.

Advice: freak thee not out! Don’t spend hours sorting, stacking and reflecting on woeful banes and sisyphusian rock-rolls. Mere seconds suffice to load two arms. Beware and Be Aware: there is a time penalty for breaking dishes. You can count on a plate dropping its gooey contents, such as non-dairy okra dip, upon the very rug that ties your room together.

Conde Nast TagID: cncartoons025158.jpg/Photo via Conde Nast

Place your gathered kitchen articles on the kitchen counter, in the sink, or into the garbage. A hint: dog-lapped plates are not cleaned plates. No they are not.

Another hint for the newbie: never leave a room empty-handed. Perhaps you have found a toothbrush in the kitchen. Might there be other bathroom-bound articles in your midst?

Advanced students will process items discovered in passing. Kick objects to the general area of destination — or kick things backward with your heel.

Are you in the bathroom? Books read are books to shelve, to repurpose, to gift or to donate.  By the bye, bathrooms make great cleaning areas. While you ponder a crossword clue and the squares on a grid, pick up tissues that end up everywhere, all day long even.

PSA: defunding the EPA is a criminally insane act.

Perhaps you kicked a pair of socks to the door jamb earlier on. You might be carrying items of clothing draped on your arm that are destined for the laundry. Bring those clothes together with open arms and deposit them in the appropriate receptacle.

An aside: I once brought along a book to read at the laundromat. Having started a washing cycle, I found my book bobbing about with the suds.

Let’s say that a sleeping moggie prevented you from making the bed. Make the bed, you big lazy, then toss more dirty laundry into hamper. Find books on the night-table that belong someplace: such as a donation box, a fund-raiser tote or on the sofa.

unmade bed

PSA: clothes you never wear are wearable at critical care areas, such as battered-women shelters. Beware of hoarding for hoarding’s sake. Random acts of kindness reward everyone in a civil society, such as the society we are currently not living in. Old towels are needed at animal-rescue facilities. Do not allow the stuff you own to own you, palindromically speaking.

Sort your library by standing on the shoulders of a giant. Here is a bookmark I give to the dear reader(s) who has (have) patiently plowed through the words above. How to sort your library.

PSA: Refrain from eating Meatables®

Thanks for reading.

Post Script: 24 vacuum tube varieties for audio applications.  Handle with caution should you discover any of these while decluttering 🙂

vacuum.tubes.for.audio

 

Post Script 2: Vacuum Tubes and High Fashion:

vacuum.tube.radio.hat

 

 

 

 

 

Crohn’s and Diet — What gives?

A kind reader’s comment catalyzed my thought process to inspire this post. Seriously. My readers are wondrous alchemists that way 🙂

Crohn’s and Diet — What gives?

diet-loses-their-minds

Curiously enough, I need not reset the year on my time-machine dashboard. We’ve recently visited curious stuff in 1975, but this time I won’t rattle on about Singer minicomputers. This time-travel travelogue concerns a close encounter at the shore of the river Styx at age 27.

The vacuum tubes in my time machine are powered by  rearranging electrons. This permits movement through time, according to a red-herring theory concocted one day while waiting on a bus to Eureka. I’ve heard that one theory is as good as another.

I’ve discovered an intriguing tattoo inspired by experience with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — something quite striking IMO.

ibd.inspired.tat

 

Sorry, but we suspect you’re just belly-aching, Bill. We’ve heard that Crohn’s is all in your mind. For the record, would you be nice and admit that?

No.

I visited my doctor on a Friday afternoon —there was unrelenting fever and stomach pain. The pain and fever were still there on Monday morning — so my doctor, being the gullible type,  told me to get my guts to the emergency room. They assigned the nearest available surgeon, one who knew how to remove several yards of intestine. The surgeon was not known for his bedside manner — he informed me that I’d brought the disease on myself by worrying too much. His advice: stop worrying and it will go away — QED.

Bill, you’ve simply become more gutless.

I guess so.

Let’s shove some electrons in the other direction: to 1978. Just a simple corollary if you will. Time is straight-forward stuff. It has a past, a present and a hypothetical future.

This time ’round I had the same Crohn’s flare up symptoms, but something unusual caught my eye while pissing in the pot — gases and solids came out with the liquid. It seems that a fistula (a tunnel) grew from an intestinal wall and connected with my bladder, thereby compromising my urinary tract.

In other words, Bill, you decided to strain the nation’s provisional health care system AGAIN. Had you listened to the wise advice of that first surgeon and changed you state of mind…instead you became ever more gutless.

This time an excellent team of surgeons were available to perform simultaneous intestinal and bladder operations. I spent the following nine weeks in a hospital bed, weaning off Prednisone by eating popsicles three times a day.  Hyperalimentation was a new technique invented by Dr. Stanley Dudrick. A tube was inserted near my right collar bone, through a vein and into my heart. Simple dumping into veins would clog immediately My weight before the hyper-A was 51 kg. Under hyper-A resulted in a weight gain of 454 gram per day.

erase.the.dividing.line

After a surgery for removal of some more intestine, and an attempt to reconnect healthy tissue to healthy tissue, I woke up with a colostomy — it reminds me of that gentle expression “We’re going to cut you a new asshole” ; in other words, I eliminated solid waste when the excrement reached that rectal alternative. The takeaway: two weeks after that surgery I was back at work and regaining strength.

We do like that part about the rectal alternative, but we do not approve of your language. Just trying to keep things civil here. You’re not very nice, are you?

Junk food is still food

I encountered that chunk of idiocy while researching this post.

Well, you got to die of something

Sadly, nutrition does not interest most physicians. There are head-shaking doctors who rail against vegan patients that have the temerity to answer a questionnaire with an honest response.

you.are.what.you.eat

It’s very much left to personal choice, and what is called dietary freedom. I suggest this caveat — you’re bucking trillion-dollar industries when you question the consumption of sentient-animals.

You are told that malabsorption results in low B-12 levels, that the most effective solution is cow consumption — the more the better. Bon appetit.

There is not much funding available for the promotion of vegan diets. Following the money leads you to profitable enterprises — a trillion dollars is not chump change.

vegan.world.jpg

When I finally realized that cheese, dairy and eggs meant both bad karma and bad health, my health became much better. Perhaps it’s the positive influence of all my kind readers :-).

Diet is only considered if there is a handy pharmaceutical prescription to address it — a little special remuneration in back pockets perhaps, provided by the nattily dressed and manicured, not to mention Happy. HAPPY. H A P P Y Big Pharm reps.

 

Thanks for reading.

I Heart Libraries

Libraries are sacred institutions, but they are also hated institutions.

old.libraries

Hordes of ravagers have more than decimated vast libraries of unknowable knowledge. Thoughts in bound form fall regularly to fell fiends, book burners, surf Nazis and the ignorami of all eras.

It seems that Gaia has already survived five extinction events. Here’s a thought for a cloudy day — the same sun did shine over each: before, during and after the curtain fell. Same old Sol. How many of those five included library detonations? My steampunk time machine isn’t good enough to slip a nanosecond into the past; however, if I ever succeed in traveling back though each extinction event, I already have a book title in mind:

The Seven Wonders of Five Ancient Extinct Worlds by Bill Ziegler the 1947th.

I’ve recently mentioned the untimely demise of a local library jewel in 1955. My home town is well known for such epic fails. Would that eye rolls might forestall them.

An esteemed librarian recently shared a magnificent find among recently orphaned books — a volume maistly Scotch (language).  Check it out here, or at your local library.

first.port.of.call

Lisa and I lovingly offer resting shelves for orphaned books dropped at the library door. Devoted friends o’ the local library open their basement walls this Thursday at 9:00 A.M. Set your alarms.

Here’s a thought I’ve for you brought — marvelous books inherited are unexpected and sudden fun:  intensely beautiful gilded Danish language volumes (50 cents each), Edwardian Era novels, Bobbsey-Twin originals, Girls of Central High, and the apocryphal So You Like Vacuum Tubes?

bobbsey.twins

Lisa is currently reading this 50-center: First Port of Call by Elizabeth Jordan.

A cult classic with crisply flowing pages like Rock of Three Planets.

We once found two crisp twenty-dollar notes in one book we purchased, each used as bookmarks. Interestingly enough the boxes of books bought that day: $44 for a couple hundred books.

So, how large is our library of misfit books? A few thousand and in every room. A thousand donated back to the orphanage.

libraries

About six years ago I catalogued 1500 of our books online; however, exigencies and other stuff — like time — placed it on the backest burner. It’s on LibraryThing 🙂

Thanks for reading.

 

…don’t say anything at all

Bill, you have crafted the perfect post title. Please take you own advice — say nothing…at all

 

Nice and Kind

Random acts of niceness?

One of first posts I wrote for this blog is Nice People Explained — 22 months ago. It’s about a philosopher who is tut-tutted in many circles: Bertrand Russell. That particular essay introduced me to the very concept of what it means to be nice in polite society — a form of expedience that keeps the wheels of industry churning and chugging, becoming accustomed to certain niceties. Leo Tolstoy was ahead of his time and ours.

Leo-Tolstoy-Quotes-27-I-Sit-On-A-Mans-Back-Choking-Him-And-...-Quotes-768x756

Yesterday I read great stuff on a great  blog that I recommend to you. May I direct your attention to the eponymous ShelbyCourtland. Great and timely stuff there IMO. Coincidentally, some people would not think Shelby very nice. Speaking up for the exploited doesn’t get the job done. Well, that’s nice, BUT.

Well, there’s a wide chasm between nice and  kind. Kurt Vonnegut did not say be nice, the word Kurt chose was “kind.” Many do not consider him a very nice person either. I once met an unkind person who had met Vonnegut once, and reported that he was not very nice.

You are wasting your time, my friend. By the way, have you ever heard the one about the nice nun who, let’s say ‘got the job done’ in certain elementary school classrooms of the 1950’s?

By “getting the job done” I think you mean training classroom bullies on the nicer points of humiliation? Yes. Thought very nice, very nice indeed.

nuns.with.rulers

Here’s my hypothesis: Nice people conform to the expectations imposed by authority to perpetuate the way it’s always been done and the ways that always work. They never rock boats or speak out of line. They don’t laugh at crap hounds like Jeff Sessions, lest they be likewise incarcerated. There’s nothing remotely fascist about that, is there?  Boats are not for rocking — unless the boats are carrying refugees from profitable wars initiated by the nicest country on Earth. Endless war to stop all those wars that end inconveniently: for armament suppliers. Endless slaughter of fellow sentient beings in technologically advanced death camps — it’s what’s for dinner.

Perform random acts of kindness when they are totally unexpected. Do them often. Do them creatively, even playfully. Get off someone’s back?

Smart and Pleasant

I’m asking Elwood P. Dowd to take over here while I visit the restroom. Please be kind to Mr. Dowd, who knows both smart and pleasant:

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

Here is a clip from the 1950 version starring Jimmy Stewart featuring the snippet above.

elwood.p.dowd

My mother, in addition to always calling me Billy, used to say to me “If you don’t have anything…nice to say…”

Or was it “…good to say?” Well let’s find out what good old Google reports on good and nice:

  1. Hits for nice: About 793,000 results (0.93 seconds)
  2. Hits for good: About 220,000 results (0.46 seconds) 
OK, let’s divide 793 by 220 and see if we obtain a result. Right.
Nice Defeats Good
Rather dour fare for a Saturday morning, don’t you know? Your really should have followed through with “… don’t say anything at all.  
Quite right, time for something restful and delightful, in full measure 🙂
The best place I know for taking a breather is upon a sentient cloud. Let’s jump in for a worthy discussion on the proper use of the ellipsis, to whit one written by Esme.

I understand that the shortest distance between two dots is another dot. So let us lose ourselves  in aethereal clouds; particularly after sloughing through this dour post.

Hey, did you know that fog is a cloud resting on the ground? We live just south of Cincinnati, I once saw the tallest building in town pointing out above a wonderful white cloud one morning while driving to where ever the heck I was working at that time.

Thanks for reading.