Hulio the Calm, Savior of the World

So, here we still are. Either that, or the world really did end, as some predicted according to the Mayan calender, and then got re-made EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS, nearly instantly. A miracle either way, I'm sure we can all agree.

Interestingly, the actual Mayans didn't seem too concerned. I heard a radio piece about how their main worry was whether or not they'd have enough hotel rooms for all the tourists coming for the End Of The World. I'm really starting to think that the New Age crowd, like any other religion, could benefit from having a check on wild claims before they get promoted to death. Something like peer-review in the scientific community. But no, it works more like rabid enthusiasm, with no fact-checking. Sort of like Romney's campaign.

But let's not get distracted by something as non-spiritual as politics. We're talking the End of the World, and so I need to tell you about a house-cat. Hulio came to us as a stray, and was always pretty sickly. Different Vets tried to tell us as gently as they could that he was doomed, until one finally came right out and said: cancer. So, we tried to make him as comfy as possible, and agreed to put him down if he seemed to be in pain, or couldn't get around. He got pretty feeble, but still ate like three cats, and still raised a purr whenever you picked him up or cuddled him. Not too bad for a cancer-victim kittie approaching planetary annihilation. I had to work on the day of the End of the World, and found him expired when I got home.

So here's my theory. He was a sweet kittie. Short on complaints, long on purrs. He didn't seem to know he was sick, or wasting away. I think he waited until End Of The World day so he could take all that on himself.

You heard me. That cat took the entire calamity on himself, in an act of unknown, willing sacrifice, and saved the world.

I figure all you New-Age-rs and media hacks who have been promoting this EotW thing owe him a pyramid. Now. You need a hobby, and the Mayans may need a laugh.

The Pyramid de Hulio, Savior of the World, Slayer of Mayan Calender Mis-interpretation. Here's his picture, for the statues and murals. Get to work.

No Ageists Around Here

Wow. Sure have neglected this blog. Been looking for work, and I picked a fine time to get back into the market, and a fine place to do it in. -And a fine time of life, no less. Mature, skilled, experienced, knowledgeable, and definitely over 50.

There is a rumor making the rounds, that it's harder to get hired in when you get past 50 years of age. I think we can squash that rumor, if you will all help me out here. Just start asking to speak to somebody over 50 in all of your business dealings. Calling up support services, contacting your bank, getting your car fixed; the works. You see, I'm so positive that companies don't really have a tendency to ignore the older amongst us, and hire youngsters exclusively, that it should never be a problem.

So, remember to ask to speak to someone who is at least 50, and have your trivia questions ready to verify it. -And if they can't tell you who played Fred Sanford, or who the Beatles' second drummer was, tell them to stop jerking around and put an old-timer on the line.

I'm confident that we can stomp out this vicious rumor of ageism in American business.

Fixing CTS - Peasant Maintenance #1

Disclaimer: OK, I'm not a doctor.  I must not know what I'm talking about.  This is mere anecdotal evidence, and I am not responsible for what happens to you if you follow my ignorant godsdamned advice.  Heaven knows how dangerous it is to eat food without important artificial ingredients in it, as I'm suggesting here.  You should consult your regular physician about this.


What, you don't HAVE a regular physician?  Join the club, peasant.  It always bothers me when important information gets pushed to the side, though.  So here I go again, arguing with the currently accepted wisdom.


Today's rant is about carpal tunnel syndrome.  I lived with the pain of carpal tunnel, both sides, for YEARS.  I've known people that have had the surgery for it.  Some got relief, and others got NO RELIEF from the surgery.  I was to the point where I'd wake up with both arms numb, and have to roll out of bed, and kneel on my forearms to get the feeling back in.  I'd spend hours a day massaging my wrists to keep them functional so I could work.  What I'm about to impart may be anecdotal, but it WORKED for me.  Plus, putting this on the net beats giving total strangers the lecture, one at a time, whenever I see someone wearing one of those wrist braces.  A friend sent me an article about this, years ago, when I was having one of those numb and painful days (AND NO, I DON'T REMEMBER WHERE IT WAS FROM; I didn't document sources, or even know how to use a computer, back then).


So, Carpal Tunnel.  It's vitamin B-6 deficiency, caused by yellow food dye #5.  No shit.  It's really that simple.  Yellow #5 breaks down in your bloodstream, 50% by weight, into hexanes, which are usually a byproduct of refining gasoline.  Hexanes are pyridoxine inhibitors.  -Like pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6).  The hexane load in your body keeps you from absorbing enough B6.  I suppose you might have the problem without consuming any Y5, like if you bathe in gasoline every day, but I'm not an expert on these things.  For most people, Yellow #5 in your diet is the way to bet.


USA consumption of Yellow #5 has risen in fairly direct correlation with the number of diagnosed cases of carpal tunnel.  Back in the early 90s, when I was shown that article , the USA used about half a million TONS of the stuff per year, and rising.  That's the weight of one of the ex-WTC towers, in yellow food dye #5.



So, why is yellow dye #5 in all kinds of food? -Because it helps sell it.  Commercial baked goods, for that golden look.  Brightly-colored treats, cereals, cookies, ice cream even.  Soda pop; Mountain Dew has GOBS of it, for instance.  But then, so do many "health", "sports", and "energy" drinks.  Even pickles.  Look at pickles they keep in refrigeration near the cold cuts.  A greyer shade of cucumber-coloured.  Then look at their non-refrigerated cousins.  Real cucumbers do not glow yellow like that.  Basically, you have to read labels, and watch out for food that is yellow-er than it should naturally be.


That's it.  Really.  I basically NEVER have problems with carpal tunnel any more.  You can take extra B6 to overcome the Y5 load you consume; I took 100mg/ day while I started cutting yellow#5 out of my diet.  But when you finally cut all the Y5 out, you'll get all the B6 you need from eating your green vegetables.  Or you can keep eating yellow #5, and pound enough B6 to risk long-term heart damage, but that's not the choice I made...  -And you can still have your occasional bright-yellow food if you really can't live without it, just so long as you give your body a break between times so it can absorb some B6.


So anyway, spread the word.  The doctor that invented carpal-tunnel surgery was supportive of "vitamin therapy", but why not attack the root cause?  There's no conspiracy here, but like so many things, if somebody is making money on it, they have no vested interest in telling you the truth.  If this gets out, less yellow dye #5 will be sold.  Big deal.  They'll just start making everything BLUE.

The Colonel is all better now...

So, just yesterday I was looking for news about Libya, and the massacre at Zawiya came up.  This was from pro-government mercenaries and other thugs firing artillery into a mosque.  I guess using snipers on peaceful demonstrators just wasn't getting it up for them anymore.  To be fair, an envoy from Colonel Gaddahfi DID come to town before that, and warned the protesters that if they continued to express an opinion, or failed to bow to his will, that there would be a massacre.  So they were warned, which I guess is supposed to make gunning down people in a mosque OK.  The mosque was located on Martyr's Square, so there's another public relations triumph for Gaddahfi.  Yeah, nobody will make that MARTYR'S SQUARE connection, will they?  Of course, that wasn't enough for him, so he had to express condolences to the victim's families, immediately before blaming them for not controlling their children, and for siding with the rebels.  In fact, it turns out that the entire city of Zawiya was responsible!  Yes, if only they had controlled their children, it wouldn't have been necessary to OPEN UP ON A PLACE OF WORSHIP WITH ARTILLERY!

Interestingly, Moammar blames Osama bin Laden.  Now, last I heard, Osama was holed up somewhere near the Afghanistan / Pakistan border, but our own rulers have been telling us about OBL's super-powers for many years now, so I can believe that he reached out from a cave in Afghanistan and controlled the minds of young Libyans.  Yes, I'm sure that Osama appeared in the cockpits of those jets, and psychically forced their pilots to bail out or defect, rather than bombing their own people, as they were ordered to by their Betters.  This is the same Osama bin Laden that used his evil magic to completely change the structural strength of steel in the WTC towers, increase the force of gravity in the area, and render a high-tech military and intelligence service blind and deaf, and all from half a world away.  So, you understand, Gaddahfi has to be right.  He insists that this is all caused by bin Laden.  -And we know from Bush the Younger that bin Laden has magic straight from Satan, so we have to believe The Colonel.  Yes, it's bin Laden; it couldn't have a single thing to do with unregulated crony capitalism leaving average Libyans impoverished and starving.  It couldn't have anything to do with wasting Libya's treasury on foreign mercenaries or domestic thugs.  We have some of that here in America, and we're fine, AREN'T WE?

So it must be Osama bin Laden's mystic Islamofascist mind-control.  If it weren't for being tied to dialysis, the man would rule the world by now.  I think he can teleport, I do.  Why are we even fucking with Osama bin Laden, ever?  He makes Magneto look like a punk.  But arrayed against him we have a few superheros, mutants with psychic powers, like The Colonel.  I'm so glad that our saintly leaders here in the West have been busy rehabilitating The Colonel's unjustly tarnished image as a psychotic supporter of terrorists, and a blood-sucking monster on the subject of human rights abuses.

Colonel Gaddahfi knows, for instance, that bin Laden has effected control of Libya's youth through hallucinogenic drugs, introduced into their coffee and milk, “-like Nescafe”...

At last, we see the deadly Nescafe – right-wing Islamist connection!  Evil hallucinogens that completely convince the rightly and properly oppressed to believe that they are being boned by their benevolent military dictatorship!  Hallucinogens that somehow allow those under their influence to act like they are stone cold sober!  Hallucinogens that against all rational logic, allow their helpless and deluded victims to protest, organize resistance, set up radio stations, distribute food, medicine, and captured arms, and in short, think like free people!  How is this possible, in a world created solely for the wealthy?

But the Colonel has enlightened us.  What we are seeing is not a mad government turned cannibal, devouring its own body, no – it is bin Laden!  Young people lured into wanting Democracy, and even – Liberty!  It's all so clear!  Permissive parents!  Coffee!  Milk!  Satan!  Nescafe!  This is what's destroying Libya!

My only question is, why isn't this guy on Faux News?  Does Gaddahfi get points for sounding like the Arab version of Beck, or what?  “You see the connections here?  We have Western Interference in this circle, controlling this much larger circle of those who want a “real vote”, which leads to starvation in this box here, and over here, we have bin Laden, who controls young people in this circle, that's your own sons and daughters, and these lines go down here, here, and here to Chaos and Anarchy underneath it all, and here we have my list: Coffee, Italians, Communism, Switzerland, Nescafe.  People, you don't need me to connect the dots for you!”

Will somebody get this guy a blackboard?  I just feel that if we could all listen to the Colonel, 24/7, that we could finally understand how bad Democracy and Liberty really are, how they interfere with accumulation of insane levels of wealth and power by those who are more worthy than The People of any nation.  If only I could listen to the Colonel without interruption, I think that all, all, ALL would finally be revealed...

Sarin Gets On Your Nerves

Maybe I could just ignore her media presence if it wasn't always something... stupid.

So.  I just saw one of those scrolls across the bottom of the screen on CNN, saying Sarah Palin's lawyers are going to try to get "Sarah Palin" and "Bristol Palin" trademarked.  I don't quite understand.  Are they hoping for revenue from every mention of their names?  That would be a sure way to get their names dropped from network news in a hurry, so I'm in favor of it, really.  -Not to mention how hard I'm going to laugh when "Ms. Constitutional Rights" has her first anti-free-speech lawsuit filed against someone for fair use of the sacred bloody name.

I think we shouldn't wait for all of that.  It's not just that I want to see a bunch of fine work by lawyers wasted.  I'm thinking that after her warm, doctrinaire, self-centered, human response to the Tucson shooting, she could use some pre-emptive re-branding.  -With a nice, public-domain kind of name.  Something from the 1940s.  Something rather beyond conservative.  So please, spread my meme.

Let's call her Sarin.  SAR-ah Pal-IN.  SARIN.  -And yes, I do know that Sarin is a nerve gas originally developed by the Nazis.  Keeps you from drawing air.  If it doesn't kill you, you usually get completely over the effects, although there is a borderline dosage where you get permanent numbness.  Stay with me, here; the parallels are just not that much of a stretch. 

Sarin flows easily into low areas, and can remain a threat for a long time.  Of course, that may describe my neighborhood, so maybe I shouldn't go there.  In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult dumped Sarin (the gas, not the gal) into the Tokyo subways at rush hour, and only got 12 deaths in a city of 12 million.  So there's that comparison; Sarin -- maybe not quite as dangerous as advertised.  Then there's the fact that to be effected, you need either a fair concentration, or a long-term lower dose.  Faux News knows this, so they are going to try to pump Sarin into every room in the country.   -And then, there's that religious connection.  Sarin -- used by religious wack-jobs the world around!   Sarin understands that there are no innocent bystanders, only opportunities.

But you know what my favorite part of this meme is?  We could call her followers "Sarinites", which just doesn't sound wholesome, any way you look at it.  Biblical, maybe, but not wholesome...  You know you wouldn't want your daughter in the clutches of Sarinites.

I've written about the plague of Sarah elsewhere, and so I guess I'd better get all that old stuff out here, so it's ahead of the trademark.  At least then if I have to fill in her name with )!*&$ (!%#@ as if it were porno or something, y'all will know exactly who I'm talking about. 

A trademark.  What's next, a basic patent?   Sarah - patent pending?  That would be one time the patent office should return to their roots, and demand a patent model, just to prove that this amazing new invention actually WORKS.  I'm guessing it would be denied.

Vers Tahrir?

Haven't touched this blog in ages.

Interesting to read my second post (below) in light of the uprising in Egypt, after the revolution in Tunisia.  Both of them were essentially leaderless and unplanned.  I don't know if there's a word for Jacquerie in Arabic, but these are lovely examples of the principle.  They also have the added advantage that they have been amazingly peaceful, which should make it harder for the ruling classes to pretend that they have a mandate for crushing them by force.  -Not that I think that will slow the ruling classes down in the end, just that they'll have more trouble looking like "the good guys" if they do.

We've already seen the evolution of the narrative by our fine right-leaning corporate media.  At first, they were "pro-democracy demonstrators".  After a few days of violence, begun and maintained by paid thugs of the regime, we suddenly had the "pro-Mubarak / anti-Mubarak" framing of it.  If they can keep that story line going, then they'll have their framework for acting like the demonstrators are being "unreasonable" and "radical" if Mubarak steps down, and the demonstrators still won't shut up and go home.  No matter if there's still no real democracy, and the interim President is a "moderate" member of Mubarak's old guard.  You can already see our government, and our "friends" in the region, and especially, our media giants, ginning up those charges.

Suddenly the Moslem Brotherhood is a gigantic threat, that will miraculously take over the entire movement that they are now a minority player in.  Suddenly, we need to get behind the same institutions in Egypt that have always served us in The West so well, and so manifestly failed The People of Egypt.  Suddenly, we know who has "credibility" for a future government, and it's not anyone camped out in Tahrir Square.  Suddenly, the price of gas at the pump jumps up in the West, and even though the corporate media, and the energy giants, have spent years telling us that it doesn't follow the price of crude that quickly or closely, NOW it's because of those pesky demonstrators.  You can see them being set-up over the horizon.

The only thing that gives me comfort here is just seeing this drive towards democracy, knowing that Tunisia proved that it's possible, and that the demonstrators may have a chance of succeeding.  So far, they are playing their cards perfectly, while the callous, backstabbing, careless government response has put the stamp of truth on everything the demonstrators are protesting about.

I also enjoy seeing the ruling class showing some genuine consternation at being caught out.  Mr. Obama trying to figure out who was winning first, before taking a "principled" stand; Ms. Clinton giving us a whole lotta' empty pol-speak about "moderation" while Mubarak's thugs were raining Molotovs into the crowds.  Various Israeli officials trying a little too obviously not to sound worried on camera.  The thunderous silence out of Saudi Arabia.  -Ah, our beneficent global rulers.  They hate it when the peasants won't get in line.  They hate it when their carefully crafted management of populations falls on its ass.  They worry that when some plebs misbehave, it may give the other plebs IDEAS.

And rightly so.  Some of us, even here in America, haven't forgotten yet what real democracy looks like, or why it's desirable.  Much luck to the righteous People of Egypt.  Our hopes are with you.

Why Vers Paris?

It's simple. No, I lied, it's fairly complex. Let me say up front that I don't speak French; sorry. -Had a friend translate the title of the blog from English. So why a French name for an American working-class blog? Lots of reasons, now that I reflect a bit.

Vers Paris, (Towards Paris), because it was the direction taken by one of the most famous peasant uprisings of the European Middle Ages, the Jacquerie. It was notable not because it succeeded (it didn't), but because it had no initial leaders, no plot, no planning; it was simply an expression of white-hot peasant rage. This after the ruling classes had broken their age-old promise to protect them, and after they had imposed crippling taxes. It was also a notable uprising for one very important reason: it left a scar on Europe's ruling classes that lasted for centuries.

Vers Paris, because in modern times, the French have a socialized medical system that works, and that they like, for the most part. A system that might actually be the best overall on the planet.

Vers Paris, because they care enough about their language to keep adding words to it. -As opposed to here, where we just can't seem to shrink our vocabulary down to a string of vapid acronyms fast enough.

Vers Paris, because I always wanted to see it with my own eyes. Because I love Art Nouveau, and want to see it in it's native habitat.

Vers Paris, for my first ancestor on this continent, a young man called William, a recent arrival from France, who fought in the Battle of Concord. He got lucky, unlike the men to either side of him.

Vers Paris, because it always seems to draw the most highly civilized, and the barbarians, as well. The earliest universities, but vikings, also. Later, jazz musicians, and Nazis. Scientists, and Jihadists. The very first industrial revolution, but then again, the Plague. It would seem to remain a lodestone for defining the times, even now.

Vers Paris, after a conversation with the poet Dawn Saylor, who told me about her trip there. -About feeling the weight of history everywhere, like a solid presence; about being moved spontaneously to tears as the beautiful singing of nuns filled one of the ancient cathedrals.

Towards Paris, because I still yearn to fall into the sweet depth of centuries.

Of course, this could all just be in my head, like religion. Putting all this on a city I've never even experienced. Assuming that all the history I've read about it is close to accurate, and not coloured by some OTHER person's sloppy-brain-chemistry demons. I hear it's another big, smelly city. So maybe this is my take, entirely. Maybe this is an idealized Paris floating on the edge of my imagination, somewhere where reason and intellect are still valued beyond their ability to make money, somewhere that cares enough about itself to rebuild even from the ashes. A city with a very long memory, and a love of art. A city that finds ignorance repellent, and that might just have in it, yet another world-changing revolution of thought, or technology. A city that has pulled itself up by its bootstraps so many times, that it does it as naturally as breathing. So, yeah, this is probably just my dream of Paris, and I'm sure it has nothing to do with renewing the land of my birth, right here and now. Still, I'd rather move towards it.

Exhaustion is not the same thing as Liberty

The image below this blog's title is of the former site of about 5000 jobs, here in my hometown. That mangled mailbox used to serve one of the factories. The address, to me, says it all. 222 Liberty Avenue, presently that patch of weeds and cracked pavement stretching away between the mud puddles. You'd almost think that something's been lost, here. I took these photos, and stitched them together as best I could, because there's something about Liberty spelled out in still-shiny letters, on a bed of battered rust, that seems iconic to me, for this state; for too much of the country. See, without good jobs, Liberty is just a word on a mailbox, just a shiny memory on a fading ground. It's no mistake that sailors still call their time off-duty "liberty". I expect that anyone who has felt the constraints of lousy jobs clawing at their free time, more and more over the years, knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'll come back to Liberty; maybe until you're sick of it, some other time. I had planned to cover other issues in this first post, but it's late, I have to work in the morning, and we can get to other questions, like the name and purpose of this blog, in future. But I figured I had to get it up and running, even if it had to stagger onto the Net, still half-asleep. Appropriate for a working-class blog, I think. Good Night!