The D Word

Every good writer knows you never begin an article with stats.  So, here we go: An estimated 22 million Americans and millions of others world-wide suffer from some form of depression.  The numbers may be higher – much higher – depending on where one draws the boundaries in terms of severity, and which other maladies (anxiety disorders, etc.) one includes.

As is the case with just about everything else I choose to write about, I found myself woefully ignorant of depression; its breadth and girth.  It is, for example, most prevalent in the 45–64 age group, and women are more susceptible to some types than men. It has been linked to heart disease, stroke, and obesity, and the number of people diagnosed with depression increases by about 20% per year.

Just let your mind absorb that for a minute.  What if heart disease, cancer, or automobile fatalities increased by 20% annually?  It’d be pretty scary, huh?

As with other afflictions, depression varies in degree, complexity, and manifestation.  There are different types of depression; seasonal, situational, cyclothymic, and more.  It’s kind of a big deal.

No one talked about depression back when I first suspected something was amiss.  A person could be “out of sorts” or “feeling blue”, but few dared admit to being depressed, as it was not only stigmatizing, but also construed as a sign of weakness, especially in men.  We’re talking late 1960’s to early 1970’s, and people were not as “enlightened” in those days, or so we rationalize.

Being wholly unqualified to advise anyone dealing with depression – the victim or those around them - I have picked up the following nuggets from those in the know:

Never tell someone that is depressed to “snap out of it”
You would never admonish a person afflicted with cancer or diabetes to “snap out of it”, but we – out of frustration or ignorance – think nothing of grabbing someone by the collar and essentially ordering them to stop being depressed.  Ditto for the motivational zingers “suck it up, buttercup”, “would you like some cheese with that whine?”, and “the world doesn’t revolve around you”.  Depression sufferers are painfully aware of how they’re viewed by society at large, and depression is not something one can just “shake off”.

Don’t remind them how “good” they’ve got it

The best analogy I can come up with for this one is: You like sporty cars, and they have a sporty car, ergo they cannot be depressed.  But people dealing with depression have a different frame of reference than you, and having an Acura in the driveway and the latest iPhone in their pocket does not equate to bliss.  Nor does having what would outwardly appear to be a good job or a happy home life.  We can never truly know the demons those around us wrestle with on a daily basis.

No one chooses to be depressed

Any more than they’d choose to be stricken with Alzheimer’s or kidney failure or deep vein thrombosis.
 

Sadly, many never seek treatment

As overused as the term is, my goal here is simply to raise awareness of depression, a disease which affects – directly or indirectly – at least one in 10 Americans. So, I’m going to encourage everyone that suffers from depression to get help. If you have access to an Employee Assistance Program, take advantage of it.  If you fell and broke your arm, you’d have that treated, wouldn’t you?  If you were running a fever for days on end, you’d go to the emergency room.

So tell someone, and keep telling people until someone listens.  It’s a disease, it’s not your fault, and we must work together to destigmatize it.

 
Get help, get better, get on with your life.  Then, get out there and help someone else.

Fifty Shades of Beige

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, the “erotic romance novel” Fifty Shades of Grey comes to the big screen in a few months.  Women everywhere are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to project themselves into the persona of the female lead.  Assuming they squint their eyes and have a glass or two of wine beforehand.

But, as erotic as the novel may be, the fact is – it’s just a fantasy.  I mean, you could never actually engage in the acts depicted in its pages.  You could?  Well, just keep that to yourself, huh?

No, for most women, fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality, and never the twain shall meet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t add a little spice to your intimate interludes.  So, allow me to introduce you to Fifty Shades of Beige:

Pet names:

Some of these can lean to the risqué side, though none I could mention here.  Best you and your partner stick to more modest monikers, such as “Honeybun”, “Sweet Cheeks” and “Mr. Jackhammer”.

Dialog:

It’s okay to push the boundaries beyond the sweet nothings you and your partner typically whisper into each other’s ears.  A couple of my favorites are “Baby, I’m gonna flip your pancakes right off the griddle”, and “I’m in overdrive and my mud flaps are singing”.  But - be sure to avoid phrases like” I never noticed that mole before”, or “Can we hurry this up?”, or “Did you have chili rellenos for lunch?”

Bondage:

Sure, it sounds like fun, but I can tell you from experience being tied up and not being able to reach that itch in the bend of your knee is not all it’s cracked up to be. I recommend having your wrists and ankles loosely bound with a scarf or dish towel, or whatever’s handy, in case the doorbell rings, or you remember it’s almost time for Biggest Loser.

Discipline:

Again, it may look erotic, but that Cat-o’-nine-tails can actually leave marks.  Ouch!  You should probably go with milder forms of punishment such as: “Well, Mr. Jackhammer, it appears you missed that box of oily rags and gardening gloves when you were cleaning out the garage.  No Sports Center for a week.”  Or, “You’ve been a bad girl Sweet Cheeks, forgetting to stick the meat thermometer in the rump roast.  I’m going to have to de-activate your Twitter account until you learn your lesson.”

Role-playing:

As much as you may think you’d like your lady to dress up as a French Maid, or Jennifer Lawrence, or that one substitute teacher from high school, I can tell you from experience, you’ll just embarrass yourselves.  Come up with more believable scenarios.  My personal favorite is Humorless State Trooper and Tipsy Blonde Speeder.  Which reminds me; I’m pretty sure it’s my turn to be the State Trooper.

Afterglow:

Many couples ignore this all too important aspect of intimacy.  Be sure to take a few minutes to bask in the warmth of the moment, the falling away, the heartbeats returning to their normal pace.

Okay, five minutes should do it.  Sports Center or Biggest Loser is probably on.

Man Convinced to Vote by Robocall

Belle Plaine, IA - 46 year old ConAgra district manager Walt Findlay reported today that he has decided to vote in Tuesday’s midterm election, based solely on the strength of an automated phone call.

“Never give it much thought before today”, Findlay stated.  “Figured one was about as good as the other”.  Findlay, who advised he hadn’t voted at all since the 2004 presidential election, was impressed by the persuasiveness of the message left on his home phone answering machine.

“Seems this one fellow is involved in some shady business dealings”, the avid duck hunter and Chicago Bears fan mused.  “And, they said he accepted donations from some big-shot Wall Street types.  That way of thinking won’t fly here in Belle Plaine.”

“The way I see it, if I don’t vote, I’m giving someone else two votes”, Findlay continued, his jaw set stoically.  “And I don’t think that’s right”.

Sources close to the Iowa elections reported the candidate Findlay has decided to support “doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell” of winning Tuesday, and has already drafted three versions of his concession speech, depending on how severely he’s defeated.

Nice Unknowing You

“Everything comes and goes” sang Joni Mitchell on Down to You from her 1974 double platinum album Court and Spark, “marked by lovers and styles of clothes”.  And, anyone who’s blown out as many birthday candles as I knows this full well.  It’s a constant stream of interactions, this thing we call life; a highway with innumerable intersections, clover-leafs, and exit ramps.

As I’ve alluded to in other writings, many of our relationships in this “day and age” are transient.  Fleeting and withering, our acquaintances often take flight like leaves on the Autumn breeze.  The bff from high school, the co-worker from two jobs back, the former neighbor that promised they’d keep in touch, sometimes gradually, other times it’s a here today, gone tomorrow scenario.  Like gears in a cosmic machine we mesh, then shift to mesh with other gears.

Sometimes we “grow apart”, as its generally phrased, other times we “don’t have time” for those in our periphery any longer.  And on occasion, we just come to a place where we simply no longer see eye to eye.

But everyone you’ve ever known has touched you in some way, and you are who you are – to a large degree – because of those interactions.  We are social creatures, and we should never underestimate the impact those whom we’ve been privileged to know have left on our lives, and we on theirs.

If I may be allowed a second lyrical reference, Billy Joel exemplified my point in his song Say Goodbye to Hollywood: So many faces in and out of my life, some will last, some will be just now and then.

So treasure the lives that have touched yours, if only for a time and a season, and know you have also touched theirs.

If only for a time and a season.

The Man Behind the Curtain

One of the more iconic scenes in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz is that of the Wizard refusing Dorothy and her friends an audience, until Toto pulls back the curtain, and Dorothy discovers the sham; this man is not the great and powerful Oz after all, but a simple conman from Nebraska.  “Pay no attention”, he utters in desperation, “to that man behind the curtain.”  The fire, the smoke, and the bellowing, disembodied voice are all for show.  Alas, the jig is up, and the Wizard is exposed for the mere mortal he is.

We see that same sham on a daily basis.  Those supermodels in our favorite magazines are air-brushed, the products we buy are no longer “new and improved”, but have become “revolutionary”, and those we naively elect to represent us are lackeys for the ultra-wealthy.  Ours is a society where image and perception have trumped substance and reality.

Take the average corporate mission statement; a hodgepodge of pithy corporate-speak which bears no resemblance to the actual corporate “culture” which exists.  Our typical election offers the voter a “choice” between what I like to call the man wearing the blue tie with a red stripe and the man wearing the red tie with a blue stripe.  They are simply two sides of the same coin, and the notion that there is a choice is therefore a ruse.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is credited with the saying: “There are no facts, only interpretations”, and I tend to agree. One could substitute the word “perception” for “interpretations”, and the phrase would still hold true.  It’s all window dressing; it’s sleight of hand.

We are free to see the world and its machinations as we see fit, and to those who prefer to view it through rose-colored glasses, I wish you peace and serenity; you have made your choice.  To those who would label me jaded and cynical, I offer no argument.  But to those who’ve not yet made up their mind: Pull back the curtain, punch through the façade, scratch the surface and examine what’s beneath.  It’s not what you think.

Thanks for the Memories

So I’m hearing that baby boomers are crashing head-long into retirement, and along with it, bouts of incredible boredom and seeming confusion.  And before long the conversations among their adult children about how much longer it’ll be before they have to “take Dad’s keys away” start.

Yes, sadly, many of us are becoming senile.

I’m of the opinion that senility does not ring your doorbell and announce itself thusly: “Hi, I’m senility.  I’ll be hanging out with you and making your life miserable in increasing degrees until you’re dead.”  No, I think senility is much more subtle. 

I’ll catch a glimpse of senility out the corner of my eye as I walk into a room and forget what I went in for.  Occasionally it’ll be accompanied by faint, maniacal laughter.  Senility likes to play like that.

And I don’t even want to talk about how I can still remember my locker combination from high school and the lyrics to “American Pie”, but couldn’t tell you the color of the shirt I wore yesterday if there was $20 riding on it.

But, I refuse to surrender my short-term memory without a fight, so I’ve come up with the following tactics to confuse my brain into thinking it’s winning:

Post-It notes

As I look around I see a good dozen or so, to remind me to take my medicine, and get the oil changed, and not leave the house until I’ve put pants on.  Others are for important dates, and lottery numbers that came to me in dreams, and my Netflix password.

Cell phone alerts

There are six daily and two weekly alerts, and they help me keep on top of things.  Important things, like to check my rear-view mirror before I back out of the driveway, and to make sure the oven is turned off, and to look at the Post-It Notes.

Ginkgo biloba

Okay, I don’t actually take this stuff, but I’ve read up on it.

Memory exercises

There are about 40 million of them on the internet and I’ve come to the same conclusion about all of them: They’re crap.
 
And I know there were at least a couple more.  Hmmm.  Hang on, it’s coming to me. Something about…  I’m pretty sure it starts with an “r”.  No, wait, it wasn’t an “r”, it was…  Okay, it rhymes with…  no, wait…

De-evolution Defined

On October 14, 1978 an avant-garde pop band appeared on SNL to perform their version of the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction”.  The group was clad in hazmat suits and their robotic, herky-jerky movements were eye-catching, to say the least.  I learned the band’s name, Devo, was short for de-evolution.

I found the concept interesting; that mankind had reached its pinnacle and then began to regress, back down the slope it’d taken us millions of years to climb.  Initially, I was skeptical.  The moon landings and other scientific and engineering feats were still somewhat fresh in my mind.  At the same time, I wondered if this musical group from Ohio was on to something; that we had, at least from a societal viewpoint, peaked, and that it was all downhill from there.

In the years that have passed since that day, I have become convinced that we are in fact de-evolving.  The only question remaining is: when did it begin?  And so, in the immortal words of Rod Serling, the following stabs at the genesis of de-evolution are submitted for your approval:

July 16, 1945: The first atomic bomb detonation

At that moment, as a 20 kiloton explosion mushroomed into the New Mexico atmosphere, mankind unknowingly took a giant step backward.  True, nuclear physics have resulted in power production independent of fossil fuels, and opened the door to nuclear medicine, but it also handed Man the ability to utterly destroy himself and his environment in a matter of hours.  To paraphrase Genesis 3:22, Man had become (a God), to know good and evil.

1977: Disco takes over

Described by one music critic as “Muzak for a dry hump”, the symphonic demon of disco succeeded in choking every ounce of soul, style and melody from music.  While many differ on exactly when this crime against art first emerged, the cultural brain freeze reached its peak with the release of “Saturday Night Fever”, in which our hero is a blue collar worker by day and dances at night.  He dances.  At discos.  At night.  Many at the time thought disco was a sign of the apocalypse, myself included.

May 21, 1992: MTV unleashes “Real World”

Many people believe this was the first “reality” TV show, and it is, if you define reality TV as I do: It’s real in the sense that it’s unscripted, but not really real because the participants knew they were being filmed.  Had this been a reality show in the strictest sense, the cameras would had to have been hidden, but that would have resulted in a lot less showboating and incendiary drama, and therefore, sold a lot less zit cream and Jolt cola.

1999: World population reaches six billion

Not only had our numbers increased by a billion (a hefty 20% jump) in the span of 12 years, it happened at a time when a significant portion of us had to have been aware that fossils fuels, potable water, and arable land were dwindling.  Yet we pro-created our behinds off.  Congratulations, it’s a billion.

September 1, 2006: “Idiocracy” is released

This “satirical science fiction comedy” tells the story of two people who are kept in suspended animation for 500 years, and awake to a world populated by idiots. One may wonder why this particular movie (which is satire after all) made the list, and the answer is simple: Anyone who’s seen the movie has seen our future.  It’s easy to connect the dots; we as a species are in fact becoming dumber by the minute, and we’ve done little to change course.   I will forever be haunted by the scene of the skyscraper with a huge digital clock flashing “12:00”.

June 2009: The Forever Lazy is born

The fact that even one of these was actually sold is sufficient evidence for me that humankind has chosen to throw off the survivalist spirit which brought him up from the great primordial soup bowl, preferring instead to vegetate on the sofa wrapped in a “onesie for adults”.  I’m surprised they haven’t introduced a matching feedbag.

What is Man’s fate?  Are we destined to slide down the slippery slope of evolution, back into that primordial soup bowl?  Will we ever create the utopian paradise we claim to want?  Or will we all wind up enshrouded in a onesie, flopped down on a sofa, clutching a remote or iPad, just waiting to die?  Where there is ebb, there must be flow; where there is hope there must be change.

Be that change.

The Excuse Jar

Is it just me, or does everybody seem to have a never-ending list of excuses ready to spring at a moment’s notice?  I forgot, I was wasted, I got a nosebleed.  And politicians are the worst, always ready to pop out some lame excuse with the deftness of a toothpick dispenser.  I was exhausted from the campaign, I was out of the loop, I swear I thought she was 18.

When it comes to contrived justification for shirking responsibility, we as a society have pretty much dialed it in.  But, I find I’m not as quick on the draw as in days past, so I’ve created an excuse jar, from which I can randomly extract a completely contrived and rationalized flimsy pretext for my short-comings and failings.  I suggest you do the same.  But, you can’t use mine; make your own:

* Bruce Willis marathon on FX

* Couldn’t find two matching socks
* Got urgent text from Zorkloff, Supreme Commander of the Klemidian Confederacy
* Busy contemplating the swirl patterns in Scott Caan’s hair
* Egg salad sandwich with Texas Pete not sitting well
* Still reeling over Cubs dismal season
* Checking eBay auction for 1916 quarter in mint condition
* Parking meter about to expire
* Forced to wear paisley as a child
* A little thing I do on the side for the State Dept.; can’t really talk about it
* Last time I did it, my gums were sore for a week
* Gotta practice my curling release
* Have that bloated, gassy feeling
* Moon is in Sagittarius with Virgo ascending
* Why don’t you ask Travis instead, since you can’t seem to take your eyes off him
* Still trying to figure out if it’s toe-MAY-toe or toe-MAH-toe
* Gave it up for Lent
* Despondent over Khloe and Lamar’s breakup
* Grout in shower not going to clean itself
* Weeding out expired pizza coupons
* Porphyrophobia