The Dangers of Binge Watching

Among the greatest benefits of 21st century technology has been on demand television. As my son grows, I can only imagine telling him old war stories of how, “in my day we had to watch commercials and if something wasn't on at the time, we couldn't watch it. Gone are the days of consulting a TV Guide or watching a show one episode at a time. .

This is the era of DVR, Netflix and Hulu Plus. This is the era of marathon television watching sessions. This is a golden age of binge watching. While I love this golden age, I have recently realized the need to approach binge watching with caution and moderation.

The other day I woke up from a bad dream I can’t quite remember. The day before I felt off and the days that followed were the same. It was subtle, a slight touch of melancholy here, a tinge of regret for some long ago transgression there. I began to feel anxious, as if there were something wrong. For a moment I thought I had cancer. For an instance I had a strange craving for crystal meth, even though I have no idea what that might actually be like.

I searched my soul to find a reason for this melancholy, this strange affinity for pure blue crystal meth and the city of Albuquerque. Nothing had happened, there were no major changes in my life, no conflicts, nothing. What happened?

I checked my Netflix account. In the past week I had watched 35 episodes of Breaking Bad. It is a great show, among the most well written that I can recall. It is so good that it should come with a warning label. Warning: If you binge watch you run the risk wanting to manufacture crystal meth and call yourself Heizenburg.

Maybe I am just more susceptible than most to become caught up in artificially created television worlds. I had similar responses to The Walking Dead, where I began to formulate my plan of action for the Zombie apocalypse, or when I binge watched Battlestar Galactica and began to suspect that everyone around me was a cylon.

Or maybe, just maybe, this is a new challenge for a brave new world. The risks of binge watching are many. Some of these risks, like a sore behind, weight gain from a sedentary lifestyle or insomnia from staying up too late watching television, are obvious. The emotional risks are a bit more subtle.

Am I going to stop binge watching? Probably not. I enjoy the entertainment provided by television and the escape it provides from everyday problems. However, I will be more aware of the times when binge watching is not an escape from my issues. Indeed, binge watching can guarantee a  transfer to a world of even greater problems. In my real life, I may have issues paying the bills sometimes, but I have never had cancer, been kidnapped by deranged drug dealers or been forced to drive a Pontiac Aztec. Maybe the solution is to take a couple days off from Breaking Bad or binge watch something else entirely, a comedy perhaps.

Running Outside: My Love Affair with the Treadmill

Yesterday I decided to run outside. Though I have been an avid runner for several years, this occasion marked perhaps the 8th time that I have ventured to run outside. The results were, how should I put it, humbling.

The first thing I learned is that there are bugs outside that don't exist within the confines of a 24 hours fitness. Second, I shattered my long held belief that growing up in Phoenix has somehow made me immune to any effects of the sun. Third I learned that being able to run 10 miles on a treadmill, in an air conditioned gym, does not mean that I can run 10 miles on the road. Fourth, I learned that Portland is first rate for bike lanes and cut rate for sidewalks. Fifth, I learned that running in bike lanes is terrifying.

Why did I do it? I have been content to run on the treadmill. I can control the pace and know exactly what is going on all around me. Yet running a marathon is on my bucket list and apparently we all have to have bucket lists because Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman told us to. Quite simply there are no treadmill marathons. Thank God, frankly that would be more boring than watching a professional bowling match played by professional golfers.

I got very close to running a marathon 4 years ago. Then something happened. Between the overtraining and lack of calcium that comes from my milk allergy, at least this is my hypothesis, my ankle became so weak that it broke. I was left with an injury that took a full year to heal and the lamest broken bone story ever.

Four years later I am still a far cry from the shape I was in then. I am 20 lbs heavier (to be on the kind side) and cannot run as fast as I could then. Through it all I have kept trying but had yet to break out in the great outdoors.

Yesterday was a reminder that I am not as close to my goal as I would like to be. The good thing is a bucket list is composed of things one would like to do before death and I don't plan on dying for a long time. I will run my marathon someday, hopefully sooner than later. I will run a good race and will find the flattest marathon in the country, hills are killer.

Tomorrow I will go running again. This time back to the treadmill, back to the air conditioning, back to the music on my i pod, back to watching sports center as I kick the speed up and down.

*Any offense taken by bowlers and golfers is understandable. I find both fun to play but extraordinarily boring to watch. The same goes for baseball, and oh, Nascar is not a sport. We at Green Eggs never shy away from controversy, but as always, if you have a divergent view, go and get your own blog. I bet, like me, you can have 7 readers in no time.

Simple Rules for happiness in the world of Social Networking

We've all seen the chain responses on facebook. They come with different enticements. Some are positive or benign. Post this flag if you love America. Pass on this quote if you want good luck. Some are negative or downright threatening. If you don't pass this on you're helping kill puppies. If you don't post this immediately to your wall, then you hate Jesus.

As a response to the litany of posts like these, I long ago decided that I would not, under any circumstance, pass along or post these requests. Perhaps by refusing to pass these along I have sadly lessened the world's puppy population or inadvertently made Jesus cry on a number of occasions. It is not that I meant to murder puppies or cause personal harm to the savior of all mankind, it is just that I found a comfortable place in the sand and drew my line.

While refusing to pass these links is my most ardent rule, I do have others. I generally don't quote sources other than myself. Occasionally I find a good one and pass it along but for the most part I rely solely on my own clever thoughts.

I occasional post a politically charged thought or a link to an article about politics. I stop there. I don't involve myself in arguments on facebook. I used to occasional imbibe in this sort of banter but found that all it did was lead to disruptions in my own inner Fonzie. Nowadays If I comment on anything controversial, I make my comment and move on. Under no circumstance do I look back and comment again. Anyone who has ever seen Indiana Jones knows why looking back isn't a good idea.

The reason I have these rules is not that I am afraid of controversy or that I don't care. Quite honestly it is the opposite. Social media is a large place with many divergent points of view. It is a place with people who want to argue issues and those who simply want to show pictures of their dogs and kids having fun. If you are latter keep on keeping on. If you are the former keep on keeping on, but consider. If all you post is your thoughts on politics, you have probably reached a point of saturation. That is to say, only people who agree with you, or don't and like to argue, are going to care.

I do occasionally post something of a political nature. I like to think that by doing this occasionally, it might actually make people think, it probably won't. Whatever way you go, go ahead. Just know that I am not going to re-post the sign that says If I don't post this in 7 minutes a kitten will die. I will stick by my rules because they work for me.

*No animals were harmed or deities offended in the writing of this post. If you are in any way offended by the content herein, relax. I have no further advice.

Obamacare and the Tea Party

So the SCOTUS, as we are calling it these days, has upheld Obamacare. If I were President Obama, besides carrying around my birth certificate so that I could pull it out every now and then to remind people that Hawaii is a state, I would get a tattoo on my arm that says Obamacare in great big letters. Except that tattoos hurt and anyone who tells you otherwise needs to call the fire department and immediately buy new pants, preferably not skinny jeans.

With a stroke of pen, which I assume was not a bic or one of those random pens I find in my car from some business establishment I've never visited , President Obama managed to forever seal his place in history as the man who at least did something. Mitt Romney enacted a surprisingly similar law in Massachusetts and all he got was a reputation for flip-flopping and the enduring suspicions of the Tea Party. Which reminds me of some enduring questions I've always had about the tea party.

I wonder if tea party members call each other by tea nicknames and eat tea cookies? If I were a member of the tea party I would call myself Rooibos and eat the hell out of some lemon cremes. I feel sorry for the guy who got the nickname chamomile, I wonder if it is because he was late and Earl Gray was already taken?  I'd ask these questions but I live in Portland and we really are much more of a coffee town.


I digress. Anyhow, having worked in the healthcare industry for a number of years, I can say that Obamacare is not perfect, but it is hard to be worse than the fractured system we have had. I know, let the name calling commence, afterall calling someone a socialist is far easier than reading a health care law or even the definition of socialism on wikipedia or dictionary.com.


Even if you don't care about health care, consider a few points. Access to lower levels of treatment, ie PCP's and routine procedures, are far less expensive than emergency room care. The United States spends far more per capita on health care than other developed nations that have some sort of universal access to care.  Most US health care entities operate on a fee for service basis. This sort of funding structure creates a need for additional levels of bureaucracy and complex systems of billing and administrative approval.


Once again, while far from perfect, the Obamacare bill is at least an attempt to close gaping holes in a system that is not really a system. Personally I would prefer something more centralized in scope. However we in the US seem to have a baseline level reactionary fear of anything that is centralized. We prefer to create multiple levels of bureaucracy by layering them through competing levels of government and privatizing to agencies that that have their own, additional levels of administration. This way always ends up being more expensive and inefficient in the end but at least they provide multiple job opportunities to people not providing actual care. 


Finally a suggestion. If you don't like Obamacare and don't wish to participate, I'm looking at you Governor Rick Scott of Florida, I've read many wonderful articles on the health benefits of green tea. I'm not sure if that nickname has already been taken though.

*If you like the views expressed in this blog please feel free to tell me how wonderful I am. If you do not like my views feel free to get your own blog or talk to your mama. I have a rule against online arguments, I leave that to congress. God Bless everyone regardless of your circumstance or view.

Wow I haven't blogged in awhile.

Get ready. I'm coming back soon, with 30% more gubment cheese.

All Dogs Sniff Butts: Debunking the Myth of the Designer Pooch

       My dog Pavo weighs 8 lbs and could probably be carried in a handbag, if I were the sort of person who carried a handbag.  Though I bought him from the humane society, he is what would be decidedly called a designer dog. He is a chi weenie, a genetically altered creature bred, for God knows what reason, to combine the traits of a Chihuahua and a Dachshund.
He is the sort of dog who turns heads at the park and regularly elicits squeals from little girls who exclaim “Oh he’s so cute.” Though he would fit in a handbag and could wear a hand knit sweater, my guess is that he would jump out of the hand bag and chew the sweater yarn until he threw it up.
He is from the part of the dog world that conjures images of gourmet dog food eaten in crystal dishes at the dining room table. Yet, if I let him, my dog would spend the entire day obsessively licking the place where his testicles used to be.
Yesterday I caught my fancy, designer dog eating the remnants of my wife’s lunch from the garbage can. Last week he attempted to eat his own vomit and he enjoys nothing more than a good pissing contest with his best friend, a pit bull 10 times his size. Poor Pavo always loses.
When he meets another dog in the park he barks and then sniffs butts. When given a chance he will happily chase the neighbors cat. He is 8lbs, but 8lbs of pure, unadulterated dog.
Growing up we always had big dogs, breeds like German Shepherds or Black Labs.  I was hesitant to bring a fancy little dog into my home. I thought, what will the neighbors think? When I walk him, me 6’1, 225lbs, I worry about eliciting strange looks from people who might think to rob me because, surely a man with an 8lb dog couldn’t possibly defend himself. Then I look at Pavo. I see him beg for food at the table. I see him bravely chase the neighbor’s 16lb cat. I hear him bark with excitement when he sees a squirrel.
When I come home and he runs, tail wagging, to greet me, I forget for a moment that he is an 8lb designer dog. I forget the images of Paris Hilton strolling through the airport with her handbag accessory dog. I smile. My dog, all 8lbs, is always happy to see me. He is the most uncomplicated relationship I have in my life. On bad days he is my sanity. He is a dog. A creature who, regardless of his size, would be perfectly happy to spend all day rolling around in the mud and eating grass.

Life beyond the Lockout; Man up and support the WNBA

With the threat of lockout looming in both the NFL and NBA, it is no wonder that sports fans everywhere are considering prescriptions for Xanax. However, we needn’t look to medication to calm our building anxiety.  If you are like me, a professional sports fan who thinks baseball is boring and is not satisfied with collegiate offerings on ESPN 27, I have a solution for you.  It’s called the WNBA.

There is an unfortunate and all too common perception that the WNBA is boring, slow and lacking in highlights worthy of primetime coverage on Sports Center. I bought into that kind of talk for several years and recently discovered that I’ve been missing out.

While the WNBA may lack some of the showboating and Blake Griffinesque dunks over a brand new Kia, the game is comparable if not better in multiple ways.

The ladies of the WNBA are equally capable of draining eye dropping 3’s, setting screens and scraping the floor for a loose ball. Their passing game often surpasses even the most seasoned of the NBA’s floor generals and they do it all for far less money than even the lowest paid NBA player.

The current highest paid player in the WNBA is Lauren Jackson, 2 time league MVP for the Seattle Storm. The current highest paid player for the NBA is Kobe Bryant, whose team was swept in the 2^nd round of the playoffs. Kobe Bryant brings in an eye dropping $24,806,250.00, not including endorsements. Jackson brings home a modest $103,500, or roughly 1/24^th the salary of Bryant. To further put Bryant’s salary into perspective, his yearly salary is larger than the total GDP of a few small island nations.

While Jackson continues to drain baskets, set screens and wow the league’s dedicated fan base; Bryant and his fellow band of overpaid celebrities are threatening a potential lock out over stalled salary negotiations.

As a dedicated basketball fan I generally shy away from the temptation to call NBA players spoiled, overpaid cry babies. However at some point it is up to fans to come together and demand accountable from the leagues that we support with our money, time and energy. Perhaps with lockouts looming in the NFL and NBA, it is time to come together and say enough is enough.

Regardless of whether or not there is an NBA lockout, I will remain a rabid basketball fan. My love for the game is unsinkable. What is uncertain is how my loyalty to the professional branch of Men’s basketball may change. Either way, I remain comforted to know that there is a professional league out there whose players play with a passion and love for the game that is unquestionable. This league just happens to be the WNBA, a league composed of people who do not share my gender. I am fine with that difference and I hope that more men will discover that there is life out there beyond the lockout.