"I am shocked, shocked..."

El Cabrero is about to hit the bird's road, to borrow a metaphor from Beowulf. I'm flying today to Italy for a week or so where the Spousal Unit has been studying Dante these days. I plan on doing some posting from abroad, but probably on an irregular schedule.

My travel plans were interrupted Wednesday evening, however. As I was exercising on a stationary bicycle, I started feeling woozy. Then I was shocked in the chest, which felt about like being kicked there.

As a martial artist, I am used to being kicked in the chest, but still it was disconcerting to experience this in the absence of a tangible human foot. I wondered what was up until I remembered the internal defibrillator that was installed there a few years ago and which hadn't done anything up till now. Over the next few minutes, it shocked me two more times.

I wasn't sure how serious it was, so I took a moment to compose myself in case it was The Big One and then set about practical things like calling 911, changing clothes, etc. During all this time, for some reason I took bizarre comfort in remembered lines of the divine Miss Emily Dickinson's death poems.

After a plethora of tests and a miserable 24+ hours, it looks like the machine mistook a fairly minor cardiac incident for a major one.

Game on!

Oh yeah, humility

Seamus McGoogle takes great pride in his humility.

As noted yesterday, as a young man Benjamin Franklin, whose Autobiography is the theme lately at Goat Rope, took it upon himself to achieve moral perfection.

It would be hard to say something like that today with a straight face...

Not surprisingly, he found his task difficult:

I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.

From his reading and further rumination, he came up with a list of requisite virtues to pursue which he committed to writing. The first list included temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and chastity.

He showed the list to a Quaker friend, who

having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavoring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or follow among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

Leave it to a Quaker to bust your bubble...

SPEAKING OF RELIGION, here's a discussion of the results of a recent survey on religious identification in the US. There have been some major changes since the 1990s.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here are some reflections on religion, morality, and the idol of unfettered capitalism.

SERENITY NOW! Anger and hostility are bad for the heart, especially the male heart.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS. If you can.

URGENT RENAISSANCE VENETIAN VAMPIRE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TRI TRI AGAIN

Caption: The swimming is the hardest part.

In a little less than a week, El Cabrero is going to try something stupid. You may well ask, so what else is new? Let me be more specific.

Next Sunday, I'm planning on trying to finish a triathlon, a questionable action under any circumstances, with a (literally) broken heart. How broken? Let me put it this way: when I read an article about Dick Cheney a while back, I learned his heart (or functional equivalent) had an ejection fraction of 35%, which is 5% better than mine.

One of the symptoms for my condition is "sudden cardiac death," which sounds like it could be serious under certain conditions. Earlier this year, I got a shock box installed, which may come in handy when cars need a jump start.

If I had a different heart, I'd use it, but as Donald Rumsfeld, mad poet of destruction, once said, "You have to go to war with the army you've got."

The fact that I wound up with this condition shows that the universe has a sense of humor. I've always been physically active, haven't smoked in years, am not obese, and only drink as much alcohol as is absolutely necessary.

In the three years before I had bypass surgery in 2004, I'd done two marathons, three triathlons, three Charleston Distance Runs (15 milers), two half-marathons, and several smaller races.

Like Dylan said, "They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good."

Paradoxically, though, finding out my heart was almost totally blocked made me feel a lot better. I kept wondering why I was getting slower and slower. The news did wonders for my self esteem. After all, anyone can finish an endurance event with a functioning heart, but it takes a real man (or an idiot) to do it with a crappy one.

NEW NOTES. One blog that is always thought provoking is Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree. Here's the latest.

OTHER VOICES. An interesting development over the last year or so has been the emergence of evangelical voices that have broken with the religious right on issues such as poverty and climate change. This latest example is even more surprising.

STICKING TO THE RELIGION THEME, here's an op-ed on the subject from yesterday's Sunday Gazette-Mail by Perry Mann in which he suggests that churches should do more to deal with the problems of this world.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED