Scheduled Stress

I am a very organized person. I thrive on efficiency. In fact, this sometimes leads to inefficient behavior. When I’m doing some activity (say washing dishes) and think of a better (more efficient) way to do the task, I’ll backtrack and start over. That’s just the way I roll.

My subconscious seems to work in a similar, highly organized way. The past two weeks have been a blur of activities. As a school teacher, I have final report cards and a sixth-grade promotion to plan and execute. The day after promotion (literally), I drove three hours up to Los Angeles for a conference on the new common core teaching standards. Then back at home, I picked up my new car from the dealer. Finally I shopped and decorated for my daughter’s fifth birthday party. All fun exciting activities, but quite draining.

The stress takes a toll on my body, yet it won’t show until the deadlines are completed. It’s as if my mind has a mental checklist. Until everything is ticked off, it will allow no sickness. Now that all my tasks are done and I’m officially on vacation, I get sick. My body collapses under the strain of so much to do in such a short time.

I don’t know if anyone else has this sort of condition. It might just be be. At least I can let my body relax. More deadlines are coming. Writerly ones. The kind I like.

Tim Kane

Let Horror Clense Your Soul

While traversing my masters in English, I stumbled onto a fact that clicked with me: The Greeks believed that Tragedy was cathartic for the soul. In other words, seeing other folks going through hell, releases the viewer’s personal demons.

This could explain our collective yearning to view horror films. Ghoulies and nasties abound. Even though my daughter is going through the typical fear of things going bump in the night, she still clings to her stuffed werewolf and Lego monsters.

The same cathartic release appears in bullrings. I witnessed a bullfight in south Spain twenty years ago (I was going through my Hemingway phase). Although it was brutal (and plenty bloody) there was this strange sense of unity with the crowd. Just before the killing blow, they all chanted and stomped to a rhythm. It seemed to hypnotize the bull.

Could the same thing have happened in Roman gladiatorial competitions? It’s well known that patricians like Julius Caesar put on many events to amuse plebeians (presumably so they wouldn’t riot). Yet, maybe it also sucked out their fears, letting the gladiators act them out.

One horrific sight I recently stumbled upon was a zombie-like behavior from the audience. Eating fresh liver was believed (by the Romans at least) to cure epilepsy. The liver had to come from a healthy specimen. What better than a gladiator? Consequently, when a gladiator fell, there was a mad dash to tear open his gut and gulp down the liver. Can you picture this? It’s like Romero movie, but for real.

Feeling a little stressed and weighted down? Maybe some adrenaline and screaming will help. Either hop on a roller coaster to slip in a horror disc. Either way, screaming may lead to peace of mind.

Tim Kane

Lego Shop of Horrors

I am not a card-toting Lego nut. Honest. Not me. But events have conspired to induct me into Legodom in a big (and somewhat expensive) way. It’s called Lego Monster Fighters and it’s damn cool. Finally, after Star Wars, superheroes, and Lord of the Rings, Lego turned its attention to the most enduring pop culture there is: Horror.

Let me go back a bit. As a pre-teen I was a Lego nut. Admittedly. Back in the day (this would be the early 80s) there were no elaborate Lego kits. The one I recall was this moon lander kit. Mostly I just jimmied parts together to make interesting things

Why did I stop with the tiny plastic bricks. Basically life. I could mark the official end as the year I got my driver’s license. With freedom came girls and traveling. Legos didn’t fit in very well.

Fast forward twenty-five years and I now have a five-year-old daughter. True, she’s been playing with Duplos since she was one or two, but things really took off this year. First she created her own Lego Hulk. Then I bought her the Lego Avenger’s kit (which took me hours to assemble). Finally her birthday was only a short time later. When I saw that Lego had gone to the monsters, I had to bite. You see everyone in my family (daughter, wife, myself) are unabashed monster nuts. So here you go, the assembled Lego kits for three of the Monster Fighter sets.

Here’s the long view of “The Vampyre Castle”. Lego has come a long way since the moon lander series. This has a trap door, a secret room concealed with moveable stairs, and a Lego coffin.

Here’s a view of all the monsters. The werewolf comes from a different set (“The Werewolf”) where he launches out of a tree at one of the monster hunters. Check out the front of that car. The monster hunters have all the cool rides.

Finally we have “The Crazy Scientist and His Monster”. It has a “glow brick” that lights up with a Lego gear system (how very Steampunk). The figures for all the sets are astounding. I’m told that these sets aren’t available everywhere just yet. But they’re coming.

Tim Kane

Death: The Ultimate State of Self Sufficiency

This has been a joke of mine since high school. When you’re alive, such as I am now, many things can happen. Mostly injury and death. Yet being dead means you  can’t change any farther. You’re already at the dead end of existence. This brings in ideas of undead, such as zombies and vampires. Yet even those folk can be destroyed.

This gets me thinking about burial. What options are out there other than your typical RIP gravestone and green plot? Cremation is there, but it actually pollutes so badly, you’d make BP look like a green company. I’ve always wanted to have a tree planted above my grave so that it’s roots would grow through my body. Then I would fertilize the tree and ultimately live through it again (a sort of rein-tree-nation).

It turns out I’m not too far off from current trends. Green graveyards are springing up. The green here refers to environmentally sound rather than green grass. Deceased are buried in natural environments. No grave marker. Instead, they get a GPS marker that loved ones can seek out.

Another trend that fits the body-as-fertilizer trend is being worked out by the Swedes. A company called Promessa Organic freeze dries bodies and then turns this into fertilizer. The body weighs significantly less when freeze dried (the process removes the water—and we’re mostly water). It also allows for a cleaner decomposition. It turns out that rotting underground, though it may seem wonderful that the body remains intact for so long, actually produces some nasty chemicals that can sully local drinking water. A freeze dried body is interned in a biodegradable coffin. With a tree or bush planted above ground, the body and coffin become a high nutrient loam in about sixth months. That’s full circle baby.

Hollywood Dreaming

Stuck in LA for the weekend—Universal Citywalk to be precise—for an education related conference. Good and bad. Nice to have a few nights to play tourist. Horrid to be away from the family. The writing also suffered. My brain was so fried each night, I was useless.