“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” is really really true!

Alright, everyone, time for a little life advice from the Fortress!

A year ago yesterday, I was walking around my neighborhood, when I passed a man walking his small white dog, when for no reason the stupid dog bit me on the back of my thigh. Ouch! Man didn’t seem to give a shit, and I forgot to get his name or info. So, as I mentioned briefly in last year’s 100 Days of Summer recap, I spent the following week in absolute panic that the dog had given me rabies or something. Yeah, I know, stupid thing to be panicked about, despite everyone and all information I looked up essentially telling me how there was like no chance. Only got out of the panic a week later when I saw the dog being walked again (rabid dogs are dead within a couple of days of symptoms, the only time they can spread it, so this dog had to of course be alright). Didn’t snap out of the panic right away. It took me another couple days to slowly come down from it.

And that week was seriously miserable. Regardless of it being for a stupid reason, I was still panicked, still absolutely filled with fear. And let me tell you something. Fear seriously fucks you UP. You can’t think. You lose your marbles. No amount of logical reasoning showing you not to be scared will snap you out of it. Pretty much just has to go away on its own after a while. Anything I had been thinking about or planning up until that asshole little dog bit me had gone out of my mind. Pretty much all I could think about was this dog bite and my irrational fear of infection.

And that’s why fear itself is a worthwhile thing to be afraid of! I sometimes find there are events or possible events in the future that I think “oh, wow, I’m going to be soooo scared!” For example, if I ever get pregnant. Pregnancy is pretty goddamn scary. Aside from all the crazy shit involved with it even when it’s perfectly normal, if I’m ever pregnant, I would be soooooo terrified! Scared waiting to find out if pregnant. Scared during labor. Scared waiting for labor at any moment. And then of course the most terrifying thing of all for which pregnancy is just the opening, parenthood! Ack!

So I would say, well, don’t be scared, but it can’t be helped. That’s another reason to fear it, since it’s hard to avoid. Education may help, in that fear preys on ignorance, since not knowing what to do in a given situation only increases the fear, while knowing what to do keeps it somewhat at bay, usually.

And your brain is on your side anyway. It gets bored with fear after a while, provided the fear brings nothing new to be fearful about, and logical reasoning grows back. So while you can’t avoid being fearful, because, well, shit happens, you can at least be ready for it and knock it out quickly. Or at least manage until it passes.

Happy Fifty-Fifty!

This has been Day 50 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

Ooooh, tropical!

Looks cold. But what a view!


On the other hand, this place looks HOT! And DRY! I want a cold beverage just looking at it.

Pretty waterfalls. I’ve heard they shouldn’t be chased.

Flat grassland is flaaaaaaaaat.

Lighthouse.

Wow! Mangrove swamp. Might be gators.

Ah, a pretty sunset over a lake.

Big tall trees are biiiiig and taaaaaaall!

Go ahead. Try to breathe. That’s right. You can’t. You lost the ability when you saw this picture!

Mmmmm, pointy.

Woods and a little waterfall. Nice.

Okay, just posted 12 pretty pictures. What for?

Here’s the thing. The locations of those pictures? Respectively, they are…

Hawaii
Alaska
California
Maryland
Kansas
Maine
Florida
Minnesota
California… again
Colorado
Arizona
Virginia

Yup. Bunch of very different climates, geographies, topographies, landscapes, people, cultures, etc.

And they’re all still part of the United States of America!

Happy Independence Day!

(yes, this was corny, I know)

This has been Day 42 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

And then I wondered… why the hell aren’t the McDonald’s fries, or at least the Happy Meal ones, shaped like smilie faces? Wouldn’t that make more sense? The things clearly exist. Or would that be a bit too much happy? Is there a such thing as too much happy?

It was eight years ago today that my family took a little 2-day trip to New York City, our first time there after the September 11th attacks, only about three and a half months after. And we saw with our own eyes that it was all true, that those enormous Twin Towers were in fact gone.

We all heard a lot about the impact the attack had on, well, everyone. Especially the friends and families of the victims, and of course the people who were in the buildings and managed to escape with their lives.

You also have to wonder about the people who built those Towers in the first place. They had only been up for about 28 years when the planes hit them, only four times the amount of time it took to complete their construction! And it’s probably safe to assume, seeing as how new the Towers were, that most of the construction workers and architects were still alive with the attack happened.

Up until then, they could look at the Manhattan skyline so proudly! Those twins they constructed over so many years overtook the Empire State Building as the tallest structures in the big city, were such an important landmark of the city. People flocked from far and near to visit it, to go to the top. Homer Simpson’s car was parked and booted on the ground beneath them, and he had to use the bathroom and raced to the top of one tower, found the bathroom out of order with a sign saying to use the other tower!

Then some asshole terrorists hijacked some planes and knocked them the fuck down. Suddenly those Towers which the builders were so proud of were now the site of people burned alive in the crashing planes, of people leaping off the higher floors to go splat on the pavement below to avoid the fire death, people being crushed horribly when the buildings came down. Those who built them saw as this gigantic atrocity turned these two majestic buildings into a horrible death trap for a couple thousand people.

Reminds me of in Titanic where the guy who designed and built the ship was absolutely devastated that all around him, his creation had the rather serious fuck-up of that little iceberg vulnerability and had now caused all the screaming and freezing and drowning and death all around him.

Of course, it wasn’t the Towers’ builders’ fuck-up that caused 9/11. Or maybe it was. Should have made them airplane-resistant maybe? That’s possible, right?

So they figure the best way to remedy this is to stow away on a train that’s heading for the North Pole for some reason. Stuff happens and they end up off the train short of reaching the point where every direction is south, so Frosty and the little girl Karen are lost in the woods and Karen is freezing to death, so they somehow end up finding a greenhouse full of poinsettias. What luck!

Frosty, being the dumbass you’d expect of someone who says “Happy Birthday” when he wakes up and who, well, is made of snow, walks into the greenhouse with Karen for some reason. It’s not even clear why he goes in. Karen points out that he’ll melt if he goes in, but he says he’ll only melt a little and goes the fuck in there anyway. Sure, don’t just let her go in on her own and you wait outside. Go in and risk melting when the whole goddamn point of your trip was to keep that exact thing from happening!

Sure enough, the second they walk in there, the evil magician shows up out of nowhere and slams the greenhouse door shut, locking them in there because the door doesn’t have an inside lock for some reason.

The rabbit they were friends with managed to go find Santa, and they found their way to the greenhouse. The door of which Santa just opens right up without unlocking it or anything, so this is either one retarded greenhouse where the door can only be opened from the outside, or Karen and Frosty were immensely retarded that they didn’t bother to try opening the door that was apparently unlocked. Or maybe Santa magically unlocked it by touching it. In any case, he walks in to a dreadful sight… Frosty has completely melted and is just a puddle on the floor next to a crying Karen, his hat and pipe sitting sadly in the puddle.

Now here’s where things get morbid. You see them get trapped in the greenhouse, and next time you see them, Frosty has totally melted. Which makes you wonder how that all played out in between. A sentient snowman whose body is slowly degrading into a water puddle, before the eyes of a terrified little girl. And the snowman himself terrified and possibly in pain through the ordeal, though maybe no pain unless the snow that makes him up has formed a nervous system. Sure, they don’t actually show this happening, but you know it did. And that’s just terrible!

Okay, okay, Santa makes his little Christmas snow speech and Frosty gets magically rebuilt, but still! Talk about a traumatic experience!

Arabs and Jews are the same people!

I might want to throw Greeks and Italians into that mix, too, for a lot of this.

Last night was the first night of Chanukah, and I can guarantee all our Jewish friends were up late and stuffed themselves with lots of delicious food. And they’ll do the same tonight. And tomorrow night. Eating and celebrating, running late into the night, with lots and lots of people.

And in two weeks for Christmas Eve, the Italians, Greeks, and Christian Arabs will be doing exactly the same.

The hora dance? Originated in Eastern Europe actually and is prevalent there and the Balkans and Middle East. Like a special circle dance. The Jews do it, of course, and so do the Italians, Greeks, and Arabs!

I even had this following conversation with my mother a few weeks back:

Me: Hey, Mom, don’t Arabs also do that chair dance thing at weddings and such like the Jews do?
Mom: Yeah. Wait… the Jews do that too?
Me: *facepalm*

The first time I had seen the chair dance was in a video of my cousin’s engagement party many many years back. So I figured it was regional. Turned out I was right!

The female of Italian, Greek, Arab, and/or Jewish descent is always built in with one strong urge: I HAVE TO FEED EVERYBODY!

That’s why I spent over $200 on food at NYRA’s annual meeting this year.

As for the guys, they seem to sweat olive oil. It’s weird.

But we do consume copious amounts of the stuff.

We all speak different languages, but they are still languages that sound like someone just choked on a bone.

And, hell, we all look the same!

And if you’re a girl, hey, you can have a career and do just about anything with your life, but it will always still end with “so when are you getting married?” Because you’re still just a vagina with legs.

So we’re the same basic people. Quit the bickering!

In the early Mario games, you obviously lose the jumping attack and can’t attack anything underwater unless you’ve got the Fire Flower. In SMB 3, you can’t even use your raccoon tail, but at least in SMB World they corrected that with the cape. SMB 3 has the Frog Suit, which enables you to swim against the current and more easily in general, except it has absolutely no offensive qualities whatsoever.

In some games, the controls for underwater maneuvering are just so odd that you can barely move your character around, and in cases where you need to move quickly, you’re in for near-homicidal levels of frustration. The Crash Bandicoot games are particularly bad with this.

Then there are water levels where you aren’t really underwater, but rather the water keeps rising and falling as you progress through it, and you need to stay the hell out of the water at all costs, whether because there’s something that thinks you’re delicious (SMB 3) or because you’ll drown (Bubsy). Those levels can go to hell.

So can all water levels.

So can you, for that matter.

She pressed on, wondering if something had happened to me or if I’m against prayer. I told her I’m not against it but that I just believe it to be pointless, that God is going to do whatever the hell he wants regardless of what we say. She said that we should still give thanks anyway, and I was like “but if God’s going to do what he wants regardless, why do it?” Who would we be thanking? She couldn’t really come up with any suitable answers to those questions, but kept on with the whole “I can’t believe you!” charade. Whatever.

Funny how people tend to not know the difference between being against something and non-participation.

I’ve heard it suggested, and I think I sort of agree, that there isn’t much difference between praying and witchcraft. Both involve saying special words in the hopes that a supernatural being or phenomenon will perform some action.

Prayer is also a miniature form of meditation. A few years ago, I heard advice that when angry, one should pray first, and that’ll help the anger. It’s true, it would, but mostly because it’s the same basic tactic as counting back from ten, that you’ve distracted your mind for a minute or so and that calms your rage and, funnily enough, brings you back to rationality.

Of course, prayer before Thanksgiving dinner is still pointless because, as said, I don’t think God gives a shit what we do or say to him, and it’s no time for meditation because I’m fucking hungry!

But then how come the Wicked Witch of the West melted when water got sprinkled on her? She wasn’t sweet… or was she?

Now that I think about it, maybe the Wizard, Munchkins, and Witch of the North weren’t as “good” as we might believe. Maybe the Wicked Witches of East and West were actually the good ones. Is it out of prejudice for green-skinned women that they are dubbed evil?

Or is it because the Witch of the West kept trying to kill Dorothy?

Then again, that’s not a mystery. If you crushed my sister with a house, I’d want to beat you to a pulp, too!

But then comes a day that is a bit warmer. Alive and ambulatory and sentient though he may be, he is still somehow made entirely of snow, and his very existence is threatened by the gradual rising of the mercury.

How does Frosty the Snowman cope with this inevitability?

So he said let’s run, let’s have some fun, before I melt away.

You’re going to die, and soon, so what do you do? Shrug it off and just keep having fun! Good advice.