Tuesday Mindset

Watched the old film “Rembrandt” directed by Alexander Korda in the 30’s, just released on the Criterion Eclipse series. Stayed up a little too late, but it was a way to chill out before sleeping. I definitely crashed immediately, so I guess I stayed up as late as I needed. What I took away from this, admittedly “stylized” version of Rembrandt’s life is that the lesson is to live your life the way you need to live it instead of the way you are supposed to live it.

That sounds awfully simple, doesn’t it, but as it was quoted so often in the film that “all is vanity …” though oddly misquoted that all that a man has is his labors by the old, foolish final version of the great man. But, of course, this might be true anyway and it is certainly the message of the film and perhaps the painter’s life. His great work “The Night Watch” was not considered worthy in his time and he suffered quite a bit after that. But, he stuck to his position and that is what I took away from it.

Generally, our world today doesn’t value this kind of attitude, as much as we admire it abstractly. We definitely want security and acceptance in our daily lives. But, like the movie “Office Space” many of us feel we are a bit isolated in a crowd and that our lives have been zapped of all meaning by this day to day. How to get out of the rut without going bonkers and becoming homeless? It’s kind of a common question.

So, the future is still to be lived, the past is over. The moment is all we have and our learned experiences. Nothing profound, as this is something expressed throughout time, but trying to walk that walk isn’t as easy as it sounds.

The Cola Conspiracy

Too much cola zaps muscle power
Excessive cola consumption can lead to anything from mild weakness to profound muscle paralysis, doctors are warning.
This is because the drink can cause blood potassium to drop dangerously low, they report in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.
They tell of the curious case of an Australian ostrich farmer who needed emergency care for lung paralysis after drinking 4-10 litres of cola a day.
He made a full recovery and was advised to curtail his cola drinking.
“ We have every reason to think that it is not rare ” Dr Clifford Packer from the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Centre in Ohio
Another example included a pregnant woman who regularly consumed up to three litres a day for the last six years and complained of tiredness, appetite loss and persistent vomiting.
A heart trace revealed she had an irregular heartbeat, most likely caused by her low blood potassium levels.
Once she stopped drinking so much cola, she made a full and uneventful recovery.
The investigators believe these cases are not atypical and that many people risk problems due to their intake.
“ Moderate consumption of cola drinks is completely safe and people can continue to enjoy such drinks as part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle ” A spokeswoman from the British Soft Drinks Association
Manufacturers insist the products are safe when consumed in moderation.
In a commentary, Dr Clifford Packer from the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Centre in Ohio said: "We have every reason to think that it is not rare.
"With aggressive mass marketing, super-sizing of soft drinks, and the effects of caffeine tolerance and dependence, there is very little doubt that tens of millions of people in industrialised countries drink at least 2-3 l of cola per day.
"It follows that the serum potassium levels of these heavy cola drinkers are dropping, in some cases, to dangerous low levels."
Moderation
The author of the research paper, Dr Moses Elisaf from the University of Ioannina in Greece, said it appeared that hypokalaemia can be caused by excessive consumption of three of the most common ingredients in cola drinks - glucose, fructose and caffeine.
"The individual role of each of these ingredients in the pathophysiology of cola-induced hypokalaemia has not been determined and may vary in different patients.
"However in most of the cases we looked at for our review, caffeine intoxication was thought to play the most important role.
"This has been borne out by case studies that focus on other products that contain high levels of caffeine but no glucose or fructose."
Despite this, he warned that caffeine free cola products could also cause hypokalaemia because the fructose they contain can cause diarrhoea.
"We believe that further studies are needed to establish how much is too much when it comes to the daily consumption of cola drinks."
Excessive consumption has already been linked with obesity, diabetes and tooth and bone problems.
A spokeswoman from the British Soft Drinks Association said: "The examples used in this paper by the IJCP are all very extreme cases - moderate consumption of cola drinks is completely safe and people can continue to enjoy such drinks as part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle.
"The soft drinks industry is committed to encouraging responsible consumption of all its products. Nutrition labelling is included on pack so people can make an informed choice about the products they are drinking."
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/8056028.stmPublished: 2009/05/19 09:50:29 GMT© BBC MMIX

Idea 1 - "The Suicidal Spy"

Chapter One
Notes from a Stake-Out

November 10, 1961

What is there in life worth living for? There really doesn’t seem to be an answer to that and I know it. I’ve seen grown men piss themselves to live and yet every day I wake up and wonder why I bothered or why God (or whatever) didn’t just allow me the peace of dying in my sleep. But, these cats that I smash with a pistol or pump full of LSD (the new thing in company these days) are totally freaking out saying, “hey, man, I wanna live. I wanna live!” They plead with me, through the shattered teeth or the matted hair, about their loved ones or whores or little boys (take your pick on how you interpret that one) and the beauty of life itself. It bores the shit out of me. Usually, just about this time, they spill the beans on what I need to know and then I just sigh and put them out of their fucking misery. And, sometimes, just sometimes, I wish it were me.

I’m a spy. Not one of those Yale boys flying around fucking up Cuba and shit. I’m low-level. Mostly keeping an eye on our “cousins” in the Bureau. Those cunts don’t have a clue how easily I could shut them down with the right word in the right ear of the right bastard on the right. But, that isn’t very interesting to me – the power, that is. I don’t care much because I’m just doing the job. The job is all I have. That and my shrink. Never had a wife and the family died in some car wreck before I can even remember them. That’s how the company gets you. The CIA plucks little no hopers like me because we have nothing to lose and are generally pretty quiet and sneaky. How else do you survive in a post-war orphanage? If I couldn’t be quiet and sneaky, I’d have starved to death.

Currently, I’m sitting in an apartment across from some guinea mob boss’s crap hole dive that he uses as his headquarters. The apartment? It’s a shit hole of course. A chair, a cot bed, a long-lens camera, and some heavy duty recording equipment. Probably worth more than a year’s rent in this cum bucket. Life makes me sick and criminals who swim and swine in this swill make me sicker. I don’t have the usual company ulcer or drinking problem. I’m on lithium, when I bother to take it, which is to say I mostly don’t. Fuck the quacks. Fuck the company.

Fuck life.

Brother Carl, the Mafioso I’m watching, leaves. I make a note, take a picture, and then go and take a piss in the most vile toilet I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I used to think it was unmanly to sit down and take a piss, but now I’m so lazy and depressed that the effort of standing is too much. At least I can press my closed eyelids into my hands and see some colors and zone out for a minute. It also helps me to block my nose and breathe through my mouth so I don’t have to smell the place. Sometimes I plug my ears, but that’s only if a hooker’s got some john next door.

The glamour of being a spy.

So, why is a company man spying on a guy in the US of A? Why isn’t the FBI all over this? Because, he’s got some deep pockets back in his little Sicilian olive and gun farm and we need to know what the hell kind of war he’s planning. The bureau doesn’t give a shit about the international scene, mostly because we don’t tell them what it is or what is going on. That’s why that Bay of Pigs thing took everyone, even President Kennedy by surprise. Hell, the middle-goons like me didn’t even know. That was a straight Yale frat-house bullshit fuck up from start to finish. If we’d been there, even in the room, we’d have told them to just keep their noses out. Instead, well all look like assholes in the biggest, and probably not the first, massive fuck up in United States history. Frankly, nothing’s been the same since Burgess fucked old Jesus Angleton up the ass and sent him spinning around and around in his own alcoholic bird house brain.
But, as usual, I digress. Keeping a diary isn’t my style, but things are really starting to fuck with me these days. Woke up this morning in a cold sweat and my pistol in my hand ready to use it on myself. It was NOT a good feeling, let me tell you. I thought, why? Why am I so depressed and exhausted. I don’t even want to get laid anymore. Just seems like a lot of work for little return.

So, Brother Carl (that’s what we call him – real name Carlos Galigooli) is just some local goon in Chicago, but he’s got some interesting international connections. Not just in Italy. His network runs through Bolivia and the diamond mines as well as Cuba. He’s got something going on with the Commies and that’s what we’re here to find out. Oh, I’m not the only one. I got three other guys running shifts on this stake out. One is on the inside, but we all figure he’s blown ‘cause we haven’t seen him in two weeks. Probably part of the foundation of some new construction project. Gangsters are great philanthropists when it comes to putting up new buildings for obvious reasons. But, who knows? He might come up for air and give us the whole show and a bag of popcorn. That’s how an undercover situation works in the company. If you were a cop or a brown shoe, a strike team would be in there immediately. We’re expendables.

The city block looks is probably not what you’d imagine in the part of the windy city populated by Italians. The new buildings are smaller, maybe 5 stories or more, and all white like something from a Miami post card. Of course, you don’t tend to retire here. The room I’m in isn’t that bad, but I smell and see everything. I don’t even want to take my shoes off just in case there’s some kind of nasty jizz on the floor, or God knows what else. The hotel/apartment building is called the Dortman. The sort of place a traveling salesmen stays, or a hooker takes a john, or a new fresh face in town looking for stable occupation and residence stays. It has a certain standard, but it isn’t very high. We all call the Dorfman. Not terribly clever, but then again neither are my collegues. I always know the caliber of people I’m going to spend the next few months with when I’m put in charge. Basic idiots, thugs, chain-smoking drunks with stroke books all over the friggin’ place. I’m in charge means I’m the smartest and most motivated, which is pretty sad.

Let’s see, downstairs casing the back alleys is Jimmy Calper. We call him the Chimp, mostly because any loud noise causes him to leap around like a fucking organ-grinder’s monkey. It would be funny if it wasn’t so damn irritating. Appearantly, he’s got shell-shock from a landmine in Korea. Did even hurt anyone, just freaked him out when the stupid thing went off. Oh well, I was in Korea. Did my share of killing. I was pretty good. So was the Chimp, which is why we’re both here, I guess. At least I got to choose him for this assignment. Didn’t have a choice with the other two. Guess they didn’t trust an irish orphan to pick a good ringer for a wop mole. Probably right.

Damn. Every forty-five minutes, like clockwork, I get another stabbing pain in my head. Not sure if it’s the lithium or the not taking the lithium or none of the above. All I do know is that it stabs over my left eye and I have to put my thumb into my eye socket to relieve the pain. It’s like a case of bad sinusitis. Nothing the docs can give me for it. CIA shrink says I got a conscience over something I must have done. Wish I’d done it to him. That would be some great company therapy – if the shrink can’t cure you in five sessions you get to pistol whip him and leave him fucking Russia. The thought seems to relieve the pain. Or it just went away like it always does. Hell if I know.

Anyway, old Chimp was a sort of buddy of mine in Korea. He’s the all-American coward type. Short cropped yellow hair and freckles, like he’s trying out for a freakin’ cartoon strip. I like him, I just wish he would never under any circumstances speak to me again. I’m just an asshole like that sometimes.

Our shooter – not that we really thought we’d need one on this caper – was on the roof. He was called Spot for a couple of reasons. One, he’s a sharp-shooter, especially with his girlfriend – by girlfriend I mean his beloved Lee-Enfield No. 5 sniper rifle. He called it his Jungle Princess, so we assume he must have sex with it as well.

I don’t really know why he loves that gun, since there are plenty of good American models, but it’s his thing. That’s how the company works on our level: if you have “your thing” don’t mess with it. Spot’s about 45, so he must have used it in WWII. Won’t talk about it, unless he’s lecturing you on keeping weapons clean and loaded or about how, if you ever touched it, he’d automatically consider you a Russian spy and blow your head right off.

He’s sort wound pretty tight. Spot also smells very much like a dog because he doesn’t like to bathe much.

And then there was Goon. Fuck Goon. He’s been inside too long. He’s dead, stupid guinea wop. I hate it when things like that happen. Send a kid in, some dumb ass with no experience and they get whacked. We can’t even tell his family he died like a hero, if he had any family. We wouldn’t ever know. In his case, I don’t even know his real name. He’s just gone. Disappeared.

Or, at least I thought until I heard a knock at the door. There he was, our “inside man” Goon standing as bright and shiny as a newly minted penny with Chimp in my front door. He seemed awfully pleased with himself, considering the smile on his face.

“What the fuck are you doing here, you idiot?” I yelled. I ushered them in the room quick and, after a quick once up and down the hall, shut the door. “You’re gonna blow this whole thing.”

“Ah, don’t worry. Forget about it.” Goon said in that irritating Italian slang. “They gave me the afternoon off.”

Shit, I thought. Something big is going down and they know we’re here.

On Writing

(By writing, I include all communicative arts … But, this is specific in many ways to literature.)

Why write? The 21st century seems at once fascinated with escapism and intellectually stunted. We live in a confusing era for literature. Most people don’t believe in things transcend the life-span of a nightly news story, let alone the finite existentialism of a modern novel. Pulp trash rules the racks. Looking over subjects to write about and great novelists past, I wonder what to put to paper.

My previous two efforts for novels have been like little hills to climb to get myself to a stage of self-confidence, but still not quite there to proceed with the agony of attempting to get myself published. All those “how to publish” books seem to give out the same stale advice that isn’t at all helpful, the most obvious and overstated piece of which seems to be: do what is being published now.

Vampire love stories? Trashy romance? Grisham? This? No …

Gone are the Nabokovs and the Greenes. Recently I’ve devoted myself to reading and appreciating Nabokov. I’ve read “Bend Sinister”, “Mary”, “The Eye”, “Laughter after Dark”, “Transparent Things” and I’m currently beginning “Invitation to a Beheading.” While my writing projects currently lurk between 3 decided different directions. Perhaps they are all valid if, like some of these greats, I could pull them into a genre of “Fuller-ness” … But, to write in this time seems to be something of a fruitless task.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m deeply greatful to the handful of friends and readers I do have (and handful is more or less on the mark.) I’m not even complaining, I’m merely at a crossroads. What to write and why? The task itself is difficult enough and I’ve already committed myself to making sure that the next project will be properly shopped around to real publishers and agents.

As a side note to all of this, I’ve come to the conclusion that life is sort of a game … one that shouldn’t be played too seriously. I’ve spent many years concerned about what I should or shouldn’t be doing only to realize that the process of doing that only gets in the way of my happiness. Life, of course, isn’t a game, but it isn’t worth losing your mind over.

And, I suppose, neither is writing. Perhaps that is why I stagnate … waiting for the spark.

A Day in the Life - 1

The day is rainy and dark. It is Sunday. Flippin’ channels on cable. No life for a reasonably youngish man. I suppose I should be concerned that I’m not living to my full potential, but I’m not. My dreams are gone replaced with reasonable ambition. “Magnum Force” is on the ole’ projector. Yeah, I haven’t joined the Blu-Ray Hi Def craze, but then again, I haven’t seen anything that makes that worthwhile. My screen is a movie screen … over 8 feet across. Detail is in size … at least, that’s what she said. Joke.

So, it is Sunday and I want to not think about work. Is that normal. I don’t have a normal life and that is ok with me. Seems to be a problem with others. Why? I don’t know.