TRUNKS – and some other stuff we carry around

If you are an average human being, you are constantly carrying a trunk around; it’s part of our anatomy. It’s also called lower mid-section, I’m told. I thought trunks were those long things in front of elephants or the rear part of most cars for luggage or the occasional lifeless body of an unfortunate gangster. Calling our mid-section a trunk doesn’t really make any sense. There are so many things we have inside our bodies that we don’t even know we have, don’t know what they are called or what their functions are. So, don’t you think we should pay more attention to our inner selves? I think we should, as it’s all rather important stuff, I’m told.

By the way, a trunk is also that big bulky object sitting in our attic; it belonged to my dearly departed great-grandmother. Nobody has dared open it; perhaps my great-grandmother is actually still with us – inside that trunk. I never met my great-grandmother, so I probably wouldn’t recognize her anyway, if it was really her. It’s confusing with all those trunks. Sorry, got off track a bit; let’s quickly move back to our inner selves…

I’ve always been fascinated with the human body. When I was about 12, that fascination was solely concentrated on Candy Floss (not her real name). She was Playboy Bunny-of-the-Month; but for a much longer time, Candy was my Bunny Forever, as a poster hanging on the wall. I still fantasize about those big – err, Candy’s smile.

For the most part I see the exterior of the human body as a live sculpture; so many exciting varieties as well as many not so really that exciting variations. Way back in the days, female body-shapes were healthy, with overall bigger proportions, as we see in paintings and sculptures from that time; I always found those bodies sensuous in their healthiness looking size and shape.

The male body was shown in lean, strong and muscular terms and still makes for today’s ‘ideal’ manly shape. I mean, what man wouldn’t like to go around with a body like Michelangelo’s famous Renaissance sculpture of ‘David”? (NO, not David Beckham, though his body is not to snicker about either - at all). 

But how much do we actually know about the inside parts of our bodies; how do all those things function, what does THAT part do, and how does it do it and especially why? Let alone, what the heck is it called and shouldn’t I at least be able to pronounce some of it correctly? When my doctor mentions any of those weird things, I automatically say: ‘bless you’ or ‘gesundheit’ if she is from Kiel, Germany. Our inner-bodies are very confusing.

To get to know my inner self better, I went through our book-case and pulled out ATLAS OF PATHOPHYSIOLOGY (yeah, YOU try to say that 10 times really fast). It has a rather gross picture of what I believe to be somebody’s lower intestines, a cut-through stomach and some other peculiar and nasty looking stuff.

On page 204 the headline screams: PERITONITIS. Okay, not too difficult to get out, but what the heck is it, and what organs are involved? I found out that peritonitis is an acute or chronic inflammation of the peritoneum (Yeah, like I didn’t know that – duh), the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity and cover visceral organs. Among the causes of peritonitis is renal failure (what?), Appendicitis & Diverticulitis, ulcerate colitis, abdominal neoplasm, volvulus, strangulated obstruction and other stuff like that. The thing is that this could happen to you and some of your organs and you wouldn’t have a clue what hit you and what stuff inside you that it hit - assumingly; just trying to pronounce any of it is marred with nervous stuttering, utter embarrassment and deep reddish blushing, mixed with massive confusion.

MYASTHENIA GRAVIS is catching me on page 148. It’s an autoimmune disorder that causes sporadic, but progressive (huh?) weakness and abnormal fatigability of striated (skeletal, I think) muscles, and so forth. Exact cause unknown but it can happen to females in their 20-30s and the male gender age 60-70. OMG I could get that stuff now – if I only knew what the heck it is.

I feel pathetically ignorant that I am not more educated (read: concerned / interested) with respect to the inner me – and you should be as well, not about my inner me, but about your inner you; don’t you think?

We trust what we are told and we are obviously fine with that. “Drink 16 gallons of water daily” (it’s about 60 liters, if you are a metrics fan). But do we really know why all this water is good for us? I quickly learned that it taught me great bladder-control and has installed in me the constant awareness of where the nearest restroom, bathroom, toilet or tree is. Besides that, water is a necessity for us and most of our organs, because without water we would shrivel away rather fast. We consist of about 75% water and just that fact makes it logical to inhale as much as we can. Oh, and it does do a lot of cleansing of some of the many organs we drag around; kidneys are on top of my list of organs that I somewhat ‘understand’...

So what do kidneys do? The blood goes around inside us, reaching all corners of our bodies, picking up dust and dirt and other waste products, which the kidneys then extract as the blood runs through them (yeah, we have two of those things); a bit of inner-body clean-up. Then we dispose of those bad things through visits to the bathroom or behind that tree over there, hence the vast quantities of water we should inhale.

When I at times try to schematically envision the functions of my body’s inner workings, I quickly realize how ignorant I am and how I pathetically, though successfully have learned just about nothing concerning any of that important stuff – because it is all really very important. I have more so kept an eye on what I saw in the mirror, and as long as I was okay with what I saw, hey why bother with what’s under my skin – huh?

I trust that if we really tried hard to learn a lot more about what it is we are carrying around inside us, inside that trunk of ours and beyond, if we learned and really cared about what the parts do, how they do it and especially what importance they all have, we would be so much more aware of what we have to do to stay healthy or healthier. We can seriously achieve a much higher quality of life, happiness and especially health, by being more informed. Knowledge can be extremely powerful that way – and that in itself, is very good to know… both inside and out.

DECEPTION – deliberate misguidance

We are constantly exposed to deception and deceit. Perhaps we are so used to being bluffed, that we more or less ignore it. That’s actually a good thing, as it would otherwise drive us crazy. Deception is the act of spreading beliefs about issues that are not true; the softer term is: bending the truth. These half-truths and omissions are also known as dissimulation, propaganda, concealment, or as I call it: deliberate misguidance. No matter how we slice it, deception is rarely a nice thing, because it foremost insults our intelligence, and we are really not that stupid.

When somebody deceives us we more so register it as we are being lied to. Lying is making up information that for the most part is opposite or different from the truth – very much like deception, duh. Dishonesty comes to mind, along with fraud, misrepresentation, lack of trust, disrespect and other lovely transgressions; what I’m concerned ‘spinelessness’ is another good name for it.

We really don’t like being deceived or lied to; it is such an ill-mannered notion. Betrayal ruins trust, and we must more so try to trust each other in all aspects of our lives together. But deceit is an unfortunate part of communicating by many (but not you and I, of course…)

And it’s not just what we say in that respect, but also with what we do not say. Concealment, as in omitting information that is important or vital concerning reaching the truth or any shade of reality, is as big as a lie. Concealing, as with lying and deceiving, is perhaps even more disrespectful (Yuk!)

Exaggerations and understatements are also tools used to avoid the truth, and I’m more than willing to place these actions on the list of betrayal, disrespect and dishonesty, as well. And we are unfortunately exposed to these ‘not-the-whole-truth’ issues daily – seriously.

The beef I have with dishonesty, deceit, whatever label you want to apply, are that it’s all done purposely, deliberately and with the precise knowledge and plan to conduct betrayal. It can be the small daily-deceits we tend to ignore, or the huge scams of milking people out of their money and property (Madoff’s billions of dollars Ponzi scheme, is a glaring example). But whatever the size of the deceit, they all come from the same mold.

I was driving behind a Safeway van (‘lorry’ for some readers) the other day. It said in huge letters FREE DELIVERY. So I read this and went WOW (I do the WOW thing a lot); I can buy groceries from Safeway on-line and get the order delivered for free. I believed that up to the point where I was close enough to the back of the van/lorry, from where I could barely read the very small writing underneath: on the first order. Sure Safeway can comfortably utter that they are NOT trying to deceive and/or mislead, but reality is that they obviously wrote it that way to conceal how the so-called free deliveries would work after the first order. I call that: intentional deceit.

We see the same on all kinds of food labels. The ice cream carton tells me something about 140 calories. Okay, I’m not totally dim as I realize (duh) that this 5 gallon bucket of caramel, cookie-dough and chocolate chip ice cream would be a tad more than 140 calories, otherwise I wouldn’t eat anything else – ever, and would be pleasantly slim in the process– right? But it says 140 calories per serving. I can swing with that, until I realize that a serving is not much more than ¼ cup (or less). Now, who the heck would eat a portion that size? Why even bother?

So if I’m not totally off track, eating ice cream as any normal person, I would no doubt inhale more than 50 million calories in one sitting (being my favorite ice cream), with no clue about how many bloody servings it takes. My eloquent point is that it is deceit and concealment of reality and purposely presented as such. ‘Oh, only 140 calories’, is a normal response – let’s dive in. But servings are set (no laws here?) so small (on purpose & to deceive) to show a low calorie count, and done so to deliberately give us a false picture and hope, of what reality really is.

When we look around in everyday life, acknowledging these pretend information panels, we quickly understand that deceit is running rampant, as in all over the place. Sure suppliers, manufactures, etc. can cover behind rules of this and that, but that is not the point, because they still purposely, deliberately and somewhat successfully misrepresent reality – and to me, reality eating ice cream does not include the term ¼ cup serving at all.

Sodas are for the most part 12 fluid ounces. Most sodas show about 21 grams of sugar, more or less – that in itself is a lot of sugar. But then we realize that it’s per serving. Did you know that a can of soda normally holds two servings, therefor 42 grams of sugar instead of ‘just 21’? But, ‘yes’, 21 sounds a lot better. The question is: who the heck drinks half a can of soda, puts the other half in the fridge to be enjoyed another day? I don’t know anybody who would do that. A can of soda is pretty much inhaled in one sitting (including all 42 grams of sugar), finished with a large burp and done with; that’s reality (in most cases without the silly ‘burp’ thing). It’s ‘lawful’ deception, that’s what it is.

And don’t get me started with the smaller size of people standing next to advertised cars, simply to make the cars look bigger than reality. Not all ads, but many. Watch for it the next time you are looking – really; the sad thing is that it's bloody obvious.

Of course, the area where deception and betrayal is inter-personal, we are talking about levels that are disturbing, sad and emotional, hurting and utterly disrespectful. That is an area that is hard to accept, as it’s degrading and ignorantly thoughtless. Sure we have all gone through some of this crap, but it’s still hard to accept when exposed to – not something we will ever get used to. We can forgive some of it to some extent, but it’s the forgetting part that is so utterly hard, if not impossible to manage.

And that’s a much bigger area to get involved with, trying to understand and/or explain. Inhaling 42 grams of sugar is much easier (and our own choice), but being deceived by anybody on a personal and emotional level is for the most part heart-breaking, confusing and very sad (sigh).

Many people, producers of any consumption products and what have you, truly believe that they are good at deceiving us, good at deception. But I fully believe that this (shallow) confidence is very misplaced. I know that we are all smarter than that, too wise to be pulled in, and that we more so laugh at their feeble and innate belief, that they think that they are so much smarter – because they are not; but we are – don’t you think?

Now where did I put that 5 gallon bucket of ice cream? 140 calories? Piece of cake (yeah, that too…)   

EASTER – crucifixions and marshmallow bunnies

Easter is a Christian and cultural festival. It’s called Easter because Wester would sound really weird. As far as I understand, within the limits of my religious ignorance, it is to commemorate the crucifixion and the death of Jesus Christ. I’m told that this day is called Good Friday. Maybe I confuse easily, but what’s so good about a day involving nasty crucifixions and death? In Denmark, Good Friday is actually called LangFredag (Long Friday) which makes more sense, especially when things are not going well, including crucifixions and death.

 

But luckily, as the story goes, Jesus resurrects the following Sunday, so all is quickly back to normal tidings. The commemoration of Jesus’ crucifixion and of course more importantly, his resurrection, is packed into the cultural festival we know as Easter – and did you know that the Easter Season is a total of seven weeks? Imagine how much weight we could gain if we took full advantage of that?

Growing up in Denmark and not using that as an excuse for ignorance (the art of not knowing), religion was not part of my life at all. Sure we acknowledged religious holidays, especially if there was candy, presents and days off from school involved (I was ignorant, but not stupid).

Christmas was and still is a major holiday for me. The awesome idea of getting presents for free, no matter how badly I behaved the previous year, has always pleased me; I mean how could Santa possibly check on everybody, huh? And then all the days off school, the great food and we even got presents on Lille-Juleaften (Little-Xmas Eve – December 23^rd). Religion coming in handy, I’d say…

The religious part of Easter was always a bit confusing, as it stretched out over several days, actually weeks, if you are really counting. We’d normally get about a week off school and later on, days off from work – so that was a big positive and something to look forward to, thinking of Easter. But I never got into what it was really all about, the significance of telling the story of Christ and the times back then. I would certainly never have put the crucifixion of Jesus and Good Friday together – ever. Would you?

I blame commercialism for ruining my holy curiosity. Instead of intellectual advise concerning this significant religious, Christian and cultural festival, they gave me jelly beans, greeting cards, marshmallow bunnies and chocolate eggs. Not that I’m complaining, but really… And what is the deal about all this candy?

 

It seems as ‘eggs’ are a main feature in this ‘candy-festival’. We are talking all kinds of eggs, from plastic, chocolate, decorated, painted, papier-mâché (I speak foreign as well), and so forth. I can only assume that these eggs are symbolizing ‘fertility’, as in the rebirth of Jesus or something. I’m all fine with that, though I’m puzzled by the lack of hens in the Easter picture – we see and eat cute chicks, but no egg-laying hens. Don’t get me wrong, I keep stuffing my face with edible eggs, hens or no hens.

 

I’m even more mystified concerning the presents of bunnies. Again, this is not a complaint. But are they represented in this scenario because of their famous multiplying abilities – as in ‘fertility’? While you contemplate this question, I’ll catch up on the marshmallow bunnies in front of me, no matter how disturbing a thought it is eating cute things you could easily name Fluffy or Buttons (sigh).

 

I remember my mother handing over all kinds of candy surrounding a large chocolate egg, wrapped in colorful foil or not. The Easter goodies continued with the Easter hunt, consisting of small hollow plastic eggs stuffed with more candy, hidden in the garden and around the house. Greed popped up its ugly head and the race was on – at times the search turned nasty, with unfortunate casualties and melted chocolate all over the place. And seriously, why egg hunts? Was it something Jesus started Easter Sunday, just for the heck of it?

In all seriousness, I have never had anything against religious holidays of any kind; I have the greatest respect for people’s beliefs and the trust some find in faith. The unfortunately part of these spiritual days, is how they more so left the church and became overly commercialized. I honestly wonder how many Easter candy-inhaling people can actually give you a somewhat sane explanation why they are stuffing their faces with chocolate eggs, marshmallow bunnies named Fluffy, egg-shaped jelly beans and so easily get caught up in hunting eggs with a vengeance; all in the name of Jesus Christ. I cannot imagine that many will know…

 

As a gratis reminder: remember that the Easter Season is more like seven weeks and not just a few days. This gives you the legal, as well as religious right, to stock up on massive quantities of candy, while (legally) forgetting about any form of diet – at least for seven weeks. It might actually be a Federal law, come to think of it. 

WOW, was that a flock of marshmallow bunnies hopping by? Fluffy, is that you? Sorry, gotta run…