Do I look like a Mario Party Person?

So I was in Gamestop yesterday, when I got the Nyko Wii Charge Station (which is a very cool 3rd party product) and the girl behind the counter started her speech. I feel for her, I do. I used to work for Funcoland, which was eventually bought out by Gamestop and they had the same stupid upsell policies. Gotta push all the high margin crap that no one really wants. We used to sell subscriptions to Game Informer magazine and console cleaners, they still sell subscriptions to game informer and now they push video game & accessory preorders.

Anyways, she asks me if Id like to preorder anything, to which I politely state, "There is nothing coming out for the Wii that I want to preorder for some time."

She replies, as she is opening the pre-order book they have on the counter, "How about Mario Party 8?"

To which I reply, once again sternly but politely, "Do I look like a Mario Party Person?" Even though, I am, I don't look it.

She got the point, I thought, so she said, "Have you seen the new Mortal Kombat: Armageddon?"

"Yes" was all she got from me on that one.

"It has the coolest new control scheme, have you considered pre-ordering that one?"

"Not my kind of game", this time only sternly...the politeness was leaving me.

I bought my stuff and left. What I really wanted to tell her was, "I'm sorry you work for a mega billion dollar corporation that forces you to degrade yourself into a high pressure sales position without the glory or high commission return of say, a car salesman. I suggest killing yourself." But that wouldn't of been very nice.

Lets Talk Politics

Someone once told me a little parable that went something like this, "If you are not a Liberal in your youth, then you have no heart. If you are not a Conservative as an adult, you have no brain." While I obviously don't buy into that, it does show a trend in a changing attitude that many Americans have. Let's face it, when it comes to politics, most American vote from the heart. We either get behind the candidate that says what we want to hear or perhaps we just vote for the candidate that has less skeletons in the closet.

We are soon going to be entering that phase where campaign ads are going to cloud our minds and crowd our TV's commercial time. We'll soon have to make choices on who is likely to win vs. who we'd like to actually see running our country. We'll soon see people says things and state opinions only to say the complete opposite in a years time. Thus is the nature of politics. This is nothing new.

History shows the political process as it is now, the many times redundant processes, the sometimes convoluted views, and the pandering to the public well being as far back as the ancient Greeks, or older still. We've learned little since that time. We still have scandal and people in power who make their own choices instead of choices for the wellbeing of the people who voted them in. The phrase, "For the people, by the people" is a joke, a sad joke with a bad punch line.

You take a look at some of possible Candidate options for, arguably, the most power person in the world, the President of the United States of America, and see the same sad story being retold once again. Every Presidential Hopeful has an angle, something to add verisimilitude to the American people. This candidate's wife has Cancer. That Candidate is a former First lady. They other guy won the popular vote but lost an election. Hey, that guy was a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. That guy is black. These things don't matter to an intelligent person, we look to the issues. It's the best we can do.

Don't vote on party lines. Take a look and see what everyone stands for, check into factors of consistency. Are they telling us one thing in middle class America, then telling the Millionaires another story all together? It's a game of cat and mouse, one we can never win, but lets use our heart as well as our brain. Let us look at both the liberal and the conservative. Lets give em both a chance to show us why they can make a difference. No matter how strange the ideas are, they can't be much worse than what we have now.

Apathy For The Dead

33 Dead in Virginia. 32 Murders, 1 Suicide, and I feel nothing but apathy. It's horrible, but maybe I'm a little numb.

20 Iraq security forces executed

9 dead as Taliban steps up attacks

Dozens dead, wounded in bombings across Iraq

8 Dead 23 Wounded

Suicide attack kills 8 in eastern Afghanistan

Market, bridge bombings kill dozens in Iraq


Etc. Etc.

Stream of Consciousness

I find myself at times letting my mind wander while at work. Sometimes it takes the creative route where I start conceptualizing ideas for Stories and essays, while other times it takes the introspective route where I contemplate my mistakes in life and how one goes about correcting them, or at the least, dealing with them in a civilized way. It's these introspective times where I believe the choices are made, sometimes subconsciously, to do or not to do the strangest of things.

The wife and I were having a conversation the other day about what she had talked about with her counselor. My wife said she sometimes had strange thoughts that cloud her mind,mean things, or hurtful things, things you wouldn't share with anyone and are thoughts that no rational person would act on. The counselor said these were completely normal and happened to everyone. The question I ask to myself concerns those who don't have the rationale to keep these thoughts in check. Take a look at columbine or more recently, the shootings at Virginia Tech. While they will never know exactly what was going through the heads of these people before they started their killing spree, we do know that something wasn't ticking correctly.

My introspection usually involves unresolved issues with my parents deaths and the unwarranted guilt I sometimes feel in regards to it. I've mentioned it before, but my mother died when I was 14, when I was at an in between stage in my life, where I knew how things worked but still played the role of a child. I was in the dark about the true condition of my mother, a lot of that probably had to do with my innocent outlook and predominantly optimistic viewpoints. So when she died, I was stunned. I mean, I never had time to deal with it, to talk to her...

The guilt I feel about my Dad is different. I felt maybe that I should of took a harder stance with him to be sure that he seen his doctors more often and that he took his medication properly, but in all actuality, none of it was my fault. He was an old man, who decided he didn't care anymore and he died for it.

I also introspect on my career choice and schooling. I have a two year degree which in itself is really nothing. I have a decent job where I feel comfortable, but I always feel inside that I could of been something more. With that said, I know my life isn't over and I could start fresh and change everything from here on out, but I've placed obstacles in my own path that will make the job many times more difficult that it should of been. My mistakes as a teen come to mind as the biggest obstruction to career change. It's hard getting work when you have to check the box that says, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony."

I seem to have issues with relationships with people as well. I bet if you polled everyone that knew me, the majority of them would say I'm a great guy, yet I don't have very many people in my life that I can say is a great friend. The friends I used to have have all gone and started there own things and we rarely (or never in some cases) see each other or hang out. It probably stems from my lack of motivation to just call people, or maybe I'm just giving out a vibe that pushes people away. I could just be an asshole and no one is mean enough to just tell me.


After all, every Mike I know is a jackass, including the one in the mirror.

Mike

An Ode To My Wonderful Wife

So the wife was reading the last couple posts I made and asked me why I decide to post the stuff I do? What makes me want to start ranting about health and weight? It just comes to me. I feel like I need to express something and I take 5 minutes and I'm done. It's not a great literary piece or anything that going to get published. It's just one post on one guy's blog that hardly anyone reads. So she then says, how come you don't post anything about me (She must of missed those posts for when she was out of town )? In all seriousness though, my wife Susan doesn't get near the respect and acknowledgment that she is deserving of.

Susan is a wonderful woman, fantastic Mother, and has the most open heart of anyone I've every personally known. She takes her responsibilities very seriously and loves unconditionally. There is no doubt in my mind or in the minds of our children that Susan is the standard to which love should be judged against. I can say this because I see the anger in her eyes at times. There are people in her life that have hurt her greatly over the years, most of them close family members, and for the most part she still cares about them. She may not like them. She may not want to be around them. She still does care about their general well being.

Take her younger sister Anna for example. This child, who we raised as our own for 6 years, became a horrible plague on our home. She brought anger and hostility in far greater measure than typical teen angst should ever have allowed, and to no fault of our own, she has failed to develop into a useful member of society. In fact, she is a leach who is not yet ready to come to terms with responsibility and self worth. She has hurt us greatly over the years and in some people's minds would be deserving of a complete disownment. Not us though. Not my wife. She worries constantly about Anna's well being and the well being of her baby daughter. Susan struggles daily internally about wanting to take her in and try to save her versus letting her come to terms on her own. It's a constant conversation around our home with no real solution. The point, however, isn't how Anna can be saved or helped, it's that my wife is the kind of person that can forgive, forget, and still love.

And you should see her with our children. Never in my life have I seen kids so loved. These kids have never known the pain and heartache that my wife went through as a child. They have never feared for there well being. They have never feared that someone won't love them. They don't really know fear at all.

My wife loves me. I don't give her near the appreciation that I should and I certainly don't show her how much she means to me often enough, but I do love her. I have never felt a moment of doubt in our relationship that my wife has faltered in loving me. She has always been there for me and we have had times that have tested that love in the past and every time, Susan was still there for me to pick me up or kick my butt and get me moving in the right direction.

So I toast my wife, an Ode to the woman I love. Let this be just a portion of the total expression of love that I have for you, the mother of my children, the love of my life. I love you.

Mikey

Value in Obesity (The Cost of Health)

We are creatures of habit and ritual. Many of us wake up and do the same exact things every morning. Some require that cup of coffee, others immediately head into the shower. Moreover, we tend to do the same things that our parents did. We share the same views and ideals and have the same sensibilities, or lack thereof. We are followers of our piers. In our constant need to not rock the boat, we do as others do, as they have always done. Occasionally we break the mold, but never to any extreme where we stand alone and completely dismissed by our friends and family. We are influenced by exposure. It's the whole reason that commercials are so pivotal in marketing. When you see the same things time and time again, things that are appealing in general, these become ideas and beliefs that we want to embrace. Now this is just a generalization of society, but one that fits the majority of the population. Now lets apply this generality to a specific topic, obesity and food choice. Here are some interesting facts:

• Between 1962 and the year 2000, the number of obese Americans grew from 13% to an alarming 31% of the population.
• 63% of Americans are overweight with a Body Mass Index (BMI) in excess of 25.0.
• 31% are obese with a BMI in excess of 30.0.
• Childhood obesity in the United States has more than tripled in the past two decades.
• According to the U.S. Surgeon General report obesity is responsible for 300,000 deaths every year.

(http://www.americansportsdata.com/obesitystats.asp)

This isn't new. We all know that eating junk food with rot your teeth and make you fat, just like we know smoking causes cancer and alcohol kills brain cells. However common knowledge does not mean common sense. We have an inane ability to ignore the facts and make unwise choices. I blame habit, ritual and pure economics.

Many limits placed on us as a society are self imposed. You may decide that you refuse to do or say certain things, out of bad taste or self-conscious, but many of the limits we place on ourselves are more economic based decisions. I've never said that I'll never own a Ferrari because I hate the way they handle. I'll never own a Ferrari because I will never have the economic means to own a Ferrari, or the maintenance and insurance costs of owning a Ferrari. We are limited by our economic backgrounds and these limits often steer us into situations we have little control over, like our fast food menu choices. Almost every fast food chain has a value menu where you can pick from a list of items, giving you some variety of choice for a meal, and every item is about $1 each. So, Burger, Fries, Coke, Three dollars plus tax. What if you would actually like to eat healthy? All the big Fast food chain's sell a variety of salads, but you are going to pay about $5, give or take. Anyone on a budget can't afford to buck up that amount every time they go out, even if they just want to drink water with it. On a side note, most of those salads have about as much fat and calories at the greasy lower prices alternatives anyways.

Lets forget about fast food for a second. Lets say you pack your lunch every day when you go to work so that you can eat better. Even on the foods that you prep at home, you have to pay for the healthy choice. Cheaper meats are processed while full of fat and additives. Deli meats, while better for you, are also many times more expensive than your cheap Oscar Meyer alternative. We see this across the board. Spaghettios are cheaper than making your own spaghetti, if for nothing else, by saving you the prep time, but the fat and caloric content of a can of Spaghettios leads to far more pounds that doing it yourself. "For many households, the lack of money can contribute to both hunger and obesity. This apparent paradox is driven in part by the economics of buying food. Households without money to buy enough food often have to rely on cheaper, high calorie foods to cope with limited money for food and stave off hunger. Families try to maximize caloric intake for each dollar spent, which can lead to over consumption of calories and a less healthful diet." (http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger&obesity.htm)

The American Obesity Association stated that the direct health care costs of obesity were $102.2 billion in 1999. Most of that was for treatments related to health issues brought upon by obesity like Diabetes, Hypertension, and several types of Cancers. (http://www.obesity.org/treatment/cost.shtml) As a society, we are actually paying for the cheaper costs of food in the end. We pay with higher health care costs. We pay with our health.

Of course, I'll admit that fast food, and economic choices aren't the only reason for the rise in obesity in the world. Other reasons include a more sedentary lifestyle of video games, television and creature comforts as well as ethnic and genetic predisposition to weight gain. It is that value that we put on obesity that is important. You assign a value to the choices you make. If you choose to eat garbage food then you value the fat and calories associated with that choice. To solve this problem is a challenge in itself. Just like many problems that plague us, we sometimes have to hit rock bottom to realize that we made a mistake. That may mean health issues are starting to materialize or maybe you just don't look good in certain clothes anymore. I implore you, regardless of how you do it, place a value in your health and do what you have to do to insure you get where you need to be.

So I weighed in at the doctor's office on Saturday

Down 70 pounds so far. It's been less than 4 months since my gastric bypass surgery and so far I've had zero complications and lots of pant sizes lost. Pretty stoked.

Mikey