It's just that so much of the misery I have seen in my life has come at the end of a lit cigarette.
Here's something I thought of when I woke up this morning and looked at the floor right by the side of my bed: I was going to post this in a "give up smoking" thread in another blog, but some of the people there don't like my negative-reinforcement style and it can get pretty ugly. So I did not post it.
But hey - this is my blog - and I'm not going to kick myself out. So here it goes.
My dad smoked from the time he was 12 until he died from "natural causes" at 69. He drank himself to death, while living in agony and misery for his last eight years after they cut out most of his jaw, tongue, and throat out in a surgery so barbaric that we called Saddam Hussein a war criminal when he ordered similar things to be done to his people. My dad had to make the co-payments on the surgery to the guy who cut his tongue out.
After he lost his tongue, he drank, but through a feeding tube in his stomach, since without a tongue he could never swallow again. (even the mucus from the smoking, which is another story).
He drank a lot. Like a BAC of 0.37 measured 24 hours after he could have had his last drink. We measured that in the hospital after his feeding tube had fallen out, after the alcohol rotted out the rubber tubing.
So lets just say he spent a lot of his last years in a drunken state of stupor that was so amazing, it's still hard to grasp. But he still smoked four packs per day, even when he had to hold his nose closed with his fingers to take a drag. (think about what you do with your tongue when you used to smoke)
I awoke this morning to see one of the familiar "landmarks" in my house, the house where he was born, and returned when he retired, and where he died; reminders that I see every day: a cigarette burn mark in the hardwood floor that's over one inch long . When he was in a drunken stupor - not really passed out, but far from coherent - he'd be conscious just long enough to get a cigarette lit and in his mouth, then he would pass out again with it still burning.
Many a night when I lived here with him during his last two years, I wondered if the house would burn down around me when I went to bed. There are seven burn marks in this room alone, not counting the three I found on the mattress when I changed the sheets, and there's more downstairs in and around his favorite recliner.
I'm a non smoker. Both my parents smoked when I was a kid growing up and I always hated it. But I was basically a smoker myself, as I remembered never being able to run more than the first 40 yards of the 440 yard races at school. They never called it asthma or COPD then, I just thought all the other kids were faster because I wasn't a very good athelete.
So this burn mark is here every morning to greet me, even though my dad will have been dead five years on November 15.
I want all of you to quit. Maybe I tell these stories to gain sympathy, but maybe I care about total strangers and I would not want a total stranger to suffer in the ways I watched my dad live in misery without his tongue, and all the subsequent agony that came with it as he medicated himself with alcohol.
I want to leave you with this:
I read in your posts about the sense of community you find here in your quest to quit. That means everything -- I know because I'm seeking a community when I come to Kos too. We all want to belong in a certain frame of mind. Some of us belong to groups out of spite or frustration that we can't belong to some other group that did not invite us or kicked us out.
And I wondered - even though the nicotine is addictive - once the "smoke nazis" started telling smokers where they could no longer light up and smokers were forced outside in the cold, and the rain, or forbidden to smoke at all - did you find yourself bonding with fellow smokers precisely because you felt community outside the community had excluded you?
I say that as a guy who has his own antisocial reasons for always avoiding the "normal" groups because there was always a reason I did not belong.
I don't want to say that smoking causes you to be antisocial; far from it. I just wondered if the bond you felt in a community that was being critized by the larger community was in itself a social bond that you found positive, just as you find the positive reinforcement here now that you're trying to quit.
it's just a thought.
And believe me, please, beleive me, If there is anyone on earth who may not even know you from the Pope but still wants you to quit because I just would not wish any of what I saw even on anyone, I send you all the support and encouragement I can.
Any way you can, I hope you quit.
Best wishes to you all. I salute you.
2009/09/17
this is where it started
There are nine young men in that picture, three ladies; and their parents. The year is 1908.
You would think that there would be people with this particular surname populating the country from coast to coast.
What I can tell you is that the oldest of those young men was killed in World War I.
One never married.
One never had children.
Five had children; four had all girls.
Only one had a male child.
That male child had an only child, and I am him.
And I feel so worthless, the world is so fucked up and people treat each other with such hostility and distrust and suspicion I just don't see the point.
So in a little over 100 years, the family name will disappear.
Do you think after I was gone, someone would want to know why?
What do you think would happen if I posted I was thinking while I'm still here?
That will be in the next post - I'll tell you what they did last time. They not only called it "health care" when the one thing they cared nothing about was my health or my state of mind; they sent me a bill for holding me against my will - which my insurance company refused to pay because I had not been pre-approved (to be held against my will).
So this will be the beginning of how to build a broken person, and why the forces still insist that it's their still their job to break me some more. But if they ever do to me again what they did the last time they asked me if I was depressed, I'll have all the reasons to actually go through with it.
And the irony goes right by them. It's like Catch-22 meets Russian Roulette.
They're going to keep trying to fix me until I finally am so broken that I finally give up.
But I can't get them to leave me alone.
2009/09/14
Comin' atcha Live. I'm going to start unloading
OK, boys and girls, I'm here to offer an apology, and then get started.
I concede and confess that I have been warped somehow to believe that unless I'm on a mainstream blog that no one will see me, and that was a fatal flaw. The internet, the blogosphere, are mine as much as they are anybody else's, so I don't need coattails to be myself or find community. I'm here to say "Cogito Ergo Sum" - I think, therefore I am.
And I'm tired of contemplating my naval over that damn Zen riddle about the tree that falls in the forest. Even If I don't make a sound, I'm going to hurt like a sonofabitch if I fall over, so I might as well wail and scream and get my money's worth out of the angst.
Buddy Hackett used to say about swearing -
"We invented these words because in some places there simply are no other words. When you drop an anvil on your foot, you're going to scream "I BROKE MY FUCKING FOOT!". You are not going to quietly say, "Spring is here!"
Even when you get to the doctor, they're going to know how much it hurts when they look at the X-rays, because the radiologist will say, "I believe that his fucking foot is broken", and the doctor will say, "I concur that that the fucking foot is indeed broken".
So - when you see me throw out words that make sailors run out from a bar blushing and holding their ears, it's because I'm trying to get your attention. If profanity turns you off, I'm not sure what part of this planet you're keeping yourself on, because I can assure you my bad habits (and some of my good ones) of using these words were not developed on the moon all by myself. I have become the man I am in the company of people like you. Deal with it.
And on that note, I'm going to start scooping up essays and thoughts I have had and just start filling this thing up and hope the internet doesn't run out of ones and zeroes.
It's clear from looking around this country right now that we've got an overabundance of zeroes.
I concede and confess that I have been warped somehow to believe that unless I'm on a mainstream blog that no one will see me, and that was a fatal flaw. The internet, the blogosphere, are mine as much as they are anybody else's, so I don't need coattails to be myself or find community. I'm here to say "Cogito Ergo Sum" - I think, therefore I am.
And I'm tired of contemplating my naval over that damn Zen riddle about the tree that falls in the forest. Even If I don't make a sound, I'm going to hurt like a sonofabitch if I fall over, so I might as well wail and scream and get my money's worth out of the angst.
Buddy Hackett used to say about swearing -
"We invented these words because in some places there simply are no other words. When you drop an anvil on your foot, you're going to scream "I BROKE MY FUCKING FOOT!". You are not going to quietly say, "Spring is here!"
Even when you get to the doctor, they're going to know how much it hurts when they look at the X-rays, because the radiologist will say, "I believe that his fucking foot is broken", and the doctor will say, "I concur that that the fucking foot is indeed broken".
So - when you see me throw out words that make sailors run out from a bar blushing and holding their ears, it's because I'm trying to get your attention. If profanity turns you off, I'm not sure what part of this planet you're keeping yourself on, because I can assure you my bad habits (and some of my good ones) of using these words were not developed on the moon all by myself. I have become the man I am in the company of people like you. Deal with it.
And on that note, I'm going to start scooping up essays and thoughts I have had and just start filling this thing up and hope the internet doesn't run out of ones and zeroes.
It's clear from looking around this country right now that we've got an overabundance of zeroes.
2009/06/25
On the subject of smoking
Background: This is a story about smoking, or what the reward can be after 50 years of nicotine jonesing. If you think it's awful, or you want to tell me libertarian hero stories about how great it is to do things you know you shouldn't, and you don't want anyone telling you not to, that's your privilege. But It's not like I've never heard that argument before, and this series of diaries is not about anti-smoking regulation or government intervention or nanny states. This is about giving you the information to make all the choices yourself. if you want to smoke, you might die of a heart attack, stroke, and be done quickly. You could "live" after cancer surgery for eight years. This is about what that life could be like, because I watched it happen to at least one man, and he was my father.
These are his words, not mine, verbatim
Some background and some introduction first, because I realize this is not coming at you in chronological order:
In 1996, at age 61, He had surgery after they found cancer under his tongue and in the lymph nodes in the back of his throat, and by then it was in the bone. They cut out his jawbone from his chin to his right ear. they cut out the right half of his tongue, the back of his throat, and part of the roof of his mouth.
To fill in the hole(s), they cut up his pectoral (chest) muscle longitudinally into four pieces, still anchored at the sternum. Think of it like four very long fingers, with the chest as the palm. They left the lower quarter to move his arm; they put the second quarter in the back of his throat, the third quarter into the roof of his mouth, and the last quarter they sewed to his tongue. His tongue was half original muscle, half chest muscle, covered in skin from his leg, which he will tell you more about.
He learned to eat pretty well after that, I'll tell you eventually about his favorite meal of breakfast down at the diner that knew how to make eggs runny the way he could eat it.
But three months after the surgery, after three months without a cigarette, he said he woke up one night and his legs would not stop twitching. He says that and only once he had a smoke they settled down. So, cigarettes to the rescue. Too bad they didn't know about "restless leg syndrome then", but I'll tell you it didn't have a thing to do with RLS. (anybody with a consistent B.A.C. over 0.3 will twitch, trust me)
So four years later in 2000, they found new cancer on the left side, and tried to do sort of the same evisceration again. But with all the vascular damage they did on the right side, there wasn't much left to heal, and future diaries will reveal that his tongue eventually just fell out.
On his lap.
While he was talking to me.
So, in June of 2000, my father was in Philadelphia having his second surgery on the day his 94 year old mother was buried. This is an email he later wrote to an old friend of three decades to tell her of his new 'circumstances'.
I may be able to find other emails of his on an old computer, but I don't have the money right now to let someone charge me $70 per hour to try and recover them. If anyone would like to help, you can offer donations (please, nothing over $5) over at my other site (pscytheology.blogspot.com) and that will be greatly appreciated. I don't like asking for money, but if any of you think there is value in these stories, a modest retainer would certainly be inspiring. I guess for writers it's called an "advance", but I know that you're not supposed to pay the ferryman until he gets you to the other side.
So here, verbatim, is the email from my dad after the SECOND surgery, which took place on the left side of his mouth. And when he says he only had about three inches of bone left for his jaw, it was not an exaggeration. His face looked like a water bottle hung on a skewer. The bone he refers to in his mouth, on the one occcasion he invited me to look at it, looked exactly as described: like a compound fracture poking through all that flesh, which was the only thing holding up ten pounds of chin and throat. That's where the blood would come from that wound up in the suction jar I have yet to tell you about.
Tomorrow's diary will be about "chicken skin" in the kitchen sink strainer, on a night when nobody ate chicken.
I'll repeat: I don't want the government to make you stop smoking. I want you to be so fucking disgusted and scared that you'll do it yourself or be able to convince someone you love that they had better while it might still matter.
Maybe Mark27 will be able to read and understand that finally.
Because in my opinion, the "lucky" ones drop dead of a heart attack or stroke. You might "survive" and learn how to "live" with cancer.
The rest of these diaries are going to be about the four year crusade of self-destruction that follows when there's no reason to quit, and eventually no point in enduring all the agony anymore.
I loved my father. I admired him. And that is why watching this and having people roll their eyes and light up a smoke makes me want to drive a sledgehammer through the side of their skull so that they might get the point.
As it is, I'll let dad give you his side of the story.
Begin Email:
moke 'em if you got 'em - and by " 'em " I mean the pieces of your mouth that the cigarette goes in. I'll tell you later how he had to hold his cigarette in his pinky and ring finger of his left hand, while pinching his nose closed with his middle and index finger and the lighter in the right hand - because once he lost his tongue, he couldn't take a "puff" with his mouth, he had to inhale with his lungs to take a drag; and with a big hole in the back of his throat he coudn't close off his nose.
So, anyone want to bitch about cigarette taxes now? I'm not here to ask the government to do a goddamn thing, Mark27 for the last time, I'm here to inspire those who might need it to do it themselves.
I wish you may find all the help you need. Whatever it takes.
Just do it already.
Just do it.
I'll be here for support and encouragement, because I'm gaining much from your comments to me. Thank you, and best wishes on your quest.
These are his words, not mine, verbatim
Some background and some introduction first, because I realize this is not coming at you in chronological order:
In 1996, at age 61, He had surgery after they found cancer under his tongue and in the lymph nodes in the back of his throat, and by then it was in the bone. They cut out his jawbone from his chin to his right ear. they cut out the right half of his tongue, the back of his throat, and part of the roof of his mouth.
To fill in the hole(s), they cut up his pectoral (chest) muscle longitudinally into four pieces, still anchored at the sternum. Think of it like four very long fingers, with the chest as the palm. They left the lower quarter to move his arm; they put the second quarter in the back of his throat, the third quarter into the roof of his mouth, and the last quarter they sewed to his tongue. His tongue was half original muscle, half chest muscle, covered in skin from his leg, which he will tell you more about.
He learned to eat pretty well after that, I'll tell you eventually about his favorite meal of breakfast down at the diner that knew how to make eggs runny the way he could eat it.
But three months after the surgery, after three months without a cigarette, he said he woke up one night and his legs would not stop twitching. He says that and only once he had a smoke they settled down. So, cigarettes to the rescue. Too bad they didn't know about "restless leg syndrome then", but I'll tell you it didn't have a thing to do with RLS. (anybody with a consistent B.A.C. over 0.3 will twitch, trust me)
So four years later in 2000, they found new cancer on the left side, and tried to do sort of the same evisceration again. But with all the vascular damage they did on the right side, there wasn't much left to heal, and future diaries will reveal that his tongue eventually just fell out.
On his lap.
While he was talking to me.
So, in June of 2000, my father was in Philadelphia having his second surgery on the day his 94 year old mother was buried. This is an email he later wrote to an old friend of three decades to tell her of his new 'circumstances'.
I may be able to find other emails of his on an old computer, but I don't have the money right now to let someone charge me $70 per hour to try and recover them. If anyone would like to help, you can offer donations (please, nothing over $5) over at my other site (pscytheology.blogspot.com) and that will be greatly appreciated. I don't like asking for money, but if any of you think there is value in these stories, a modest retainer would certainly be inspiring. I guess for writers it's called an "advance", but I know that you're not supposed to pay the ferryman until he gets you to the other side.
So here, verbatim, is the email from my dad after the SECOND surgery, which took place on the left side of his mouth. And when he says he only had about three inches of bone left for his jaw, it was not an exaggeration. His face looked like a water bottle hung on a skewer. The bone he refers to in his mouth, on the one occcasion he invited me to look at it, looked exactly as described: like a compound fracture poking through all that flesh, which was the only thing holding up ten pounds of chin and throat. That's where the blood would come from that wound up in the suction jar I have yet to tell you about.
Tomorrow's diary will be about "chicken skin" in the kitchen sink strainer, on a night when nobody ate chicken.
I'll repeat: I don't want the government to make you stop smoking. I want you to be so fucking disgusted and scared that you'll do it yourself or be able to convince someone you love that they had better while it might still matter.
Maybe Mark27 will be able to read and understand that finally.
Because in my opinion, the "lucky" ones drop dead of a heart attack or stroke. You might "survive" and learn how to "live" with cancer.
The rest of these diaries are going to be about the four year crusade of self-destruction that follows when there's no reason to quit, and eventually no point in enduring all the agony anymore.
I loved my father. I admired him. And that is why watching this and having people roll their eyes and light up a smoke makes me want to drive a sledgehammer through the side of their skull so that they might get the point.
As it is, I'll let dad give you his side of the story.
Begin Email:
November 17, 2000
Subject: More Surgery
Dear Phyliss,
I forgot to mention I'm having more surgery after Thanksgiving on the 28th. A couple remnants from the last go around need to be repaired.
Because so much tissue was taken, along with the jaw bone, there wasn't enough tissue left to cover the remaining bone. Nature is great and the expectation was that the new tissue would grow over the exposed bone. Apparently my flesh is the same disposition as my personality and it refused to do as ordered. So now the doctor will remove more bone and hope the surrounding flesh will heal over. My situation is aggravated because of all those radiation treatments I had. The flesh does not like to knit together as well as it might otherwise. I must tell you that having exposed bone in your mouth (or any other place) is not a lot of fun. Bone is extremely sensitive when exposed. Just blowing over it is enough to give a nasty jolt. The situation is much akin to a compound fracture where the bone pokes through (the flesh into the open air). It is very painful. Also the doctor is reluctant to remove much more of the remaining bone. What's left is about 2.5 to 3 inches on the left side, and it is the only thing keeping my chin from flopping to my chest, literally. Because there is no jawbone on the right side, my lips are askew. It looks like my lips were put on sideways.
I have become a true freak. Especially when you consider the other remnant which must be repaired.
Do you remember that feeling you have when you wake up after having too much to drink? The feeling like there was hair on your tongue? Well, I actually do have hair growing where my tongue used to be.
The first surgery on the right side used the right pectoral muscle to fill in the hole left by the discarded cancerous tissue. That hole was on the inside of my cheek, and what they did then was not to use the skin from the chest over the pectoral muscle (because it had hair), but to transplant a patch (about 4 by 4 inches) of skin from my thigh where there was not much hair. That worked fine. This time, they rerouted a part of the left pectoral muscle with the (original) skin still attached into my head to become the floor of my mouth. The piece of skin and muscle (about 2 by 2 inches) used to be just to the inside of my left nipple. Understand, this is not a transplant, it is a re-routing under the skin. They dig a trench from the nipple under the chest and neck to the under side of the chin. The nurses measured the length o f the scars on my chest and neck and it exceeds 50 inches. No, I did not miss the decimal point, that's two inches longer than four feet.
(my father stood just under 6'1")
They cut a piece of the pectoral muscle into a sausage-like shape with one end of the sausage still attached to my shoulder (that is done so to keep the original blood supply flowing into the tissue) and route the free end through that trench the dug up into my head to become the new floor of my mouth--hair and all. So now what the doctor will do is to use the laser to burn out the follicles.
So now what I have, after all this rerouting, is a think layer of skin covering my sternum, and pectoral muscles in my neck and head. An interesting result to all this is that these foolish pectoral muscles don't know they're not in my chest any longer so that when I use them to pick up something the damned things pull my mouth open. Such are the results of man-made repairs.
By the way, the doctor says this time they got it all. The last time they found cancer cells in 2 out of 18 lymph sites that were examined. For three and a half years I've been waiting to see where it would pop up again. Understand this was a second primary tumor, not a reoccurrence of the first. Doctor says it could not have chosen a worse place. I'm so lucky.
I'm trying to come off my addiction to morphine again. It is very difficult and frustrating--leg jerks in the middle of the night and arms twitching all over the place. An added complication is muscle spasms in the left deltoid so that I'm not able to do very much for very long before the pain gets to me and I have to sit down with a heating pad.
Enough of this bitching already. We have to make the best of what we have.
This is more typing than I have done in 15 years. I never did learn how to type properly. I use one finger - I'm called a hunt and pecker. I'll save the horrible ambulance story for another time and just sign off with G. Keillor's words,
"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch".
Love, _________
moke 'em if you got 'em - and by " 'em " I mean the pieces of your mouth that the cigarette goes in. I'll tell you later how he had to hold his cigarette in his pinky and ring finger of his left hand, while pinching his nose closed with his middle and index finger and the lighter in the right hand - because once he lost his tongue, he couldn't take a "puff" with his mouth, he had to inhale with his lungs to take a drag; and with a big hole in the back of his throat he coudn't close off his nose.
So, anyone want to bitch about cigarette taxes now? I'm not here to ask the government to do a goddamn thing, Mark27 for the last time, I'm here to inspire those who might need it to do it themselves.
I wish you may find all the help you need. Whatever it takes.
Just do it already.
Just do it.
I'll be here for support and encouragement, because I'm gaining much from your comments to me. Thank you, and best wishes on your quest.
2009/04/07
Welcome to the Jungle, we got fun and games
learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play
you can hook up with what you need
or take it eventually
you can have anything you want but you better not take it from me...
- Axl Rose.
Who also wrote -
Don't Damn Me
Guns 'n'Roses
© 1991.
(We'll see how long this stays up on Youtube - obviously it's copyright infringement and Youtube keeps cleaning them out - but as one poster pleaded in the comments "how can this NOT help promote G'nRoses!" - Just think about being so pissed off you're nine secons shy of a stroke and realizing you can crank this up and thrash like a lunatic until you exhaust youself - sure would be preferable to lock and load, wouldn't you think?)
(notice at the end Axl says into the fade out..."all right! that sucked! (so he did not like the take that wound up on the album)
Now my life looks as much like Axl Rose in the sense that....well, it doesn't at all. So how does a once notoriously famous millionaire with a wicked temper write a song that a broken recluse with not much money can identify with?
Oh, yeah....the temper.
So I'm going to ask our new readers to start at the chronological beginning of this story to get an idea of how I arrived here. I'm trying to build something coherent and easy(er)to follow, but I'm rarely coherent or easy to follow...so for those who have inspired me by suggesting my thoughts are provocative and enjoyable to read, I'll leave it to you to figure out some framework that makes more sense and I'll give you a cut of my royalties, which are currently zero.
I thank you for the inspiration, but realize that now I want to slap you for calling my bluff and putting all the pressure on me to actually give people what I was hoping they would ask me for. So thanks...
If anyone knows how I change the formatting from strictly chronological to some kind of subject index, please let me know. I know just enough about most things to know how to misuse them and rarely as they were intended...
Thank you for making this tree who fell in the forest have a reason to blow raspberries at the Zen buddhists who ask that damn riddle about whether or not I made a noise. Well someone heard me now...so it's no longer my problem.
Ha!
you can hook up with what you need
or take it eventually
you can have anything you want but you better not take it from me...
- Axl Rose.
Who also wrote -
Don't Damn Me
Guns 'n'Roses
© 1991.
(We'll see how long this stays up on Youtube - obviously it's copyright infringement and Youtube keeps cleaning them out - but as one poster pleaded in the comments "how can this NOT help promote G'nRoses!" - Just think about being so pissed off you're nine secons shy of a stroke and realizing you can crank this up and thrash like a lunatic until you exhaust youself - sure would be preferable to lock and load, wouldn't you think?)
(notice at the end Axl says into the fade out..."all right! that sucked! (so he did not like the take that wound up on the album)
Don't damn me When I speak of piece of mind
'Cause silence isn't golden When
I'm holding it inside
'Cause I've been where I have been
An I've seen
what I have seen
I put the pen to the paper
'Cause it's all a part of me
Be it a song or casual conversation
To hold my tongue speaks Of
quiet reservations
Your words once heard They can place you in a faction
My words may disturb But at least there's a reaction
Sometimes I
wanna kill
Sometimes I wanna die
Sometimes I wanna destroy
Sometimes I wanna cry
Sometimes I could get even
Sometimes I
could give up
Sometimes I could give
Sometimes I never give a f...k
It's only for a while
I hope you understand
I never wanted this
to happen
Didn't want to be a man
So I hid inside my world
I took
what I could find
I cried when I was lonely
I fell down when I was blind
But don't damn me When I speak of piece of mind
'Cause silence isn't
golden When I'm holding it inside
'Cause I've been where I have been
An
I've seen what I have seen
I put the pen to the
paper 'Cause it's all a part of me
How can I ever
satisfy you
An how can I ever make you see
That deep inside we're all
somebody
An it don't matter who you wanna be
But now I gotta
smile...I hope you comprehend
For this man can say it happened 'cause this
child has been condemned
So I stepped into your world
I kicked you in the mind
An I'm the only witness to the nature of my crime
But look at what we've done To the innocent and young
Whoa listen to who's talking
'Cause we're not the only ones
The trash collected by the eyes And dumped
into the brain
Said it tears into our conscious thoughts You tell me who's
to blame
I know you don't wanna hear me cryin'
An I know you don't
wanna hear me deny
That your satisfaction lies in your illusions
But your delusions are yours and not mine
We take for
granted we know the whole story
We judge a book by its cover and read what
we want
Between selected lines...
Don't hail me and
don't idolize the ink
Or I've failed in my intentions
Can you
find the missing link?
Your only validation is living your own life
Vicarious existence is a f...ing waste of time
So I
send this song to the offended
I said what I meant and I've
never pretended
As so many others do intending just to please
If
I damned your point of view Could you turn the other cheek?
But don't damn me When I speak of piece of mind
'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside
'Cause I've been where I have been
An I've seen what I have seen
I put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me
Don't damn me
I said don't damn me
I said don't hail me
Don't damn me
Now my life looks as much like Axl Rose in the sense that....well, it doesn't at all. So how does a once notoriously famous millionaire with a wicked temper write a song that a broken recluse with not much money can identify with?
Oh, yeah....the temper.
So I'm going to ask our new readers to start at the chronological beginning of this story to get an idea of how I arrived here. I'm trying to build something coherent and easy(er)to follow, but I'm rarely coherent or easy to follow...so for those who have inspired me by suggesting my thoughts are provocative and enjoyable to read, I'll leave it to you to figure out some framework that makes more sense and I'll give you a cut of my royalties, which are currently zero.
I thank you for the inspiration, but realize that now I want to slap you for calling my bluff and putting all the pressure on me to actually give people what I was hoping they would ask me for. So thanks...
If anyone knows how I change the formatting from strictly chronological to some kind of subject index, please let me know. I know just enough about most things to know how to misuse them and rarely as they were intended...
Thank you for making this tree who fell in the forest have a reason to blow raspberries at the Zen buddhists who ask that damn riddle about whether or not I made a noise. Well someone heard me now...so it's no longer my problem.
Ha!
2009/02/16
REDUX: Why that goddamn smile makes my blood run cold
I still am far more uncomfortable by people who are always smiling when there isn't an obvious reason why. It's the political equivalent of stepford wives, and anyone who's always smiling in this country in this time is either completely full of shit or too blind, deaf, and stupid to be trusted to tell me if the Earth is round.
French diplomat, dramatist, & novelist (1882 - 1944)
_____________________________
Why that goddamn smirk makes my blood run cold
by snafubar
Thu Aug 10, 2006 at 04:36:20 AM EST
I was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR, and the other day she had a segment with Tony Bennett, who has been getting a lot of attention on the occasion of his entry into the Octogenarians club. The money quote came from Frank Sinatra, when a younger Bennett asked ole Blue Eyes how he could control his nervousness in front of a crowd:
"Don't ever worry about being nervous. If the audience sees that you are nervous, then they know you care, and they will be behind you."
That's why Bush/Cheney scares the fuck out of me. Can you ever imagine a situation in our lifetimes where things were this incredibly fubar, and yet every one of the bastards in the administration has that perennial Joker smile on their face. They're never nervous - and it makes me shiver to contemplate just how bad it would have to get before these freaks actually develop a countenance with any semblence of humanity on it.
That Sinatra quote has been with me now for a couple days. It really hits home whenever I see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, or Condi. They are so creepy with that Harvard Business School/Stephen Covey 'successful habits' 'nothin's gonna get me down' grin.
Can you really fathom just what has kind of training and mental masturbation it takes to keep those muscles clenched in the right direction? When Bush was finally asked a question with some teeth "How many Iraqis have died in this war?" and W just nonchalantly spit out "About, um, thirty-thousand" I almost threw up. Seriously. That's the entire population of my town and the three surrounding. At least Nixon looked solemn. These people look like they're really having fun.
How about Rummy's retort when Hillary fluffed up her shoulderpads and asked him "Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?" :
A very calm, contemptable, "My Goodness". Well, how 'bout it, you lying bastard? That's the best you have? You were wrong about the WMD, you were wrong about being welcomed as liberators, you were wrong about the post-invasion troop levels, you were wrong about the oil revenue, Israel is looking for a fight, and "My Goodness" is all you've got?
A few months ago, on the day that some reporter asked Bush if he thought the current events were signs of the apocolypse, everybody just giggled and gave the clown a free pass. WTF - it's a legitimate question only because the man has the religious right actually sending money to Jews who they are sure will go to Hell in the rapture - that ought to be a sign. This is the Elephant in the room, folks, and now that fat pachyderm is about to sit on the couch with your little sister and grandma on it. If Bush does believe the way a true born-again should, and he does believe that God wanted him in office, then we need to realize that when the book of Revelations describes the blood rising to the height of a horse's bridle, this man believes that will be a good sign.
Look at the Condi "strategy" - that's not diplomacy, it's her middle finger in everyone's face. You could not develop a better catalyst to war than this "Israel is always right even if they have to bomb the playground" attitude. This is party who claims that life is so sacred that we can't be allowed to spend one federal penny if it will kill a stem cell to cure a disease, but we can stand back and let Israel and Hezbollah keep throwing missles at each other because it will somehow make things more stable? Are you kidding me?
These lunatics are trying to provoke a war, people, and the hand-over-the-eyes "I can't see what you're telling me" attitude that most of this country has about itself because it blindly believes we're always on the right side is going to send us to Hell. I'm an atheist, and I believe we will have a battle of Armageddon, only without the thousand year reign of glory and all the rapture. We will see the blood start to flow and keep cheering because we're convinced Jesus is right over that hill....
he's comin right soon....
...any minute now....
...we can see him....
People that blind would make Hitler and Goebbels jealous to have a population so gullible. And I am seriously frightened. We're the only species on the planet with the capability to deliberately and consciously change our environment; don't you think it's pathetic that 80% of the U.S. population thinks that the story has already been written and they have no control?
Help. I'm almost ready to start the prozac again, even if I do act like a zombie.
"The secret to success is sincerity; once you can fake that you've got it made."
French diplomat, dramatist, & novelist (1882 - 1944)
_____________________________
Why that goddamn smirk makes my blood run cold
by snafubar
Thu Aug 10, 2006 at 04:36:20 AM EST
I was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR, and the other day she had a segment with Tony Bennett, who has been getting a lot of attention on the occasion of his entry into the Octogenarians club. The money quote came from Frank Sinatra, when a younger Bennett asked ole Blue Eyes how he could control his nervousness in front of a crowd:
"Don't ever worry about being nervous. If the audience sees that you are nervous, then they know you care, and they will be behind you."
That's why Bush/Cheney scares the fuck out of me. Can you ever imagine a situation in our lifetimes where things were this incredibly fubar, and yet every one of the bastards in the administration has that perennial Joker smile on their face. They're never nervous - and it makes me shiver to contemplate just how bad it would have to get before these freaks actually develop a countenance with any semblence of humanity on it.
That Sinatra quote has been with me now for a couple days. It really hits home whenever I see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, or Condi. They are so creepy with that Harvard Business School/Stephen Covey 'successful habits' 'nothin's gonna get me down' grin.
Can you really fathom just what has kind of training and mental masturbation it takes to keep those muscles clenched in the right direction? When Bush was finally asked a question with some teeth "How many Iraqis have died in this war?" and W just nonchalantly spit out "About, um, thirty-thousand" I almost threw up. Seriously. That's the entire population of my town and the three surrounding. At least Nixon looked solemn. These people look like they're really having fun.
How about Rummy's retort when Hillary fluffed up her shoulderpads and asked him "Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?" :
A very calm, contemptable, "My Goodness". Well, how 'bout it, you lying bastard? That's the best you have? You were wrong about the WMD, you were wrong about being welcomed as liberators, you were wrong about the post-invasion troop levels, you were wrong about the oil revenue, Israel is looking for a fight, and "My Goodness" is all you've got?
A few months ago, on the day that some reporter asked Bush if he thought the current events were signs of the apocolypse, everybody just giggled and gave the clown a free pass. WTF - it's a legitimate question only because the man has the religious right actually sending money to Jews who they are sure will go to Hell in the rapture - that ought to be a sign. This is the Elephant in the room, folks, and now that fat pachyderm is about to sit on the couch with your little sister and grandma on it. If Bush does believe the way a true born-again should, and he does believe that God wanted him in office, then we need to realize that when the book of Revelations describes the blood rising to the height of a horse's bridle, this man believes that will be a good sign.
Look at the Condi "strategy" - that's not diplomacy, it's her middle finger in everyone's face. You could not develop a better catalyst to war than this "Israel is always right even if they have to bomb the playground" attitude. This is party who claims that life is so sacred that we can't be allowed to spend one federal penny if it will kill a stem cell to cure a disease, but we can stand back and let Israel and Hezbollah keep throwing missles at each other because it will somehow make things more stable? Are you kidding me?
These lunatics are trying to provoke a war, people, and the hand-over-the-eyes "I can't see what you're telling me" attitude that most of this country has about itself because it blindly believes we're always on the right side is going to send us to Hell. I'm an atheist, and I believe we will have a battle of Armageddon, only without the thousand year reign of glory and all the rapture. We will see the blood start to flow and keep cheering because we're convinced Jesus is right over that hill....
he's comin right soon....
...any minute now....
...we can see him....
People that blind would make Hitler and Goebbels jealous to have a population so gullible. And I am seriously frightened. We're the only species on the planet with the capability to deliberately and consciously change our environment; don't you think it's pathetic that 80% of the U.S. population thinks that the story has already been written and they have no control?
Help. I'm almost ready to start the prozac again, even if I do act like a zombie.
2009/02/10
CBS' "Survivor" is what started me on this path
I think that show marked a turning point in American society. Think about it - the idea that you lie, cheat, steal and cajole people to ride with you as far as you need them to get as close to the prize as you can get, then you cut them loose and run off with it - that's a hell of a lesson.
If you want a reality show to impress me, put one guy on the island every day and no one gets a fucking thing unless everyone survives with no wounds, no scars, and in good health. Just keep adding people - like we do in real life - and the prize goes up as a function of the number of people and number of days.
That would be the only show resembling reality like that I'm stuck in.
If you want a reality show to impress me, put one guy on the island every day and no one gets a fucking thing unless everyone survives with no wounds, no scars, and in good health. Just keep adding people - like we do in real life - and the prize goes up as a function of the number of people and number of days.
That would be the only show resembling reality like that I'm stuck in.
2009/02/04
The price of your pills: $5 each, or two for $15
So I'm officially over the hill now. Not only am I 41, but the doctor says my blood pressure is absurd, even though my cholesterol is half the healthy level (I'll try to remember to tell more on that later) So he prescribes a pill that works - it does wonders at 10mg, and I ask him if I can up the dosage since I notice it wearing off halfway through the day.
He ups it to 40mg. It really does the trick.
So I go to the pharmacy to get the new refil, and I'm on my ass in the aise of the drugstore after I get the bill: Get this - the old 10mg x 30 days was $6.00. Got that? So if I had taken the same 10mg pills four times per day, that would be a total of 1200 mg for the month at a cost of 4 x $6.00 or, $24.00
But if you ask for 40mg pills of the same medication - I checked, it's not time-release, or with any special coating - it's $56.85 for 30 days.
So I get daring and ask the doctor if he can go back and write me a prescription for the old 10mg pills and just prescribe 4x the quantity, so I will be taking 120 pills per month at a total cost of $24 instead of 30 pills per month at a total cost of $56.85 - and the receptionist says, "will your insurance let you do that?"
And I said, "huh?" I told her I don't have insurance, and the reason I'm making the switch is that because cash-out-of-pocket I could use the extra $32 a month given that I'm getting exactly the same dosage. She says, "Well some insurance plans won't let you do that..."
And there it is folks; how your government helped out the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry at the same time. If the 40mg pills are the ones that the doctor prescribes more often, you multiply the price by almost 250%. And if your uppity patient complains, you tell them that the rules don't allow common sense to intervene.
Now you have to wonder if mathematical shenanigans like this are why the Medicare prescription drug plan is something that Bush was so proud of, despite the fact that it was yet another unfunded mandate (the kind only Democrats are supposed to be guilty of proposing). Because if Medicare can't recognize they're getting reamed a hole that's two-and-a-half-times the size of the pill going into it, then we should all be slapped for letting it happen.
So - in the end, ONLY because I don't have insurance and my doctor has a brain that can do simple accounting, I have dropped back to the 10mg pill, only now I take four of them at once with the same glass of water, and I have saved $34 a month, or $394 per year to get the same quantity of medication. I still get 1200 mg per month, only at less than half the cost. .
He ups it to 40mg. It really does the trick.
So I go to the pharmacy to get the new refil, and I'm on my ass in the aise of the drugstore after I get the bill: Get this - the old 10mg x 30 days was $6.00. Got that? So if I had taken the same 10mg pills four times per day, that would be a total of 1200 mg for the month at a cost of 4 x $6.00 or, $24.00
But if you ask for 40mg pills of the same medication - I checked, it's not time-release, or with any special coating - it's $56.85 for 30 days.
So I get daring and ask the doctor if he can go back and write me a prescription for the old 10mg pills and just prescribe 4x the quantity, so I will be taking 120 pills per month at a total cost of $24 instead of 30 pills per month at a total cost of $56.85 - and the receptionist says, "will your insurance let you do that?"
And I said, "huh?" I told her I don't have insurance, and the reason I'm making the switch is that because cash-out-of-pocket I could use the extra $32 a month given that I'm getting exactly the same dosage. She says, "Well some insurance plans won't let you do that..."
And there it is folks; how your government helped out the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry at the same time. If the 40mg pills are the ones that the doctor prescribes more often, you multiply the price by almost 250%. And if your uppity patient complains, you tell them that the rules don't allow common sense to intervene.
Now you have to wonder if mathematical shenanigans like this are why the Medicare prescription drug plan is something that Bush was so proud of, despite the fact that it was yet another unfunded mandate (the kind only Democrats are supposed to be guilty of proposing). Because if Medicare can't recognize they're getting reamed a hole that's two-and-a-half-times the size of the pill going into it, then we should all be slapped for letting it happen.
So - in the end, ONLY because I don't have insurance and my doctor has a brain that can do simple accounting, I have dropped back to the 10mg pill, only now I take four of them at once with the same glass of water, and I have saved $34 a month, or $394 per year to get the same quantity of medication. I still get 1200 mg per month, only at less than half the cost. .
2009/01/31
The story behind the name
I once worked as a computer drafstman (sometimes called a detailer) for a very well known heavy-equipment manufacturer. I have never been known to hide my feelings, and it is my opinion that if someone is deliberately provoking me to get a reaction, I will give them precisely what they were expecting. One of the managers from another nearby department (we'll call him 'Jeff') who I was obligated to deal with from time to time was fond of calling me "Boom Boom": He said that was the sound of the two gunshots when I finally went postal.
One particular day I was already wound up...parking snafu on campus where I was attending class, parking snafu while at work (go figure your employer can't find a place to put your car) and other miscellaneous things were ricocheting around in my head - the kind of stress that we all are burdened with. I had to go into Jeff's department for some reason, and although it was not that I had specifically to deal with this particular antagonist on this occasion, as I approached I could already see I had caught his eye and there was that grin on his face.
Knowing my limitations, and knowing I was near them if not already past, I approached Jeff in complete calm and said in a measured tone, "Today is not the day to get my goat. Please, just let me do my job and I'll go back to my desk."
And of course, confessing that was all the reason he needed to get him started. I don't remember what exactly his point was that day because I only let him go about thirty seconds before I stopped him:
"You know, Jeff, you're right about me. But my original plan when I snapped was to enter the building and spray the entire place indiscriminately with gunfire. Now I've decided I'm going to come right to your fucking desk and start with you."
It was suddenly very quiet throughout the department, and instantly I realized that I was in imminent danger of being escorted out of the building on the spot, probably subject to arrest, and surely committed to some kind of 'institution' until I could prove I was no threat to the community.
Amazingly enough that did not happen, and more amazing still was that Jeff did not tease me again after this encounter. We got along with a professional attitude from there forward and were able to accomplish work-related tasks without any further hostility or confrontation.
So I want you to ponder this situation for a moment, and ask yourself just one question: Is is more outrageous that I would ever dare to say something so unthinkable, or is it more outrageous to realize that it was only once I said something so unconscionably obscene that the he finally took me seriously?
In the years since, I have reduced this to a parable of my own conception to get this point across without involving my personal experience:
If you see a dog - a mangy, angry, growling dog, covered in open wounds, with it's teeth bared and frothing at the mouth, hunkered down in the corner, it's a pretty safe assumption that if you were to charge over there and poke it in the nose, it's going to bite you.
So if you decide to march on over to that dog - who was not coming after you before you approached it - and do just that, and the dog does bite you...
...don't blame the dog. He did exactly what you expected he would. You were the one who gave him the reason he did not have before you poked him in the nose.
Therefore, if you are the type of person who finds it personally amusing to "push people's buttons" just so you get the opportunity to admonish them that they never should have had whatever reaction you feel was inappropriate, may I suggest to you that you got what you asked for. If you don't want a bad reaction, don't deliberately invite one.
Even if you are right that the person you want to condemn never should have done that, once they've already done it it's a bit late to prove your point, don't you think? And you chose to antagonize them and encourage the situation knowing full well where it was headed.
That's not the fault of the dog. Before you came along, he was hunkered down in the corner trying to avoid everyone, wasn't he?
I'll let you leave your comments in answer; the rest of my posts are similar observations about how humans, who are supposed to be the one species with more brain power than all the others, so often deliberately chooses to use so little of it - if any at all.
One particular day I was already wound up...parking snafu on campus where I was attending class, parking snafu while at work (go figure your employer can't find a place to put your car) and other miscellaneous things were ricocheting around in my head - the kind of stress that we all are burdened with. I had to go into Jeff's department for some reason, and although it was not that I had specifically to deal with this particular antagonist on this occasion, as I approached I could already see I had caught his eye and there was that grin on his face.
Knowing my limitations, and knowing I was near them if not already past, I approached Jeff in complete calm and said in a measured tone, "Today is not the day to get my goat. Please, just let me do my job and I'll go back to my desk."
And of course, confessing that was all the reason he needed to get him started. I don't remember what exactly his point was that day because I only let him go about thirty seconds before I stopped him:
"You know, Jeff, you're right about me. But my original plan when I snapped was to enter the building and spray the entire place indiscriminately with gunfire. Now I've decided I'm going to come right to your fucking desk and start with you."
It was suddenly very quiet throughout the department, and instantly I realized that I was in imminent danger of being escorted out of the building on the spot, probably subject to arrest, and surely committed to some kind of 'institution' until I could prove I was no threat to the community.
Amazingly enough that did not happen, and more amazing still was that Jeff did not tease me again after this encounter. We got along with a professional attitude from there forward and were able to accomplish work-related tasks without any further hostility or confrontation.
So I want you to ponder this situation for a moment, and ask yourself just one question: Is is more outrageous that I would ever dare to say something so unthinkable, or is it more outrageous to realize that it was only once I said something so unconscionably obscene that the he finally took me seriously?
In the years since, I have reduced this to a parable of my own conception to get this point across without involving my personal experience:
If you see a dog - a mangy, angry, growling dog, covered in open wounds, with it's teeth bared and frothing at the mouth, hunkered down in the corner, it's a pretty safe assumption that if you were to charge over there and poke it in the nose, it's going to bite you.
So if you decide to march on over to that dog - who was not coming after you before you approached it - and do just that, and the dog does bite you...
...don't blame the dog. He did exactly what you expected he would. You were the one who gave him the reason he did not have before you poked him in the nose.
Therefore, if you are the type of person who finds it personally amusing to "push people's buttons" just so you get the opportunity to admonish them that they never should have had whatever reaction you feel was inappropriate, may I suggest to you that you got what you asked for. If you don't want a bad reaction, don't deliberately invite one.
Even if you are right that the person you want to condemn never should have done that, once they've already done it it's a bit late to prove your point, don't you think? And you chose to antagonize them and encourage the situation knowing full well where it was headed.
That's not the fault of the dog. Before you came along, he was hunkered down in the corner trying to avoid everyone, wasn't he?
I'll let you leave your comments in answer; the rest of my posts are similar observations about how humans, who are supposed to be the one species with more brain power than all the others, so often deliberately chooses to use so little of it - if any at all.
2009/01/23
Another Blog. Like the world needs another blog
Let's be candid: I am not so deluded to think I will change the rotation of the Earth. I doubt I will even change the mind or outlook of more than a few individuals; perhaps none at all. I will admit freely that I blog here to be heard.
A Zen riddle asked the reader to ponder, "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no ear close enough to hear it, does it make a sound?". This riddle can leave a very dark pall over someone who spends too much time alone, because the real answer in 2009 is that if a tree falls and there is no one to hear it, who really gives a shit?
So many of us are shouting to be heard purely because we hope that someone gives a shit.
I'll say a lot of things about religion; I don't have any and what I see of the one's I'm familiar with leaves me wondering why having faith in one leaves any ludid person with any comfort at all.
I'll say a lot of things about politics; although I'm grateful to live in a democracy, I'm not so deluded to believe the system can have no faults.
My goal here is to cast a critical eye on sociology; our conditioned and accepted behaviors that sometimes make no sense at all yet endure because they are so predictable and self-sustaining.
We may be the smartest species on the planet, but that does not guarantee that there can't be some galactically stupid fools amongst us, nor that those souls can't lead the masses to carry out some truly unfortunate (but nonetheless popular) acts. I just want to have a discussion about them.
A Zen riddle asked the reader to ponder, "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no ear close enough to hear it, does it make a sound?". This riddle can leave a very dark pall over someone who spends too much time alone, because the real answer in 2009 is that if a tree falls and there is no one to hear it, who really gives a shit?
So many of us are shouting to be heard purely because we hope that someone gives a shit.
I'll say a lot of things about religion; I don't have any and what I see of the one's I'm familiar with leaves me wondering why having faith in one leaves any ludid person with any comfort at all.
I'll say a lot of things about politics; although I'm grateful to live in a democracy, I'm not so deluded to believe the system can have no faults.
My goal here is to cast a critical eye on sociology; our conditioned and accepted behaviors that sometimes make no sense at all yet endure because they are so predictable and self-sustaining.
We may be the smartest species on the planet, but that does not guarantee that there can't be some galactically stupid fools amongst us, nor that those souls can't lead the masses to carry out some truly unfortunate (but nonetheless popular) acts. I just want to have a discussion about them.
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