The final, abridged blog of Mediocre Man!

Culture with just a dash of unbalanced logic.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

 

The largest ancient cultures built enormous empires around the concepts of honor and maintaining the respect of ones' community. The Japanese took that to the extreme and imposed the harshest penalties on themselves when faced with the prospect of living with dishonor. On days like today, I'm glad that I wasn't born in Japan... especially ancient Japan. Although, I may have been. The celestial jury is still out on that one.

I started writing a long blog that was more of an exercise in feeling sorry for myself than the blunt confession that I'd intended it to be. In the interest of "saving face," and also to prevent me from feeling like hari-kari is my only option, it's been scrapped for a kinder, gentler, sillier blog. We can all breathe a little easier. Go ahead. BREATHE, D****T!

It ticks Jackie off when I do this, but Dictionary.com defines Depression as...

de·pres·sion ( P ) Please No Javascript="ahdpop();return false;" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/help/ahd4/pronkey.html">Pronunciation Key (d-prshn) n.

1. The act of depressing.
    
2. The condition of being depressed.
    
3. An area that is sunk below its surroundings; a hollow.
    
4. The condition of feeling sad or despondent.
    
5. Psychology. A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death. Also called clinical depression.
    
6. A reduction in activity or force.
    
7. A reduction in physiological vigor or activity: a depression in respiration.
    
8. A lowering in amount, degree, or position.
    
9. Economics. A period of drastic decline in a national or international economy, characterized by decreasing business activity, falling prices, and unemployment.
    
10. Meteorology. A region of low barometric pressure.
     
11. The angular distance below the horizontal plane through the point of observation.
     
12. Astronomy. The angular distance of a celestial body below the horizon.

Now, which one of those definitions sounds like fun? Hmm? Yeah, this is the first time I've ever even SEEN the word anhedonia, too. Actually, that one sounds like a cleaning product, more than "the absence of pleasure or the ability to experience it." Isn't that usually called death?

Every single one of us, from time to time, gets a little tired and apathetic. Life has a way of wearing you down to the point that even getting out of bed at night to go to the bathroom is cripplingly overwhelming. No, I'm not suggesting that peeing at three o'clock in the morning has brought me to tears. Uh, wait... nope, haven't done that one, yet. It's just that without a sense of humor people find it difficult to accomplish even the most menial of tasks. Getting out of bed to evacuate your bladder is only one example. This week the top ten is a list of things that could overwhelm even the most stalwart soul.

 

Top Ten Things That Overwhelm Mere Mortals:

 

10) Applying for a new Social Security card. FDR created a benevolent organization that moderbureaucracycy has placed in the Emerald City at the end of the Yellow Brick Road. There's no place like home, there's no place like...

 

9) Balancing a budget. I took a bookkeeping class in High School and was told that balancing any budget was simply the steadfast entry of every credit and debit in order to track spending and predict future trends. Horse hockey! Even the federal government freely admits that it's all smoke and mirrors combined with clever marketing. Let me clue you in on a little secret. In Monopoly, the banker always wins.

 

8) One word: Politics. In ancient Rome the governing officials entertained themselves, and their subjects, by throwing slaves and selected enemies into large arenas to fight to the death. Today, the slaves and enemies are throwing the officials into the gladiator-esque arena of the modern media. Sometimes I think the Romans were far more civilized.

 

7) Socks in the dryer. Physics can harness the power of the atom but it can't explain why a pair of socks enters a machine with only one door and only one makes it back out again. How many of us still sit and stare at the pile of unmatched orphans and wonders, "Where do they go?" It's possible that some brilliant scientist actually found the answer to that question but it's far too terrifying to ever share with the public. Or that's how they got all those features crammed into your new cell phone...

 

6) The phone book. Think hard on this one, folks. How many times have you been faced with a simple task like where to get dinner when you don't want to cook and then looked at that giant phone book under the phone? Like most of us, that desire to find the perfect local bistro is suddenly replaced with the rationalization, "McDonald's really isn't all that bad."

 

 

5) Owner's manuals. I have yet to meet someone who writes these things for a living. I'm beginning to think that maybe they don't exist. Or, more likely, they don't ever see the light of day. It's far easier to believe that these torturous works of non-fiction are simply the by-product of a desperate inventor's deal with the devil. That's right. Owner's manuals are actually the gateway to hell. Now you know why they must be avoided at all costs.

 

4) The freeway. I once worked with a man whom I considered to be one of the toughest people I'd ever met. He wasn't bitter, just hardened. The kind of man who'd been in the military during wartime, lived a very hard life and had done and seen things that would make most people curl into a fetal position and suck their thumbs. You know, tough. This same man, when faced with the prospect of taking the freeway suddenly turned into a giant wishy-washy, coward that made Woody Allen look butch. Of course, if I'd ever personally pointed that out to him I'm sure that he would have crushed me like a bug. Isn't the internet wonderful???

 

3) The pediatrician's office. I have seen the opposite of number four happen to small children when faced with the possibility that they have to go to the doctor. Children, who normally will cry like frightened animals when they are kept at the dinner table and told to eat their spinach, suddenly are willing to silently limp around on half severed limbs in order to avoid getting a shot or face the scary, East German women's wrestling champion with the tongue depressor.

 

2) Family gatherings. We all know how it feels. Someone in your family has a birthday, anniversary or other celebratory event and it sounds like something worth planning a large gala for until the responsibility for said affair becomes yoursBelugaga caviar at the Ritz turns into pigs in a blanket at the community rec center. Remember this the next time you're listening to cousin Nunzio tell you about his bunion surgery while chewing on canned dough wrapped weenie goodness.

 

and the number one thing that overwhelms mere mortals:

 

1) The DMV. I don't even think I need to explain this one. I'm still clueless as to how the people who work there show up every day. The mere contemplation of spending an afternoon being ushered through nothing more than an indoor cattle run makes me wonder why every facility doesn't have a smoky lounge right next to a non-denominational chapel.

Hope you have a great week, all. I have two quotes this week, from the same brilliant man, for all of you who have read my entries in the past and wondered why I put myself through this every week.

"Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it."

 

 

 

 

"Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation."

~ Albert Schweitzer