The Pigeon-toed Surfer Dude

Just a few thoughts...

On the Planet Green network, I came across a group of shows having to do with human sexuality. Now, being typically male for as long as I can remember (probably longer), that's a subject that intrigues me. The first show was very informative because it concerned the female orgasm. It was called Why is Sex Fun. But one thing bothered me. The female orgasm is not a requirement for procreation, that's a given, but the show seemed to think it was therefore unnecessary in human sexuality. Eventually, they revealed that there might be physical reasons for its existence. I maintain it exists for one important psychological reason. Pleasure induces us to repeat functions. And repeating reproductive activities is important, maybe critical, to species survival.

The other two shows involved sexual attraction, called Science of Sex Appeal. It turns out there is a Golden Mean involved. The human face, it was stated, had a certain ratio between the width of the lips and the space between the eyes (leftmost point of right eye to rightmost point of left eye), if I recall it properly. We have no real control over that, of course, it's genetic. This two part series explained everything pretty well. The interviews with couples of various ages and length of relationship was especially interesting.

If you get a chance to see these shows, do it.

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Since I am of a certain age and I live in a fabulously sunny state, skin cancer is a constant concern. Not so much for me because I don't worry about it too much. I figure it's too late. After all, I was a "surfer dude" for a year and a half  (during a time before we feared the sun) and pretty much roasted 95% of my body on a daily (almost) basis. I was very dark, a mahogany color, except for the area that my cut-offs or baggies covered and the soles of my feet. I once cooked my skin so bad that even my tan peeled revealing raw pink skin underneath the bridge of my nose and parts of my cheeks... which quickly tanned back to match the rest of me over the next few days. And there was that 8 hours I spent off Waikiki Beach on my first WestPac cruise while in the Navy. Burnt so bad that I slavered myself with Noxzema skin cream and suffered for three days with severe pain and taut skin. I felt like a barbecued hotdog.

They say most skin damage happens when you are a child. I figure there's not much I can do about it now. Oh, I still wear a hat but I am not overly concerned. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. My advice to others is to eschew the ballcap when spending a lot of time in the sun and opt for the "bucket hat", anything with an all around brim so your ears are protected. I have more than a few friends who have lost parts of their ears to skin cancer.

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I am naturally slightly flat-footed. But, back when I was that roasted surfer dude, I became a little pigeon-toed. It gave me better balance on the surfboard. I don't know why this thought came to mind except that I am having problems playing golf and balance is very important to the swing. I notice that most people use a flat-footed stance when striking the ball with a wood or an iron but many switch to pigeon-toed when putting. I tend to square my left foot (I am right-handed) but flare my right foot toe out.

Years ago, there was a TV show called "Silk Stalkings" which was supposed to take place in Palm Beach but was actually filmed in San Diego and southern California. The female star was Mitzi Kapture, a gorgeous young woman. But she walked funny, unfeminine in a way. I realized she was flat-footed. I also realized, about that same time, that few women walked that way. I thought back to my sister teaching some neighborhood teenage girls how to "walk" as part of a charm school she did as a hobby. All were taught to walk just a little bit shy of pigeon-toed.


Any thoughts on the above?

Stupid ball!

I am trapped. Stuck in the flypaper of poor golf habits. I know I can play better but I just don't. It is lack of concentration, of focus. And so I wallow in the mid-80's (and sometimes worse) week after week.

It doesn't just happen with golf. I have gotten in these ruts many times in the past. Especially on the job. My concentration would get poor, I'd start missing clues to the troubles I was shooting. My mind would wander rather than stay focused on the task in front of me. The only place this happened when it didn't matter was school. Concentration was pretty much unimportant there. I could simply drift along. But, back then, I had a good memory. It worked best when I wasn't concentrating.

That's how memory always worked for me. The more I tried to remember, the less I could. the less I tried, the better my memory worked.

This does not happen on the golf course... and didn't at work. I should rephrase that, sometimes clearing the mind and relaxing did improve my performance at work. It improved my perception. But it does not work on the golf course because, while I strongly believe the mind is the absolute ruler of good golf, clearing the mind allows me to get sloppy in physical execution. Focus is paramount. I would say that it is the same for many sports. Also for many professions.

Consider a surgeon, for example. Should he daydream while cutting you open? Should he let his mind wander a bit while he has that scalpel in his hand? Of course not. You don't want to know the OR team is laughing and joking or discussing politics while you are in a drug induced coma as they are clamping arteries and moving organs around.

But I am not a surgeon. I am not even a good golfer. I am just a schlub who is going through a period of unwanted driftiness.

Have a cup?

It started out innocently enough. I was traveling on business, for training, while I was with Pacific Telephone (as it was called then). I was spending a lot of time in airports; connecting flights, destinations, and all that. You wander into the gift shops, you buy paperbacks to read on the plane, you browse through the various gifts and trinkets with nothing on your mind except killing some time until you have to board.

It was just a cup, with something about the city I was in on it. Dallas, I think. It caught my eye and, on impulse, I picked it up and took it to the counter. It's so easy... that first one. Harmless. I would just bring it home, maybe take it to work, a coffee cup. I had a few others, with logos or whatever on them. Souvenirs of various events.

But you can't stop. You buy more. And more. Some have sayings, some are novelties. Funny, or pithy, or both.

So now I have somewhere between 50 and 75 cups. I do not display them, only about a third of them are in the kitchen cabinet. Faye complains about those cluttering the cabinet and the close to 50 that are stored in the garage cabinet. "They take up space", "we never use them", "why do you keep them?" I don't know why I keep them, I just do. I suspect a genetic connection.

My mother collected things. The first (and most) I remember were her rabbits. Big, small, tiny, all sizes. Crude, ornate, glass, ceramic, even plastic and rubber. She also didn't display them overtly, they were just there on shelves, in cabinets, here and there. My father said she had "pack rat-itis". Of course, he ignored the tools he collected over the years, never throwing (or even giving) them away. Once he owned something, it was always his. He did give me a small chain saw once. He no longer had a need for it, or had bought another one, and he knew I had a use for a chain saw from time to time. On a visit to my house about a year later, he asked me about it. I told him I had made good use of it and that I had loaned it to a friend who had a need.

He seemed angry that I would loan it out. It was as if I had given away his property. Very strange.

A sobering event

Last week, as Faye and I were driving home from our weekly Wednesday dinner with some friends, we found ourselves being sent on a detour by the police. There had been a fatal accident on US 27 while we had been laughing and joking with those friends after finishing our meals.

http://www.newssun.com/news/033012-ct-27-accident

 [Peggy Sue] Roaf, 52, was traveling north in the outside [left] lane of the highway when the Envoy, traveling south, jumped the median, crashing directly into Roaf's Ford Focus, riding up onto the hood.

The SUV's driver, 31-year-old Nicholas Steven Fox of Fort Lauderdale, was reported to be under the influence at the time, according to Sebring Police. An investigation is under way. Charges are pending, but no arrest has yet been made.

I have written before about the traffic on US 27 as it goes through our little city and how frustrating that traffic can be. I have written before how slow traffic in all lanes can induce drivers to weave across lanes in an effort to avoid getting stuck at traffic lights and to "make time" through the area.

Please try to understand, I am not defending the drunken driver who jumped the median when his SUV went out of control. There is no defense for him. None at all. He will recover from his injuries enough to be arrested and he will be convicted and go to prison and his life ruined... as it should be. But it won't undo the accident, it won't bring Ms Roaf back to life. It won't take away the pain of her friends and family, but it will be "justice" as we call it.

But things do not happen in a vacuum, as they say. In order for something like this to happen seemingly unimportant things have to fall into place. Accidents are "set up" by events happening prior to it.

The slow traffic on the highway can be frustrating, aggravating, infuriating. Add in a brain muddled by alcohol and you get poor decision making coupled with terrible reaction times. And this, I believe, is what led to a woman's unnecessary death and severe injuries to several others.

When we drive, we are encased in a little metal "bubble"; our world becomes the environment within our cars. We are detached from the people in the cars around us. We should remember that as we drive along. We don't know if the other drivers are sober or drunk, if they've had a bad day or a good one, if they are angry or happy. We forget that our driving, our existence on the road, can be viewed many different ways by other drivers.

We can cause, or increase, the irritation of an already angry driver who's in a hurry. We can confuse more a driver who is already lost or disoriented. We can become the focus of someone's antipathy merely by being in front of them. All because we are moving a bit slower than they want to be moving. So they swerve around us, flitting between cars, intent on getting from whatever "point A" they had come from to the "point B" they are in a hurry to get to. They creep up close, tailgating, jumping to the right or left, squeezing between cars.

Maybe the passengers in their cars are yelling at them to slow down, maybe not, maybe they are encouraging them to get around and through the traffic. Who knows? But a too hard swerve and poor reaction time (or an alcohol or drug induced over-reaction) results in a vehicle out of control, bouncing across a median and into oncoming traffic and tragedy explodes in micro-seconds.

You have every right to drive a little slow but you also have an obligation not to impede traffic. You should not contribute to events that can lead to tragedy. You never know what's in the mind of that driver in that car behind you. Look at the picture above and keep that in mind. 


Keep right, maintain speed, try to avoid blocking traffic behind you, don't contribute in any way to that unknown driver's rationale for stupidity.

And don't even have "just one or two" and get behind the wheel!
 

Leadership, smeadership...

Disclaimer: the following is opinion, I have no training or qualifications in anthropology.
 

One of the things I muse about is the human penchant for caste-ing. Ok, that's not a real word, it's one I just made up. It means:

Caste-ing: verb: the creation of tiers, or hierarchies, in society either by law or social agreement.

A long, long time ago, as man (and woman, presumably) discovered the advantages of society and community, he created crude hierarchies in an effort to create and sustain order. A leader was necessary; someone who could direct the activities of the group and who could, therefore, be blamed when things went wrong (the latter developing naturally after something went wrong). But then the problem became one of choosing leaders. A democratic society would simply select a few likely candidates and then seek a consensus on which one should lead.

Unfortunately, society was such a new concept that democracy had not yet been invented. We are talking pre-Stone Age here, there were no philosophers yet, probably not even Greeks. So, it's likely that it was more of a "top down" thing. That is, the strongest guy just beat up his rivals and took the leadership position. Much like aggressive herd animals do. And that was probably the method for countless thousands of years. Even today, you can find this. Just look at our primary system for presidential nominees.

But leaders generally like not only to lead but to retain that position. And agriculture and animal husbandry led societies to emulate the concept of breeding and superior and inferior stock. Enter royal families and the concept of nobles. This was in spite of the offspring often being mediocre and sometimes disasters as leaders. Face it, you really had to screw up royally (I wonder why we use that phrase?) to trigger a revolution. And those revolutions often just shifted control from one noble family to another.

We still practice this caste-ing. At local levels, you see it in the "good ol' boys" who run your town or county. The same families who may have started the community are still running it. Mostly, because they always have and we are suspicious of outsiders and newcomers. We elect Kennedys and Bushes and Rockefellers (and proabably Roosevelts if there any around). Wannabes marry into established families to gain status. Who was Schwartzeneggar before he married into the Kennedy clan? A movie actor of little talent beyond the ability to be a caricature of a heroic figure. We assume greatness of anyone whose father or mother made the big time in spite of the fact that they rarely perform as well as the parent. 

We conveniently forget the failures as we concentrate on the rare exception.