Cat
Category: Generic
Basic Needs Plus
Daily writing prompt
What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
Which branch of science was it that defined the three basic needs of life as food/water, shelter, and clothing? Was it psychology or sociology or philosophy? That’s the real answer to this question, right? Take away one of those three things and the good life gets pretty shitty, pretty fast.
What can we add on top of that to make life aces? Let me list a few things and then one final thing that outstrips them all.
- A job with an income. You know… so that you can get the things that you need to get through your daily stuff… and stuff.
- Transportation to get you to where you need to be to get/do the stuff you need to do.
- Music. Speaking for myself, which should be obvious gievn that I’m the red head who is writing this idiotic crap, life would be pretty much garbage without music. I’m including listening to and playing music in this statement as both are mega important to me.
- People to share life and experiences with. Friends, family, strangers. This is hinting at the one thing I will write about when I sum up this whole post, but really it’s about in good times and bad times I’ll be on your side forever more. That’s what friends are for. Right?
Which leads me to my summation. The one thing that supersedes everything else. For me, personally, in order to live a good life I need four things. Four basic needs, not just three. Food/water, shelter, clothing, and Jen and the kids. Take away all of the other stuff and leave me with those four things? I’ll be pretty good with that. That works for me.
Let it End, Please
The first week back at work after a vacation. It has been a rough one. It’s always rough, but this week has been extra rough.
I was hoping it would end quietly and mercifully but I just got asked to join a 3:00pm meeting and it’s going to stress me out and piss me off and I am not looking forward to it.
10 minutes left before I have to join the conference call.
Crud.
My Favorite Person
I live with her. I travel with her. I have dinner with her every night. I spend as much time as humanly possible with her. I hate being away from her at all, even when I have to go into the office for work, or go to the store, or whatever.
Yes, kind readers, there is only one possible answer to today’s question and it shouldn’t be hard to guess who I’m talking about.
I spend the most time with the love of my life, my wife. Jen. My dream come true. No one on Earth even comes close and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hipsta-Kitty Take Two
Pseudonym
Back in high school my band played at the annual Greek Festival in Lowell, MA. This would have been 1988, I think. One of the guys in the band was Greek and he set it up for us. He told us that, for appearances sake, we should all pretend to be Greek. We decided to each come up with a fake, Greek sounding last name. We then proceeded to argue over which of us got to use the name Papadopoulos. Our drummer won out. That is the only time I’ve ever even thought about using a different name.
Years later I went through a period of obsession with playing EA Sports NHL games on my Playstation 2. When the game introduced the ability to build your own players I made one with my name and put him on the Bruins. At some point I made a bunch of players for various teams (all very tall and very overweight with red hair, wearing number 71 (because I was born in 1971, get it?)) and used my first, last, middle, and confirmation names in various order to give them all unique names… because I am the king of friggin’ nerds.
I’ve never even thought about a different name. I am named after my father. That’s the only name I’d ever want to use. If I were forced to use a different name? How about Luke Skywalker? That’s a good name. How about James Eric Beck (as in Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, get it?). How about Alex Neil Lee (as in Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, Geddy Lee, get it?). How about Robert Papadopoulos? I bet that name would get me a gig someday.
Chocolatey Goodness
Like all food related questions this one has two answers. One from before weight loss surgery and one from after.
Before the surgery I weighed 450 pounds. It shouldn’t take any difficult math to prove that chocolate was a huge part of my life. My love for chocolate was deep and passionate and a little weird. I just loved me some chocolate. I am also a very picky eater so I can’t say I devoured all chocolate bars, but I did eat massive quantities of those that I liked… and there were a lot of them.
Snickers, Milky Way, Nestle Crunch, 100 Grand, Fast Break, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, plain old ordinary Hershey Bars, and many, many more. I could eat them by the truck load and I had the waist line to prove it.
Post surgery things are different. My gutted, rewired digestive tract can no longer process more than the smallest amount of sugar. That means my chocolate bar devouring days are pretty much over.
Or are they?
I thought so when I agreed to the surgery, but since then I have found a lot of sugar free chocolate options. There are all sorts of no-sugar protein bars that I eat happily. Atkins makes some, Quest makes some, there are a couple of others as well. That’s cool. Possibly even sanity or (dare I say it) life savingly cool. Did you know, however, that both Hershey and Reeces make sugar free bite sized candy? Oh yes they do, and Robbie has made very good use of them. Oh yes, he has. If I had to pick one as a favorite it would probably be the plain old sugar free Hershey Bites, but the Reeces Peanut Butter Cup Bites are pretty amazing too. Do they taste like the real thing? Maybe. Is it close enough to not matter if they really don’t. Yup. Close enough for me at least.
So there you have it. Before surgery I ate chocolate like my life depended on it. Since? I still dig mme some sugar free chocolate. Life is good.
Again? Already?
They aren’t even trying anymore.
You want my answer to today’s question? Read yesterday’s answer. Same thing. Two days in a row of pandering to the religious right by asking a question that will fish for the bible as a response. Yippee.
Alas, Babylon
Hot Rod
1984
Brave New World
See a trend? I do too. Both in my answer and in the question. I wonder how they will fish for the bible tomorrow. Someone at Jetpack or WordPress.com must be trying to rig a bet or something.
Books
This question is pandering to the religious folks, right? 95% of the responses are going to be the bible. I know it. You know it. We all know it. Insert my frustrated sigh here.
Three books… I don’t know if I can narrow it down to three. They’ve all had an effect on me to some extent or another, even the crappy books.
Okay, the first one we’ll go with came from my school days. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. I was born in the 1970’s and came of age in the 1980’s. The cold war had a big influence on who I was. I don’t think all of my friends were obsessed with imminent nuclear annihilation, but I sure as hell was. We lived close enough to a major city and, more frighteningly, a couple of air force bases and one army base that the chances of me and my family surviving a nuclear conflict was pretty much zero. When you’re 13 years old and have a vivid imagination and a bit of a dark side… well… that leads to quite a bit of near panicked fear. Alas, Babylon was written in 1959 and it tells the story of a town in Florida trying to survive the aftermath of world war iii. I was both terrified and fascinated by it. I forget what grade we were in when we had to read it for English class but I loved the book and didn’t sleep for weeks after I read it. I knew that the situation described in the book were not accurate by 1980’s nuclear capabilities (the bombs described in the book were wimpy by comparison) and it ignored the whole nuclear winter thing. Still, it made me want to read more post-nuclear fiction in some weird attempt to prepare myself for the inevitable.
On to book number two. This one also goes back to my school days. 8th grade, if I remember correctly, but it could be earlier than that. Hot Rod by Henry Gregor Felsen. This one hit me hard because there is an extremely graphic and violent twist in it. It was bloody and gory and I couldn’t believe we were asked to read it in school. At that point in my young, innocent, sheltered life I was not allowed to watch R rated movies. This type of violence was not something I was used to. The book was written in 1950 and was about teenagers driving souped up cars way too fast. You can probably guess what the graphic, violent twist entailed. This book clued me into the idea that a novel didn’t have to be PG rated. There was more to life than that, and books could give me a glimpse.
The third book I am going to go with is Weaveworld by Clive Barker. In my last year in high school I was exposed to the horror genre through a movie written and directed by Clive Barker called Hellraiser. It scared the every loving shit out of me. I was terrified, I was grossed out, and I was instantly obsessed with the genre. When I found out that Clive Barker was better known for writing short stories and novels I checked him out. I can’t remember if Weaveworld was the first of his books that I read. It might have been The Damnation Game, or one of the Books of Blood collection. I’m going with Weaveworld because it was the best of them all, by far. My new horror movie fandom morphed into a horror fiction fandom almost instantly. I tore through everything Barker had written up to that point. Weaveworld is amazing. It’s not really scary, though there’s some gore to be found. It’s actually more of a fantasy novel, I think. Really… it’s just a Barker novel. It’s a little of everything thrown into one super imaginative setting that no one else could have ever come up with. It’s very hard to explain. There’s one other item of note here. When I ran out of Barker books to read I needed to find someone else to hold me over until more books were released. That’s when I started dipping my toes into Stephen King. Yeah… we’re still drowning in that particular literary pool today. Talk about a master, right?
Okay, there’s three books. I could have mentioned 1000 others, and none of them are about a guy who is his own father.
Connecticut
Inside the Red Head's Head 