Relentless Unfettered Depravity

 Relentless unfettered depravity.

I came across a screenshot of a post that someone put up this morning that can barely be touched by describing it as startling.  More accurately, it was literally physically sickening.

Upon introspection, I don’t suppose it ought to have been – it revealed the true heart behind an issue that has been dragging itself along, fueled by the kind of selfishness that makes even the hardest of hearts recoil in horror, a grimace involuntarily splashed across faces who have the unfortunate destiny to cross its path.

Perhaps it was an exaggeration.  In my optimistic soul, I can only hope it was, but the last several years has taught me better and more clearly about the depths of the darkness that exists in this world, and the heart behind it told me otherwise.

It was bold and proud and twisted and dark. 

It was the kind of thing that stirs up so much fire in the depths of your soul to protect the vulnerable that the searing of its sickness upon your very being causes such a whiplash of opposition that you are surprised by the force that is stirred within you. 

Can this be human expression?

No.  This creation was boiled up not from what is beautiful in this world, but from the fiery depths of hell, spouted out by blatant demonic influence over easily swayed beings, thinking they are progressive and brilliantly independent, when in reality, they are nothing but slaves to their hellish masters.

Last year when things got particularly dicey, did you feel the recoil deep in your heart?  Did you burn deeply for justice when you saw innocent people’s businesses and homes and lives being destroyed by displaced anger, stirred up, funded, and artificially created by the media and their minions?  Did you pity those who were so easily influenced for evil?  Did you lament the lack of education, introspection, and consideration that was played out and highlighted across every media feed and praised as good and peaceful when you saw plainly that it wasn’t? 

There is a direct tie to that post in that behavior and the drive behind it – and that is the absolute lack of respect and disregard for human life.

We have left the realms of logic a couple years ago, and what is painfully plain and elementary can no longer be seen by those who are blinded by such darkness.  Describing and explaining in their own words back to them, in black and white, is disregarded as misinformation, hate speech, or dismissed and unthinkingly blanket labeled as misogyny, racism, privilege, or anti-science.

The days of logic and good are being destroyed moment by moment, to be replaced by the whim of the political passion of the day, stirred up by fear from those who profit from it.

What has happened to discourse? 

If you value logic, it will be difficult for you to comprehend all that is permeating society, but we must preserve the ability to think clearly when we are being perpetually baited to react at our most basic levels.  This is the behavior of the unintelligent.  This is the behavior of the undeveloped beast.  Will you succumb to their depth?  Will you too leave logic behind and become an unthinking Neanderthal, disconnected from higher thought and the good? 

The temptation to hit back at their level of wretchedness is mighty because it so deeply offends all sense and life, but only those who are civilized will overcome.

My friend said it exactly right – will you fault the blind for being blind?

Rise above, lovelies.  Speak the truth in love.  Do not be afraid.  It is the only way to preserve our society and to diminish the sick evil that attempts to spread.  Will it take you under?  Or will you prevail?  Our world depends on it.

Stay human, lovelies,

Ms. Daisy

The Scam of an International Women's Day

If you've been on social media today, you likely have been made aware that today is International Women's Day.  I have to be honest - I don't know if I quite remember it much before last year, although it is reported to have an origin in New York City organized by the Socialist Party of America in 1909. 

On social media today, I saw women that I respect and enjoy hanging out with display links to women that they think are killing it in the realm of business or breaking barriers or whatever else is out there that ought to be celebrated.  They highlighted pictures of their best friends, their mothers, their sisters, and women in business.  They brought attention to the fact that women are out there and they are making things happen.

While I am glad that they are associating strength and success and potentially even a desire to emulate these women, (are you ready for a shock?) I find myself disagreeing with the whole premise.

I actually find it insulting and off-putting.

I think that highlighting the achievements of women because they are women is the equivalent of posting extra thirsty cleavage shots and pretending that you're asking for feedback on your necklace.  It's desperate and it debases those highlighted.

Hear me out.  If you are female and you truly believe that you are able to compete in every way with a man (within physical reason - and yes, I said it.  I'm 103 pounds.  I'm not going to be able to beat my dudes benching 270 - yet, anyway.  Will I give it a chance based on percentage and bench more than my weight?  You know it.  Will I try to do more pull ups than them?  Absolutely.  Which, by the way, I'm at 12 and still climbing.), why would you point out achievements only because you are female?  Shouldn't you rather be pointing out achievements and amazing accomplishments and humans of note because of those very things and not because they were born without the coveted blessing of a peepee (does this very idea not readily and obviously admit that you view yourself as less when you chase after it?)?  Do you secretly and subconsciously cling to the belief that men are better than you, and that in order for you to fight the social injustice of it all, you must stand on your soapbox for one day each year and loudly declare and demand attention for yourself - attention that you suppose you would not otherwise get without having a special day dedicated to you because you can't figure a way to compete on your own of your own merit?

Perhaps at this point you would argue that society is male-centered and is set up to benefit men, and that they are creating the narrative and it is unfair.

Do you know what I hear in that?  An excuse.

Do you believe that you are able to do things or not?  This makes it difficult to truly decipher between what you are saying and how you are behaving.

Most women are not leveling up because they don't actually believe that they are even in the game in the first place.  As I mention "the game", I want to be clear that this is not a game of two teams, in particular, the boys vs. the girls.  This is the game of life, being played by everyone on the planet.  I don't need to prove to you, some man, or anyone else that I am worthy of being deemed successful or anything else because I am female.  That is insulting.  That is petty and quite frankly, feels beneath me.

When I was growing up, I was always the shortest and smallest person in my class.  I was the shortest and smallest person on my sports teams.  I was the shortest and smallest person everywhere.  Even though I knew that was the case, I was very blessed to grow up in a family that never made that an excuse as to why I couldn't beat someone else.  In fact, I didn't know that there were some people out there who thought that because you were bigger and stronger that you would probably win.  I didn't even have this concept in my head.  Instead, the concept I had in my head was, "Do you want this?  Do you want it more than the next person?  What must be done to get it?  What are you willing to do to get it?"  

I remember my mom recounting a story of me in high school.  It was my senior year and I was at a home swim meet.  I competed in breaststroke and the 100 was about to start.  I walked over to my lane, flanked on both sides by girls from the other team.  I walked up to the starting blocks and did what I always did - stretched myself out and got myself pumped up by stretching my arms and then my legs, grabbing the blocks and frog jumping a few times, staring down the lane and imagining my race.  My parents were in the stands and my mom tells the story that two girls who were almost a foot taller than me and 50-60 pounds more were watching me instead of getting their own minds ready for the race.  She watched their faces as they became increasingly unsteady and lost confidence.  I didn't even know that they existed and didn't even look at them.  I was there for the race.  I won.  I thought nothing of that win outside of the fact that I knew I had done what I needed to do to achieve that outcome.

In business and achievement, I'm not competing with imaginary men (or women).  I'm out there doing my thing, with my eyes on my race.  I can assure you, however, that on race day - whatever that may mean literally or figuratively depending on the circumstance - I am going to level it up and I don't care if you are male or female or an elephant or a unicorn, I am going to give it what I have because of who I am as an individual - not because I am a woman.

Let us all ask those questions - Do you want this?  Do you want it more than the next person?  What must be done to get it?  What are you willing to do to get it?  

Let us not denigrate ourselves as individuals by too much associating and identifying as what society tells us we are as a group. 

Go out and get what you want because you want it and you will work for it.  Use the smart brain that you have to figure out how to do that.  Do not emulate someone solely because of their gender - instead, admire the tenacity of their character.  Be inspired by their drive.  Let the fire of what you want be torched higher because you have chosen to surround yourself by people who tirelessly seek excellence.

Don't be put in a box, lovelies.  You're so much bigger than that.

Peace, love, and don't freaking quit,
Ms. Daisy

Are you an emotional pawn?

Hello lovelies!  I've just started reading a book entitled Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.  The author, Ryan Holiday, tells his stories of "marketing" for his clients, many of whom have millions of dollars for budgets.  He starts off by telling about a time where he designed, paid for, and put up a billboard, then drove to it in the middle of the night, dressed in black, defaced it, drove around the block, took pictures of it, and then sent it to various media outlets in the morning.

The response was astounding.  But he wasn't finished or satisfied - he submitted anti-women articles about it to feminist groups, anti-Christian articles to Christian websites, and made repeat calls for anonymous complaints about it.  

It blew up astronomically.  People were angry from every corner of the world and he got exactly what he wanted - overwhelming attention with very little effort.  He played on people's emotions in order to suck them in.

Even though it was completely fake, it became an event - a "true" living, breathing, emotionally charged reality - for hundreds of thousands of people who became entangled in his deliberately artificially manufactured emotional net.  He got them.  He owned part of their minds.  He won.

He refers to a political cartoon from 1913 that is more true today than it has ever been before. In it, we see a businessman throwing coins from a gigantic bag of money labeled "money for business announcements" into the mouth of a tentacled monster, whose head is the press and whose arms include "cultivating hate", "slush to inflame", and "distorting facts".

 

I believe that we are at a critical time where if we do not pay very close attention and fight back, the monster will destroy all of us.

Right now, if I asked you who your enemies were, would you easily be able to rattle off a list?  Consider it -

The right hates the left.

The left hates the right.

The vaxers hate the antivaxers.

BLM hates the police.

Half of the country hates the post office.

Antifa hates everything and everyone.

These, we are told, are our enemies.

What if we're being played?  What if our real enemy is the media?  

Our national presidential election was last week.  On election day, after being told daily for months by every single person across all social media platforms, through billboards, on television and on radio, to vote, to let our voice be heard - we went to the polls.  We did our civic duty.  We felt proud of our little patriotic stickers. We were so proud that we took pictures of ourselves wearing them like a gold star on our foreheads in a kindergarten classroom, some of us posting our picks to social media, watching the likes stack up and watching the haters react.  We regurgitated and reaffirmed that we had a voice and that our voice mattered.

The counting began and the main event started.  Even though we knew that we would not likely see results until at least the next day, millions tuned in to watch as if it were the big game, cheering for our side, feeling more tribal than ever.

We cheered when our team got a point and likewise boiled, muttering and scoffing in wonder at those who voted against what was clearly a sane, educated, forward thinking choice.  We thought of those with the yard signs - the ones on "our side" and those who were on the enemy's side - and our love and hate grew yet more.

I have the app for Ted Talks on my phone.  A week before the election, I got a notification from Ted, telling me that I might be interested in what would surely be a valuable talk.  It was entitled, "What if a US presidential candidate refuses to concede after an election?"  It was given by Van Jones, a CNN political commentator.  

Huh.  That's interesting.  Are we predicting the future?  Or are we just setting it up?  Do we have a history of this that I need to be alerted to something that I should expect to happen every four years?

What we saw next in the days following was surveillance videos, personal tiktok videos, and eyewitness reports showing that our votes - our voices - may have been compromised.  I watched a ballot counter in a yellow vest and a white mask lift up a ballot, point to the presidential section where it was marked, and then rip it up and throw it over his shoulder.  I watched a personal video and heard eyewitness reports of ballots being brought in to downtown Detroit in coolers.  I heard that the Dominion software (funded by the Clinton Foundation) used in critical states was flip-flopping candidates names (like in Antrim county in Michigan).  Attorneys were called in, and what was thought to be a guarantee was now being contested.

While questions were still ongoing, we watched CNN declare a winner.  There was a speech.  People reposted a video of Ms. Harris making a phone call to tell Joe that they did it.  We watched women repost all over social media to "watch out" because there was "glass all over" since the glass ceiling had been broken. 

Without taking a side on the previous two paragraphs, I want you to think about what was really going on.  Fly yourself up above this and go big picture.

What was happening was the creation of a slush to inflame.  Whatever "side" you find yourself on, you are wired and pulled and tempted and played with to become emotionally entangled.  Why?  

Because we know that fear and anger will turn your attention and potentially drive you to action, and that, more than anything, is what they are there for.

They are not there to create peace.  They are not there to unite.  It does not pay to make peace.  The clicks on the media slow down when things are at a state of equilibrium.  When the world is in an uproar, it is good for the media.  It pays their bills.  The advertisers crank out even more, in hopes to get your attention. 

My concern is for what will happen once they've hooked most people onto one very passionate, die on this hill side.  

What if the legal battle turns the decision the other way from what the media declared?

The fire will engulf us.  Those who thought that the glass ceiling was broken will crumble in despair at it being so unfairly snatched out of their hands.  Those who thought their voice was silenced will rejoice that they were not eradicated.  The media will have created another group to be us versus them, another team to be on, and another source of heated, passionate division.

What is the end of this?  A civil war?  The thought of that gives us so much pause, but it brings gleeful delight to the media.  How juicy!  How absolutely fantastic!  They will have unleashed the monster for near complete annihilation of the American people and what we know as our culture, our way of life, and the future of our children's lives.  

I submit to you that those that you think are your enemy are not.  We know that we can believe differently and still be civil, unless we are perpetually fanned to do so and swallow it.  Contrary to what you've been told, Don and Joe aren't your enemy.  BLM and Antifa aren't your enemy.  The keepers of the glass ceiling aren't your enemy.  The police aren't your enemy.  The post office isn't your enemy.  Hunter's laptop isn't your enemy.  Joe's blond leg hairs aren't your enemy.  Don's border wall isn't your enemy.  Those are all logs to make the fire bigger.

Our enemy is the media.  You feed them every time you bow to worship their almighty proclamations, swallowing all of it whole: hook, line, and sinker.  Every time you feel the burning in your chest to smite that "other group", they found another hook to own you, to leverage your own emotions for their purposes.  They mock your pain, your desire to be justified and vindicated, and do it all while hiding in the background, throwing out fiery arrows to the middle of your street wrestling match.  

From what Ryan Holiday tells us, why shouldn't we believe that much of what is out there is literally created out of thin air for the purpose of getting that attention?  

How willing are you to place your emotional stability into the hands of an entity that lies to you and uses you?  You get a choice to answer that question every single day, multiple times a day.

We can get above it and see the big picture or we can continue to be pawns, fighting amongst ourselves, never looking up and seeing that we're really in the middle of a boxing ring on the Truman Show.  

 

I'll leave you with this picture quote that I found today that I hope makes you consider the true state of what is going on.

Who and what will you willingly give your power and your life energy to?  It is no small thing and you should not bestow it haphazardly or unthinkingly.  Will you stand up and fight for humanity?  Will you help reconnect us?  Will you reframe your thoughts to recognize that others who believe differently than we do are not so different from us?  Will you be hooked and swayed by every wind that the media blows at you?  Will you believe all of it, whatever "side" it comes from?  Will you ignore the fact that the only thing they want is your pocket, your will, and your passion so that you can be shaped to carry out their desires, schemes, and plans?

Will you live the rest of your life content to be a pawn?

Peace, love, and reach out - one person at a time, one day at a time - we can do this,
Ms. Daisy

The Facebook Divorce

Hello lovelies!

As humans, we have a shared existence at times.  The feelings that well up within us and crash over us are not unique to us as individuals - there are not many among us who have not felt the pangs for the summer sunset in the middle of dreary grey, cold winters, nor those who are foreign to the way that sweat forms upon our brows as we labor beneath the blazing sun.  Many of us know the feelings of longing, of hunger, of thirst, and of satisfaction.  But above all of these things, I believe that we all share something even more basic to the human condition - a question, one that looms deep within our very souls, and the tremendous wonder at moments in our lives - why on all of God's green earth do we have a facebook account?

This question, although it seems ancient for all of the times this river of thought has driven a path by coursing through our very souls, is relatively new on the planet in the scheme of things.  Perhaps you have wondered it yourself recently.

What makes us wrestle over it?  What holds us back from a clean break?  Why do we cling?  Why do we wish it gone?  Why are we tugged in both directions?

I cannot answer that for you, but what I know I will offer for your consideration.

But before I do, I want to tell you of my relationship with facebook.

It started out really early.  I was one of the early adopters.  I have a younger sister and younger family members who joined when it was advertised as a college yearbook.  As soon as it was open to non-college students at the end of 2006, I jumped in.  I was fascinated with being able to have a page that I could make and post whatever status I wanted while also being able to hop around and visit people I knew virtually.  What a novelty!  What a genius and fun idea!  I was excited to check in on a regular basis to see how everyone was doing, to look at their pictures, and to have a view into a corner of their lives - I was exploring that interesting new balance of socializing through a screen.

I loved seeing new people finally come aboard, people that I had known from high school or college that I hadn't seen in a long time and didn't have contact information for.  I loved seeing that they had children and that they were happy and that some of them looked exactly the same as they did when I knew them.  It was fun to be able to see how the teenage person I knew grew into a mature adult (for most of them, anyway) with jobs and adventures.  It was nice to see that they had made it and what they had made of themselves.

Years and years later, more and more people joined the party.  And then one day, The Thing happened.  I got a friend request from my mother.  My mom was on facebook?  My mom?  For real?  And then my dad joined.  And then my grandmother-in-law.  The community was looking very different and my "audience" was spread from friends out to family and over to people I worked with and everyone else I had ever known on earth.

It was fine for a few years and then the arguments started.  Some people were really political and it seemed that this was the place to try to further your political party with your undying support.  It was a forum for discussion, and for the most part in the beginning, it was fairly civil, although I am sure people felt some heat in their bellies when they were arguing their cause.

I'm not sure exactly what the line was, but I watched it happen right in front of my eyes.  I watched people behave differently to others because they were behind a screen and then removed the person from the information that they were connecting to on the monitor.  It was as if all social rules were off of the table and you could just open up and say whatever you wanted to because it wasn't in real time, and it wasn't in your voice, it was only text, and that isn't a big deal.  I watched people remove personhood from those who were called their friends so that they could argue perpetually about different things.

At some point, I decided to delete my account.  I wasn't happy with all of the crazy and it really just didn't feel worth it.  After all, if I was looking for connection, this certainly wasn't it.

After a few more years went by, I decided that I missed seeing people and I would just jump in and keep it fun, check in only occasionally, and use it as a way to help others with health coaching and my business.  It was okay, but it wasn't how it used to be.  I didn't get the kind of personal interactions that I was looking for, but that was because I wasn't putting it out there on my side.  It was boring, but also kind of mean out there.  It was a place where I used to scroll through and make sure I was caught up on everyone, but it became a place where I couldn't be bothered to even read more than a few updates.  I would only comment on something if it seemed like something that was impossible for me to personally neglect.  I checked on it less and less until I deactivated it for a few months at a time.

I loved Facebook for the advertisement of my book and for a place I could share myself being silly in videos or peeking in on long lost friends, but it was really losing its luster.  I wanted to have a place to share my writing, but even that seemed like it couldn't possibly be worth the garbage I had to dig through to get it out there, not to mention the way that we are being mined for data, violated on privacy, and advertised to in order to line the pockets of Zuck and his homies.

Finally, I decided - it was time.  What it was taking was more than what it was giving, and it had run its course.  

Last month, I clicked "Delete Account".  If you have done this before, you know that it isn't a swift process.  They send you a message letting you know that for the next 30 days, your account will be in limbo.  It will hover between heaven and earth, accessible for you if you will just simply log in and ask for forgiveness and get back to it.  This time, I counted down the days until it would come true and everything would be really gone for good.

Today the sun sets on the last day of me being part of a facebook world.  It was fun while it lasted, and that era had some good things, but it is over now.  It is not worth feeling angst and revulsion over people that I think I really like in real life.  It is not worth the data mining.  It is not worth feeling like I'm making my stress level go to 100 from looking at people's opinions and arguments.  It is not worth being part of a place that censors information.  It is just not worth it.  Life is better without it.

I'm glad to be on the other side.  Maybe you would like it, too?

Peace, love, and freedom,
Ms. Daisy

The Year the World Lost Its Entire Mind

Hello lovelies!

I'm writing to you from the middle of June in the year of our Lord 2020, a time in which all persons inhabiting our once beloved planet are absolutely and wholeheartedly certain of one thing: we hit the tipping point and tipped waaaay over.

Is it because of the rona?  No - unless you have hooked yourself up to an IV of CNN, you are easily able to see that the predicted terror ended up being quite a bit of an overblown issue (not to say that it didn't exist or affect people - it did, but not at the levels we were being terrorized with initially).  The rona was so like, spring 2020 and we are totes like, mega over it.  Figuratively and literally (if you hear of the waving of a "second wave" flag, I'm pretty sure it's because the media misses all of those clicks and the powers that be miss all of the diabolical levels of control they get out of bludgeoning the masses with the scaries.  That level of power is highly addictive.), quite frankly.

Is it the media-stimulated race riots?  No, but it is linked to that.

Is it ANTIFA burning down buildings and smashing windows with bricks and making a lovely tent village with speeches and dance parties for themselves where naked people run down the street saying that they are prophets looking for their children, proudly declaring that they aren't part of the United States (but rather, "Chazikstan"), while still using our wifi, EMS and hospitals for the drug overdoses, building (the very literal and social) walls (that they ironically hate and riot and terrorize about), and silencing any differing opinion?  Well, no, but that touches the fringes of it.  (And if you're mad about Chazikstan, I hear you, but just let them be for a couple weeks and you can have a front row to watching the inevitible rise and fall of a very sad social experiment.)

No, it is none of those things, and neither is it even the chaos of the liberties that people have allowed to be stripped away from them out of fear.

What is it, then?

It is the silencing of rational discourse with the rise of cancel culture.

Could it be any more in your face (literally?) to silence people symbolically by forcing them to wear a mask, stripping them of their identity, individuality, oxygen levels, and muzzling them while taping directions on the floor of their local grocery store, telling them how they ought to walk?  This is the physical that has translated to the emotional, out into the atmosphere, that is now flying around the internet-sphere.  And flying it is.

Over the last couple weeks, we have seen countless examples of the vocal mob crying out to crucify anyone and anything that they deem as inappropriate, whether or not the person's opinion was justifiably and/or intentionally offensive or not.  This crucifixion is not only social, by people declaring they are now unfollowing them on social media (OH, THE SEARING PAIN!), but it is an outcry to demolish their livelihood, business, passions, and future.  This is once again a physical parallel in domestic terrorism of the destruction and arson of physical buildings as a result of the emotional world.

What once was "only" name-calling (you misogynistic, transphobic, fascist, homophobic, sexist, racist!) and slander on social media as a result of differing opinions is now full-blown catastrophic destruction if someone is caught in the crossfire and dares to think for themselves outside of the popular groupthink that is making an attempt to burn through the nation. 

Why did that name-calling start?

Name-calling in this realm exists most often from people shying away from the difficult work of digging through something together in order to try to understand another viewpoint. 

You don't like what someone is saying and you don't want to consider their points?  Call them a name.  Block that conversation from going anywhere.  Feel much better about yourself.  Nod in victory at your obvious moral high ground.  Threaten to unfollow, share with friends.  Spread the virus of the inability to have an intelligent conversation over a subject with which you strongly disagree.  Never even entertain that any aspect of their point of view could be valid because you are busy not listening to anything they are saying, convinced of your superiority.  Such intelligence.  So noble.  So big brain.

What harm could it do?

That is the catalyst that has led to a college football coach grovelling and begging for forgiveness because he wore a certain t-shirt while fishing. His running back, offended at the sight of his coach wearing an OAN News Network t-shirt while fishing tweeted that it was unacceptable and that he will not be doing anything with Oklahoma State until things change. 

I just want you to back up one second really quick with me here.  A man went fishing at his leisure.  He wore a t-shirt with the emblem of a news network on it.  Another person saw it and threatened to quit working with him because of it.  The university said that they would not "tolerate insensitive behavior" such as this rude TV network t-shirt wearing fisherman. 

Please.  Go with me for just a second.  This is the United States of America.  You can dye your hair purple.  You can identify as a tree.  You can fill your backyard with rocks.  You can drive a car that has figurines glued to the roof.  You can dance the cha-cha slide.  You can play basketball at midnight in your driveway.  You can refuse to shower for a week.  You can wear a skirt with combat boots.  You can tattoo your neck.  You can name your kid after viruses.  Why?  Because whether you like all of the results or not, we have the freedom of expression.  We are entitled to our own opinions.  We have the liberty to come to our own conclusions and to express them within our free society.  (Yes, I'll admit - that's getting harder for many to practice as we are bombarded with propaganda for what and how to think, but it still exists.)

This bizarre example is not one that is few and far between.  The founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, was stripped of his position for tweeting the opinion that there were some that were taking advantage of the death of George Floyd and manipulating it (just as had been done with Covid-19) by his tweet that stated, "FLOYD-19".  Furious tweeters demanded his resignation, saying that he was racist, and then pulled his business partners in, demanding that they withdraw from their partnership (like Reebok).  Reebok jumped ship, terrified to be associated with anything that the masses declared scandalous. His history of funding and supporting people of color did not matter to anyone, nor did anyone want to open up that door to conversation.  They wanted to call him a racist and end him, and that is what they did.

Whether or not you agree that he ought to have tweeted that, and whether or not you agree with his opinion, it is still only his opinion.  It is within the realm of his freedom of speech to declare such things.  You don't have to like it.  You don't have to agree.  You don't have to be friends with him.  But just because you disagree with another person does not mean that they should be silenced and destroyed. It is the mark of intelligence and maturity to be able to have a conversation with someone that you disagree with, and it is the embodiment of a free society to be able to express your personal views, whether they be popular or not.

Another aspect of the danger of groupthink was displayed recently with masses of people displaying black squares all over social media in an attempt to gain traction to end racism.  Perhaps I have been fortunate to surround myself with people for my whole life who think the very idea of racism is absolutely absurd to hold and expressly intolerable - in fact, I've only been aware of a very small handful of people who have ever vocalized anything overtly negative about people of color, and those people were very old and are now dead.  I don't know any person in my generation who has ever leaned positively toward becoming a racist.  It is the very fact of why so many scurry from even the hint of any behavior that would be linked to it.  Am I a minority for that?  I don't know for sure, but I have a hunch that even if a person was closeting feelings of racial superiority, they would never dare express it because they know it is wrong and that it is offensive, as they should.

With that being said, though, what happened on black square Tuesday on social media did not necessarily lend a hand in the right direction to fight racism.  Instead, what it did was influence people to behave a certain way and to display a signal to others that they were not racist and that they were going to prove it.  Instead of being comfortable with who they are (knowing in their heart that they were not racist) and displaying it in real life, in action, in loving others as they ought, they felt discomfort that someone might accuse them of being racist for their sin of omission of not following the masses and what was trending that day by not displaying a black square.

Certainly there were many who were passionate about connecting to other races of people - and we know that they are because they live it in their everyday life.  It was already part of who they are and at the front of their minds, but I fear that the majority of people who posted that did so more out of the fear that others would think less of them if they didn't.  That is not fighting racism.  That is unthinkingly following the vocal mob.  If you need to prove that you are not a racist with a black square, maybe you need to do a little bit more soul searching and think deeply about where you are at and what you believe.  The whole world is better when you're thinking critically.

Where do we go from here?  I beg that you connect with people who don't think like you and who are not like you, not so that you can call them names or crucify them on social media, but to explore the other side in an effort to truly understand - to expand yourself.  I encourage you to shun cancel culture wherever you see it as it is the very epitome of silencing voices.  But most of all, I encourage you to think for yourself and to use the liberty you have to express your own thoughts. 

You never know, your thoughts and opinions might not be a scary minority, even if the media tries to tell you that they are.  But even if you do not hear many other voices like your own, if you're not you, what are you even doing with your life?  Who are you?  Speak up.  The free society deserves it.

Peace, love, and think for yourself,
Ms. Daisy

The Fear Factory

'Ello lovelies!  (Go back and try again in a British accent if you didn't do that the first time around.)

What a year so far, amirite?

It's been enough of a wild ride on the free-flowing, wavy scrolls of hoarded toilet paper, diving deep into the deepest depths of oceans of hand sanitizer for any of us to likely want to climb aboard the crazy train again any time soon.

I am sure that many of us have had significant time to ponder and reflect on many new things (including - but not limited to - what you might trade toilet paper for and if you were going to be adventurous enough to make your own hand sanitizer from your liquor cabinet).  There are a few things that I have been rolling over in my head and I thought to share one with you today.  Are you ready for a ride into my brain?  It's wilder than the life of a Costco toilet paper roll.

I think that if there was one emotion that could be collected and weighed across all of humanity starting somewhere in late winter, fear would come in first place.  In many of our lifetimes, we have never had to deal with something that had such a wide span, affecting so many all at once.  One day we woke up and schools were closed.  And then the next day, they were closed for the year (three months out).  The next day, people were afraid of airports.  The next day, people were working from home.  The next day, we watched Italy singing from balconies, locked in their homes.  The next day, we were locked in our homes and high fives and hugs were essentially declared illegal.  The next, they took away baseball.  The next, people started wearing hazmat suits and disinfecting their groceries.

There is absolutely no reason that you could have ever gotten to a hazmat suit and a pile of $37 N95 masks that you burn inside out in your driveway on the way in and tossing your Rice Krispies into a bathtub of bleach without being completely terrified of something.  Three and half months ago, if you would have done that, they would have called 911 and put you into a mental institution.  Today, you're asked for your bleach concentration recipe and stared at for your tremendously stylish hazmat outfit.

How did it get that way?  It was that a lot of people truly believed the worst of what they were seeing in the media, and not only that - they believed it was probably going to happen to them and to their loved ones.  Imagining dangerous things happening to you and your loved ones is probably one of the strongest catalysts for change and wild unnatural behavior that you could ever find on the spectrum of humanity.

As people dove in headfirst, the media felt the exhilarating rush of clicks.  They upped the coverage.  The clicks went exponential.  The media stood in their quarantined offices with their fingers spread out to the sky, eyeballs flickering, purple-blue electricity pouring out of their wrinkled fingertips,  voices suddenly strengthening, and erupting with, "No, no!  YOU WILL DIE! Unlimited power!" while launching Samuel L. Jackson into the sky.  In a few short moments of our life, all news turned into coronanews.  In fact, in the first few weeks, I saw an infographic that showed the amount of times a word had been mentioned in the news.  Ebola was in the millions over the course of the entire epidemic.  According to Sprinklr, a company that tracks language and trends and helps manage social media images and brands, just on one single day - February 28 - 6.7 million people mentioned the rona on Twitter and on social media platforms.

 Personally, I am not one who likes to submerge myself into the news machine.  I don't want to support the media getting ad revenue for their hysterical hype, leveraging the novelty of a pandemic to benefit themselves financially. As they play on people's vulnerability and panic, they push others into a downhill spiral, scouring the world to shock them daily with more terrors and horrors, digging up the most random one-off experience you wouldn't find unless you were on page 19 of a google search, and then making it front page news.

I don't know if you noticed this, but it seemed that all of the media everywhere only had about six stories to pick from to broadcast on any given day. No matter what news outlet it was, they were all saying the same thing.  It was like it was either completely lazy journalism (and I use that term very loosely) or otherwise a very united front to decide what stories were going to make it to your homepage.  Those headlines would sit on top, ready to be gobbled up by the eager clicking masses who had barely just opened their eyes for the day, and then re-spread in various degrees across social media, infiltrating every crack and corner of life, giving people the Next New Thing To Freak Out About.

(And then their cortisol levels from stress tanked their immune systems, and they worried more into a perpetual spiral, making themselves more vulnerable to the thing that they were most worried about. SLOW CLAP.  Awesome job.)

You can get people to do anything if you work up enough panic.  Rational, thinking, level-headed people will turn to bleaching their cereal boxes, turning their masked faces 180 degrees away from other's in terror, afraid to pick up a box of pasta without a gloved hand.  These small things are the proof that you can get them to do big things.

This is the place that we stand and wonder at society.  Where are you?  Is it possible that the media may have their own interest in mind?  Do you believe everything that you're told?  How much do you question?  What if you weren't afraid?  Wouldn't you like to feel that way again?  (I ask that knowing that there are some people who totally get off on panic, so even though it could be rhetorical, it isn't.)

You know what?  You don't have to watch the news.  You don't have to read the headlines.  You don't have to know every gory detail of what someone is putting out for you.  You don't have to wake up and throw yourself into panic and depression.  You can just do your thing.  You can avoid any scrolling through facebook.  You don't have to open it up at all.  You don't have to argue with those who disagree with you.  You don't have to read the news before you go to the grocery store.  You can just go.  You can go outside.  You can call your friends.  You can smile at people at the grocery store and interact like they are a human being instead of the Black Plague personified.  You can refuse to drown in it.

Do you know what happens when you do?  You feel a lot better.  You're not fueling people who don't have your best interest in mind.  You're not giving them power over your day and your emotions, creeping into your subconscious, prying one thing after another away from your once much happier life.  When something wild happens, you will be clearheaded enough to react appropriately to it, and not with a knee-jerk survival mode.

I just thought that you should know that you're not obligated.  Maybe you could try it for a day and see how you feel.  Or don't.  Whatever.  It's a free country.  Kinda.

Peace, love, and take back your brain,

Ms. Daisy

The Hilarious Canadian News

I don't know how you feel about Canada.  Perhaps you feel the same way you do about Canada as you do for Switzerland.  They're just one of those nice countries that doesn't bother the other ones, and even though they are socialists and have universal health care and are generally unarmed, most of the people are considerably more alert and better educated than your average run-of-the-mill type in the United States.

I love to listen to CBC Radio 2 on the way home from swimming in the morning to hear their news, because any propaganda being barfed out on an American station is so insanely slanted and idiotic that I just end up gagging and yelling at the radio, and really - who wants to start their day off like that?  Not me.  So on with the Canadian station it is.

Their national news is about one billion gallons less narcissistic than the American news, and that is grand (Oh wait, there are other countries out there?!  Pish posh, don't be silly, of course there are.  And they are only important as long as they have a direct effect upon us.  Duh.  Talk about those only.  And do it from the perspective of how they probably should work a little harder to benefit us.).  I appreciate that Canadian aspect, but what I really tune in for is the entertainment of their local news.

I live in a place that if I tuned in to local news, it would be the news of Detroit.  Do you know what that looks like?  I just checked.  It looks like this: police officer's trial begins today for beating a motorist in their car, rape kits arrive in Detroit, apartments burn on Detroit's west side, man found dead of strangulation after a fire, woman won't be charged in son's fatal shooting, and cameras capture thief breaking in to gas station.  I am not even keeding.  Those are the headlines for today.  They're pretty much the same everyday, give or take a few rapes and murders.

HOWEVER.

In Windsor, across the river, we have a different kind of news going on.  It is refreshing and hilarious.

On CBC Radio 2, there is a lovely Englishman, Pete Morey, who subs in for Tom Power when he's out - and everyone likes to listen to a good English accent in the morning, so that's a win.  On the local news, you've got my favorite news person, Peter Dock (he's local to Windsor).  I have no idea what he looks like, but I imagine him to be very serious.  You should hear his voice.  He is so somber, matter-of-fact, and direct, I can barely stand it.  He is my favorite.  He seems so serious that I imagine myself meeting him, sprinting up to him with the most gleeful face, grabbing onto his shoulders and jumping up and down in front of him, gushing that he is my FAVORITE news person in the world.  If I had to guess, I think this would embarrass him, mostly from the overabundance of emotion I would be showing at that point, especially considering his apparent penchant for being excessively reserved.  That right there would make me even happier.  Stir it up?  YES, PLEASE!
 
What I am about to tell you is not a joke.  This was REALLY ON THE NEWS.  Peter Dock actually reported this this morning.  When he did, I erupted into laughter in the car so vivaciously that even I was amused at myself.

After they reported a building fire, Peter Dock came out with the stunning news that nearly ran me right off of the road.  Please, be seated before you read this.

It went something like this: "A teacher in LaSalle distributed a spelling sheet that included American spellings.  The word 'color' was spelled without the 'u', and the sheet also asked the students what state they lived in (said with much disdain).  The superintendent was notified and has corrected the teacher."

I love you, Canada.  This is the funniest news I have ever heard in my life.  It's sure a heck of a lot better than rape kits and being strangled and burnt to death.

Rock on.

Peace, love, and please do not pronounce Quebec with a "kw" sound (it's "ke-beck"),
Ms. Daisy

Oh my gosh, I got a Twitter account.

Horrifying, right?

I totally agree.

Okay, let me explain.  As you likely know, I left facebook quite a while ago and it was nearly the most liberating things I have done in my entire life.  So why am I picking up another stupid social media vice?

Honestly?  To argue with idiots, I think.

I know.  That's the same thing as facebook.  (But facebook has more pictures of people's breakfasts.)

Well, whatever.  Maybe in like two hours I'll decide it was too stupid to pursue.  Maybe the orange hair chemicals have seeped into my brain and have made my previously clean brain tainted beyond recognition.  Either way, it is what it is.

If you're on there and want to peek, you'll find me @daisyglitters.  If you don't have a Twitter account, I suppose I ought to say by all means, and for heaven's sake, don't start now.  

Peace, love and submit this as evidence not to dye your hair,
Ms. Daisy

 

Amazing Errors

Having a slight obsession with grammar, I am always on the lookout for fun and entertaining spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors.  When I find such a thing, I document it (if possible).  

Why, just last week I nearly drove off of the road for such a thing.  It was garbage day in the neighborhood I was driving through.  People had their garbage bins all lined up along the side of the road (a moderately busy road, mind you).  In this area, you must distinguish your general run-of-the-mill garbage from your compost on the outside of your bin.  This is usually done by painting the word "compost" or some such thing on the outside of the bin so the guys know which to bother with at the time.

But this day I was to see such a sight that has never been seen (by me, anyway).  A sight that would forever be burned into the minds of those who had beheld it - a wonder of wonders.  I saw a garbage bin with large yellow lettering that said, 

"YARD WAIST".

Are there ever TRULY any words to express what goes through one's mind when such a thing is witnessed?  My 8 year-old asked me, "What does that even mean?"  Usually for me it is something along the lines of, "Oh wonder of wonders, they did NOT just do that.  That is AMAZING!  Children, LOOK!  Look at the horror!!  We're drivivng too fast to take a picture!  Shall we turn around?"  And then I feel the pressing urge to knock on their door just to get a glance at what kind of special person they are so that my mind can conceive the depths of how this would be possible.  I want to ask if they are one of the people who were educated in the illustrious Detroit public schools (and therefore have a 50% chance of being illiterate).

Well.  It's not just on garbage cans, love.  Yesterday there was a storm and the sirens were going off so I flicked on the tube to see if we were having a run of the mill storm or a tornado.  After they reported that we were just indeed having a severe storm, they had a piece about how Magic Johnson was criticizing Donald Sterling (you know, the guy who they are going to force to sell his NBA team for making private comments to his girlfriend in his own home?) for his opinion on HIV/AIDS (now I like Magic - he went to the best college in the nation and everything, but the fact is that he got HIV from sleeping around with so many women while playing in the NBA: not a very upstanding background).  The caption read,

"Magic Johnson cricizes Sterling".

He whats?

I couldn't decide - do I take a picture of it?  If I run to the other room to get a camera, will the caption be gone?  Should I just keep reading it aloud and staring at the wonder?  I was frozen as if in front of an accident.  The caption cleared off of the screen and I ran to do what I usually do in such a situation.  Write an email.

Dear _______ (news people),

Perhaps you are unaware, but during your piece about Magic, the caption contained a misspelling of the word "criticize".

Not to criticize... ;)
Ms. Daisy

Response:

Of course there are many hard-working writers and producers scrambling to write an incredible amount of news each day.  Having produces newscasts for nearly 25 years, I know each strives to be letter perfect.

Believe me, no one is more aghast at any misspellings than the one who made the typo.

Sincerely,
Mr. Producer*

Me:  Did he just write "having produces"?  Should I correct that?  Putting bets on Mr. Producer* as the editor of captions...  I never knew news could be so entertaining!

(* Names have been changed to protect the reputation of Detroit public schools.)

Keep your eyes open and your brain clear of pesticides!

Peace, love and entertainment,
Ms. Daisy

Response to David H. Freedman's article

I get Reader's Digest in the mail (thanks to my hubby's grandmother).  Most of the  time, I look up the vocabulary quizzes and then put the publication in the basement's bathroom until the pile becomes intolerable at which time I burn them in a fire pit.

This month (October 2013), however, there is an article that I actually read.  It is a clever piece of propoganda filled with wrong premises and lies that I just couldn't pass up the chance to talk about.  It is called, "Have the elite hijacked healthy eating?" by David H. Freedman (edited from his first version in the Atlantic).  Freedman writes for the Times, Inc., Newsweek, Scientific American and has written his own books, one named Brainmakers: How Scientists are Moving Beyond Computers to Create a Rival to the Human Brain.

Here is the overview:
- eating real food is expensive, elitist, inconvenient and unrealistic.
- people who adhere to Michael Pollan's (of The Omnivore's Dilemma and Food, Inc. fame) ideas are impeding science and progress.
- things that are called health foods have more fat than a Big Mac, so just eat the Big Mac.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?  Because I don't want to misrepresent what Mr. Freedman is saying, I'll quote his article directly at vital points I want to share with you.

Mr. Freedman begins his article on a quest across the nation to try some healthy food options.  He went to Oberlin, Ohio, to Cafe Sprouts and got an apple-blueberry-kale-carrot smoothie which his friendly server "spent the next several minutes preparing" for him.  He said it was tasty, but was (according to his rough calculation) about 300 calories and at $9, he wasn't about to make a habit of it.  But being a man of such perseverance, he tried again at L.A.'s Real Food Daily and got a green veg juice.  The poor man suffered and said, "I could stomach only about a third of the oddly foamy, bitter concoction.  It smelled like lawn clippings and tasted like liquid celery.  It went for $7.95, and I waited ten minutes for it." (italics mine)

Pause.  What is Mr. Freedman used to?  Based on what you read here, what is his palate used to?  How much time is Mr. Freedman used to spending/waiting for food to be ready?  Does this display anything about his character to you?

He reveals more to us in the next paragraph: "I finally hit the sweet spot just a few weeks later...Thanks, McDonald's!"  (He had their "delicious blueberry-pomegranate smoothie" - even though it contains artificial flavors, demineralized pineapple juice, and xanthan gum.)

Mr. Freedman (what an ironic name!  Am I in Orwell's 1984?) then says that the foodies are wrong when they say that processed food is making us overweight (false.  See article here: Link between processed foods and obesity, cancer, etc.).  He quotes Michael Pollan and says that Pollan's solution is to "replace - through public education and regulation - Big Food's engineered, edible evil with fresh, unprocessed, local, seasonal, real food." (Is it weird that he has a problem with this?  Isn't this the way of all history up until our very present age?)

He then states that, "there is no reasonable scenario under which these foods could become cheap and plentiful enough to serve as the core diet for most of the population - obese or otherwise..."

Screech the brakes, baby.  Hold up, homeboy.

WHY is junk food so cheap?  Is someone subsidizing it?  Is the government tied in with this food industry to make sure crap costs less than real food?  The answer is heck yes.  (To the tune of the government paying out $20 BILLION plus a year for the subsidized products, corn leading the pack: read here - agricultural subsidizing)

Now let's go the other way.  Even if we can't change what the government has decided to subsidize, we can change what we do and how we spend our money.  If you have cable TV, quit it.  If you have a car lease, dump that and buy a cheap car in cash.  If you have a smart phone, ditch it for a flip phone with no data plan (or don't have a mobile phone at all).  Never go out to eat.  Don't go to the movies (they aren't any good, anyway!).  Don't go to the mall so your greed gene won't even be tempted to kick in.  Get media from the library instead of paying for it (Netflix, books from Barnes and Noble, etc.).  Learn how to do stuff yourself.  Want fresh food?  Plant your own garden on the space you have, even if it is small.  Get chickens if you can.  Learn how to preserve your own food.  Stop buying junk food and convenience food and you'd be surprised at the rest of your grocery budget.  Make do, fix it up or do without.

If you just said that was totally unrealistic, then you haven't met me and many other people who are doing exactly those things.

I'd rather pay for the good stuff now than to pay out in health care later.

Next point - Freedman (I can't get over that irony) says real food is fattening, too.  He repeatedly points out calories and fat in his examples.  This is built upon an untrue premise that foods that have fat and calories are inherently unhealthy.  "What the [Vegan Cheesy Salad Booster] does contain, though, is more than three times the fat content per ounce of the beef patty in a Big Mac...and four times the sodium."..."By weight, [Trader Joe's Inner Peas] has six times as much fat as it does protein, along with loads of carbohydrates.  I can't recall ever seeing anything at any fast-food restaurant that represents as big an obesogenic crime against the vegetable kingdom."

The point that is trying to slide by under the radar is that you probably should just skip the other stuff and go for the Big Mac.  And just because he "can't recall" ever seeing anything at a fast-food place that has more fat than TJ's Inner Peas doesn't mean it's not there, doesn't exist and is healthier for you.  But if you take a closer look, you'll see something that still doesn't line up: he's comparing one processed convenience food to another and to another.  The "Pollanites" (as he calls them) would probably more likely aim you toward comparing a Big Mac to a grass-fed burger with the organic raw carrots you grew in your back yard, not the bag of Inner Peas.  Don't let them slide things by you.  Let's always pay attention to what is trying to get in.

Again, he says, "Check out their products' nutrition labels online: fat, sugar, and other refined carbs abound."  Think.  To be quite frank with you, I don't ever read the nutrition label.  I read the ingredients.  If your food is real food, the nutrition label is not going to worry you, or at least, it shouldn't.  I certainly hope you don't pick your food based on nutrition labels.  Ingredients are what matter, not calories.

Read here to check out why counting calories is actually a very bad idea: (Spoiler - the stress of doing it increases cortisol levels, causing you to be unable to lose weight at all.)  Counting calories is gonna make you fat.

Read here about how eating fat doesn't make you fat and is actually healthy for vital functions in your body: Eating fat doesn't make you fat.

Read here about: how full-fat dairy is linked to skinny people and low-fat is linked to overweight people.

And about how full-fat dairy may lower the risk of diabetes.

And lastly, about how awesome butter is - why it really should be considered a health food.  

Freedman (ha!  It's getting funnier every time I write it!) states "The U.S. population does not suffer from a critical lack of any nutrient, because we eat so much processed food. (Sure, health experts urge Americans to get more calcium, potassium, magnesium, fiber, and vitamins A, E, and C...)"  This is so wrong that I almost fell out of my chair when I read it.  The entire book that Dr. Weston A. Price wrote concerns this very topic.  As humans, we have only the sense of hunger - we do not necessarily hunger for nutrition, although when we do not gain nutrition from what we eat, we are not satiated and our brain tells us to keep eating and searching for vitamins and minerals, thus we pack our bodies with empty food that eventually fattens us from overeating wrong things.  (You can read his book online here: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration)

Did you see that he said we are urged to get more of at least seven different vitamins and minerals?  Would you say that we are doing a good job?  What kind of standards does Mr. Freedman have that he thinks a lack of at least seven vital vitamins and minerals is normal and expected?  Is it any wonder so many people are so ill?

Freedman says that these processed foods are just fine - the proof is that they are regulated by the U.S. FDA and their "effects on heath are further raked over by countless scientists who would get a nice career boost from turning up the hidden dangers in come common food-industry ingredient or technique."  

Stop.  Let's talk about the FDA.  Here is an article that can tell you the names of the men who have gone back and forth from their high positions at Monsanto (the world's leading GMO producer) and their high positions at the FDA.  I wonder if there is any conflict of interest there at all.  And here is an interesting demonstration of propaganda: Monsanto scientists are hired to pick out whether info should be accepted or rejected.

Freedman (eye roll) then dives in to the utterly inane and bewildering with, "the wholesome-food movement is impeding the progress of the one segment of the food world that is actually positioned to take effective steps to reverse the obesity trend: the processed-food industry."  Dear God, please tell me I am in some weird Alice in Wonderland dream.  Oh no, but wait, there's more, "In fact, these roundly demonized companies could do far more for the public's health in five years than the wholesome-food movement is likely to accomplish in the next 50."

Oh.  My.  Gosh.

He starts this in order to promote the industry of food-science engineering companies.  He speaks of a couple companies who add in strange unpronounceables and gums in a favorable manner, suggesting that these are the saviors of our obese world.  

"...there is a battery of tricks for fooling and appeasing taste buds, which are prone to notice the lack of fat or sugar, or the presence of any of the various bitter, metallic, or otherwise unpleasant flavors that vegetables, fiber, complex carbs...can impart to a food..."  

Pause again.  First - if you've adulterated a food, HECK YEAH you're going to notice if it is lacking fat and sugar if it was there in the first place.  Do you love how he says that the presence of vegetables, fibers and complex carbs carry an unpleasant taste?  What does this say about his palate?  If he speaks for the masses, what does it say about theirs?  Shall we dump what is right to appease the out-of-whack?  Please, dear ones, let's look at this from a sane perspective!

His solution: "people can make small, painless, but helpful changes in their diets by switching from Whoppers to turkey burgers, from Egg McMuffins to Egg White Delights, or from blueberry crisp to fruit-and-yogurt parfaits."  (Yeah right.  That's why Diet Coke makes people so freaking skinny.)

How about - people can begin to regain their entire overall health, not just a proper or desirable weight or BMI, by eating what they actually ought to eat - grass-fed meats, free-range poultry, organic fruits and veg, and using only whole grains in their breads that they will be making at home while they skip the things that have proven to make them fat, sick, unhealthy, depressed, lethargic, infertile, undernourished and completely lacking in satiation. 

You can't get around it in a way of trickery or through the back door.  Dr. Price writes, "Our modern process of robbing the natural foods for convenience or gain completely thwarts Nature's inviolable program...Our appetites have been distorted so that hunger appeals only for energy with no conscious need for body-building and repairing chemicals." (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, chapter 21, p. 378)

This is exactly where we stand in our modern society.  Mr. Freedman writes to excuse himself from eating properly - such an inconvenience to his sweet-tooth and his hurried life.  He writes to justify those who wish they could feel better about eating McDonald's and who adhere to the Standard American Diet (SAD).  Those on the fence pondering real nutrition and health raise one cocked eyebrow and say, "Well I guess I've been right all this time.  I'm not so bad."  Instead of pushing people to be their best, he fills their bellies with lies, false premises and propaganda.

His diet matches his rhetoric and they bring the same results.

Be wise, my friends.

Peace, love and thinking may be hard - but it's worth it,
Ms. Daisy

Driving, Media, and the Soaring Heights of Being Pathetic

G'day me lovies!  How are yas?  I am a little...well...disturbed.  Let me tell you whyfor.

So, when I am in the car at 5:00 a.m. driving to go for a swim, I need to get all pumped up, right?  You can't just sit there too quietly or the lull will put you back to sleep.  In order for me to get my blood pumping and really get blisteringly fired up, do you know what I do?  Why, I listen to National Propaganda Radio, of course!  (That's NPR for the rest of you.)

Some of you are wondering how this possibly could get me fired up to go swimming and I say to you, HOW COULD IT NOT?!

Sometimes there are interesting things on there, personal interviews and what not.  I like how I can tune in to a station near my college town and hear all about the fun things going on at the library (not that I can attend since it is so far away, but I still get the station in and this makes me feel cozy in the land of happy memories) and at other good-times places.  

But then.  Oh, then.  Then there are times when they are speaking on such fantastic topics that I must yell at the radio and flail my arms around wildly screaming, "What are you THINKING?!  Are you even kidding me right now!?"  I can pretty much swim as fast as dolphins after an episode like that.

One of the more recent episodes that got my blood all pumped up before the workout had to do with the pathetic youth of society today.  Obviously, not all youth are complete dingbats.  I'd say a lot of them will turn out just fine.  But those kinds of people aren't going to get interviewed on National Propaganda Radio, let's get real.

The interviewer was asking 16-18 year olds if they had their driver's licenses.  All but one of them did NOT have a license and didn't care that they didn't.  This was a little pathetic, but their reasons for not having one was exponentially more pathetic and was the reason I felt compelled to begin yelling at the radio.  

Ready for this?  They said that they didn't need to go and hang out with friends because they had social media (facebook, Skype, etc.) instead.  They also said they didn't want to do something with people unless it was media-worthy (a.k.a. to take pictures of themselves pretending  to be hilarious and casual and hysterical and put it on facebook on their timeline).

ARE YOU SERIOUS?  ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?

They don't want to hang out with real live humans and have face-to-face contact with them, they want to hook up into their matrix instead and rock out.  This is so head-slappingly disturbing.

Basically, what has been created is a culture of completely self-absorbed people who truly believe that most of their life is on a stage.  Any other non-stageworthy aspect of their life is pretty much a pile of dung and not worth the effort.  Do you know what this says?  This takes people from the belief that MOST of life is work, MOST of life is everyday, day-to-day humdrum, and turns it into MOST of life ought to be on a stage or skip it.  This is so mental!  

Most of life IS work.  All of those things they don't show on TV or movies is the bulk of life.  You've to got to brush your teeth, take care of others, go to the grocery store, call to sort out things.  What a horrid shock it would be to live thinking the other way around!  Vacation is not a way of life.  It is a piece of life.  A teensy shrivel of it.  If you live seeking thrills, vacation, parties and the like, how seriously disappointed you must be.

This is how the next generation is being built.  Their poor little faces screwed into screens, thinking they should just forget about hanging out with their friends because they'll probably just sit around and talk (and probably not even break out the flourescent wigs and go-go boots, so what is there even to take a picture of for instagram anyway?).

The interview concluded with a dude who admitted that he mostly gets around because his girlfriend drives him around.  He commented, "Twenty years ago that would seem pretty pathetic, but that's just the way it is."

Indeed.  Yes, that is pathetic, little man.  Please, you need to learn how to drive so that you can go to your next party when  you live in a van down by the river.  It's gonna be real, yo.

Peace, love and look up, my friends,

Ms. Daisy

p.s. Just heard something else while on the way home - Disney is making a new toy/video game called "Infinity" (live forever in your avatar, LIVE!) targeted at little kids.  They plug a character toy into the video console and it pops up on the screen.  The toys interact with each other and with the child.  They concluded, "It will probably forever change how kids play."  Great.  Obliterate imagination and free thought at the root.  It is much easier to control a  society living in a quasi-reality, so let's start 'em young, baby!