Nobody Knows Anything

I’m not sure the difference is really noticeable here—in fact, if you ask me, it’s hard to see any difference at all. (But I may be slightly biased about this.) Here is me last July, at Mystic Seaport, doing the Fat Mom Hiding Behind the Kids pose, at about 177 pounds:

And here I am today, after a run with Rob, at about 145 pounds:

If you can’t see a difference…just STFU and don’t tell me about it, okay?

Darin points out that the supremely stupid Maureen Dowd column (redundancy alert!) about Twitter contains the following exchange:

ME: Do you ever think “I don’t care that my friend is having a hamburger?”

BIZ: If I said I was eating a hamburger, Evan would be surprised because I’m a vegan.

Enough with the burgers already. We need to find a new standard food.

(Admittedly, Biz’s response is somewhat of a non-sequitur. Okay, more than just somewhat.)

I’ve become interested in vegetarianism and veganism recently. I’d like to say I’ve suddenly developed compassion for other species—any other species…actually, let’s include ours in there too…except I haven’t. In fact I was most deeply affected in this respect by the book Food Matters by Mark Bittman, which I read on our recent trip to Hawaii.

There wasn’t anything particularly new in the book, I’d read the various things in bits and pieces elsewhere, but for some reason, the way he juxtaposed the effects of factory farming on the environment (for instance: the fabulous fact that raising livestock creates more greenhouse gases than does all of transportation…cars, planes, the whole nine yards) and the effects of our diet on our health (which I’ve known) and came up with Change Or Die really made a big impact on me. Here’s Bittman on the subject at a TED conference.

Bittman’s strategy of eating “vegan until six” makes a lot of sense to me (though of course I haven’t done it yet): eat a strong plant-based diet until dinnertime, at which point nothing is off the menu, although after a while you’re going to lean much more heavily toward the vegetables and greenery and use the meats as a condiment, not as a main course. And as a convenient side effect you’re going to find your health improve and your weight drop. Just a side note.

Between “vegan until six” and Michael Pollan’s seven words mantra, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” it seems really easy to choose what direction to head in.

I really like Bittman; I think How To Cook Everything is a fabulous general cookbook, and I am looking forward to picking up How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. (Well, after our remodel is done. Not buying more stuff now!) I am also bored crapless with the meals we’ve been having. I can see the kids aren’t going to be thrilled by moving to a more vegetarian diet, but my theory on dinner runs something like this: “You can eat it, or you can not eat it. There is nothing else being served.” So maybe they’ll adjust.

And by the way, if you don’t buy what Bittman or Pollan has to say, maybe you’ll buy Barack Obama:

(Let’s all take a moment to imagine how George W. Bush would have responded to that question. Or pronounced the word “vegan,” for that matter.)

Anyhow, so I’ve been reading up more on vegetarianism and veganism (hilariously, I’ve discovered that the built-in Macintosh dictionary doesn’t recognize the word “veganism”—uh, guys, you might want to get on that before someone shows up in your office with a flamethrower), and I’ve noticed something omnivores do whenever the subject comes up. It’s like a tic. A really, really weird tic that makes me go “Hmmm.” Obama does it in that YouTube video. In the letters to a recent Salon story about Jeffery Masson’s appeal to veganism, letter-writers did it over and over again. The general gist of it goes like this:

I like to eat steak.

or:

What you need is a good cheeseburger.

And all I can think every single damn time I see it is: Is somebody a little defensive about something?

It’s always about cow meat. It’s always specifically about consuming cow meat and how it’s superior to all other forms of food. I know that Americans worship this idea of the West and cattle ranchers and what have you, but…the knee-jerk defensiveness makes me think: You guys know there’s something wrong with your diet, right?

It is impossible to be informed about our current food production system and our understanding of nutrition and keep to the standard American diet with any confidence or gusto. Consuming cow does not make you superior; in fact, depending on the kind of cow, it could make you quite sick.

We know there’s something wrong. We know we can’t continue the way we’ve been going. And the entire world can’t move to our diet (which they are trying damn hard to do), because if they do the entire freaking ecological system is going to collapse. (Seriously. Look into it.) Start with yourself and discover different ways of eating that don’t depend on cutting up other living beings (that have a central nervous system—don’t go for that canard again).

And stop with mentioning the cheeseburgers already, unless you want to signal that you secretly know how bad your diet is.

Update: And indeed, the letters to this Huffington Post column about the enivronmental dangers of livestock production continue this you-will-pry-my-steak-from-my-cold-dead-fingers meme apace.

Via Making Light, Charles Pierce at Eric Alterman’s blog:

I have now lived through three major episodes in my life where the political elite have told me quite plainly that neither I nor my fellow citizens are sufficiently mature to suffer the public prosecution of major crimes committed within my government. The first was when Gerry Ford told me I wasn’t strong enough to handle the sight of Richard Nixon in the dock. Dick Cheney looked at this episode and determined that the only thing Nixon did wrong was get caught. The second time was when the entire government went into spasm over the crimes of the Iran-Contra gang and I was told that I wasn’t strong enough to see Ronald Reagan impeached or his men packed off to Danbury. Dick Cheney looked at this and determined that the only thing Reagan and his men did wrong was get caught and, by then, Cheney had decided that even that wasn’t really so very wrong and everybody should shut up. Now, Barack Obama, who won election by telling the country and its people that they were great because of all they’d done for him, has told me that I am not strong enough to handle the prosecution of pale and vicious bureaucrats, many of them acting at the behest of Dick Cheney, who decided that the only thing he was doing wrong was nothing at all, who have broken the law, disgraced their oaths, and manifestly belong in a one-room suite at the Hague. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m sick and goddamn tired of being told that, as a citizen, I am too fragile to bear the horrible burden of watching public criminals pay for their crimes and that, as a political entity, my fellow citizens and I are delicate flowers encased in candy-glass who must be kept away from the sight of men in fine suits weeping as they are ripped from the arms of their families and sent off to penal institutions manifestly more kind than those in which they arranged to get their rocks off vicariously while driving other men mad.

Hey, Mr. President. Put these barbarians on trial and watch me. I’ll be the guy out in front of the courtroom with a lawn chair, some sandwiches, and a cooler of fine beer. I’ll be the guy who hires the brass band to serenade these criminal bastards on their way off to the big house. I’ll be the one who shows up at every one of their probation hearings with a copy of the Constitution, the way crime victims show up at the parole board when their attacker comes up for release. I’ll declare a national holiday–Victory Over Torture Day–and lead the parade right up whatever gated street it is that Cheney lives on these days. Trust me, Mr. President. I can take it.

Everyone who was involved—everyone—in approving these decisions, from the top down, needs to be on trial. Open it up. Let us see what was done ostensibly in our country’s name. Better yet, put them on trial at the Hague—oh, but we don’t belong to the International Criminal Court! Isn’t that convenient!

We’re plenty strong out here, Mr. President. If you keep hiding this from us, we’re going to keep on doing it.

Well, the short answer is: “I still don’t know, because they’ve put me in this room and thank goodness I have my Mac and my iPhone so I can be entertained some.” (Yes, welcome to your modern hospital, with its free wifi for guests!)

This morning I left the house to go to a local cafe and do some writing. I got my nonfat vanilla latte, I sat up on one of the bar stools at the marble bar, and I bent over to plug my Mac into one of the power strips they have hidden on the underside of the bar. No charge. That was annoying. I leaned over to unplug it from the strip –

Suddenly I had this pain in my left side, below my rib cage, above my hip, like I’d pulled a muscle. I thought, “That’s a weird way to pull a muscle…” But it just kept getting worse, like I’d really pulled something horrible there, and I thought, “Did I just give myself a hernia?” (I’ve never had a hernia, I know nothing about them other than they “pop out,” and whatever this muscle pull was, it felt like it was popping out.)

I sat up straight, and the muscle still cramped. So I stood up.

And I immediately started to black out.

I often get lightheaded when I stand up (ah, low blood pressure), but this time my vision actually started to go. I gripped on to the bar stool or something to keep me standing up.

A woman came over to me and said, “Are you okay?” She sat me down in a chair and told me to put my head between my knees. She asked for my name, asked me what happened, and then called someone — apparently not 911, but whoever it was dispatched paramedics to the cafe. They arrived approximately 45 seconds later. Okay, maybe not really, but seriously, they had to have been at the next cafe over they got there so fast. They set up their little high-tech monitoring station, checking my heart rate, checked my blood pressure, checked to see if my side was still hurting (it’d stopped almost as soon as I’d stood up), and since I reported I wasn’t quite at 100%, the main guy said, “Which hospital you want to go to?”

Oh, SIGH. Okay. But I want you to know I agreed to do it only because this set of paramedics had to have been cast by Hollywood: they were seriously the best-looking group of men I’ve seen in a long time and spending more time with them was not a hardship.

They stuck an oxygen tube in my nose, hefted me onto a gurney, and wheeled me out to the ambulance. I answered lots of questions over and over. I said, “This is probably easier than some of your runs, huh?” The guy sitting with me said, “Yeah, you don’t smell like feces or vomit.” They had an EMT student in the ambulance, and they asked if I minded if he practiced on me. Whee! I’m a crash-test dummy!

Wheeled me into the hospital, took my blood pressure, my heart rate, my oxygenation. Told me to pee into a cup (seriously, is there not a better version of this someone could some up with for women?). Handed me a gown. Told me to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It’s 1:00 now, so it’s been…3 hours? I have to get the kids in another hour. The doctor (who eventually stopped by, and asked all the same questions again) said he thought it was a muscle strain…or an ovarian cyst, so we really need an ultrasound. Since I’ve recently gone up on my oblique sidebend exercise at the gym–I hold a 42.5 lb. dumbbell doing that one; fear me!–I’m rooting for muscle strain, myself. I still feel lightheaded, but I haven’t eaten since 8:30 and I usually have both a midmorning snack and lunch by this time, so I’m not sweating the lightheadedness.

Mostly this is just boring. There’s a machine outside my room that goes BOING every 10 seconds. EVERY TEN SECONDS. I had someone come in to adjust my gown because apparently I was showing too much leg and then she pulled my curtain closed…which just then opened it that much on the other side. Thank goodness I have my Mac with me, because I would be bored bored BORED without it.

And that is today’s fun.

2:12pm Update: After 3 hours here, I asked the nurse for some water. No, she said, you need an ultrasound and your bladder needs to be empty. 45 minutes later I asked again and she gave me a small cup, telling me not to drink it all.

Then the ultrasound tech came by and mentioned that my bladder needs to be full.

The nurse came in and said, Was I okay with having a catheter to FILL my bladder?

I said, No, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way, kthxbai. <insert steaming angry emoticon here> So now I am drinking as much water as I possibly can. Hopefully this means I am on the fast-track (HAHAHAHAHA) to getting the hell out of here.

Final Update:
A friend got my kids at school, took them for ice cream, then took them to Club Swanky (where they practically live anyhow).

Darin came by at 3pm to stay with me, which was good, because after I drank a ton of water ultrasound wasn’t ready to see me. When they finally got me in there, the tech told me my bladder wasn’t nearly full enough (and I told her to stop pressing too hard on that particular spot, because “bladder not full” had a different truth value depending on which side of it you’re on). She managed to get the images she needed anyhow, all of which showed…nothing. No kidney problems, no ovarian cyst, nothing that they could see that would have caused that pain I’d had.

The doctor looked at all my tests and said, “No idea what happened.” Okay, he didn’t use those terms, but that was the upshot. General thought is that I did strain my oblique muscle and then cut off blood supply when I stood up too quickly.

Except for the fact that I’ve had low blood pressure my whole damn life and I know how to stand up without passing out…that sounds great. Where do I sign so I can get out of here?

We got the kids, went out to dinner, and came home.

It’s sort of frustrating that this anomalous incident is completely inexplicable, although I suppose that’s better than finding something horrible.

In no particular order:

• Much to my own amazement, since my decision not to drink alcohol because it’s interfering with my exercise plan, I have not in fact had any alcohol. There was one night I actually wanted to have a cocktail, but we didn’t have a lot of time and I did have to work out the next day, so I passed. Saying no to margaritas at La Fiesta is pretty goshdarned hard, though. They make a very tasty, and very deadly, margarita.

• I know I need to post some pix of My! Amazing! Transformation!™. I need to get batteries for my camera. How lame of an excuse is that? And yet: oh so true.

• My guilty pleasure these days: SecretTweet. I have no idea if these are real or not, but unless they start mentioning space aliens or something, they could be. This is the kind of thing that makes me appreciate my own life more.

• Movies we’ve seen recently:
  • Sin Nombre: I don’t know the provenance behind this movie. I was looking for something to see and I used the Rotten Tomatoes score to come up with one. It’s a film in Spanish with subtitles about a family trying to get to US from Honduras, and a boy who’s part of a violent, territorial Mexican gang, how they meet, and what happens. The simplicity of the storylines and the tightness of the focus on the story I think shows it’s clearly a first film by a young writer/director, but he’s a very talented writer/director who is interested in issues that have no easy and clean solutions.

  • Adventureland: It’s a very sweet look at summer 1987 after a kid graduates from college before he starts grad school. I’m kind of disturbed that 1987 = historical flick though. I liked it, but it was a small movie. I’m also kind of tired of movies in which everyone’s shared experience is one that I have nothing in common with. At least it’s not as bad as when I watch a high school movie and might as well be watching an artifact from a lost African culture for all I have in common with it.

  • Sunshine Cleaning: An interesting indie film that suffered from one too few passes on the script. Yes, the scriptwriter is saying this. There was some really good material in here, but it needed…I don’t know. Some kind of oomph. And less randomness.

  • I Love You Man: Paul Rudd is every girl’s fantasy boyfriend—the fantasy boyfriend you could bring home to mother. (You save the other fantasy boyfriend for…well…you know.) It was definitely an enjoyable flick, and I remember very, very little about it, other than they didn’t do the obvious (and so overdone) thing of having Rudd’s character end up in a fracas with another woman, leading his girlfriend to draw the wrong conclusions! which I was definitely expecting.

  • Monsters vs. Aliens: Jesus, does Pixar make it look easy, and then everyone else makes it look so hard. I don’t even remember that much about MvA, other than I was impressed that Hugh Laurie can do yet another accent that isn’t his normal voice. Such a great title though. Man, such a great title.

• There are simply no words to describe how much “Lost” has rocked since they, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, decided to “let the freak flag fly.” You know none of the actors signed up to be part of a sci-fi/ancient Egyptians/ghosts/assassins/time travel/comedy/romance/action/adventure spectacular, and you know just as hard that the writers/creators could give a flying fuck what the actors signed up for. They have an end date! They don’t have to spin this out forever! Let’s ROCK this town!

• Darin says the official “Lost” podcast by Damon and Carleton is Teh Awesum, so you should listen to that. (I have zero time to listen to anything, I’m finding, so I have not added it to any of my iPods, but I laugh like a hyena when Darin recounts the latest one.)

• And, as always: Actors, there are no small parts, only small actors. Michael Emerson signed for two or maybe three episodes. And he took over the entire damn series. You can do it, folks.

• I thought “The Unusuals,” a new cop show on ABC, was going to be about a precinct of detectives in NYC who have very strange, minor superpowers. I like my idea for the show much better than theirs: It turns out to be a very boring police procedural about a bunch of cops Who Are Quirky. We took it off the list of stuff to be recorded during the first half hour.

• I was mostly satisfied by the “Battlestar Galactica” finale—so long as they ended without Galactica, say, plunging into a nearby sun with everyone on board I was going to be okay. (The show was so dark for the last half season I honestly didn’t know what they were going to do.) As Ted Tally says, you have to give your audience a little glimmer of hope at the end. Just a tad. I think the BSG guys didn’t have as tight a grip on their stuff as the Lost guys do, but there was still so much wonderful stuff in there over 4 years I don’t care. (For example: if you’re going to start every episode with the statement that the Cylons have a plan, get a kilo of cocaine, lock all the writers in a room for the weekend, and figure out that damn plan before you go Season 2, okay? Remember that for next time.)