A father’s day story (bad language alert!)

·       Websites of the week

Best to the webbys:

Wow, how did they do that! http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

http://www.monet2010.com/en

http://www.indecisionforever.com/

http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/2009/06/12/simple-mechanisms-explained/

·       The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Farewell

Published on June 10, 2011 by Ethan Remmel, Ph.D. in Living While Dying

I expect this will be my last post for this blog. Thank you to Psychology Today for providing this small soapbox and to you for reading. I am planning to take my Death with Dignity medication soon, unless I die spontaneously before then. I have limited energy to write, so I am not going to spend it justifying my decision by describing how poor my quality of life has become. You'll just have to trust that my quality of life has become unacceptable to me and that I am a reasonable person

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-while-dying

Twenty-five per cent of all Medicare spending is for the five per cent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months which is of little apparent benefit.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande#ixzz1PQhm8rwm

·       Meditation of the week

The past has flown away. The coming month and year do not exist; ours only is the present's tiny point.
--Shabestari

We are tempted to look back and to look ahead. But what we most need to do is be present in this moment, with ourselves, with our loved ones and friends, and with our experience right here and right now. When we were lost and asleep in our using days and codependency, we could not be emotionally present. Our thoughts were taken up with how we would get our next drink, our next big gambling win, or with how to handle the latest crisis. To be emotionally present and live in the moment; this takes time, and it's a frame of mind that develops as we grow in recovery.

One way we become more present in the moment is to practice gratitude. We can always name a few things we feel grateful for - small and big things, funny and serious things. Looking through the lens of gratitude brings us into the immediate moment.

Today I will look at my day through the lens of gratitude.

You are reading from the book:

Wisdom to Know by Anonymous

·       Video of the week

Whole foods parking lot (thanks brother Rob!)

·       history of the week

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the United States Senate on this date. It's often viewed as the most important United States civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction, and it prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. It was first proposed in 1963 by President Kennedy, but failed to pass. Lyndon Johnson put forward a more robust version the following year, but it had faced a long battle in Congress, including a 57-day filibuster organized by Richard B. Russell. Eventually, the Senate voted to end the filibuster and passed the act, with a 71-29 vote.

Watch what you say Rob, it may end up on this website!

http://shitmysonrobsays.blogspot.com

If Rob says some random crazy thing to you, please send it to me and I will post it. Even if you have to make something up, send it in!

·       Quotes of the week

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."

Franklin D Roosevelt

"It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."

William Shakespeare

"Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world."

Wayne Dyer

·       Websites of the week

http://www.someecards.com/

·       The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger http://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg

·       Song of the Week

It's the birthday of Cole Porter, born in Peru, Indiana (1891). He was a composer and lyricist, and he wrote a string of hit songs: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Night and Day," "You're the Top," "Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love," "I've got You Under My Skin," and "Let's Misbehave." All of these songs were written within a 10-year period: between his first popular Broadway musical, Paris (1928)—his first musicals had been complete flops—and a terrible riding accident in 1937. Porter was at a party at the New York home of the Countess Edith di Zoppola when his horse rolled and crushed his legs. He claimed that he didn't realize how badly he was hurt and that while someone ran for help he finished up the lyrics to "You Never Know." But he was in fact seriously injured—the doctors insisted that his right leg be amputated, maybe his left as well. Porter refused. He preferred to be in intense pain than be missing a leg.

He lived with the pain for more than 20 years, and he continued to write songs, but never at the same rate of success as he had before his accident. In 1958, after 34 operations on his leg, he finally agreed to have it amputated. The playwright Noel Coward went to visit Porter in the hospital, and he said: "He has at last had his leg amputated and the lines of ceaseless pain have been wiped from his face. He is a bit fretful about having to manage his new leg but he will get over that. I think if I had had to endure all those years of agony I would have had the damned thing off at the beginning, but it is a cruel decision to have to make and involves much sex vanity and many fears of being repellent. However, it is now done at last and I am convinced that his whole life will cheer up and that his work will profit accordingly." But Porter never recovered. He told friends, "I am only half a man now," and never wrote another song. He died in 1964 at the age of 73.

He wrote "I Hate Men" for his musical Kiss Me Kate (1948):

I hate men.
I can't abide them even now and then.
Then ever marry one of them, I'd rest a maiden rather,
For husbands are a boring lot that only give you bother.
Of course, I'm awful glad that mother had to marry father,
Still, I hate men.

Of all the types of men I've met in our democracy,
I hate the most the athlete with his manner bold and brassy.
He may have hair upon his chest, but sister, so has Lassie!
Oh, I hate men!

I hate men.
They should be kept like piggies in a pen.
You may be wooed by Jack the Tar, so charming and so chipper,
But if you're wooed by Jack the Tar, be sure that you're the skipper.
For Jack the Tar can go too far. Remember Jack the Ripper?
Oh, I hate men!

If thou shouldst wed a business man, be wary, oh be wary:
He'll tell you he's detained in town on business necessary.
The business is the business that he gives his secretary!
Oh, I hate men!

I hate men.
Though roosters they, I will not play the hen.
If you espouse an older man through girlish optimism,
He'll always stay at home and night and make no criticism.
Though you may call it love, the doctors call it rheumatism.
Oh, I hate men!

Of all I've read, alone in bed, from A to Zed about 'em,
Since love is blind, then from the mind, all womankind should rout 'em.
But, ladies, you must answer too, what would we do without 'em?
Still, I HATE men!

·       Quotes of the week

“A disbelief in God does not result in a belief in nothing; disbelief in God usually results in a belief in anything.”
Unknown

 I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
—Wilson Mizner

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
—Abraham Lincoln

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin

·       Websites of the week

Hallucinogenic video  reminded me of my LSD days!

What your son needs is some tender, loving… medication

He’s so proud of his new slaughterhouse!  (http://www.peta.org/)

http://thisguyhasmymacbook.tumblr.com/

http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/

http://helenkellersim.com/

·       The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

You can audit University of California, Berkley classes for free

Psychology 107 - Buddhist Psychology

All the other Spring 2011 courses

·       Meditation of the week

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
-- D. Thoreau

Conscious, careful selection of those activities, situations, or people to whom we'll devote attention is all that separates centered, serene people from harried men and women. All of us are bombarded by myriad requests for some form of personal involvement. The temptation is great to attend to first one thing and then another, passively and superficially. However, our lives are enriched only when we commit ourselves to a deeper level of involvement, and to the few, rather than the many.

The talent given each of us shines forth if it's been nurtured, coddled, encouraged. We must become immersed enough in a project or an experience to lose self-conscious reservations if we're to discover the real weight of our talent. We know ourselves fully only when we're able to let the talent within define the posture without.

You are reading from the book:

The Promise of a New Day by Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg

·       Poem of the Week

Homework

by Allen Ginsberg

Homage to Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
         scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
         the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
         Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
         out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
         Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
         Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
         the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
         & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
         Aeon till it came out clean

·       Video of the week

Ultimate dog tease