The Demon Sugar

So NYC mayor Bloomberg wants to remove soft drinks from the list of acceptable foods that you can buy with food stamps. Really?

I have many conflicting sentiments about this. First, government telling you what to eat or drink seems like a really bad idea, but we do have warnings on cigarettes and alcohol. However cigs and booze are considered adult-only consumptives. You have to be eighteen and twenty-one years of age, respectively, to legally purchase them. Do we need to make soft drinks age restrictive for purchasing as well?

Second, if they are banned from the food stamp program, then what sugar laden beverage would buyers choose? Fruit juice? So-called juice beverages? There will be a replacement that will not help reduce obesity. Mark my words.

Third, how much more liberty are people willing to give up? Do we need to have people give up choices because they are poor or impoverished?

Fourth, this is a government subsidy program. The government does have the right to set requirements for being part of the program. Is it right that the government asks people to give up choices to be part of a subsidy program? Do they require dietary behavior modification for inclusion now? What behavioral modification would be next, religious modification? Sexual behavior modification? Consumer spending behavior modification? How does getting someone to give up their legal rights, protected in the United States Constitution, align with the government's duty to protect the United States Constitution?

I don't have any concrete answers, but I do have plenty of questions to consider. Maybe we need to be encouraging people to be responsible with their exercise of their rights rather than holding them hostage in an all or nothing negotiation?

Cyber Bullying vs. Breakdown in Communication

The whole bullying thing is sadly a breakdown in communication between people. On one side is the subject of the bullying who doesn't deserve to be a target and doesn't understand the context of what is being said about them. On the other side are the people who are saying things for suspicious reasons and have attempted to use the person they are subjecting taunts to as a way to connect.

If you want to know something about another person, ask them if they will share with you. Do it in the context of respect and privacy. Recognize that you don't have the right to know things that other people don't want to share and you can't force them to share. It is frustrating, but that is the reality. The best perspective is to put yourself in their position and see how you would react. You can't expect to be perfect, but it is a better place to start from rather than make random speculative statements about that person.

Don't let bad communication turn your intentional concern and inquiry in to an attack on a person's character.

Life... neglected blog. Blog... neglected life.

Does anyone read my blog?

I am faaaarrrr too self-conscious to do this for attention and to self-centered to do this and be ignored.

It's political season. Time for the Republicans to try to attack the Democrats and how they have handled things in the last two years. Like Dubya needed only two years to have a referendum on his policies.

I am so tired of hearing the phrases "Job-killing taxes", "Typical politician" and "Bringing New Ideas" that I want to scream at the god-damned TV.

I have opinions and am not afraid to state them, nor change them.

God Bless You, Travis

My wife's cousin died yesterday. I is believed that he had meningitis.

http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2010/apr/meningitis

The thing about it is....

Depression sucks. You can try to fight through it. You can try to strategize around it. You can even try to plan around and manage it. However, it will thwart your best intentions and stymie your most resolved intentions, so all you can do is flow with it. It's not the best way to handle it in this modern organized, planned, processed world, but it is the only thing that works.

I am convinced that trying to force your willpower on to it to make it change results in making it resist that change more. However coming to the watershed of the ride is very liberating. Pent up energy is released and you can focus it on that which you love.

Good day!!

Billboards

Written by Clifford Meth with Illustrations by Dave Gutierrez

IDW Publishing $14.99, ISBN: 978-1-60010422-0

Reviewed by Paul Ewert

Billboards is a satiric short story collection from Clifford Meth. This quirky set of speculative fiction stories reminds us that the winds of popularity, politics and commerce are dangerous ways to orient one’s moral compass.

The title story, Billboards, gives us the tale of two people who are making money effortlessly by being physical advertisements for corporations thanks to biometric tattooing. It latches on to the vain attention-getting behaviors used to attract mass media interest like a rabid pit bull. The main characters are enjoyable and caught in contradiction after contradiction. They use carefully crafted laissez-faire methods and attitudes to get an unsuspecting public to notice them and by default their corporate brands. Yet their true laissez-faire relationship creates a situation that drops opposing corporate objectives between them. Their efforts to resolve this conflict draw a very stark and unorthodox resolution.

Dave Gutierrez provides illustrations for Billboards. Each of his illustrations helps underscore an element of Meth’s story, thus adding the visual depth to the world of Billboards.

Queers is another fine story in the collection. In it Meth takes the stereotypical American family and turns it upside down then turns it inside out. This short story could be described as an American version of Gerd Bratenberg’s Egalia’s Daughters with a coming of age twist. It is a wonderful reminder of the battle between popular morality and being true to your own self.

Other stories in the collection introduce us to the hyper-cerebral billionaire CEO Jonah Zwillman, a coming out story as written by the Olympian gods, an encounter with an angelic succubus and a writer drunk on power he has over a devoted fan.

This is the kind of book that takes you away from your daily worries and brings you in the back door of the looking glass. You find yourself thinking your know how Meth will resolve the story, but he surprises you with thoughtful resolve.

Getting Started

What is the Puddle of Life? It's Life and it is like a puddle. You try to avoid it, but you step in it despite your best efforts to avoid it. It gets splashed on you when you aren't looking. It's the things you end up thinking about or dwelling on even though you want to forget them. It the thing that intrudes in to your life like water that you thought you had dammed up. You wonder if it is deeper than it looks and when you step in it the depth is not what you expected. It's renewed by the events going on around it. It dries out when neglected or isolated. It's the map and the landscape. It's contradiction and validation. Oh... and it was the title of a letter column that I wrote for a couple issues of Entropy Tales, a comic book that I was involved in during the mid-1980's. 

Welcome.