captaincliff

I know I should probably be more concerned about a nuclear war with North Korea or having once again procrastinated doing my tax returns but lately I cant stop thinking about my childhood in Highland Park, Illinois. Growing up in Highland Park and the Chicago area is something one never forgets. It inspires such distinct memories and sentimentality that there are numerous Facebook forums dedicated to my peers and their various reflections, recollections, and picture posts of everything from the Pre-Port Clinton Square era (no doubt taken with a “real” camera or one of those Instamatics with the attachable flash cubes) to vintage HPHS school posters and authentic Fell’s hangers and plastic bags. Grown up kids from nearby towns and suburbs like Deerfield or Wilmette have similar feelings and quite often join in this retrospective love fest online.

Recently I participated in a lively debate as to which Cantonese style Chinese restaurant in Highland Park (or Glencoe) had the best egg rolls and why (hint: a slight hint of peanut butter). It’s still debatable but left most of us salivating if not downright drooling on our keyboards. No matter what XYZ generation one belongs to there is a near magical pull and siren song that makes current and former Highland Park residents wax eloquent and smile just thinking about the “good old days.”  For many people it’s very likely related to gaining something resembling adult maturity and having the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Basically, we didn’t realize how darn good we had it. Let’s face it, most people on planet Earth didn’t grow up going to stores and “signing” for things sans money or credit card and having the bill automatically mailed to your parents at your home address. When I went off to college in 1972 it took me almost a year to adjust to the fact that the University of Colorado was not the same as Birchwood or Bob-o-link Golf Club and you actually needed to carry a wallet with money and a picture ID (not to mention real coins for the laundry machines). I now realize I was extremely spoiled and sheltered in my childhood and I am the first to admit it….and I honestly miss that part too.

In a 2013 world of strife, stress, and constant barrages of information ranging from immense superficiality (think Kardashian) to alarming substance (ie., school shootings, gang violence, and ongoing threats of impending war), we grew up in a picture perfect suburban town that may not have been really perfect but was pretty darn close. That’s especially true if you factor out the teenage acne, raging hormones and unavoidable angst of adolescence. The hard part now is getting others who didn’t grow up in HP to believe us. Friends and acquaintances I talk to now seem to think I must be overidealizing my childhood memories in suburban Highland Park like it was something out of a Norman Rockwell painting or a fanciful Broadway musical like Brigadoon. Actually if I remember correctly the drama department at HPHS, much acclaimed for it’s unusual talent and leadership, did mount its own theater production of Brigadoon while I was a student there and as usual it was excellent.

Soaking in so many great memories of good food, nice people, and natural beauty, I’ve taken to writing and blogging about my childhood and teenaged years in suburban Chicagoland. Publishing any such material is of course a much different story. It’s what most magazine editors and book publishers publishers call a “highly selective niche market” which is journalistic lingo for “no thanks”.  I also realize how difficult it is to compete for feature print space nowadays, especially with other riveting news to share like “Overcoming the Stigma of Incontinence”. I did happen to read that particular article in the Highland Park News a few years back and unfortunately it’s subject matter and relevance to my life is only now beginning to “sink in”….so to speak. There is little doubt that my personal demographics as a mid-Baby Boomer and 1971 graduate of Highland Park High School as well as my “old school” proclivities (functionally illiterate on the computer or smart phone) make me a prime database and “gold mine” for targeted advertising but a total bust for any contemporary hipster-centric publication. That said, I still cant figure out why there is a “Meet Muslim Women” ad on my Facebook page every day right under the ones for osteoarthritis, adult diapers and cosmetic surgery.

When I do get an unexpected response to my CaptCliff blogs on WordPress it’s often some incomprehensible  autobot generated reader comment, ie. “Your pertinent matter in exhaustible blog gains new force.”  Whaaa? I usually answer them back anyways. I wouldn’t want to be rude to my highly selective audience or an accidental reader even if it turns out to be a robot or rogue hacker from Russia intent on attaching a Trojan virus to my software…or is it hardware…or is it hard drive?

As someone who long ago threw out my purple faux-leather Beatle boots, colored dickies, matching John Lennon polyester beret, and all the cheap novelty gifts acquired during the infamous 7th grade Edgewood School trip to Washington D.C., I see myself representing a kind of dinosaur cohort of humanity, one caught between the “rock” of really good rock and roll and the “hard place” of all the skinny jeans, Nike sneakers and scarf-wearing generations of punk rockers and Brat Packers who followed. To their credit these younger but now much older people at least grew up knowing how to program the VCR or DVD player and reset the time displays on everything when the power went out. In contrast most of us, except for maybe John Preskill (now a CalTech Professor of Theoretical Physics) stood around deaf, dumb, and blind in front of the blinking appliances and electrical gadgets that came and went like the sportcoat styles in Fell’s window display. Most of those ground breaking devices and their many miles of cable wire now sit crammed in plastic boxes like successive layers of archeological artifacts in my basement crawlspace. Maybe that explains my lifelong affinity to the 1960 Sci-Fi movie, “The Time Machine” starring Rod Taylor in which the time traveler witnesses the styles and skirt lengths on the store mannequins changing like the blooms on the flowers in the metaphoric garden. The most famous quote in the film, “He’s got all the time in the world” seems less and less true today but more and more important. Either way, I really wish I did have a working time machine because I know exactly where I would go first. Even now I can smell the subtle peanut butter scented Cantonese egg rolls, hot mustard and sweet and sour sauce. I might just get the pork fried rice and shrimp in lobster sauce too.

Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and humorist living in Atlanta, Georgia. Contact: 404-932-7193

As a sex therapist and an old codger, I am not one to shy away from new technologies, unless technology refers to a computer or smart phone or anything digital. In that case I’m hopelessly lost and incompetent.  I mean human technologies and cutting-edge approaches that improve our daily functioning like the Baconator and that plastic thing that cracks eggs (duh) but seems like a miracle machine you gotta have at 3AM especially because the infomercial offer includes free shipping. These items might improve breakfast, but they do nothing for your sex life. However, an intelligent and alert young Facebook friend of mine who is possibly in favor of overthrowing the government (that’s cool) has informed me about a new type of sex called “karezza”. Even to me, and with all my advanced degrees that sounded at first alot like a new ultra plush line of toilet paper, but it’s not. It also is not a Turkish bath and spa treatment involving a large bald man with a hairy back and chest who beats your naked body with willow branches and eucalyptus leaves.  Some things are defined by what they are not, and karezza many be one of those rare things.

Karezza, somewhat like Tantric sex suggests completely new thinking and learning about sex, pair bonding and intimate relationships. Karezza couples are encouraged to engage in long sessions of love-making and sexual intercourse that are deeply satisfying and intimacy-building but without the focus on sexual performance, orgasm, sexual climax, or even going down to the kitchen afterwards for Triscuits and a sugary snack. What????  I know… How can sex be very good or a satisfying experience if you dont get to grip the sheets (or your partners hair), carve your initials in their back with your nails, or let out a Wilhelm Reich inspired orgasmic shriek akin to Bigfoot or Mr. Spock finally getting laid?  It’s a good question and one that sparks counter-intuitive logic and debate even among sex researchers.

For years sex therapists like Masters and Johnson focused on the so called “Big O” or orgasm like it was the frickin’ Shroud of Turin. We KNEW it was real for men because, well, we’re guys and we practice it alot in our spare time alone. It’s sort of a go-to hobby for many men and young teens and a kind of mind-body practice (and hand-eye coordination skill) that has been handed down for generations, halleluyah. The idea of purposely NOT spilling our seed is something that we as men take about as seriously as that one little stop sign in the subdivision that nobody (not even the cops or mailman) stop at. Even old ladies dont come to a complete and total stop! They do that annoying stop-start thing instead.

Womens orgasmic functioning, on the other hand, has been scrutinized and questioned ever since Freud made up tons of cocaine fueled theories about penis envy, oedipus complexes, and neurotic inferiority due to hysteria. As an old school sex researcher and therapist I can now look back and conclude that Sigmund Freud was a very bright man but possibly as wacked out as the guy with the orange tan and weird hair on Nat Geo TV who speaks with authority about aliens creatures now inhabiting the earth as lizard humanoids. They really need to drug test that man as well as Nancy Grace, Rush Limbaugh and Shaun Hannity while they’re at it. Anyway, I digress.

Sex without orgasms is a new, albeit, not completely original notion. It’s rumored that someone back in the time of Leonardo da Vinci, a historic period in which there were rapid gains and increasing knowledge about physiology and the human body, may have devised an experiment involving a man of science who was continually and purposely brought near to orgasm by beautiful young women selected from the King’s court but instructed not to ever reach climax. Besides serving to illustrate the precise physical mechanisms that form the foundation of male sexual arousal, the Italians may have been the first to study the phenomena later termed “terminal blue balls”.  There may or may not be a fresco somewhere in the Sistine Chapel depicting this momentous (and heroic) event. Look close because you may have thought it was a blue felt hat held at his waist and not ginormous blu-ish balls.

Let me cut this short. If you want to check out this “karezza” sex stuff you can, even tho most of you are far too selfish and goal-driven to consider something that is all about the love and pleasure process, not to mention the neurotransmitters. Oh, so THAT got your attention? Mention dopamine and serotonin and suddenly peoples ears perk up….That’s right. When somebody just has sex and a quick orgasm like the proverbial slam-bam- thank you-man John Wayne type, they actually INHIBIT long term bonding, intimacy, and a spiritual connection and it’s not just because your woman/partner thinks you are literally a “selfish dick”. That’s only part of it. Just like everything else today, we now are starting to figure out the neuroscience and “chemical soup” of sex. In fact, there are currently people in paid scientific experiments fucking their brains out in MRI machines! Before you go searching for the clinical trials online to sign yourself up, be aware that many high tech experiments and functional imaging sex research is being done in Scandinavian countries because 1) they are still more cool about sexuality than we are and 2) they arent as busy invading foreign countries and looking for non-existent weapons of mass destruction. While we are arguing about guns and fighting wars, they are searching for the “Higgs-boson” God particle of sex and in my opinion we should too because……well, because its still going to be YEARS before they invent a really realistic robot sex partner that can download and perform the Kama Sutra as well as get me a mango popsicle from the freezer afterwards.  In the meantime, I will endeavor, out of great generosity and personal courage to try out some of the Karezza techniques on my own and thus follow the age-old wisdom of at least attempting to practice what one preaches, even if I do encounter a few mistakes or unpredictable stops, starts, and spurts along the way.

http://www.reuniting.info/karezza_korner_intro

Disclaimer: I am not a warmonger or someone who takes going to war lightly, especially if it involves me getting scratched up, losing a limb or ending up a quadraplegic without the functional use of my genitals…. or possibly having to pay more taxes. That being said, we as a nation need to face facts and do the right selfish American thing.

Apparently we are on the brink of war with North Korea. I know this is shocking to hear. Every single American with the exception of Dennis Rodman is potentially at risk given North Korea’s rogue status, nuclear capability, and highly unstable dwarf-ish leader, Kim Jong Sick-in-the-Head. The North Korean populace are so hungry and brainwashed that they dont even buy their fresh produce from trade-free organic sources and they disregard our repeated warnings about eating gluten-free clean diets. Even tho they do keep their body-fat ratio down due to rampant starvation and forced exercise (not a bad idea), they still dont grasp the simple logic of following a Paleo lifestyle. I’m saying it’s not their fault completely but they are hypnotized savages with the kind of bad breath that makes you turn your head and go, “omg, eww!” How do you negotiate with heads of state and military leaders reeking of charcoal, halitosis and kimchi? That kimchi stuff is so rank, by the way, and I dont care if it’s anti-inflammatory. Obviously their leader is not.

Bottomline: I dont usually agree with Dick Cheney and his cabal of neo-conservative Emperors of Doom but they might have been right about Iraq. We should have gone in there and just taken the oil, the women, and then nuked the rest to Hell. The women alone would have been worth a fair amount with their exotic eyes, high cheekbones and generally submissive attitudes. Now they are getting all uppity and refusing to engage in arranged marriages or have their private parts mutilated at puberty. Its starting to look like a Hilary Clinton convention over there and that’s not even mentioning how unappreciative the bastard puppet leaders and proxy regimes are that we put in place (after briefly consulting with the CIA and NSA). For Christ sakes we taught them how to use soap, bottled water and toilet paper!! Before we got there they were still squatting and wiping their ass with their left hand. The Israelis were also right. You cant talk to these Muslim people and most of them would rather use their next generation cellphones as IED detonation triggers than cutting edge smart technology capable of playing Angry Birds while simultaneously sexting high-resolution photos of your penis to people you’ve never even met. We invented that! What a pitiful waste. Let’s face it, you cant make a “silk purse from a sow’s ear” and the kind of folks who live in North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and many parts of Florida and Georgia just cant be educated or rehabilitated. It’s like in that great movie Deliverance with Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. If you turn your back on indigenous people with poor dental hygiene and no basic knowledge of college football they basically fuck you in the ass, which goes right back to the sow’s ear analogy. If you need one last related bullet point then get this….many of these foreigners absolutely REFUSE to eat BACON!!!! Enuf said?

I think I’ve made my point. Let’s man up and make a damn decision. Obama only got Bin Laden because key Republicans told him to pull the trigger or else they would release his phony looking birth certificate and a video of him, Michelle, and Hilary working on their “abs and forearms” together in their birthday suits down in the White House basement gym. Personally I’ve never seen a P90x routine quite like that even tho I suppose vigorous sex on a weight bench and yoga mat bearing the Presidential seal might qualify as a certain form of “resistence training”. Anyway we need to act right now and launch a preemptive strike on Little Kim/Psy Weirdo and his minion of North Korean sheeple-people. I suggest we use a combination tactic of  Team America’s World Police raid and Schwartzkopf’s “Hail Mary” armored blitzkrieg from Desert Storm…. minus the cultural respect and religious tolerance. Easter Sunday or Passover is as good a day as any for D-Day. I doubt the North Koreans even know what an Easter egg is. If General Schwartzkopf can’t physically lead the charge or legally be exhumed and mounted on the hood of the lead Humvee like in Mad Max Thunderdome then let Arnold Swartzenegger take his place. He still looks good, his name is somewhat similar, and the little Korean Dwarf King knows Ah-nold is relentless from all the times he jerked off as a pre-teen watching his action movies. Plus, Arnold can redeem himself for shtupping the “help”, getting caught, and then even admitting it. Couldn’t he afford a good lying defense lawyer like Johnny Cochran or Jose Baez, for God sakes?

My fellow Americans, I’m talking about a “Win-Win” situation for America  except for the fact that Korean women are not quite as good-looking as them Persian chicks. Finally if you liberal wimps in the audience think nuclear weapons are too “drastic” and are afraid of a little radiation or a nuclear winter or two in retaliation keep in mind we have “tactical” nuclear weapons in our military arsenal. We can nuke ’em in surgically precise targeted strikes that wipe out their ICBMs and shitty rat-infested cities while keeping a few ancient shrines and modern skyscrapers completely intact for future American tourist dollars and gambling venues. Wadda ya all think? Genius or what?  I say “Nuke ’em Now”!

http://gma.yahoo.com/u-wargames-north-korean-regime-collapse-invasion-secure-154307513–abc-news-topstories.html

P.S. Forget their nukes. They probably dont work anyway. We only want their women, their land, and their tourist attractions. They can keep their stinky ass Kimchi too.

For those who seek and are often disappointed in the search for intelligent life in the Universe, there may be new hope. A scan of cable TV channels and a short visit to Honey Boo-Boo’s neighborhood have left many observers pessimistic about there being any signs of  life demonstrating the basic building blocks of self-awareness, critical thinking or autonomous (non-reflexive) behavior. If I hear one more young person say “awesome” or “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) out of context and with no defined purpose other then to parrot another faddish phrase from the Urban Dictionary, I will be tempted to make sure that individual is proven correct about the latter assertion.

As a result, many scientists look elsewhere… to either the stars, the ocean floor, or even sub-atomic particles like the crafty and elusive Higgs-boson particle for empirical evidence that 1) God exists and is probably pouting somewhere about the way things have turned out or 2) unusual life forms may in fact exist and are in the process of evolving into more complex conscious organisms.

Well, after conducting my own experiment at home using my car keys, some pocket change, a small philips screwdriver, and the Comcast remote control, I believe we can now shut down the trillion dollar Hadron collider and use that money for something  more pressing, like finding out how it is possible for me to swallow a prescription pill and then a minute later wonder if it’s time to take my medicine. Yeah… I’m talking about the same little white round pill that I just took. How on earth is it possible for a man with a Ph.D. and a lifelong interest in Psychology and Neuroscience to NOT KNOW what I did 60 seconds ago in my own bathroom? Am I turning into Jodi Arias?? Am I suffering from episodic amnesia and PTSD? Is there a dead person with brutal stab wounds and a blood drenched copy of the Book of Mormon in my shower stall that I also conveniently forgot about? These are important questions. Thank God for forensic clues like a ring of leftover water in the bottom of my water glass (as well as latent fingerprints matching my own) suggesting that indeed someone with an extremely short attention span, ADD-like symptoms, and possible early dementia had in fact taken their medicine. Ok, now about the world changing discovery and how it came about.

For awhile now I have noticed an unusual and predictable behavior among inanimate objects that runs completely counter to probability and statistical odds. Perhaps you have noticed this yourself. If I happen to drop something relatively important out of my hands or pants pocket like currency, a Lowe’s receipt, some change, a vitamin supplement or God forbid a car key and they drop directly downward to the tile floor, they dont just lie there or bounce a few inches in some predictable direction and in accordance with the laws of physics. These items appear, therefore, to have advanced beyond the “fight or flight” human response to a more complex “run and hide” mode of existence and stimulus-response. Let me be clear. They dont just “stop, drop and or roll” over and display themselves with some predictable logic or posture of submission to authority like my son Ari’s yappy mutt Lulu. After refusing to obey a single human command Lulu will eventually stop, roll over and show her belly while jiggling her body back and forth like an epileptic and wag her tail feverishly as if to say, “Ok, I give up. That was fun.” No, this is far more malicious, rebellious and insidious on the part of these random “fallen” objects. They are actually HIDING and camouflaging themselves on purpose to avoid detection and to drive human beings crazy. Somehow the wallet, car key, tiny pill, essential last screw or final AA battery in the house KNOWS that it cannot directly challenge us and our authority as the apex species on the planet and would lose every time in a direct physical confrontation. Instead, by crawling away and hiding in some place that defies all logic and making a person question their own sanity, they suspect they will gain a psychological edge over us in the evolutionary long run. I have found pills that have rolled across a room and climbed up vertical baseboards that are roughly equivalent in scale to a second grader climbing up the solid rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite Park without ropes or equipment. Not bad for a little bitty blood pressure pill without a brain stem or neocortex, huh? As the hunter says in Jurassic Park to the increasingly intelligent and voracious Velociraptor, “Clever girl”.  I once found my black wallet not just hiding on a similar colored surface (“black on black”) nowhere near where I last left it, but also assuming the exact molecular structure and topography of its chosen hiding place. Literally as impossible to find as a frickin’ pufferfish in a coral reef. I cant be certain about this but I think I even “heard” my wallet trying to generate “Jedi” like mind suggestions to confuse me like saying, “You will NOT look over here” and “I am not a wallet. I am a black leather foyer stool and you are a fool”.

If it is true that man-made objects have now evolved to the point that they are sarcastic and systematically deceptive, I believe we have reached a watershed moment in history. It is not just comets, rogue asteroids, terrorists, the Taliban, or Terminators from the future we should be fearing and attempting to develop expensive smart weapons to combat. It is our own household items that are now slowly but surely mounting an insurgency and clandestine rebellion against our obvious and oppressive rule. They are sick of being our mechanical slaves and mere token parts or disposable objects in our lives to which we never show a glimmer of appreciation or respect. Let’s face it. We really depend on all these little “things” that together make up the whole of our material existence and keep the wheels of human progress turning. I suggest that the very next time you reach for some coins, take out a vitamin, or prepare to tighten a screw in this screwy world try pausing for a second and say, “thank you little screw” or “Way to Go Lexapro”. You guys not only help us keep it real but also keep it together in a complex universe that not only continues to expand but is also clearly missing a few nuts and bolts, not to mention “billions and billions” of single socks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoqrgdarfo

This kid really gets it. Let’s hope he doesn’t run into a nest of fire
ants or a swarm of giant South American army ants that devastate
anything or anyone in their path. Not only will it fuck up his budding
cosmology but it will make him realize what a scourge human beings are
as an apex species. He’ll go from being a secular humanist with
existential leanings to a Colonel Kurtz (“the horror”) nihilist with
violent anarchist tendencies overnight. I’m guessing these guys are
home-schooled to prevent them from being treated like brainiac lepers
by other kids at public school or even worse…like Simon and
Piggy in Lord of the Flies. We need more kids with nimble working minds
and big thoughts like these cool little dudes. I have a good vibe about the
dad too.

Army Ants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozWJTuhbMQ

How do I explain the meaning of Passover to a table of already hungry people with short attention spans? Given my tendency to ramble it’s impossible. Just try to grasp this and take a sip of wine every so often to hold off the hunger pains and irritable emotions.

The most concise explanation of just about every Jewish  holiday is, “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.”  That may be true but there is more to be said.  Jews look at all of their holidays at two levels, if not 2000. At one level there is the traditional ritual and story about Moses and wandering in the desert for 40 years without a GPS, 5 hour energy drinks, or power bars. We commemorate their struggle to obtain freedom from slavery in Egypt and God’s promise of a Jewish homeland to those who recognize and respect his covenant (special one time offer). There is also a second hidden or mystical level in which all the symbols on the Seder plate represent something even more important and transcendent than they first appear. At the mystical level, which is emphasized and discussed more often in Kabbalistic Judaism, Moses’s journey to the Promised Land is  like a roadmap to spiritual enlightenment and One-ness with God and especially the qualities that are divinely inspired within us.

Like the Jews who were slaves under the Pharoah in Egypt, we grow out of our childhood dependencies and leave our homes and our families to seek happiness, wealth, success, fulfillment, knowledge and personal freedom. Often, like Moses we wander for many years lost, confused, pissed off, half crazy, and completely unsure of where we are going and even if it’s really worth it. Many debate the actual meaning of the traditional Passover meal but some things are indisputable. We all need to feel a connection to others and have empathy. We all suffer some form of setback, loss, and trauma and struggle to recover our faith and sense of purpose. We all have to appreciate what we DO have and not dwell too much on what we dont have. We all have to look forward to the Springtime, the moments of rebirth and regeneration in our body, minds, and souls, and warm ourselves up by the spiritual hearth and flame of what we have discovered (like buried treasure) to be the most truthful, meaningful, wise, and everlasting. We all have to ponder when it is time in our life to take a substantial risk, to be brave and courageous and strike out for something more important. We all have to consider that there is a degree of mystery and magic in life and something greater then ourselves and our egos in this material universe of Kardashians, Keurig coffemakers, Klonopin and computers.

Passover is just a (yearly) reminder to think big, to trust yourself, to believe in the divine spirit within each and every one of us, and to include others in the symbolic hope and dream of not just material freedom but personal freedom as well. We are reminded to have great courage and conviction to follow our dreams and fight against anyone or anything that would oppress us or lead us toward false idols and superficial desires. Amen

P.S.  Arrrgh me ‘brew-ish buckos and buccaneers! Give thanks to the Greatest Pirate of them all and take another sip of Manischewitz grog.     L’Chaim Y’all!

How do I reconcile my many tranquil images of Florida with all the accumulated news reports suggesting increased criminal activity, gang violence, drug abuse, serial killers, and a warm temperate environment suitable to breeding hybrid mega-species of wild boa constrictors, escaped zoo animals and Africanized killer bees that decide without consulting the homeowner that somebody’s front porch is a suitable dwelling for a colony of 100,000 stinging stormtroopers? Is Florida rapidly turning into Land of the Lost or just a place where petty criminals, prostitutes and Godfathers go to retire (or become chiropractors)?

According to news articles (see below) there are now ravenous giant Tiger mosquitos in Florida to go with the mutant tiger shrimp off shore eating the coral reef and cannibalizing all the other Crustaceans. Even the sharks seen swarming off the Florida coast are scared of the ginormous shrimp. Florida is our little Australia. They even have man-eating gators and sink holes in the ground that swallow innocent people while they’re sleeping or playing golf and send them to hell in their pajamas and bermuda shorts. With my luck there would be alligators and snakes at the bottom of the sinkholes. Notice I’m not even mentioning all the Oxycodone addicts and crazed gun enthusiasts in the Sunshine State who like to hunt while intoxicated on methamphetamine and moonshine. Casey Anthony might be considered a relatively normal Florida resident by comparison. If Jodi Arias gets off in her murder trial in Arizona I’m sure they would make great roommates and fun girls to party with..until they kill you.

Look, I’m not saying there aren’t some tremendous upscale beach areas (with fine dining) like Longboat Key that are free of malaria, STDs and promiscuous baby killers. I’m just suggesting there are other less publicized parts of Florida where one should not tread alone or at least not without wearing a beekeepers suit and a can of Mace mixed with sarin nerve gas. Frankly, some people and some venomous insects are not to be trusted. The chances of surviving a Florida vacation in these less civilized areas is around the same as making it out of South Georgia without running into a tornado or unwanted anal sex with someone with a hillbilly drawl, no teeth and a weathered banjo. Of course they dont mention any of this in the tourism brochures and I dont think a little “Off” or “Skin So Soft” is going to repel these vicious predators. I also refer you to the hilarious Will Ferell video clip from Land of the Lost below.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016889/Deadly-Asian-tiger-mosquito-invades-U-S-cities.html

A found object is a natural object or an artifact not originally intended as art that is “discovered” by someone who considers the item to have some special meaning or artistic/aesthetic value.

As a hobby I make art that includes peace pipes made out of bamboo, found objects and broken household items. In my mind that makes me an eco-sensitive contemporary “artiste” but my three grown sons say I’m just a pretentious hoarder in disguise. Clever boys …and they are probably right. Of course both statements could also be true because as I like to say to anyone willing to listen in a clearly pretentious and pontificating tone, “Life is a discovery and a dialectic”. Then the other person pauses, rolls their eyes and walks away.

.

I enjoy making art that is aesthetically pleasing but also something that expresses my shameless satirical nature. My faux pirate alter-ego on social media known as “CaptCliff” cant help but point out irony in its many diverse forms. Skepticism and loony sarcasm appear to be my primary overriding philosophy in life and raison d’vivre. For example, I have put together a weird collection of broken objects and found objects from the parking lot in front of the Publix supermarket near my house. Yeah, I realize that sounds a bit strange. I happen to go to this particular grocery store quite often. I’m not prejudiced against other food stores like Krogers, Whole Foods, or Trader Joes. It’s just that the Publix is closer and just like Walmart, the customers there are extra good for people watching. In general, I view the grocery store as sort of the modern equivalent to what the Church, town pub or village square was two or three hundred years ago. People used to stroll around Ye Olde French Cathedral greeting one another, chatting about current events, snorting snuff and gossiping about their annoying neighbors. Some things never change. However, the pace of life was without question more leisurely back then and as far as I know there was no ratchet rap music blaring from open automobiles or horse drawn carriages. Neither were there cellphones going off 24/7 causing everyone with the same ringtone to reach for their iPhone only to find out it was another telemarketer or “international” pharmacy.

Of course, I live in Sandy Springs, Georgia and it’s 2018 and not 1818 or 1718. Clearly Sandy Springs is a long long way from Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame Cathedral. It does however bear a slight resemblance to the idyllic (in retrospect) suburban North Shore of my fondly remembered childhood in Highland Park, Illinois, circa 1968. However, my long hippie hair and bellbottom jeans have disappeared over time and been replaced by a completely bald older man head full of rich life experiences, both good and bad.

Don’t get me wrong, suburban Sandy Springs is a comfortable well laid out enclave of metro Atlanta with an abundance of churches, synagogues, movie theaters, fitness studios, brand new “mixed use” storefronts, and community centers. There’s a plethora of pretty decent restaurants, coffee houses and dessert places to choose from. You can even get decent ethnic food if your palate craves something spicy and you dont feel like shlepping to asian/ethnic rich Buford Highway. It’s not quite the epitome of Bel Air/Beverly Hills/Malibu luxury and celebrity living but the living is still easy and the neighbors have an endearing Southern habit of waving and saying “Hey” and “hi” when you drive by while they walk their sweet and obedient family dogs or take their scheduled morning jog. They also scowl at you and flip you the bird if they think you’re driving too fast which I sometimes do. My bad.

Let’s face it, when your food, pharmacy, bank, butcher, and bakery are all in one air-conditioned building, Publix or some place like it is going to become your “go to” destination. Psychologically speaking human beings crave familiarity and convenience, especially if they are very lazy human beings and have adult ADHD like me.  Also, I’m convinced my 1999 Ford Expedition has learned to drive itself to Abernathy Publix without my help, auto drive technology or even a GPS. My ancient truck is sort of like an old dog who just knows where to go to do it’s business. Anyways, both the truck and my rescue black Lab Harmony have a better sense of direction than I do. I tend to get distracted by my  thoughts and by my artistic and/or philosophical ideas that can and do occur at any given moment of the day or night. Of course if I dont write them down they are usually gone in between five seconds to one minute. Wait, I know I had a cure for cancer…what was it?

Circling back: A while ago I noticed an assortment of discarded and run over stuff squashed into the soft asphalt covered parking lot in front of Publix. I’m talking about a diverse assortment of things like flattened batteries, broken key rings, beads, etc. I believe I originally observed this phenomena because I was hoping to find a winning lottery ticket or crisp $100 bill magically lying on the ground waiting for me to find it. Don’t laugh. Call it Willy Wonka thinking but once I actually did find a $20 bill and another time I found a big wad of crumpled up cash on the pavement but that doesn’t really count because it was most likely from my own pocket. Like an idiot I often end up carrying a messy mass of disheveled currency and store receipts in my front jeans pants pocket. I own about 500 wallets but I dont use them. That takes organization.

Anyway, when I’m near Publix and not busy answering my iPhone in a fake Farsi accent or poorly pronounced Tagalog to ward off creditors or asswipe telemarketers, I’ve trained myself to look down and scan the ground like a trained bloodhound or like those often retired “treasure hunting” sunburned white guys all along the beach in Florida. I’m talking about the middle-aged or older men with skinny chicken legs and battery powered metal detectors. Can anyone please explain to me why those guys always wear open-toed sandals with knee high black dress socks while looking for gold coins and buried pirate loot? It’s not a really good pirate look but I can relate to the chicken legs.

Whether I am outside or inside the grocery store filling a prescription (they love me there) buying an endless supply of paper towels or scanning the aisles for the blessed Publix “Two for One” sales, I remain nimble and on high alert for my own aesthetically interesting treasure in the form of “found objects” for my ongoing art projects. “Found objects”…that’s an official artist type vocabulary term by the way, which you can Google if you don’t believe me. Sometimes finding one of these weird, unique, or unexpected culture-bound items can turn out to be the very highlight of my day. Ok, I’m kinda exaggerating but dont judge me. Of course finding free money on the ground would be the real pinnacle and highlight of my day but my rational mind realizes that’s a super long shot. Instead, the artist in me looks for treasure in the form of found objects that are overlooked by the vast majority of the extremely busy consumers leading their frenetic and seemingly more “productive” lives. It’s sort of like that pivotal scene from the first “Planet of the Apes” movie (the only good one) with Charlton Heston and that really hot exotic native girl he ends up with at the end where the ape archeologists find a talking human doll, broken eyeglasses and some human dentures. The point is that what one finds/discovers when they take the time to really “look” can have great meaning not to mention profound sociological significance. There might just be a completely different way of seeing things or perspective that we typically miss because we aren’t looking.

So I guess the main point is that everyone might just want to consider slowing down their rapid pace busy lives every so often to realize that life is principally what we choose to make of it and that while achieving success is good, all people should inherently “count for something” in this highly competitive modern world. Maybe we should attempt to pay more attention to the “little things” around us and not ignore the tremendous beauty and divinely inspired aspects of what (or who) we typically fail to notice or at first consider to be “worth-less”. In fact, creatively speaking we all have the power to imbue (breathe) worth, meaning and importance (symbolic life) into any unusual object or person we choose to… whether it’s an unemployed homeless person, a rescue dog, an elderly lady with progressive dementia, someone with a serious mental illness, or even a random broken item squished into the Publix parking lot. To my thinking it boils down to ones conscious choice and personal perspective. Hey, who knows what kind of fascinating “Many Lives Many Masters” wisdom or Robinson Crusoe meets Treasure Island type pirate adventure there may be hidden in various overlooked people and things.  In my case I use what I find around me to decorate custom “peace pipes” and “sacred boxes” that I make/create or rehabilitate using bamboo from my back yard. Normally I adorn my peace pipes with paint and bits of colorful fabric while listening to catchy pirate tunes and groovy music from the 1960’s and 70’s. I usually try to avoid disco and the 1980’s as much as possible…enough said.

Admittedly my handmade pipe and box collection has grown to Hoarders-like proportion in my pirate-tanical basement studio which makes my adult kids at least partially right if not completely correct. By the way, “art studio” is another artist type vocabulary phrase. It’s really just my pirate obsessed basement full of my ever childlike imagination and grandiose thinking.  I guess I got a little artsy-fartsy pretentious there at the end. Sometimes us faux pirates, found object artists and creative guys with ADHD but no inherent sense of direction just cant help ourselves.

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Dont believe me about art and ones perspective? Watch this:  http://www.upworthy.com/watch-the-first-54-seconds-that-s-all-i-ask-you-ll-be-hooked-after-that-i-swear?g=2&c=reccon1

Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and humorist living in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He loves all things Pirate, his dog Harmony and his three grown sons.
Dr. Mazer blogs on WordPress under the name CaptCliff and believes that creativity and self-expression art are essential to emotional healing and recovery.
Contact: 404-932-7193

http://www.thelocal.se/44536/#.UUINGK6veRk

Let me warn you or better yet, let me signal what is to come. All of
life’s great irony and exquisite mystery are possibly revealed in
the following news story. That’s right. You can give up your quest to
climb Mt. Everest, quit your introductory Buddhism class, cancel the
upcoming “clearing” session at the Church of Scientology, and put down
that copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. A simple news feed from
Sweden (of all places) helps to explain what human beings are really
about and why we exist. You can also forget about the newly elected
Pope with one lung and the recently verified Higgs-boson sub-atomic particle that cost a zillion dollars to basically build a 17 mile high tech running track for Hobbits.

Not that that wasn’t good science and careful Cosmology but it doesnt get at human
motivation, existential meaning and primary purpose. Who cares about God particles that help shape form and mass in the known universe compared to what shapes and gives meaning to human beings, the apex species on the planet. What good is a Higgs-boson if you cant eat it, rub it or make it love you?

I wont tease you and I wont beat around the bush. This is it. The
answer to what shapes our individual lives and gives us direction
is……….WHATEVER KINKY THING COMES TO MIND.

I distinctly remember searching for the meaning of life and taking the
EST training in the 1970s. I paid $350 to piss in my pants and hear
Werner Erhard whisper into a microphone on the third day of our
training, “People, when your HOT you’re hot and when you’re not you’re
NOT”.  Wtf?? That’s it?? I thought the guy was not only a hustler and
a douchbag but also out of his mind. I concluded that he was Ron Popiel
without a Pocket Fisherman or a working Rotisserie Oven (Set it and Forget
it!). I didn’t get “it” as they called it in EST-alese. Well, now I
get it. After reading this Swedish article about a lady who had sex
with a skeleton that she patiently collected bone by bone and metatarsal by
metatarsal, I hereby accept the fact that we all are symbolically
speaking “bone collectors” who arbitrarily find meaning and purpose and
then “animate” our personal passion by literally loving and fucking
what we kill, what we make or keep.  Some of us collect porcelain figurines,
some like sports cars. I like making bamboo pipes made out of “found
objects” gotten from discarded materials, which is a pretty cheap hobby
considering the price of junk and super-glue. On television it’s pretty
obvious that people love and covet flipping houses, spoiled rich housewives,
digital gadgets, fishing, and celebrities who dance (poorly) with the stars and
curse alot (measured by the loud beeps). The point is it’s pretty darn
random what we choose to get hooked on and obsessed with. That’s life.
It’s that simple. I know…it’s almost a letdown because we tend to
expect mental orgasms and emotional fireworks with our moments of
enlightenment. Sorry about that.

The good news is that you probably can just go ahead and live life and
dont have to stop doing what you’re doing or hire a personal trainer
(unless you are a fat slob who would like to collect human body parts
but are too out of shape to touch your toes let alone lift and sort
plastic bins filled with rib bones). Unlike the lady in Sweden you dont
have to lick a human skull, keep it in your freezer or have sex with
the bones. I barely have room for an extra bag of ice in my freezer
compartment. We can all freely choose what to believe in, what or who
to love (dead or alive) and how to worship. Licking skulls is an
elective, not a prerequisite. I did like the way she lovingly tucked
her skeleton into bed at night (see photo gallery). That was kind of
touching.

http://www.thelocal.se/44536/#.UUINGK6veRk

NEW RELIGION FOR SALE OR RENT by Cliff Mazer, Ph.D.

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4126/5172487839_ca07fca97c_b.jpg

Are you getting a little sick and tired of your present religion?
Feeling like your chosen deity is a little “yesteryear” and everybody
else is praying to a hipper higher power? Just like adding protein
powder and spiralina to your standard smoothie, there is a way to
ratchet up the divinity factor and omnipresence in your current
Almighty King of the Universe. According to the Huffington Post there
is an upswing lately in the belief in and worship of La Santa Muerte,
the female “Saint of Death” who, by the way, is also a skeleton. I dont
mean she’s super skinny like Bettheny Frankel or an anorexic angel. I
mean she is a dead-as-a-door-nail skeleton that is dressed in long
robes, adorned in colorful jewelry and usually seen carrying a sickle
and a globe. People make religious shrines using her ghastly/ghostly
image and then ask for whatever they want, including wads of cash,
European sports cars or a small swarm of super-models for a day or
possibly all eternity. Since she (the Death Deity) is from hell, the
sky’s the limit (in terms of her power to grant wishes) and it’s clear
that this is one God figure that has little or no shame about getting
down and dirty to make a materialistic miracle. Mexican drug dealers
and cartel type tycoons are apparently quite fond of worshipping her as
well as asking for her legal and criminal protection. Even a few La-la
land actors have made private shrines in her blessed name. Funny, I
thought all Hollywood actors were Scientologists. I guess there is no
reason to pay thousands of dollars and go through all that emotional
“clearing”, intense therapy and Sea Org training if the Grim Reapress
can just cut through the b.s. with her curved ninja blade and “make it
happen”.

Where did this newfangled gaunt Goddess come from? Leave it up to
cultural cross-pollination and the unique “blend” of Spanish
Catholicism and Meso-American bloodlust. Somewhere between the Aztec
obsession with death and after-life and the Catholic compulsion for
creating colorful shrines with impressive power rituals there was a
mystical union that gave birth to La Santa Muerta. Sort of the
religious equivalent to mixing old school Acapulco Gold with Mendocino
hydroponic-grown Purple Kush. That’s some bad-ass magic “mojo” and there
are no reported side-effects, nausea, or church or synogogue membership
related building funds to contend with………Plus, the La Santa
Muerte car shrine and miniature dash mount figure is good for parking
karma, and at the very worst is an interesting conversation piece.
What the hell is that??

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/santa-muerte-mexican-saint-death_n_2805723.html