Day 36

Today I called nurse Jasmine "Pinky" instead of Jasmine. Both Pinky and Jasmine are nurses I rarely see.

"I'm Jasmine!" said Jasmine (who is East Asian). "Pinky is Indian!" She thinks I've confused their ethnicities. I haven't. I confused their names because Pinky and Jasmine have the same flavour to me; the same vibrancy.

They're called "Spotlight Images"

Yeah, I just found that out. Those initial MS Windows images, usually beautiful landscapes, where you first enter your pin upon starting up a PC session. They call them spotlight images and in case you're even slower than I to stumble upon this information: you can look them up here, when you really dig one and it gets replaced too soon:

windows10spotlight.com/

Oh hey! Look at this. I still have a blog. I really should make more use of the damn thing.

Cheers.

The ecZiting A-to-Z conclusion

Let’s see: I postponed the letter V essentially for health reasons, I declared X-Day a holiday (it’s not a real letter) and to complete the cop-out trilogy I’m outsourcing Z to the youtubes.

I never did assign Z to a friend. I kept it to myself and here’s what I have to say:

Thiz guy iz my new favourite youtuber becauze he crackz me up. He’z got a few little enterprizez going on as he getz a bit of cred az a major influencer and internet reporter. But what I like bezt iz hiz straight-up commentariez.

He’s got a great sense of humour, a great accent, he’s not afraid to liberally apply the F-word, he’s got a brain and a social conscience. He is:

OZZy Man

Phoney Baloney

Well it’s P-day over at the A-to-Z and I haven’t crashed yet. Still in this thing and today my plucky, playful, passionate, pensive, sometimes panicky pal, the Ponderer has pulled this fine proposal from her hat:

Parsnips: the forgotten carrot

So everyone knows what a parsnip is, right? A white carrot-like root vegetable which has lagged in popularity behind its orange cousin. Its sweeter than a carrot when cooked. Who doesn’t like sweet?

Well here are ten fun facts about parsnips you probably didn’t know:

1. The shoots and leaves have serious toxic qualities which harvesters need to be aware of. People have suffered severe burns and blistering from wild parsnip encounters.

2. The original carrot was much more like today’s parsnip than today’s carrot.

3. In the video game Stardew Valley you will earn a 100 gold piece reward the first time you fully cultivate a parsnip.

4. The novel Parsnips in Love by Porochista Khakpour centres around the harvesting of a pair of parsnips which had grown entwined with each other; inseparable without breaking them.

5. Duke Gregory III of Naples once sponsored a footrace challenging any nine runners who would put up a 50 gold coin wager against his “magical sprinting parsnip.” Nearly everyone assumed some trick was afoot. Only three runners took up the challenge and the race proceeded. Gregory paid out the 150 coins. The parsnip never left the starting line.

6. The longest parsnip on record is 7.49 metres long! And was grown by the same retired Englishman, Joe Atherton who also holds the records for longest beetroot and longest carrot.

7. It is decidedly difficult finding ten interesting things to say about bloody parsnips. Thanks Ponderer!

8. Kenneth Kholer of then-West Germany became famous as the Trojan Parsnip Man when he found a parsnip half-jammed in his mailbox. He left it on his kitchen counter planning to query neighbours about the gift but the next morning the vegetable was nowhere to be found, while a dozen small white mice ransacked the kitchen.

9. Parsnips were the “potato” of ancient Europe - until the potato came along.

10. A pediatrician and popular blogger recommends that the best way to get kids to eat parsnips is to make french fries out of them. Sounds reasonable. I would eat a parsnip too if someone threatened to otherwise make a french fry out of me.

Well there you go. Sadly that was only seven facts about parsnips. Two of them I totally fabricated. I think you can guess which two. Sorry folks. I can’t always be trusted!

Ominous shore

I’ve never until now been down at the shore at night during one of these carnival snowfalls; these bright peaceful wet snowfalls where the ground is white with it and the sky immediately overhead glows with it and everything is gently illuminated by added streetlight reflection.

But standing, looking out at what should be the sea (a great lake officially), the view is arrested and without glimmer. It is no usual vista tonight nor occasional wall of fog. It is instead a dark translucence. A thick, blurry realm with a darkest imprecise layer where the horizon should be, but pressing unnaturally close to the shore, just out of reach.

Without this glowing shoreline modernity, the lake would be left alone in the darkness I suppose. A simple void, unpenetrated; unperverted.

I have never seen a natural space so visually unsettling; gloomy; foreboding. Like a giant filthy window pane; like a dome which seals from some most final dystopia. It is the edge of some dark unstable half-world.

Shall we politicize the holidays?

I cringe every time the subject of political correctness arises because I NEVER seem to hear an enlightened opinion. The general concept seems too vague to be relevant. I suggest it can only be realistically examined in particular examples.

In a perfect world people would think carefully before speaking or acting, and would demonstrate respect where it is due, and take responsibility for their words and actions. I realize that the human ego works against all of that, and for most people, any of that is a lot to ask.

Most people who I hear complaining about political correctness, seem to resent it as a cumbersome new code-system suddenly required to protect them from unjustified criticism. In other words, they come across as dingbats who don't know that they are dingbats and are mystified to be finally treated as such.

I personally don't give a flying care what kids look like at Halloween because they are just kids who are bribed by candy to look silly for us. Whether you dress up as Einstein or a skeleton I would happily surrender the tootsie roll without projecting arbitrary social interpretations onto the poor kid - concerning physics or flaying.

With Christmas just around the corner I shall grab hold of the nearest bolted-down object and steady myself for the coming onslaught of grating carol broadcasts and Greeting Debaters. I’m not aware that there is any intelligent debate to be had or ever was.

As a human being, you can either think about what you say before you say it, or you can be dull. You can either say what you mean, or be a dunderhead. You can mean to be respectful or you can be an asshole.

There are no inherently correct or incorrect seasonal greetings. It always depends on who you are and who you are communicating to: how wise, present, dull or dunderheaded you are being.

Let’s remember what Merry Christmas means. It is short for, “It is my wish that your Christmas will be merry!” Thus “merry Christmas” between Christians is perfectly appropriate obviously. And as a former Christian I do not manufacture imaginary harm by hearing it (Don’t get me wrong. I still like the dude but I’m allergic to some of his worshipers’ habits).

Example two: Wishing “Merry Christmas” to someone of a specific faith who does not celebrate Christmas but rather a specific winter ceremony of another name, is either presumptuous, dull or insincere, depending how well we know the person and their particular divine bents, or whether we give a damn.

And… example three: A government-sponsored billboard which wishes “Merry Christmas” to the public appears balefully ignorant of the fact that much of the taxation which pays for such trinkets comes from non-Christians or else was chosen to speak to a limited sector of its public and not to others, which is surely fiscally inefficient!

I won’t bother addressing those who claim that Canada is a Christian nation and “Merry Christmas” ought to rule unimpeded (if such dinosaurs still exist). I will flatter myself so much as to assume that no one of that intellectual quality would be reading this blog.

Frankly, I don’t care what anyone says to me, or around me, in between credit card transactions this jolly Productfest Season. Say what you want and let it reveal something about you!

To anyone who resents this concept and wishes to dribble arbitrary Merry Christmases everywhere you go, with clemency, as I have often done, it is surely no great crime. But it reveals we are lazy, insincere or both, and would be a far more honest person if we kept our mouth shut instead of issuing artificial sentiments from the tongue and not the heart.  

Or if we all agree instead that we like artificial sentiments from the tongue as a societal behavior model, then why should it matter what the hell the words are?

Happy Productfestia!

M is for... well... you'll see:

It's actually been about four years since it caught my attention that the naming of planets in mankind's favorite solar system is relatively uniform except for one glaring exception; that ostentatious little brat of a planet called Earth.

The other eight orbs are labelled in the realm of mythology, six of them of the Roman variety. But Earth? When has there ever been such an obvious and unapologetic display of subjectivity?

Of course, given our natural evolution out of complete ignorance, this is all entirely understandable. Nevertheless, four years ago I wrote on my bucket list: Rename Earth.

Don't worry. I'm not starting a movement. It's strictly an academic exercise though one I find truly interesting and quite likely relevant to a series of sci-fi short stories I have been planning, plotting and researching for quite some time.

The objective: Given the existing pattern of planetary nomenclature, what is the most obvious name for this third planet of the system?

"Easy," says my pal, Killer. "Terra."

"Won't even make the short list," says I.

"It's Latin," says Killer.

"Yeah?" says I. "What's Latin for Who gives a rat's ass?"

Killer: "I'd have to get back to you on that."


It didn't take long to find the solution which satisfies me.

The first step was to decipher a pattern into which Earth could fit. Immediately we see that it will be the name of a god, probably a Roman one.

Next, there are three things that stand out:

1. Earth is, for many reasons both scientific and poetic, the sister planet of Venus, thus Serena makes the short list. Ha ha! Just kid'n. We're looking at Roman, possibly Greek, mythology; not tennis mythology. It is Artemis and Athena who make the short list, among others.

2. There is an obvious lineage running toward the sun. Saturn fathered Jupiter, who fathered Mars. The previously-named Earth comes next. This presents a strong case for naming us after a child of Mars. For various reasons then, it is Romulus on the short list. Hmm. Not pretty. No Earthling I know is likely to wish to be renamed Romulan. It would totally screw up our coveted Star Trek mythology, at least without a terribly clever plot twist.

3. The Gods already represented in our system, with their various spheres of influence, cover most of mankind's most passionate and arduous pursuits. They are politics (Jupiter), media and commerce (Mercury), food (Saturn), water (Neptune), religion and family structure (Uranus), wealth (Pluto), war (Mars), love and sex (Venus).

The most obvious missing human obsessions? I must suggest they are education, art/music and, perhaps, pop culture.

As criteria 1 and 2 are obviously exclusive (Mars did not father Venus nor presumably any of her sisters) there is no way to resolve all three criteria with a single name. The next ideal then would be to find a name that satisfies two of the three; still an unlikely possibility, it occurs to me.

Well, it turns out there is of course a Roman god of art and music; more specifically, a goddess. And lo and behold: She is the sister of Venus! Two of three criteria satisfied!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Minerva

L is for Labels

American, Canadian, gay, straight, Catholic, Jewish, Conservative, Liberal, white, black, Torontonian, Hamiltonian, Blah blah blah.

I am morbidly tired of all these words. I hear conversations based on these words, sometimes conversations that are being inflicted on me while I nod politely or simply fight to stay awake. And invariably they are conversations not bearing the slightest shred of truth. They are exercises in the softest thinking; Nonsense. I could record every sentence and craft a report that demonstrates the sad falseness of every sentence. But why would I do that?

Not everyone is a committed seeker of truth, and why should they be? They are occupied, doing what they feel they must to survive. They are raising children, raising roofs and raising their salaries. I can not complain about this. They are keeping the race alive and keeping me in coffee, wine and automobiles which I readily accept. I am no hero. I make use of their offerings, for better or worse, and I offer them the fruits of my own poetic labour, whoever may listen; whatever use they may make of it.

So why sometimes, am I inclined to slap them in the face by telling them that everything they believe is wrong? Perhaps by the time this rambling is done I will have some answer for that.

Labels. Wretched things. It is unarguable that every living thing is unique. Yet so few wish to acknowledge it. We insist on having easy peasy simple conversations full of generalized nonsense stemming from the feeling that labels are something real; that labels actually tell us something real about someone or something.

Example: Nationalism.

Masters of labour and commerce have dictated the bond between "Americans" and "Canadians" while bubble-headed politicians strut around pretending that they have something to do with it; while average "citizens" bash each other across the 49th parallel; insulting their imaginary neighbors to the south or north for whatever imaginary faults the airheads at CNN have planted in their meagre little minds this given day.

Do you want to know how the average American citizen and average Canadian citizen compare? I know plenty of each by the way.

The average Canadian citizen spends his day chasing the objectives of his greed, guarding his reputation with undiagnosed neurotic obsession and paranoia, obeying constant directives from obsolete survival instincts and mistaking the simple biochemical processes that bind him to his children as some glorious holy love while blindly orchestrating the ruination of their little lives. Then he goes home and learns nothing of his plight because he's distracted by a mob of talentless television twits, while his brain, once young and vital and curious, now grows softer and softer.

Meanwhile the average American spends his day chasing the objectives of his greed, guarding his reputation with undiagnosed neurotic obsession and paranoia, obeying constant directives from obsolete survival instincts and mistaking the simple biochemical processes that bind him to his children as some glorious holy love while blindly orchestrating the ruination of their little lives. Then he goes home and learns nothing of his plight because he's distracted by a mob of talentless television twits, while his brain, once young and vital and curious, now grows softer and softer.

How am I doing so far? Am I winning any new friends?

Just the fact that you are reading this blog is an indication that you may very well not be *average*, by the way, so please don't feel insulted.

I have a friend who graduated from a prison environment where he was well acquainted with a group of individuals who were all loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed, garishly dressed, infantile-minded gangster types and who all had black skin. Now he goes around angry at the world for calling him racist when he complains about black people.

He defends himself stating he has made honest and consistent observations.

But I suggest it is not the black part that is the problem. It's the loud-mouth part or the foul-mouth part. So perhaps he should complain about "foul-mouthed people" or "loud-mouthed people" instead of "black people." Perhaps that would be a bit more intelligent and a bit more accurate. perhaps it would also be more kind with regards to all the millions of black people who are polite and quiet and who wear their pants in the general vicinity of their waist. And perhaps it would be a lot kinder to me, given there are intelligent, kind, inspired black people who are my friends and whom I dearly cherish and respect.

But that's tribal instinct for you. As useless as it is ubiquitous.

Every person I've ever met is utterly unique in the universe, and the universe could not be what it is without them. And for all my above bitching about the general failing of the dull masses they are all in the habit of occasional feelings or acts of kindness, love, empathy and generosity, each of these incidents a small miracle given the once-necessary, but cruel, nature of life.

Beyond the propping up of our own brittle egos, we will never accomplish anything truthful or useful in conversation without recognizing the reality of uniqueness; without passing up the tyranny of labels and getting at the specific realities of specific persons or things, which usually means suppressing our own illusion of enlightenment and deconstructing our own selves. Dangerous work though that may be!

Even the label human is a generalization. We might assess it a useful label because it is 99.9999% or so reliable but it is worth understanding that it is not 100% reliable.

If you're a human does that mean that your children will be human? Does that mean that both your parents had to be human?

Yes and yes, obviously. Right? But what's the problem? The reality of evolution which we have now observed too long in action to be dismissed as theory, is the problem.

If you're a human then your mother had to be human. So her mother had to human. So her mother had to be human. And so on, infinitely? Of course we come to a problem, don't we? At some point in your great lineage, your great great great (etc, etc...) grandmother was not human but something resembling a chimp and which I know not the name for. Look further into your family tree and you will find a shrew or few! Look much further and your own personal ancestors were all sea polyps.

Even our own status as "human" is likely only temporary. Look forward in time. For how long will you and I maintain the label? Whatever unfamiliar creature our kind evolve into, assuming we survive this decadent and dangerous adolescence of the human race, may just want to keep the label human for themselves and may relegate our generation, post-mortem, to some kind of "pre-human" term.

The lesson is that all labels, to some degree are a cheat. Some much more so than others. It's worth remembering. Because at some point we will need to become smarter than our instincts. I'm pretty certain it will become necessary.


I mistrust all systemizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the lone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.
- William Blake

Everything popular is wrong.
- Oscar Wilde

Noo-noos and dooeys and other labels

As I sit down to write the blog entry that must so obviously follow my last blog entry, I feel sadly unmotivated. This idea has been creeping around in my head lately that yet another reason why normal contemporary human interactions are marked by such woefully small uses of intelligence has to do with efficiency; that use of intelligence is somehow, instinctively, a costly exercise and that people who don't interpret something as a problem for themself are naturally inclined not to spend any precious "intelligence units" dealing with it.

I think the following topic might actually be a great example with which to test that idea if only it would generate enough blog comments to provide some measure of evidence.

But no matter. Let me take a deep breath and persist:


I challenge you to grasp the following scenario: I walk into a restaurant with my friend Mary. Mary, we all presume, has a vagina and is officially recorded as being of the female gender in the records of all relevant governmental and socio-economic schemes.

We sit down and we both order steak.

The waiter asks how we would like our steaks cooked.

I immediately leap to my feet, cast my napkin at the floor and shout, "How dare you insult us! Can't you see I am a man! Can't you see this is a woman! Obviously men eat their steak medium rare and women eat their steak well done! How dare you question our normalcy! DO YOU SUSPECT WE ARE PERVERTS!"

Now. Is my reaction intelligent? Is my reaction logical? Is my reaction sane? Or should I be quietly ushered off to a psychiatric hospital at this point?

Okay, back up and let me offer a more responsible reaction:

The waiter asks how we would like our steaks cooked and I cordially reply, "Oh, we're both meatlinear. But thank you for asking."

The waiter then smiles and departs, understanding of course that I want my steak medium rare and Mary wants hers well done, just as he would have guessed, knowing that meatlinear people are in the majority and meatgiddy people (men who prefer well-done steak and women who prefer medium rare) are in the minority of 10% or so!

Does this scenario sound much more intelligent? Much more logical? Much more sane?

What? No?

But scenarios alike either of these are played out every day all over this continent (and others I assume) by damn near every single person, I would wager. But instead of steak preference it is used in terms of sexual preference or "sexual orientation".

The problem with the above scenarios is that there is of course no correlation between gender and how you like your steak cooked except that if someone did a study you would inevitably find some pattern because it is mathematically impossible not to.

But what people so hysterically find impossible to grasp, is that there is no correlation either, between which brand of dingly-doodle one carries between their legs and which brand one prefers their bed-partners to come equipped with, except that if someone did a study (hmm.. Kinsey?) he would inevitably find a pattern because it is again impossible not to.

Now, is anyone already thinking I'm wrong, that there is a big difference between sex and steak (I enjoy both equally, by the way); because genitals and meat are two different things (if you ignore the obvious joke) while genitals and genitals are the same thing?

They are not the same thing. That is soft thinking. What you have and what you want are two different concepts. Apples and oranges.

Any person actually has a plethora of sexual preferences at once. You can't just give a "straight" man a vagina in a jar and he'll be happy. There are untold factors to his preferences of varying significance, much of which can not be quantified, verbalized or perhaps even consciously recognized.

My point, by the way, is that such labels as gay and straight are a wild aberration from normal thinking and from scientific process, not that they offend me or that I'm militantly against their use (though I can not think of myself as "gay" or "straight" - the idea feels stupid) but that this social peculiarity is a very significant phenomena which the average person seems unable to even comprehend, despite it being a matter of simplest logic. And I say this only because every time I've broached the subject in conversation, people who otherwise get away with being viewed as intelligent just stare at me like I'm an alien... Who has just double-dipped his potato chip... In the punch bowl...

Normal scientific process labels things based primarily on what they are, not on combinations of arbitrary conditions, and socially we copy this method.

By normal scientific process we would label all people who sexually prefer males "male-lovers" or whatever fancy word and all people who prefer females "female-lovers" or whatever. The idea that our primary label is derived through the arbitrary condition of one's own gender is wildly unscientific and no more sane or logical than saying that blond people who like women are called "straight" and dark-haired people who like men are called "gay" or perhaps "wiggly".

People who like medium-rare steak are just called "people who like medium-rare steak" and there is no thought to any conditions, gender-wise or else-wise because, and this is my main point: We are as a society and as individuals massively deluded by sexual superstitions and not so much by meat superstitions.

Unfortunately it is pointless to demonstrate the astounding reality of our sexual confusion because my motives will be misperceived and rather than understood as a man just sick of all the bullshit I'll just be suspected seven kinds of pervert. So why even go there?

I have a feeling I've never met a human being entirely free of superstition nor any human being capable of recognizing their own superstitions for what they are.

Am I the exception? How could I know for sure! I know that for the first 30-odd years of my life that almost everything I believed was crap and then I literally started over as an integral seeker of truth.

Now... what is your argument?

That gender "orientation" is not a preference; that there is no choice in the matter? That's fine. But same with steak. There is no choice in that matter either. You like it one way and not the other for reasons that connect in your non-conscious mind. Both are indeed preferences.

But the 90% straight rule is consistent! There is some kind of meaning there! No. There are mathematical patterns to steak preference or any other preference if you care to do the field research. There are multiple components to these and most other preferences. It is no wonder that cross-gender attractions are the more common when you realize that a large component of sexual attraction stems from fascination with the unfamiliar. Societal customs dictate that we spend more time naked with our own self and with people of the same gender. Need evidence here? Foot fetishes are wildly common in North America where people's feet are largely hidden from view in shoes, and almost non-existent in warm nations where people's feet are exposed in sandals daily.

Okay but "straight" longings are normal and other longings charitably tolerated (or not, in many cases) and we know this because straight couplings make BABIES which is a VERY BIG DEAL and essential to survival of the human race! SO THERE...! Wrong. Not a big deal. Water is essential to all of life on this planet but that does not make it a perversion when oxygen or hydrogen blend with other elements to form materials other then water.

I could go on predicting what the soft arguments would be and pre-emptively axe them in this space but I'd rather stop here and go to bed, frankly.

If you understand my point despite my less than ingenious attempt to explain it then that is much to your credit, I would say. But I suspect that most people are so enslaved by the pressures of survival instinct to be socially normal that you are being prohibited from doing the math!

I would love to hear from you whether you "get" what I'm saying. Or if you still think I'm wrong, I'd love to hear why!

This is very abnormal, I know, but truly I take great delight in discovering flaws in my own thinking but also it is my responsibility to point out a flaw in your own comment if applicable!

Peace.

Day 14: One confession

Hold on to your hats folks.

My confession is in regards to... sexual orientation!

Are you ready for this?

I am attracted to...

Are you sure you're ready for this?

I mean, REALLY sure?

Brace yourself...

I am attracted to...

Skin and bones.

Exactly like everyone else.

The most important meal of the day

"YOU ARE CAPABLE OF VERY HARD WORK AND DEDICATION."

Huh? Who, me?

I guess when you eat a pile of fortune cookies for breakfast you get jokes instead of fortunes. Who knew?

Summer is for kids and kids-at-heart.

The ever excellent Fumadiddle has published the following advice: 20 things to do this summer to be a kid again. I support it whole-heartedly but I must add some clarifications:

1. Catch lightning bugs.

Is that the same thing as fireflies?

2. Play hopscotch.

Sounds like a recipe for broken ankles. Can I just draw chalk pictures in public places instead?

3. Chase down the ice cream truck.

Did that once. Turned out to be a knife-sharpener guy instead. Luckily I had a knife on me. I hadn't been planning to pay for the ice cream, you see.

4. Blow soap bubbles.

Saw him the other day. He says Hi.

5. Hula hoop.

Not a chance in hell.

6. Swing.

I've heard about those parties. No thanks.

7. Have friends over to play hide and go seek.

We thought Ollie was a welfare case. Turns out that "Ollie-Ollie income-free" was supposed to be "All ye, all ye in, come free."

8. Cloud watch.

Ah, yes. And try it at night too. Especially if there's snow on the ground and a fullish moon.

9. Camp out in the back yard.

Best done a couple yards away from another batch of campers. Launch crab apples at them all night. Great fun.

10. Jump off a rope swing over a river.

We call that water skiing now.

11. Play in the sprinkler.

That's what Mom always said when declining a request to go swimming, which always infuriated me but in hindsight, it was better than "Go play in traffic" I suppose.

12. Have a mud fight.

Might eating a Mile-High Mud Pie dessert count?

13. Build an indoor fort with chairs and sheets.

Add a couple card tables for a fort-mansion.

14. Eat watermelon on the back porch and spit the seeds.

The goal is to land them in your friend’s hair, of course.

15. Have a water balloon or squirt gun war.

Have you seen the weapons of watery mass destruction they manufacture these days?

16. Climb a tree.

My childhood climbing-tree finally got cut down in the last year. There can never be another.

17. Skip stones.

And hold hands. And get an old gold Chevy and a place of your own.

18. Go wading in a creek.

Does the hot tub count?

19. Create a masterpiece with sidewalk chalk.

I see the end of the list is coming and you haven’t yet said, clip a hockey card to your spokes to make your bike a motorbike. I guess that was strictly a boy thing.

20. Laugh until your sides hurt.

That's why I visit your blog, Flumadiddle.

Notice of Impending Return

In case anyone is still peaking in at this space now and then:

FWG has been lost in severe hermitude of late; fueled indirectly by severe poverty. As tides have shifted and various worthwhile income sources are now appearing on the horizon and the pieces of his next stage in life are finally coming together, we expect his full return and consistent presence here in Blogland very shortly.

In the meantime please enjoy some complimentary muzak:

Hmmm... What to be thankful for...?

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving y'all. Day one of two was spent here at Mission Control (Biodad's home). Tomorrow I'll be up at the farm with my official family.

Today's deliciously awesome menu:
turkey
stuffing
gravy
cranberry sauce
spiced yams
broccoli w/ melted cheese
whole wheat rolls
pumpkin pie

And what do you suppose we were thankful for?

No! Not the pumpkin pie! That dad is alive!

Yeesh. You people are incorrigible.

No, Dad. You can't buy the Respiratory Therapist

Pleased to announce that Biodad's condition is now improving so rapidly that he may be home in a couple days. He's currently in the ward, removed from the respiratory apparatus and from various other devices which were plugged into every available natural orifice and a few new ones created by doctors. I'll leave the particular details alone. How's that?

The turning point began about ten days ago when he came out of his tortuous delirium - or rather, for the most part - and communication of a rough sort began. He was still impeded by a full-size tracheotomy and thus voiceless and some remaining drug effects still lingered in his brain.

He mouthed words we couldn't grasp. He signaled for the clip board and pencil and wrote, with terrible effort and shakiness, his muscles and thought processes both impeded, POLPE.

"People?"

He shakes his head.

"Pope?"

He shakes his head.

"Pole?"

He nods, and slowly points toward the other patient in the "semi-private" ICU ward. There is a pole between them and it bears the electronic devices which administer drugs to his roommate.
'My pole.' he silently mouths.

"Your pole? I don't think so, dude. Your pole is over there."

He shakes his head and slowly points again. 'My pole.'

"That pole is hooked into that lady. That's her pole. She needs it. It's giving her the drugs she needs. Your pole is on the other side of your bed. Over there. See?"

He shakes his head, takes up the clip board and begins the arduous task of writing, $100.00 bill.

"One hundred dollar bill? You'll give me a hundred bucks to steal that pole?" I quickly calculate that a hundred dollars is not enough to go killing a person for. I do have principles.

He shakes his head and we spend the next ten minutes or so establishing his claim that there is a hundred dollar bill on top of the pole and he wants it. I spend the following ten minutes assuring that there is no such bill on top of the pole and we should all just relax. Finally he winces and puts his hand to his forehead. He seems to realize he's been a little off the mark. We laugh and tell him it's okay.

Later he asks if he can purchase the pretty young respiratory therapist and take her home. This is no delusion. This is how we know he's his old self again.

Welcome back.

Why FWG is like your roof

The gown is soft. I like it. I'd kind of like to keep it. Except it ties in the back. Rather awkward.

I'm watching the shoes move back and forth out there in the land beyond the curtain, and listening to the voices following them around. The curtains look new. You can see a lot of creases in them still. Curious set of patterns on the curtains. There are six repeating images. Two are botanical; two astronomical and two geometrical. Very hodge-podgey. I'm irked by its themelessness. There's a single blemish; a carrot-shaped stain. The human body produces dozens of different fluids. I wonder which is responsible for this?

Somewhere distant a baby is screaming. Not crying. Screaming. This baby is seriously pissed.

I pick up pieces of a strange conversation. "You know what she does? She kicks cats! And she pushes old ladies down escalators!"

"That's not true! I pinch old ladies. And I kick babies!"

I swear, that's what they said.

In the next compartment a woman occasionally gasps. Her intermittent cramps are getting worse. Someone, a doctor or nurse, enters her space and moves back and forth, assisting her in some way while brushing against the curtain before me. If I were a cat I'd be swatting the heck out of this person.

Finally Doc enters my pen, looking at the notes they'd taken at reception. She puts me in the blood-pressure cuff, slaps a pulse-monitoring doo-dad on my index finger and slips a thermometer under my tongue. She shines a light in my ear. The nurse had already done these things earlier - along with taking a blood sample. I hate giving blood. It's painful. No - not the needle. That's a breeze. It's the goddam tape they use to hold the gauze over your tiny puncture wound. When I rip that tape off later it takes my arm hairs with it.

I have a slight fever and my BP is very high. We discuss my long list of symptoms.

"I'm going to untie you," she says, "So I can check your shoulder."

"Your going to hate the knots I put in it."

"I see that."

She checks my shoulder and neck and pokes about in my hair with her light.

"I hate to tell you this but these aren't hives."

"They're not?"

"No. They're shingles."

"I've got shingles?”

“You sure do.”

Since the previous doctors at the walk-in-clinic failed to make the diagnosis, the window for treatment has expired. She explains the kind of pain I should expect.

“I’m already getting that,” I assure. “It’s manageable.”

She shakes her head slowly; ruefully. It’s the kind of expression that can only mean one thing: ‘It’s gonna get worse.’

“It’s gonna get worse,” she says.

“I knew you were going to say that.”

All she can do is prescribe more drugs to try to keep me comfortable. She issues me Percocet for the pain and some damn thing called Amiabletrampoline or something like that. I presume it’s to keep me friendly and bouncy.

I’m going to be home-bound for a while.

Death by Haircut

Okay, it's like this, see. I'm sick but without the usual sore throat, drippy nose thing. The symptoms are very strange and are all located on my left side and above the shoulder.

- very stiff neck

- overly-sensitive skin (beard stubble feels like daggers on my neck)

- hives

- visible swelling of the neck and cheek

- ear-infection-type discomfort in ear

- tender swolen lymph nodes

- extremely sore areas on scalp

- fever

Sounds fun, eh? I'm living in a blurry world because it hurts to wear my glasses!

Luckily work has been slow and I've basically worked half-days the last few days and from home, at that. Gawd bless the internet.

Been hounding doctors to give me antibiotics but that of course is like trying to get gold out of Fort Knox. They gave me Naproxin or something like that - an anti-inflamatory. Hasn't done shit so far. Basically if you come crawling back to the doctor a week or more after your initial visit with all your hair fallen out and your bloody entrails dragging behind you they'll begin considering antibiotics. I have a few days to go.

Most unfortunately our lacrosse playoffs run this week and I'm in no condition to squish my head into a helmet let alone play the game.

Speaking of my head, it was feeling rather hot and sweaty yesterday and I realized I was touting way too much hair, so I popped across the street to one of the barbers.

I wasn't thinking clearly.

I got a great haircut.

I also learned what it is to be tortured.

There are hives on my head, you see. And for whatever reason, I didn't feel like asking Aldo for special treatment. He raked his comb across the sores over and over and over again until I was sure my brain was exposed.

Ouch.

Oh dear god, ouch.

.

Image rudely pickpocketed from Splash Magazine

My Woggathon

In support of noble friend Tommyknockers and his young son who was recently diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome, I participated in the Tourette Syndrom Association of Ontario Walk-a-thon fundraiser.

One of my darling wise-cracker co-workers offered to double her pledge if I were to provide video evidence demonstrating I actually walked in the event.

“Can you really imagine I’m gonna spend an afternoon with a bunch of people swearing uncontrollably without video-taping it?” I replied. “You really overestimate my scruples.”

Well, I raised $345 on short notice and attended the local event armed with shigital camera with primitive video functionality. Let’s find out if I can actually manage to upload the video…

The participants were very disappointingly well behaved. At one point I heard spontaneous shouting, “Don’t eat that! Don’t eat that!” But I looked over and the boy’s dog was trying to eat something so I guess that didn’t count. Oh well. Better luck next year.

But seriously – Nice people, they were. It’s always great to meet new people who are nice.
.

The Farm

Dropped in on my folks. They weren't home. It was a nice half-thawed day so I wrecked an old pair of running shoes tromping around in the slush taking photos.

Agh! Backwards! Backwards!

One year ago I vowed to quit dicking around; to either put up or shut up; to either conquer my laziness with regards to productivity (writing) and health (weight loss) or just give up and accept the flawed creature I am and the limits thereof.

It’s report-card time.

I eventually lost 30 lbs, gained 18 back, developed some dietary discipline but crashed headlong into the calorie behemoth that is the Christmas season. Oh, and I joined a gym finally.

Started logging the writing projects and scheduling my writing time. Joined the National Novel Writing Month contest and forged a watchdog partnership with other writers on the Hamilton team. But haven’t significantly boosted productivity so far. The Nano project crashed when Peter Pan had his breakdown and I turned full-time caregiver for a week.

Decision: inconclusive.

The results are not good enough but the new structures are in place and I’m feeling motivated. Therefore – I extend the project. I need to be down another 50 lbs and up 350,000 words by this time next year.

As Doctor Lock would say… ONWARD!