Swirling Chemicals

I've been sick for a while now. A week, give or take. My illness moved from a simple cold to a sinus infection, confirmed by a visit to the doctor. And to combat that I now have a whole new cocktail of chemicals running rampant through my system.
   First there is the antibiotic. Amoxicillin. A full 10-day course. This will deplete not only the bad bugs in my system, but it will get rid of the good bugs too. Antibiotics usually mean diarrhea.
   So, to combat that I bought some probiotics. Yakult, which, come to find out, is actually made in Mexico - ironic considering I got it to keep from getting the Hershey squirts - and some stuff from the Vitamin Shoppe. Hopefully that will put beneficial flora back in my gut to replace what the antibiotics kill off.
   I also got some vitamin C. Which does make my pee an alarming, almost super-heroic shade of yellow, but otherwise I'm not certain does anything but add to the chemicals coursing through my bloodstream.
   I have some decongestant still hanging around too. Sudafed. Which, if I were a chemist and totally amoral I could turn into meth.
   Then there's the nasal spray. I got it free from the doctor, but it's a nasal steroid, so that's added to the brew inside me. It also really dries out the boogers in my sinuses, so that in the morning I basically blow out the lining of my nose. Which I think is cool but others might have a different idea.
   So instead of blood in my veins I now have a witch's cauldron of eye of newt and wing of bat. I'm not so certain it's good for me, to tell you the truth. But at least I can breathe at night.

Snickers Owes Me

I was just thinking about how many Snickers bars I've eaten over the years. There's no way I could get an accurate count, but it's a lot. An awful lot.
   Since the time my mother first let me have chocolate I think I've been eating Snickers. Had 'em in school - elementary through high school - usually as part of some sort of candy sale to support the marching band or Spanish club or what have you. Had 'em through years and years of Halloweens, from the regular-sized bars to the half-sized to the bite sized to the fun sized. Had 'em with almonds and with dark chocolate, and in ice cream bar form. Had 'em in college and after college, as a snack on the plane for a business trip, and as a meal at the hotel after a long day.
   I've had more than my share of Snickers bars, is what I'm saying. One look at my waistline could tell you that, though.
   After all these candy bars, after all these empty calories, I think Snickers owes me. Not more Snickers bars, they owe me an apology.
   Apology for what? For not really being food. If you think about it, candy bars are one of the few products that survived intact from the time there was no FDA back in the 19th Century. It used to be that candy bars were marketed alongside various other snake oil products as some sort of calmative or invigorator or cure-all. The government legislated away most false medicinal claims, but candy bars survived. So did soft drinks.
   There really is nothing about a candy bar that is good for you. Just empty calories, and in the last 20 years lots of high fructose corn syrup. High-fat, high-sugar, high-calorie, low nutritional value. You could probably just eat a stick of butter and be better off than eating a candy bar. But I still eat them.
   I don't want to come across as a crazed liberal, but if as a society we're going to legislate an end to cigarette smoking, why aren't we doing the same with junk food? We decry Philip Morris for profiting for decades with a product that kills people. M&M Mars does exactly the same thing, and yet we encourage kids to become consumers. Something ain't right here.
   So I'm going to sit right here until Snickers apologizes. I think I'm gonna need a snack while I wait, though. Something with chocolate. Maybe some peanuts too. And some caramel. Nougat would be nice. Hmmm...

Bliss

Sometimes I wish I was stupider.
   Really. There are days I wish my mind would just turn off. Times I wish I had less ambition. Moments when I believe that I would be truly happier if I didn't think so damned much.
   If I could just slog to work, then slog back home, eat dinner, turn on the tube and zone out for three hours or so until it was time to go to sleep to start the cycle all over again, I might have less stress. If I had nothing to strive for then I'd never be disappointed.
   It seems that all I've been doing lately is fighting, both against myself and outside forces. I'm trying to get published and that's a definite uphill battle, I've been trying to get a decent job close to home - good luck on that - I've been trying to put together a business plan for a new venture my brother-in-law and I are starting, and that's a struggle. I know, the less-trodden path is the more rewarding, etc. etc. etc. But does it have to be such a rocky, frustrating road? Can't it be just a little bit easier?
   I know - I'll commit a crime and get put in prison. I'm thinking some non-violent white-collar crime, nothing with blood or where anyone gets injured, that's just not right. There's no ambition in prison but to get out, which will happen eventually. Plus the days are nice and regimented, it's all done for you.
   On second thought... if I went into prison the first thing I'd probably do is plan to break out. And since I'd have nothing but time I'd probably accomplish it. But then I'd get sloppy and get put back in the klink for making a stupid mistake like using my real name on a lease or something.
   Better to walk the straight and narrow right now. It might be frustrating and full of disappointment, but at least it's honest.

Delayed Compassion

My grandmother wasn't a very nice person.
   I'm talking about my father's mother, who lived a block away from us when I was growing up. I spent my childhood enslaved to her and my grandfather, doing all sorts of manual labor for 25 cents an hour. She was a child of the Depression, one of the 'Feminine Mystique' generation, and generally sullen, resentful, and spiteful. Not to mention openly racist, but that wasn't her so much as the times she grew up in.
   After my grandfather died it fell to me to take care of her, which meant I just did the same thing I always did, mowed her lawn and cut limbs and weeded and all sorts of other things. She didn't drive, so she stayed by herself in her big house, waiting for visitors and emerging for graduations and holidays. It was kind of sad, actually, she'd been so mean and objectionable that she spent the last few years of her life mostly alone.
   It wasn't until just today that I realized how awful that time of her life must truly have been. Sure, she had the telephone, and she loved her San Antonio Spurs on TV, but she spent 99 percent of her time all by herself. No visitors, family only on special occasions, a visit from a Lutheran minister once every few months to take communion. I knew all this at the time - how could I not - but I was still so close to my decades-long servitude that it didn't matter to me.
   Now it makes me want to weep. No one should have to live like that, not even a bitter, hateful old woman who never did anything for anyone else. Time and distance have given me perspective and softened my own hard feelings.
   I feel sorry for her now, trapped that way, in a suburban prison largely of her own making. And it makes me realize the prison I'm building around myself, isolated, alone, becoming increasingly disconnected from people. I don't want to go out like that. I want a house filled with friends and family, I want people to drop by at all hours, I want to live my last days with noise and clamor and company, not bitter and alone, waiting for the end to come.
   Cross your fingers I'll get my wish.

Gimme Fever

I'm sick.
   Probably got it from work (ugh...) where some people just don't understand the concept of staying home if you've got something contagious. So I have a fever and chills, and I've been wrapped up in a blanket in my recliner for much of the morning, dozing and waking myself up with my own snoring.
   I think I've figured it out. Being sick is not just a virus's method of propagating itself - though it is that - it's really a way for your body to say 'enough' and make you rest.
   I've been sleeping poorly the past week or so, maybe longer, and I've been keeping on. Going to work, writing, fencing, working out, as if everything is just fine. But it's not. The sleep was the first clue, when that's interrupted you need to pay attention. But I didn't. And now I'm sick.
   I don't feel like going anywhere or doing anything, all I want is to sit and wrap myself in a blanket and watch really bad TV. And I probably should do just that for the next few days.
   But you know what? I'm going to get up tomorrow morning and I'm going to go to work. Why? Because if some bastard infected me with his sickness I'm going to make sure everybody else gets it too. Let them spend their Thanksgiving shivering and locked in a bedroom while the rest of the house enjoys a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
   What's that? I'm being vindictive? Damn straight. I didn't even want to be working in the first place...

What If?

What if every American just refused to go to work one day? I mean all of them (us), every one, including policemen, firemen, pilots, sewer plant workers. Everybody.

What if cars could drive themselves? Would they really do that much better a job than we do?

What if you remembered everything? For all your life. What you ate for breakfast as a three-year-old, every stroke from every time you shaved, how much water was in every glass you ever poured. The look on that middle-school kid's face when you told him his family was poor? Everything.

What if the Chinese had a decent navy? They could put a lot of sailors on the water, and a lot of Marines on foreign soil.

What if lightning keeps the Earth alive? Like a huge defibrillator?

What if someone was secretly photographing you when you picked your nose, and then they posted the pictures on line? And then what if someone did that to them?

What if you could understand what your dog was thinking? Would you be flattered, bored, or horrified?

What if you could understand what your cat was thinking?
   We know the answer to this one. You'd be horrified. Cats think of nothing but murder all day.

What if you weren't potty-trained until you were 30?

What if you could see air? What would you see? And would that make you functionally blind? And if you were an astronaut how would you see out of your space helmet, and how freaky would space with no air be to you?

What if all the power in the world stopped working? Even solar and hydroelectric? What would we do?

I Could Be Dreaming

I had a dream last night. One I remembered, I mean, I dream every night but unless I write them down I don't remember them, and I haven't made the effort to write them down for quite some time. This dream did not compare with the 'Madonna eating Mrs. Fields cookies in the flying deLorean' dream from twenty years ago, but it was interesting in its own right.

FADE IN
    You never know how dreams start, they just kind of pick up from somewhere, this was no exception. I was wandering through a city that looked vaguely like a cross between Rome and London – both places I've spent time – where the ends of the city blocks were lost in mist.
   A clock walks by. An anthropomorphic, round, six-foot-tall alarm clock walks by, but because it's an alarm clock it doesn't have knees so it just kind of waddles and clanks. It looks a little like one of the kids' toy phones with a face from years ago.
   I see the 'Tuppence' woman from Mary Poppins – complete with black Victorian clothes and pigeons on her hat - only she's behind a folding table piled high with pirated CDs. I tell her that nobody buys CDs any more and she tells me to 'scram.' Yup, she said 'scram.'
    At the corner by the 7-11 (which I guess they have in Dreamland London-Rome) there are four dusty workmen in a battered blue pickup truck, drinking beer and listening to Conjunto music complete with rapid-fire accordion music. None of them are Mexican, though, they all look like Appalachian rednecks.
   I'm hungry, and there's a street vendor trying to sell me that Boba stuff, the horrible bubble tea abomination you 'drink' with those huge straws. I don't want any but the guy follows me down the street. So I take him back to the Tuppence lady so she can tell him to 'scram.'
FADE OUT

I'm guessing there's some serious psychology underneath all that, but it's just so weird that I'd rather celebrate that than try to pick everything apart to find meaning. Good thing there weren't any rocket ships, or cigars, or trains going into tunnels, that would make it really uncomfortable...

A New Boutique

Ah, sir, welcome to the Change Boutique.
    Actually, I think I'm in the wrong…
Nonsense, sir, you wouldn't have been able to find this establishment if it weren't your time.
   So why am I here?
That is the question, isn't it? Have you undergone some sort of drastic life change recently?
   Not really. Well.. I was one of the millions of people who lost their jobs last year.
That counts.
    But I was cool with it. Really. I had money saved up and with an unemployment check coming in I made it work.
Are you still 'between assignments?'
   Hey, funny, that's what I called it. No, I found a gig. Contract work.
And?
    I'm doing doing the same stuff I was doing nine years ago.
Ah… a step back.
    Kind of. But they're paying me pretty well. I just don't want to that work any more.
So, not recently unemployed, then re-employed at something you'd rather not be doing.
   It brings in rent money, can't ask for more than that.
Actually, you can. Anything else?
   I'm trying to get a franchise started back in my home town.
That's certainly a change.
   Wait, are you taking notes?
Of course, sir. Is there anything else, anything big that's happened to you lately?
   No. Well, my father died.
That's very big. My condolences. How are you holding up?
   Some days are better than others. Some days are way worse.
Feeling your own mortality, then?
   Big time. And I'm not married and I don't have any kids.
Do you want those things?
   Absolutely.
Wow, just a barrel of conflict here. What else is happening?
   I'm trying really hard to sell my writing.
Ah… you want that particular change then, you want to make a living as a writer?
   Of course.
And you feel you're being kept from it?
   Well… I suppose…
I can say without equivocation, sir, that you belong here in the Change Boutique.
   I don't like dealing with this kind of stuff.
Of course you don't. That’s why you need our help.
    Who are you?
Just relax, sir. Go with the flow.
    I can't. I want to fight this, try to swim out of the rip tide.
Struggling will only tire you out more.
   Crap… do you mind if I cry? Maybe just a little?
You go right ahead, sir.

Carried On The Tide

You ever get the feeling that forces beyond your control are not-so-subtly pulling your strings? That maybe the seeming coincidence or synchronicity of events in your life aren't all that coincidental or randomly synchronous? That, for some unfathomable reason that is well above your mortal pay grade, you're being carried almost forcibly toward a certain goal?
   Doesn't it kind of piss you off?
   That's what's happening to me right now, at least it seems so, and I'm not quite sure how to take it. I've always been someone who hesitates on the threshold of life change, unwilling to take that step through the door until I get a serious push. I know this, and I'm working on it, I swear. But I get the feeling that I'm not getting pushed so much as getting a combat boot to the small of the back.
   I'm going along with it, since there's not much else I can do right now. They say life is what happens when you're making other plans, don't they?
   But I sure wish I felt more in control.

Where My Stooges At?

I had a mild panic attack today, nothing serious, but it did take me a moment to get over. I don't have cable, you see, haven't for over a year now, and I this afternoon I was really jonesing for some Three Stooges. And I couldn't find them.
   There are some days you just need to see Stooges, and today was one of those days. And I was foiled. Back when I had cable it was a simple matter of looking up 'Stooge' in the directory, and I guarantee you there was would be an episode airing on one of the 500 channels within a few hours. But now... no Stooges.
   Oh, sure, I could have gone to YouTube, but it's not the same. It's just not. Watching Stooges sitting at my desk, on some low-res pirated screen capture... that's not a prime Stooges-viewing experience, that's what you do when you're at work pretending to accomplish something.
   I wanted to see Larry, Moe and Curly - not Shemp, not Curly Joe - smack each other with boards or hit each other in the face with lobsters or poke each other's eyes out while I sat on my couch and enjoyed their decades-old antics while my head rested on cushions. But it wasn't meant to be.
   So I watched COPS instead. Which is like the Stooges, but in HD. And the stooges usually don't have shirts on and the only antics they have are running from the police and getting tasered. But it's still better than YouTube.

What's The Protocol?

I was just in the grocery store, gettin' groceries - duh - just minding my own business and looking to stock up the refrigerator, which was running low on supplies. I was taking my time, ambling about, and I saw a guy who looked like a street person. He was unkempt and dirty, and his face and hands were deeply tanned, like he spent most of his time outside. He had a wild-man beard, the kind where you let everything grow including your neck, but oddly enough his extremely long hair seemed freshly-washed. Or at least not as dirty as the rest of him.
   So I thought that maybe my first estimate was a bit unkind, and that he might actually be a mechanic or a roofer or some kind of tradesman that gets dirty regularly but has a home to go to at night. I moved on and watched a few more people, like the Armenian guy with the shaved head wearing an Ed Hardy shirt and sunglasses indoors, and the SoCal soccer mom with bleached blonde hair and 'I swear I'm only 29' desperately hip clothes, and the cartoon-like short man who was as wide as he was tall with a head shaped like a great big gumdrop. Not a bad day for people watching, actually.
   After my peregrinations I ended up at the only open register, right behind Homeless Man.* He had a Von's card, though it was beat all to Hell and had an odd, almost melted shape. The checker gave him his total, $5.43, and he dug into his pocket.
   He drew back a hand with the filthiest, grodiest wad of $1 bills I have ever seen. And I used to be a waiter, people tipped me in bills they didn't want in their own wallets. He only had $4, and had already presented the cashier with 4 quarters, laid out carefully on that little stand they have. She told him he was short, and he dug back into his pocket for a fistful of change which he counted out laboriously. Being this close to him for so long I had to reverse my earlier estimate. This guy was homeless for sure, he just happened to find somewhere to wash his hair earlier in the day. Or the day before.
   His transaction successfully completed, he took his purchases - gum, I think, and something else - and departed. His money sat on the little shelf, just leaping with grime and bacteria and unknown nastiness. I was wondering if the cashier was just going to leave it there, but she grabbed a plastic bag and scooped the bills like she was picking up her dog's poop. Then she got another bag and did the same with the change. She stuffed one bag inside the other and then put the wad under the cash drawer.
   It had never occurred to me that not only did some people have 'so gross you don't want to touch it' cash, but that cashiers would have some sort of personal routine for handling that kind of terrible yet perfectly legal tender.
   You learn something new every day.


*sounds like a super-hero, doesn't it? Kind of a hapless one, but still. Nobody steal this, I'll make a script out of it.

A Or B?

I've been thinking about choices lately, one or the other, this or that, yes or no, etc. etc. I don't mean the nature of choosing or the act of choosing, I mean the choice itself. How do human beings make what might seem to be impossible choices? So today I want you to think about the following choices, but I want you to visualize the situation in your imagination. Don't intellectualize it, go with your gut.

Which is funnier:
a clown falling down or an old lady falling down?

Which tastes better:
a five-star meal from a celebrity chef or PB&J made by your mother, with the crusts cut off?

Which is more cuddly:
a puppy belly or a fluffy cat?

What gives you more satisfaction:
completing project for work or raking the leaves at home?

Which super-power would you rather have:
flight or invisibility?

Which fast food is best for football games at home:
pizza or chicken wings?

Which gives you more pleasure:
a hot bubble bath or seeing the jerk who cut you off in traffic pulled over by the cops?

Alone

I didn't used to mind being alone. I preferred it, to tell you the truth. Just being by myself didn't mean I was lonely, and no roommates meant my place was mine, I could walk around in my underwear to my heart's content, do dishes or not, leave laundry until it was an absolute emergency. No big deal.
   I don't like it now.
   I find myself coming home to an empty place, no wife, no kids, no pets, just a few houseplants, and I know I'm missing out. I'm alone and I'm lonely. Even as recently as six months ago I didn't know that.
   What changed? I wish I knew. I'm getting older, as we all are, and maybe I'm feeling the march of time, maybe my chance to have a wife and kids is slipping away. But I'm so out of dating practice I don't know how to go about it any more; I don't know how to find someone I want who would want someone like me. It's enough to make me despair, really.
   But I'm not gonna. Things will get better, but they're not gonna get better all by themselves. I have to do something, I have to make this happen. I know what I want and I just have to go out there and grab it.
   Sure wish I knew what to do...

If A Tree Falls On El Molino...

A tree fell over in my neighborhood today.
   We're not having any violent weather, no rain, no fire, no wind, no nothing. Nobody hit it with a car or took a chainsaw to it until well after it had toppled. One minute it was standing tall and the next it just... fell over.
   I happened to walk right past that tree on my way home from the gym not an hour before its demise. I've passed by this tree on foot several times a week for years now, with never a second thought as to its sturdiness or fortitude. It's a tree, for God's sake, it's a landmark, an ecosystem unto itself. As a matter of fact, a little dog was taking a leak on that exact tree as I walked by.
   Must have been one serious whiz.
   But as I watched the city workers carve it into little chunks small enough to fit into the wood chipper, I got to thinking. There is no constant in the world but change, after all, and when a neighborhood tree just pitches into the street you'd better take notice. Is this a metaphor I need to pay attention to? Is this some sort of message that the pillars of my identity are built on an unsturdy base? Am I that tree, purportedly strong yet fragile enough to collapse under my own weight? (no fat jokes, please) Is everything I am and everything I thought I would become - the branching of my own life from acorn to oak - rotten inside? Do I need to delve into myself and re-invent who and what I am before my proud canopy lies ignominiously in a metaphorical street?
   Or is it just a freakin' tree?
   I'm voting for number two. But I might start taking personal stock. Just in case.

Who Approved This?

They closed a highway in Los Angeles this morning. Not because of a fire or an earthquake or mudslides or rockfall - all of which have happened before - but to film a commercial.
   Yup, you heard that right. The city agreed to close an entire Eastbound stretch of the 105, the main artery leading out of LAX, to let some production company film a car commercial. Not only inconveniencing tens of thousands of people trying to leave LAX only to find they can't, but also making Saturday a nightmare for the people who live around LAX and have to deal with all the traffic that should have been on the highway.
   Am I the only one who thinks this is astonishingly wrong?
   Living around LA you get used to seeing film trucks, especially in Pasadena, where I live, which is a favorite location shoot since it's only about 10-15 miles from most studios. The first year you live here you get excited when you see the equipment trucks and the catering vans, and you try to spot anybody famous. Which, of course, you can't. Then the bloom wears off the rose and you see the film crews and trucks and tattooed fat guys in shorts for what they are, an interruption in your day that you can't avoid. Seeing the trucks stops being an 'ooh... look' moment and becomes an 'aw... crap' moment. You stop looking for famous people and start looking for the 'no parking' signs so you can tell how long the circus is going to be in town this time.
   Film productions do close streets from time to time, and every six months or so they'll close the Colorado Street bridge on a Sunday for a commercial. But an entire highway? And not only that, but the highway that is the ONLY way to get out of LAX without taking surface streets? Who got paid off to agree to that?
   Oh, wait, it's Los Angeles. EVERYBODY got paid off to agree to that.

Grocery Store Jerk

As he heard his nose break and felt it twisting into a new shape on his face, Chad thought 'I probably should have gone to another grocery store.'
   The older Asian woman he assumed he could intimidate with his height and muscles hadn't been cowed in the least. She told him he was behaving like a three-year-old and when he took exception to her words she punched him square in the face. In hindsight, as the blood really started to flow, he realized he'd misjudged her.
   He also misjudged the pot-bellied, balding-yet-with-a-pony-tail hippy throwback, whose tattooed leg was even now launching a combat-booted foot into Chad's groin. When the blinding light and searing pain tore into his brain Chad made a mental note to remember what it felt like when a testicle ruptured, just in case the ER docs asked him.
   A meek mother of two toddlers got in on the action, slamming her fifteen-pound diaper bag into Chad's solar plexus so hard that for a moment he actually was paralyzed. He vaguely remembered calling her 'stupid bitch' when she'd been trying to wrangle her older child away from the produce.
   Chad's wobbly legs failed and he pitched forward onto his knees. His tears and blood combined in a pool on the floor, and copious amounts of vomit joined the mix as Chad heaved and spat, emptying his stomach contents in one colossal urping bellow.
   Before he could get to his feet a Rascal hit him from behind, sending him sprawling into his own vile fluids. Chad rolled over onto his back, catching the murderous glint in the eye of the 500-pound man he'd called 'tubby' not five minutes ago, over by the gluten-free dessert case. Evidently when the morbidly obese got mad they stayed mad.
   More people descended on Chad, eager to exact their revenge, and he tried frantically to catch the eye of the lone security guard. The one he'd called a 'rent a cop' and told to go back to DeVry and find a real job. The guard found something interesting across the store.
   As more fists and feet and bariatric assistance devices pummeled him and his consciousness slowly slipped away, Chad started to regret being such a colossal douchebag. Then he passed out and thought nothing more about it.

Not The Oldest Any More

I remember the first time the guys in the comic book shop called me 'Sir.' I couldn't have been thirty, and yet to them I was already well past my prime, an old dude, the kind of guy who buys the expensive back issues, the ones printed before even their fathers were born. It was true, especially the back issue part, if a comic was out on the newsstand in the past 30+ years and I don't have it, it's because I didn't want it in the first place. For the longest time I was relegated to that lofty status of 'serious collector,' competing with the middle schoolers for the latest issue of Archie Comics. But today I've cast that status aside. Why? you may ask.
   Because today I am no longer the oldest person in the comic book shop.
   My comic shop here in Pasadena is a great store, and its got a very eclectic clientele. It's a stone's throw from PCC - Pasadena City College - so there are tons of just-graduated high school kids, and then are slightly older people, guys in their 20s with a little disposable income. And there are chicks too, not just the ones dragged inside by their boyfriends. And men and women about my age, who really grew up with the advent of comics as a semi-serious medium, and then there are the old dudes. I mean older than me old dudes.
   A few of them write for television sitcoms, the guys in the store have told me as much, and at least one is a physician, and several are money managers. So I'm reasonably confident I haven't been the oldest in the comic shop for quite some time. But today I saw the guy that confirmed my suspicions (hopes?). He was short, thick, and with shiny white hair and a shiny white beard to match. Cut short so it's easy to manage.
   He was behind me in line, and I didn't see him until I had paid and was about to leave, but when I saw him I almost heaved a sigh of relief. Seriously, I almost shook his hand because he had taken over my status as Oldest Man in the Comic Shop. And he's taken it over by long shot, so I'm not gonna regain that title any time soon. What a relief.
   Now if I can just get someone to take my title of Most Indecisive Person in the Doughnut Store...

Where's Miss Cleo?

Every so often I like to go to the bookstore and buy a magazine I never otherwise would. Like 'O' for instance, or 'High Times,' neither of which is on my regular reading list. I particularly liked 'Make' and if I owned a home I'd probably buy it regularly. My point is, I like to expand my horizons and encounter things I normally wouldn't.
   I think I want to visit a psychic.
   This is not because I believe that psychics have special powers, rather the opposite, it's because I specifically don't believe they do that I want to go.
   I know several people who swear by their psychics, and several more who have been more than once and come away entranced with the depth and specificity of the 'psychic's' knowledge. But there are well-documented techniques - using cold reading, like what that fraud John Edward does - to get people to believe you know more about them than you actually do.
   I want to go and just see what happens. I'd have to pick my psychic carefully, go on someone's recommendation perhaps, and then just let them talk. No feedback, no nods, no responding to general questions, just listen. A real psychic would say what he or she 'hears' about me, from the spirits or her own intuition or whatever, a real psychic wouldn't need my yes or no.
   Of course, this does open the door to potential problems. I'd go because I'm pretty sure the person giving me the reading would be either so general as to be useless, or so far off the mark that they might as well be talking about somebody in Istanbul. But what if the psychic really is? What if they know things about me a stranger couldn't possibly know, specific things, like, say, where the heist took place and what I did with all the money. Then I'd be up a metaphorical creek, and I'd be forced to re-examine my preconceptions about the world and the way it works.
   I'm tempted to abandon the effort. But... then I'd always have this nagging question. I'm doing it. I'm gonna find a psychic. I'll let you know how it goes.