Category Archives: sickness

On the common cold

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There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.

On the common cold

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There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.

On ice cream

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Is there a more superfluous food than ice cream? Sugar, sugar, and more sugar, and nobody needs more sugar. Perhaps what is wrong with the consumer mentality is emblematic of what is wrong with eating ice cream. No doubt that ice cream is one of the funnest, most delightful on the face of the earth to eat, but nobody needs ice cream to survive. There is no essential nutrient or vitamin that is only contained in ice cream which means we eat ice cream, not to survive, but because we are slaves to our hedonistic natures, which are fulfilled by all the sugar and fat in ice cream. Let’s face it, there are fewer more tasty delights in this world than a banana split made with vanilla ice cream, chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple toppings, a nice, ripe banana, lots of whipped cream, and covered with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts–with a healthy dose of caramel drizzled over the whole thing. People pay good money for that sort of treat, but who needs that kind of sugar in their life. Ice cream is emblematic of societal excess. A society is too successful if they can dedicate resources, time, and energy into the production of food that serves no nutritional end. Sure, one might argue that this is just another dairy product and that people can benefit from the calcium, some trace minerals and vitamins, if they eat ice cream, but the benefits have to be minimal when one considers all of the sugar and cholesterol that they will also be consuming, so what is the benefit, then, of eating ice cream? Is it possible that there is more to life and nutrition and health than just eating broccoli? I mean, I like broccoli as much as the next guy, but can man live by broccoli alone? Certainly, I have picked an extreme case with broccoli (which I love to put into my salads, by the way), but nobody would classify broccoli as a “fun” food. Yet, is it necessary to have “fun” foods? Perhaps nutritionists have studied why we like to eat caramelized walnuts and whipped cream, quadruple mocha lattes with extra whipped cream and caramel, or bananas foster, but I’m also sure that there answers would always be rather unscientific and subjective because who can turn down any of those things? I suspect that mental well-being, bolstered by the ingestion of delightful food, might lead to a healthy, well-fed person if they don’t ingest so much as to become as big as the great outdoors. This is, however, the rub: we love to eat fun foods, but they essentially bad for us in large quantities, so the trick is to learn moderation–eat a little instead of a lot. Yet, I would also say that for human beings this is almost an insurmountable paradox. Gluttony did not make it onto the list of the seven deadly sins for nothing. Human beings are by their very nature incredibly gluttonous because long ago, when food was scarce, only the gluttonous survived to pass on their genetic material–the thin, moderate folks were eliminated long, long ago, which brings us back to ice cream, a super-food that can give you the energy you need to get up and get all those important chores done, such as surviving until the next day. If you survive until the next day, you may have offspring, carbon copies of yourself who will have the same gluttonous motivations that were underpinning your own success. Go ahead, enjoy with heightened delight and glee your next bowl of ice cream.

On ice cream

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Is there a more superfluous food than ice cream? Sugar, sugar, and more sugar, and nobody needs more sugar. Perhaps what is wrong with the consumer mentality is emblematic of what is wrong with eating ice cream. No doubt that ice cream is one of the funnest, most delightful on the face of the earth to eat, but nobody needs ice cream to survive. There is no essential nutrient or vitamin that is only contained in ice cream which means we eat ice cream, not to survive, but because we are slaves to our hedonistic natures, which are fulfilled by all the sugar and fat in ice cream. Let’s face it, there are fewer more tasty delights in this world than a banana split made with vanilla ice cream, chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple toppings, a nice, ripe banana, lots of whipped cream, and covered with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts–with a healthy dose of caramel drizzled over the whole thing. People pay good money for that sort of treat, but who needs that kind of sugar in their life. Ice cream is emblematic of societal excess. A society is too successful if they can dedicate resources, time, and energy into the production of food that serves no nutritional end. Sure, one might argue that this is just another dairy product and that people can benefit from the calcium, some trace minerals and vitamins, if they eat ice cream, but the benefits have to be minimal when one considers all of the sugar and cholesterol that they will also be consuming, so what is the benefit, then, of eating ice cream? Is it possible that there is more to life and nutrition and health than just eating broccoli? I mean, I like broccoli as much as the next guy, but can man live by broccoli alone? Certainly, I have picked an extreme case with broccoli (which I love to put into my salads, by the way), but nobody would classify broccoli as a “fun” food. Yet, is it necessary to have “fun” foods? Perhaps nutritionists have studied why we like to eat caramelized walnuts and whipped cream, quadruple mocha lattes with extra whipped cream and caramel, or bananas foster, but I’m also sure that there answers would always be rather unscientific and subjective because who can turn down any of those things? I suspect that mental well-being, bolstered by the ingestion of delightful food, might lead to a healthy, well-fed person if they don’t ingest so much as to become as big as the great outdoors. This is, however, the rub: we love to eat fun foods, but they essentially bad for us in large quantities, so the trick is to learn moderation–eat a little instead of a lot. Yet, I would also say that for human beings this is almost an insurmountable paradox. Gluttony did not make it onto the list of the seven deadly sins for nothing. Human beings are by their very nature incredibly gluttonous because long ago, when food was scarce, only the gluttonous survived to pass on their genetic material–the thin, moderate folks were eliminated long, long ago, which brings us back to ice cream, a super-food that can give you the energy you need to get up and get all those important chores done, such as surviving until the next day. If you survive until the next day, you may have offspring, carbon copies of yourself who will have the same gluttonous motivations that were underpinning your own success. Go ahead, enjoy with heightened delight and glee your next bowl of ice cream.

On coughing

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If there is a more useless and annoying bodily function than coughing I don’t know what it is. Maybe sneezing, but I digress. Sometimes when you get a cold, you also get a cough–a persistent, dry, hacking thing that makes you sound like a hoarse seal on its last flipper. You put your hand up to cover your mouth, but you fail and phlegm goes everywhere infecting the entire world with plague. Perhaps this is the secret of the common cold: it spreads itself through uncontrolled coughing, and let’s face it, all coughing is uncontrolled and ultimately, uncontainable. You pop cough drops as if they were candy corn and the cough doesn’t go away, but now your stomach hurts as well. A bad cough always coincides with a concert where most of the music is very quiet–no, you will never have a cough if you have to go to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overature w/ canon. You will cough during an Arthur Miller play where everyone talks and says lots of really profound stuff and you can’t get your cough drop unwrapped because maybe having a stomach ache is a little less horrible than coughing all the time. You buy new, very strong cough drops made with menthol eucalyptus jam that is so powerful the vapors make your eyes water (but now your eyes water and you cough). Good bourbon will help temporarily until you out of bourbon, but now you are tipsy and you have a cough. At the height of your cough you are scaring people who are expecting you to cough up a lung. Your ribs are sore from coughing because your stomach muscles can’t keep up. And then you finally kick the cold which has lasted about 14 days (or if you take zinc it will only last two weeks, so try that), you still have the bloody cough, which is going to hang around for another five weeks–maybe 35 days. Why do you always cough while chewing a soda cracker, spewing everything in eight directions at once. When you cough, people walk away from you, and if you go to the movies you either get hushed or the usher asks you to leave. You get one of those scary, raspy coughs that sound like a part of your throat is actually breaking loose. Some people cough as if their lungs were tip-toeing. You cannot stifle a good cough. You just threw-up a little in your mouth because the cough was so powerful it made you gag. Cough syrup, unless it has serious drugs in it, will do nothing to stop your cough, but it will keep the big drug manufacturers in business smiling all the way to the bank. You may have tuberculosis if you cough that much. As much as I hate to cough a lot, don’t every sneeze and cough at the same time, you will either sprain your head or have to change your clothes because of the wild spray pattern from the snot. Do not let others see the things you cough up and never do it in public. Go off in private–and that means out of earshot–if you have to cough up something like a cat with a persistent hairball. Nobody really wants to hear you clearing a nasty throat. And don’t forget the old adage, “It’s not the cough you have, but the coffin they carry you out in.” And I just ended this note with a double stranded preposition. Priceless.

On coughing

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If there is a more useless and annoying bodily function than coughing I don’t know what it is. Maybe sneezing, but I digress. Sometimes when you get a cold, you also get a cough–a persistent, dry, hacking thing that makes you sound like a hoarse seal on its last flipper. You put your hand up to cover your mouth, but you fail and phlegm goes everywhere infecting the entire world with plague. Perhaps this is the secret of the common cold: it spreads itself through uncontrolled coughing, and let’s face it, all coughing is uncontrolled and ultimately, uncontainable. You pop cough drops as if they were candy corn and the cough doesn’t go away, but now your stomach hurts as well. A bad cough always coincides with a concert where most of the music is very quiet–no, you will never have a cough if you have to go to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overature w/ canon. You will cough during an Arthur Miller play where everyone talks and says lots of really profound stuff and you can’t get your cough drop unwrapped because maybe having a stomach ache is a little less horrible than coughing all the time. You buy new, very strong cough drops made with menthol eucalyptus jam that is so powerful the vapors make your eyes water (but now your eyes water and you cough). Good bourbon will help temporarily until you out of bourbon, but now you are tipsy and you have a cough. At the height of your cough you are scaring people who are expecting you to cough up a lung. Your ribs are sore from coughing because your stomach muscles can’t keep up. And then you finally kick the cold which has lasted about 14 days (or if you take zinc it will only last two weeks, so try that), you still have the bloody cough, which is going to hang around for another five weeks–maybe 35 days. Why do you always cough while chewing a soda cracker, spewing everything in eight directions at once. When you cough, people walk away from you, and if you go to the movies you either get hushed or the usher asks you to leave. You get one of those scary, raspy coughs that sound like a part of your throat is actually breaking loose. Some people cough as if their lungs were tip-toeing. You cannot stifle a good cough. You just threw-up a little in your mouth because the cough was so powerful it made you gag. Cough syrup, unless it has serious drugs in it, will do nothing to stop your cough, but it will keep the big drug manufacturers in business smiling all the way to the bank. You may have tuberculosis if you cough that much. As much as I hate to cough a lot, don’t every sneeze and cough at the same time, you will either sprain your head or have to change your clothes because of the wild spray pattern from the snot. Do not let others see the things you cough up and never do it in public. Go off in private–and that means out of earshot–if you have to cough up something like a cat with a persistent hairball. Nobody really wants to hear you clearing a nasty throat. And don’t forget the old adage, “It’s not the cough you have, but the coffin they carry you out in.” And I just ended this note with a double stranded preposition. Priceless.

On Thanksgiving dinner

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The crush is on in the supermarkets to buy the food for Thanksgiving. This seems rather ironic for me because most of these people don’t cook during the rest of the year. They not only don’t cook on a regular basis, they don’t even eat at home, ever. Although there is nothing morally superior to making your own food, it is certainly better and cheaper, if not healthier. People who eat in restaurants all the time tend to overeat on a regular basis, which leads, of course, to obesity. So the crush is on. Let me guess, pumpkin pie, cranberries, the ubiquitous turkey, dressing, gravy, green bean casserole, lots of whipped cream, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes. To say that Americans are totally unimaginative would be to underestimate the situation. The Thanksgiving Day menu is a cliché at best. Cooked by people who never cook, I would be so afraid to try a turkey cooked by an inexperienced cook who doesn’t know what they are doing, much less know how to handle a turkey. Most of the menu is either baked or boiled, so ruining it might take some initiative, but I know people who have. I’ve seen burned turkey, raw turkey, frozen turkey, tanned turkey, exploded turkey, underdone turkey, dry turkey, tasteless turkey and inedible turkey. Turkey is one of those dishes which takes a lot of culinary know-how, and most people don’t have the street creds for getting the job done correctly. Do people really know how to handle a raw cranberry? And opening a can of pre-cooked cranberries is for wimps and pretenders. Let’s not talk about dressing. Most people just don’t cook enough to develop the experience necessary to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. So they buy all this stuff–flour, shortening, mince meat, sugar, spices, bread crumbs, croutons–and they think that just because mom used to cook all this stuff that they can do it too. Actually, I’m amused by all this cooking activity because I think we would all be served by more home cooking even if it affected the national restaurant economy. When one eats at home, one eats less, one eats less bad fats, one eats less starch, one eats less sugar, and one stays healthier. I know a lot of pigging out is going to occur this week across the country, but there is very little reason for it. By eating less, we stay healthier, we feel better, we have fewer aches and pains, climbing the stairs is easier as is just about any other task we perform on a daily basis. Our interaction with food is complex and chaotic, but the over-abundance of food, our horn of plenty, is almost as a much a curse as it is a blessing. Since the only thing we cannot resist is temptation itself, we fall into the trap of overeating and suffering because of it. Perhaps Thanksgiving would be a holiday best served by humility and moderation, but eating less and walking more, by not focusing on how much turkey and dressing we might eat, by not focusing on how much dessert we show down our gullets. What if we didn’t make pigs of ourselves, ate sensibly, exercised more, and forgot about putting a ton of food on the table that we never needed in the first place? If you don’t put it on the table in the first place you will never know that you ever missed it. With so much of the world starving, it seems like a shame to gorge ourselves on food we don’t even need.

On Thanksgiving dinner

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The crush is on in the supermarkets to buy the food for Thanksgiving. This seems rather ironic for me because most of these people don’t cook during the rest of the year. They not only don’t cook on a regular basis, they don’t even eat at home, ever. Although there is nothing morally superior to making your own food, it is certainly better and cheaper, if not healthier. People who eat in restaurants all the time tend to overeat on a regular basis, which leads, of course, to obesity. So the crush is on. Let me guess, pumpkin pie, cranberries, the ubiquitous turkey, dressing, gravy, green bean casserole, lots of whipped cream, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes. To say that Americans are totally unimaginative would be to underestimate the situation. The Thanksgiving Day menu is a cliché at best. Cooked by people who never cook, I would be so afraid to try a turkey cooked by an inexperienced cook who doesn’t know what they are doing, much less know how to handle a turkey. Most of the menu is either baked or boiled, so ruining it might take some initiative, but I know people who have. I’ve seen burned turkey, raw turkey, frozen turkey, tanned turkey, exploded turkey, underdone turkey, dry turkey, tasteless turkey and inedible turkey. Turkey is one of those dishes which takes a lot of culinary know-how, and most people don’t have the street creds for getting the job done correctly. Do people really know how to handle a raw cranberry? And opening a can of pre-cooked cranberries is for wimps and pretenders. Let’s not talk about dressing. Most people just don’t cook enough to develop the experience necessary to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. So they buy all this stuff–flour, shortening, mince meat, sugar, spices, bread crumbs, croutons–and they think that just because mom used to cook all this stuff that they can do it too. Actually, I’m amused by all this cooking activity because I think we would all be served by more home cooking even if it affected the national restaurant economy. When one eats at home, one eats less, one eats less bad fats, one eats less starch, one eats less sugar, and one stays healthier. I know a lot of pigging out is going to occur this week across the country, but there is very little reason for it. By eating less, we stay healthier, we feel better, we have fewer aches and pains, climbing the stairs is easier as is just about any other task we perform on a daily basis. Our interaction with food is complex and chaotic, but the over-abundance of food, our horn of plenty, is almost as a much a curse as it is a blessing. Since the only thing we cannot resist is temptation itself, we fall into the trap of overeating and suffering because of it. Perhaps Thanksgiving would be a holiday best served by humility and moderation, but eating less and walking more, by not focusing on how much turkey and dressing we might eat, by not focusing on how much dessert we show down our gullets. What if we didn’t make pigs of ourselves, ate sensibly, exercised more, and forgot about putting a ton of food on the table that we never needed in the first place? If you don’t put it on the table in the first place you will never know that you ever missed it. With so much of the world starving, it seems like a shame to gorge ourselves on food we don’t even need.

On gluttony

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We are probably only kidding ourselves if we don’t think that we eat too much. I have come very close to writing this note on several occasions, but I have always stopped because for most people, not all, the decision to overeat is theirs. Living in a land of plenty, we have an opportunity at every meal to eat too much. The food is plentiful, nutritious, and tasty. Modern science has solved most of the issues surrounding safe food conservation, and between refrigeration and chemical food additives, food does not spoil before we eat it. The result of all this success and plenty are supermarkets, restaurants, and big box retailers that are loaded to the brim with lots of food. During the medieval period, food was less safe and less plentiful, and gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. Staying trim was less an effort because there was less food and lots of work. Obesity was not common and most people did not have weight problems. Sugar was a very scarce commodity and uncommon in the diets of most normal people. Today, sugar is everywhere, and even the mayor of New York City is concerned about people buying 64 ounce soft drinks to suck on all day. I do not think it is the governments job to legislate eating habits, which does not work anyway. Most people suffer from gluttony because they are really quite unaware that they don’t need about half of the food they are eating at any given sitting. Most adults can probably get by with two small meals a day unless they are involved in heavy physical labor such as construction or farming. Sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen all day does not qualify as physical work. We all eat too much because it’s very pleasurable, it’s very plentiful, and we exercise no self-control. Eating turns into a nervous habit that we do for fun, not for nutrition. The result is obesity, and (no puns intended) it’s a growing problem. Ask yourself this: have you had to buy larger and larger clothes to contain your expanding girth? Have you supersized anything in the past month? The simple truth is that most people are eating about twice what they really need. Gluttony is almost an accidental byproduct of a society wallowing in its own success. Our economy is driven by the food industry which spends billions on advertising, product development, packaging, transportation, and labor, and millions of hard-working men and women depend on the food industry for their daily bread. It is very hard to tell people to eat less when eating is a status symbol of financial success. Other generations do us no favors by encouraging us to clean our plates or eat as much as we can. “If you don’t eat, you’re going to dry up and blow away!” The sad truth is that we can eat a whole lot, and if we do those things on a consistent basis we are going to be as big a blimp, victims of our own excess. Every person has the right to choose how much they don’t eat, but almost no one has the ability to recognize themselves as a glutton and put down their forks and push away from the table. The sad truth about gluttony is that we no longer see it as a sin, and since we exercise no self-control concern food and eating habits, we are slowly, but surely, killing ourselves.

On gluttony

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We are probably only kidding ourselves if we don’t think that we eat too much. I have come very close to writing this note on several occasions, but I have always stopped because for most people, not all, the decision to overeat is theirs. Living in a land of plenty, we have an opportunity at every meal to eat too much. The food is plentiful, nutritious, and tasty. Modern science has solved most of the issues surrounding safe food conservation, and between refrigeration and chemical food additives, food does not spoil before we eat it. The result of all this success and plenty are supermarkets, restaurants, and big box retailers that are loaded to the brim with lots of food. During the medieval period, food was less safe and less plentiful, and gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. Staying trim was less an effort because there was less food and lots of work. Obesity was not common and most people did not have weight problems. Sugar was a very scarce commodity and uncommon in the diets of most normal people. Today, sugar is everywhere, and even the mayor of New York City is concerned about people buying 64 ounce soft drinks to suck on all day. I do not think it is the governments job to legislate eating habits, which does not work anyway. Most people suffer from gluttony because they are really quite unaware that they don’t need about half of the food they are eating at any given sitting. Most adults can probably get by with two small meals a day unless they are involved in heavy physical labor such as construction or farming. Sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen all day does not qualify as physical work. We all eat too much because it’s very pleasurable, it’s very plentiful, and we exercise no self-control. Eating turns into a nervous habit that we do for fun, not for nutrition. The result is obesity, and (no puns intended) it’s a growing problem. Ask yourself this: have you had to buy larger and larger clothes to contain your expanding girth? Have you supersized anything in the past month? The simple truth is that most people are eating about twice what they really need. Gluttony is almost an accidental byproduct of a society wallowing in its own success. Our economy is driven by the food industry which spends billions on advertising, product development, packaging, transportation, and labor, and millions of hard-working men and women depend on the food industry for their daily bread. It is very hard to tell people to eat less when eating is a status symbol of financial success. Other generations do us no favors by encouraging us to clean our plates or eat as much as we can. “If you don’t eat, you’re going to dry up and blow away!” The sad truth is that we can eat a whole lot, and if we do those things on a consistent basis we are going to be as big a blimp, victims of our own excess. Every person has the right to choose how much they don’t eat, but almost no one has the ability to recognize themselves as a glutton and put down their forks and push away from the table. The sad truth about gluttony is that we no longer see it as a sin, and since we exercise no self-control concern food and eating habits, we are slowly, but surely, killing ourselves.