I hope you all had a wonderful Black Friday.
Ah, yes. Black Friday is the most recent of the American customs that have leaked into my native Norway over the Internet, along with classics like Helloween and VD. I am not sure whether this actually is the first year I’ve seen it here, but it just might be. The name certainly seems well chosen from the perspective of the porcupines among us, don’t you think? ^_^
Filled with clothes. No, I am not moving again quite yet.
A newly established charity is collecting clothes for Russia and Poland. I wish them the best of luck: Russia actively tries to stop people from trucking stuff like that into the country, as it is bad for the local economy. And Poland… well, its standard of living is lower than ours, but I sincerely doubt there are more people needing clothes than the local Catholic charities can keep up with.
That said, I eagerly grab an excuse to get rid of some of my immense hoard of clothes. I packed this bag full, so full in fact that I have to be careful when dragging it; and yet if someone else had packed that bag and told me to look in my wardrobes, I would not have been able to tell what was gone. I am not even sure I would have been able to tell whether or not anything was gone at all! They still look and feel pretty much full.
To be honest, I wonder whether the charity will even come to pick up the clothes, or whether it is just a publicity stunt.
And even if they do pick it up, I wonder whether it will ever reach the supposedly poor in Eastern Europe, or whether it will be quietly burned when the challenge of transportation and distribution dawns on the organization. Or when it is stopped in customs.
But it is worth a try, simply because I will have that much less if I move again, which probably won’t be years off. If I live, I don’t see myself here in a year. You can rent fairly large houses not far from here for the rent I pay here. Although fairly large houses are likely to go to families, for obvious reasons. Â I have to scale down so I can rent something cheaper. Well, I don’t “have to” as in otherwise hunger, but “have to” as in I could spend that money more wisely, if at all. Having to rent an extra room to store the excessive amount of clothes is not wisdom, I think.
Even so, I am not packing up everything except what I need for a month. No. First of all because I don’t really expect this to work. But also because, well, it’s clothes and I can use them. If I live another 40 years, like my grandpa did, I can wear out most of them. And that’s better than them being burned near the border. Probably. I am not quite sure. So I am hedging. Giving away the stuff I am pretty sure I will never wear, and that is too good to throw away.
Well, that I think is too good to throw away. The poor Russians or Poles may well think differently. I am honestly not sure which has the highest standard for what to wear, they or I. Just because you’re poor does not mean you don’t have pride. I, on the other hand, am single and celibate. What use do I have for pride?
New entry up in the even more personal journal: Vacation started.
Despite the name, it is mostly a health update, so I wouldn’t read it if I were me and it wasn’t about me. ^_^
“Perverted people and pure people often fail to communicate.” After I saw this, I have adopted it as one of my favorite proverbs.
I looked at my Amazon Kindle recommendations a while ago, and noticed a rather unexpected title: True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Now, my initial reaction was that I must have strayed further into Catholic territory than I intended, and that is indeed the proper conclusion. But the next thought was what my Liberal friends would think if they saw that book title. That’s almost enough to make a grown man blush.
I came to think of it today again because of the book I am reading on the bus. While I tend to read paper books at home (if at all), I read e-books on my Galaxy Tab. This has the side benefit that people can’t see the title or even the general type of book you are reading. (The same goes for dedicated reading boards like Kindle or Nook. I however read books in Kindle format on the Tab, which I use anyway to read up on Twitter and such.)
Now this particular book is indeed Catholic, although I am not. It is called Fire Within and is about the lives (just a little) and teachings of St Teresa of Avila (also known as Teresa of Jesus) and her friend St John of the Cross (of “Dark Night of the Soul” fame, which honestly sounds like the title of a full-fledged horror book. I would not be surprised if some, even among Christians, feel that way about it too). Fire Withinis quite an inspiring book, claiming that the kind of life shown by these two saints is available to all and indeed the intended Christian life even in our days. It is a book suited to call forth self-reflection in a modern reader.
The title Fire Within also happen to sound like a trashy novel about lovers with uncontrollable urges. Or perhaps that is just me.
Don’t get me wrong, a few years ago I have in fact read some romance novels for the decidedly feminine audience, although quite possibly all of them were “supernatural romance” before that became synonymous with more or less glittering vampires. I have written about this in the past, but basically there were sorcerers, aliens, fallen angels, survivors from sunken continents, that kind of things. So I guess if someone mistook me for reading a trashy novel these days, I would not even get what I deserved.
And the paper book I am occasionally reading at home? Meditations on the Tarot, at least it does not sound like a cheap Harlequin title. It does sound like a typical New Age book though, about how to win the lottery with playing card or things like that. It is also, as it happens, a pretty certified Catholic book, not quite mainstream but accepted by people close to the Pope and quite possibly the Pope himself.
(Why all the Catholicism? Well, it happens to be pretty much the only branch of Christianity I know of with a strong intellectual tradition, and even that mostly in the upper echelons, I’m afraid.)
Yeah, I bought up a bunch of books this summer, just before the Norwegian government launched their tax on e-books from abroad. Because you know, if we don’t tax e-books, people might buy them instead of paper books, and our friends in the paper pulp industry might not contribute to our next election campaign. Paper pulp used to be a pretty big industry around here, although it has largely outsourced of late.
Anyway, I guess the titles weren’t so “ha ha” funny. I am just easily amused. And of course, it is entirely incidental that I get to show off how pious books I am (occasionally) reading these days. Probably holier than thou. Certainly holier than me! I guess I am hoping that it will rub off on me eventually. That could be useful: The less than pious reader my recognize the picture for today’s entry as a picture from the anime Seitokai Yakuindomo, which is virtually all about double entendres and off-color misunderstandings, mostly of the verbal sort. So I may need all the rubbing I can get…
Personal entry up. For those not yet used to the more personal entries being on a separate blog. Here you go: Paying bills. It’s all about me!
So I really went and did it. Made a separate blog for the overly personal stuff. Today’s entry goes there. It’s about me taking a sick day. Whee! Stop the (Word)Press!
At work today, just before and during the lunch break, I had a new case of fat poisoning. Or at least to the best of my knowledge that is what causes it. The symptoms are not obviously connected to fat in any way, they are mostly neurological. First I felt very sleepy. This is not something unique and exciting on a Monday, so I paid no heed to it. But after a while the classic symptoms of hypothermia began: Feeling of cold from inside, shivering and then shaking uncontrollably from frost, teeth clattering. Queasiness and sudden bowel activity as the muscles of the digestive tract also join the desperate attempt to heat the body, along with the usually voluntary muscles of arms, legs, neck etc. It is basically as if the body had been cooled down to a dangerous level.
I put on the outdoors clothes I had used on my way to work, and started opening and closing my arms and walking in place, lifting my feet as if walking knee-deep in loose desert sand (a mental image meant to heat the body along with the heat from the muscles). It took about half an hour, but I seem to be over it now.
I suspect the noodles. Due to sores in my mouth, I have stuck to low-friction food this weekend. (The sores are healing now, by the way.) In the evening I ate a plate of noodles, but after a while I grew hungry again and cooked another. I have read that noodles are fat bombs, but I have not had a problem with just one of them. The thing is, the dry weight of a package of noodles is pretty small, so even if it consists almost entirely of carbohydrates and fat, there just isn’t enough fat in them after cooking to set off my system. Two of them within 4 hours seem to be too much, though. So now I know.
Also, I know that I still have this mysterious fat sensitivity. It’s been many months since I have had a serious fat attack, possibly a couple years, so I was starting to wonder if it had healed. Obviously it had not. Well, that means no low-carbohydrate diet for me. I thought so. But having lost a few pounds from all the walking, I am growing hungrier than I used to. Noodles are not the answer, it seems.
Yeah, this is the kind of entry that should go into the new more personal sub-blog because it has a very limited appeal. I haven’t been able to set up the new blog yet though. There is backing up to do, installation etc. Have upgraded WordPress and PHP so far. Now it is midnight again.
Immediate reaction to being exposed to morons, screenshot from City of Heroes. We are obviously not talking about latter-day (or any other) saints here.
In the game City of Heroes there is a science enhancement called “boron exposure”. The logic behind this will be explained below, so I’ll just mention that I created a brute-type character named Moron Exposure.
In real life, it is easy to see oneself as being exposed to morons, an old word for people with severe cognitive challenges. Or in other words, really stupid people. The somewhat less flattering truth is that we all risk functioning on a moronic level when we go beyond the limits of our competence. In some cases there is a sudden cutoff, in other cases it is more of a slope: The further we get from what we know, the more stupid our thinking becomes.
Be that as it may, even the competent may make mistakes. A slip of attention, an unfamiliar task, and you end up sending off a job badly done. This happened just yesterday with Form Regnskap here in Mandal, an accounting company that among its clients count my landlord’s company. They sent me, on behalf of said company, an invoice for two different costs related to the house.
According to the contract, I am to pay the costs of water, sewage, garbaged disposal etc. This is somewhat unusual around here, usually these are included in the rent. Anyway, all of these were on the invoice. Unfortunately, some of them shouldn’t have been. I already paid the garbage disposal fee directly, in fact it was one of the first thing I did after moving in. As for the other fees, it is not possible to see whether they are for the whole house or only half. Looks like the first, unless the house has been sectioned off into two independently owned parts. This is possible but not something you’d do if you plan to sell the whole building again at some future time. I’ll have to check this with the municipality. It is pretty clear that I can’t rely on the accounting firm.
I intend to counter-invoice them for the time I have to spend clearing this up. Not as any sort of punishment, but I already work full time. I am not obliged to work for free on behalf of other people’s accounting firms.
***
While my first reaction was one of annoyance, I took a long walk and talked it over with the voice in my heart. We came to agree that this was actually a positive event: It is a chance for me to fix my own broken karma. It is not like I haven’t made mistakes, at least one of them really serious, in my own work. By being on the receiving end of such a work mistake, I get to see this from the other side. I get to, at least to some degree, reap what I have sown. So that is good, to have the opportunity to do so while alive.
Earlier this year I read Dante’s poetic description of Purgatory, in his Divine Comedy. The literal existence of Purgatory is a matter of theological dispute, but I notice that Jewish tradition (within Kabbalah at least) support the notion that the “demons” we have created in this life will come back to haunt us in the next, until they have fully expended the power we gave them here. Since we are rather less substantial in that state, it takes a lot more time and / or intensity to pay this back. Â The Buddhist notion of Hell, which is actually more like Purgatory in that it is temporary and useful, is similar to this. Although it has attracted even more grotesque imagination than Dante’s Hell, much less his rather bearable Purgatory.
I have no experience to speak with authority about the afterlife, or even the before-life. What I know is that in this life, as you move closer to God / Tao / the Light / the Source, the distance between action and reaction grows less. You get the chance to pay off your karmic debt within reasonable time, whereas if you speed away in the opposite direction, there is so long a time from crime to punishment that you may have forgotten the first when you are caught up by the latter.
Now you may argue that Jesus (or Amida Buddha) has paid your karma debt, so there should be no such reaction. But that is only partially correct. We still need to turn around and see our acts from the other side, otherwise we lack in being complete persons. If we keep slapping people and never get slapped, we live and die unaware of what we have done to others. In that example, we are usually educated hands-on in kindergarten, so we don’t need to end our days in ignorance. But when things become more subtle, it is easy to live a life of ignorance, and our soul becomes unbalanced. This is its own punishment. The (partial) perfection of the soul is its own reward, and a very great one.
If getting an inaccurate invoice can help improve my soul, it is something to give thanks for, rather than a cause for clenched fists.
***
In Silver Age superhero comics, it was not uncommon that exposure to dangerous chemicals or energies could alter a person to become a superhero, like for instance Flash who got his powers from a lightning strike in his chemicals while he was working in his lab, or the Fantastic Four who were exposed to cosmic radiation in a space shuttle. The Science enhancements in City of Heroes are based on this idea.
My imaginary character Moron Exposure is derived from this notion, except instead of being exposed to a toxic chemical, he was exposed to a toxic social environment, and gained his amazing strength and resilience from this.
I created this character a couple days ago. Nice to see someone up there is watching me even when I dive into the 2-dimensional worlds. ^_^ Or is this what they call “synchronicity”? Synchronicity of Heroes?
Today for the first time my afternoon walk took me over the same hill that I had crossed when I got the racing heart episode ten days ago. I was slightly nervous, or at least cautious, checking my pulse rather often, but nothing like that happened this time. I completed the whole circuit.
However, there is another phenomenon now. I have noticed it the last two days in particular: After about one hour’s brisk walking, my legs start to feel heavy. This is shorter than I habitually walk (around 20 minutes shorter) so the last leg of the trip, as it were, is somewhat unpleasant. But I don’t write this to whine. Rather, it kindled my scientific curiosity. Again.
More exactly, each trip has three phases now. For the first 35 minutes, the pulse is ridiculously low. Â We’re talking from 110 down to less than 100 with brisk walking. Then for the next 25 minutes the pulse is typically around 120 with the same workload. And then after one hour, the legs start to feel heavy. (They always felt a bit stiff toward the end of a long walk, but not heavy, as far as I can remember.) Because I automatically slow down, the pulse also goes down a little. If I force myself to keep up the speed, it goes up slightly, but not much. So it seems to be something local to the muscles.
Why now? I don’t think the heart, even at 190 beats per minute, has the power to cause lasting changes in other parts of the body. Rather, I suspect it has to do with something else that was measured that day: My blood sugar was down to a perfectly normal 5.2 mmol, instead of my usual 6.1. As I’ve mentioned a couple times, it stayed on 6.1 even after fasting for 12 hours, and taking a 90 minute fast walk during those hours. So it moving is a bit of a big deal.
I thought at the time that either the heart had soaked up that much blood sugar, or the lower blood sugar had triggered the change in my heart rate. By now I am pretty sure that the heart – which runs fine on both fat and sugar – could not possibly be the cause. The measurement was made later when my pulse was down to around 100, the same as when walking slowly.
I won’t know until December, but I suspect that my slightly high blood sugar has disappeared. I have lost a few pounds, although I don’t seem to be losing more now, but so far they stay off. Â As you may know, the fat cells (“adipose tissue”) send out a hormone called leptin. The fuller they are, the more leptin in the blood. This is a hormone that has a number of effects around the body. It lowers your brain’s appetite (although your actual stomach muscles will continue to churn when they have nothing to do). Mice who are immune to leptin have a voracious appetite and, given free food, end up double sized. But the hormone also regulates other aspects of metabolism, and is one of several factors that influence blood sugar level. Leptin is a long-term hormone, unlike insulin and the anti-insulin glucagon, which act in a matter of seconds or minutes.
So yeah, I suspect my blood sugar levels have fallen to normal human levels. Well, when I am not eating, which these days I do constantly. Â Except when walking. Â Perhaps I should bring along some sugar on the next trip and see what happens?
The handle is inside the panel to the right – pull the knob to get to it.
I woke up and as I passed through the kitchen on my way to the bathroom, I heard a strange noise. It turned out one of the faucets in the bathroom had bust wide open during the night. It was one to a wash basin I don’t actually use, although I had some dirty clothes lying there that I had not washed yet. Well, they got wet at least! The water pressure was quite impressive.
Being the rational adult that I am, I decided to turn off the main water intake. When I moved in, it had been pointed out to me. Unfortunately, what I thought was the handle for the main water intake was the handle for the firehose. The landlord had to send someone to turn off the water for me. He also sent a plumber, later. I went to work and the plumber did an excellent job in my absence, nor am I missing anything from the house. So I guess not all people are thieves. It would have been kind of conspicuous, I guess, but still. Temptations have shown me that they are worthy adversaries. Anyway, it ended well.
The bathroom is quite water-resistant too, so I expect few if any long-term problems from this.
Kristi requested a picture of the firehose, thus the choice of topic for today. I am not sure what firehose is called in modern English, if you even have them in modern England. Both my Android tablet my Opera spell checker think I mean “firehouse”, but I don’t, and I sincerely hope the phrase will never be connected to this or any other place where I live.