There's This Little Gland ...

Let's talk today, guys, about Mr. Prostate Gland! In the picture above, Mr. Prostate is the little heart-shaped white thingee with Mr.Urethra running through the middle of him, just under Mr. Bladder–he's the big kidney-bean-shaped organ at the top center of the image.


(Mr. Happy is at the center, extending to the bottom of the photograph.)


Are you still with me?


Mr. Prostate is an amazing fellow. I will not offer Too Much Information, let's just say that end-stage activities with Mr. Happy during which Mr. Happy grows larger for a time–more than four hours, you are supposed to call your doctor–require the assistance of Mr. Prostate to come to a satisfying conclusion.


Thing is, Mr. Prostate is a tricky fellow. While he starts out about the size of a walnut when you are, say, thirty or so, he often continues to grow, like your ears and nose do. So that by the time you are sixty, he is larger, say, nectarine-sized. At eighty or ninety, Mr. Prostate can be as large as an apple.


This is called Benign Prostate Hyperplasia, or BPH. There seems to be a direct link to the amount of circulating testosterone in your system, so that the more manly you are, the more likely you are to eventually get BPH.


The increasing size presents a problem, because the prostate squeezes the urethra, sometimes hard enough so that urine flow is markedly decreased, and the bladder gets backed up. Stopping/starting, retention, weak stream, increased pressure, an urgent need to pee making you get up in the middle of the night, all of which can lead to infections, bladder stones, and major discomfort. 


Fortunately, there are treatments, herbal, medical, surgical. (There's one involving insertion of a tube through the urethra and needles that pop out at right angles and zap the tissue with electricity ...)


Ow. Ow. Ow–


 Oops, TMI. Sorry. 


But  that's one kind of problem. There is another that is worse.


Prostate cancer. 


This is the second-leading cancer among men, just behind lung cancer, and on the rise. There are a lot of things that predispose one to developing this, genetics, environment, diet. While usually slow-growing, it does knock off about ten percent of men who develop it, and just under a quarter-million cases a year are diagnosed. 


Usually, it is so slow-growing that if you develop prostate cancer when most men do, around age seventy, doctors will sometimes recommend that they don't treat it, going with the notion that something else will probably kill you before the cancer does. 


Two guys, same age, one gets surgery, the other doesn't, the mortality rates aren't all that different, so they say, and the surgery carries certain risks. 


I'm not overwhelmed with that argument. The Big C makes me nervous. I know of a case, two guys, fairly young, both diagnosed with prostate cancer. One elected to get the surgery, the other didn't. Guy who did is still around; the other guy isn't. 


Prostate cancer can be aggressive, especially among younger men. Part of being a manly man is that sometimes, testosterone is a poison ...


All of which is to say that one you are past the age of forty, you need to get a prostate exam every year or so. There is a blood test, the prostate-specific-antigen, or PSA, that is used as a screener. The Feds have decided that statistically, this doesn't help all that much, but my doctor is not impressed with their logic, nor am I. If you get a false-positive, you can retest, or do a biopsy, and I want to know what's going on. Statistics aren't all that comforting, and better safe than sorry. 


The more, ah, interesting part of the exam? Again, I won't overload you with TMI, dude, but it involves your doctor's finger, a rubber glove, and KY-Jelly. 


This is not, for most of us who are heterosexual men, the most pleasant of experiences, and I can see why you might avoid it; nonetheless, and if it never crossed your mind, I hereby urge you think seriously about it. If I have to get it done, you should have to get it done ...


Read chapter seven in the text, there will be a quiz on Wednesday, and remember, the quizzes count for one third of your grade ...

'Lorax' Beats 'John Carter'

I think that title says volumes. Rotten Tomatoes is giving John Carter a 49% at the moment, and for a movie that supposedly cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make, you know heads are gonna roll if it tanks.


"Tank" is a relative term, of course, but if I had to bet, given what I'm hearing?


A so-so, not-bad-to look-at-shrug ain't gonna power the thing into the blockbuster heights.


Remember, the rule of thumb for a big Hollywood movie to turn a profit is that it makes back 2-1/2 times its cost. John Carter took in about $30M, plus or minus. Contrast this with Avatar, which collected $77M its opening weekend. 


I expect the chances of John Carter pulling in $625M to be, um, less than good.


Supposedly doing much better overseas; still, it doesn't sound promising for Carter and company.


The reviews I've read, including some by folks I tend to trust, indicate that the money is indeed up there on the screen, it is visually terrific, but that the writing and acting are pedestrian; the plot a colander; and there are more surprises in a bowl of oat bran with skim milk. Your twelve-year-old son will love it, and maybe it'll tweak your inner twelve-year-old, but ...


Too bad. 


I expect I'll see it, but I'm not in a hurry. 


Well. The Avengers is still a possibility ...

Memento Mori

Got a little check from the WGAw today, my part of foreign royalties on some of the animated stuff I wrote for back in the day. Typically these are tiny for each episode, but because I did a lot of 'em and because they just keep getting recycled somewhere in the world, these checks show up. There's a long list of episodes and markets, with each one worth like sixty-seven cents, a dollar and fifteen cents, nine cents–we aren't talking about buy-a-new-car money when you add it all up.


Still, it's free, and I'll take it. Well, except this time, I can't.


It seems that among the list of shows are The Real Ghostbusters, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, The Adventures of Batman and Robin, and Silverhawks.

Thing is, while I did write a slew of animation for the tube back in the day, including most of the series listed, I never did any work for Silverhawks. 

It is an easy enough mistake to have made, because oddly enough, there was another Stephen Perry writing animation during the same period in which I was active. And while, as far as I know, he didn't write for any series except Silverhawks and Thundercats, he did work on those, and so those monies should go to him.

Unfortunately, that isn't possible; that Steve Perry, who was a resident of Zephyrhills, Florida, was, just about two years ago, murdered, and his body dismembered and scattered. 

I wrote about it when it happened, here. Got a few comments from people who were surprised to still see me on Facebook, given that I'd been murdered and all, and I managed to get the wiki straightened out, but here comes money due a dead man. Less than a hundred bucks, but maybe his family could use it, and it's not mine. 

So I sent the WGAw a note and told them, and I expect they'll re-cut me a new check and see if they can track down where the rest of it is supposed to go.

Clever Hairless Monkey Boys

Human ingenuity can be, well, ingenious. Witness the Napoleon cane, circa 1815 CE. This was made when the former Emperor was in, I think, his second exile, to St. Helena. 

It was considered treasonous in certain circles to be a supporter of old Bony Part at the time, and you best not have his portrait hanging on your drawing room wall, else you find yourself in deep merde.

So, some clever fellow came up with the notion of the cane handle. This was done in such a manner that at first glance, the handle appeared to be nothing but a bit of ivory carved in an innocuous design, like something turned on a lathe. However, hold it in front of a strong light source, and the shadow produced was a silhouette of His Former Excellency Himself.

Passing clever, these hairless great apes, non?

Gettum Up, Scout!

Johnny Depp as Tonto

Geez Louise! Are there no Native American actors? I mean, even the 1950's TV version of The Lone Ranger had Jay Silverheels doing the role.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's because Depp can open a movie and in LaLaLand, it is always about the money, but ...

During the Bruce Lee documentary I watched last night, they talked about The Warrior, Lee's concept/treatment for a TV series that morphed into Kung Fu, starring David Carradine. They didn't think Americans would tune into a show wherein the lead was Asian, so they hired a dancer and made-up his face. This was in the 1970's.

Kinda hoped we might be past that by now. I mean, even in animation when I was writing it, if you had a black character onscreen, you were supposed to hire a black actor to do the voice. 

But that bottom line? It rules.

Heigh, ho, Silver ...

I Am Bruce Lee

Saw the SPIKE TV documentary on Bruce Lee last night. Most of it was stuff I already knew, having read a bunch and seen a shitload of stuff on him from before he was famous. Actually saw him do a demo at Parker's Internationals back in the sixties, his one-inch punch. I went to his L.A. school in Chinatown around 1967 or so, but he wasn't there, Danny Inosanto was teaching, as I recall.


Lee's picture on the cover of a magazine still sells copies, and back in the day, he was the man.


He was fast and in terrific shape, maxing out at about 140 pounds at his peak. He died at age 32; I'd have been interested in seeing what moves he came up with had he lived to be an old man. If you watch him, you can see how skilled, fit, fast, and flexible he was, but you can't really teach that. The JKD he was doing just before he died? You needed to have four hours a day to train to make it work like Lee did, plus really good genetics ...


The documentary is notable for some of the folks interviewed who knew Lee best, and there were a couple things I hadn't heard before. And some stuff they didn't speak to, but which had been hinted at along the way. A lot of what was bandied about at the time was pure rumor–the Dim Mak death touch stuff, the OD on drugs. But the official version has almost certainly been sanitized at least a little for public consumption. He died in the apartment of a young Chinese actress, Betty Ting-Pei, and the studio hushed that up. When it came out, it made the official story suspect. Supposedly, Lee and Betty were going over the script for Game of Death, but that doesn't sound like what they were doing.


Some good archival footage is included, too, mostly B&W home movies stuff not always available even on YouTube.


I particularly like Judo Gene LeBell's comments, especially about Lee being the father of mixed-martial arts, and who'd have won if Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee had fought. (He'd put his money on Chuck, LeBell said, and he'd have reason to know: He counted both Norris and Lee as his students when they wanted to learn grappling.)


For the MMA record, Gene fought boxer Milo Savage in 1963, choking him out in the fourth round. He's also credited with choking out Stevan Seagal, and was considered one of the toughest guys around. He did a bunch of movies, and he still looks like a bulldog you wouldn't want to mess with.


Check it out when it repeats if you missed it, it's an hour and a half and worth seeing. 

Small Surprises

I read a posting on a site about somebody stopping and creating a line of traffic as the lead driver got out of his car to go help a turtle get across the road. Nobody was honking or screaming, the writer said, they just watched and waited.


See that with ducks now and then. Mama crossing the road with babies, people wait.


Reminded me of something I saw a few years back. I had a shooting buddy who was big into submachine guns. He owned six or eight of them, including a couple in .22 Long Rifle, go figure. He invited me to go on the annual machinegun shoot, at a gun club in Albany, Oregon.


This was an event that drew all the heavy-hardware guys. Dozens of shooters, with everything from fully-automatic Glocks to .50 Brownings mounted on jeeps.


The range had been set up with a bunch of reactive targets–balloons, oil drums, posts to be cut in half, like that. There were various courses of fire–military guys shooting M-16s on one end; small calibers on the line; suppressed weapons, etc. 


There were dealers who brought their arsenals, and you could rent a piece and put a few rounds through it. I got to examine and shoot some weapons I'd never seen up close before, including a .50 Barrett sniper rifle. The sucker does kick some. The blowback from the muzzle is fierce.


At one point, with the line hot and twenty-some people spewing jacketed hail downrange from all manner of full-auto weapons, two whitetail does walked onto the range a couple hundred yards out.


"Cease fire, cease fire!" the Range Officer yelled. He didn't need to–the line went cold on its own, and once weapons were downed, the RO walked out toward the deer, took off his hat, and waved it, shooing them off.


Once they were gone, he came back. Not kosher to shoot the critter in such circumstances, and besides, nobody was allowed to hunt here. The deer were used to the noise and it didn't bother them.


Apparently the safest place for a deer to be during hunting season is a shooting range. 


I can't help but wonder what a rabid anti-gunner would have thought had he seen that. All those rednecks with muh-muh-machineguns stopping cold so somebody could shoo a deer off without hurting it? Probably wouldn't have believed it. 

The Camera Never Lies ... ?

The picture above is making the rounds under the heading: Best Job in the World–Yoga Instructor!


And if you look at it, you might see why some people–men–think it is funny. Probably wouldn't be so funny if one of those was your daughter ...


No way is that guy a yoga instructor.


Either the image is fake, or the man is looking at criminal charges.


Maybe it's real. Maybe somebody stepped into the yoga class and copped a double-feel, it's possible. But if he's a real yoga teacher? I can fly by flapping my arms.


Recently, I decided to devil my niece by manipulating a picture and putting Justin Bieber next to her. She is not a fan. It's pretty obviously a fake, but I'm not very good at it. There are folks a lot better than I am at it ...

Steamtrooper

Got to like this one. Steam punk Star Wars. 


Use the farce, Luke ...

Connections

Here's how my mind works:


Recently, I read a biography of Carly Simon. Those of you too young to recall her, she was a singer/songwriter who hit it big in the early 1970's with "You're So Vain," and who had a slew of hit singles and albums thereafter.


For a time, she was married to another well-known singer/songwriter of that era, James Taylor. The union was doomed–Taylor was depressed in a major way and elected to self-medicate with heroin; Simon was neurotic, and had stage fright so bad she avoided singing in public as much as she could. They had two children and the marriage ended badly.


They sang on each other records and together–Carly was braver when they did duets onstage–and their arrangement and delivery of "Mockingbird," when they were both big, gawky kids, was killer:

Um. Anyway, Simon later got into other endeavors, she wrote children's books and did movie scores. One of these movies was 1989's Working Girl, starring Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith, and Sigourney Weaver. It was a Cinderella story, and a chick-flick–but I confess that I liked it. Go look at it now, it's entertaining for the hairstyles alone.


One of the songs Simon wrote for the flick was a gospel-like rocker called "Let the River Run." There's a kid's choir that opens it, much like The Rolling Stones did with "You Can't Always Get What You Want." (And it has long been thought that Mick Jagger and Carly Simon had an affair back in the day when both were married to other people, though both deny it. Rock stars who slept around? My, can you believe that?)


I really liked the song, but at the time my guitar was parked next to the file cabinet gathering dust and cobwebs, my small skills much lesser then even than now, so I never did anything with it.


But when I came across the section in the Simon bio that talks about the movie and how the song came to be, and now having access to a plethora's plethora of information via the internet, I poked around, found the lyrics, and started noodling with the chords. It's an interesting song, starts in the key of A, then switches to C in the middle. There's a section I can't quite figure out the chord changes, plus it's right at the limit of my vocal range after that shift up two steps, but what the hell, you can't get more limber unless you stretch, so I'm gonna see what I can go with it. Worst comes to worst, I'll just buy the sheet music, I don't mind paying for it. 


Here's how it sounds when Carly does it:

Real Power

From a Security Camera at a Farm Store in Kentucky

Man is at the top of the food chain on this world, and operator of vast and powerful machineries, holding dominion over the other species and much of the Earth. But when you look at this image, you realize how much farther humans have to go to claim mastery of the weather. For me, this image brings awe. Had I been there, I expect terror would have overridden that.


Holy shit! Look at that!

Juice

Notice the color difference between the spinach-flavored juice (above) and the kale-version, (below) 


The latter has bananas, pear, pineapple, and just a few leaves of kale. I'd have thought it would be darker, but it isn't.

And another shade ...

Oh, and by the by, until this year, I never in my wildest dreams expected I'd be drinking anything with pureed kale in it. Kale? Come on!

One Man's Floor ...

... is another man's ceiling. I'm sure you've heard that one before, and it goes to one's perception of how things are, reality, and the relativity thereof.


Ah, reality and relativity, there's a fine couple. We all tend to have our own view of what they mean, and in my experience, we apply our standards to others. Well, of course we would, wouldn't we? What we bring to the table, most of us, is a combination of our actions, hopes, our education, our beliefs, an olio of this and that, and our default is: I'm normal, so other normal people will tend to see things my way ...


If ever I believed that, the reëlection of George Bush the Younger certainly blew that thought clean out of my head. Really? I'm living in a mad house. Welcome to Bedlam ...


Reality is plastic, malleable, it twists and bends and balloons hither and yon, and what you see might not be what I see at all. And normal? Forget about it.


Yes, there is a kind of consensus version we bruit about, those things upon which the so-called saner ones among tend to us agree. That's a tree; yonder, a stop sign; over there, that critter, why, it's a dog. Have to be able to do that to have any kind of civil society at all. But even at that simple level, it often breaks down. 


So, what color is the stop sign? Red, you say? 


Explain "red" to somebody who is color blind–he doesn't see what you see. If you think you can pull that off, try explaining it to somebody who has been blind from birth. He can understand that it's a color, but he won't know what it looks like. No analogy gets there.


Working through a medical rotation umpty-dump years ago in the Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson, there was a patient in the asylum who always walked around an empty place in the rec room. That's because he saw a table there.


I didn't see it, nor did my co-workers, but he said he did.


One of the students asked the shrink treating the guy what his problem was. The answer was–quoting here the psychiatrist's exact term–"He's crazy."


There is a famous argument from folks who have indulged in psychedelic drugs: Are all those woo-woo things you see and hear and feel when sky-high on LSD simply mind-fog? Hallucinations? Or are they the reality, and unchemmed folks experiencing naught but a throttled-down version their filters offer to keep them from mind-boggling sensory overload and a trip down Nutso Lane?


Lot of people talk to God, that doesn't make you crazy; if God talks back to you? The old days, such folks were sometimes considered prophets. Maybe some of them were. These days, we tend to put those people into places where there are invisible tables in the rec room ...


One man's vision is another man's madness.


I get the my-reality-is-better-than-your-reality a lot discussions about all kinds of stuff. It's our nature, I think, to think that what we believe is right and folks who disagree with it are wrong. Sure, they might not be evil, but simply ... misguided ...


All you people who voted for Shrub the second time? I'm talking to you here.


And you can see that holier-than-thou as a working attitude is polarizing. Look at political discussions on on Facebook. 


One man's conservative is another man's liberal. 


The notion that I'm-the-real-stuff and you live in fantasy world is misapplied constantly. Consider: A movie star, who makes millions, is lauded everywhere he goes, who has a long career, then dies in his sleep. While what he does might be considered a fantasy life by most of us, is not his life real to him? Are his experiences less valid because he was rich and famous?


Using that logic, I have to allow Republicans who voted for Former Occupant of the White House Before the Current Occupant their due, much as I dislike the notion. We are where we are, and if you disagree with me, it doesn't mean you are necessarily wrong, even if I believe that you are. 


I like the old Hoyt Axton song "Have a Nice Day," from which comes the refrain, "All I'm sayin' is have a nice day/ I hope it doesn't rain on your parade/And when it all comes down/I hope it doesn't land on you ..."


Have a nice day. I hope the guy upstairs isn't stomping around on your ceiling; however, if you elect Rick Santorum President? You are either evil or seeing tables I can't see ...

Mmm, Mmm, Good!

Take an apple, a banana, an orange, some cranberries, fresh spinach and a little water and hit high on the blender and what do you get? 


A spinach smoothie ...


Don't have to add sugar because there is plenty of sweetness in the fruit


Of course, it looks like split pea soup without the ham, but it does taste a lot better than it looks. And if you  don't get enough vegetables with your meals–that would be me–it's a great way to get the healthy goodies without having to cook the stuff so it loses whatever nutritional value it has.


Yum.


The only drawback to fresh vegetable juice is that it tends not to keep very long. Carrot juice in particular after two days turns into something that starts trying to shove the refrigerator door open to crawl out looking to devour hapless teenagers. Still; make less, drink it fresh, it's all good. 


I got your V-8 right here ...

Surrendering the Things of Youth

With the Olympics upcoming in the U.K. this summer, I thought it would be fun to speak about Oscar Swahn, a Swedish shooter from the early part of the previous century. Swahn competed for his country in three Olympics, 1908, 1912, and 1920, and won assorted medals, both individually and in team competitions. He shot the Running Deer events, in which a silhouette of a deer moved back and forth at various ranges, and competitors used a rifle, for single or double shots. 


The fun part of this was that in the 1920 games, Swahn was seventy-two years old. 


Seventy-two.


Choosing your event matters. Don't see a lot of seventy-year-olds on the track or diving off the ten-meter platform ...


Swahn was not just the oldest competitor to win a medal, he was the oldest to even compete in the modern Olympics. (In the team competitions, his son Alfred also shot in the same games, and was thus a medal winner, as well, and he'd be considered long in the tooth for a whole lot of events)


There is a caveat as to the age thing: The Art Competitions, which were once part of the Olympics, wherein people brought paintings or sculpture or literature, music, even architecture and were awarded medals. How cool would it have been to have won an Olympic Gold Medal in Literature?


I confess that I never knew such things existed. The Art Competitions ran from 1912-1948; however, since the entrants were clearly professionals in each of the categories, the events were dropped. 


Apropos of nothing, Swahn's middle name was "Gomer." Andy Griffith fans might find that amusing.

Plumbing Ain't Us

Got up this morning and was told the shower head was dripping. Okay, so the shower was installed fifteen years ago during a remodel, it needs some attention.


Never replaced a shower faucet before, so, I got the brand–Delta–got online to see how to not-screw-it-up, and of course, could not find one that looked exactly like it. Naturally. 


Still, the principles are the same. I turned off the water, disassembled the sucker–and it's tricky, there's a brass cap that doesn't look like it comes off–and went to Home Depot. Guy said, "All you need is this and some plumber's grease, you're good to go. 


This being a pair of springs and rubber cups, three bucks:

Came home disasembled the module, took the old springs and rubber seals out, put the new ones in, greased things up, put it back together, turned the water back on, and voila!

The shower still dripped ...

Not as much, but some, a drop every eight or ten seconds.

Well, drat*. That's not what I wanted. So. I went back to Home Depot and got the entire module, which I should have done in the first place. In theory, these are guaranteed for life and if I had the receipt, I could have gotten it for free, but good  luck finding that. Thirty-four-ninety-five. 

Home, out with the old, in with the new, and now it works just fine, no drippery. (I needed a T-bar tool to turn the water valve on and off at the street anyhow, another eight bucks, and it makes things a lot easier than using a Crescent wrench and Channellock pliers in combination.)

So, forty-six and change total, a hour and a half,  or so, counting the drives. Second time, five minutes to change it out, plus another five to adjust the scald-stop. 

Way cheaper than a plumber. I'll take it. 

____________

* drat: ORIGIN early 19th cent.: shortening of od rat, euphemism for God rot.

Saw One of These Yesterday

Bumper Sticker of the Day

How Times Have Changed

All photos by John Andrews

from the Orycon 25th Anniversary CD

Before there was Orycon, the local science fiction and fantasy convention, of which we are coming up on #34, there was the Symposium. This was a one-day deal held at at local U, Portland State, as I recall, which was essentially an introduction and tune-up for the first Orycon.


This was in 1978, which was the first year I was here, fresh from Louisiana. Several of my short stories had been published by then, though I was still two and some years away from my first novel.


The venue wasn't large and it wasn't full. The big draws were John "Herb" Varley;  Vonda "Shrimp" McIntyre; F.M. "Buzz" Busby; J.F. "Jesse" Bone; Mildred "Bubbles" Broxon; and John "I won't live to see fifty" Shirley. And me.


Jeez Louise, I still had the hippie haircut ...


By the time the second Orycon rolled around, my hair was maybe a bit shorter–here I am, below, right, interviewing the Guest of Honor, the late, great Friz Leiber–but I was still fifteen pounds heavier than I am now.

And I'm not positive, but I think that's a young George R.R. Martin below, watching Fritz smoke. People did that in hotels on panels back then, they smoked cigarettes ...

Ah, the good old days ...

Looking for a Home in the Country?

My old buddy Mike Byers, an artist in glass, writer, guitarist, and all around good guy, is selling his home in the country. It's in Baliff's Hollow, Williamsport, Indiana, and is a custom-built A-frame with a monster shop. At a most reasonable price, too.


If you are thinking about leaving the trials and travails of civilization? Check it out.

Son of Arm Candy

I had intended to do a before and after photo on the arm candy post I put up a few days back. Show the bruise, work it for a couple days with balur, then reveal how it had healed right up, through the miracle of Javanese goop applied with vigor.


Thing is, if you go back to class and bang it again before it heals right up completely? It, uh, doesn't look better.


So this is what you get ...

Before (above) 

After ...

The Middle Aged Look Up

Got an email from a guy I know. He's about twenty years younger than I, and his message reflected what I know as the classic Mid-Life Crisis.


There is some contention about this term, which came from the sixties. Once thought to be common, it now seems to be less of a crisis than a reflective realization. Too, it is much more likely to happen in America than it is in, say, India or Japan. Mostly this seems to be because in the U.S. we exist to serve a youth-culture. (As a baby-boomer, there are more people my age than older or younger, but this is changing as we get older and die off. "He spoke frog," they say. Spoke frog? Yeah. He croaked ...)


And I'm not going quietly, I'm going kicking and screaming, by God ...


What is a mid-life crisis? Well, it is centered around the realization that you ain't getting any younger. You look up, realize you are on the downhill side of life, and you wonder: Is this it? Is this all there is?


Manifestations are varied, and range from physical to emotional. Precipitating factors can be anything, but big ones hit the hardest: Your father dies. A guy you went to high school with keels over from a heart attack. Your kids leave the nest. You get to be a grandpa. You lose your job.


You pass a mirror and notice you've put on a few pounds, there are wrinkles where you didn't used to have any, your hair has gone gray. 


It happens to men and women about equally, though the physical side seems to matter more for women in our country, I think, than it does for men. Scratch ten women on the street and ask them how they think they look, nine will be unhappy with some aspect of their appearance. With men, that ratio seems to be reversed. 


It happens insidiously, too, not just with major life-altering events:


You are at the mall and a group of cute young women passes you. You smile at them and they don't smile back. Or they do, but the smile is one you give to your granny. Or worse, you've suddenly taken a potion more potent than the one Claude Rains created: You have become the Invisible Man. Weighed, measured, and dismissed as naught but an old guy.


The good-looking twenty-s0mething boy checking you out at at the market looks at you and he isn't checking you out. He says, "Have a nice day, ma'am," and quickly turns to smile at the teenaged girl behind you. 


Ma'am? When did that happen?


On your way to work, you wonder why you bother. Nothing about your job but your paycheck drives you to do it. You have to get up in the middle of the night to pee. You read the paper about something you remember as having happened maybe last month, and notice that it actually took place four years ago. The rock group you loved is having its 45th anniversary reunion. 


Whoa! Hold up! Slow down!


What people do to try and get past this varies, too. Traditionally, the attempts are to recapture lost youth. A sporty car. An affair with somebody half your age. Appointments with the plastic surgeon to get this augmented, that lifted, the eyelid tuck or the belly fat sucker. New haircut, plenty of dye. The bucket list comes out. Travel, experiences, that new French restaurant and what the hell, carpe diem. Hurry! Time's a'wasting!


People will try to run with a younger crowd. How sad is it to see a sixty-year-old guy with his hair dyed trying to look as if he belongs with a group of twenty-year-olds? 


Folks throw themselves into learning a new thing, keeping busy, but in the end, those are only temporary fixes. The coming to terms with the notion that you are, in fact, going to get old and die (or maybe die before you get old) is part of what being an adult means. It sucks. But you don't really have a choice, because the reality nudges the fantasy out of the way.


My friend didn't really want to hear all this. I understand. There's a line in Desiderata:


"Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth ..."


That's a hard one. Good luck with it.

Everybody Talks About the Weather ...

Woke up this morning to a dusting of snow here in lovely Beaverton. First of March, still have some of last fall's leaves in my gum tree, and now, snow. 


Nothing sticking on the streets or walks, and rain will come in tonight and wash any that's left away, but still, another entry in the unusual winter we sorta didn't have this year ...


The picture above is what I wanted to get–icing on the roof. But the picture below is what I shot the first time I stuck the ipod up. Funny.