Long Time, no see me

Well, it's been a while and I don't expect that anyone is still reading this. In the meantime, I've started a new job, moved into my own place (!) and gotten cable TV. All very important developments. I'm trying to be healthier in general, so lots of gym time, calorie counting and cooking are happening as well. Between the gym time, the car time and the living alone time, I've had a lot of time to think, so blogging seems like a good way to vent it all out there. At least it's searchable, unlike a journal.

On the food front I've had some successes and failures. This morning I had a lovely breakfast of polenta and fried eggs (I know it sounds decadent, but polenta only has 70 cal a serving, as do medium eggs). Add some juice and coffee, and I am ready for the world. Unfortunately, earlier this week I planned a tofu and veggie stir fry that turned out less than awesome. The leftover rice I planned to use was far beyond left over and well into going rotten, so I had to sub in a nuked potato. The ginger I bought last week was moldy (how does that happen?), but I cut that off and used it anyway, though it seemed very stringy, too. Finally, I had no sauce. The tofu, peppers and onions looked very naked in the pan once I was done. Fortunately, it was edible and I only had 3 servings of the stuff to suffer through. Back to the drawing board on that genius idea, I guess.
The upshot is that I am saving a ton of $ (which is good, since my other wellness plan is to pay off all my credit cards--better late than never). Word to the wise, if you live in a big metropolitan area and cook for yourself, there are loads of places to get cheap produce. My faves in LA are the 99c Store (I know it sounds sketch, but I wouldn't lead you wrong here; also, milk by the quart and the other smaller sizes they sell are perfect if you usually cook for one); my new fave (and employer of a good friend) Fresh and Easy (like the 99c Store, their produce is prepackaged, bc they only have do-it-yourself checkouts), which also has a bunch of prepared foods for the lazy among us (I have a friend who might starve if not for them and the snacks at work; but their fresh hummus is fantastic); and Food 4 Less which has a semi warehouse feel and is prob not the best place to buy meat, but at least the produce is loose and they sell my favorite yogurt (though the 99c Store has had a lot of Yoplait 4 packs lately--that's 25c a yogurt!). And now that I cook and eat more produce than I toss (I'm looking at you, three pack of Romaine hearts), I really am saving money!

This week I tried to numb the gym time (when will they fix the 3 TVs that mock me with their blankness as I toil away on the elliptical?) with some heavy reading. Boy did I come up with a noggin scratcher (but 20 mins on a stationary bike seems like nothing when you've only read 4 pages): Baudrillard's The Illusion of The End. Yes, it's about Y2K, and isn't that long gone? But also, I am deeply interested in our cultural (and my personal) fascination with the apocalypse. What is so compelling about this notion of an end? Are we so goals oriented as a society that history must have a culmination in order to mean anything? Time must have an end? Is it the nature of our minds, because we have an end? Have we anthropomorphized more than god, but all of space-time to make it finite, like us? Or are we actually approaching the Rubicon as a species? Do we sense catastrophe the way animals sense earthquakes and hurricanes? Have I used enough rhetorical questions?
Christianity is an apocalyptic religion. It cannot culminate until we all die and the world (and presumably time as we know it) ends. Perhaps that has laid in us the desire for that end, as a moment of fulfilment. It's not even just the whack-job cultists who seem to pushing this. It's the millions of main-stream Christians who read the Left Behind books and support the state of Israel because they believe the re-establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine is a prerequisite of the Second Coming (btw, how great a name would that be for a porno? so great, I'm sure it's been done).
It seems strange that ultimately Christians believe they were created (in fact, everything was created) for the purpose of their end. I'd find religion much easier to swallow if it said we were created to live, t0 be, to get as much out of existence as possible (if I could put a soundtrack here: Those to come, by the Shins). Of course, the big sleight of hand at the end of the world is that if you are a good Christian (Muslim, Mormon, whatever) you get eternal life in some sort of spiritual realm. And if not, you are punished mercilessly for all eternity (but if time ends at Armageddon, maybe eternity isn't that long). That dovetails nicely with the human desire for reward and schadenfreude. I reject also that we were created in order to be punished--religion is madness.
Anyway, back to Baudrillard and the theory of the end. WTF? He sure manages to use a lot of big words to say nothing that makes any sense. His thesis? "This is the problem: is the course of modernity reversible, and is that reversal itself irreversible?" Huh? I think of myself as reasonably intelligent (ok, WAY more than reasonably intelligent--we all have our pride). Apparently he's concerned that our modern preoccupation with the end will lead us through a process of culturally eviscerating and digesting history to the point where nothing means anything anymore (or I guess, everything means everything, so nothing has any intrinsic significance)---oh my god, I'm doing the talking in circles thing he does to sound smart, and use a lot of print.
The process reminds me of the calculus classes I took in high school (very few intellectual experiences are traumatic enough to bring that up!): I remember trying to solve an equation (but not how, please don't ask me how) and I did a lot of work and changing this and that and multiplying and dividing things and at the end the teacher told me I had done nothing. I'd just spent 5 minutes multiplying everything by 1.
That's how this feels. Like intellectual wheel-spinning. Perhaps I am too concrete a thinker. I would like examples. If I can have an example, I can usually understand a concept that's been laid out in the abstract. The problem with the abstract is that is has to go to crazy extremes with language to avoid saying anything concrete. The concept drowns in alphabet soup.