Aloe Vera

If you have esophageal or acid reflux, then you know it is not just uncomfortable, it is dangerous. If left untreated, it can cause cancers of the esophagus.

I used to self-treat with calcium carbonate (Tums). I was buying Tums at Costco to get the volume pricing. That was just masking the symptoms. Stomach lesions, the underlying issue of gastroesophageal reflux, are not treated just by using Tums.

I have used Prilosec in two treatment iterations. Prilosec does work. You have to use it every day for three weeks for the symptoms to disappear. The symptoms came back eventually, though, all too soon.

I have also used every OTC remedy on the market. The last one I used was Tagamet. That's a histamine H2-receptor antagonist that inhibits stomach acid production. Tagamet always works. But Tagamet is a powerful drug, interacts with other medications, and you're only supposed to take it for two weeks.

I just didn't want to give up my coffee.

A few years ago, I started collecting aloe vera cuttings, and cultivating the plant. There are dozens of varieties.

To treat, I break off a leaf and stick in whatever drink I am carrying around. Aloe is somewhat bitter, so I take it with iced tea with lemon, and the sour of the lemon counteracts the bitter of the aloe.

It took several months, but it did happen. The aloe vera cured my stomach lesions, and my acid reflux. And what's most amazing to me, is that I don't seem to overproduce stomach acid anymore.

I have seen aloe vera in bottles at the market. I've never tried them, and can't vouch for their efficacy. The whole reason I cultivate, it's about something that gets lost in the whole "buy local" fervor. The reason you buy local is because every plant and animal has its own immune system, and a plant that has been cultivated nearby has proven that it can tolerate environmental stresses very similar to the ones you encounter. Air pollution, noise, temperature, all these affect the viability of every living thing. When you ingest a plant that has developed immunity to the same environmental stresses that you face, it helps you.

I wouldn't even recommend trying aloe vera without talking to your doctor. All I know is that it works for me. I trust pharmaceuticals only for treating very specific disorders, and then, only for a limited time.
Originally posted 6/15/15

UPDATE: 1-27-16
At the time of this writing, aloe vera surreptitiously treated another stomach affliction and I just noticed. For years, I would experience cramps in the area between my stomach and duodenum. Even hours after eating, it felt like the food hadn't left my stomach. I would describe it as incomplete emptying. And I couldn't trace it to any one food. It happened one time right after eating a few macadamia nuts. I realized several months ago that I haven't had symptoms of this for at least six months. Whether it's correlation or causation, all I know is I believe this condition has also been cured.

Eight Twelve Twenty

If you believe you may have an anxiety disorder or just don't know, contact a mental health professional; many services including in the San Diego area are covered by Medi-Cal. Consult your doctor before following any health advice.

It can happen while you are driving around and feel your heart palpitating a little. Could that be serious? It used to happen to me all the time, and I was afraid to even go to sleep sometimes.

I didn't know that I was experiencing anxiety attacks. I was gulping air, faster and faster, and still thinking that I wasn't getting enough oxygen or something.

The doctor put me on a medication, and it stabilized me within a few weeks. He told me that I was breathing so hard that I was cyanotic. I stopped taking the medication abruptly as I didn't know about titrating or risking possible seizures.

By the time I stopped taking the meds, I had taught myself breathing exercises that work for me, in my particular situation, quite well. I tried yoga first but those people are all so uptight.

If you have ever participated in endurance training like running, then you already understand rhythmic breathing, for lack of a better phrase.

At the start of a run, it's optimal to get into a breathing rhythm right away. My way, was counting out numbers while I exhaled in tiny bursts. One-exhale, two-exhale, three-exhale, four-exhale, five-exhale, six-exhale seven-exhale, eight-exhale, until my lungs didn't have hardly any air left, then, a tiny inhale, and then a pause.

The first time I count to eight; the second time I count to twelve, and then keep repeating briefly until the rhythm sets in. You know you are in proper synchronization when you are striding with minimal effort and are repeating long beats like four-counts to sips of air.

Oxygen is an accelerant; hence you only need sips.

snip

When I got home, I jumped into the pool and floated on a huge innertube, staring at the bottom. The colliding surface waves refracted bright sunshine as intertwined strands and cords of pure light on the bottom of the pool. They crashed against each other violently and I closed my eyes. When I opened them a few moments later, the refracted rays were bouncing a bit more slowly against each other. I closed my eyes again and again, until the bottom was a diffuse pattern of calmly undulating rays. I could see a spider on the bottom of the pool. About two feet below the surface, a single particle of vegetation hung weightless in suspended motion.

Intersectionality Five Fast Facts

Sally Kohn excused the murders of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, because the murderer was a homosexual with a grievance. This is all you need to know about intersectionality.

Fewer Clantons

The Rolling Stone article on Eric Clanton is full of equivocation, but I liked the #helicoptertwitter reference.

So much passive language. Riots erupted, etc. How is Rolling Stone still a going concern?

Awful nice of Alan Feuer to mention Clanton's alleged victim, Sean Stiles. Alan Feuer wrote four thousand words on Eric Clanton and one paragraph went to Stiles. Alan Feuer. Probably pronounced "fewer." Alan Feuer. Journalism is such an honorable vocation.

Clanton may have at least seven victims, according to court records. Where was he radicalized?11!

Good job 4chan. If not for you, Eric Clanton would still be in a classroom, attempting to socially engineer the next generation. And Sean Stiles is only twenty years old. Stiles could have been one of his students!

Clanton took selfies at the event that matched the video evidence. Heh.

I don't know what brand of U-lock Clanton allegedly used in his attacks, but this critter weighs 2 lbs 5 oz so it's like getting hit with a hammer.

Clanton is represented by Oakland attorney D an Si egel, well-known in activist circles since NLG is like antifa's in-house counsel.

"Human rights over property interests," except situationally.

Republic of Kev

The ostensibly outraged feminist must say that, "Kevin Williamson wants to hang one-third of American women." Little do they know that this use of statistics points out that abortion has become so common as to be mundane.

Jessica, please. In the Republic of Kev, a woman who has already had an abortion would be grandmothered in, so to speak. The capital punishment regime would be a deterrent to new abortions, and the actual number of hanged women would be relatively low.

I'm not signatory to much of anything that Kev has to say, including this. It does say a lot about the protected status of women in the workplace that the female staff at the "Atlantic," would have had a good argument for a hostile work environment.

And it speaks volumes about the women involved, they just wanted to no-platform Kev. You'd think all these young firebrand female polemicists would enjoy having a Kev around to sharpen and temper their arguments.

Female columnists probably skew higher in neuroticism than average.

The Jessicas want a media representation of a young woman's abortion to be a moment of sisterhood with your friends Hannah and Marnie and Jessa being supportive.

Young women are conditioned to think of their first abortion as a rite of passage.

I wonder if Kevin regrets deactivating his Twitter account.

The Language of Lindsay Shepherd

Lindsay Shepherd does not have a Wikipedia page. The left has embargoed all content. She must be a very dangerous person.

Defiant bemusement.

Shepherd has conventionally liberal positions on gay marriage and climate change. In her Goodbye to the Left video, she rejects the "white guilt" narrative.

Shepherd invited Faith Goldy to Wilfrid Laurier University to give a speech entitled, "Ethnocide." That's a provocative way of talking about native displacement, and Shepherd is now labeled a Nazi for her troubles.

There is clearly something very serious going on with Lindsay Shepherd. Her evolution is happening right before our eyes.

If you call her a "crying white girl," she's just going to wonder why.

Eventually, Shepherd will remember Maslow's Hammer, and realize white guilt is just a tool.

Maybe the unthinging that the left does so well should be used on them. Colonization? That's not a thing. Once they define terms, they've lost the argument.

The Social Indignation Boycott

Boycotts are not the "free market." They are conducted by ostensibly free people, but they are not the workings of a "free market." Not when producers are made to weather abuse over an everyday business decision like marketing.

A free market is when countless individuals exercise their discretions in myriad ways. A boycott these days means a company has violated some queer social contract. Very occasionally an airline or whatnot will endure some mild general opprobrium, but that's nothing compared to the social outrage boycott.

Markets may operate more fairly or efficiently if more information is available to both parties to transactions. But Media Matters isn't Consumer Reports.

Yes, I did say "ostensibly free people." There is coercion involved, and people's livelihoods directly threatened. You think they will stop there?

The above-all reason to generally disdain boycotts is that they are invariably instigated by collectivists.

Maria Is Confident

Sometimes when I see an advertisement, I imagine the madcap life of the person that created it. It's always some earnest guy named Darrin, who has Paul Lynde as his brother-in-law, and Larry Tate is his boss. While Darrin juggles ideas and storyboards, chaos reigns in the background, like a family friend hitting on his hot wife and having her turn him into a dog.

The reality of the ad-man's life is probably more like a stultifying group-think collaborative, because how else would you get an ad campaign like Quicken Loans Rocket Mortgage, that is so attuned to the culture?

This is "Maria," and she is "confident."

This woman is a new breed we'll call "Adderall Mom," because she literally does everything. Her hair is frazzled because she has to fold laundry, buy groceries, and raise a child. Her kid's hair is just as frizzy and unkempt. Both of these gals are apparently semi-feral.

She even plays lead guitar in a garage band. It's a grrl band, with her black neighbor on keyboard, and her Asian neighbor on bass. Diversity quota achievement unlocked!

Maria is a total Mary Sue as well, or maybe rather a Maria Sue. She can make household repairs like removing the trap to her kitchen sink to fix a clog and hell's bells did her daughter put a doll's head in the sink? The mother's psychopathy has been passed on to her offspring.

Maria's kitchen sink doesn't have a garbage disposal, and there is something else about her domestic situation that seems a bit off. She ain't got no mans. But wait! There, in the background, out of focus, that clearly looks like a man.

But look at the composition. He is on one end of the porch, squeezed into a corner, and the kid is on the other side. The kid's mother is literally and figuratively between them, even elbowing him aside. This guy is clearly auditioning for the role of father figure, and failing.

If you've made it this far, congratulations, there is another ad for Rocket Mortgage that induces even more cringe.

This is "Sarah," and she is also "confident." Sarah is a fifth-grade teacher who builds combat robots and wears an empowering shirt with GIRLBOTS empoweringly emblazoned in a drippy monster-type font.

Why "GIRLBOTS," I wonder. Did New Line Cinema trademark that well-established term of female empowerment, "Fembots"?

Nevertheless, this is a very important milestone in advertising, because it is established scientism that if little girls do not see women doing STEM on television, they will become very discouraged and become psychologists.

Sarah's advertisement dispenses with the husband idea altogether, because it's established science that any woman who's that good at STEM was born with a male brain and is a lesbian.

Here, Sarah so doesn't need a man because she can program a lawnmower to keep her, ahem, lawn, nice and trimmed. Kind of makes you wonder what other motorized or battery-operated devices she programs in order to maintain her, ahem, other needs.

I can't wait for the next installment in the Rocket Mortgage series. I'm really hoping for a lesbian couple, and it would be neat if one of them was in a wheelchair.

At least Darrin was a good straight man.

Wind River (2017)

Wind River, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, is a multi-jurisdictional murder mystery set on an Indian reservation. U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent, Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), first appears onscreen in a white snowsuit, camouflaged to blend in with the wintry landscape. A pack of wolves is maneuvering to pick off a sheep from a grazing flock, and a concealed Lambert fires a round from his rifle, killing one wolf, and causing the rest to withdraw.

Two of Wind River's main themes are introduced in this scene. Lambert embodies the shepherd archetype, willing to protect sheep from wolves. This literal embodiment carries into a figurative one, as human beings are separated from their flock to perish.

We are also introduced to an implicit theme, that of camouflage and concealment.

In a subsequent scene, Lambert is called to investigate the killing of a steer, which he deduces is the work of a mountain lion and her cubs. "She's teaching them how to hunt. And she's teaching them on livestock," he tells his father-in-law, Crowheart.

The lions' tracks lead away from the steer carcas, to high up in the timber line, accessible only by snowmobile. The mountain passes around Park City, Utah stand in for the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

While tracking the lions, Lambert encounters different tracks, the deep tracks made by a person running, and then sees crimson stains in the snow. The tracks and blood trail end in the body of a young woman, half-buried in the snow, her blue parka a bright contrast on the white snow field.

Lambert pulls out his radio and calls for emergency assistance in a flat voice, "I found a body on the Wind River Indian Reservation, I need emergency assistance." Renner's Lambert is emotionally composed throughout, but it is a cloak for emotions that are buried beneath the surface. Lambert looks at the ground while talking, or looks into the distance to compose his thoughts, and never betrays the pain he himself is still processing.

Lambert and FBI Agent Jane Banner go to interview Martin Hanson, the father of the dead girl, Natalie. The scenes between Lambert and Martin form the emotional core of the movie. A full Shoshoni, Martin is even more reserved than Lambert. Martin has a tall, warrior stature, hawk-like features, and black eyes that are trying to comprehend the loss and grief before him.

Martin tries to conceal his grief, because he must. What remains of his family, his wife and his son, are disintegrating. Banner encounters Martin's wife, Annie, sitting on her bed, cutting her arms and and hands with a kitchen knife out of pure sorrow.

Lambert and Martin go out on to the porch, and a little of Lambert's hard-earned Arapahoe wisdom pours out. Lambert shares the lesson from his experience with loss, telling Martin, "You'll never be whole. Ever. What was taken from you can’t be replaced. You’re daughter's gone. As soon as you accept that, as soon as you let yourself suffer, allow yourself to grieve ... You’ll be able to visit her in your mind, and remember all the joy she gave you."

This is just the first instance of Lambert acting as an emotional shepherd, guiding those in pain toward resolution.

Agent Banner, played by Elizabeth Olsen, is emotional counterpoint to Renner's stoicism. Olsen has enormous blue eyes set in an almost malnourished skull, and they convey the fear she would rather disguise. While Banner is interviewing Sam Littlefeather on the doorstep of his dilapidated drug house, he attacks her with pepper spray. This sets off a dramatic sequence where Banner pursues him inside. Her vision is impaired, and it would have been understandable for her to wait before entering the house looking for him. It's a moment of seized initiative, of peering around corners, trying to recover enough sight to fight.

Martin's son, Chip, is one of the inhabitants of the dilapidated drug house, and he is almost too far into a drug haze to realize the fact that his sister is dead. While Chip is handcuffed in a truck waiting to go off to jail, Lambert confronts him with this stark reality, and enables Chip to begin his healing journey.

Once the mystery is resolved, Lambert guides Banner through her own emotional gateway, helping her to transcend the experience, as the movie itself transcends the genre. Banner lies in a hospital bed, recovering from her wounds, and Lambert picks up a woman's magazine and begins flipping through it.

"I know what you're doing," Banner says.

Lambert reads the title of one of the stories, "'How to know if he’s into you -- ten signs. Number one: he looks you in the eye when he speaks.' You’re supposed to do that anyway, ain’t you?" This makes her laugh, and then her emotions come out easily, cathartically.

Totality

It begins at 9:06 am PDT, on Monday. The path of totality is drawn across United States like the finger of God, evoking the spiritual division of our nation.

We once fought a war over our divisions, four score years after our nation's founding.

More than six hundred thousand men died in the conflict.

If you want to find out what started the Civil war, you can look at Wikipedia, or open a history book, and you'll get a satisfactory answer.

It's worth keeping in mind that history is written by the winners.

Well, now the victors have decided that the terms signed at Appomattox, and assented to by our institutions since then, are no longer valid. The symbols that long softened the shame of The Lost Cause are to be burned in the pyre of America's Great Cultural Revolution.

The symbols can no longer be said to stand for valor, bravery, brotherhood, and chivalry. They have been reduced to mere symbols of slavery.

Countless Southern boys carried the rebel spirit into battle in service to the Union, subsequent to the Civil War. Their blood was shed at Anzio, Belleau Wood, Chosin, Da Nang, and in countless other battles.

Even the Stars and Bars and the Confederate Battle Flag are being lowered.

The what then? question is being answered, and it's not pretty. Activists replaced a Robert E. Lee statue in Baltimore with a statue of a black pregnant woman. That aesthetic nightmare was rightly ripped down.

The ritual purification of the public square includes Father Junípero Serra, who established twenty-one missions in California. These were the first settlements of Europeans in California. Father Serra's statue in Mission Hills was vandalized.

Tear them all down if you want. Follow the Third Commandment and don't allow graven images, I won't argue. But these people are convinced they are on the right side of history, and that even the most degenerate images are better than heritage.

It's like hell on earth, now.

Dunkirk (2017)

In the opening scene of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, we meet Tommy, a retreating British soldier played by Fionn Whitehead. Tommy and his mates are walking through the deserted streets of the French town of Dunkerque, leaflets fluttering gently from the sky, when their stroll is interrupted, fractured by gunfire.

The fusillade is deafening, and startling, and the boys start to run, but only Tommy makes it over a wall to temporary safety. This begins Tommy's quest for escape and survival.

The enemy makes himself heard by dropping bombs that explode, firing guns that shatter the air, and especially by dive-bombing Stukas that sound like banshees. We never see the face of the enemy; in fact, the enemy is completely disembodied throughout.

War is loud because it's supposed to be. Dunkirk is loud because ear-splitting instruments of ruin represent chaos, and Dunkirk is a movie about the essentiality of order from within chaos.

That's also why we never see a German soldier. The enemy is unseen, yet potentially everywhere. They ply the English Channel in U-boats, submerged by the water that is itself an agent of chaos, and a barrier to safety.

The unseen German soldier represents the unknown. The unknown is an archetypal form of chaos. Outside your island of safety, of tea and toast with jam, of all that is known, there is an infinite universe that is hostile or indifferent to your existence and survival. The unseen German soldier is a reminder that outside the ordered realm, there exists a vast realm where the chances of not surviving are nearly infinite.

The promotional tag-line for Dunkirk reads, "When 400,000 men couldn't get home, home came for them." Home is the rolling green countryside viewed from the window of a train that must have been a welcome change from a beach pelted by wind that would blow the foam across the sand.

Home represents the ultimate orderliness, in a very British stiff-upper-lip manner. Order is personified by Commander Bolton, played by Kenneth Branagh. Calm, rational, stoicism is deeply embodied by Mr. Dawson, played by Mark Rylance, who pilots his motor yacht Moonstone across the channel to help the evacuation.

Order is the scores of life preservers neatly stacked belowdecks of Moonstone. Mr. Dawson doesn't even turn around at the sound of approaching aircraft. He knows they are Spitfires from the engine's thrum, saying, "Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, sweetest sound you could hear."

Stoicism is embodied by Mr. Dawson telling the shivering soldier he rescued, "There’s no hiding from this." And it's symbolized by the masses of soldiers queuing in neat lines down to the shore, dispersing when the Stukas appear, and reassembling when the Stukas move off.

This order has counterpoint in the utter chaos of war. Tommy hides along the mole, hoping to sneak aboard the next boat after being kicked off a hospital ship. The hospital ship is bombed at its berth, and sinks within minutes, men diving off the wreckage to safety.

Tommy boards another ship, which is torpedoed during the night crossing, and sinks also. His journey through chaos is nowhere near done, and neither is Britain's. Tommy's imperative is his own personal survival, by whatever means, but Nolan imbues him with virtue nonetheless. When Tommy's ship is torpedoed, he opens a hatch that allows a few boys a passage to safety. It's a very small act compared to the hundreds of boys and nurses trapped on board that will surely drown.

But it's not nothing. When Tommy arrives safely back on the dock in England, a man congratulates him, "Well done lads!" Tommy replies, "All we did was survive."

"That's enough."