Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
He knew their faces, knew them well,
saw them every day.
When they weren’t present on their appointed time,
he always wondered about their fate.
They never looked at him,
when he was looking at them,
and never shared a sound;
not hello, good-bye, or how’s the weather,
their lips were sealed against verbs and nouns.
They were his daily companions,
he knew them well,
saw them every day,
and knew the gulf between him and them,
and wondered why it wouldn’t go away.
Having experienced benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) and then discovering my blood pressure was residing north of 220/130, I’ve become more mindful about my food and nutrition. (BP is now hovering around 136/70 now, thanks.) Searching for foods that are benevolent to my prostate, I read recommendations about celery. In my own tests, I felt that the results bore this out; eating a stalk of celery each day seemed to please my prostate.
However, I read, beware: celery has high levels of sodium. Oh, dear, don’t want that; sodium is bad for blood pressure. Wanting hard information, I hunted the net and discovered that a stalk of celery can have as much as almost thirty milligrams of sodium.
That didn’t strike me as high. As far as I could tell, that was pretty low, as long as I wasn’t eating stalks by the minute. Thinking about it more returned me more net searching about sodium levels in food.
The U.S. government’s nutrition guideline recommends that people keep their daily sodium intake below twenty-three hundred milligrams a day. There’s a big gap betweeny celery’s thirty and twenty-three hundred. For a food to be considered low sodium, it should have one hundred forty milligrams per serving, or least. Calling celery high in sodium compared to that seemed excessive.
Which prompted me to hunt for common food’s sodium levels. Fortunately, many websites eagerly compile and post this information. The American Heart Association provided a summary of the CDC’s findings in 2017. From that, they created a list of the twenty-five most hazardous foods for sodium levels in the U.S. It’s a disturbing list. They then distilled the list into the top ‘Salty Six’:
These are foods that I was frequently eating. I was checking fat, sugar, and fiber levels but ignoring the sodium levels. Now, it was like, holy crap. Gotta check those sodium levels, too.
I know, this is a post by the converted. I respect that response, but my ignorance went on until it was an emergency. Just thought I’d share my experience and maybe keep you from stumbling down the same path.
On the bright side, I found that beer and wine do not typically have much sodium. There’s some in them, with beer typically have eight to twelve milligrams of sodium per sixteen ounces, and most domestic red wines containing twelve milligrams per glass (imported red wines have about six milligrams); mindfulness about how much is being consumed — and what else is being consumed that day — is required.
Just like with celery.
You’re now free to resume your normal day.
I know it’s another Princess and the Pea complaint, but don’t you hate it when the ‘net is so slow that you can click a link, go make a cuppa coffee, drink half of it, select new music, peruse the newspaper, and then return to the computer in time to see the page load?
These things always trigger corollary suspicions: is it just my provider, or this location, a flawed router or modem, a computer issue, DDoS attack or virus, the web site, the browser…?
Bah. Too damned spoiled, aren’t I?
Hulley paused from writing his novel. He’d seen and finished a long scene, all praise the muses. Once that was done, he needed to collect where he was and what was to be done.
Scanning the other patrons and front door, he picked up his coffee. Half remained, but cold as iced-tea. Time? Been here sixty-five minutes. Sipping the coffee, he continued peering around, debating options, choices, and plans. Plenty of time remained but his writing energy seemed as spent as a summer storm. It’d been a good day of writing, but —
His eyes picked up on the opening front door, and then his brain shouted, “Holy shit.” His brain’s declaration slammed the rest of his being into shocked stillness. Through the front door came a pale white man, about six three, narrow-framed, with thin white hair and an ancient poets’ beard. He wobbled like he could be tipsy or suffering from a balance issue. Dressed in ragged, soiled denims on this ninety-plus day with a yellow Polo shirt, a Cubs hat, and aviator styled sunglasses, he didn’t fit in. Hulley gagged on recognition: Breech.
It couldn’t be Breech. He almost laughed at the suggestion. It was too freaking insane. Breech was his fucking character, star of the last scene, a gray-blue antagonist traveling the west coast in his big 1970 Chevy Suburban, hunting and killing kidnappers and rapists. Breech couldn’t be here.
With rising alarm, Hulley conducted a lengthy double-take of the coffee shop. Gone was the tidy suburbanized business with its lit glass food cases and soft beige and blue walls, replaced by a cramped, smaller, and darker place, an old home re-purposed as a cafe. It wasn’t that Breech was here; it was that he was there.
Breech strolled past his table like a spinning top losing energy. Although the man wore sunglasses, Hulley felt Breech rake him with the predatory blue eyes he’d seen with his mind too many times. Breech always thought he knew his quarry by the way they reacted to his scrutiny. The guilty stayed relaxed but the innocents were unnerved.
Slapping his coffee mug down, Hulley gulped down a lump that could’ve been a rock. He didn’t know what was going to happen or what had happened to him, but it looked like the next scene was beginning.
Sucking in a deep breath, he began typing. What else could a writer do?
Guess I remain in an introspective mood. Childhood rock spills into my stream, coloring reflections and expectations, although today’s choice came out during my childhood’s end.
Today’s theme music, by Lou Reed, was another vinyl record that was played and worn down until it was too distorted to appreciate. It’d be hard to explain to people who only experience digital music how the vinyl could become warp, or the static that you sometimes heard through songs.
This album, Rock n Roll Animal, was one of my favorites in 1974, lasting through my high school senior year. I stopped listening when I joined the military and went away. Like many, my favorite song off that album was “Sweet Jane”. The guitar work on the extended entry, and then the stinging, fast high note work later, epitomized the emerging rock sound for me as much as Eric Clapton’s work with Cream. Lou Reed’s vocals often reminded me of Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger later, as he often delivered this broad, inflected flatness that seemed like a vocal shrug.
We went to a spotlight performance the other night. As an elderly community of retired professionals in their sixties to nineties thrive around here, performances are often geared toward their preferences and memories. The spotlight performances are among those, featuring music from 1960s era “girl-bands”, the Motown sound, the Eagles, and the current offering focusing on the Mamas and Papas. They’re a lot of fun but they fire up neurons from that era, as more of that period’s music flooded my stream this morning.
“Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire was playing as irritation with our current government sent me into new spasms of frustration. Then along came a song by a group called Thunderclap Newman has been on loop. I always liked the name, Thunderclap Newman. Goes right up there with Moby Grape, Psychedelic Furs and Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Thunderclap Newman’s song, “Something in the Air” is streaming in my head. Word association started it. First, “Eve of Destruction” lyrics bobbed along the stream:
Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of Senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
Read more: Barry Mcguire – Eve Of Destruction Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Ah, the rhyming. But the song’s sentiment plays as true for 2019 as it did for 1965 regarding governments’ ineptitude, human respect, frustration at the pace of change, and constant war. We stay on the eve of destruction, don’t we?
Lock up the streets and houses
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here,
I always enjoyed Newman’s piano solo in this song. I have a vivid memory of smoking hash and listening to this song again and again when I was sixteen and my Dad was away.
So, that’s my Sunday theme music, Thunderclap’s 1969 song, “Something in the Air”.
Omnifloofium-gatherum (floofinition) – A gathering or collective of housepets. On small scales, they are generally organized around pools of sunlight or food being distributed. Organized omnifloofium-gatherums are established for more serious matters regarding quantum energy, shape-shifting, and time-shifting.
In use: “Each year, unbeknownst to humans, an omnifloofium-gatherum was established in which five representatives were sent to another dimension on a fact-finding adventure. Though it was an honor to be selected, the housepets felt bad for their humans, because they never knew what had happened to them.
“Then, along came a boy and a girl who changed everything.”
It seems like a surprising twist, but it probably isn’t. It’s probably one of those oft-experienced, universally known, but rarely mentioned phenomena of life. I will mention it in passing because it strikes me now.
Every night brings something different that I miss from the past. Tonight brings memories of sitting around, listening to music with my friends. I’m listening to some old live Clapton and remembering times and places, but it’s such a solo act.
Yet…this is how it is for most of us. We slip from childhood to our teenage years, to first loves and first jobs, to relationships and marriage, and then find ourselves looking back, remembering, think, and wondering.
I guess it’s not that surprising, or a twist, after all.
I was reading a news article about SoCal high school students – the boy’s water polo team – singing a NAZI song while saluting. That brought to mind the Santayana comments and quotes about history and the past and repeating it because the lessons aren’t learned. We see it as a trend around the world through decreases in environmental protections, compassion, and social injustice while nationalism, isolationism, and white supremacy movements increase. The social actions that took us to the development and use of the first atomic bomb is alive and thriving again. Meanwhile, the environmental protections developed to clean our air and water are being stripped away. It sucks.
Of course, flipping all those over to look at it from other angles. Corporations’ loyalty are usually with shareholders, increasing profits, and improving executive compensation – because they want the best. Many decry regulations because they stand in the way of profits or burden efforts with time and expense. Whole swaths of population struggle with changes and mourn for a different time, beguiled by rosy stories of how it use to be, or are hateful, selfish, and greedy people whose primary concern is for themselves.
Naturally, Steely Dan’s song, “Do It Again” (1972) arose to the occasion. Their song is about personal miscues and problems but the lesson remains the same as for a nation, society, or civilization: if you don’t learn, you’re going to do it again. As they sing in the song, “Wheel turning round and around.”
Then, I think, where do I sit on the spectrum of history, lamenting the swing back while listening to fifty-year-old music? Naturally, I must laugh at the aging fool on his computer…
Good times, bad times
pastimes, last times
the next time, a new time
beyond time, besides time
just in time, the nick of time
a niche in time, high times
time beyond measure
time after time.
Michael Seidel, writer 