Cheese Omelet: Super Sunday

Speaking of omelets, I had a nice one this morning. I read somewhere that tumeric was good for you, and good with scrambled eggs. Well, I add it to my omelets now. It does add an interesting flavor, and makes everything sort of brown, but I really have no idea if I'm using too much. But a nice omelet with tumeric, some freshly grated parmesan cheese, some shredded sharp cheddar and some pepper jack. Very nice. Really needed some onions and peppers, but I was lazy.

The reason why I mention the omelet at all is because most mornings I'm having a blueberry protein smoothie, and I'm happy to report that I am finally getting my money's worth out of that Magic Bullet™ kitchen appliance. It's pretty much the only thing I use it for, but it works pretty well. I mix in a little plain yogurt - about half a cup (not the non-fat stuff either), a little skim milk (the only kind I buy), some whey protein powder because soy is an estrogen emulator and who needs that? This may or may not be useful on the subject, but there are enough things in our food and environment that mess with our hormones, I prefer to just avoid this one. Oh yeah, and about a cup of frozen blueberries (if I buy fresh ones, I freeze them anyway - and frozen blueberries are nutritionally the same as fresh). Delicious, helps recovery from the morning run, and keeps me from getting hungry before lunch. The only downside is you really have to floss because those little bits of blueberry skins get everywhere in your teeth. So maybe that's a plus, I don't know.

So today is Super Bowl Sunday, and I'm going to be joining my friends and neighbors at the condo clubhouse to enjoy the game and each other's company. There are many downsides to living in a condo, particularly in 2010, when many condo owners in my part of Florida find themselves, like me, seriously, seriously upside down in their mortgages. But one of the good things is that you do live so close to so many people that you are almost compelled to get to know a lot of them if you're the least bit extroverted at all. And chances are, some of them turn out to be pretty nice people and it's fun to get together and share things with one another. So I made about 10 lbs of chicken wings yesterday, and today I'm going to make a pizza or two (homemade), just before the game, and I'll bring over the remainder of the keg from the Groundhog Day party and we'll finish that off. One of my neighbors is bringing her homemade chili and there'll be lots of other things as well.

I really have no interest in which team wins this year. I don't care for any of the players, other than perhaps to say that I am suffering from a bit of Peyton Manning fatigue. But it's fun to watch the game, and the commercials. Though this year I guess we're getting an advocacy ad from Tim Tebow and some anti-abortion group that has some people up in arms, and other people up in arms about those people. Which I think is the reason why, historically, these sorts of advocacy ads have been kind of barred from the Super Bowl. I don't expect any fights to break out at the clubhouse, frankly, I'd be willing to bet that without the controversy, most people wouldn't even notice - except the Gator fans.

Still, it's kind of a reflection of our competitive culture - where we have the ultimate football competition, which draws a great deal of attention, and we have one competing political camp using the event to garner a bit of attention for its issue, to the dismay of the other competing political camp. So we can't just enjoy a trivial, meaningless football game and each other's company, we have to be subjected to an effort to draw us into a longstanding, ongoing, unresolved political argument. Which is another example of how competitors are unrestrained in seeking a competitive advantage. I suppose this should really be a Competing Messages post, but whatever. I just think it's not a good thing, regardless of how anyone feels about the issue.

And living in my part of Florida, I'm also suffering from a serious case of Tim Tebow fatigue as well. Why not just canonize the guy and get it over with? Well, apart from the fact that he's not dead yet. It's probably just me, but I don't think this guy is as genuinely authentic as he's painted to be. I think he and his handlers have found a good schtick, and they're gonna ride it for all its worth till the day his clay feet trip him up; and then we'll all be tut-tutting about the shocking glimpse of his humanity. We set them up, just to knock them down. That's how we roll. And the poor kid will never see it coming. But hey, it's probably a good gig for him now. And he'll probably get to play the whole comeback-redemption gig after his fall from grace, so maybe he'll get a twofer. Wouldn't surprise me at all if that hasn't already been plotted out for him, not that he'd know it.

Just sayin'.

So anyway, that's probably enough about all that. Don't be gorin' no sacred oxen around these parts, brother. Wouldn't be wise.

Hope it's a good game.

State of the Heart: Love and Other Mysteries

Insomnia, inspiration or affliction? Who knows? In any event, here we are.

State of the Heart is a new category of posts about, well, love and other mysteries. As usual, I make no claim of authority here, I make all this shit up and you, dear reader, are on your own. I will go further and suggest that my opinions in these matters are likely to be even less informed than the opinions I've offered here on other matters. Many, many people, far better writers and far more intelligent than I, have written volumes on the subject. And while discretion might suggest that I should keep these opinions to myself, sorting them out here might be a useful exercise, at least for me. For you, there's the entertainment value of watching me go way, way out on a limb and then begin sawing away at it. Might be fun.

Since Valentine's Day is just a week from today, it seems like a nice time to start.

With that, I suppose I should do something to dispose of the usual definitional confusion, as it seems there are a lot of different things people mean when they're talking (or thinking) about love. For the most part, I'm not inclined to regard the experience of sexual desire or attraction (eros) as the same thing as love. Certainly, it is a component in some relationships; can be the impetus or stimulus that promotes a relationship that evolves into one of love, but it's not likely to be what I'm going to be considering here. Not that I don't like sex, or that it won't come up from time to time in these posts, it's just not the part of love that I find the most interesting. And let me hasten to add that I'm not going to be focusing on Platonic love either, although perhaps that's conceptually closer. Which also goes for agape, as again, conceptually it's closer, but I think it kind of misses the point. Maybe more about that later. And yes, the reciprocity aspect will be considered, as in unrequited love; as will desire, at least from the standpoint of reciprocity as distinct from purely physical or sexual desire. Desire, of course, being the source of all suffering. Which then raises the notion of passion - as that idea has its origin in the idea of suffering. So yeah, we get to think about the good stuff too. This isn't just a cerebral exercise here. There's always something at stake.

Confused yet? Yes? Good. Me too. We're making progress.

Having waved my hands and quickly dismissed many of the ideas that seem to come to mind when one thinks about love, I'll offer my foundational thought about love - that it is "faith in action." That's a construction I've grown less satisfied with over time, but I think it's largely correct, even if it's not especially elegantly expressed. What it's meant to convey is that love, both the emotional experience, and the actions that it compels in our relationships between one another, is ultimately grounded in the notion of faith.

And so what do I mean by "faith?" A word that has become burdened with a lot of particularly religious baggage, I refer to faith in its simpler, less onerous meaning, "complete trust or confidence." In effect, faith is the ultimate affirmation. It is "yes" writ large. To me, faith is the basis for, well, everything. While this isn't meant to be a consideration of various cosmological or ontological theories, you have to start somewhere, right? So perhaps a brief digression is in order.

Why should anything exist? I mean, in order for there to be something, it must exist against an idea of not being, or nothingness. (And then you get to wondering if really the idea should be that for nothingness to exist, it's only against the foundational idea of somethingness. And now you're dealing with that whole duality thing, and it all just gets very confusing. So I just pick one, knowing I'm probably wrong, but I'll be dead before I know it so I'm not going to worry about it too much.) Anyway, that anything exists is kind of the negation of nothingness, in effect, an affirmation.

Essentially, the universe is an affirmation. The Big Bang was just a big "Yes!" Or "Om." I really don't care which. Is the universe conscious? I'm not sure that's a meaningful question, but, yeah, I think so. In a way, just not in a way that you and I can understand. "The tao that can be named is not the tao." Don't worry about it. A more interesting question might be, "Is the universe love?"

So, to me, faith is kind of reflected in the residual cosmic background radiation, plus all the other forms of matter and energy that have evolved since. "Complete trust and confidence."

Yes. We shall be.

And so we are.

Works for me as well any other theory I've heard. Doesn't explain why, just that the how has something to do with an affirmation - an act of faith. I have no ideas on why. Not sure I really require any either.

But we exist against the backdrop, the foundation, of nothingness. That exists just as much as somethingness, or we wouldn't be having a conversation at all. Heraclitus called it the harmony of binding opposites. As conscious beings, we are aware of our existence. As conscious mortal beings, we are also aware of our eventual or potential nonexistence. So while our existence is a manifestation of the initial universal affirmation, an act of faith, in order to know of our existence, we must also know fear.

"We're all gonna die!"

Faith says "Yes!" Fear says "No!" (Not always that simple, sometimes each says the other thing, but it's really not "them" doing the saying anyway; and when you start getting down into the Planck length on the granularity of faith and fear, "somethingess" and "nothingness," it's all very confusing. We're looking at the Big Picture here.)

Okay, I've sawed through enough of my branch tonight. As you look on in horror, I'm going to pause for now and return to this some other time. It probably wouldn't do much good to assure you that I haven't lost my mind. I'm just thinking out loud here. It's kind of fun, and nobody gets hurt. We'll get to the parts that, hopefully, make a little more sense very soon.

In the mean time, have a little faith, okay?

Google Maps Still Busted (But there may be hope...)

In response to my report about Google Maps showing the wrong location for my address, a reader wrote to tell me that you can also edit the location in Google Maps. Doing so in my case results in moving the pointer more than 200 yards from where Maps thinks the address should be. This generates some kind of trouble report to Google, which they send to you at your Gmail address.

I have yet to hear from them after receiving the initial report two days ago.

I'll let you know when I do. As of this afternoon, Maps was still plotting my address in another neighborhood.

Cheese Sandwich: Groundhog Day Party 2010 Gallery

For all my friends not currently on Facebook, here's a collection of pictures from my Fourth Annual Groundhog Day Party, held last Saturday. Best one yet.