Archive for category Health Tips for An Early Death
Glossophobia and The Fugitive Mind
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, Health Tips for An Early Death on May 21, 2011
Stage fright is a truly terrible feeling. Many people confront it, but usually they manifest their experience in different ways. Some people cry, some talk louder, some simply feel a vague sense of dread as they move through the speech. What I’ve noticed in talking to people about it over the years is that the experience of it changes dramatically from person to person, but it is always quite miserable if you feel it.
I have an awful fear of speaking on stage. As a teacher, I never feel nervous speaking to a roomful of high school students, but once a year in May I am asked to speak in front of a large audience on a stage with a microphone. The speech itself is something I’m honored to give, but the fear I feel starts around January and becomes nearly debilitating by the end of April. It is only a three-minute speech but my fear of it consumes months of my life.
People are always very supportive and try to be compassionate but usually the advice I get doesn’t help all that much. If you mention you have this fear you will get a lot of guidance, but often I’m not sure if the people who give it really understand the parts of it that make it so terrifying. It is an irrational feeling and most rational suggestions fail to address it in a way that is practical. You get advice like “Try to imagine them all naked”. If everyone in the audience were naked I’m sure I’d be even more terrified! How could the thought of hundreds of naked humans staring at you be even remotely comforting? Other people ask you “What’s the worst that can happen?” They have no idea of the circus that your brain becomes for three minutes. The worst that can happen is that you’ll be on stage giving the speech. People simply can’t comprehend why a relatively simple act like this can cause such suffering. I don’t really understand it myself.
The following is an attempt to describe the experience in real time. Some of this will sound silly, but every single thought written down has gone through my mind on stage. The goal of this piece is to create a running record of what stage fright actually feels like for me.
Alright, here we go. Need another sip of water. If you act confident, the fear won’t come. Okay, time to stand up. They just called me. Fix my jacket. Three buttons…how many should I button? I need to keep it buttoned cause my tie is too short. I look like Oliver Hardy. Someone once told me leave the bottom unbuttoned. Okay. Here we go. Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Just read. You should make some arm gestures. Just hold the podium. Don’t fall. Hands sweating. The podium is see through. Are the spots around my hand fogging up? Do they see me sweating? Act confident. Here it comes. Here it comes. I should have left them all unbuttoned. I should have acted more confident. Now IT is HERE.
Hot. What if I pass out? Falling, hitting my head. Would someone catch me? I’m too big. Where am I? Did I just miss a line…no, no, I’m okay….page one is over. Don’t look up. They are all looking at you. They are all looking at you. Is my fly zipped? Don’t look up. Fast. Dizzy when I look up. Falling, hitting my head. IT IS HERE.
Does what I’m saying make any sense? Do they hear me? I didn’t practice enough. I practiced wrong. Fast. I practiced too much. What if I forget how to read? Sweating. Pain in the top of my head. Antler pain. I feel like antlers are going to sprout out of the top of my head. Stay focused. Where am I? I am reading, but I don’t know how. There is another me reading. I don’t even know what the other me is saying. Why are they laughing? Did I say something funny? Did I do something embarrassing? I didn’t write that to be funny…what’s happening???
FOCUS!!!! Antlers. Sharp, sharp pain in the top of my head. Halfway done. Sweating. What if I can’t breathe? Slow down your breathing. What if I can’t? I don’t control my breathing. Long way to go in this speech. Lots of words left. What if I start saying weird things? What if I start shouting random nonsense? NO CONTROL. What if I burp? What if I start cursing? What if I lose control of my body? Sharp pain in my head. Antlers are growing inside. Will they pop out?
One page left. Downhill, downhill, breathe, another minute…..breathe. If I can just get one more page. What am I talking about? Where am I? DON’T LOOK UP!!!! THEY are watching you….breathe….breathe….you are going to fast…..no one understands….breathe….one paragraph now…..look up once…try it…..try it….dizzy….FOCUS….DON’T LOOK UP…..clapping…no more words….handshake….get to the chair….don’t fall….don’t pass out…get to the chair…..sit down…..breathe….
We Are Bones, We Are Dust
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, Existential Rambings, Health Tips for An Early Death, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on March 6, 2011
This thing that I think that I am, sometimes, I am not. Looking at an X-Ray of my right foot has twisted my mind into knots for the past few weeks. It’s not that they found anything that disturbing. My doctor discovered a bone spur, which I was pretty sure that I had. No surprise there. I am having surgery tomorrow. Again, not a surprise. The thing that got in my head was the X-ray itself. If I am what’s in that picture…what am i?
There was this picture of the bones in my foot staring at me. The doctor was pointing to things and saying a bunch of words, but I was transfixed on the picture. There I am? There I AM! There I am?!?!?!? This picture is of the inside of me. Underneath all of this skin and blood are a set of bones. These bones have been with me all of my life. They were at my high school graduation, they were there when I got married, they attended the births of my two beautiful children, they have seen me laugh, they have seen me cry, they have been there when I thought I was alone. I couldn’t process it. These bones are actually me!
The me that I think I am is the thing that experiences the world consciously. I am aware of feelings and ideas. I make plans and I remember experiences. I see, I smell, I touch, I taste, I hear. I have no problem associating these things with me. Then, there are these bones. They are in me, they are part of me, but I can’t believe that they are me. This picture wasn’t some random x-ray they keep in the back and show everybody. These were my bones! Seeing them really sucked the magic out of everything. I tend to think of myself as more than the sum of my parts, but maybe I am nothing more than my parts. Maybe, I am just bones and skin and blood with a few organs floating around.
There are parts of myself I have never seen. I don’t know what my hip bone looks like. I don’t know what my liver looks like. My heart, my brain, my lungs…all highly valuable parts, but I couldn’t tell mine from my neighbors. The me that I know seems so special, so unique. My memories seem so important, as if they are part of some great mystery that I have a lifetime to solve. My thoughts, my ideas, my identity all seem to be pieces in the great “who am I?” puzzle. They all conspire to make me believe that I am an enigmatic character whose mythology is terribly important. And then, there is this picture of the inside of my foot. It is not special. It is not unique. It is simply mineralized osseous tissue housed in a pile of skin that is called “foot”. There are somewhere in the range of 14 billion of them and they all pretty much look and act the same. Sure, there are minor subtleties and nuances, but for the most part, what is the difference?
My foot does not find itself unique. It pushes against surfaces over and over throughout a day. It works, it rests. It does not feel loneliness or claustrophobia if it is trapped in a shoe for too long. It does not become jealous that I am favoring my other foot. It does not make plans to meet with my spleen for coffee. It does not become romantically involved with my esophagus. It does not ponder the mysteries of the universe and wonder what will happen to it when it dies. It is material and material has no time for enchantment. It simply is. When it ceases to work, it will waste away along with the rest of this thing that is me.
There is a part of me that cannot imagine that this is possible. There must be something else, there must be something more. I am more than that picture. I am not just bones. I am not just flesh. I am something mystical. I am more than those parts. I am more than words on a page saying “healthy, well-developed 35 year old male suffering from Hallux rigidus“. Right? Right?!?!?!
Maybe this identity of mine that I find so fascinating is just a bunch of electrical impulses. Maybe we are just piles of material walking around among other piles of material, thinking that thoughts and memories and ideas make us more. These self-important piles of material spend much of their time avoiding damage so that they can one day be part of creating new piles of material. And on and on with no direction, no meaning and no end. Thousands of them are created each day and thousands disintegrate. It does not matter…it is only matter.
Ester of Wood Rosin: The Miracle Preservative that Works Miracles
Posted by Keith Spillett in Health Tips for An Early Death on January 18, 2011
Today I’d like to talk to you about a preservative that has been given a bad reputation over the years. Many people believe that because ester of wood rosin is made from wood or that its chemical cousin ester gum is used in paints, lacquers and varnishes, that it is something that they should avoid drinking. People who think this couldn’t be further from the truth. I have found, through days and days of careful research, that it is, in fact, a wonderous creation that has transformative, healing powers.
I came to this discovery by accident. I was in my home working on my model airplane collection and I cut my finger. I did not have a band aid, gauze or any soy sauce handy to stop the bleeding. Not wanting to ruin my scale model reconstruction of Delta’s first DC-10 airplane, I took the can of Fresca I was drinking and poured it directly on the wound. I wasn’t sure what might happen but you can imagine my surprise when the bleeding stopped and the wound closed within about 10 seconds. This was a rather large cut that should have required stiches, but the Fresca seemed to heal it right away.
I started to wonder why this happened so I looked at the can of Fresca. The ingredients seemed rather normal (EDTA, acesulfame potassium, brominated vegetable oil, carob bean gum). I looked each of the ingredients up and found nothing that piqued my interest until I got to ester of wood rosin. With one search of the internet, my entire life changed forever. Apparently, a scientist named Dr. Arnold Kreifeld conducted a study near Harvard University back in 2003 where he tested the effects of ester of wood rosin on injuries. Kreifeld’s assistants cut the arms of 100 study participants with razor blades. They then poured water on the wounds of half the participants and Fresca or Tahitian Treat (both drinks with large amounts of ester of wood rosin) on the other half. The half that were treated with ester of wood rosin showed significant improvement compared to the other group. Kreifeld, who is currently in Leavenworth Federal Prison for sending “suspicious” packages to news broadcasters, had stumbled on to the medical discovery of the decade, perhaps the century. Kreifeld first gained a great deal of recognition as a researcher for the tobacco industry back in the late 1980s. During his time there he co-authored a monumental study that showed that long term cigarette use leads to increased IQ scores. As important as his earlier work was, it is clear that his work in the field of ester of wood rosin research could have changed much of how we view medicine today. Had he not been imprisoned on trumped up charges, he’d be viewed with the same reverence as great medical minds like Jonas Salk, Hippocrates and Dr. Oz.
Deeply impressed with Dr. Kreifeld’s work, I decided to do a few experiments of my own. For one month, I bathed my two young children exclusively in Fresca. This was quite an expensive proposition (it takes nearly 17 cans of Fresca to fill a bath tub), but it was a sacrifice I needed to make for the good of mankind. My son, who we will refer to as Mortimer for the purposes of this post, has grown 29 inches since the experiment began. Mortimer, who at 3 years old stands nearly 6 feet tall, has already gotten recruiting phone calls from The University of Kentucky, The New Jersey Nets and The Ringling Brothers Circus. Thanks to ester of wood rosin, his future is bright.
I began pouring two cans of Fresca over my head per day, one first thing in the morning, one during afternoon visitation, and I have watched my head go from looking like bowling ball to having long, flowing Fabio-esque hair. My wife, who recently suffered a broken leg in a waterskiing accident, was injected with Fresca once a night during her sleep for two weeks. The doctors said it would take 3 months for her leg to heal; it took 9 days. I took a syringe to a local senior center down the street and randomly injected an 82 year old woman. With one surprise injection of ester of wood rosin, she went from barely able to walk to turning double back flips while singing the opening song from Guys and Dolls.
Fresca is not the only soft drink with ester of wood rosin, but I prefer it because of it’s tangy flavor. There are many drinks that contain this miracle of modern science. Several government military contractors and food conglomerates are considering creating ester of wood rosin supplements which may be on the shelf at your local supermarket within the next few years. Until then, you’ll have to stick to drinking soft drinks to get the health benefits of this little wonder. When you are staring at your birthday cake and looking at 146 candles, you’ll thank me for this great bit of advice.










