Blech.
Thanks for the update. Keep us posted.
Posted on 06/13/2005 1:22:08 PM PDT by gobucks
The priests of golf frequently state that just before you begin your swing, you should think your 'swing thought'. It is supposed to relax you, just before you swing, such that the result doesn't provoke the smirks, chuckles, and sympathetic looks from your golfing buddies. The only problem is that most golfers are unaware of the Golf Conspiracy.
The powers that be in the Pro Golf world are fully aware of the advantages of a priesthood of golf. Recall that priests have legal immunity. You can't sue a golf teacher for malpractice. Thus, as any golfer knows, you can't find two people who teach golf the same way. In fact, it defies description just how differently this black art of golf teaching is practiced, from guru to guru. I used to think it was simply something to be endured. Now I think it smacks of conspiracy.
Someone once said, there is no need for conspiracy if everyone is on the same page. Well, the golf teachers sure are. If they were REALLY interested in making better golfers, you would have heard something fantastic in the golf news: the percentage of golfers who break 90 keeps increasing year of year, 'golfer' being that individual who actually keeps a sanctioned handicap card.
But, wonders of wonders, you never hear about that do you? In fact, even though there are millions of suckers taking up this game every year, the total proportion of golfers who break 80 consistently never changes ... well under 5 percent of all golfers. The average handicap of 108, roughly, never changes, year after year. Why? An example from the priests is as follows: the 'swing thought'. What they tell you is that just before you bring the clubhead back, you say in your mind something like "take the clubhead all the way back".
There is one slight problem with this. It doesn't work. In fact, horrors, it actually creates a mental dissonance which just about garuntees the golfer will mis-hit about half the time. Why? Because words, ANY words, in the mind of a golfer are his mortal enemy.
Any golfer who actually can break 80 already knows this. But given such men usually have a deeply vested economic interest in keeping their 'friends' in the 90 range, you'll never hear them speak of the matter.
They know that the ability to image, that is 'think in pictures', while at the same time zipping shut and locking down that part of their mind which creates mental words, is one of the two primary 'open' secrets to being an effective golfer.
For example, any golfer has heard a million times on the downswing that you have to turn the hips 'out of the way' before you really whack it. The problem is that so many foolish men listen to this advice and think about it while they swing. In reality, plenty of photos of Tiger, Phil, Vijay, whoever-it doesn't matter, exist which show the front of BOTH hipbones, especially the right one, nearly facing directly down the line of ball flight well BEFORE the club head is anywhere near striking the ball.
Why is that? I don't really care. All I know is this: when I put that picture in my head, and conformed my future to that picture, I then swung back, held the club head behind me until I made my hips look like those millions of pictures, and then struck the ball.
Sweet God of Mercy. The sight of that glorious white arc cutting across the blue sky with the faintest whisper of wind around me all the while, then watching it dropping into the far-off emerald fairway, and rolling ..... astonishingly, the English language begins to reveal bona fide inadequacies to illustrate the sensation of watching that sight.
The utter increase in absolute power. The oddness of the 'lag' sensation as I make the hips move to their position, the weirdness of how golf remarkably transforms from a game into a dance...; and the BLISSFUL feeling when the brutal, sick, pent-up mass of frustration endured month after month, season after season finally, FINALLY drains away and is replaced instead by the feeling of 'oh. Is THAT all I had to do?' The washing waterfall of hope cascading down into my soul as I realize that, as God as my Witness, I can break 90, not just 100.
Which leads me to the question: why do the powers of golf persist in false teaching? Of course: that great, green, greedy god: money. By saying your cure to your golf woes is yours after you release your gold for the latest technology that conquers the green landscape, why, the powers of golf set up a perpetual money machine. The snake oil salesmen of yesteryear are cheering in wild approval.
It is a FANTASTIC racket, and I hope to make a good chunk of money within it myself, but not as a fellow racketeer.
My hope is that I break the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the 'mystery' of golf. For then, the elegant mirror it was intended to be all along will then be revealed, and the control freaks who currently set the cultural tempo, they and them, will grow into the Men they have always craved to be and falsely believe they already are. And then the bleating masses, who follow dutifully with their plastic bottles of Miller Lite from hole to hole, might just transform into creatures worth imitating instead of being worthy of mere envy.
But first: I have to break 100 off the blue tees. My average is 105 ...
Now, all that said, Castor Oil is a favorite method by which a woman who is overdue in her pregnancy can 'jump start' the whole process. Sometimes it is reported to work great, other times, it is reported to have no effect other than what the bottle says it will do: make plenty of appointments with your porcelin fixture ...
Mrs G.B., who as I have discussed in my other preg-wife threads, and I, finally, with the clock ticking down (the Midwife practice told us that we're reaching that stage when overdue is too overdue and something will have 'to be done') have chosen to try a 'traditional' method to 'help'. Castor Oil fails utterly if the cervix is not ready, but if so, it can indeed help.
Now, we have tried the standard protocols for reaching the 40 week mark, and no more. But we're well beyond the 41 week mark now. So, about three hours ago, a tablespoon down the hatch, and about 30 minutes ago, the second table spoon went down. Very, very interestingly, Castor Oil is one of those odd fatty acids everyone talks about these days. Mrs. Gb reports it doesn't taste that bad, but she didn't savor it I'll grant.
Castor Oil evidently is fully absorbed, and then puts the G.I. tract into a real tizzy, causing the releasing all kinds of 'prostglandins'. Evidently, that release is an essential trigger to the hypothalmus gland (in the brain), which then triggers the pituitary gland (in the brain) to release oxytocin (the same chemical hormone that is required for a woman or a man to fall in love interestingly enough).
The oxytocin travels to the uterus, and the contractions are supposed to start. It could be the placebo effect only, but Mrs. Gb just reported contraction number six, in the last 3 hours. I lovingly told her I wasn't holding my breath. (You see, I'm stressed right now, and I tend to get a pretty dry outlook on life when I get stressed.) She smiled at me, and returned to her puttering routine.
The tension ... well, as any golfer knows, tension is an exponential function when you are shooting close to three shots below your handicap and then your buddy bets you 100.00 you can't make that last putt on hole number 15. And then, bang: all your fuses blow, you yip the putt, your next drive sounds like a miramba for all the trees you strike, and you realize the 19th hole will not be beer this time, for it will have to be something much stronger. It can get real psychotic out there...
Anyway, I have a bit of time to muck around in FreeRepublic while Mrs. GB reports that her contractions may just 'happen' to be starting now. This of course would be the umpteenth time they have 'started'. In all seriousness, our time is a great time of joy. Our son, bless his heart, is in all likelihood going to be a great golfer someday.
But I'm content, for now, to simply look forward to singing him Happy Birthday today ... or maybe tomorrow ... or Wednesday, and hugging Mrs. GB all the while. Of course, I've considered bringing my laptop with WIFI capability to the hospital when we leave ... but, I don't think that would be a very good idea in practice.
Congratulations on your miracle swing, GB, and I hope it's a successful evening for you, the Mrs., and Baby GB!
Many thanks ... they say patience is a virtue!
No news, just an fyi ping...and any comments about castor oil are welcome of course.
I used castor oil when I was ready to deliver...called the doc and asked him his opinion, which was:
If you're ready to deliver, it will work. If not, you will be completely miserable.
I was both. Naturally. ;-D
At least you're not pregnant!
My trick to induce labor is to stop eating. Either it works, or it's a coincidence :-).
Good luck! If the baby is born today, then he shares his birthday with the start of the Boxer Rebellion, the decision by the Supreme Court in Miranda, and Thurgood Marshall's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also will share his birthday with William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. If he arrives tomorrow, he shares his birthday with Che Guevara, as well as the founding of the U.S. Army, and the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the official U.S. flag. Don't you just love the Internet?
My first was induced on my due date because my BP was supposedly high. It was really hard on me and I think it may have caused some consequences for my son. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have done it. Hope the baby will just come naturally. It's best for mom and baby. How overdue is she? I know babies during my mom's era were sometimes over two weeks. Why is it that babies only get 1 week overdue now? There must be a reason.
I don't know anything about castor oil and labor.
Speaking of your golf swing, I've been told that there are other ways to stimulate labor. :)
Hopefully, you and Mrs. G.B. will have a new wee G.B. within the next 24 hours! God bless!
http://bbs.babycenter.com/board/pregnancy/childbirth/1379807
Here's the overdue baby board at Babycenter.com if you don't already go there.
When I was overdue, my MD told me and my husband to have sex..something in the semen. However, at over 9 months pregnant the LAST thing I wanted was to have a repeat preformance of what had caused me to get pregnant in the first place..LOL
stop eating ... which would make insulin fall. Hmmmmmm...
LOL, the internet is awesome.
Yup. I read about it in the Wall Street Journal. The kicker is that you don't want to go to the hospital too soon, or they'll pump you full of glucose and the contractions stop. (Learned this the hard way ...)
"Why is it that babies only get 1 week overdue now? There must be a reason."
my guess? lawsuits. I've read reports now where women are lying to their obs about their last cycle dates before pregnancy, so that their 'due date' is later, to offset the tendency to practice defensive obstetrics...;if I were an OB, I know I'd do the same thing. The numbers are evidently very, very stark: damaged babies cost a lot more than anything, and few moms sue if the baby is just fine. The longer a woman waits, the more and more certain intervention will usually occur if it is a standard OB practice.
I've been reading alot...
She is about a week overdue, but also, they think our son is big, but not 'too big'.
Blech.
Thanks for the update. Keep us posted.
He told me that on Monday. Daughter arrived on Wednesday, about 10 days early IIRC.
The infallible local cure for pregnancy around here is to go eat eggplant parmigiana at Scalini's Italian Restaurant up on U.S. Hwy 41 in Smyrna. This is such a popular cure that Scalini's posts pics of the 300 or so moms who have given birth within 48 hours of eating the eggplant dish . . . and they offer a free meal if you DON'T deliver within 48 hours!
Since you probably don't want to come all the way to Cobb County, here's the recipe:
Wow, that's a deal! Much more fun than fasting for a week!
Forget the castor oil. My OB had delivered several thousand babies (he started in practice before WWII) and he said it just made you miserable. He thought the idea originated in the practice of sympathetic magic, because when you really do go into labor your bowels empty quite thoroughly - clearing the decks as it were. So folks were artifically producing the consequence in hopes of also producing the cause . . .
Wow! Thanks; I have heard at least one other report that Chicken parmesegn will do the trick.
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