Ambien Warning Update: Stay Frosty

Posted on January 12, 2013 by captaincliff
What a surprise. There’s a new FDA warning about the sleeping pill Ambien and its tendency to leave people (especially women) “groggy” in the morning and therefore in no condition to operate heavy machinery, drive  forklifts at Home Depot or work the early morning shift at ICBM missile silos containing the launch codes to the nations nuclear weapons arsenal. With the kind of zombie night eating and unusual nocturnal behavior I’ve previously reported to you in my CaptCliff blog, I wasn’t completely surprised they decided to not chance a perfect storm of  PMS,  sleep-driving, penis envy and megalomaniacal revenge fantasies.  One is left to wonder how these powerful meds ever passed the “stringent” FDA testing and approval process in the first place (besides Big Pharma’s  Hawaiian luau lobbyist lunches, cash envelopes and Halloween bags filled with gold bullion and Superbowl tickets)?

 
Did researchers not notice that women volunteers tended to stagger out of their double-blind Ambien studies and have trouble finding their own car keys and vehicles in the hospital parking lot the next morning ? Admittedly this is something I experience on a regular basis at Publix and Krogers but my ADD is the more logical causal factor. On the new Ambien advisory, men are also urged to “reconsider” cutting their sleeping pill threshold dose down by “half”. However, to the average Ambien user that is like saying, “Hey we’re out of those super effective migraine pills you take to quell your exploding head and murderous rage but we’re now recommending you try the Pirates of the Caribbean Melatonin gummy bears instead.  Are you kidding me? Have you ever watched the clock all nite and/or the Weather Channel praying for a major storm to break the incessant monotony of chronic insomnia?  Oh, thank God, there’s a super-volcano erupting in Malaysia and a Tsunami higher than Mt. Fuji forming. That should keep me busy until morning…….
 
Those who sleep like babies and are not strung out on Ambien have no idea what this really means. Dont think we, the Ambien Army of America have not already explored and tried chamomile tea, valerian root, warm baths, sublingual melatonin, relaxation tapes, mindful meditation, hot yoga, and enough acupuncture to closely resemble the scary dude in Hellraiser. We dont like having a dependence on a pharmaceutical product. It’s also true that many of us are not complacent pill poppers and continue to seek newer, safer and better solutions.  Let’s face it Michael Jackson was someone who pushed the envelope in his creative attempts to get a good night sleep. Somehow, however, he missed the part about not leaving hospital grade anesthetics and IV sleep meds in the hands of a gigolo doctor trying to simultaneously text four girlfriends and his accountant. Auto-correct will really mess you up and slow you down in that kind of emergency situation.
 

Finally, it is wholly legitimate to question ones dependence on a certain sleep medication like Ambien (Zolpedim) especially when attempts to goggle the manufacturer (Sanofi) return obscure and somewhat suspicious web sites that appear constructed by international PR firms to exude openness and transparency while simultaneously hiding relevant corporate data, exact locations, updated drug warnings and actual contact numbers. It’s not that web sites for pharmaceutical companies dont exist. It’s just they’re nearly impossible to figure out (due to multiple hostile corporate takeovers and repeated name changes) just who’s in charge of what. One starts to feel like Michael Moore without the baseball cap, sweaty morbidly obese body and permanently disheveled appearance trying to figure out who runs a mega enormous “French multi-national pharmaceutical maker and global healthcare provider” and more importantly, who’s front door to knock on or break down if you need to execute a Jason Statham style “I havent slept in a week. We need to talk” intervention.

Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about it. The new FDA warning story only came out yesterday, but I already have had about 3452698 friends and acquaintances find it important enough to text me, call me and tell me in person. Maybe I’ll go to Costco and stock up on a pallet of chamomile tea and a triple pack of Valerian root. I beg you my dear friends and readers to please not tell me to drink decaf coffee in the morning. I might still get that job interview at the nuclear missile silo and I need to stay frosty.

 
Anybody remember this? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoQjuAyeA8Q
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dr. Cliff on James Holmes…again.

Posted on January 11, 2013 by captaincliff

Let me reiterate.  James Holmes has Dysphoric Mania and Agitated Depression with Psychotic Ideation/Paranoid Delusions. Nowadays it is referred to as Psychotic Mania, but is not to be confused with typical Bipolar Disorder or simple manic depression.

He was diagnosed and treated too late. The University psychiatrist who saw him was partially fooled by his ability to maintain a facade of superficial social interaction and self-insight and mistook that to mean he still had a modicum of reality testing and borderline appropriate ego functioning/mental status. She only pushed the yellow caution button and she should have pushed the big red danger button. His worsening biochemical imbalance and psychiatric illness fused with his situational stress, anger, agitation, lack of sleep and mounting feelings of hopelessness, rejection, social/sexual/academic failure and estrangement from others and lit a dangerous mania fire in his head. He “flipped out” in a controlled, relatively quiet and secretive way over several months that allowed him to formulate his personal doomsday plans and violent form of rage-revenge against society, women, the University psychiatrists, the Medical school, his professors, and a world he progressively perceived as uncaring, dark, and depressing.  He still feels that way and that is why he smirks and sees the courtroom as a “joke”, himself as the “joker”, his victims as “collateral damage”, and his current “notoriety” as fair trade for losing his previous dreams of success (as a neuroscientist), fame, prestige, wealth, and social acceptance. He is definitely nuts but he knew exactly what he was doing. He gave signs and as usual nobody took it serious enough.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dr, Cliff on Broken Penis Syndrome (BPS)

Posted on January 7, 2013 by captaincliff

Notable quotes: “You know you’re getting older when you’re no longer part of your own sexual fantasies”   Rona Mazer

I know I’m expected to keep up with the current “sex news”, which at my age is starting to bore me to tears. I would rather report about amazing cheesecake and outstanding sashimi than bad sex, but hey, I’m not a licensed chef and Alton Brown hasn’t called me for my opinion, so here goes nothing substantial.

TMZ, the younger generation’s equivalent to Wikipedia for current news involving famous nobodys just reported this: In Malaysia, an MMA fighter suffered a severely broken penis, not in the Octagon fighting another human killing machine but in bed with his gf during vigorous sex in which she “sat on him the wrong way”. You really have to read this article yourself (see link below) to get the full visceral squeemish effect. Not that anyone really cares, but penises dont exactly break like a leg or an arm does, but they can suffer minor damage or a severe “bending injury” (BPS or Broken Penis Syndrome) or even internal tearing of erectile tissue. Such an injury, while not uncommon can require stitches, minor surgery and “bedrest” without sex…for awhile.

Of course I am not talking about the same thing as when a crazed spouse discovers her husband is cheating on her and uses sharp scissors or landscaping shears to cut off the offending appendage and feed it into the kitchen garbage disposal (see earlier blog). That’s a much bigger problem requiring lawyers, psychiatrists and a surgical team with a collective look on their face that says, “Say, have you ever thought about having a vagina?” Back to the MMA fighter down for the count. Apparently the Ultimate Fighter was fine, suffered only a minor internal tear that was fixed, and was amazingly gracious  considering that excruciating pain and spurting blood out of your manhood is extremely low on most mens bucket list. Obviously the world and cultural norms about sex have changed alot since my heyday because he claimed, “In an attempt to make it up to me … [my GF] has promised me a threesome of my choice when we get to the Philippines … which usually has some solid talent.” Wow, thats really nice of her and reminds me of how my former wife, on a trip to Thailand  a zillion years ago finally relented to letting me go get a Thai massage as part of my personal as well as professional interest in local culture, but ONLY AFTER my Asian flu and associated fever spiked to 103 degrees and I was so sick and delirious I couldn’t get out of bed. So much for  fancy promises.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

On 2013, the Mayan Apocalypse, Being Jewish, and Having My Head Frozen

Posted on January 3, 2013 by captaincliff

 

Now that it’s 2013, you dont have to be Freud to figure out what all that “Mayan Apocalypse” stuff was really about. After my recent holiday trip to Tulum (on Dec 21) and Cancun Mexico, I’ve had time to think about it. Also, I’m no longer hung over from New Years eve, sort of.

I will tell you this. It definitely wasn’t about Christ or messiahs, Biblical revelations, Meso-American astrology or numerology. It also wasn’t about 9/11, doomsday, Noah’s Ark, atomic bombs, fall-out shelters, the Cold War, flesh-eating bacteria or zombies that enjoy doing the same.

The apocalyptic “fever” that spread beyond even out own borders and led to mass chanting, hippie drum circles and a few 1%’ers buying concrete bunkers and moving into renovated nuclear missile silos in Kansas is much more likely about the ever present  challenge of being conscious human beings and sentient bipedal creatures on planet Earth. As such, we are left to ponder,confront, and interpret the importance of life and the reality of death. Other plant and animal species dont have to think about it. They certainly dont obsess about it. They just “do” as Yoda would say. Pontificating or writing about our morbidity and mortality is a relatively easy task for me, both as a psychotherapist and as a so-called humorist-blogger.  However, really thinking and feeling about the inescapable fact that we live our lives KNOWING we will expire one day and that our turn in the whole Lion King cycle of life awaits ( like an alarm clock tick-tocking away or a Mayan calendar ending and starting over at zero) is far more disturbing, unnerving and cause for  reflection, soul searching, and a large glass of red wine… or all of the above.

Those of us who have had to face a death in the family, suffered a serious illness, had a near-death experience, or lost someone near and dear know how we are forever changed by it. Both as understandably neurotic young parents with children and as middle aged parents with aging and sometimes chronically ill parents of our own, many of us cant escape the feeling that the “other shoe is going to drop” eventually. We are honestly and quite often fearful that “something bad” might happen.  Sometimes something bad has already happened and we think we cant handle any more emotional pain, loss or tsuris. However, the truth is either we embrace our losses and life traumas and find a way to give them meaning or we add to the existing denial in society and the collective dread, fear, anxiety and angst in our fast paced modern world. Some people dont think about it or just aren’t all that afraid. Historically people have used various individual or shared rituals to control their fears, ie., hop on one foot, dont step on cracks, or even rolling severed human heads down steep Mayan pyramids after first removing their still beating hearts. That last strategy seems rather drastic to me. Also kinda messy……

I’m one of the people who used to lie in bed at nite as a 10 year old boy and creep myself out thinking about “not existing” someday.  I’m not sure I’m much better today but at least I know a few things. I know we can heal our “selves” but we can’t cheat physical death. Once, around age 13, I thought about saving my allowance to have my head frozen in one of those futuristic cryogenic chambers run by companies that store dead bodies for a million dollars in hopes of one day curing their fatal illness. Now I realize that’s dumb because not only does it beg the question of who would want my nasty old frozen head with hardwired mental problems and sleep apnea, but also who’s second hand, defect-ridden body would I no doubt get stuck with?  It’s not like I could ever afford a brand new one, and if I could I  wouldn’t be driving a 2001 Ford Expedition around Atlanta now.

With my luck and my ADD (disorganized sub-type) my freeze dried head would probably get lost, repossessed for non-payment or they’d finally cure my illness and bring me back to life…. on the day before the real apocalypse. Is it really worth it being thawed out and propped up on some stainless steel desk like Robo-cop connected to a laptop and heat lamp in the year 2146 AD just so I could witness a giant meteor hit Miami Beach and turn South Florida into cinders? Actually, now that I think about it…maybe.

Being the cerebral Jewish person that I am, if I do end up like that somebody please remember to at least turn me off before going to bed and for God sakes, dont forget to give me my sleeping pill. I cant seem to live without my Ambien.  Also, I’d really be pissed if somebody in the future decided to use my head for a bowling ball or attempted to roll it down the steps of some blood-stained pyramid. I’m Jewish and we dont go in for that kind of thing. If a Jew is going to throw a ball nowadays, it’s most likely going to be a baseball. Trust me, when the time comes for me,  just light a yahrtzeit candle and say a Kaddish prayer. It’s way more civilized. Until then, “L’chaim” and  Happy 2013!


Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dunkin Donuts Night

Posted on December 31, 2012 by captaincliff

Yesterday I learned that Dunkin Donuts intends to market and sell gluten free donuts.  This is hard to imagine given the fact that I view DD glazed donuts and chocolate munchkins as a sugar and carb-coated version of crack cocaine. Consciously I KNOW I shouldn’t go there but every so often one gives in to the intense cravings for the sweet junkie’s crystalline sugar rush. Unfortunately, like crack, the “high” doesn’t last that long and the retched downward spiral afterwards is a complete bummer. I know I’m not alone in this often secretive and unhealthy every-so-often behavior. Adolf Hitler, for example, had himself injected daily with “Vita-Multin”, his personal physician’s proprietary blend of vitamins, bull testicle extract and crystal meth. That’s right…the Fuhrer apparently needed something “extra” to help him stay up late and figure out how to kill all the Jews.

In a slightly different vein (get it?) the gf and I needed to stay up last night after a really lousy sushi dinner at Sushi Mio in Sandy Springs. I wont give you the whole hyper-critical CaptCliff restaurant review, but I will say this:  It’s not a good sign when you enter a sushi bar and there’s only one other Caucasian couple there and they both look between comatose and dead, slumped over their cold miso soup and lukewarm ginger salads. Also, once I nudged the deceased diner’s head over to the side, the ginger dressing appeared watery and store bought, another rather bad omen.

Anyway, after we ate and repeatedly sent back our tempura vegetables for being somewhere between E-coli ridden raw and undercooked, we graciously paid, bowed with mock appreciation and swiped the entire porcelain bowl of mints at the front counter in revenge. I would have taken the reproduction antique oriental wood bench in the entry foyer as well but there were too many boisterous suburban Jews right outside kibbitzing with one another after having an excellent albeit predictable meal at the Brickery next door. How would I have explained the intricately carved dark wood stained waiting bench under my arm? “Hey, look it’s Martin and Cindy, how’s it going?? Oh yeah, right…I, uh brought my own seating to dinner. Yes, I always do that…. bad arthritis you know. It’s hereditary on my mother’s side…Shabbat Shalom y’all, say hi to everybody. Nitey Nite! Buh bye!”
.
So we had almost a full hour left before the movie started at 10:00 PM at Lefont Cinema, which means we had about a 5% chance of actually going due to elder fatigue, exhaustion, and the wear and tear of living in the affluent suburbs. We needed a wake-up “hit” of something and “da kine” (as they say in Hawaii) would have had the opposite effect on my delicate Baby Boomer physiology. Suddenly I remembered the Dunkin Donuts news story in the paper. What if,  just what if… they really DO now have amazingly tasty gluten-free chocolate donut holes that would be a “dieter’s dream” come true not to mention a godsend to celiac patients and all the other hypochondriacs who think they have celiac disease? We drove over to the Roswell Road location and entered the drive-in line. Random question: Why is the drive-in lanes at my Dunkin Donuts this dark, cramped, “back of the shack” alley way that make you feel like you are a Vicodin addict in the shitty parts of Florida buying painkillers or sex toys in brown paper bags?  In contrast, the triple wide drive-in lanes at McDonalds across the street are lit up like a drag racing venue with ballpark floodlights and circus clowns.  Maybe this was just my overly vivid imagination and my mixed feelings of guilt and desire talking. It turns out the Indian guy at DD had never heard of the so-called incredibly delicious gluten-free donuts and to make matters worse they were, “all out of chocolate donut holes”.  They could have told me a Delta jumbo jet had just hit the King and Queen buildings in Sandy Springs. I felt that taken aback and crest fallen. However, because psychological “resilience” is supposed to be one of my professional specialties, I used a mindful meditation technique and quantum coping (radical acceptance) to turn my deep disappointment and grief into an order of one dozen red velvet munchkins and two large coffees with French vanilla and a half-kilo of Splenda with cream. Of course we felt so “wired” afterwards there was no way we could sit quietly in any theater seat until well after midnite. At that point going home and popping  Ambien and a bottle of Melatonin from Whole Foods seemed the best possible cinematic ending.

PS  After waking up the next day with a sugar migraine and red velvet crumbs stuck to my hairy back and chest, I did manage to go to the movie, Silver Linings Playbook. A very kooky bipolar love story and I loved it. I highly recommend it to any quasi-bipolar person such as myself, along with the occasional glazed donut and mood stabilizer as needed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/dunkin-donuts-gluten-free_n_2377202.html

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Riddle Me This: About Soldier Suicide and PTSD

Posted on December 28, 2012 by captaincliff

(Unfinished Draft)

Riddle me this:  How is the Pentagon and the military top brass like Psychiatrists and the AMA (American Medical Association)?

Tough one, right? Here’s the answer. They both think that there is a physical, mechanical or biochemical solution to what essential is a spiritual or soul-based problem. I’m talking about PTSD and especially the epidemic of soldier suicides occurring among our combat forces returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree from any theater of war since man started hitting each other over the head with rocks, clubs, arrows, spears, guns and atomic bombs.  Without doubt the problem has gotten worse, and the reasons for this are highly debatable. Certainly the length of military deployment and the severity of physical violence and psychological trauma suffered in combat are significant factors. Research backs that up as the more intense and frequent a soldier experiences life-threatening episodes and the longer they are deployed in such unusually stressful horrific conditions, the more likely they will later suffer from Post Trauma Stress Disorder.  However, the question of why so many soldiers are returning home from active duty and later taking their own life is not the same question, altho there may be a correlation between the two.  I believe this is one of the first “knotty” issues that needs to be more fully investigated, empirically untied, and essentially deconstructed. Why do some combat veterans come home from war and become symptom free business leaders, senators and congressmen, some become alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless bums or cave dwelling hermits, while other tortured souls eventually commit suicide?
It is too easy to assume the obvious: that they are men and women trained to kill and to use lethal force, that they had access to and competence in using firearms and other sophisticated weaponry, that they returned to lives of economic hardship, monotony, loose or non-existent social bonds (unlike their highly supportive Band of Brothers), that they lacked or lost (due to their wartime experiences) normal social skills or the ability to give or receive love, comfort and intimacy,,,,the list could go on and on. Each could be true in one case but absolutely untrue in another. Regardless of circumstances, a growing number of veterans, in a state of desperation and emotional pain we cannot conceive of and/or loss of faith in living, tragically end their lives.

Unfortunately, just like the well trained and highly efficient soldiers they are, when they attempt such an act, they are usually successful.

The “glasses” we wear, rose colored or otherwise, and the “lenses” we see through morally and instrumentally often bias our conclusions.  Religious people tend to conclude that these lost souls and wounded warriors failed to maintain a life-affirming connection to God, Christ, and the numerous faith-based institutions that reinforce fellowship and community. Certainly that could play a major role in some cases and represent an important mitigating factor. Again, such a theory still does not address the real question of “Why?” as in: Why did they do it and why do some choose to take the most extreme, most final form of “treatment” for their psychological and emotional pain?  Can death ever be considered a reasonable solution to human suffering? Even on this most fundamental question there is much debate. However, recent findings about PTSD in combat veterans may provide us with some intriguing clues to help explain the growing number of suicides among service members, both active and retired.

 

To Be Continued….. High Tech Drones and Psychoactive Drugs will not keep our Combat Veterans Safe From Suicide on Their Return Home (Part 2)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

CaptCliff on the New Year

Posted on December 26, 2012 by captaincliff

As you know I love to give my pompous overeducated opinion on numerous topics, mostly to show just how nimble my mind is compared to my rapidly aging and deteriorating body. The verb “to shrivel” does not do justice to the physical changes that have ensued over the past few years.  Besides having no hair on my head and copious amounts of thick grey fur-hair on my back, shoulders and chest, my sons love to call attention to how the top half of my body is like a “wine barrel” and that my limbs seem like skinny “chicken parts” in comparison. They apparently marvel at the asymmetry.

I can only hope that the barrel they refer to carries a quality vintage and one known to mellow and deepen”with age. I’m not sure if I really have. I seem more to be just an old bald guy with ADHD….and a consistent tendency to embarrass myself and my grown children publicly and especially on social media.

In keeping with the past, I will attempt to answer another complex question drawn from  recent news reports and contemporary society. The Question: What is it with all these goddamn lunatics randomly shooting people with high powered automatic weapons? Why is this happening and more importantly, what does it all mean?? Lastly, are there powerful psychiatric medications that would help these people?
Answer:  I have no fricking clue. It’s really fucked up. Some effective gun control for lunatics would probably help some. As far as medications are concerned, possibly but the really severely deranged  lunatics have a tendency to isolate, under-medicate, go off medications suddenly, and/or fail to maintain regular psychiatric follow-up appointments.  Frankly, however, I’m currently concerned about my own blood chemistry and hormone levels as I think I may no longer be producing serotonin, melatonin, dopamine or sperm in any appreciable quantity.  I may in fact  have less free testosterone/male hormone circulating through my body than my son’s old, blind neutered mongrel, Cesar.  Luckily Cesar doesn’t have to deal with the psychological ramifications of knowing he is growing asymmetrical tufts of hair out of his ears, nose, back, chest and ass. He just sheds constantly and bumps into walls. Like I said before, it’s all fucked up.  Happy New Year.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Dont Say No…It’s the End of the World

Posted on December 21, 2012 by captaincliff

Well I was there, in Tulum Mexico today, EXACTLY on the day and time (plus or minus 2 hours) of the so called Mayan Apocalypse. The 97 tourists a certain HuffPost journalist talked about “behaving badly” on sacred Mayan ground was more like 9700 this morning. Nothing apocalyptic happened (like a comet or super volcano eruption) so people just swam in the sea, lounged on the beach below the main temple structure, swabbed on gobs of SPF 50 sunscreen and fed sugar addicted rock iguanas who, due to ingesting human junk food and chemical preservatives have become some kind of mutant dinosaur-lizard species. I saw a Frenchman lying on his back feeding a massive iguana an Oreo off his hairless naked chest.  In “jest” I moved the half-eaten snack directly onto his Speedo bathing suit bottom. The crowd giggled at my PETA inspired intervention but unfortunately the sugar crazed beast wasn’t interested in French food or human protein of any kind.

Before catching the air conditioned buses back to the mega all- inclusive resorts, we/they stuffed our tourist gullets with “Mayan” Subway sandwiches with “Maya-naise”, and were encouraged to buy Mayan inspired trinkets that appeared on closer examination to be mass produced in China. The problem with day one of the “dawning new era” (as mentioned by our tour guide Ernesto and precisely calculated by this proud extinct civilization) is simply this: what we call “civilized” (ourselves) is really nothing more than bloated sunburned modern day versions of Hernando Cortez… Caucasian Conquistadors carrying fat wallets and smart phones and lacking any real appreciation of indigenous cultures. Luckily the modern Maya were pretty nice about the whole thing and take American Express almost everywhere.

Addendum from the Jewish book of Travel:  I enjoyed my 50 minute Holistic massage, manicure and pedicure yesterday at the Beach Palace resort and all-inclusive. I felt incredibly relaxed except for a moment of sheer panic when I realized I might not use up my $1500 in free “resort credits” by Monday. My mind began to calculate all 12,542 possible permutations of last minute spending that I could utilize and still not go one nickel over. Tomorrow is the Jungle tour and the Swimming with Dolphins excursion. Thanks to You Tube I have a fear of sexually aggressive bisexual dolphins in heat, but I need to use up the credits and Cancun “Wet and Wild” is fully booked, especially the Apocalypto Pyramid ride and the Colonel Kurtz- Zetas Drug Cartel sponsored Ritual Human Sacrifice at 1, 3 and 5 PM. I kinda wanted to see if heads really do roll around here……..More later.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

CaptCliff on Vacation Destinations

Posted on December 13, 2012 by captaincliff
Baby Boomers, the quintessential travelers are always looking for interesting places to go. Instead of backpacks we now carry high-end but functional luggage, you know, the kind of stuff that people in Boulder, Colorado would buy and use if they ever left Colorado and their 12 million medical marijuana dispensaries.
The rest of us who dont live in paradise look for travel bargains and/or highly unique places to visit. Normally Belgium would not come to mind. Besides making good waffles and pretty decent milk chocolate, Belgium is not known for all that much. It’s sort of the “Idaho” of Europe, as in they make a good export product or two, like Idaho potatoes and violent domestic terrorists, but I wouldn’t want to live there. So what do you do if you cant compete with London, Paris, Las Vegas or Los Angeles for tourist attractions and swinging nightlife?
You create a “niche” market. You create a hotel and distinct brand that appeals to a limited but oddly loyal segment of the traveling public. Previously I have opened up to my readers, so to speak, about my recurrent intestinal problems and interest in all things “bowel”. Ok, actually I have opened up my entire head, mind, and mondo bizarro sense of humor to the public domain in my CaptCliff blog. As a result, my grown children have attempted to take away my computer and put me in a permanent state of digital “time out”. In their defense, given the very permanent nature of what is posted on the internet, it is quite possible that I sometimes confuse my posterior for what I leave for posterity. So be it.

Still, it’s not gonna happen. I will not be silenced, even if it is for my own good. There are too many important stories to tell and news items to dissect for their superficial cultural value and deep insight into the human condition, circa 2012. The underlying theme is usually the same….that mankind, like “auto-correct” on our cellphones tries hard to help, to be good and to get it right, but often fails miserably. Existential humor is better than severe depression.

Writing about 2013 is a bit more speculative what with my upcoming trip to Cancun next week and the coinciding Mayan Apocalypse. I checked with my travel agent to see if a disintegrating home planet or Extinction Event sized meteor is covered by the travelers insurance, but they claim that requires an extra charge and a signed waiver of some kind. Waiver of what, that a one way trip to hell or hordes of drunken tourists turned into brain eating zombies rampaging through Cancun is excluded from coverage?

Anyway, back to Belgium. If you dont have a good beach and Brussels isn’t liked much more than brussel sprouts, what do you do to draw in new tourists?  Apparently, according to this HuffPost article (see below) , you build a room-hotel in the shape of a human colon. In fact you call it CasAnus and for some reason people want to come and sleep inside a large, medically accurate architectural recreation of your asshole.  As far as I know they havent added an olfactory component or aromatherapy program that accurately depicts how it smells up in there, but that could be coming as they “squeeze out” new marketing strategies and gather venture capital. Of course everyone thinks I’m kidding (again) or believes I am exaggerating the insanity of our times, but look (or smell) for yourself.  When they talk about “destination vacations”, how much cooler can it get for us Baby Boomers then the Presidential Suite at the CasAnus, delicious vegan diinner at the Colon Cantina, and an in-room hot stone massage and coffee enema? This is the kind of place you leave feeling clean, refreshed, and a lot lighter…mostly in the wallet.
Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. is a licensed Psychologist and 59 year old humorist living in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He likes Pirates and blogs on WordPress about zany topics relevant to Baby Boomers. Contact: 404-932-7193
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cannibalism: Sharpen Your Mind and Your Cutlery

Posted on December 3, 2012 by captaincliff

Cannibalism: Sharpen Your Mind and Your Cutlery by Cliff Mazer, Ph.D.

 

In an attempt to shore up my self-image as an intellectual, I ordered the book, Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form by Eli Sagan from Amazon.com (gently used/nibbled for 99 cents). 

 
The author, I was surprised to find out, is NOT Carl Sagan’s idiot-savant brother nor is he the famous Cosmologist’s first cousin with high functioning Aspergers and a thing for eating people. I guess I must have made up those non-existent family associations due to my own diagnostic dog tags, namely being ADD and prone to excessive imagination. For no good reason I imagined receiving in the mail an enormous, dense, meticulously researched textbook about cannibals with startling ramifications and “billions and billions” of carefully crafted connecting dots leading (like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs) to our current warmongering patriarchal capitalistic culture. Wow, that last sentence had a crapful of C-words in it. Go ahead, count them up. I dare you. 

Given the engrossing as well as gross topic, I prepared for my literary deep-dive into mankind’s demonic past by buying two extra large beef jerky packages at Krogers (one teriyaki, one peppered). I prefer engaging in this atavistic-ritualistic type flesh eating when I get an opportunity to observe human behavior at its most primitive, like when I watch Cops or The Worlds Dumbest Brawlers on the boob tube.  Similarly, when I read this kind of  anthropological horror show stuff I like to get myself into the Marlon Brando-Colonel Kurtz role in “Apocalypse Now”.  Instead of reading The Golden Bough and muttering, “The horror, the horror…”, I rip into a big chunk of jerky with my cosmetically enhanced teeth and try to figure out why classical theism is considered only a “serviceable” definition of ritual and religion in evolutionary perspective……whaaat? WTF does that even mean? I was hoping for a couple of cool color pictures (Ogrish style) of human intestines on the barbie but there arent any in Sagan’s miniscule egghead book. What a ripoff!

Ok, update. The book came in the mail yesterday. It is small, thin, and written in a font type that may require halogen spotlights if not a portable electron microscope. Using a jeweler’s loop to read this book might take longer than I expected. I got stuck on page x of the Foreward where Sagan’s esteemed colleague, Robert Bellach manages to eloquently applaud the author while simultaneously evicerating and diseboweling him verbally. I smell a MENSA cat fight, or more likely a vicious intellectual throw-down between Ivy League educated monkey scholars with psychoanalytic training.

Can’t we just skip ahead in the book to the good part like the South American rugby players who got stranded in the Andes mountains for 72 days in a plane crash with two women, a guitar and no food? How about a couple of nice black and white pictures of Nando walking off the mountain like a goddamn super-hero with home-made boots culled from airplane debris and a pocket full of sun-dried human jerky? Will we ever get to the snow-bound and starving Donner Party and the kind of man-eat-man history that led my alma mater, the U. of Colorado to name our campus cafeteria after one of the cannabalistic survivors, Alfred E. Packer? I dont know why but just knowing that fact made those damn burgers taste better and a little bit more…well, exotic- forbidden good. Not too gamey, well charred on the outside…….good with catsup, relish, red wine and fava beans.
I will keep my avid readers informed on my progress reading this little devil of a book. I suspect it will get better when I make it past page 3 of the Foreward.
PS  Random Fact: Did you know there is a official store policy at Krogers that if your food item is incorrectly priced or if it is not hung on the correct peg, you get the item for free?  I found this out when I got my two jumbo bags of beef jerky (see above) for the price of one. I left quickly to prevent myself from acting on impulse and going back to the meat aisle to casually rearrange filet mignon packages.  Say, what are those pricey steaks doing hanging in the produce section?? Hey, a mans gotta eat, even a caveman or cannibal. Just ask Nando or Alfred E. Packer.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment