Don't Call It a Come Back

Howdy,

It has been a while since I graced this site with a post, but here goes nothing. I am sitting at a Starbucks, because my internet is slow and I needed a change of scenery. I cannot discuss my work, but it is going well. Once I got over the initial freakout, I have felt able to handle the pressure. It is strange going into a store when you are deciding its fate in a law suit.
In terms of my personal life, things are just beginning to settle down. I have done a very bad job with the ladies. I feel destined to fail out of any relationship. I was not even dating my most recent epic failure. It might be my best "break up" yet. I got "dumped" on valentines day weekend after comming up from Puerto Rico. I always feel fine about ending relationships, when it is me doing the ending. It is my fault, because the last two times I got into something complicated with vague hopes of things working out. I plan to be done with that.
I have yet to properly explore the Island yet, I am waiting for visitors to go see the sights. I will have these in overwhelming numbers soon. I will be swamped the entire month of March. I dont know where everyone will sleep, but that problem will just have to work itself out. Look for my next post, I will explain about the PR pollicatical status.

Tiger Woods-Scott Lagos

This was written one week ago. I was really busy this week and wanted to look at it again before I posted.

Okay. I know it's the Olympics. And I should just be focusing on the noble, pure Olympic athletes. Okay, the Olympic athletes, that haven't been sent home for playing with their bronze medal with young, innocent girls, Scott Lagos, you, perverted 22 year old! You don't pull up your shirt and you are probably still partying in BC.... that's Scott above and if any one actually read this blog, I'd probably get in trouble with TMZ for posting this pic...

I'm not sure if there was another picture too risque for TMZ to post. (I swear I'm not being sarcastic). If there was that picture then I guess Scott Lagos got unlucky, if not, and they didn't edit anything out, that's ridiculous. Obviously he is at a party or bar, there are lots of people around. I hope he didn't disrobe. He is young and the girl is obviously enjoying herself. what's wrong with that? Isn't the point of being an Olympic athlete, that you can party with hot girls (although personally I'd rate this girl around a 6, maybe 6.5; good for me, I hope an Olympic medalist could do better.) I wonder how many pictures there are of Alberto Tomba, a five time Olympic medalist, three time gold medalist (known as three and five also for another reason). Alberto bragged a normal night for him is to party till five with three women, the night before the Olympic race, he will mellow out and party only until three, but with five women....

besides, Tiger Woods apologized today, well yesterday (okay a week ago).

One complaint about Tiger Woods long awaited public apology is that it was during the Olympics and is taking away some of the spotlight from the Olympics. It seems to me that he did it to take away the spotlight from one of the sponsors that dropped him. Accenture, which hosted a major golf tournament last weekend. I think this is definitely a fair. If a sponsor dropped me, you bet, I'd screw it over every chance I got. The Olympics unfortunately happened to be at the same time.

Sometimes I feel people don't feel responsible for their behavior. If you paid attention to Tiger's apology it is because you wanted to. Notice the period at the end of that sentence. Notice how it is complete thought. Nothing else needs to go in that sentence. You might have chosen to pay attention because there was nothing better on, or because you really wanted to. If you did, you might still have watched as much tape-delayed Olympic coverage as you wanted and maybe even some live coverage (if you were lucky). If Tiger's apology made you not care about the Olympics, and that is entirely possible, there is nothing wrong with you or Tiger, as far as I am concerned. That's just the free market of interest working there.

Listen I understand if you are one of the people personally affected by Tiger's story, but I have no idea why you are reading this blog. I'm writing from my perspective. For me, Tiger's story is pure entertainment. It's a good story. It's interesting.

Here's a man, that was so successful in his career that he made a billion dollars. A billion dollars. Hitting a ball about the size of a human testicle (okay, two put together), into a hole (really a cup). You have to be really good at this thing to make a billion dollars. With this kind of success, girls seem to come easy to him or easy girls came on to him.

Although morally this may be wrong. At some point all guys fantasize about getting together with lots of women or men. For many straight guys this always remains a fantasy. It can be hard to hook up with women; especially women that aren't promiscuous. Will women actually find you attractive and be willing to put out? Some guys just don't have want it takes to get with lots of women. If lots of women want to have sex with you, generally as a guy, you don't turn them down.

So this is Tiger's tale, he married one woman and got with lots of other women. Lots of people knew about this before the story hit the public. They had kept hush hush. Being a billionaire, maybe you could do what you wanted. Finally his wife found out, and the sh-t hit the fan and golf fans. If you took a vacation to Mars, you might not know that Tiger took a hiatus from golf since Thanksgiving and has been in sexual addiction therapy for awhile now.

After months of letting the story stew without any remarks. Tiger finally issued an apology in a break from rehab. Commentators wondered whether his apology was sincere or fake. Was he really sorry for his behavior or just covering his ass. Did he feel like he let the public down or that his behavior is none of the public's business? or was he just embarrassed?

Whether his apology was sincere or not. Why limit your judgment to (his) words, tone of voice and body language. Why not just see what happens next? See what he does.

Tiger can reform. He can become a faithful family man. Or he can learn to use more discretion with his sexual conquests. Either way, I hope he gets back on the golf course and I never have to hear about his sex life again. Personally I hope he gets back with his wife and stays faithful. But if he is not happy with that, I understand. Many males aren't wired for monogamy.

As for why I am interested in his story, because I think for me, Tiger represents a generation of males. Males that would do exactly what Tiger did. Men who play video games or computer games, and swear on the golf course, and in some ways still act like they did in high school or even earlier. Men who would given the chance sleep with 14 women, even though they were married. I wonder what's going to happen to him (to us). Is Tiger and my DC roommates going to man up? or is this incident not really going to help him grow? I don't see how that can happen. That's growth, redemption is what I'm hoping to see and that's why I'm following his story.

Back to the Olympics.... So far: Bode Miller three medals, one gold. Lindsey Vonn, two medals one gold, and many good-looking bikini pics. Apollo Ono one. Scott Lagos one medal, one standby flight back to the States.

Best.
GCNOF

NBC Prejudice

(caption) Lindsey Jacobellis, US Snowboarder, 2006 silver medalist; 2010 5th place.

I think NBC is prejudice against the unemployed, those that work evenings and weekends and (sometimes) those that live on the west coast. For example how can NBC, which shows the Olympics on Prime Time, and Tape Delayed the same events to TVs on the West Coast even though the actual events take place in Vancouver, which happens to be in the Pacific Time Zone.

I'm okay with scheduling events so they'll be live on the East Coast at a reasonable hour, but then please, show them live on the West Coast, too. It's not fair that the East Coast gets to hear Shaun White's coach swear, and then NBC edits out for the West Coast. I'm okay with the tape delay of figure skating, and cross country skiing.

Really, it's just the snowboarding and downhill skiing I care about. Now I can't check the Internet, because the results of say, Downhill Skiing or the Women's combined are posted around 12 p.m. on all the sports websites and the NBC telecast of those events are not until prime time 8-11 p.m. I have enough will power to avoid the Internet, if I know I'll get to see the events at 8. But say, I have to teach a class from 6-9 p.m, so I'm not sure I'll see the events on tv anyways. Then I might as well see what happens when it does. And if I'm at the gym, I can't watch any channel that has a footer with scores. That's how I heard about Lindsey Jacobellis's fall and Bode Miller's bronze.

Say, you are already behind in life, either you don't have a job, or you work nights and weekends, when most of your friends are free. It, life, already sucks. The least NBC could do, is show the events live. So you can watch the Olympics on TV when they actually happen and not worry about accidentally finding out the results on yahoo's sports page or ESPN. If you lost your job, you can console yourself by knowing that at least every two years, you'll have good day-time TV (The Olympics) to distract yourself from your troubles. Who knows, it might cut down on the people that fly planes into federal buildings (in Austin, TX)... at least during the two weeks of the Olympics.

as for me, I'm going to see what NBC website has to offer. As tonight, I'm going to miss NBC's telecast of the men's super G.

Best.
GCNOF

next post, more Olympic coverage. I'll talk about results, favorite events, and more.

ANTI DEPRESSANTS

I thought I'd write about a Newsweek article on the effect (or lack of effect) of anti depressants. Given the likely readers, I think I'm talking to people (ok, I'm talking to one person, El Capitan) who don't have these issues, nonetheless, loyal followers of Georgetown Tales: Here goes...

The Newsweek article cited studies that suggest most of the effects of anti depressants in curing mild to moderate depression can be attributed to the placebo effect. The idea that you are taking something that can help your depression has just the same effectiveness in curing your depression as taking an anti depressant helps you. Considering that therapy helps much better than antidepressants for all but the most severe forms of depression, this lack of impact by the anti depressants is not really all that surprising. The debate is over whether to tell patients this and lose the placebo effect of the drugs, or just let the placebo effect of the drugs do the trick and let ignorance be bliss.

After reading several economics books that talk about how taking a $1 aspirin, helps more than a 10 cent one, I'm a firm believer in the power of the placebo. But, I'll warn you, as someone with a mental illness, just because it's just in your head, doesn't make it less real. Society use to stigmize those with cancer, because people didn't know what cancer really was. We now have a stigma with mental illness, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, for the same reason. Finding out more about cancer, made it less stigmized; hopefully as we find out more about the brain and mental illnesses, we will erase the stigmism.

So, my recommendation is if you are depressed, see a therapist. Talk to someone (whose a professional). There are no side effects. If you have issues with getting help. You can be really open and joke and say you are seeing a "shrink", like Barbara Streisand in "Prince of Tides," and make a joke about it and remind everyone exactly where you are going or you can lie and say you have a weekly lunch or coffee date with your "friend," Lowenstein. If you choose this option, make sure no one is following you when you go to his or her office. I recommend wearing a disguise, even just a baseball hat and sunglasses. And make sure you don't put your guard down until it's just you and your therapist. You never know who you might see in the waiting room.

Therapy has definitely helped with my situation, but it didn't prevent my episodes. And unlike depression, the meds for serious mental illness are probably not much better than a placebo. The med I'm on, even says, it works, Eli Lilly is just not sure exactly why. This makes sense, because as far as I know, we (the best scientists/doctors in the world and, of course, me) don't know exactly what goes wrong in the first place. If you don't know what causes something to go wrong, it's kind of hard to fix it. Of course, everyone I know with a serious mental illness who changes meds has an episode and winds back up in the hospital. Could all this be because of the placebo effect?

Speaking of friends and hospitals. You can get an update of my friend, who I blogged about last week. Doug's posts are at http://www.dougmeron.blogspot.com/. He's in the hospital and am pretty sure he's not going to be let out any time soon. : -(.

Love to hear your thoughts on the anti depressant article, or any issue of mental health.

Finally, for anonymous, is this emo boy style thing a porn website, or is it to help us get some style so that we can become cool; and therefore, we will be able to pick-up hot chicks, have real sex and therefore not have to visit porn websites?

Peace, (used My friend, Doug and also, I think, cousin N)
GCNOF

Putting The Horse Before The Horse

Here is an interesting bit from Israel's Defense Minister, the other Barak. He is concnerned that Israel may become an "undemocratic apartheid" state. What exactly does he think is going on right now? Possibly his reference to the obviously unpopular and failed South African system was a rhetorical point to signal his disaffection for the Israeli government's policies. An admission that the current state of affairs is neither moral nor practical is a good sign, especially from the military.