Where is the love?

Sometimes I wonder how humanity survived the eighties and the nineties. Not because of nuclear war or novel diseases or alien invasion or even Madonna. Rather, because men reached an apogee of confusion with women. 

A small sampling of pop songs of the era:

• Michael Penn: "No Myth" 
• Stone Temple Pilots: "Sour Girl"
• Marshall Crenshaw: "Mary Jean"
• Mark Oliver Everett (A Man Called E): "Looking Out the Window with a Blue Hat On"
• Deep Blue Something: "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

All these songs show a man in confusion about a woman, unable to understand what she wants, except she doesn't seem to want him. I'm sure you can add many more to this list, some by the same artists. 

The more I thought about it, the more it appeared to be a running theme. These are not just breakup songs; those have been around forever. They aren't even angry songs; there are plenty of those. These are songs where the male is in love, but baffled about the disaster befalling him.

Traditionally popular love songs fell into the categories of Desire, Devotion, or Desolation: I want you, I love you, I lost you. The songs I'm thinking of are a subset of the last. Torch songs can be found anywhere, but usually the torch bearer knows what's happened: she fell for someone new, she had enough of my garbage, she decided to trade up, whatever. But beginning in the eighties, and especially in the coffee-shop nineties, men were getting utterly gobsmacked by these women. She's leaving and I have no idea why this is happening.

I think there are some reasons these kinds of cris de coeur arose when they did. For one thing, after women's lib (as it was called in the seventies), men started to wonder what women actually wanted from them. Kind and sensitive? Witty and adventurous? Gentle and loving? Or was the old strong and silent still what they liked the most? Confused men trying to be what their women wanted made for cases where no one could behave like themselves, so the guys couldn't grasp why nothing ever clicked and everything just fell apart one day. 

Another possibility is that couples moved much faster into intimacy than they had in the past, giving the illusion of solidity without the actuality of it. Not surprising that one person in the relationship might be much more committed than the other, thinking that, having made it to home plate, the couple had achieved something solid. 

Traditionally the subsequent broken heart in such situations would be the basis of female torch songs, but by the eighties we heard it from the boys, who had a sense they had screwed up but more of a fear that they were screwed up.  

Anyway, that's my theory of this subset of the breakup song -- the What Did She Want? song -- that arose in the eighties. I know there are more than I listed above, and maybe examples that preceded the era mentioned. I'd be happy to hear your additions to or even rebuttals to this theory. It won't break my heart.

Dunderland.

You all know I enjoy a good meme, and I'm willing to tolerate some memes that are affirmations. (Although not many.) But I will not tolerate even good-intentioned stuff that advances ignorance.   

When I see something with such active ignorance as this above exhibit, it makes me angry. 

Two facts:

1) Lewis Carroll's work fell into public domain more than a century ago; 

2) Nothing, and I mean nothing, is less trustworthy online than quotations. 

Quotations are the fact-checkers' bugaboo, as I have written before, and mainly because no one seems to care at all if they are accurate, as long as they advance an idea. I promise that the thing they mostly advance is ignorance. 

Take the above example. I love Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but this quote has nothing to do with it. 

Now, it may be that in one of the many adaptations, pastiches, homages, parodies, sequels, and other rip-offs of Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a character actually gives a damn about Alice and would say something banal like the above. But in the actual book, where Wonderland is a bizarre and disturbing place, all the characters besides Alice are either:

1) Virtually Useless, or 

2) Total Jerks. 

Here's my breakdown: 

VIRTUALLY USELESS

White Rabbit, Mouse, King of Hearts, Bill, Dormouse, Frog-Footman, Duchess, Mock Turtle, Gryphon, Knave of Hearts, Cheshire Cat (arguably also a Total Jerk)

TOTAL JERKS

Caterpillar, Queen of Hearts, Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dodo, the Pigeon, the Cook

Some of the characters, even the Jerks, are helpful to Alice, but all of them are by design unpredictable and thus unlovable. 

Okay, but maybe it was from somewhere else in the Carroll oeuvre? Maybe a letter he wrote to Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the Alice books?

I followed a thread on Reddit that claims the quote can be found in an Emilie Autumn book, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, the title of which sounds as far away from anything life-affirming as imaginable, but who knows. I haven't read it, nor can I find a preview of it, so I can't confirm the quote. The book is on Amazon, but Amazon doesn't do previews of books anymore. And you know what? I don't care where it's from -- except that it is not from Lewis Carroll and sounds like nothing he ever would write. He would have thought Wonderland too dangerous to be a fun place to visit, let alone to identify with happiness. He knew no one there gave a damn about Alice's feelings. He ought to know -- he invented it. 

It's too much to ask people to look into these things before reposting, but man, the complete uninterest in accuracy these days just makes me sad. 

Let's hear from the spleen.

There's a woman I have known for a number of years, and the odd thing about her is that while she has changed many things about herself, she has herself remained unchanged. I'm not sure that's a good thing. 

In a way it shows consistency, but it may be of the hobgoblin-of-little-minds variety. I am not without any respect for her, so I'll say it's somewhere in between consistency and a failure to learn.

Everything about her seems to have changed in many ways, including attitudes, religions, politics, dietary preferences, work ambitions, and on and on, but they're all keyed into the fact that she is ruled by the heart. Intellectually it looks like she's all over the map -- and not a well-drawn map either -- but emotionally I think she's straight as an arrow, following a rule of kindness and love. It seems to me that without the intellectual virtues of prudence and justice, this kind of compass can lead to horrible whimsical decisions, and also hatred for those who get in its path, ending in destruction and misery. 

Then again, my wife thinks I am a logical person, and I've heaped my buffet plate with my share of destruction and misery too. So who knows what's best?

And yet whenever someone uses that aggressively stupid expression "The heart wants what it wants," I chime in with "Could you at least please give the head a vote?"

They might be better off if they polled all the organs, in fact, rather than just cave in to whatever that ignorant thumping dumdum in the chest says all the time. I'm sure the other organs might have interesting counsel. Like:

STOMACH -- "I don't care. When do we eat? Not now? In a little while? How about now? Not yet?"

GENITALIA -- "Who? That person? That GORGEOUS SEXY THANG? YES! LET'S GO! LET'S -- What? We're just here to compare home equity loans? DANG wake us when its over."

LUNGS -- "This nonsense leaves me breathless, although everything does in time. On that note, don't listen to the genitals. They just want to get into everyone's pancreas."

Pancreas: "Hardy har har, lungs."

LIVER -- "I'm just sick of this behavior. I always have to clean up your stupid mistakes, whether it's the Beer Pong World Championships or the Nuclear Wings Cookout or the gas-station nigiri. How about we just say no to everything for a couple of weeks and let me catch up?"

KIDNEYS -- "We are down with Liver on this, as we are with many things, and for the same reason -- we always have to deal with the fallout. Sorry to rain on your parade. Don't even ask Bladder; he never says anything unless he's all full of himself.”

LARGE INTESTINE -- "I think I speak for my partner Smalls when I say we are just flushed with relief. It bowels us over. Let's move on with this decision right away."

SPLEEN -- "What do I think? I think I'm furious, that's what! And if I don't start doing some venting, there's gonna be trouble around here!"

ISLETS OF LANGERHANS -- "Well, gee, thanks for asking! After all, I'm not really an organ, just a group of pancreatic cells, but since you -- Hey! Where're you going?"

Today's craziest thing ever.

Today's lunacy comes from the World of Science, another institution hopelessly corrupted by greed, ambition, and political correctness. I encountered these examples on a research project about headaches.

Let us start with the Global Healthy Living Foundation (bold in quoted material added):

Recently, it has been suggested that the word race should not be listed among risk factors for disease. Instead, it is suggested to state the effects of racism as the reason why a disease is more common, more severe, or less well treated in people from underserved populations.

All right, so there we have it. There is no reason that one group should suffer from any disease more than another; the only difference is the effects of racism. Note that we don't know who has suggested that; it's just out there, like the breeze, like radio waves. 

Taken at face value, what does this mean? Well, for one example, how about all those studies that noticed the preponderance of breast cancer in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, studies that pointed the way to the discovery of a mutation on the BRCA genes 1 and 2 that made many of these women more likely to suffer from this form of cancer. Did that teach us anything? No, the only reason that these women were more likely to have cancer was because of the effects of racism. 

See how easy it is to say something that sounds good and throw away a century of genuine scientific research?

The unequitable scientist,
plotting how to exclude others

But Jewish people are of the white race, not the Jewish race, I hear a voice in the balcony say. Well, that depends who's making the assessment, doesn't it? College administrators say Jews are white, I guess, and Hitler said they weren't, and in both cases it was anti-Semitic. 

Let's look at a study in Neurology, the esteemed journal of the American Academy of Neurology. What do we learn here?

Whereas races are not inherent biological categories, race is a social construct that as a vehicle for systemic racism has profound health effects. Throughout the literature, it is apparent that race plays a role in the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of headache disorders. Although recent population studies have found the prevalence of severe headache and migraine is roughly equal among White (15.5%), African American (15.0%), and Hispanic (14.9%) groups in the United States,6 differences exist in diagnosis, treatments, and outcomes.

So now we learn that there really is no such thing as race at all; it's just a social construct invented to keep people down. And yet then we have data for people of difference races, to prove that some are treated differently than others. It's easy to get the feeling that the word race is magic, that it can be dismissed when convenient and raised again when useful. When bad people see race, it's not real; when good people see race, it's crucial. Even in the same paragraph. They want to have their pain and eat from it, too.

Now let's see what the National Migraine and Headache Awareness Month people have to tell us about this topic. (That month is celebrated in June, by the way; mark your calendars.)

About one in six African Americans in the United States are diagnosed with migraine disease and one in five is diagnosed with tension-type headache. Studies on race-related gaps and possible health care inequalities in people with headache disorders are virtually non-existent. Understanding potential race-related disparities in headache patients may inform the development of culturally contextualized healthcare policies and interventions that are more likely to reduce or eradicate race-related headaches altogether (Bernadette Davantes Heckman and Ashley Joi Britton 2015).

Prior research suggests that if a patient is black, his pain is likely to be underestimated and under-treated compared to a white patient.

So now it looks like race is back on the menu, because people have race-related headaches and are treated differently by hospitals and doctors because of their race. In fact, an outfit called CtrlM Health would like us to know that

A growing body of research shows that migraine in Black people is more frequent, severe, and likely to be chronic and associated with more depression compared to white People.

Yet, among Black people with headache and migraine, inaccurate diagnoses are more common. 

BUT WAIT! Race is just a social construct, so how can you possibly say that black people have migraines more often than white people? You can only say that racism causes a difference in their care. 

Look, I personally think WAY too much is made about race. It's part of our individual human makeup and experiences, but as a Catholic, I think we're all made in God's image and we're all made by Him with love, and we should be happy about it, not fight about it. 

Medically, though, racial background and social background can provide a lot of clues about the origins of disease. Arguing about whether race is a real thing or not is almost beside the point; we would like to know if disease is caused by genes, caused by behavior, or caused by genes and triggered by environment, or the like. Thus, there are statistical uses in studying groups by similarities in DNA. And if you don't want to call it race, call it something less explosive. We're just stirring up trouble where it isn't necessary.

As for racism, sure, that's a problem in the human condition and always will be. The more tribal we act, the worse it is, and political correctness is nothing if not tribal, dividing us by income, race, sex, sexual preference, religion, experience, nation, history, you name it. 

However, there is one notable reason that I can guarantee has a lot to do with why white people get better healthcare in America despite the ferocious drive for "equity," a reason that cannot be conquered by all the goodwill in the world. Allow me to quote the uber-leftist Kaiser Family Foundation:

As of 2020, Medicaid covers about three in ten Black, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) nonelderly adults and more than two in ten of Hispanic nonelderly adults, compared to 17% of their White counterparts. 

Government healthcare sucks. And that's true whether you're red, white, blue, black, polka-dotted, or striped. The more of it you have to rely on, the worse your overall experience with healthcare is going to be. By the numbers, most Medicaid patients are white, but not by the percentage of the groups, and that's what matters to the equity hustlers.

On a related topic, about twenty years ago or so people were going bananas because researchers noted that men were usually the subject of cardiac health studies, and this made women's experience (especially symptoms of coronary distress) invisible, leading to misdiagnosis and death. They pointed out that heart disease is the #1 killer of American women, same as American men, but claimed that women who relied on the usual advice about heart attack symptoms were dying more often. So in 2004 the American Heart Association launched the Go Red for Women movement. 

Pardon my cynicism, but I also think the AHA and others were tired of the breast cancer people getting all the attention -- that is to say, money. "Hey! We're still #1! Show us some love! And money!" 

The point is, people still want to argue that women face health disparities, but when you put them on the spot they won't even tell you what a woman is. Not even Supreme Court nominees. They know the mob is waiting to pounce, and they're -- what's the word? -- chickenshit. And liars. Don't forget liars. 

Anyway, I literally have a headache now after writing all this. So, my research is complete.

Dare we say, another moment with Igor.

 This has been another moment with Igor.

All my heart.

I know it's Super Bowl Sunday, boys, but don't let yourself take your eye off the ball. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and you have to be ready for that tomorrow morning. Yes, the new 17-game football season has thrown everything off. Don't lose your grip, lads! You can do this! 

The thing to do is run out and get something. It doesn't have to be big. The supermarket should have flowers and chocolate-dipped strawberries. Just pretend you have to go out to get some more chips for the watch party tonight. That way it doesn't look like you haven't given Valentine's Day -- and by extension, your significant other -- a single thought. 

While you're at it, do not forget to get a card. Doesn't much matter which, as long as it's not directed to your kid or your mom or something. Just grab something with a heart on it and go. 

Do that before you swing to the grocery area for Velveeta and Ro*Tel. 

Look in the seasonal aisle as well for chocolate. The chocolate on the strawberries doesn't count. You want something with chocolate. Be warned that if your supermarket is like the one closest to my house, it has already moved on from Valentine's Day to Easter, leaving nothing for tomorrow but a few sad candy hearts and some kiddie klassroom kard packets. You might be tempted to grab some Reese's eggs or the like, but DON'T FALL INTO THAT TRAP. Anything Eastery is a dead giveaway that you went shopping at the last minute. Better to get her favorite candy bar at the register than something that says Easter. If you don't know what her favorite candy bar is, get something Godiva. Nowadays it's easier to find Godiva than Heath Bars.

The seasonal aisle may have some little gift bags left. Get one to put your stuff in. Tissue paper, too. Yeah, it's a whole big production number. Suck it up. And remember, Kleenex is not a substitute for tissue paper, especially not the kind with the lotion in it.

Okay, you should be safe now. Sneak it in the house, get it all together, and hide it someplace that you won't forget for tomorrow morning. I know it's all a bother, but remember, anyone who doesn't believe that little things mean a lot has never had an ingrown toenail. 

Migraine, and yours.

For decades I've had these weird, occasional migraine symptoms, without the actual migraine.

I get the shimmering lights that they call the aura. It starts as little spot, then slowly spreads into a backward C, and keeps expanding until it goes beyond the range of vision. I can't drive, can't read; it blocks the center of my vision, then a large part of the field; just before it goes away, when it's only at the edges, it's still very distracting. I used to get a headache at the end of this little light show, but no longer.

The aura is the first sign of an oncoming migraine headache for many sufferers. I'm very grateful that I don't get the actual migraine. I've heard stories of people beating their heads on the wall because that pain was less bad than their migraine, so it felt good.

It happens maybe twice a year. Only once was it so bad that I left work. It happened yesterday when I was up early to finish a project I couldn't complete over the weekend. I started work at five, before the dogs (Thing 1 and Thing 2) were awake, and suddenly had this little twinkling dot in the center of my vision. As it grew and obscured my sight, I knew I'd have no choice but to lie down until it passed. That usually takes about half an hour. Of course I fell asleep, and woke at six.

So what causes this problem? Defective brain? Am I Abby Normal?

Years ago I talked to an eye doctor about this, and he was a bit confused. He said it sounded like the migraine aura (which is well-known, but only about 20% of migraine victims have that symptom). He thought it could be a vascular problem, which I believe at the time (the early 2000s) was thought to be migraine-connected.

The National Headache Foundation now says that "we know that aura is due to transient changes in the activity of specific nerve cells." Thanks! I'll make sure to keep those cells safe from transient changes. Seriously, though, I wonder if what I have does count as a migraine; the NHF also notes that there is no specific test that can confirm a diagnosis. "Your blood contains Factor Z, my man -- migraine!"

The Merck Manual, a very good resource, tells us that "Migraines occur in people whose nervous system is more sensitive than that of other people." Well, that sounds like me. "In these people, nerve cells in the brain are easily stimulated, producing electrical activity." Again, me. Some things are known to trigger the headaches, like lack of sleep and stress. Who dat? Me! But why some people get them and others don't is still a pretty dim area.

It's weird to have any kind of condition that science! doesn't understand. Same thing happened with my idiopathic hearing loss last year. You guys figured out the human genome, but you can't figure out this? 

It doesn't always help when they do understand, though -- they know all about the hundreds of cold viruses, but haven't yet managed to come up with a vaccine to prevent them all. Although, to be fair, they're trying.

Oh, well. I'm still very grateful that these attacks are rare, and that I don't get the crippling migraine headaches. Sinus headaches are another story. And tension headaches. Those I get. Doesn't everybody? Or is it just us people with more sensitive nervous systems?

Valentine's Day... in March!

Okay, not really, but here's some candy for you.

Actually, I bought these after Valentine's in a post-Valentine's Day sale (25 cents for the box) after I got my driving privileges back following my concussion. I didn't buy them because I was so hungry for sugar. No, it was because this was the first time in 118 years that Necco was not doing the Conversation Hearts.

Necco, the storied candy manufacturer that was founded in 1901, gave up the ghost last July when it closed its doors and sold off its operations. The company, known originally the New England Confectionery Company, had been making heart-shaped candies with little sayings on them from 1901 to 2018. This was the only year in living memory that we've been heartless.

Or we would have been, but cheap candy magnate Brach's picked up the slack with these Tiny Conversation Hearts. A quick search of the U.S. Trademark Office database shows no trademark, live or dead, for "Conversation Hearts," and this late in the game it would be tough to show Brach's was stealing a unique idea of value. Anyway, lovebirds who wanted to share nearly flavorless romantic candy had someplace to go, so it was kind of a public service. Maybe Brach's has been making them for years in competition with Necco. I have no idea. I've been off the dating circuit for a while.

Brach's calls them Tiny Conversation Hearts, but are they really? Well, here they are next to a pencil.

Kinda small. Smaller than Necco's? I don't know.

We should be able to do a coronary candy competition next year, though. Spangler, the company that makes approximately a kabillion candy canes every Christmas (seriously, 2.7 million a day!), bought the rights to most of Necco's headliner candies, including Necco Wafers, Canada Mints, and Sweetheart Conversation Hearts. They've as much as promised a return of these old-time sweets in 2020. So there's something.

We can buy a box of each and have a heart-to-heart. If we remember to do it. Meh. The candies are kind of dull. Brach's taste kind of like miscellaneous fruit. It's hard at my age to get worked up about it.

I'm blasé about the whole thing. Maybe I need a hug. Can I buy a box with just the "Hug Me" hearts in it?

Why does the heart get all the songs?

People who get heart transplants don't suddenly wind up with the emotions of the person who donated the heart, as far as we know. Neurologists will be happy to tell us at length that the emotions, while influence by other biological processes, all come out of the brain. But we still think of emotions as being seated in the heart.

It is reasonable---when you get an emotional response, it's your heart that responds. When you say that your heart dropped, your heart skipped a beat, your heart ached, your heart melted, even that your heart broke, you're describing legitimate physical feelings that occur in the vicinity of the heart. When you say your brain froze up during a test, you don't actually feel like ice is forming on your head. At least I've never felt that.

No, the heart grabs all the credit for the emotions, and the heart gets almost all the songs. Eyes get some songs; heads a few; some dirty songs give us some more base organs. But that's about it.

What about all the other organs that we all have? Other organs we all enjoy, that we would all hate to part with? Just because the heart feels doesn't mean our other organs shouldn't get a song. Take the nose. Aren't we are all glad that we have noses?

Aside from these guys, I guess.

But then I looked over some well-known heart songs, and...

My Nose Will Go On

Noses Afire

This Nose of Mine

Hard-Nosed Hannah

Your Nose Is as Black as Night

Young Noses Run Free

Nose and Soul

Tell It to My Nose

Cold Cold Nose

Me and My Broken Nose

How Can You Mend a Broken Nose

Nose of Glass

Nose of Gold

Nose of Stone

Nose Wants What It Wants

Noselight

Don’t Go Breaking My Nose

Nosebreaker

Nosebreak Hotel

Un-Break My Nose

Hole in My Nose (All the Way to China)

Total Eclipse of the Nose

With a Child’s Nose

Nose-Shaped Box

Nose Like a Hand Grenade

Noseache Tonight

Hungry Nose

The Nose of the Matter

Two Noses

Two Noses Beat as One

Yeah, I guess we'll stay with the hearts.

Unless... Pancreas songs...?