Hooray for Captain Spalding, the African Explorer. Did someone call me shnoror? Hooray, hooray, hooray!
Shnoror, snorer. Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to. The bottom line is snoring sucks -- loudly. And it gets worse over time, especially if you're prone to (gasp) neck fat. What? Seriously, my doctor -- M.D. -- used the words "neck fat." As she's looking inside my mouth she's mumbling, "Aw yeah, there's a lot going on in there. That's some serious neck fat." Bitch, I will drop kick you right out that window, callin' my neck fa ... hey wait, I just caught glimpse of my neck in the mirrow. It really IS fat. No one will ever love me!
Enter Sandi, my other. Lover of fat-necked men, apparently. Hey, it's OK, cuz I loves me some big bottomed woman. Win/win. Anyhoo, Sandi, being not able to sleep because of my snoring for like EVER, issued the mandate: Either spend the rest of your life in the guest room, or go see your doctor. She, also being a dedicated non-licensed doctor/researcher/prognosis-a-tician and general woman about town, suggested I might have Apnea. The big A. As in, "Ah'll kill ya if ya don't stop that god damn shnororin'." True to form, "research Sandi" forwarded a link where symptoms of Anpea could be found, most of which described me to a 't'. Except, of course, the one about reduced sex drive (he said, grabbing his crotch and spitting in a most masculine fashion. Know what I'm sayin'?).
Yeah, so fast forward past Dr. FatNeck's insightful diagnosis to the sleep clinic. Two visits, 2 weeks apart, either easily qualifying as the least comfortable night you'll ever spend -- even if you were in the trenches in WWI with scurvy, sleeping in the icy mud puddles between a guy with cabbage farts and a pile of rotting corpses. That exploded. And had bad breath. And high voices.
Anyway, having just tried to recount the sleep clinic experiences and having also realized that the memories are just too painful to relive, I opted to erase and will now mercifully skip ahead yet again.
CPAP delivery day. Hooray! Even though the guy who was scheduled to deliver was like 3 hours late, hooray! Even though the $600 co-pay was due on delivery and nobody told me, hooray! Even though 3-hour-late guy, once done with his hour-long spiel about how to use your new CPAP (continuous positive air pressure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_airway_pressure) eased into his impression of John Belushi's "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave," regaling me with stories of his kids' shenanigans at Bible camp, etc., hooray! Hooray to it all, because I'm sleepin' tonight, bitches!
And so it was. Having finally shoo-ed Johnny CPAP delivery guy out the door and onto his next spiritual connection, I gazed. I caressed. I whispered sweet nothings. We are going to be friends, you and I. Lovers. I will breathe your HEPA-filtered-pure and constant air into the marrow of my soul and you, you will illuminate my dreams with flickering, frolicking adventures along life's golden shores. OH, CPAP, you slut! Do me here and now!
Screech. Back up a bit.
Yeah, about those symptoms. Give this a read: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/sleep-apnea-symptoms
That's a pretty suckful existence, no? Yes. So you'd expect this magic bullet of oxygenization to be an out-of-the-box instant life changer, no? Yes. And was it? Well, no and yes. Maybe it was my intense excitement at the thought of getting better that kept me from sleeping well that night. Maybe it was the break in period they'd warned me about, where you need to adjust to having air pumped into your nostrils all night long (it really is kinda fun. You should try it.). Whatever the reason, I didn't notice jack the next morning. By all accounts I should have been happy and peppy and bursting with love. Eh. I think I made pancakes, but not as a way to expend my newfound energy reserves, and certainly not with Dick Van Dyke-esque morning alertness. Really it was only because the anticipation of my newfound energy made me promise my kids pancakes the night before.
But as the day wore on I realized I wasn't as tired. I didn't feel like taking a nap. I wasn't pissed off. Maybe it actually did work. In hindsight I suppose my expectations were a bit unrealistic in that there was no audible fanfare, no bounding out the door to run the first of what would surely be many marathons. It was much more back-bay tidal than wave-crashing-on-the-shore tidal.
Over the months since I began using my CPAP I have noticed dramatic changes in my being. Sure, I'm still pissed off, but now it's for the right reasons -- many of which will no doubt follow as entries on this blog. But the biggest change of all? Ich bin ein CPAP-er. You can have my CPAP when you pry my dead, cold, sleep-deprived fingers from it. My other CPAP is a Mercedes. Whatever. I'm a believer. Nap time.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Duality and the women who love them.
One of the most drastic changes I've noticed in American sensibilities since 9/11 is the exponential widening of the gap between Conservative and Liberal ideologies. It has almost become cartoon-like in that people have flung themselves so hard into one of two of the following camps: Those who value society where we're only as good as the worst off among us and those who believe Darwin was a pussy and everyone should have to fight for what they want (ironically, most of the people who truly embody Darwinian behavior by opting to de-legitimize entire castes of fellow humans, turning life into the ultimate competition, are the ones who deny his theories most vocally). Commune or compete. And neither camp seems to be able to quite grasp how in the world the other can exist, let alone sleep at night. Of course these characterizations are cartoon-like in their simplicity and overstatement, but no one can deny they're real.
The scenario begs entire strings of the most profound questions ever asked, all of which inevitably spiral toward the mother of all profundities: What is the meaning of life? Besides the number 42, that is.
Me? I fit about as hard against the left-most wall of the Liberal partition of our great country as you would find. I believe life happened by chance. I believe that as such, our survival relies on our ability to go viral on the universe. I believe we are all in it together. I also believe we have evolved. I believe we are evolving right now, perched on the edge of a major motion, and are so obsessed with our infighting that we fail to appreciate the quantum advancement through which we are kareening right now. WTF? Glad you asked.
Ever heard of Fractal Geometry? Benoit Mandelbrot? Here's the wiki on him which links to a primmer on FG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot
At the heart of Fractal Geometry is the notion of self-similarity, which essentially refers to the similarity of a thing to itself across vast scales. One really great example I learned of recently was the study of the fractal relationship between a tree and its rainforest. They chopped down the tree (it was dying anyway), counted its limbs and measured each of their diameters. Then they counted the rest of the trees in the forest and measured the diameters of their trunks and found that the distribution of both number and size was nearly perfectly parallel -- like the tree was a microcosmic representation of the entire forest in which it thrived. That's pretty freakin' deep, kids. Like the first time you see the image in one of those magic eye posters deep. Like audible gong deep. Like "Ode to a Wheelbarrow" deep.
Anyway, I am the first one to admit that my knowledge of such things is laughably entry-level at best, but it got me to thinking. Maybe humanity grows in a macrocosmic representation of its own cellular behavior. At one time we are all made of a handful of cells. As cells divide, even though they appear identical, they take certain information with them and ultimately become fingernails or kidney tissue or femur or butt hair or whatever. Imagine if you could listen in to a cell about to divide. Imagine that the cells that would become the immune system would argue that defense against foreign invaders is our primary concern while the cerebellum argued that if it weren't for thought there would be no recognition, ergo all that would ever exist would eternally be relegated to the Quantum state. (By the way, I tend to side with the cerebellum here, because I believe higher thought will go a long way toward helping us avoid "red menaces.")
"Tastes great." "Less filling." "Fuck you." "Fuck me? No, fuck you!" "Look, let's just go our own way. You do your thing, we'll do ours." "Fine. We're seceeding from the cell wall and starting our own cell."
Ultimately the division benefits the whole, as each does its part in a truly common good beyond its perception. So where does that leave us? Will we divide permanently? Have we already? Into new species? Before you scoff at that last question, consider the definition of species that allows for us to be differentiated by our perceptions and specializations: 1 a: kind , sort b: a class of individuals having common attributes and designated by a common name ; specifically : a logical division of a genus or more comprehensive class. (from Merriam Webster online).
Aren't we kinda there already? Certainly we have pet names for our distinctions: "Elitist." "Hockey Mom." "Tree Hugger." "Joe Sixpack." Even "Liberal" and "Conservative" are becoming so pure in their definition as to exclude any hint of the other's traits.
So can we ultimately all form a symbiotic relationship to serve the common good? And how will we evolve in the future? What new species will sprout from our cellular divisions? Why am I asking you? You probably have no idea what I'm talking about, you immune system bastard. Cerebellum RULZ!!!
The scenario begs entire strings of the most profound questions ever asked, all of which inevitably spiral toward the mother of all profundities: What is the meaning of life? Besides the number 42, that is.
Me? I fit about as hard against the left-most wall of the Liberal partition of our great country as you would find. I believe life happened by chance. I believe that as such, our survival relies on our ability to go viral on the universe. I believe we are all in it together. I also believe we have evolved. I believe we are evolving right now, perched on the edge of a major motion, and are so obsessed with our infighting that we fail to appreciate the quantum advancement through which we are kareening right now. WTF? Glad you asked.
Ever heard of Fractal Geometry? Benoit Mandelbrot? Here's the wiki on him which links to a primmer on FG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot
At the heart of Fractal Geometry is the notion of self-similarity, which essentially refers to the similarity of a thing to itself across vast scales. One really great example I learned of recently was the study of the fractal relationship between a tree and its rainforest. They chopped down the tree (it was dying anyway), counted its limbs and measured each of their diameters. Then they counted the rest of the trees in the forest and measured the diameters of their trunks and found that the distribution of both number and size was nearly perfectly parallel -- like the tree was a microcosmic representation of the entire forest in which it thrived. That's pretty freakin' deep, kids. Like the first time you see the image in one of those magic eye posters deep. Like audible gong deep. Like "Ode to a Wheelbarrow" deep.
Anyway, I am the first one to admit that my knowledge of such things is laughably entry-level at best, but it got me to thinking. Maybe humanity grows in a macrocosmic representation of its own cellular behavior. At one time we are all made of a handful of cells. As cells divide, even though they appear identical, they take certain information with them and ultimately become fingernails or kidney tissue or femur or butt hair or whatever. Imagine if you could listen in to a cell about to divide. Imagine that the cells that would become the immune system would argue that defense against foreign invaders is our primary concern while the cerebellum argued that if it weren't for thought there would be no recognition, ergo all that would ever exist would eternally be relegated to the Quantum state. (By the way, I tend to side with the cerebellum here, because I believe higher thought will go a long way toward helping us avoid "red menaces.")
"Tastes great." "Less filling." "Fuck you." "Fuck me? No, fuck you!" "Look, let's just go our own way. You do your thing, we'll do ours." "Fine. We're seceeding from the cell wall and starting our own cell."
Ultimately the division benefits the whole, as each does its part in a truly common good beyond its perception. So where does that leave us? Will we divide permanently? Have we already? Into new species? Before you scoff at that last question, consider the definition of species that allows for us to be differentiated by our perceptions and specializations: 1 a: kind , sort b: a class of individuals having common attributes and designated by a common name ; specifically : a logical division of a genus or more comprehensive class. (from Merriam Webster online).
Aren't we kinda there already? Certainly we have pet names for our distinctions: "Elitist." "Hockey Mom." "Tree Hugger." "Joe Sixpack." Even "Liberal" and "Conservative" are becoming so pure in their definition as to exclude any hint of the other's traits.
So can we ultimately all form a symbiotic relationship to serve the common good? And how will we evolve in the future? What new species will sprout from our cellular divisions? Why am I asking you? You probably have no idea what I'm talking about, you immune system bastard. Cerebellum RULZ!!!
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