Under Where?
My Great Underwear change is not progressing with the dreamed-of joy conjured when the great change began.
Setting the scene, I’ve been a boxer wearer for decades, migrating from other styles while I was younger. Recently, while shopping, I spied other underwear on the shelves. Why, the materials were different. And the shapes! Perhaps I will try these newfangled garments.
I bought two styles. One was purchased at Costco. Kirkland. The second, Body Glove, was purchased at Kohl’s. Both are elasticized cotton or something. Boxer shorts. That’s where their overlapping identities end.
The Kirklands went on first. Wow, comfy. Very nice. Useful and expected, it had that vent up front that negates the need to drop trou and sit to pee. I know females are shrugging, “So you have to pull down your underwear, sit and pee instead of standing? Welcome to my world. Is standing to pee really so special? Got any other tricks?”
No, that’s my one trick.
Standing to urinate isn’t the world’s most amazing feat but I’m used to it. I’m in my mid-sixties. Learning new information is challenging. Especially when it comes to the body. The body is already rewriting its rules on its activities, sending out new advisories without warning whenever it feels like it.
“Hey, don’t move like that!”
I was in the process of sitting down. “But I’ve always moved like that.”
“Well, stop it.”
“Why?”
“Don’t question me! I don’t like it. And put that doughnut down. What’s wrong with you? Now go pee.”
“Again? But I just peed two — “
“Don’t talk back! Pee! Now!”
“Okay, okay, okay…” Grumble, grumble, grumble.
That’s why I still stand to pee: because I can. I almost feel young again, you know?
So the Kirkland shorts work. The Body Glove? Umm, no.
They were comfy. At first. But, they didn’t have that useful front vent.
I was surprised. I thought the vent was a requirement. I speculated, maybe men are all starting to sit down to pee, so the vent isn’t required.
It is possible. I’m not always up on the latest happenings. Take, if you will, ball deodorants. I saw a post on Trouserdog while I was flipping through the net: “How to Stop Smelly and Sweaty Balls — Defunk Your Junk”.
Yes, it is an arresting title.
I’ve never considered a need for ball deodorant. Sure, my hairy sack sometimes sweats. Smells can ensue. That’s why I wash. A quick wash and they smell fresh as rain. A sweaty/stinky testicular area didn’t seem to be a problem. Maybe it’s been one and others are too polite to mention it. Perhaps, after walking away, people turn to one another and whisper, “Did you smell him?” My wife has never said anything. Neither have my cats, who are some of the most critical creatures I know.
The second offense against the Body Glove undies is a classic: they shrank. A lot. The comfortable tight fit now felt like a girdle or leather pants encasing my skin like a sausage, i.e., tight as hell. Now, it could be that I’d gained weight. I’ll give you that. But to have gained that weight, my other clothes would also need to no longer fit or fit differently. That wasn’t happening.
I gave the BGs two additional tries after that first washing. You know, more data. They became worse and worse. Waist bands flipped over. Legs rolled up. No, I told myself. I’m too old to endure this crap. Off you go. I banished them to the giveaway pile.
Yet, the experiments have intrigued me. I saw undies that have a cool sack to keep my Johnson more comfy on these hot days. They might even keep my junk from getting sweaty and funky. I’m willing to try them as long as they’re vented and I can stand and deliver.
If my body says it’s okay. It always has the last say.
The Mt Tam Dream
Mount Tam, full name, Mount Tamalpais, is part of the Marin Hills. Twenty-six hundred feet high, it won’t awe with its rise about the land the way that Mounts Hood and Shasta do, or McLaughlin. I knew abut it from living in the SF Bay area and Peninsula for fourteen years. We’d read about it, and visited twice, maybe three times, during our local explorations.
Didn’t stop me from dreaming about it. First came name confusion. I was being told to go to Mt. Tam. Mt. Tam? Yes, Mt. Tam. We exercised some Laurel & Hardy exchanges about what was being said. I’d quickly reached the point where I understood that I was being told to go to Mt. Tam. My point, which I struggled to convey with little humor, was, why do I need to go to Mt. Tam? But they — the unseen folks I was speaking to, but who sounded and seemed male — were fixated on ensuring that I understood the place’s name without clarifying why going there was important. The back and forth eventually felt as painful as a bad tooth.
They gradually led me to believe there is something in Mt. Tam, the something never being explained, continuing my stretch of exasperation. I’m supposed to go to Mt. Tam to get something that’s there that I’ll know what it is when I get there. Seems significantly vague.
Then, going over the dream, I wonder, was Mt. Tam a literal destination being directed to me from my dream masters or a metaphor for matters churning through my subconscious? Bonus discussion points, for me, anyway: how much of this dream was influenced by The Overstory, as I’m currently reading that. For that matter, how much is generated from wrestling with the novel in progress?
Friday’s Theme Music
As the world kept turning, the sun came on, arriving in the valley at 5:36 AM, officially, because we had light well before that. I know because the cats were like, “Come on, it’s night, let’s do something.” So, I was up at 4:30, doing something with the cats. Yep, feeding and petting, talking to them, just like it was a more civilized time.
The turning world will spin the sun away at 8:51 PM. High temperatures of about 94 F are expected, which isn’t too bad. Long as it stays below 100, we don’t feel the need for the A/C. The temp inside sometimes reaches 83, but then we turn on a fan. We’re not big A/C fans.
“Boom, Like That” (2004) is passing through my brain this morning. Mark Knopfler’s song about Ray Kroc and McDonald’s came on in when my brain opened the door by thinking about fast food restaurants. Our town has two: Wendy’s and Taco Bell. I don’t eat regularly at either. I visited the Wendy’s last year for ice cream. But these places — fast food — and big box stores have had a smothering influence, the way that they sprang up, crushing the locals. Meanwhile, what they often pay employees has barely moved until social activism kicked up some political pressure. As Mark wrote and sings, “It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat,” in his smooth, dry way.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. We in Oregon are almost at the point where we won’t be required to have masks. Vaccinations are slooowwwllly closing in on 70%. That’s the state’s trigger for saying we’re good, following CDC guidance. Jackson County, where I reside, is way behind, at 52%. Ashland, though, is higher, in the lower sixties. Harder to get numbers for the town. Here’s the music. Cheers
That’s Life
Drips of time slide by
leaving nothing on my soul
I follow the streams down
looking for the exit
chaos movement in theory
an orderly life on surface
a spark still flickering
holding onto the last ember
losing its color
turning gray
fading into ash
Tuesday’s Theme Music
The slide began on a Tuesday, June 22, 2021. Sunrise at 5:35 AM was one minute later than the previous day. This depressed Michael. He could see the tunnel forming that would lead inexorably to the coldest, shortest day, which meant the longest, darkest night.
Brewing coffee, he shook it off. Summer was here! At 9:00 AM, the local temperature was 78 degrees F. Thunderstorms and clouds offered some refuge from the heat. They’d only be 94 today before the Earth’s turn shifted them from the sun at 8:51 PM. The thunderstorms might bring wildfires, though. Fingers crossed…
He began humming “More Human Than Human”. Humming it until he began singing, soto vocce, “Yeah. Yeah.” The White Zombie song came out decades before. When? Yes, back when he retired from the military in 1995. He’d been amused hearing it. The song title is lifted from one of his favorite movies, “Blade Runner”, based on a favorite book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” He often thought of that slogan while slogging through corporate meetings in subsequent years. The start ups. Then Tyco. ISS. IBM. “More Human Than Human” encapsulated the misleading slant corporations bring to their marketing.
It was a depressing way to begin the day. Brewing more coffee, he turned to writing. Even if not a successful writing day (which was always iffy), writing was a distraction, his personal drug.
“Be positive,” he told himself. Test negative, his mind answered. Wear a mask when needed. Already got the vax. The state — his adopted state, Oregon — was almost at seventy percent.
Fingers crossed. It was becoming his personal slogan.
Friday’s Theme Music
The Earth rolled over. The sun’s first feeble rays hove into view.
5:34 AM.
“Morning has broken. Like the first morning.”
Too early for nonsense.
Thought processes were engaged. Thursday? No, Friday. June something. Eleventh. Still 2021.
Rain fell outside. The sunshine drooped. Clouds barged in. The heater kicked on. Cats slumbered. He would slumber on, too. What time was sunset today? Eight something. 8:47 PM, he remembered, eyes closed, breathing deepening. He returned to his dream. Better there anyway.
Dream songs enter. “All I want to do is dream.” “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.” “These dreams go on when I close my eyes.” “Sweet dreams are made of these. Who am I to disagree?” “Runnin’ down a dream. That never would come to me.” “Dream weaver, I believe you can get me through the night.” “Dream on.”
He sleeps and dreams. Awakens. Half-hearted sunshine lights the bedroom. Coffee, he thinks. The list. Things must be done. He heads into the bathroom. Songs walk with him. “Stray cat strut, I’m a ladies’ cat.” “In the year of the cat.”
The coffee pot beckons in the kitchen. Sunshine withers to a softer shade of pale. Let it rain, rain, rain. Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head. The sky is crying.
He sips his coffee. Enter Ringo Starr. “It don’t come easy. You know it don’t come easy.” Uriah Heep responds. “This is a thing I’ve never known before, it’s called easy living.” Charlie Daniels strikes back with “Uneasy Rider”. He needs to write. “Paperback writer,” the Beatles sing. A truck rolls back outside. “Truckin'” by the Grateful Dead begins. 1970. He heads for the other room. “It’s raining again.” Supertramp. There’s a song for every thought. “I think we’re alone now.” “Do ya think I’m sexy?” “You better think. Think!” “Did you think it’s alright if we leave the boy with Uncle Ernie?”
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get that vax.
Sunday’s Theme Music
After peeking in through windows at 5:38 AM in Ashland with shy pale goldens, the sun boldly shouldered in, shouting, “We got your sunshine. We got your daylight.” Such a bold sun plans to put out browning, sweat-inducing heat, don’t you know. Temperatures will hunt the lower nineties before the sun, still in its place, disappears from the valley at 20:39.
Got the darkness trying to throttle me. It’s a debilitating but brief trough experienced when I ponder what’s the use of all this nonsense? I was walking as it struck, like a bolt into my soul, just before sunset last night. Because a wildfire is being fought and people evacuated, I was thinking about wildfires and water shortages. Many new homes are being built in Ashland. Development is the daily cry as the trucks lumber in with supplies and workers busy with foundations and walls. We were already being told to conserve water. Now there is less water to be divided among more households.
Dev is good but with that shrinking water base, we also have an expanding wildfire season. Before COVID-19 shut down activities, wildfire smoke did the same, cratering the local economy becoming an annual thing. The first time it happened, businesses dismissed it as a one off. Second time, some pulled the plug. Third time, dark mutterings about what are we going to do were heard.
City council lacks the leadership to move out of this mess. Frankly, the mess is bigger than them. Is it climate change? By the time sufficient data is collected, we probably won’t be around to know. Meanwhile, the new houses being built are closer together as land becomes a precious commodity. Streets are narrower. Traffic density rises. Did I mention that a two-lane state highway longitudinally bisects the town? Only one way in and out, not a reassuring realization for planning evacuations. Every street feeds into it.
With the darkness and these bleak realizations colliding, on came an old song by the Smiths. Here are the lines.
This town has dragged you down
And everybody’s got to live their life
And God knows I’ve got to live mine
God knows I’ve got to live mine
h/t to Genius.com
The 1984 song is called, “William, It Was Really Nothing”. Yes, it’s really nothing; just a little darkness nibbling the psyche. Stay positive (you know, like me!), test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers
Thoughts
I spent over twenty years in the military, 1974 to 1995. The Cold War was underway. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. and the allies of each were constantly ready to fight a war. Stationed in Germany for several years, we used to practice wearing our hazmat suits and gas masks, taking shelter as we were attacked. I did the same during war games in Korea and Egypt.
Wearing the suits and masks wasn’t fun. That experience rendered it much easier to wear masks during the pandemic. These masks over our mouths, attached to our ears, are much easier to wear.
I’ve just finished reading The Splendid and the Vile. This book by Erik Larson covers Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister. World War II had begun six months before. The London Blitz began that first year, 1940. The tales of deprivation are stunning. Larson uses multiple sources to weave a narrative not just about Churchill, England, and the Blitz, but about Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess, FDR, and the many people around Churchill coping with him, helping Churchill, and hunting for the way forward.
Imagine those times in the United Kingdom as bombers flew overhead through the night skies, dropping incendiary devices, and then bombs, feeling the ground shake with violence as buildings were shredded and people were killed. Imagine being one of those people in London and other cities, enduring as food and tea was rationed, gas, electric, and water services were interrupted, fighting fires, worrying about unexploded bombs if you survived the raid, then going to work. Imagine sleeping in air raid shelters in squalid conditions. Imagine the black-out demands where lights were left off, forcing all to stumble through darkness.
And so many here, in 2021, complain about social distancing. They won’t wear a mask, because fake news. Freedom.
They know nothing. They should have been in London or any of the other cities around the world that experienced these conditions. Then maybe they’d realize what sacrifice means. A mask? Six feet apart?
Really. It is nothing.
Wear the mask. Stay positive. Test negative. Get the vax.
Digitized Smells
I have my telemedicine video call today. It has an element incorporated that I knew nothing about: digitized smell.
Apparently, recent software improvements has been added to many video-conferencing systems. These improvements capture local air, digitize it, send it through the net to the other end, and then reproduces the smell. This is being done in conjunction with telemedicine calls because studies show that patients develop greater confidence and feel calmer when they experience ‘hospital smells’. That mélange of odors isn’t by accident. It’s actually a carefully contrived blend created by psychologists and marketing specialists over decades of study. It is the smell which makes people feel safer, more secure, and soothed.
Trippy, right? All this time, I thought the smells were an accidental by-product.
The second aspect of the technology is that it allows the healthcare practitioners to smell you. That aids them in their assessment about your state of health.
I can see that. Makes total sense. It’s also fake news. Yes, fiction. Made it all up. Yep, I lied.
Michael Seidel, writer 