I must start off by saying that Jenn and I just came off of a good mini-vacation. I took her to see Jeff Dunham at the Verizon Arena in Little Rock on Sunday, and we stayed overnight and returned this morning. We stayed at a Best Western nearby which had been newly built, so that eliminated a lot of the usual problems one runs into when staying at a hotel. The only drawback was that somehow we got a room on the same floor as some kind of pee wee baseball team. We kept hearing preteen kids running up and down the hall and yelling occasionally. Jenn complained when this kept happening after 10:30 at night, and this seemed to help somewhat. The show itself was pretty good, but it really amazed me how such a simple comedic ventriloquist performance (with the addition of his friend the "Guitar Guy") commanded somewhere around seventy dollars a ticket (for floor seats). Given, one doesn't see that many ventriloquists these days and Mr. Dunham has worked for many years to make a name for himself, but wow... It's just the human touch, isn't it? The guy brought out jokes based on his life experiences, and he was genuine in doing that. Gives me hope for humanity in a way because people resonate to such a performance with such force. It's hard to explain, I guess...
But now for the sad animal tale. Jenn and I returned the rental car in the middle of the day today. Since I returned it to the Fort Smith airport terminal, we took lunch and even did a little shopping on that side of town. We usually go back to Van Buren the Barling way through the bottom lands when we're on that side of town, and we cross the bridge over Lock and Dam 13 to get over the river. It was on this bridge where Jenn spotted a cat that was not much more than a kitten - a little black one with some spots of white. She begged me to get out on the bridge as she turned around and try to get the cat out of this very life-threatening situation. I obliged, and we ended up kind of stopping traffic there for a few minutes while I tried to approach this terrified feline. When I first approached, it looked up at me with eyes full of terror and ran out of the middle of the road, jumping up on the concrete guardrail. "Don't jump, kitty," I said, but it was hard to use slow and del
iberate mannerisms when you are in the middle of a bridge and traffic is flying by. I walked as carefully as I could toward the kitty. Panting from the heat, it looked back at me again with terrified eyes. Then, it looked down at the water flowing fast underneath us hundreds of feet below. As I walked to its side of the bridge, it hurled itself off and into the river. I watched with disbelief as it took what seemed like forever to hit the water. It floated away, and amazingly I think it survived the jump as it seemed to keep its head above water. I'm always going to carry that image in my head of the cat plummeting toward the water belly-down with all four legs extended. I feel a little guilty for hesitating at that critical moment when I was within arm's length of grabbing him, but I feared that 1) he might have had rabies or something similar and 2) that he would probably have clawed me to pieces if I did put my hands on him. Jenn consoled me by saying that at least we did try to do something for the little critter and that he was certain to die if he stayed on that bridge. Maybe he was able to swim to safety... There's a part of me that clings to that possibility. Jenn reminded me that the Lock and Dam 13 area is where a lot of people drop their unwanted pets off at. That's just depressing...
Against all better judgment, I tend to worry about things. What if I totally flop professionally after graduating from John Brown? What if I'm not making the most of my time? What if my continually poor diet leads to health problems? I could choose any of a host of things to run over with in my mind, and I often do. Over the year, however, I have found ways to divert this constant morass of nagging and unproductive thoughts. I basically ask myself if there's really anything I can do about the issue right now. If there is, I will take action - even in some small way. If there's not, I rationalize and tell myself I'll pick another time to deal with it during a more opportune moment. Of course, this doesn't work every time, but I've found that this simple method is effective. Speaking from a cognitive behavioral perspective, a lot of my worry comes from my core belief that I'm lacking in different ways. Even though I was raised in a good loving home I still brought with me from childhood some feelings of inadequacy for whatever reason. Thinking back, I could have done and been so much more than I am today: the backwards-looking "what if" regarding things I might have done differently. One part of me dwells on such regret, while the other focuses on present-day opportunity (and the latter part is the one that I try to feed the most).
Being a former English major, I'm always interested to divulge the etymology of certain words. I looked for this with the word "worry" and found the following at Answers.com:
Worrying may shorten one's life, but not as quickly as it once did. The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant "to strangle." Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense "to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate" or "to kill or injure by biting and shaking." This is the way wolves or dogs might attack sheep, for example. In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense "to harass, as by rough treatment or attack," or "to assault verbally," and in the 17th century the word took on the sense "to bother, distress, or persecute." It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses "to cause to feel anxious or distressed" and "to feel troubled or uneasy," first recorded in the 19th century.
I like that image of being strangled, as that says it all.
As I often preface this to my friends, I know the thought of one's eventual and inevitable death is a morbid thought (and obviously this fact of life is a great source of worry and fear for a lot of people), but actually it helps me with being able to rationalize the absurdity of some of my worries. Who will be around in 100 years to acknowledge any of my shortcomings? What will it matter to me then pending the time I've ceased to draw breath and after my body has been simplified by cremation into dust? One could use this as a license to totally live for today and totally not give a shit about anything, of course, but that's out of balance as well. Going in that direction, you're bound to have some regret regarding what could have been or find yourself homeless at 40, having burnt all your bridges with the people you know after so many years of self-indulgent celebration. Life's meaning is something that you create for yourself as you go within the parenthesis of birth on one side and death on the other. You cannot control the happenstance of your birth or the inevitability of your demise, but you can work to make the most of your life in between.
For years, absinthe for me was one of those forbidden pleasures as it was not legal to sell it from within the United States. I always got mine through Alandia (http://www.alandia.de/) who assured me that even if my purchase were intercepted at the border, my money would be refunded. I don't have to worry about that now (or the outrageous shipping fees that applied for overseas transportation). They carry the stuff at Shamrock! Incredible! What you see to the right is a brand I formerly had to order from overseas but which is now available locally. It originates from Austria and is known as a "bohemian" absinthe. The only real difference is that it contains less anise (the herb that gives absinthe that really powerful and not-so-desirable (in my opinion) licorice taste. Because of this, it makes it easier for you to mix it in cocktails.
Absinthe has a rich history and was, of course, outlawed here in the States and most places abroad around 1915. Wikipedia has a really good entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe
The following particular paragraph, quoted from Wiki, says it all. Though absinthe has long been knows as some sort of devilish psychoactive poison, those claims are just not warranted:
"However, the debate over whether absinthe produces effects on the human mind additional to those of alcohol has not been conclusively resolved. The effects of absinthe have been described by some as mind opening. The most commonly reported experience is a "clear-headed" feeling of inebriation—a form of "lucid drunkenness". Chemist, historian and absinthe distiller Ted Breaux has claimed that the alleged secondary effects of absinthe may be caused by the fact that some of the herbal compounds in the drink act as stimulants, while others act as sedatives, creating an overall lucid effect of awakening. Long term effects of low absinthe consumption in humans remain unknown, although the herbs in absinthe have both painkilling and antiparasitic properties."
The only danger that I might warn would-be experimenters of is that it's not as easy to tell how many drinks you feel you've had. The absinthe does indeed "wake up" the brain, and the experience is quite beyond normal alcohol intoxication. You travel above the normal swaggering "blarrgg" of an alcohol buzz to a place where you find a flight of ideas and an overly talkative 
impulse.
Something I did over the weekend was to experiment with a basic absinthe martini recipe I found on Webtender. Here's what I ended up with:
1.5 oz. Stolichnaya vodka
1.5 oz. Mata Hari absinthe
1.5 oz. Gallo dry vermouth
add a little red grenadine to taste (but you don't have to)
Shake all that stuff up in one of those mixing things along with some ice and pour yourself a cocktail. Drink heartily, but be warned...
"After the first glass (of absinthe), you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world." - Oscar Wilde
On Friday, I had a conversation with an associate (who will remain nameless for certain reasons) about America and I asked him generally what he thought about our country. He is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent people that I know, and when posed with this question he voiced his opinion that he thought Denmark and Norway had better health care systems than the US and that in general those European nations were just better countries. By this declaration, he jumped on the traditional liberal bandwagon which is of the opinion that America is inferior and full of itself. Granted, America IS full of itself, but that's part of why I love my country. Why does it seem to be generally accepted that highly intelligent people here in the states eschew and seem to be embarrassed by their country? I must make clear that I'm certainly not one to endorse blind acceptance to any government, as that's where so many peoples have gotten into trouble in the past. One must remember that America was set up so that its citizens could criticize and be heard AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
I think that America is the greatest country in the world, warts and all. We have our problems, sure, but we're always working on them. We are a hodge-podge of gene pools which traditionally has built off of the strengths of variation and differences in opinion and ways of life. There's a reason why the brilliant fathers of our country put the First Amendment first!
I must start off by saying that Jenn and I just came off of a good mini-vacation. I took her to see Jeff Dunham at the Verizon Arena in Little Rock on Sunday, and we stayed overnight and returned this morning. We stayed at a Best Western nearby which had been newly built, so that eliminated a lot of the usual problems one runs into when staying at a hotel. The only drawback was that somehow we got a room on the same floor as some kind of pee wee baseball team. We kept hearing preteen kids running up and down the hall and yelling occasionally. Jenn complained when this kept happening after 10:30 at night, and this seemed to help somewhat. The show itself was pretty good, but it really amazed me how such a simple comedic ventriloquist performance (with the addition of his friend the "Guitar Guy") commanded somewhere around seventy dollars a ticket (for floor seats). Given, one doesn't see that many ventriloquists these days and Mr. Dunham has worked for many years to make a name for himself, but wow... It's just the human touch, isn't it? The guy brought out jokes based on his life experiences, and he was genuine in doing that. Gives me hope for humanity in a way because people resonate to such a performance with such force. It's hard to explain, I guess...
iberate mannerisms when you are in the middle of a bridge and traffic is flying by. I walked as carefully as I could toward the kitty. Panting from the heat, it looked back at me again with terrified eyes. Then, it looked down at the water flowing fast underneath us hundreds of feet below. As I walked to its side of the bridge, it hurled itself off and into the river. I watched with disbelief as it took what seemed like forever to hit the water. It floated away, and amazingly I think it survived the jump as it seemed to keep its head above water. I'm always going to carry that image in my head of the cat plummeting toward the water belly-down with all four legs extended. I feel a little guilty for hesitating at that critical moment when I was within arm's length of grabbing him, but I feared that 1) he might have had rabies or something similar and 2) that he would probably have clawed me to pieces if I did put my hands on him. Jenn consoled me by saying that at least we did try to do something for the little critter and that he was certain to die if he stayed on that bridge. Maybe he was able to swim to safety... There's a part of me that clings to that possibility. Jenn reminded me that the Lock and Dam 13 area is where a lot of people drop their unwanted pets off at. That's just depressing...
