Real Joe

The FDA’s approval of Botox has the pundits all atwitter. To wit:

William Saffire says a “furrowed brow gives the impression of a brain thinking deep thoughts… how will a politician be able to measure a voter’s reaction to the stump speech? … How can the viewer, at a rally or watching television, know if the politician is truly concerned about the public’s grave anxieties if the demagogue bites off his words in a tight-jawed rictus, physically unable to appear infuriated, worried or empathetic?

Ellen Goodman says “You trade the ability, literally, to express your emotions – furrow that brow, crinkle that eye – for a flawless appearance. In the search for approval from others, you hide what you are feeling. Especially anger.”

Who would have expected these venerable columnists to offer such a perfectly complementary Mars/Venus interpretation within days of one another?

Both columns are a good read (Saffire, as always, has me repeatedly zipping over to dictionary.com – “tight-jawed rictus“? Is that related to sphincter? Sort of, but not what I was thinking.), but both miss the mark for me.

The instinctive desire for More comes in many flavors for each of us, tantalizing us with the promise of happiness once we get it. The Botox promise of More — more youthful appearance, therefore more approval from others, therefore more love or admiration — doesn’t seem any different than other kinds of More. More money, More power, More toys, More education, More spiritual development, More you-name-it — all have the same dead ends.

I can’t be sure, but I think I detect in both Goodman and Saffire a little condescension. Do they get More approval because of how well they’re handling the “letting yourself go” process? I don’t think I’ll ever do Botox or dye my graying hair, but I can’t be sure. My desire for More is as sneaky as anyone’s.

The Real Joe home page now has a Spyonit button to remind non-subscribers that they can get notified via email alerts whenever The Real Joe Blog changes… or any web site page, for that matter. It’s simple and effective.

Mwsg replied to my post about chemical use and abuse: “I have certainly abused both alcohol and drugs, but because of what I was taught by my parents, I was able to learn the hard lesson that came from doing this and able to stop myself before the abuse became a real issue beyond feeling like crap the next day or two.”

So I like the messages your parents gave you, mwsg, as well as their example. It’s tricky, though, to make too many assumptions about cause-effect relationship. Many parents take the same approach as yours did and still, one or more of their kids become dependent. Family dynamics, rituals, social environment, body chemistry (the X factor theory), and plain old free will all contribute in complex ways to whether someone becomes dependent or not.

My wife and I met some of our old co-workers for lunch recently and one guy, after seeing my electronic gizmos (Palm Vx, collapsible keyboard, Omnisky modem) and hearing about my web sites and online contract work, marvelled at my technological prowess and bemoaned his cluelessness. This from a guy who knows how to build a house and the furniture in it from scratch.

There are levels of confidence, creativity and problem-solving ability that comes with most any acquired skill. I have some of that with computers, though I’m really not a geek by any stretch. I’ve installed CGI scripts on the Real Joe server, know how to set the permissions on a file or directory (chmod, baby!), and know enough to not have my eyes immediately glaze over when my true techie pals get to jabbering. For most household computer technology problems, I can sit down and usually figure things out… and in most cases, enjoy the challenge of it.

My wife used to marvel at my knack with everyday-type computer problems until I pointed out to her that I felt the same way about her cooking. She can work magic in the kitchen — that knack of being able to look in the fridge and take a bunch of leftovers from the past week and figure out something on the fly to turn it into a fantastic soup or stir fry, adding spices here and there, complementing it with a side dish of this or that, and pretty soon I’m in gastronomic heaven. She initially dismissed this as no big deal but it’s just as much magic to me as my computer jockeying is to her. One of my sons has her knack with food, and with musical instruments, too. I’m as pleased to see it as I am in awe of it. (Continued….)

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Articles like this one, How Men Can Stay Mentally Fit, bug the hell out of me, even when they’ve got good things to say.

On the one hand, these experts are all saying that men have a harder time than women when it comes to seeking help for the problems in their lives. And then they and the author of the article proceed to talk about this in a way that alienates most guys. Here are a few gems:

• “Specialists see some common threads in the causes of emotional stress among men. Many experts believe that some mental problems stem from how men are treated by society.”

  Translation: Your emotional stress is a mental problem and it’s caused in part by how society treats you.
  What guy wants to hear that he’s got a mental problem? And what guys wants to hear that he’s a victim of society?

• “Mental health problems are massively under-diagnosed in men.”
  Translation: Too many of us are sick in the head and not being diagnosed correctly by the helping professions.
  Makes you just want to march on Washington DC to fight for equity, doesn’t it?

• “Men are more likely to show psychological distress in overt, external ways.”
  Translation: Your misbehavior is really a sign of psychological stress.

  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have my problematic behavior labled bad, stupid, wrong, or even weak than “psychological distress.”

In the movie Dragonfly, Kevin Costner plays a typical tough guy doctor who’s having a hard time dealing with his wife’s death. He’s buttonholed by a woman psychologist at a dinner party who tells him in new agey lingo that he needs her help to aid him in the grieving process. His response? Something to the effect of “I don’t need a damn shrink crawling up my ass with a flashlight to tell me what’s going on.” Right on, I thought at the time. The vast majority of magazine articles and books aimed at the problems of men make it more unlikely that men will seek help for those problems. And movie scenes like this reinforce it.

One quote in the article got closer to describing a problem in a more palatable way:

• “For a lot of men, the so-called ‘midlife crisis’ is the result of living an unexamined life and suddenly, after years of hard work, feeling trapped.”
  Translation: You can get trapped by your own unexamined life.
  That’s wording I can relate to.

“Asking for Directions” is a New Hampshire project that explores how men deal with health care. It’s featured in this Intelihealth article on how we typically avoid getting help for physical ailments, titled, Men Get Road Maps To Health. Lest you think we don’t have a problem:

Dr. Frederick Magaziner of Baltimore, a dentist for 40 years, has… treated men who used sandpaper or their wives’ emery boards to adjust the fit of their dentures, some who go as far as revving up their electric sanders. Cavities prompt a separate set of creative treatments. “I’ve had them stick all kinds of things in cavities thinking they can get by, from chewing gum to a roofer who put hot tar on a stick, let it cool down a bit, then put it in his mouth,” Magaziner said. “One gentleman used caulk.”

I’m not quite that bad, but I’ve not had a physical in 3 years nor have I ever had a colorectal exam which my wife keeps bugging me to do. Since I plan to live till I’m 119 (that’ll be 2069, the 100th anniversary of Woodstock and man landing on the moon — seems like a good year to kick the bucket) I’d better do what needs to be done. So I’ll do the colorectal deal and report back. I’ll be judicious with the details.

A witty, insightful piece: Glasses, like small breasts, seem to be one of those things that women automatically assume men find unattractive.

We are all tied to the belief that glasses denote intelligence, while not being a guarantee of it. And maybe, where women are concerned, the belief that glasses are unsexy is a subtle way of saying that brains aren’t sexy, or at least that they are indicative of prim reticence. Too often the sight of a woman taking off her glasses in a love scene denotes that the pretense of brains has to be put aside before she can become sexy. But doesn’t it depend on the brain? Sexiness is a state of mind. I want to be surprised, and you can’t surprise anyone if your brain is put on idle… To men for whom women are a constant source of wonder, surprise and delight, glasses continue to hold out a promise of something to be discovered, and an emblem of what’s already there to take pleasure in. That ought to make women feel good. After all, how many times have they been requested to put something on rather than take something off?

“You may have the company of perhaps at least one of your children. To be the author of that is an unspeakable crime.”

That from U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum at the sentencing of investor George Kline. The judge gave Kline 6 1/2 years in prison for insider trading. His two sons also were sentenced, the oldest to two years in prison, as he had involved them in the scheme for over 15 years. And when Kline’s attorney called it a tragedy, the judge objected, “This is not a tragedy. This is tawdry. This is base. This is mean. This is low. This does not rise to tragedy. This is a pickpocket who got caught.”

Like most, I generally get a bit of thrill when rich, white-collar crooks get caught and sent to the stir. This case is no different. But the question is: is it possible to feel compassion for a guy like this? “It is natural to wish for wealth and to try to get it any way you can. This man’s wish for wealth is so strong that it overwhelms his good judgment.” That’s from Timothy Miller’s book How to Want What you Have in a section where he matches possible compassionate thoughts to annoying or frustrating situations.

I don’t know that I can feel compassion towards Kline, but I do know the wish for wealth, especially during this tax time of year. And it’s strangely painful to see someone with so much influence and skill and knowledge get so taken with greed that he screws a ton of people and takes down his sons with him. Is that compassion? I don’t know. But I do hope the guy figures out how to make a contribution to the world after he gets out of prison. He’s got a helluva legacy to overcome.

Dan posted an interesting comment on Monday about drug education.

Dan, when my sons were in the teens, we told them that we viewed pot and alcohol use about the same. Each can be used relatively safely and each can easily lead to abuse and messed up lives. If we saw their use of either causing a problem for them, we’d intervene quickly and if things didn’t change right away, we’d slap their ass into treatment so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them. Since pot is illegal, we didn’t allow it in our house or cars or anywhere on our property. And since alcohol use is illegal for those under 21, we never allowed their recreational alcohol use in our house. We did serve wine to all our kids during the ritual of holiday meals, however.

Neither my wife or I smoke dope and haven’t for 30 years. We do drink some alcohol each week but we’ve not been drunk in 30 years. So we felt we were modeling appropriate use but couldn’t in good conscience say to them “Don’t drink or smoke pot” when they’d see us have a couple glasses of wine on Saturday nights.

Has it worked out? They’ve all abused alcohol on occasion, and it’s caused an occasional problem in their lives. They’ve all probably spent too much money on pot when it was probably financially stupid to do so. Both chemicals have probably inhibited their emotional and spiritual maturation to some degree. So it’s too early to tell, I guess. I’m not ready to pronounce our way as the best way. I still stand by it, though.

On Death and Dying: A Columnist’s Final Story

“Gene Amole is a giant of Denver journalism and the heart of the Rocky Mountain News. In October, he told his readers in a front-page column that he was dying. What an incredible experience it has been. Gene is still writing as he approaches his 79th birthday. Death hasn’t come as quickly as he had expected – even hoped. But his diary of dying has taken readers on a voyage of discovery, a journey that has shed more light on the meaning of life than on the darkness of death.”

Here’s a newspaper columnist that people seem to love – they wish he could’ve been their dad or grandpa. He’s slowly dying — more slowly than everyone anticipated — and he’s chronicling his final days for his legions of reader fans.

I read many of his columns but found precious little that, as his editor says, “shed more light on the meaning of life than on the darkness of death.” It’s way more diary than introspective or spiritual journal. What’s cool, though, is that the guy is upbeat and living life as fully as possible. He’s modeling how to do it. He doesn’t believe in the traditional heaven or hell, though he apparently does believe in God. But he’s leaving a legacy that will long live on after him, which is a damn good afterlife.