Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Since I have not posted in a few days this may get long, and as such, I won’t bother grammar and spell checking it.

I’m in a strange place right now because Nefarious is visiting with her mom in Los Angeles. I think the last time she had a visit was at the start of the summer, something like six months ago (so she was very happy and excited for her trip of course and I’m hoping is on cloud nine right now), so it’s quite an alien sensation not having her here… Not that being able to sleep in and play video games all day isn’t nice, but she’s so much of the focus of my normal days that it really tosses me off kilter when she’s away. Even the sound of my own voice is weird, as if it’s someone else’s voice somehow coming out of my throat, I guess because it’s so removed from its normal context. The positive is that it gives Caitlin and I a chance to go on a all-too-rare date night, so we’ll head to eat fish and chips and to watch The Road at the theatre.

I haven’t taken painkillers for the last couple of days, in part because I knew that I didn’t have to be as concerned with the result — being cranky from a mix of the pain itself and the withdrawal symptoms. I shouldn’t say that I “like” it, but I do “like” to occasionally go narcotic free because (a) it reminds me how unpleasant withdrawal is which keeps me from asking for my prescription to be increased, since like a fat belly, it’s a lot easier to increase than decrease, and (b) it gives me the opportunity to gauge my true and unadulterated level of pain. If I’m being very careful with my painkillers and spreading them out as evenly as possible, I am effectively pain free, and it makes me wonder if the problem is illusory and I’m just an addict. Even though I don’t think that’s the case, I do know that it has happened to many intelligent and self aware people, so I try and stay conscious of my objective reality. In some ways it’s a relief, and in some ways it’s an unpleasant and sobering reality, but like people who replapse after going off their anti-crazy medication because they’re convinced they’re “healed” (even though it was just the medication working like it should) and stop taking them, I was welcomed by and abused once more by the throbbing agony in my thighs and upper arms.

As a point of interest, and because I hope this side-note might be helpful to others, I avoided most of the symptoms of opiate withdrawal by taking Imodium. Not just to control the digestive upset that comes with kicking, but because Imodium actually is a form of opiate — it just can’t cross the brain blood barrier (as it’s not very fat soluble), so there’s no mental narcotic effect — which is why it works. Opium actually used to be prescribed for dysentery because it relaxes the muscles in the colon, causing feces to be held in the colon for longer than normal (which is also why it can constipate some people) causing more liquid to be absorbed, stopping diarrhea, and the Loperamide in Imodium and similar products do the same but without the troublesome side effect of turning the user into a junky. Lest I ramble too much, the point is that in many people Imodium eliminates the physical effects of withdrawal (everything other than the potential mental craving), and for me, this means that I can much more clearheadedly assess where I’m at and whether my problems seem stable, seem like they’re getting better, or seem the same.

I’ve been thinking lately that it was getting worse, but after the last couple days experiment I think I take that back. I think I was just believing that because of the placebo effect of moving toward a diagnosis giving me “permission” to feel like that, and because one of the effects of short term narcotics (I take Oxy-IR rather than Oxycontin because I feel like Oxycontin — the time-release version of the same medication — makes me drowsy) is that it can artificially enhance pain because of the up and down effect of the level in your bloodstream increasing and decreasing. I’m sure that not having to run around with and after and from a six year old and kicking up my legs and resting instead helped, but I really felt a lot better than expected at the end of my cold turkey stint. So that’s all good news I think.

Speaking of medication, this morning when I went out to pick that up at the pharmacy, I drove past the apartment building construction site at the end of our lane-way. They’ve been making great progress recently, rushing before the winter stops them for the season I suppose, and this morning they were raising up the temporary shileds that stop tools and workers from falling to their deaths (I assume that’s what these are anyway). I didn’t realize until after that I had my camera in my pocket, but as I sat and watched them use the crane to pull the first one up to raise it, they “slipped” and dropped it on the wire and pipe fence that tries to keep taggers out of the site, crushing it. When I told Caitlin she said she wasn’t surprised, as her experience with them is that they’re walking cliches more concerned with whistling and hooting at her than doing their work…

Not sure if anyone can even see that because of the bad photo, but it was quite funny to watch.

I saw a story a few days back on Digg (“Teach a Donkey to Fish“) about “Goppy” the elephant, a children’s book character that exists to pass conservative values on to children by telling stories about his interactions with his liberal strawman buddy “Libby” the donkey.

I went to their site, Goppy’s blog specifically, and saw an entry where Goppy was wondering about Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. The entry read in part,

Goppy heard on the news the other day that our President won the Nobel Peace Prize. He won it basically for the “vision of unity” he has for this world. Now no disrespect to our President, but Goppy thinks President Obama needs to show what he has done to deserve this award. Stand up for America, Mr. President. By the way, Libby thinks its great — any prize that has the word “peace” in it, she’s all for! No matter who wins it!

Before I continue, here’s a picture from their book, but to really get a better idea, follow the previous link and watch the interview with the woman who wrote it with her husband:

Gotta love the peace sign on Libby and the American flag on Goppy, haha, as if those two things are somehow contradictory. How do these people see the Republican Party, as Afghanistan-style warlords or something? Too weird.

Ignoring that Obama got the Nobel Prize not for achievements, but because the Nobel commitee wanted to send a message that they supported the shift in direction that Obama could represent for America (ironic given that he’s increasing the militarism in America even over Bush, and extending the Patriot Act, and so on), and ignoring that the “stand up for America” interjection doesn’t really make any sense, and ignoring that the weird “Libby likes anything with the word peace in it” dig, I made a general comment that much to my surprise (I will admit to having a certain amount of anti-repuglican prejudice) they did not censor and was published:

I appreciate what you’re trying to do — pass your values on to your kids. All parents should take an active role in helping form their children’s moral foundation… Or perhaps “guiding their children as they form their own moral foundation” would be more accurate.

However, my concern is that you have put labels on the message — the labels of the two big political machines in the USA — and that these labels are both too black and white, in that the issues transcend party alliance (obviously there are plenty of hard workers — and plenty of slackers — in each party), and that the labels shift over time. That is, what the parties stand for can change over time (and this has definitely happened) — so you should pin to the values, not to the label/party.

Let me humbly suggest that rather than having the characters be ham-fisted caricatures of the political parties that imply a stark black-and-white view of what is in fact a much more complex world, that you would be better off tackling issues directly, rather than confusing children by painting such stereotypical views… Stereotypical views that are part of the problem in America’s growing political divide.

Using the Grasshopper and the Ant to tell a story of the rewards of hard work? Great! But wrapping it all in political baggage and strawman characters that turn ones neighbor into ones enemy, or even just into a stereotype that isn’t understood in any deptyh? That comes with a whole lot of baggage that may not be entirely helpful to children.

But either way, I do applaud that you care enough about your children to try and pass on your values to them, and I do appreciate your entrepreneurial spirit. In those regards your children are very lucky, even if I have concerns about the way you’re going about it.

Quite a long time ago, someone derisively said to me that my father had raised me to be like him, and that I am now doing the same with my daughter — as if that’s a bad thing. The job of a parent is not to coddle a kid and send them out into the world as a blank slate, but is to help them become an adult, not just with an academic and physical education, but also with a moral and ethical foundation. So I really am happy to see parents that do what they can pass on their beliefs to the next generation. However, I think it should be done with a bit more lucidity and depth than most people who do it with a political agenda do. It’s my feeling when I’m explaining right and wrong on various issues to Nefarious that I don’t just do it with absolutes, cariactures, and platitudes, but that I do it by clearly explaining how I came to the conclusion and why it makes sense.

This type of very American party-aligned kid propaganda is far from a Repug phenomena. Judging by the kids stores that I browse here in Canada, the leftist propaganda machine is just as ham fisted and silly in how it attempts to mentally condition its next generation, and books abound on the subject. Here’s a few examples that are in the same theme as Goppy, but on the other side of the fence:

Here’s another example and yet another one. I guess my real complaint about these books is that they’re ignorant in the way they apply such black and white labels, and discourage critical thinking…

Good intentions all around I’m sure. Parents who care about the world and care about their children is a great starting point. I’d rather see well intentioned but idiotic loving parents than see parents whose views are more sensible and whose intellect shines but don’t care about their kids and raise them in loveless homes. I feel like happy adults who got that way because they are products of a loving childhood have a good opportunity to come to their senses when they are faced with the reality of the world… I hope… Because I do realize how hard it is for people to break free of childhood conditioning, so I may well be completely wrong.

As I said, we’re going to go see The Road, but I’ve really been watching so many movies. On the 29th anniversary (coincidentally, to the day) of the suicide of Darby Crash of The Germs we watched the biopic What We Do Is Secret, which felt “amateur” in its acting and production but was still enjoyable. I watched the teen comedy Fired Up!, being a sucker for this sort of low-brow comedy, and I watched the slasher film Basement Jack, and Leguizamo playing twin brothers revenge crime movie The Ministers, the bank robbery romance drama Skills Like These, a documentary about kids raised unknowingly by people potentially involved in killing their real parents in Argentina’s dirty war called Stolen Babies, Stolen Lives. I watched a great documentary about Iran from the travel series Don’t Tell Mother I’m In…, and I watched 2012 (I wish there had been more destruction, as destruction porn as it already was), and I watched another crime drama, We Own The Night, and I watched a couple Amish rumspringa-themed documentaries called Devil’s Playground and Trouble in Amish Paradise. and a movie about pro-gamers called Frag The best documentary that I watched though was Surfwise about the Paskowitz surfing family and their 25 years of bohemian life on the road with nine kids, and their feelings about that life — a mix of really appreciating it, and some resentment against their father for not passing on the skills they needed to live in the normal world. Since I want to spend some time traveling around the world in a boat with Nefarious and Caitlin, it gave me a lot to think about, both positive and negative. I highly recommend this film. Continuing in the documentary department, I watched Heckler (about just that — hecklers in comedy clubs), Herb and Dorothy, a really nice documentary about a pair of amateur abstract art collectors with an amazing collection as well as Waiting for Hockney, an art documetary about a guy who spends — wastes — ten years of full time work on a single ultra-high-resolution pencil drawing, and Jamie Johnson’s (of the Johnson and Johnson family) amazing second-movie (his first is really good as well) about wealth called The One Percent. I watched Lil Wayne, The Carter Documentary, which was good, even though I’m not a fan, and I watched Reclaiming the Blade, a movie covering western sword fighting and European martial arts, an all-too-neglected and forgotten part of our culture. I’m getting tired of typing and remembering, but also The Suicide Tourist, an overly positive documentary on euthanasia, and Unknown White Male, a documentary about a guy with almost total amnesia about who he is that I suspect is a hoax. I watched a lot of fiction as well, including Carriers and Pandemic (since I love virus and zombie movies), and Saw 6 (can you believe they’ve made that many in so little time?), Flawless and The Maiden Heist (because I love “perfect crime” robbery movies). I watched the mocumentary How 2 Build a Rapper which was one of the few awful movies on this extended list — although I tried watching crazy Christian Kurt Cameron’s Left Behind: Tribulation Force movie about the rapture which was just terrible and I turned it off. Even the cheap and unbelievable MegaFault (a made for TV sister film to 2012 I guess) was much better. New Town Killers was a fun sort of “American Psycho without any depth” movie about rich yuppies hunting humans that I made it through, and Oral Fixation was another fun psycho movie about a masochistic woman überstalking her dentist. I finally got around to watching Pirate Radio (aka The Ship That Rocked) which I enjoyed immensely. I watched The Final Destination 4 which had great gory death scenes in it — it’s worth watching just for the decapitations — and also ghost movie The Echo in which Jessie Bradford looks an awful lot like Collin Farrell. I enjoyed The Lazarus Project in which instead of being executed, people are “reprogrammed” so they can go out and live new lives, and I watched We Own The Night, because I like Russian gangster movies. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg to illustrate just how relaxed lazy I have been lately.

And while I typed all of this, I just finished watching Soul Power, about a huge seventies soul concert in Africa, which provided the James Brown soundtrack to this entry. Now I think I’ll actually get to real work. Not sure what will get added to the list, but my TV is always on and will be screening films until I leave for fish and chips assuming I don’t suddenly realize I have something important to do outside these walls…

If you actually read this far you have way too much time on your hands as well.