THE FIBROMYALGIAN

Apologies for Not Posting Lately...

2009-11-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

...but everything that's come into my head that I've felt like putting on paper or running through a word processor has me creating a comic book that has little dialogue and no drawings.

But now that we're here, let's discuss Latisse. The drug "is a prescription treatment for hypotrichosis used to grow eyelashes, making them longer, thicker and darker. Eyelash hypotrichosis is another name for having inadequate or not enough eyelashes." (Cite from Latisse's Web site.)

Also from the site: "LATISSE^® use may cause darkening of the eyelid skin which may be reversible. LATISSE^® use may also cause increased brown pigmentation of the colored part of the eye which is likely to be permanent." (Italics, of course, mine.)

This means the eyelid skin darkening, since it may be reversible, also may be irreversible! And Latisse can freaking turn your eyes brown!

Latisse has the potential to make one's eyelashes 25 percent longer, with effects becoming noticable after two months of use.

Is that a big flapping deal? Am I nutty for not understanding how the hell this drug is worth taking?

The gods (in the US, the pharmaceutical industry qualifies as a deity) must be crazy!

'Straight From the Bog.' (C) Ocean Spray

2009-10-26T16:05:00.003-07:00

Ohhhh-kaaay. That's the slogan they're going with?

This is what a bog is, according to dictionary.net: "A quagmire filled with decayed moss and other vegetable matter; wet spongy ground where a heavy body is apt to sink; a marsh; a morass."

I can't even think of a worse slogan for Ocean Spray to have. Maybe "Ocean Spray: Mostly Toilet Water"?

...Yeesh. Maybe they ought to reconsider their advertising firm. Who the hell wants something that's fresh from landfill juice?

Spanish-speaking Clown Cowboys Electrocuting A Guy for Fun and (Very Little) Money!

2009-10-26T15:30:00.003-07:00

I was flipping through television channels and came upon the Spanish Channel.

The show's MCs were dressed in clown-ish makeup and wore cowboy-kinda clothes. They also had fake hair that came from their ten gallon hats that looked like red yarn -- Raggedy Ann and Andy-style.

And that wasn't the weirdest part.

The two MCs egged on a person who picked numbers on a board. The numbers were taken away, and behind them was either a lightning bolt or a dollar amount.

Now's probably the time to talk about the person's (likely) family member, who was strapped into a chair and holding two e-meter thingies in his hands, but wasn't auditing for Scientology... Or maybe he was -- I don't know exactly how Scientology goes.

If the person picking the numbers revealed a lightning bolt, the guy got the juice. If the person got the money... Well, the person got the money.

Eventually, the guy strapped into the chair couldn't take one of his zappings, and let go of his e-meter.

All for $350.

That's Entertainment!

OK... So Methadone Knocked Me On My Ass For A Month

2009-10-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

Did not see that one coming!

But now things seem to be better... And not in the way I said before. For example: Now I know that I cannot lay down for a second during the day or I will pass right the hell out. If my head hits a pillow, bam!, I'm asleep for at least thirty minutes. That's how things have been for about a month now.

Then I got an idea: To try sitting about my apartment instead of laying about it. It turns out that this simple act changed my sleeping habits. Now I don't go to sleep until my head hits my pillow at 1 a.m. Previously, I had thought I couldn't do anything to affect how much and when I slept, so I didn't bother modifying my actions. It's a good thing I did, because my life is much more pain- and fatigue-less.

So I believe I will stay on my current drug diet of 60 mg Methadone, 60 mg Oxycodone IR (immediate release), 6 mg Klonopin per day. This costs me $162 a month. My doctor wants to put me on Cymbalta, which would force me to get a Medicare Part D Plan -- or Medicare Prescription Drug Plan -- which would mean that I would end up paying much more out of pocket per year than I currently do.

Since I seem to be doing well -- and should continue to do better the more my system is exposed to Methadone and is able to become used to it -- I think I'm going to forego a Part D Plan for now.

Perhaps I'll post an explanation about Medicare Part D someday soon. Then again, maybe I won't, since it would be an unholy pain in the ass, just as dealing with it is.

...Anyway: Hopefully I'm back to blogging. And back to having a life!

Mysteries Of the Pyramids, Explained

2009-09-28T15:46:00.003-07:00

A lot of wacky stuff has been posited by a lot of wacky people due to the fact that pyramids were made by various cultures at various times, despite these cultures having had no contact with, or knowledge of, one another.

How could that possibly be? How could so many different cultures come up with the same structure throughout history?

This is how: Because all these cultures were made of people, and people anywhere think the same way as people everywhere. And the people that made up these cultures wanted to create the tallest, most stable structures they could.

And at the time these cultures existed, the pyramidal form was the best one to use to create a tall, stable structure.

DUH.

...I mean, it's that or aliens.

Jesus's Family Values

2009-09-27T12:24:00.003-07:00

[Originally posted December 10, 2008, and inspired by this Newsweek cover article by Lisa Miller.]

The Biblical patriarchs had as many wives and concubines as they could afford. In fact, polygamy was (and I daresay is) the ideal for People of the Book (and having multiple wives, technically, is polygyny -- "The More You Know"!). Poor people tended toward monogamy solely because they couldn't afford more bitches. (And I use "bitches" in this post only because the Bible treats women on par with female dogs: as a male's property. Hell, only a handful of women in the entire Bible are even bothered to be named. You get maybe a thousand male names from all the chapters/verses regarding all the begetting and begetting and begetting, but essentially no female names. And the begetting was a lot tougher on them.)

I fervently believe traditional marriage must be restored. Still, I'm a modern guy. I bend with the times. I don't think we have to go back to making women chattel. Also, I don't get money mixed up in my relationships. Especially now that I, personally, don't have any to speak of.

Tacks (brass): I want ten wives (starters) who pay for anything and everything I want to do/to have/need/merely want.

But that's me. A real traditionalist.

But I know a lot of people out there are fighting for traditional marriage as taught by Jesus: a union of one man and one woman.

The problem being that Jesus never said, never gave any indication, that this is what marriage is supposed to be. In fact, since Jesus was a Jewish man of his times, he would have been more than OK with polygamy.

Jesus believed the end of the world was at hand. By example, he taught celibacy. He did so, in part, likely because in a nonexistent world a family doesn't need kids to ensure its prosperity. As part of this apocalyptic view, Jesus encouraged people to leave their families to follow him and, generally, not to care about these families because they were earthly things, soon to be rendered unimportant by God's appearance on earth, which he did often say was at hand (as in during his lifetime or shortly thereafter).

So Christians who follow Jesus's actual teaching should desert their families, if they have them, (but not get divorced). And if they don't have families, they shouldn't marry at all.

The family values Christianity currently teaches are the exact opposite of those Jesus taught (in essence: the family has no value whatsoever). Preachers go on and on about the family being the bedrock of civilization.

Such preaching couldn't be more anti-Christian.

If Christian preachers get what they want -- Jesus's family values imposed on America -- the result will be the annihilation of our concept of family.

Personally, I don't need nor want that. I'd be fine, simply, with ten wives.

...At least for starters.

My Apartment Is A Prison

2009-09-26T14:54:00.002-07:00

I'm at the coffeehouse I so often go to, but haven't been to since I began my current pain-management regimen.

I've stayed away because I haven't wanted to aggravate the pain in my legs by walking the four block round-trip to here and back home. I also thought it would be a bad idea to go to a noisy place that could do nothing but exacerbate my ever-present migraine.

But I'm here today. I came out... To discover that, as always, I'm right.

Today I awoke to a studio apartment that felt like a jail cell -- or, better, a holding cell. I've been in quite a few of those, so it's better for me to make a comparison to one of those since I know how it induces claustrophobia and the desire for -- to the exclusion of all other desires -- escape.

So I put a hat over my greasy hair and bellowed a Braveheart FREEEEEDOM! as I locked my apartment door behind me as I left.

My stilt-y, unbending legs tottered me here and I ordered my usual sixteen ounces of coffee, to which I added a quarter-ounce of half-and-half, seven heaping teaspoons of Sugar In the Raw, and two taps of powdered cinnamon.

I scored a spot on the love seat, but was bothered by the noise the few, but loud-talking -laughing -moving -breathing -existing, people made. So I moved to an outdoor table, where I sat and smoked until I couldn't take the annoyance of the line of people that qued up to ask me for a cigarette. (See this post for how I feel about would-be cig-bummers.)

back inside, it had quieted down in the time it took me to smoke two cigarettes. So I finished my coffee and got a refill to try to remedy my lethargy (which you can read about in my previous post).

Then the place filled in and the people who took the table behind me began playing dominoes or something like it. Something that involved blocks or tiles that someone was always hammering into the table or shuffling with enough force to crack to tabletop.

...Ug.

It's best for me to go home and lock myself safely back into my apartment.

...How long will I have to jail myself? Methadone: Take me away! ...Er, Set me free!

The Methadone May Be Starting To Work...

2009-09-25T15:46:00.003-07:00

...because I'm feeling very lethargic -- again. I also think my pain may be -- maybe -- reduced from where it was Monday, when I began taking Methadone.

So I'll be posting short, new, posts like this one when I can, and otherwise updating the blog with stuff from Essays About Anything (see the post below this one) when I don't feel up to writing new stuff.

...As it is, I can't even muster the energy to play video games.

And that, friends, is the very definition of lethargy.

The Good News Of Judas Iscariot

2009-09-25T15:44:00.002-07:00

I watched a program on the Gospel of Judas. In response to whether this noncanonical gospel is important, a priest/reverend responded with this (paraphrase): I can't imagine anyone wanting or needing more than Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. He made it seem preposterous that a noncanonical gospel would have any value or worth.

(Further detail: This priest/reverend -- whatever he's called depending on how his religious hammer hangs -- holds televised Mass or whatever you call it, and has been doing so for what seems like decades. He has full, gray hair, a not-overdone tanning-booth complexion, and great teeth... His native habitat must be a PoliGrip commercial.)

About one hundred gospels and other texts regarding Jesus (that we know of) were created in the second, third and fourth centuries. All were made for the purposes of preserving, in writing, what Jesus taught.

Aside: The stories, teachings, etc. that eventually comprised individual gospels and other texts were taught, spread, and popularized orally before they were committed to papyri. Which is to say that all gospels/other texts included in and excluded from the New Testament were guaranteed to have errors, embellishments and the like.

A game of telephone with twenty people can't pass one sentence intact.

Back to it: The reason we have MML&J in the New Testament instead of or alongside the Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdelene and/or many others is that the Catholic Council of Hippo circa 390 chose what books, from then on, made up the New Testament. The gospels of MML&J were included, and at least twenty (gospels) were excluded.

In the program I watched a scholar stated that MML&J are the narrative gospels. They are stories: Jesus did this, did that, was crucified and resurrected. As such, the scholar noted (most likely with a British accent -- the possession of which increases one's credibility at least twofold), they are the gospels that are most easily understood.

However, MML&J contradict one another and differ in extremely important ways on extremely important things. Noncanonical texts could, possibly, help explain these contradictions and differences.

(Long example of the canonical gospels differing: Only Matthew and Luke wrote that Mary was a virgin when she conceived and gave birth. And Matt's and Luke's gospels differ in many ways many times regarding Jesus's birth.

Still, Matt and Luke began their gospels with Jesus's birth, so it makes sense that they would discuss the birth's circumstances. Mark and John began their writings with Jesus's baptism, and so don't mention Jesus's birth. Didn't bother to shoehorn in a mention of the only virgin conception and birth that ever occurred. To dedicate even one verse to something that cannot and has not been done, except in the case of Jesus and Mary, not just for humans, but virtually all multicelled organisms.)

Many of the noncanonical gospels deal mostly or wholly only with what Jesus said. The Gospel of Thomas is a perfect example: It's structure is: "Jesus said: yadda yadda yadda. Jesus said: yadda yadda yadda." Again and again, then abrupt end.

Many of these gospels do not mention Jesus's crucifixion. Far more gospels aren't concerned with Jesus's death than are. (Christianity being based largely on MML&J is, in part, why Christians celebrate Jesus the miracle man-god and freely disregard the fact that Jesus only cared about poor people and was a radical pacifist. The US's outgoing president is considered one of the most religious POTUS-es in history. Obviously: Following Jesus's example, W. got the US into a war on pretenses he knew to be false, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, is bailing out financial-services firms with billions of dollars -- and those firms currently are giving employees billions of dollars in Christmas bonuses -- while allowing these firms' victims, the poor, to lose their homes -- and torturing people in violation of US and international law. Et cetera et cetera etc.)

At least one noncanonical text deals with Jesus's "missing years": the time in Jesus's life between his birth and crucifixion. Thirty years.

All of the above makes me wonder how a person like The PoliGrip Preacher possibly be satisfied only with MML&J? These four gospels disagree, contradict one another, don't account for almost all of Jesus's life, and on and on.

A priest/reverend is supposed to be an expert on Jesus's life. If a historian chooses to become an expert on Abraham Lincoln, it seems PoliGrip Preacher would suggest the historian only take into account Abe's birth and the year up to and including his death. Wanting more information would be just just plain silly.

Warning: This Post Contains Objectionable Material If You Object To Reality

2009-09-23T11:07:00.007-07:00

Last night I watched a PBS show about stress.

Stress.

But just before the show began, words on the teevee screen and an announcer announced: "This program contains material some viewers may find objectionable."

I watched the show. Didn't see a single bare breast -- nor any exposed genitalia -- nor hear a single swear word. So no nudity, no "bad" words (as though words can, in and of themselves, be bad. Here's this: Fuck. The F-word. I just typed it, you just read it. Did it hurt you? What's wrong with it for fuck's sake?), not even talk of sex (which people spend their lives trying to have and having, but can't stand to have discussed on their televisions).

So their were none of the usual things that cause American teevee viewers to get mad.

...The show focused on how stress affects a certain group of baboons, and reveals that this stress is caused by the extremely hierarchical system the baboons lived under. As one of the researchers on the show put it: Baboons only need to spend three hours a day finding food, so they spend the rest of their time giving each other grief. This "grief" is doled out to establish and maintain their society's hierarchy.

Then the show discussed Britons who worked in the Civil Service, where every worker knows exactly where he/she stands in the hierarchy. Workers are even labeled with numbers: so a two in a certain function knows a three can give them shit, while they cannot give the three shit, but the two can give ones shit.

So Britons in the Civil Service are very neatly analogous to the baboon society.

The baboon researcher concerned himself with the levels of stress hormones in the baboons, and found that the lower the rank, the higher the stress. And the higher the stress, the worse that baboon's health would be. This is exactly the same for the Britons in the Civil Service and humans in general.

...After viewing the program in its entirety, I realized that the "material some viewers may find objectionable" is the fact that humans can learn a hell of a lot from baboons because we're so closely related, genetically, to them. And that this fact is incontrovertible.

The program asked, toward its end: "Are humans brave enough to learn from baboons?"

I interpreted this to be: Can we get religious people who, in Western society's religions, believe in human exceptionalism out of science's way? Will we be able to, one day, run a show about the incredible similarities primates (including humans) exhibit without having to take a bow to religion?

Succinctly: Are humans brave enough to discard religion (or at least completely banish it from the scientific realm because it has absolutely nothing to offer) in the pursuit of scientific truth -- aka truth -- and to allow teevee programs to present this fact: that humans are just another member of the order primates?

And can we grow the fuck up enough to the point where humans don't give a fuck about the casual use of the word "fuck"? Right now there are adults who are afraid to use to use certain words because they are "bad." Grow the fuck up!

...But the above was a way-off tangent. This question is more important to humanity: Can we admit that religion adds nothing to our understanding of the world? Can teevee programs that deal with how life and humans really are be freed from warning people not to watch them because they present the truth? ...Getting rid of these warnings is important because idiotic parents may use them to prevent their children from being presented with the truth of the human condition. Children must be freed from their parents' ignorance.

And we need to admit that our religions have only ever served to obstruct an informed and intelligent understanding of humanity and the world and universe of which we are a part. ...For god's sake, it took until the year 1992 -- nineteen ninety-two! -- for the Catholic church to apologize to Galileo for ruining his life. And he lived circa 1600! Therefore, it took the Church about four hundred years to say that it was OK for Galileo to have posited that the earth revolves around the sun -- which members of the Vatican must have verified for themselves with their own telescopes (since they had the money for them), yet still condemned!

All of which is to say (write): Humans -- especially children with ignorant parents -- should not be warned that they are about to be presented truths that oppose their religious beliefs. These beliefs need to be challenged so they can subsequently be discarded. Religion has no place in the presentation of knowledge since its only object is to hinder it, as it has done since humans invented it.

Hundreds of years ago Galileo proved the utility of the telescope and how inutile religion is. If only the world subsequently kept the telescope and discarded religion. But we wanted to have out cake and the Spanish Inquisition too.

Are we brave enough to accept that baboons are more intelligent than their human primate cousins, in that they haven't invented religions to torture themselves with (literally and figuratively)?

PS regarding my last post: I'm already over getting tired from taking Methadone. And am in extreme fucking pain.

...Of note: Humans knew methadone to be an effective painkiller through its being tested on animals, most importantly non-human primates. And it's the way we evaluate all drugs before their use on humans is OK'd. If humans were exceptional compared to the rest of animals, we wouldn't learn a goddam thing by testing them for safety and efficacy on these non-human animals before using them on humans, because humans would be so radically different from our test subjects.

PPS: I apologize that this post is all over the place. I'm in too much pain to concentrate and put together a cogent argument for or against whatever I'm for or against here.

But there's an argument made somewhere in this post. it's up to you, dear reader, to put it together. It's like a jigsaw puzzle! The parts are there... Even if there are a surplus of them...

Take what's needed, toss out what isn't, until you have a coherent argument!

I Am So Very Tire...... huh? Wha? Oh. Right. I'm Tired.

2009-09-22T12:53:00.004-07:00

I need to make this short because I don't have the mental energy to make it long.

Yesterday I began Methadone. This week I take five mg every eight hours, and use fifteen mg of Oxycodone for breakthrough pain, up to four oxys a day. Klonopin remains at six mg a day, which is where it will be the rest of my life.

Taking any opiate that is foreign to your system will make you tired. And so the Methadone has got my brain feeling like mush and the couch crying whispering: "Just lay down for a second... Maybe shit your eyes for just a second. Then you can go do the chores you need to take care of. ...And holy shit -- I just happen to have that super-comfy pillow right here!"

Goddam couch. It's talked me into a lot of naps. But for some reason that seems suspect, right now, I'm fighting them. I suppose I'm trying to avoid them mostly because I don't want to get out of my sleep schedule, which is bad on its own for a fibromyalgian, and because I don't want to be stuck wide awake in the wee hours, when only televangelists and infomercials are on. ...And since televangelists are always selling shit, why don't we call the programs they're on Evangemercials or some such thing?

Before I sign off and likely heed the siren song my couch is singing, it occurred to me that my last post wasn't clear on a very key item: Why Dr. N couldn't just keep prescribing me more oxycodone. Here's why: Oxycodone is a short-acting opiate, and if a doctor prescribes nothing but a hell of a lot of short-acting opiates, the feds are likely to come get him/her.

So I needed/need a long-acting opiate -- Methadone being the best choice -- with which to supplement my drug diet so my doctor is safe, and so I don't have to pop a pill every two-and-a-half hours, and have no "pain coverage" overnight and, therefore, wake every morning with the screaming withdrawals.

...I don't know if any of this made sense. I do know it sure doesn't make sense to me because I'm so tired I can't go back and read what I just wrote.

Anyway: I'm sure my level of tiredness will go down as I become accustomed to Methadone -- which I will take ten mg of after one week, and then see Dr. N for further instructions. And I'm sure we're taking the right course of action.

And my couch agrees!

Methadone Treatment Begins Tomorrow

2009-09-20T18:13:00.008-07:00

Yep. This is going to be a post, on a blog called The Fibromyalgian, about fibromyalgia. What can I say (write)? It's a crazy world.

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm switching meds, most likely tomorrow, from Oxycodone to Methadone. Why tomorrow? Because I have an appointment with my pain management doctor tomorrow. Let's call her Dr. Not-Too-Damn-Bad, or Dr. NTDB for short. Or Dr. N for even shorter.

Dr. N is not too damn bad because she hasn't been afraid to prescribe me the dosages of painkillers I have required. She also came around on my Klonopin, and I'm on my necessary six mg per day, instead of the four mg she was previously stuck on. This is to her credit because every doctor is wary about prescribing a patient two central-nervous-system (CNS) depressants, which can result in the patient ceasing to breathe. And the vast majority of doctors like to keep their patients breathing.

The only problem I have with Dr. N is that she prescribes me Provigil for my chronic fatigue disorder. Before I came to Portland and began being treated by Dr. N, I had been taking Ritalin, which worked extremely well and, which is very important to someone who relies solely on Social Security Disability for his income, dirt cheap.

But Dr. N wasn't comfortable with prescribing speed to a fibromyalgian. It seems to her that speed and opiates and Klonopin are at odds with one another.

And I suppose I agree. But agreement doesn't make Provigil affordable. And so my chronic fatigue is left untreated.

On the first of October I will have Medicare. But Medicare doesn't help one out with prescription drug costs, and getting private insurance to help with my drug costs may actually be antithetical, since the cost of my monthly drug copays and drug insurance are likely to cost more than just buying my meds outright.

...Unless I start filling my Provigil, which costs something like four hundred and fifty dollars a month. Yeah. No typo: four hundred and fifty dollars a month.

Which reminds me to beg: Please help me get the treatment I need by donating. Please please please PUH-leeze! The button is right there... Right there on the right... And any amount helps! Any amount at all!

OK. begging done. On to the Methadone.

It's a tricky bastard of a drug because its half-life is longer than its active life. That is to say (write), that Methadone provides pain relief for a shorter time than it stays in one's system, in which it depresses breathing. So one has to be very OCD about one's Methadone schedule: If you're having a bad day and in a lot of pain and take more some Methadone to help you out, then take more... and maybe later some more, one can find oneself with enough Methadone in one's system to make their breathing cease before one's pain does.

Anyway, it's likely to be a good thing for me to be on Methadone. I'm currently taking so much Oxycodone that Dr. N doesn't feel comfortable prescribing a higher daily dose. For a patient to be taking one hundred and thirty mg of immediate-release Oxycodone per day could attract unwanted attention from the feds. But I can't take Oxycodone together with OxyContin (long-lasting oxycodone) because -- got a guess? -- OxyContin costs too much. That, and OxyContin is scarce because the feds are so overly concerned with the drug being diverted and under-concerned with the needs of people who are in constant pain -- which includes people who have terminal cancer, multiple sclerosis, and a bevy of conditions besides fibromyalgia.

The government is more concerned with keeping people from having fun by taking pills than it is with the quality of life of tens of thousands of people. And we're talking about pills that keep people from killing themselves or wanting to.

So tomorrow Methadone begins. I'll follow up tomorrow with the plan for how my transition from oxy to 'done is going to play out.

("'Done" work for you as shorthand for Methadone? ...Yeah. Didn't think so. And I agree.)

I Live In A Freaking Nuthouse

2009-09-19T17:42:00.004-07:00

I was coming back into my building, with another resident behind me. This particular resident is an adult. Probably fifty-something. He's rotund, and always wears T-shirts that can't manage to cover the bottom portion of his gut. The kind of T-shirts with prints on them I see shit-tons of twenty-somethings wearing. He also goes everywhere -- everywhere in the building, everywhere he goes outside, I've seen him walking around the neighborhood on various days with a stuffed animal.

The stuffed animal is a rendition of a human animal. A baby human animal.

Fifty-something-year-old-guy in too-tight T-shirts with a baby surrogate that he carries absolutely everywhere.

I hurried to the elevators, trying to avoid having to ride with Mr. Mom, who shuffled slowly through the lobby.

One of the elevators had its doors stuck open because someone was moving in. The guy introduced himself by saying "Don't go in that one, someone peed in it."

I said "Wait: Some one peed in it?!

"I gave a woman a ride up to the seventh floor. When she got in she squatted in the corner and just let it go. ...And this is my move-in day."

"Welcome to the building!" I exclaimed in an over-jovial, sarcastic tone.

Unthinkingly, I added "Well, not all of us are crazy."

By this time, Mr. Mom was standing right beside me. Then the other elevator arrived and I got in with him as the building manager came out with a mop.

As the doors closed I immediately imagined that Mr. Mom was going to beat me to death with his baby.

But he arrived on his floor and left the elevator without incident. He probably didn't want to lose his temper and, thereby, set a bad example for his kid.

'Sweet Caroline' Is Just Freaking Gross

2009-09-18T16:36:00.002-07:00

Does Fenway (home of the Red Sox) still play, and the stadium sing along with, "Sweet Caroline" (by Neil Diamond) before the bottom of the eighth inning?

If so, I thought they would have stopped doing so when it was revealed, by Diamond, that he wrote the lyrics when he was 26, and that he wrote the lyrics in an hour (such was his fevered inspiration) after seeing a picture of a 10-year-old Caroline Kennedy.

Diamond: "It was a picture of a little girl dressed to her nines in her riding gear next to her pony. It was such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt a song was there." --Songfacts.com.

Apparently, the picture also made Diamond feel incredibly horny. ...The picture of a 10-year-old made a 26-year-old hot enough to write in a single hour:

Where it began, I can't begin to know when
But then I know it's growing strong
Oh, wasn't the spring, whooo
And spring became the summer
Who'd believe you'd come along

Hands, touching hands, reaching out
Touching me, touching you
Oh, sweet Caroline
Good times never seem so good
I've been inclined to believe it never would

And now I, I look at the night, whooo
And it don't seem so lonely
We fill it up with only two, oh
And when I hurt
Hurting runs off my shoulder
How can I hurt when holding you

Oh, one, touching one, reaching out
Touching me, touching you
Oh, sweet Caroline
Good times never seem so good
Oh I've been inclined to believe it never would

Ohhh, sweet Caroline, good times never seem so good

(Copyright sick-ass Neil Diamond. Lyrics provided by lyricsdomain.com.)

If the song is still a staple at Fenway, I can't imagine wanting to sing it.

I can't imagine listening to it without massive discomfort.

I'm Getting Hot for Guys

2009-09-17T18:19:00.005-07:00

[It's probably important for me to note that I'm straight. And male.]

A lot of hipsters hang out at my favorite coffeeshop. By definition (it seems), male hipsters are people who wear tight pants, tight T-shirts and short, androgynous hair.

And it just so happens that I find skinny chicks with short hair to be attractive as magnets. Further, since I'm male and hetero, I'm inborn with the silly-as-putty attraction to lesbians that is one of the near-universals of our (male, hetero) kind.

...And now this piece's conflict has its sperm and egg. Time for the miracle of birth!

Often, while I'm sipping my coffee (slooooowly... Because as long as I have even the slightest bit of coffee in my mug, I'm entitled to my seat in the coffeehouse... Right?), I'll also be checking out two people sitting with their backs to me. Eventually one of these people will turn in my direction, go get something, go to the bathroom, etc, that will reveal her to be female.

So at this point I'm thinking: Sweet. Two hot girls hanging out. How can I introduce myself to them in a way that will maximize the likelihood that I'll be able to, in the future, introduce my penis to one or both of them?

Or I'm thinking: Both have short hair, tight pants, tight Ts... Probably lesbians. Sweet. Now to sit back and enjoy their hot hot-lesbian selves in an aesthetic sort of way.

But no matter what I'm thinking, these thoughts are accompanied by a desire to see the rest of the person I haven't seen in, what I'm assuming to be her, entirety. I start looking forward to see the rest of her. And am a little... "excited." A little.

Then KA-POW! "She" stands and she's a guy who looks like a mega-flat-chested woman. And this person is then immediately unattractive because I know it has a penis -- even if said penis must have somehow been left at home so he could fit into his painted-on pants.

Though my primary wonder is how to make my own penis detachable [nod to King Missile] -- though this ability would have best served me some time ago in high school... Especially when I was on the diving board or slow dancing in the cafeteria with a girl who would suddenly position her hips a foot from mine while trying to maintain her hands' position around my neck -- I'm also struck with the fact that my libido and I need to slow things down and get a good look at every person's face before taking a stand on his/her attractiveness.

Because right now I'm getting just the tiniest bit hot for guys. And I'm not hot for guys.

Really. I swear.

Portland: Beware The Macbook Liberator!

2009-09-16T17:11:00.006-07:00

Portland has a new superhero (or will if he ever gets enough liquid courage...): The MacBook Liberator!

I spend a lot of time in coffeehouses because, for a two-dollar house coffee (the drinking of which -- instead of some whipped-creamed, chocolated, cinnamoned espresso drink -- causes the staff and patrons to look down on me as the cheap-ass I am) I can sit in air-conditioned comfort for more than a few hours and read and write (laboriously, by hand) what become blog posts like this one.

During these many coffeehouse visits, I meet or am forced to overhear (loud-talkers of the world, spontaneously and unanimously combust!) people with MacBooks prattle on... usually on Portlanders' favorite topic: how to make more money.

Unfortunately -- for the would-be entrepreneurs, anyway -- the vast percent of their ideas never will come to fruition and make them the degree of rich they believe they're so richly entitled to because their ideas are mostly the recycled ideas of others. Therefore, they often take the form: "Yadda yadda is blowing up in This Other City... How can I make it work in Portland?"

I would have thought such a person would have considered that the person with the original idea either has, indeed, made it work in Portland, or come to the conclusion that it would not work.

In either case, ripping someone off in a lucrative way isn't going to make one rich. It's going to make one get sued. Hard.

And sometimes ideas I overhear (despite my deep desire not to) or am presented with an idea of this form: "OK, how about This Stupid Idea? ... Yeah, I guess it'd be years before I saw money from that, if ever. ... But isn't it kicking ass in This Other City?"

Of course, what truly enrages me is that many of these people have MacBooks! One of the devices I've coveted, and therefore feel entitled to, since its inception!

These mongers of bad ideas need to be put on notice: Continue speak-yelling your mouth-diarrhea, and you are apt to lose the privilege of MacBook ownership.

...I can take a cacophony of stupid-speak from a PC-owner, but not a shouldn't-be Mac person any longer! Order must be foisted on this city!

...Just pay some attention to Apple's commercials, Portland: Macs are for cool people, not pretentious, business-minded assholes whose best ideas consist of recycling other peoples' bad ideas!

For the love of the gods, people, Microsoft recycles or buys out other peoples' and companies' bad ideas! It's their goddam business model! Therefore, according to Apple's commercials, your word-vomit -- by definition -- makes you a John Hodgman... er, PC!

So surrender your Mac, citizen, and get yourself a netbook until you're cool enough for a MacBook (like I am)!

PS: Today's MacBook owner, who should be safely out of my hearing's range, just said something about "the twitter stream"! That's not Mac-person talk!

...If this place served booze, and the above guy stuck around long enough for me to down about ten vodka-OJs, The MacBook Liberator would strike in the name of justice and holy self-interest!

Someone in this depraved city has to bring order among the notebook/laptop-owning community. And one day, Portland, The MacBook Liberator is going to get drunk enough to do just that!

So fear for your MacBooks, poorly costumed should-be PC people. Calvin Bandini/The Fibromyalgian is heading to the Low Brow Lounge Friday. Should he dive deep enough into a bottle of vodka, no MacBook shall be safe!

Bwaa-ha-ha!

Stats Don't Lie: States That Went for McCain In the Prez. Election Are Stupid

2009-09-15T14:38:00.004-07:00

[Originally posted December 8, 2008.]

This post will be a series of factual statements from which the reader can draw his/her own conclusions, because giving my own -- as I did in the headline -- would be inflammatory.

Morgan Quinto Press publishes, yearly, Smartest State Awards. The most recent, free, results are here, and for 2006 to 2007. My statistics come from this page.

Quinto uses 21 factors processed through a formula (details of which can be found here) to assign a numerical value to each state. That value shows how "smart" the state is compared to the national average.

For example: Vermont was the smartest state in '06-'07, with a "Smart Rating" of 18.57. Arizona was the least "smart" state, and rated -17.61.

I printed a map of the US that showed which states' electoral votes were awarded to Obama in the 2008 election, and which states went to McCain. I used the map and Quinto's Smart Rating numbers to make the following calculations:

*The 27 states that went to Obama had a total Smart Rating of 43.45.

*The 23 states that voted for McCain had a total Smart Rating of -65.27.

*States that went to Obama had an average Smart Rating of 1.609.

*States that went to McCain had an average Smart Rating of -2.838.

I also think it's important to note that eight of the ten "smartest" states voted for Obama.

Abortion Facts (Conservative Fat Cats Don't Want You To Know!)

2009-09-14T12:36:00.001-07:00

The following stats enumerate the fact that abortion is legal in the US because it is the will of the people. However, many people who aren't rich -- and, therefore, the beneficiaries of conservative policies or legislation -- vote Republican because they believe Republicans will get rid of legalized abortion.

Regarding the above:: While George W Bush was in office and the Republicans had control of both houses of Congress, they could have easily made abortion illegal.

Again: Conservatives could have made abortion illegal. They did not because there are enough Republican voters who support abortion rights to ensure that outlawing abortion would have been political suicide. They care more about getting votes -- that is: staying in power -- than they do about embryo-Americans.

The undeniable situation is this: Republicans have ensured that abortion remains legal. It's the best wedge issue they have, and perhaps the only issue they can use to keep non-rich people on their side. Republicanism serves only the wealthy. Especially the richest 0.1 percent of the population who loved the hell out of Bush's policies, by and large.

Of course, this ultra-small percent isn't a sizable enough chunk of the populace tho win elections with.

As I believe I've written before, and surely will write about again: If you're not rich and vote Republican, even if you're pro-life, you're voting completely against your interests. You're a dupe. A sucker. You've been co-opted.

Pay a little attention to the workings of the Republican machine, for the love of god; get facts, and stop harming yourself with your votes. (It's pretty easy in the Google age...)

Bush didn't enact a single piece of domestic legislation that would have advanced or helped the conservative cause -- reduced the deficit, prevented homosexuals from getting married, or make abortion illegal, though it would have been easy as hell for him to do so since his slightest whim was carried out by a Congress that made a law out of his every utterance. ...That didn't have to do with abortion.

Which is to show: Republicans don't give a shit about making the deficit smaller, making homosexual marriage impossible, or making abortion illegal. And if you have voted for Republicans because you care about any of the above, you've been had. You've been taken for and made a fool by a political party whose only care and goal is to advance the causes of rich people.

Again: If you aren't rich and you vote Republican, you're a sucker. And -- just to be a little insulting -- you're likely also to be willfully ignorant, since discovering the above is something anyone with Google can do (to harp on a point already made).

Now to the below: a bunch of stats regarding abortion that will help show why it has been, is, and always will be legal in the US (especially since the last thing Republicans want is for abortion actually to be illegal):

* In 2007, The Center for American Progress reviewed the American public's support of abortion:
-- 49 percent of Americans consider themselves pro-choice, and a plurality or majority (save one tie) has identified as such since 1995, when data began being collected. Forty-five percent consider themselves pro-life.
-- "59 percent of the public either believes abortion laws should remain as they are (36 percent) or be made less strict (23 percent)." ... "Every Gallup poll since 2003 has returned either 59 percent or 60 percent support on this question."
-- 30 percent want to make abortion legal in all circumstances. This position has been held by an average of 26 percent through the last five years.
-- "Just 13 percent said it should be illegal in all circumstances."

* "In medical terms, the word abortion refers to any pregnancy that does not end in a live birth and therefore can refer to a miscarriage or a premature birth of someone that does not result in a live infant. Such events are often called spontaneous abortions if they occur before 20 weeks of gestation." (Wikipedia)

* "[F]etuses likely are incapable of feeling pain until around the seventh month of pregnancy, when they are about 28 weeks old." In fact: "Offering fetal pain relief in the fifth or sixth month, when brains are too immature to feel pain, is misguided and might result in unacceptable health risks to women." (MSNBC.com, from 2005, reporting on an article in the Journal of the American Medial Association) (Italics mine.)

* "Forty states and the District of Columbia already ban third-trimester abortions except when the life or health of the woman is at stake." (Planned Parenthood)

* According to the Centers for Disease Control (2002):
-- 59.3 percent of (non-miscarriage) abortions were carried out when the embryo was eight
weeks or less gestational age. Only after eight weeks is the womb-dweller called a fetus.
-- 18 percent of abortions performed nine to ten weeks GA (gest. age).
-- 9.4 percent 11 to 12 weeks GA.
-- 5.9 percent 13 to 15 weeks.
-- 4 percent 16 to 20.
-- 1.4 percent more than 20 weeks GA. (Handy graph of this on Wikipedia)

* Therefore, in 2002, 86.7 percent of abortions were performed in the first trimester.

* "Labour resulting in live birth before the 37th week of pregnancy is termed 'premature birth,' even if the infant dies shortly afterward. The limit of viability at which 50% of fetus/infants survive longterm is around 24 weeks, with moderate or major neurological disability dropping to 50% only by 26 weeks." The fetus has been carried to term at 37 weeks. (Wikipedia)

* "Nationwide, there are now fewer abortion providers in the U.S. than at any time since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 -- 87 percent of U.S. counties don't have one." (FRONTLINE, "The Last Abortion Clinic")

* "In October 2002, the Bush administration issued final regulations specifically making fetuses—but not pregnant women—eligible for health care coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program." (National Organization of Women)

The Bailout Is Bullshit

2009-09-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

[Originally published -- and reprinted, here, without being updated with facts that show the government bailout of the financial services industry to be an even more sizable black hole of bullshit -- December 23, 2008.]

Financial-services firms are getting taxpayers' money to the tune of $700 billion. And then they're going to get more.

Why? Because some people took out mortgages that were designed, by the banks that supplied them, to be, eventually, unaffordable by the people that used them. And so these people, surprise of surprises, in fact did end up being unable to afford them. Stupid poor people with their stupid belief in the American Dream.

Banks were hemorrhaging money. To get the red ink off their books they, in very basic terms, sold these "bad" or "toxic" mortgages (in the parlance of our times) to financial-services firms. When these firms' books started gushing red like the elevator in "The Shining," they created an entirely new financial instrument that allowed them to sell bits and pieces of mortgages and on into things I won't discuss because I can't understand them.

Everything fell apart. So the Bush Administration and Congress acted with the speed of Hurricane Katrina to pass the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) -- $700 billion for the financial sector.

...And?

We're in Great Depression II. TARP provides the best example yet that for a half-century the US economic system has been, and continues to be, subsidized capitalism. Which makes one wonder if capitalism can work at all without being subsidized by governments -- by the tax dollars of the people abused by capitalists. Incompetence has been and will continue to be rewarded or punished based on a person or business's wealth. The less-fortunate must rely on governments that pass special laws to make charging 400 percent interest legal (payday loans).

To survive, 99.9 percent of us will have to work a lot harder, longer, and smarter at jobs we'll consider ourselves lucky to have or manage to get. These jobs will pay, adjusting for inflation, less than they did in 1980.

0.1 percent of Americans, their real wages having grown 497 percent in the past decades to an average of $1.7 million, will continue to invent new ways to screw the other 99.9 percent, cheek-to-cheek with a government as immoral and unethical as they are.

Dear Freshpet Select:

2009-09-11T22:01:00.001-07:00

Your commercial asks: "You wouldn't feed your family food from a bag, so why feed it to your dog?"

This is used as a means to induce people to buy dog food that requires refrigeration.

But in asking your question, you've answered it: One's family is comprised of humans, while one's dog is one dog. Hence the difference in how people feed them.

Also of importance: Dogs are descendants of wolves. As such, they prefer food that is warm, at least somewhat akin to freshly killed prey. Which is to say that refrigerated -- cold -- food isn't desired by dogs. I imagine that part of the process of feeding a dog Freshpet Select is warming it up, or letting it warm up. Or perhaps the product packaging tells a pet owner to expect that their dog will, naturally, find the food unappetizing, but come around. Perhaps when the food warms up or they're starved enough to eat crap they don't find appetizing.

Your Web site says: "Once you feed Freshpet® Select you'll notice that it looks like real food you might prepare for your own dinner table. That's because it's made from ingredients you would choose for yourself, like high protein meats and vitamin rich vegetables for a fresh meal that dogs can't resist and that you can feel good about."

Dogs have a lackluster sense of taste. What matters most to them is their food's temperature, as mentioned above, and its texture.

So feeding ones dog expensive shit "made from ingredients you would choose for yourself" is intensively stupid, as are the people who buy it.

Back to the question posed in your commercial: Are you trying to make people feel like assholes for feeding their kids cereal? And am I to feel as though I'm less than a dog because I love the hell out of Lucky Charms?

If there's justice, Freshpet Select, you'll be belly up as quickly as dogs happily gobble up their own feces.

Dear USA: You Embarrass Yourself (and, Worse, Me)

2009-09-10T16:21:00.007-07:00

I was watching OPB -- Oregon Public Broadcasting -- yesterday. Specifically, "Rick Steves' Europe."

The show was a treatise on how they make the show, which I'm a fan of, in large part because Steves is such a dork and does a lot of walking around a lot of beautiful places, which I'm unlikely to be able to do -- the "lot of walking" being the sticking point.

To paraphrase something Steves said during the show: "When we're shooting all this art, which people have enjoyed for centuries, we have to take into account whether it can be shown in the States." He went on to say that he meant breasts and genitals and/or the depiction of people using or enjoying same can't be filmed because America is in denial of the fact that all humans have sex organs and use them. (Even Catholic priests; hence the Vatican's rapist-defense fund. Which reminds me: If you go to Catholic Church on Sundays and contribute to the collection plate, you're helping sick-ass rapists get away with their crimes and you're complicit in them. ...Perhaps Church isn't the best place to cleanse your soul...)

OK, so I editorialized the slightest bit toward the end of that last sentence. (The one before the one in parentheses... But that goes without saying, because we all know that putting a sentence in parentheses makes it a weird kind of sentence-that-isn't. So you're reading this sentence, here, and not-reading it at the same time. ...Yowzah!)

...Back to the main: Sex is the best part -- or always should be, anyway -- of the human experience. And that's coming from someone who takes 130 mg of Oxycodone and 6 mg of Klonopin a day. That boobs carved in marble can't be shown on TV -- or television fit for people of all ages, anyway -- is just fucking mortifying.

Jesus, America, I'd say grow the fuck up, but kids know they have genitals and how to use them and run around naked without shame Until their parents' religion gives them the gift of being ashamed of what god created in his own image.Which makes sense in some parallel fucking universe. ...If we're to be ashamed of our very selves -- our naked selves -- made in god's image, then when we all meet god are we supposed to feel boundless shame for god's appearance?

So: Jesus, America, get the Jesus outta my goddam teevee! Some of us can appreciate The Birth of Venus without getting a sinful erection from a marble statue!

Apropos of nothing: Take a listen to Starfucker. One of the best bands that, due to it's name, may never be allowed on television. Good thing we have the Internets. ...Where most people in America are checking out porn which they would, presumably, enjoy having on TV but won't let themselves have on TV.

Great. Now I have a mammoth headache from thinking about how goddam silly and twisted about itself this country of ours is. Dancing at architecture ain't easy.

A Toast To My Health!

2009-09-10T11:54:00.005-07:00

Last evening I drank a bottle of Robitussin with dinner. It made a poor accompaniment to lime chicken with broccoli and rice.

Huh. Maybe I should have prefaced that by writing that I'm in a lot of pain -- or, I should write, I'm in more pain than I've become accustomed to since I've been on my current drug regimen. The daily 120 mg of Oxycodone, and more of which my doctor won't prescribe, isn't cutting it, and I won't be able to start on Methadone until I see my discomfited doctor later this month (who prefers her patients to be on Methadone -- and if she prefers it, I truly have every reason to believe that I will too, because she's one of the very few doctors I've seen since being diagnosed with fibro I have a scintilla of respect and trust for/in).

(Sorry for that extremely poorly constructed sentence. ...I use non-union labor.)

I've been told that getting off Oxy and onto Methadone (which doesn't have a catchy shorthand I can use for it -- "Meth" having been taken by... Meth) will involve withdrawal, so I desperately look forward to that. Perhaps this time I'll get simultaneous-shitting and -puking down to an art, or at least a science.

So I drank the Robo (10 mg of DXM and 100 mg Guaifenesin per dose times I don't know), for the DXM, which binds to similar receptors in the brain as opioids and so, I thought, might boost the effects of my Oxy -- or some such thing. I was shocked and awed to find that my pain didn't demand, later last night, that I take the day's last 30 mg of Oxy. However, I did wake up at 7 this morning in pain that made my eyes water for the hour-and-a-half it takes for my 30 mg morning dose of Oxy to kick in.

...Obviously, I'm off to the store sometime this week to get another bottle of the 'Tussin. I'll let you know how further adventures in Roboland turn out, and if it makes a nice mixer for vodka.

Cheers!

Faithlessness Is the New Black

2009-09-10T11:42:00.002-07:00

The fastest growing religion in the US:

None.

From 1990 to 2001, people who have no religion/are atheists/are agnostic grew 6.6 percent, from 8.4 to 15.0 percent of all Americans. The number of these people increased 105.7 percent.

This is according to the American Religious Identification Survey performed by the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. For the survey people were asked only: "What is your religion, if any?"

The survey found that "the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001."

Note: This post cites ARIS (despite my desire for more current data) because "statistics on religious adherence are difficult to gather and often contradictory; statistics for the change of religious adherence are even more so, requiring multiple surveys separated by many years using the same data gathering rules. This has only been achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country, such as the American Religious Identification Survey in the USA." (Wikipedia)

Which is to say (write): I used ARIS because it's the only reliable source available.

Dear Ten Percent Of Portland:

2009-09-09T12:33:00.005-07:00

Yes, I have a cigarette. I definitely could spare one.

However, I'm not about to set a precedent that would have me give away two cartons a week. So I lie to you and, as far as you, five percent of Portland, know (the other five know I'm lying), I'm perpetually smoking my last cigarette, and quite sorry that I can't help you out.

Importantly, however: I'm the farthest thing from sorry. If you, dear would-be-cig-bummer, were a smoker -- a true addict -- you'd never let yourself be without your nicotine delivery devices. Get serious about your vices or fuck the fuck off.

Burn This Computer

2009-09-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

I just read Fahrenheit 451, a book by Ray Bradbury. My understanding is that most high schoolers are forced to read it. Somehow, I wasn't. And so I didn't side with the firemen, stop reading and quit school to work on a farm to raise, have sex with, and butcher livestock.

Bradbury's not good. And not the one to make the case against burning books.

(Of course, I'm much worse than he is. But I'm not making the case for saving word-strings.)

Get a load of Faber. The character and his relationship with Montag was so goddam contrived how could he have been anything other than a police-plant?

But no.

And the ending -- saving books inside people, people negating themselves, considering themselves only the books they carried in their heads.

Fine fucking life.

Of course, preferable to the shitstorm of the city, to having Denham's Dentifrice drilled up your nose into your frontal lobe and wagged about.

Still, the book ends with the book-band marching away from the city.

What?

The city is utterly ruined, and you guys are off to be walking shelves.

Why not take what was the city and make it a big goddam library, grab all weapons available to fight off the government -- if it remains at the closing of the book... It could have been bombed to nothing as well -- make what you want and protect it?

That the walking books choose to roam around the not-cities seems to champion pastoralism. Blech.

...Thus ends Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which you could burn Fahrenheit 451: A bunch of ass-hats are roaming the countryside, many books within them, to wait until the phoenix of man rose from the ashes of its war-lust.

...They do so instead of making whatever their ideal society would be from the ashes of the bombed-out metropolis so conveniently behind them.

They make a simile (phoenix) and then can't use it.

Goodbye, Blue Monday!

ETC.

(I also re-read Breakfast of Champions. The Vonnegut writing machine was set to Massively Self-indulgent prior to aforementioned book's creation. ...But the man draws a fine asshole.)

Christ Abhors Christianity

2009-09-09T11:41:00.002-07:00

Matthew 18:6-7: "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

7 "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"

(italics mine)

That is: It is better for a corrupting influence to kill him-/herself than to allow him-/herself to be a corrupting influence. Jesus, here, is speaking of children, who need to be taught scripture and how to follow god.

Taught properly -- without "corruption" of the holy texts and Jesus' words.

Now: Not a single passage in the Bible has anything to do with lesbianism. Therefore, it is not prohibited. Not a sin.

However, Christianity teaches that it is. It teaches people that which the Bible and Christ himself did not.

Christ didn't have anything to say about abortion, either.

And on and on and on and on.

Christianity corrupts those who are as children in their understanding of Jesus and the Bible:

"Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife." (Bill McKibben, Harper's Magazine)

Jesus apparently recommends a millstone and a plank-walk to every Christian preacher.

Christ calls for Christianity's end.

The Liberal Media Isn't Giving Us the Whole Story (Of Course!)

2009-09-08T17:54:00.004-07:00

An awful and disgusting thing happens when one is told of a murder committed with a claw hammer.

One immediately wonders, and actually hopes to learn: Which end did the killer use?

And one is always disappointed when this question isn't answered.

WHAT TO DO WHEN A LINK IS BROKEN/DOESN'T TAKE YOU ANYWHERE:

2009-09-08T16:41:00.004-07:00

This very very likely means you're reading a post that originated from Essays About Anything. So, to check out whatever link doesn't work, you should be able to get it easily by going to the original post. The header should be the same because I rarely change them in transit from one blog to the other because I'm wicked-lazy. ...Um, and I want to make checking links easy for you, dear reader. Yeah...

Here's a link to the other blog:

http://essaysaboutanything.blogspot.com

Stay beautiful, blogfriends!

Sex Is Medicine

2009-09-08T16:38:00.002-07:00

...And our sick and wrong world with its sick and wrong religions considers celibacy, chastity and especially virginity to be virtues.

...Deadly Virtues (ominous bum-BUM).

For the gods' sakes', Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders lost her post because of the following:

"In 1994, [Elders] was invited to speak at a United Nations conference on AIDS. She was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a means of preventing young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity, and she replied, 'I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.' (Wiki, of course)

In fact, masturbating like a fiend is being linked to myriad benefits.

Bu sex is better.

(The citations below are from this Wikipedia page.)

"In 1997, Forbes Magazine reported on 'one of the most credible studies correlating overall health with sexual frequency'. [sic] Queens University in Belfast tracked the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. The study, published in 1997 in the British Medical Journal found that 'men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards'; that is to say, those that engaged in sex more frequently enjoyed longer lives. The report also cited other studies to show that having sex even a few times a week may be associated with: improved sense of smell; reduced risk of heart disease; weight loss and overall fitness; reduced depression (in women); the relief or lessening of pain; less frequent colds and flu; better bladder control; better teeth; and improved prostate function. The report cited a study published by the British Journal of Urology International which indicated that men in their 20s can reduce by a third their chance of getting prostate cancer by ejaculating more than five times a week."

And you just have to love Bush II, who will leave office having done irreparable harm to the US and not a single good thing to/for it.

At least the below action wasn't evil:

"In 2006, the George W. Bush administration expanded abstinence programs from teens to adults, by introducing programs to encourage unmarried adults to remain abstinent until marriage." (italics mine)

At what age did Bush II swim up from decades of alcohol and drug abuse? And what goes with alcohol and drugs like alcohol with drugs? Sex.

Why does a piece of advice always have to come from someone who did fine without it him-/herself? What worth is such advice to be given?

Overheard In Portland:

2009-09-08T15:33:00.004-07:00

"Just speak, don't talk."

I was having coffee on a couch near Couch Street and one of the two people sitting next to me broke this pearl out in the heat of an argument.

...Which made me think of how much better this world would be if all of us and our leaders did a lot less talking and a lot more speaking. ... Wow. ...Alas, and unfortunately, such Utopian thinking gets us nowhere.

PS: I didn't make the quote up. I'm not dumb enough to.

Evolution Is Just A Theory

2009-09-06T17:18:00.001-07:00

"In casual speech scientists don't use the term theory in a particularly precise fashion." For instance: "Einstein's relativity is usually called 'the theory of relativity' while Newton's theory of gravity often is called 'the law of gravity.'"

But the "theory" best explains why the universe acts as it does. Newton's "law" imagined gravity to be, simply, a force that pulled on everything.

Still, despite the fact that Newton's force doesn't exist, it's easier to accept and comprehend than a four-dimensional universe in which orbits are straight lines.

Onward: I think it's best to think of a theory in this manner: "a testable model that is best capable of predicting future occurrences or observations and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation." (Love you Wikipedia, and I promise not to forget Valentine's this year)

Einstein's 4-D universe allowed humans to, for the first time, explain why Mercury's orbit is what it is. And so on.

His models, theories, and theory of models currently best explain the universe. The universe could, in fact, be exactly as he explained it. Nothing has proven him wrong.

Still, the 4-D universe will always be just a theory simply because humans don't have access to every happening everywhere at any-/every time.

Then there's Cell Theory, which "refers to the idea that cells are the basic unit of structure in every living thing." ... "The theory says that new cells are formed from other existing cells and the cell is a fundamental unit of structure, function and organization in all living organisms." (Wiki)

Obvious, it seems. But still just a theory.

Now to (biological) evolution.

It's 100 percent true, factual, proven, unable-to-be-disproved that organisms change over time. You can watch organisms with short life spans evolve (develop; change over time). Organisms like bacteria and viruses that cause illnesses in humans; like the flu virus, which portions of the population are immunized against each and every year because each and every year the virus has changed enough to make the bugger immune to your previous year's immunization.

So, if you don't believe in evolution, you have the unfortunate habit of proving that evolution happens/has happened every single time you get sick. And you get sick an average of three times a year.

Evolution happens. You state its reality with sneezes and to your boss whenever you call in to work when you actually need to.

Here's the sticky thing:

The theory of how evolution works continues to be refined.

Meaning that evolution is just a fact that has a continually more precise theory behind its whats and wherefores.

PS: Creationism/Intelligent Design disproved: the duck-billed platypus.

The. End.

People Don't Die From Cancer

2009-09-05T18:30:00.005-07:00

It's True! Tell Everyone! Cancer Is A Hoax Perpetrated On The World By The Medical-Insurance-Pharmaceutical Complex! It's The Biggest Lie Of Our Generation! No One Is Safe!

...Um, no. The above isn't so. But it is a fact that, whenever you read that "Insert Name died of cancer," you're reading horseshit.

People die from complications due to cancer. So is it too much to ask that magazines, newspapers, newspersons, et cetera please, for the love of Baal, start using that one word for the sake of being correct, and so that reading-obsessed people with a decent IQ and OCD can lead lives filled with slightly less annoyance?

Purely hypothetically, let's imagine that I just read in The Atlantic, while having coffee at Stumptown Coffee Roasters on SW Third, that someone died from lung cancer. And let's imagine it drove me batshit enough to write this, because I know that a simple growth in a lung can't cause someone to cease living.

The subject of the article I hypothetically read didn't die of lung cancer. This person, who had lung cancer, died from, perhaps, the metastasis of said cancer into other parts of his body. Perhaps the growth invaded this person's heart, causing it to fail.

Therefore, in this case, the person died from heart failure brought on as a result of lung cancer.

The above example also implies the (hopefully) well-known truth that cancer cannot kill unless it metastasizes. And this is why the early detection of cancer is so incredibly important, and why this fact is drummed into our skulls by every source out there telling us that people drop dead from abnormal growths when, in truth, these abnormal growths have to gum up the body's works to truly cause problems.

So, publishers and newspersons of the world: The word is "complications." Please, please use it till you love it, or I promise to continue erupting into anger and frustration in public and freaking out those around me.

Can you live with causing innumerable freakouts? Or with the complications that arise therefrom?

Deep Thoughts, by Calvin Bandini

2009-09-05T18:28:00.001-07:00

I have a mug full of writing utensils next to my computer. One is a marker: MARKS-A-LOT.

Every time I see it, sitting at my desk almost daily, I become more convinced that Sir Mix-a-Lot took his stage name from a permanent, broad-tipped marker.

Hopefully, anyway, because I'd consider that absolutely hilarious. Even if it wasn't -- or, more likely, because it wasn't -- at all imaginative. It would be made all the more funny if Sir MARKS-A-LOT came by his moniker exactly as I've come to ponder how he did so. I imagine him staring at writing devices, but noticing this one in particular because the marker is bigger than the pen and pencils, and screams its brand in all-caps. He's mixing tracks in the studio, marking things up, the light bulb flickers above his head, and the ass-crazy bastard is reborn.

Which isn't a value judgment on The Rapping Marker. At least his name came from a more esoteric source than Eminem's did.

Now I'm left to ponder whether I should re-christen myself King Dual-balls (I adore Uni-ball blue, fine-point pens) or CalPod...

America: The Christian Nation That Rejects Christ

2009-09-05T15:38:00.001-07:00

This nation full of Christians is full of a bunch of Christian hypocrites. Read this article by Bill McKibben in Harper's Magazine.

Here are some highlights from the article (written in 2005) to encourage you to explore the depth of how little Christ means to American Christians:

McKibben notes that "somewhere around 85 percent of [Americans] call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish."

Still, he wonders:

"But is [America] Christian?" ... "What if we chose some simple criterion -- say, giving aid to the poorest people -- as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they'd fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. What would we find then?"

We find that, "by pretty much any measure of caring for the least among us you want to propose -- childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool -- we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin."

Also:

* "Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are, of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers."

* "We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations."

* "Having been told to turn the other cheek, we're the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest."

* "Despite Jesus' strong declarations against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate -- just over half -- that compares poorly with the European Union's average of about four in ten." ... "[C]ompare our success with, say, that of the godless Dutch, whose divorce rate is just over 37 percent."

* "A rich man came to Jesus one day and asked what he should do to get into heaven. Jesus did not say he should invest, spend, and let the benefits trickle down; he said sell what you have, give the money to the poor, and follow me. Few plainer words have been spoken. And yet, for some reason, the Christian Coalition of America -- founded in 1989 in order to 'preserve, protect and defend the Judeo-Christian values that made this the greatest country in history' -- proclaimed last year that its top legislative priority would be “making permanent President Bush's 2001 federal tax cuts.”

*A "furor erupted last spring when it emerged that a Colorado jury had consulted the Bible before sentencing a killer to death. Experts debated whether the (Christian) jurors should have used an outside authority in their deliberations, and of course the Christian right saw it as one more sign of a secular society devaluing religion. But a more interesting question would have been why the jurors fixated on Leviticus 24, with its call for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They had somehow missed Jesus' explicit refutation in the New Testament: 'You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

McKibben comes to his own conclusions.

My conclusion: Were there a heaven, nearly all American Christians could get in only by killing Saint Peter and rushing the Golden Gates.

Which it seems very likely they would do, given the above.

All (Hetero) Sex Must Cease for Abortion to End

2009-09-04T21:41:00.005-07:00

Twenty percent of pregnancies result in spontaneous abortion, the medical term for miscarriage.

What's more, "Studies have found that 30 to 50 percent of fertilized eggs are lost before a woman finds out she's pregnant, because [stet] they're lost so early that she goes on to get her period about on time -- in other words the woman doesn't realize she was pregnant at all." (Go here for more.)

Abortion is a natural phenomenon. Anyone trying to get pregnant or engaged in behavior that could result in pregnancy is, without any doubt also -- statistically -- risking having a natural abortion.

Therefore, it seems Pro-Lifers should vociferously take up the cause to stop everyone from having unprotected sex and to get every woman on the pill.

Or to do all in their power to make everyone everywhere one-hundred percent abstinent. No sex among the married -- spontaneous abortion can (and does) happen to women whenever, wherever, etc.

To end abortion absolutely we must put an end to (almost) ALL sex, including sex between heterosexual married couples.

A delicious irony is that the only people who can have sex and not risk abortion are gays and lesbians.

And any Pro-Lifer who is a woman may have unknowingly killed a soul-endowed blastocyst during her menstrual cycle, making who knows how many of them goddamn hypocrites.

Gun Control

2009-09-04T18:50:00.002-07:00

She got home to find me sipping Syrah and watching television.

"How was work?"

She tossed her keys onto the small table by the window where we used to eat dinner together, stopped for a moment to glare at me, then went into the kitchen.

Almost immediately she was back, purposely standing in front of the TV, with a half-full garbage bag in her hand. She raised it shoulder-high and let it drop.

"What is this?"

"It's a garbage bag that could use more refuse before it makes sense to discard it."

"What did I ask you to do before I left this morning?"

"To empty the garbage from the kitchen. But when I saw what I was dealing with I thought we should throw away more garbage than the plastic that contains it."

We stared at each other.

"Sweetness, it's Double Jeopardy now and you're kind of in the way."

She pressed the Power button on the TV set.

I pressed the Power button on the remote.

She pulled the TV's cord from the electrical outlet.

"You had all day. I asked you to do only one thing."

"And I thought that one thing was ridiculous."

Her eyes were huge for her face and, terribly, all the more gorgeous and absorbing when she was in a fury...

"Get the fuck out of my house."

"I love you" -- I stood, stating a fact I had to reiterate so often it had come to insult both of us -- "I'll take the bag out."

"No. Get the fuck out of my house."

"OK. Fucking fine. Watching me? Here goes: I'M TAKING OUT THE GOD DAMNED TRASH JESUS GODDAMNED CHRIST!"

As I went for the bag she went for the telephone in the hall.

"And I'm calling my Dad. He'll be here in twenty minutes."

I knew she kept a loaded gun in the bedroom closet, the location of which she never told me in our months of living together.

"Fucking fine. Tell your Dad I said hello and that his fucking daughter needs to get back on her fucking meds."

"I'm dialing."

I yanked the door open and slammed it behind me.

The trash remained in the middle of the room.

I'VE RETURNED TO BLOGGING, to blogging on THIS site, and promise to do so forevermore

2009-09-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

Quite a while ago, creating a new blog just when this one was developing a nice readership seemed like a good idea.

Of course, it wasn't.

And so I'm coming back home. I'm going to be updating this blog with what I published on Essays About Anything, and then adding new material as it comes to me starting... now.

...Now that I'm squared away with a lot of family stuff and have completed my cross-country move. (I'm on the Pacific Coast now.)

So: After this post, the deluge. Or at least, I hope, a respectable trickle of posts everyone on earth will love.

STAY TUNED BLOGRIENDS!

Ode to Joy

2008-09-06T00:00:00.006-07:00

We were together for months and I wish I could get in touch with her to say various things to make myself feel better but I can't because I never got her last name.

INVEST THE FIBROMYALGIAN'S WAY!*

2008-08-27T07:23:00.006-07:00

L. Ron Hubbard received holy wisdom through mental disease, amphetamines and pederasty, and was told when to give up writing sci-fi by the plurality of the voices in his head and to, instead, found a religion.

Let it be known: Lt. Ronald Hubbard certainly didn't give up sci-fi and go on to Dianetics, etc because (paraphrase): The real money is in religion.

Nope.

Now I have been called in a way I didn't expect!: To tell you what stocks to buy!

Sadly, my epiphany doesn't involve an intergalactic opera and nuclear bombs inside volcanoes.

But from here on THE FIBROMYALGIAN will also function, occasionally, as a Here's What to Invest in Right Now! blog.

BUY BUY BUY!:

Apple! I just did, and if everyone who reads this (you, boyo!) does too, we'll send the stock up perhaps a fraction of a small fraction. Guaranteed green, blogfriends!**

But, given my extremely limited resources (all my money belongs to debtors), why would I buy Apple? Why now?

Good questions. Thanks for getting right to it.

I am making Apple a short play -- which I think means that I bought some of its stock, but plan on selling my purchase off rather soon.

Why? Glad you asked!

On September 9 Apple is likely going to announce a revamp of its entire iPod lineup, and the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

...As long as we're doing this, let's toss some completely unsubstantiated rumors around: Apple may be making all its notebooks with touchscreens, so the interface will function much like the iPhone's.

Closer to reality, perhaps, is the possibility that the Mac Mini could bow out and a Mac tablet take its place. ...Many people keep rumors going about this possibility, but forget that they wouldn't buy a tablet PC -- even if it is as sweet as an iPhone on 'roids.

Tablet PCs have been around forever. (Remember the Newton!) They don't get bought. But reading all the rumors re a Mac tablet certainly gives one the impression that there's an untapped market waiting at the gates for the doors to be flung open.

Nope.

[In this space is this sentence instead of a few paragraphs that were deleted for posterity.]

Short: Big product rollout September 9. If you need money for the short term, as I do, buy as many slices of Apple as you can about one half-hour after trading opens (things are cheap around ten a.m. for as much reason as exists in the stock market) tomorrow (use a cheap service like Scottrade or something such).

Then hold tight for just a few weeks or so until Apple announces its financials in its fourth-quarter earnings statement.

Apple sold the hell out of the iPhone 3G in that (this) quarter. Despite issues/flaws/whatever, the iPhone 3G remains an unattainable must-have.

Primarily for this reason, listen in to Apple's 4Q go-round with the analysts, hope that everything any analyst has to say is positive and that you hear "exceeding expected earnings for the quarter by..." as often as possible.

M-kay. That's this edition of THE FIBROMYALGIAN INVESTOR.

Expect more amazing advice and insight in the future.

(But please be aware that the advice given in this and any post on THE FIBROMYALGIAN is not to be construed in any way as advice. --Nothing written is meant to motivate you to do anything, no statement demanding or suggesting you should do something or any thing demands or suggests that you actually do do something or any thing.

(I think this should catch all: This blog post is for entertainment purposes only. The author of this blog expects that the reader will live his/her life after reading the post just as if he/she never read the post.

*The title of this post is in no way meant to suggest that you should "invest the Fibromyalgian's way."

**Any guarantees or promises ever made by C.Bandini are neither. Bandini bears no responsibility for anything -- and that would include washing himself if he had the money to pay someone to do that for him.

WELLSPHERE UBER ALLES!

2008-08-17T15:37:00.002-07:00

Wellsphere.com has been kind enough to add this blog's posts to their site, and to give me the laurels you see to your left.

I hope they know what they've gotten into...

Until my posts are pulled from their site for their off-topic topics, for revealing only the author's venality and adoration of expletives, I thank everyone who is part of Wellsphere.

...Well, I'll still thank them, even after my posts are scratched out, for being a site where one can find a lot of good info from real people.

--Now to throw in something to do with fibromyalgia (which I feel a bit pressured to do because of my new attachment to Wellshpere, I must admit):

For the past two weeks I've had to keep a regular weekday schedule: The alarm's sound comes at 8 a.m.... The only sound I hate more than Celine Dion's voice. I swallow the small bottle I filled the night before: 60mg Ritalin, 10mg OxyContin, 2mg Klonopin. Then I curl up and get back to sleeping.

An hour plus thirty minutes later the Ritalin kicks and I have to move. It is very important that I'm up and about by 11 (for reasons I must omit with apologies) and, because I need twelve hours of sleep per night -- which I finally figured out after having fibro for how long? --
I developed the forced-wakefulness regimen described above.

On the weekends I hibernate. I sleep from whenever the steam furnace runs out of charcoal to feed it and hit the pillows and blankets Friday night and remain there, with small breaks to watch TV and take meds, until around four or five p.m. Sunday.

Sleep is important. Especially, I hear and read and experience personally, to people with fibro.

So I neglect my Rit. pills on the weekend and catch up on what I missed through the forced-wakefulness project.

All of which is bad and stupid and for the love of oxygen don't do anything like what I've described, be harmed in some way by it and sue me. Every and any action I take is not to be done by anyone else and I cannot and do not condone my own behavior. The things described in this post have been performed by a professional weirdo and should not be imitated or deemed rational by anyone.

...Today I woke at 4:30 p.m. And I hope to be sleeping again by 1 a.m. because I want to be ready to kill the alarm tomorrow morning, down my drug cocktail and get back to sleep. ...The elapsed time between my waking at eight and being asleep again is now only five minutes.

I'm an extraordinary machine.*

*Buy every Fiona Apple album.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

2008-07-24T13:43:00.003-07:00

My lawyer called me today to let me know I have "won" (seems like a poor term to describe the situation... But that's how she put it) my Social Security Disability claim.

Which means I will be getting back-pay for the year of my life I've wasted (fifteen months if you're counting) waiting for this decision, and a monthly income of... Well, since I can't make any money myself, at least it's something.

More to come blogfriends, at long last! (But you have to wait longer because I'm too happy to write today!)

Finally I can breathe... The terror ebbs.

EVERY DAY IS LIKE SUNDAY

2008-06-28T00:20:00.001-07:00

A BIT OF NEWS FROM THE PAIN RELIEF NETWORK!

2008-06-27T08:28:00.005-07:00

[This came to my inbox and I thought I'd pass it along and urge everyone who is able -- after donating all you can to me me me, of course (button's on the right) -- to give give give to PRN. The e-mail:]

Pain Treatment Advocacy Group Sues State of WA
Jun 25, 2008
By: Donna Gordon Blankinship
The Associated Press

SEATTLE - A pain treatment advocacy group filed suit Wednesday in federal court to challenge the restrictions Washington state officials have put on prescription pain medication

The nonprofit Pain Relief Network says the guidelines for prescribing narcotics, written by the Washington state Department of Health and published in March 2007, have influenced pain treatment across the country and have made doctors afraid to give opiate prescriptions[...]

Me (Calvin) again:

Get the full story using this link.

Donate to PRN using this link.

This post's title is a link to PRN.

...And sorry for the dearth of posts this month.

Family.

put it on its back

2008-06-11T20:04:00.006-07:00

when they stop staring
at your ass
you need their ogles back
enough to tell the
very superior old pale lie
you reserve for
more-often occasions:
your younger sister found blue in her crib.

...You were so young.

THE EXAM! ...NOW: WAITING!

2008-06-11T14:44:00.003-07:00

My exam was far too short. But I think I may have some sort of chance at being found to be disabled (infinite-non-jinx).

The doc started asking questions after taking my blood pressure, and I found myself reading from the pages containing the lists I made yesterday, so I just stopped myself and handed her the pages.

She looked at all the meds I've taken previously (we were on that topic at the moment) and was taken aback. So was I, truthfully, when I saw all the meds I listed, college-notes-style "a" through "z," then indented and listed next to asterisks. "A" through "y" covered only the meds I still have the bottles for.

After that I cheated on a few list items. For example: I put Paxil on the list (note to dear reader: Do Not Ever Take Paxil) and simply noted that I've taken every other SSRI, SNRI and NSRI as well.

So she had, and I hope the Social Security Admin. will end up with, a pretty-complete list of my current meds and their dosages, my current treatments (TENS), my past meds prescribed/taken, my past treatments (trigger-point injections, all the other injections given by Dr 9, so on) and -- first things last: everything that tags along with fibro (chronic fatigue, etc).

(Wow... This is so deadly close to what I wrote yesterday. ...Best to get past the list.)

She was amazed by everything. She would interrupt something she or I was saying to mutter "...You're only twenty-nine..."

She seemed to have a problem with the OxyContin and the fact my doc had upped my dose two months after I started taking it. She was worried about habituation, the definition of which she gave me... Not as an insult. She did so before she found me using similar words in our conversation. I let her know that the correct Oxy dose has not been reached, and I didn't need to take more Oxy to get the same relief I originally obtained from it. I also let her know I've been on high doses of benzos (mostly Klonopin) for more than a decade without becoming habituated, without escalating, on.

I also let her know of the studies I've found that prove people who need painkillers and benzos don't get habbed, hop on the escalator, get addicted, all that mess.

But it turns out that, even if she believes I am having to escalate my Oxy dose, she realized what the following illustrates:

"Overall, you've got to realize that getting on OxyContin was the last option I had and I had to take it."

Immediate response: "Of course without doubt."

...It may be a good sign that she spent most of our appointment trying to think of a clinic or hospital or doctor I could see that could somehow treat me better than I am being treated now (impossible -- and she came up empty, which was the only possible thing to do. I've tried everything).

Also, I believe she was impressed by the life I had been living until I had fibro (work-wise) and appreciated what it meant for me to be kicked off the track I had built.

...Fuck.

God damn it.

Now I wait for a letter and try not to think about everything that letter could be.

I don't know how to feel.

Until I figure out how I should, I'm at my default setting: Extremely Anxious.

FIBROMYALGIA, SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY, CINDER BLOCKS!

2008-06-10T14:21:00.006-07:00

Tomorrow is my second, and hopefully last, exam to determine whether I am so decrepit I must, essentially, become a ward of the state.

When I found out I was to have the test, two cinder blocks immediately were stacked one on another atop my ribcage.

So for weeks my muscles have been weakening until now my lungs only can inflate enough to take in as much air as is held in two of the empty pill bottles (one for each lung) I've kept in a drawer I'm about to pour on the floor so I can make a list of most of the the meds I've previously taken.

For the MD examining me I also will need to list all current and past treatments (like trigger-point injections), ailments that accompany the pain of fibro (like chronic fatigue) -- anything I can think of... Though I won't be able to get everything down.

(I know I've written something quite similar to this post before. But hell, I'm padding my blog -- I admit it... Plus I haven't read my own stuff in a while and recall my previous pieces as corpses in need of a Dr Frankenstein. ...And I'm not referring just to the recent stuff.)

I'm afraid to tell the whole truth and nothing but to the doc tomorrow because it's going to sound like I'm horribly inflating my case.

But I'll be truthful anyway... But be sure to let the MD know it's going to seem like I'm padding -- the way I'm padding the blog right now.

[UPDATE! -- written after initial post]

My analogy using cinder blocks was stupid: It only works if I've been lying down ever since I found out about my appointment... And I've had to walk to the bathroom a few times since then.

So how about this: Since then a daily-tightening rubber band has surrounded me from armpits to floating ribs.

Or how about this: Screw the analogies. I've been increasingly anxious ever since the letter, and now I'm in such a panic I barely can breathe.

Tomorrow will decide how I live the rest of my life.

A bit stressful.

standard-current short story

2008-06-07T00:17:00.008-07:00

The fireworks finale! The expectation before!

A description of what happened in the sky pre-finale. The description-length is dictated by the word count sought by the publication you hope to appear in.

Since you just saw the display being described, you can relate to it.

Something before, during or after the events described set off a memory for the narrator, or the events themselves now turn into something else on a sentence.

An ambiguous sentence. Or a sentence that nails the events above to a cross. A sentence meant to be a revelation. A sentence that, were it the first one, would have made what you just read not worth reading.

ON THE 11TH: MY SECOND SSA DISABILITY EXAM!

2008-06-05T17:43:00.001-07:00

An MD is taking care fo this one. So I'll have to write down my many disorders and all the drugs I take now/ever have taken, all the tests that I've had done, and all the treatments that have been foisted on me.

It should be a blast.

Meanwhile, the Ritalin doesn't seem to be working for me. I've gone back to sleeping all the time.

And since right now is a time, I should be sleeping in it.

I'll get back to it, and let you know what impressions I have after the exam.

...I need to learn how to write in my sleep...

project

2008-05-30T23:26:00.005-07:00

When he can't make you come
Your practicality
would have you
carve carefully
but maybe you'll
take the lathe out this time
and shave until the blade
is as dull
as you keep
your nails...

Please:
Try it all
with sap
still running...

Try working
alive.

potential

2008-05-30T19:20:00.006-07:00

In the sandbox
you were the
firemanson
But now you're
afraid to smile
because it shows
the creases life has
made in your face
though you know
everyone around you
wherever you are
in the small town

and the only
way they know
your face is by lineage

you know they
hunger to see
your face crumple
that they
delight in
the signs dying things
give
and you try not to.

walk!

2008-05-30T18:59:00.002-07:00

After I
swipe off
your wing-feathers
You're
interesting
only for as long
as you face
gravity
like the fucking
rest of us.

foreplay

2008-05-30T18:35:00.000-07:00

The worst of the
world groped its
way into you
as soon as my fingers stopped.

NEW CONTACT E-MAIL: CALVINBANDINI@gmail.COM!

2008-05-29T15:45:00.003-07:00

I switched my account from AOL to Gmail because my AOL account, lately, has been hiccuping like a sot on his fifteenth beer.

Please send any/all correspondence to calvinbandini@gmail.com from now on.

Love and kittens

--CB

COMING SOON: ANOTHER EXAM SO THE SSA CAN ENSURE I'M DISABLED!

2008-05-28T06:19:00.004-07:00

My lawyer called me yesterday to let me know that, now that a psych picked by the Social Security admin. has examined me (what? three weeks ago?), the SSA is going to have me see an MD of their choosing. Hopefully soon...

I'll have to be sure to list all the stuff I have -- you can't say "I have fibro" to a doctor and expect them to know that that means you have a disorder that is comprised of various other diseases/disorders, plus the pain everyone knows it causes, I've discovered. I also need to list all the medications I've taken and treatments I've been through, too.

...With all that, plus the doc's personal findings, I can't imagine he/she reporting to the SSA that I should be put to work in a coal mine immediately... Or saying I could be hired by any company for anything. Like my personal doc said -- "I hope your book works out [I'm writing a book... Seems important to note that, here], because once you fill this you'll never get hired by anyone for liability reasons" (then he wrote me my first Oxy script).

"Hi! -- Calvin Bandini, here for the interview..."

...

"So what you're saying, Mr Bandini, is that you're pretty much on something like heroin, plus uppers and tranquilizers twenty-four/seven?"

"I guess, yeah. But, I can't get high from the stuff. I take it out of medical necessity."

"...Yeah... Huh...

"Um -- Do you think your medications would affect your ability to do you job?"

"Only in that they would allow me to do my job. --Provided I can get a one- or two-hour-long nap in sometime during the day, don't have to remember anything said to me five minutes after it's been said, don't have to walk, stand nor sit for more than thirty minutes at a time, and can have anywhere from four to ten days off per month, depending on what treatments I need at any given time.

"...You know, pretty average stuff.

"--Oh! I can bring in my own hammock! It's one of those you can set up anywhere you have the space! So the nap-thing is really a non-issue!

"...And you guys have a three-day workweek, right? Because I need to rest four days out of the week or I just get completely messed up."

"...Huh.. Well... Yeah.

"...Thanks for coming in...

(This is the next thing the person would say if he/she were able to be honest:) "We'll call to tell you we can't hire you as soon as our lawyers come up with sufficient grounds on which to deny your application that also preclude you from suing us under the Americans with Disabilities Act."

--And, Scene!--

...Moving on in my staccato fashion: I should tell you why/how the hell I'm up at eight in the morning (so unnatural... It never felt right for me to be up at this hour even when I had to be for work): Every time my Oxy dose is upped my bags pack themselves and I'm sent on an unplanned vacation to Snoozeville for about a week until I become used to the increase. (Thankfully, the sleepiness wanes but the pain relief doesn't)... Which is why it's eight a.m. and I've been up since eleven p.m. ...Last evening I passed out right after taking my second, 20mg, dose of Ritalin. ...If that doesn't illustrate my exhaustion, it's impossible to.

My body has pretty much matched my mind, now, in weirdness...

...So I guess I'll be getting something from the SSA in the mail, hopefully soon, re when I get the pleasure of being probed by a doctor. ...And let's hope the doc has some experience -- or at least knowledge of -- fibro beyond having seen those whiny, demeaning commercials for Lyrica.

...It now has been a year since I applied for disability. Wow.

...And I remember reading that the SSA was making it a priority to expedite disability decisions this year. I'm actually glad that isn't the case (or doesn't seem to be, anyway). The Bush administration's idea of expediting disability claims, I'm sure, would have been to throw all of them out as baseless.

Remember when "compassionate conservatism" was all the rage? ...If the phrase "compassionate conservatism" was on the SAT, it's analogue would be "humane death penalty."

SOOTHING SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA & CHRONIC FATIGUE: DRUGS!

2008-05-23T09:13:00.007-07:00

I saw Dr ML&S this morning. I thought I was going to have a problem waking up early (I had to leave the house at 9:00, and I've been awakening at 11:00 or noon lately), but did not. I woke at 4:00. ...That would mean I got five hours of sleep.

I don't know what the hell that is about... Some nights my person seems to love sleep at least as much as it loves oxygen, but other times it wants out of it like a college kid wants out of the drunk tank as soon as he wakes up. (The three-inch thick foam-rubber mattress you're given to put on the concrete floor isn't comfortable once you've sobered up.)

First we discussed the results of my allergy test. I told him I immediately cut yeast out of my diet, and that what I had thought was IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) was actually my gut's response to its yeast allergy.

So I have no more IBS-like symptoms (which I won't discuss here -- eeeeeeww)! However, that's the only thing wrong with me that has been put right.

After that discussion, Dr ML&S asked me to rate my pain throughout the day. I told him that, since I take all my meds on time and on an exact schedule I make every morning, based on when I wake up, it's a 4.5/10 all day long.

He said "Then I guess we have a ways to go."

...On my way to see him, today, I hadn't even thought about increasing my OxyContin dose, but the doc doesn't seem like he'll be happy until my pain rates 0/0, if that's possible to attain.

When he asked me if I thought taking 10mg of Oxy every five hours instead of every six would further reduce my pain, I said yes. Thirty mg/day decreased it significantly (from 50/10 to within the scale), 40mg/day decreased the agony maybe two points more, and so now I hope my pain decreases even further.

...Perhaps I can get to a 2.5 or 2/10... If that happens, it may no longer hurt when I sit back in chairs!

He also asked me to tell him how my pain has been since I began seeing him.

"Well... You saved my life."

I explained that going from 50/10 to 4.5/10 was something so tremendous it hadn't even occurred to me that we should try to bring it down further (maybe I should work on this post so I don't restate that)... That he had improved my life (reduced my pain, etc) so much that I'm still in shock due to how much better I feel. (Which isn't to say every moment isn't agony...)

I know this seems like I'm simply blowing smoke up my doctor's ass, but I have no reason to: very few people know about this blog (PLEASE DONATE!), including him.

I'm simply grateful that this guy saved my life. The day before I saw him I was thinking up different ways I could kill myself. The very next day a smile crept on my face for the first time in forever.

...Dr ML&S also increased my Ritalin LA (long-acting), so now I'm taking 30mg to get me out of bed, and 20mg later in the day, about eight hours before I plan on going to sleep.

I think it could work out... And if it doesn't the good doc (I think that is the first time I've used that phrase without sarcasm) and I will fine-tune things when I see him in about a month.

...Hopefully all this is leading to me getting on some sort of sleep schedule... That's eluded me for a very very long time.

May Dr ML&S live a thousand years.

WAITING FOR SSA TO MAKE A DECISION RE MY DISABILITY!

2008-05-21T14:08:00.004-07:00

It now has been exactly two weeks since I was examined by a psych. chosen by the Social Security Administration. Someone I know, who succeeded in getting disability benefits, said he received his decision within a month. Perhaps I will get mine within two weeks.

Now would be a good time to have patience, which I've always sorely lacked...

But, on the bright side of the I-Can't-Eat-anything-With-Yeast-In-It-Anymore situation, I've been so preoccupied with watching my diet and its effects (minimal: It's easier for me to wake up now, but still very hard for me to stay awake, even with 40mg Ritalin and all the green tea (which has caffeine) I'm drinking... Green tea being my sub for coffee, the latter of which I'm also allergic to... It's a good thing I've always liked green tea) that I haven't had much time to think about the forthcoming decision from Social Security. Also, I've lost seven pounds in one week. Perhaps because my diet, now, is a hell of a lot like what people in the first two weeks of the Atkins program are supposed to eat.

...Waiting is boring. So is this post. How fitting...

MOTIVATION!

2008-05-20T12:20:00.003-07:00

History has taught us that pain can make anyone do anything...

I was walking the two miles home from J’s at, what I found out when I arrived home, was about eight a.m. on a Thursday.

I kept to the side of the road, freezing...

I woke up at J’s half-covered in a blanket, the XBox controller still in my hand. I must have passed out while navigating some goddam menu the console makes players go through. Leave it to Microsoft to make accessing a game as fun and easy as typing in a proper MS-DOS command.

The first thing I noticed, before opening my eyes and realizing where I was, was the extreme pain in my head. ...The same pain that's there every morning. I soon found that I was sitting upright... Still locked in the position I likely had been in when I first went to sleep.

Then the anxiety hit. And then I noticed I was shivering, and that J must have moved from the couch he had passed out on to his bedroom. For a minute I surrounded myself in the blanket I had -- made a cocoon out of it -- and laid on the couch he had occupied. I learned that leather likes to maintain its temperature, and that if it was going to warm up, it was going to have to steal from me heat I wasn’t producing.

My morning panic attack forced me into action. I don’t know why I thought it would be possible for me to go back to sleep under any circumstances. My drugs were back home; my pill-box was empty. I hadn’t planned on staying the night, and so I hadn’t brought my morning pills.

I needed ten milligrams of OxyContin and two or three milligrams of Klonopin immediately.

I searched J’s entire first floor for a phone. All I found were chargers for cordless devices I couldn't locate. ...I couldn’t be rude and wake J up so he could drive me home, so I decided to check to see if the weather was nice enough for me to walk home in.

...I had lied to myself, because I began walking down his driveway and up the road as fast as I could as soon as I stepped outside. I had known I was going to walk home even before I stepped out the door.

At least it wasn’t raining. However, whatever the temperature was, I felt if it was a few degrees lower I would have been able to see my breath.

...I tightened the ankle straps on my sandals to try to avoid getting blisters. ...This also locked in the gravel that already had crept beneath my feet. ...I couldn't make myself stop to shake out the pebbles because I couldn't suffer a drug-free moment I could avoid.

The sun was a murderer. It focused all of its rays on my right eye, where my daily migraines emanate from. I zipped up my jacket to my chin, put on the winter hat I had worn the night before, even though it had been about sixty degrees the day before. I wondered why I was so cold, both that morning and the night before, when the the level of magnesium in small tubes indicated I had no reason to be.

It passed the time as I walked up the big hill.

A car passed and I realized I was on the Walk of Shame, and I hadn’t even gotten laid the night before. And for the first time in my life I actually found it shameful to be walking home early in the morning in the same clothes I had worn the day before, freezing and disheveled. On all previous walks like this one I had been coming back from having sex, which I could never understand anyone being ashamed of.

My thoughts occupied me as I walked as fast as I could, head down against that bastard in the center of our solar system. The pain blared in my head like bad music trying to get Noriega out of a church and into an American prison... My panic attack forced me on.

Eventually, finally, I could see my house.

I pictured the two brown bottles... My Oxy and Klonopin, waiting for me on the coffee table next to my bed and its four blankets and comforter. Not close enough...

The sun hit my eye and I grabbed my head as though it had been pierced with an arrow... A person driving by in an SUV at the same moment probably thought a wheel had kicked a pebble in my face. Whoever it was didn't stop.

...Down the driveway, through doors, my pills were on their way to my stomach. I buried myself beneath my blankets and began to feel warm as I waited for them to kick in. As I did I thought of the fact that a large percent of the population in the Eastern time zone was beginning its workday. If the person in the SUV though he/she may have blinded or otherwise injured me, he/she couldn't stop because he/she was late for work... But the person likely didn't notice me at all because his/her mind already was there.

I envied whoever it was as I lay in the dark, twisted up in my blankets.

AN ERUDITE COUNTERPOINT TO MY '10 COMMANDMENTS' POST!

2008-05-17T13:46:00.004-07:00

[This is a comment from David at the LifeTrek blog re my 10 Commandments post that needed to be more visible than it is in the Comments section, followed by my response:]

By no means am I deeply religious, but I did do some online research.

Typically much of Galatians (try 3 and 5 for starters) explains some of what you're asking.

It appears to be a common misinterpretation when questioning the bible piecemeal, but that is answered throughout the New Testament.

Here are some summaries online of the bible in whole:
The coming of Christ made parts of the Mosaic law unnecessary.

In order to understand this, we must realize that the Law is made up of three parts: ceremonial, civil, and moral.

The ceremonial law related specifically to Israel's worship. Since its primary purpose was to point to the coming Savior, Jesus made it unnecessary. He did not abolish it, in the sense of destroying it; he fulfilled it. Nowhere do we read that Jesus thought that the ceremonial law was wrong. The principles behind the ceremonial law are still applicable to us today -- that is, the principles of worshiping and serving a holy God.

The civil law prescribed rules for the Israelites' daily living. These laws separated the Jews from the Gentiles, and gave the Gentiles the example of how a holy people should live. Since much was given to the Jews, much was expected. But God gave a new covenant in Christ, and there is now no distinction to be made between Jew and Gentile. We are still to follow the requirements of this law as God's people, but the punishments are not for any nation to impose on its people, because we are no longer separated by nations but by God's grace (Christians and non-Christians).

The moral law is basically the Ten Commandments. We are still bound by these laws, not for salvation, but to live a holy life. Jesus not only desired that His followers adhere to these commandments, He wished that they would go above and beyond them. He said, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment..." He desired not only an outward observance of these laws, but an inward observance as well.
---
"If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law" ... "therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath day -- things that are a mere shadow of what is to come," and "For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under Law but under grace."

Keep in mind who Paul's talking to: young churches, mostly of Jewish backgrounds. When he speaks of "the Law", he's referring to Mosaic Law. When he speaks of "the law," he refers to state law. (I say this so nobody thinks I'm claiming Paul says to disobey all laws.) Jesus clearly states in the the Gospel of Matthew that He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He didn't destroy the Law of Moses, he completed it. He fulfilled the prophesies of the coming messiah, He became the very essence of the suffering servant.
---
The Ritual Decalogue is the list of commandments in Exodus 34:10-26. They are generally viewed as having minor significance compared to the Ethical Decalogue. Although the Ritual Decalogue appears in the text at the point where the Ten Commandments are inscribed into the second set of stone tablets, and it is them, rather than the Ethical Decalogue, which are there identified as the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:28), it is the Ethical Decalogue which is commonly believed to have been inscribed on both sets of tablets.
---
I also read in one of my searches that the reason for the differing translations for commandments, but I can't remember where I found that and am lucky to have kept these straight through the fibro fog.

So, maybe we aren't all going to hell. Hope that helps.
David

My response:
Re your comment on the "10 Commandments" post. Put simply: you got me!

Ha!

From a strictly Christian standpoint, you've got me dead to rights. The only thing I would point out is that it is Christian tradition that makes the ethical commandments those written on Moses' tablets. I maintain that the commandments I list in the post are, in fact -- based on reading the Bible alone -- the ones that actually went on the tablets.

However, your comment goes on to make the above point... pointless.

Since I am a former Catholic, you reminded me of what I already knew: That Jesus fulfilled certain parts of scripture, and went so far as to remind the people that certain laws were to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah, and that those specific laws no longer needed to be followed in his presence which, it can be argued, Christians remain.

I'm also very happy that your comment is so erudite and learned, when usually the kind of bile I spit in that post (I admit it: I wrote it in haste and with with a certain gleeful meanness) only causes more bile to come forth from readers. Which would be my fault, of course.

But you took a much higher road, and I say well done.

I. CAN'T. EAT. BREAD!

2008-05-16T09:09:00.006-07:00

FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

Yeah. I can't eat bread. It turns out I'm INCREDIBLY allergic to yeast (including brewer's, so NO MORE BEER... NO MORE BEER!), so I can't eat anything that has it. This includes all breads. I can't eat fucking bread!

...Weeks ago I had a blood test that determined what and how much I'm allergic to certain things/foods. It turns out that yeast is a huge no-no for me.

The good news is that, by cutting out of my diet everything that has yeast (just about everything), I should feel better.

I'll still have fibro -- neither my trigger points, the alpha-wave intrusion into my delta-wave sleep, nor the constant pain I live with are going to go away as I exclude all yeast-containing products from my diet -- but I may feel more awake, and maybe even a little better overall.

I'm also supposed to avoid sugar and pretty much all sweeteners. Eating properly is going to be very difficult, but worth it if I can feel a bit better. Especially if my allergy is making my chronic fatigue worse. (It's been horrendous lately, as up-to-date readers know... I've even been able to sleep for hours after taking 20mg of Ritalin for crissake!)

But oh well. Like I've said since I was diagnosed with fibro: I'd walk The Mall (in DC) from Congress to Lincoln barefoot over broken glass to feel better.

...It's too bad that's pretty much what I have to do now.

But I will. I feel so bad all the time that I'll do whatever it takes to improve my condition even slightly.

I was sent the info on my allergies yesterday, and immediately went on a short fast. I ate lunch today, and realized that from now on I will have to cook, myself, almost everything I can eat. Almost everything has yeast in it.

This afternoon I spent 45 minutes cooking a chicken breast. ...I haven't cooked in a very long time, but give myself kudos for my improv skills. I don't measure anything, nor do I know how I'm going to prepare what I'm going to cook when I put it in the pan (I have always stayed away from ovens). I just look in the cupboard and pantry and pick out whatever spices/herbs/oils/etc smell like they'd work together.

I ended up with seared garlic and rosemary chicken with a red wine (though I'm not supposed to drink wine anymore, I figured it would be OK to cook with it since I reduced it to practically nothing... Maybe that just made it all the worse by concentrating it, though) and roasted peanut oil sauce. (The two don't seem like they'd work together, but I added the oil after I had added the chicken back to the pan and the wine had reduced to a tablespoon, so I needed just a touch of oil in the sauce.) The finished product somehow turned out quite well.

...Perhaps I'll eventually get incredibly tired of preparing everything I eat, and wind up having to be fed intravenously...

But until then I shouldn't have a problem losing the rest of the weight I want to. (I dropped twenty-five in the month after I stopped taking Lyrica, but would like to get rid of another twenty-five or so.) That's another plus.

I will keep you posted on my yeast-free existence... It will be interesting to see if I begin to sour on having to live with this allergy (did I mention I can't eat bread, the very thing that allowed humanity to cease living as hunter-gatherers?), which is yet another kick in the nuts from a professional field goal kicker.

I HAVE FIBROMYALGIA AND NEED DRUGS!

2008-05-12T15:38:00.004-07:00

[I have recently been prescribed double the dose of Ritalin previously prescribed because each pill keeps me awake for only eight hours. I'm trying to be awake for sixteen daily, like a normal person. So I called my doc and now am to take one in the morning and one later in the day.

Which I am very happy about, but may worry a friend of mine. I e-mailed her -- a postscript to an e-mail I previously sent to her -- explaining why more Ritalin is a good thing, though it's likely she doesn't think so.

Here's the e-mail:]

I wonder if you think more Ritalin is exactly what I don't need -- more drugs of any kind exactly what I don't need.

It's important to remember that my disorder is rather serious (the pain medication I take is the same given to terminal cancer patients... And not because I love painkillers but because I'm in equivalent pain), even though I act as though it's anything but. It affects every single facet of my life... And the drugs I take I take to attempt to crawl into the shadow of my former self.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth -- I just wanted to prevent you from worrying about my drug diet.

I wasn't able to talk to you for a month because I was sleeping so much (and so very very tired when I wasn't asleep). I finally was able to call you after I was put on Ritalin.

Everything I take I take to feel more normal... Not exactly better.

waiting for godot

2008-05-12T11:54:00.007-07:00

I call her after I drink the fifth of Stoli to a certain level.

She doesn't notice I'm drunk and continue to get more so.

Her: "My ex is stalking me..."

Her, later:

"I think he's gotten over it..."

Me: "The last thing you want is for him to get over it. The last thing you want is for anyone to get over anything. You need power over everyone. That power turns the crank that juts out of your back."

(I don't know if I just came up with that or if I'm reiterating it.)

Later, me:

"The fact remains that if he showed up at your door and said he'd really try this time, you'd take him back. You love the fat, small-dicked fucker because he's broken... And it isn't that you want to fix him: You love playing with the pieces."

"You think I'm incapable of loving someone who isn't fucked up?"

"You know you are."

The conversation goes on until I find myself sinking too far into self-loathing.

...I need her.

I must love playing with the pieces...

And I must be shattered for her to listen to me...

The realization scares me as it did the first time and I beg off the phone quickly with a limp excuse.

We'll talk when the bottle of Stoli gets to the proper level.

Maybe the next time I call she'll have some other guy. And then I'll hear about all the ways in which he's inadequate, and mesmerizing because.

Then maybe her ex will begin stalking her in an obvious manner, out of jealousy.

Then maybe they'll get back together.

THE REAL TEN COMMANDMENTS!:

2008-05-11T10:48:00.002-07:00

[I got into a hyper-religion-investigating mode yesterday and thought I'd post this instead of my own ranting. And I also promise to get on some other topic after this post.]

From Exodus 34:

1. Behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves

2. For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a-whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods

3. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods

4. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt

5. All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty

6. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest

7. And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year

8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning

9. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God

10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk

There are twenty-one or twenty-three edicts given by god in all, but these are the only ten called "commandments" in the bible. Therefore, these are the ten commandments.

Christians, you'd best start to observe passover! Also, what the hell is with the faithful no longer making sacrifices? God nothing more than the smell of burning animal entrails! Observe the feasts! (Maybe the fact that you do not is the reason god obviously did not keep the promise he makes in this commandment.) On to numbers eight and nine: Get with the freaking sacrificing, you're pissing god off! Finally, keep kosher!

It's good to know that I'll see everyone in hell because they fail to keep the real commandments.

Feel free to blubber and make lame excuses as a way of sliding yourself through the closed pearly gates, but by doing so you're basically saying "god didn't really mean it." But sorry: God meant everything, and literally, in Exodus -- and he killed and ordered to be killed a hell of a lot of people for much much tinier infractions than not keeping the commandments.

We're all lucky we haven't been struck dead already.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A RAINBOW!

2008-05-10T06:18:00.005-07:00

[I know the proper saying is "...tree." The reason I modified it will become clear.]

I was sent an e-mail that had a bunch of cool pictures of rock formations that looked like animals. After the pictures was this plea: to take ONE MINUTE to say the lord's prayer, to not be ashamed of your love for god, and to show it by passing the chain e-mail along.

My response to the sender:

[The creation of every formation is] explicable by natural phenomena. Cool though.

I take this e-mail as an attempt to illustrate that god is the creator of all things, and only god could make the rocks, etc look the way they do. And that its creation is beautiful.

The flip side being: If god is the creator of all things we must also give ONE MINUTE to god for the Holocaust.

We can't just give god credit for the beautiful things; it has to be given credit for everything. Otherwise it is not god because it is not all-powerful.

One can make an argument that god is unknowable, and all the evil that is done is done for a purpose only god can understand; the beauty must be taken with the horror. And one cannot lay blame for evil on free will -- on people choosing to do evil -- because mankind was created in god's image and likeness.

Further, just as people are capable of wrong, so is god. A reading of the Old Testament (Torah, Hebrew Bible) shows that god is capable of error -- it admits to erring on a few occasions (oops! Hundreds of thousands dead!). Ergo, he is not all-knowing. God endorses wholesale slaughter of entire cities and the men, women and children within them. It endorses slavery. On and on.

God made a rainbow, and rainbows are beautiful things. Before it made that, though, it wiped out almost every single living thing on earth, without remorse. The people drowned to death -- one of the worst ways to go.

The foundation of my life is, irrefutably, my parents, and I give thanks to them for my life. I don't have god's genes.

And you'll excuse me for being ashamed of a mass-murderer. I'm ashamed of Ted Bundy, and he killed far fewer people than god ever did.

You can choose to divorce the Old Testament (Torah, Hebrew Bible) from the New Testament, but then you are not following the god of Jesus, the Jew, who gathered followers through his superior understanding and (strict) interpretation of the Torah.

Either god has done it all or he has done nothing. We can't pick and choose.

To quickly sum things up and give you the short version of the argument against the existence of the Christian god:

1. If evil exists and God is omniscient, then God knows about it.
2. If God knows about evil and is omnibenevolent, then he wants to prevent it.
3. If God wants to prevent evil and is omnipotent, then he can prevent it.
4. Therefore, if God is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent, then evil should not exist.

The Christian god is defined as being omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent. He is everywhere, he is all-good, he is all-powerful. But he cannot be all these things if evil exists, which it does.

But if "evil" is really "good" -- a necessary part of god's giving mankind free will, etc -- then there is no point in worshiping such an entity, for why kneel to something that allows us to suffer? That makes us suffer?

And if the devil causes evil, then god is not omnipotent, for he cannot defeat the devil. If god chooses not to defeat the devil, then he is not omnibenevolent. If god is unaware of the devil, then he is not omniscient.

Sorry to belabor the subject. I added this last piece because I needed to address specifically Christian conceptions of god, and not just the god of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible/Torah, who was undoubtedly evil (commanding the rape of 32,000 women from one city, for just one example).

Still, to not-love the god of the Old Testament is to not-love the god of Jesus, the Jew.

And to love the god of the Old Testament is to love a dictator/fascist who commanded the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, the rape of hundreds of thousands, the enslavement of hundreds of thousands, to love a being that did not frown upon the incest committed by Abraham's (the patriarch of Judeo-Christianity) daughters, and on and on.

Personally, I'm incredibly relieved that such a god does not exist.

THE DRUGS DON'T WORK?(!)

2008-05-10T05:30:00.003-07:00

I'm having mixed results with the extended-release Ritalin. Yesterday I awoke at two p.m. but had to go to sleep at ten p.m. last night. I was freaking exhausted, despite having taken a Rit promptly upon waking.

Perhaps the release isn't so extended...

But the previous day I couldn't get to sleep until six or seven a.m. I had been awake for what felt like forever, but was probably about sixteen hours.

And now I'm awake and it's eight a.m. However, I woke up at three.

Perhaps in the struggle between Ritalin (amphetamine) and Klonopin (tranquilizer), the Klonopin wins... But K hasn't made me tired for about a decade.

I can't make sense of this.

Perhaps I'm being worked over by the impending decision from Social Security re whether I'm disabled according to them. The sound of the executioner sharpening his blade sings beside my ears...

In other news, I think I could go for a nice round of marcaine shots. My neck isn't as flexible as it used to be and the trigger points in my back make it painful for me to sit back in chairs. Also, my migraines are worse than they used to be.

So it may be time to see Dr 9 for the only thing he's good for and believes in: those damn shots of his. ...My TENS unit just isn't a good enough proxy for those shots.

(Man what a boring post. I should have waited for the Ritalin to kick in before writing.)

Now I have to go hide my drugs. A certain person is visiting today, is a fucking pill fiend, and would rather I wish for death due to lack of narcotics than he be high.

He does have a legitimate problem with his back, but won't get his own Oxy prescription, which he has said time and again his doctors are more than willing to give him. Instead he sticks to taking overdoses of Tylenol through taking assloads of Vicodin and his liver must be as black as our lungs by now (each of us has been smoking for about fifteen years).

How am I to sympathize?

...And now I have Ritalin, which he would be more than happy to ingest like a behind-schedule trucker...

One's possession of heavy drugs easily turns certain of one's friends and loved ones into con men and snakes who search for your the pills you hide and protect like unhatched eggs...

it could [have] be[en] sweet

2008-05-07T19:33:00.009-07:00

[From now on all short stories, like poems, will have titles in all-lowercase so you can easily tell the posts that have to do with fibro -- the diaristry (I like making up words) -- from the ones that (usually) do not. A new blog devoted to shorts and poems to be announced soon.]

It Could [Have] Be[en] Sweet

(please begin playing thePortishead selection below)

Stereotypically, I developed a huge crush on her because she pushed me away for so long and that crush went away as soon as we slept together.

So many idiots make the mistake of waiting to sleep together. Get it fucking the fuck out of the way. The first time is horrible. You hardly even want to be naked with the person.

And christ, being told that sex was to be "something special between us" -- at our age (thirty-ish) -- was just laughable.

At thirty you damn-well-better know that all sex is is two people getting off together. Trying to make it something else corrupts the act itself and the people who buy into the idea that it's more than what it is.

...After a full month we were finally fucking and it was awkward and bad, despite the athleticism involved. I came three times, trying my best to remember each picture in the Kama Sutra.

It was nothing but a goddam performance piece... She was too loud to be believed... Then, anyway. If it had been weeks ago I would have bought it. I would have loved it. I would have joined in. ...At that time her wailing, and my belief in its contrivance, almost made me limp. I practically had to close my eyes and think of England...

All this despite the fact I had nothing but admiration for her only minutes ago. She was too like me for me to not love her (which is the more honest way of saying that we had a lot in common and I loved her because). We had already started communicating just by looking certain ways at each other.

...Naturally, after we finally had sex, that fascination with one another turned into the love one has for a sibling. And the third time we were screwing it was almost as weird as having sex with a goddam relative (I'll point out, here, that I come from a family of all [hetero] boys and unattractive cousins).

I began to think of how we were missing Aqua Teen,* and became sure she was thinking the same thing. So I pinned her knees by her ears and came within minutes, playing "Common People"** in my head to drown out the screaming of my name.

Then we lay on the bed, naked, sweaty, exhausted, the room stinking of vaginal and seminal fluid. I grabbed the remote from the floor.

The box flickered on and I was relieved to discover I had caught the last few minutes of Aqua Teen.

She curled herself around me, sighed loudly into my ear "Mmm god aren't you so glad we waited!"

She held me everywhere with all her limbs and kissed me on my face, neck and chest while I watched television, using her pillow to prop up my head.

Within thirty minutes she had put her clothes on and we lay next to each other, not touching, staring at and laughing at the television together.

*Aqua Teen Hunger Force (number one in the hood, G): see Adult Swim listings, Cartoon Channel after-hours

**Pulp

"i love you"

2008-05-07T16:35:00.004-07:00

That you're convinced
I'm lying
makes me wish
I were
being truthful.

the red crayon

2008-05-07T15:04:00.006-07:00

I'm at my best when I
dull and shorten you
and resent that you
always reappear
sharp and tall.

MY SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY EXAM!

2008-05-07T12:02:00.008-07:00

Well, who the fuck knows how that went. ...I just know I don't.

The psych who administered the exam seemed sympathetic, but the cognitive memory disorder test was too easy. Every psych (two prev.) but this one asked me to remember three or five very specific things, and let me know I would have to recall them after five minutes of conversation (which I cannot do). Didn't happen this time.

I was asked who the current president is (and had to taste his name in my mouth as I said it... I need to rinse with Drano) and who the previous president was, then asked to count backward from one hundred, subtracting seven on the way. I've always failed the shit out of that one. The psych let me flounder for about five minutes before turning off the embarrassment.

And then I was asked to interpret three metaphors! I have a BA in English! I was a professional copy editor! NO FUCKING FAIR!

"What is the phrase 'The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' meant to convey?"

Who the fuck doesn't know that?!

If we're testing to see whether I have opposable thumbs just have me hold up the fucking digits!

Maybe testing the mental acuity of someone who has spent his entire life studying all the goddam nuances of the English language is not best-done by asking him to interpret common goddam metaphors!

Gr.

...Me telling the story of getting fibro, showing him my current meds, and answering the five memory questions. That was the visit.

(It's important to note that I have nothing against the psych, but know it's the Social Security Administration that sets the questions.)

Too much of me thinks I'm fucked...

Also, the Ritalin seems only to work for about three to four hours. I'm fucking tired.

Gr.

FUCK!

RITALIN: IT'S NOT JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!

2008-05-06T12:50:00.004-07:00

I feel like I'm beginning to live a childhood I never had, having just been prescribed Ritalin, since I never had ADD/ADHD/whatever the hell kids who won't sit at their desks and shut the hell up are "diagnosed" with these days. (The real problem: The kids don't function at all well in a stupidly structured environment and parents and teachers don't have so much as the inclination to deal with them on their wavelength. Thank you DSM-IV for letting bad parents and teachers off the hook... And I swear this is the only swipe I'll take at you.)

...Now, with any luck, I'll be able to reverse the cycle I've been in, and sleep for about eight hours a night and be awake for about sixteen during the day! I'm sure I won't know what to do with myself... But fear excessive masturbation may be involved.

...I took my first extended-release Rit about a half-hour ago, and drugs take one-and-one-half-hours to kick in for me. So I'll see if I can stay awake today.

Until it does kick in: Still so very, very tired...

UPDATE!: Here are the drugs I now take for fibro, generalized anxiety and chronic fatigue disorder:

OxyContin, 40mg daily
Klonopin, 6mg daily
Prozac, 30mg daily
Ritalin, extended release, 20mg daily

With any luck the Ritalin will help me take another pained step toward the shadow of my former self...

WEDNESDAY I GET EXAMINED BY A SOCIAL SECURITY DOCTOR!

2008-05-03T16:57:00.003-07:00

It seems the long wait may finally be nearing an end... And what I call my early retirement near its beginning.

I am to be examined by a doctor who will then report my status to the Social Security Disability Administration. I'm sure to be diagnosed with cognitive memory disorder, which fibromyalgians lovingly call fibro fog, because I've been diagnosed with it twice. Said disorder is the reason someone I know was awarded disability, so I feel pretty good about my newfound idiocy being just cause for "awarding" me benefits.

(This is a snip of a conversation I had with the first psychologist who diagnosed me with cognitive memory disorder:

"So basically I'm a moron now."

"That depends on what your IQ was before you got fibro."

At the time -- and this one -- I'm still intelligent enough to find the above hilarious.)

Also, there's the fact that no one will hire someone who has to eat OxyCodone and Klonopin like candy and that, for months at a time -- times like now -- I have to sleep for sixteen hours of every day.

I would be a total liability to anyone who would hire me... Whacked on Oxy and Klonopin (most people think of these two as incredibly debilitating in and of themselves... However, they allow me to function. Still, no one would put me at the helm of a steamroller... I'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen), unable to remember what happened or what I was told to do any given five minutes ago...

I'm unemployable.

I feel reasonably certain that will be the finding of the doctor I see Wednesday.

...It's an odd thing, to hope that this will be his conclusion.

But there is no other to draw.

A POST THAT KINDA HAS TO DO WITH FIBRO (PLUS JOY DIVISION)!

2008-04-29T08:53:00.007-07:00

I'm going to be away from the desk for the next couple days, and would like to leave you (for the time being) with Love Will Tear Us Apart. I hope you enjoy the song, but that love will not, dear reader, tear us apart...

A programming note: I plan on making a new blog where I will post all my short stories that have nothing to do with fibromyalgia and actually start to post here, on a blog called THE FIBROMYALGIAN, about only fibro and everything related to it, which I haven't been doing much of recently.

What's my excuse for the dearth of posts and for posting so many lame short stories lately? The change of seasons has floored me and I've been sleeping all the time. I was on my feet for about eight hours last week.

Pity me.

I hope to improve or get on Aderral or Ritalin -- prescription amphetamines -- soon.

More to come! Till next, try not to enjoy:

DONE!

2008-04-28T20:13:00.007-07:00

I hate the fact that I'm putting exclamation points on my short stories just to make them fit the style of this blog... Just as I'm sure many of you are sick of me not writing about fibro and instead writing short shorts (use NAIR).

This is Done

“I love you l love you I love you...” I breathed into her ear as I came.

Her breath had slowed...

Both of us were done.

For years we had messed around, but this was the first time we had had sex... And in a way that used every aspect of the right-angled couch that sprawled along her one-thousand-square-foot basement...

It was supposed to be bad... Everyone we knew told us it would be. But it was like seeing the Fourth of July from the Point (which I would do much later and find analogous) in San Diego: fireworks everywhere... Unable to see it all, everything happening too quickly... The moment over before it began...

Ten years later more than made up for it.

I called her, drunk; I had had a dream in which she was killed.

It was 4 a.m. She picked up on the second ring:

“Calvin! I’ve been trying to reach you for two weeks!”

“Why? Are you OK? You’re not hurt are you?”

“No... I had this weird dream.”

“I had one too. Just now.”

“Are you OK?”

“Good, now.

“So how have you been in the ten years since we last talked to each other?”

AND SHE WAS!

2008-04-23T14:55:00.005-07:00

It had not been a good evening. She wanted to stay in the apartment, I desperately wanted to be the fuck out of there on a Friday night like a normal goddam twenty-five-year-old.

We lived together in Tacoma Park, an ex-urb so close to DC you would smell the Potomac if your stood in the right spot.

She gave in and decided to drive us to a bar she had been to on Connecticut Avenue.

"Why are you taking this way? We're going around half the freaking Beltway. ...We should've just parked and taken the Metro, like I said before."

"This is the only way I know how to go where we're going -- and we're already driving, so just be quiet."

I was getting the shakes. And I couldn't let her see that. ...The alcohol withdrawal drove an impatience that bordered on insanity...

Still, who the fuck drives slower than the speed limit?

I held my tongue and wrenched my hands all the way to The Four Provinces, a not-so Irish bar. It took us forty-five minutes to get there when it should have taken fifteen. ...Or would have, if I had driven.

But she drove because both of us knew I was going to get loaded... I physically needed to at that point.

She parked her Beetle on the street a few blocks away from the bar. We walked, picking our way along curbs and jaywalking across four-lane streets, never touching.

We got a table for two once we were inside. I immediately ordered a Guinness plus one because the place was so busy I knew it would be a while before we saw our waitress again.

"Did you know Guinness has less alcohol in it that Busch Light?"

Her stare answered: How could you possibly think I would care?

She stared off and twirled the stem of her wine glass in her fingers.

God I wished she would just get drunk so we could fucking forget about everything...

I finished my first glass in three gulps and held up a hand to the waitress for a third.

I finally felt not-sick.

I calmed. Everything around me stopped being an assault on my senses.

I sat back in my chair and looked at her: her thin top gathered by a string that was knotted loosely around her champagne-flute neck; her witch-black hair so long it almost touched the ground; her eyes large orbs of undisturbed water on a night full of clouds, glistening.

I had never told her that I loved her. I wanted to, then.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that? ...You can't be drunk already."

"No, I'm not. It's just...

"...You look good tonight.

"You always look good."

"I like the band that's playing."

"So do I."

I cupped the hand she had around the wine glass and bent over the table. I kissed her on one of her cheeks, which felt delicate as paper-thin glass to my lips. Then we pressed our heads together, side by side.

When I sat back both of us were smiling.

BITCHES!

2008-04-23T02:21:00.005-07:00

I've been in too much pain to sleep tonight. So I spent an inordinate amount of time writing this through the agony fog:

BITCHES

I had to go to the second-floor's bathroom because the first-floor's was completely mobbed. After waiting on the stairs for about five guys to come out I was able to go in.

I went to the one open urinal and started to think of when I was ten years old and the family went on vacation to Niagara. My stage fright was just abating when a guy stood at the urinal next to me and put a beer in a plastic cup atop the stained porcelain, directly beneath the pipes where the effluent water flooded down when you depressed the handle... And I could see the pipes sweat just above his drink...

My dick shrank until it was nothing but an oversized clitoris.

"Fucking bitches. I mean, man, you bring them out, you buy them drinks and then the bitches are like (he puts a childish expression on his face and speaks faux-apologetically): 'I'm kinda seeing someone.'

"Fucking fuck you bitch! Tell me that before I buy you five drinks!

"...I mean bitches, right?"

I was still trying to convince myself that I had heard what I had heard, which prevented me from responding.

"You've been there man. Watch out some bitch could be doing it to you right now."

He flushed, and with the sound of flowing water my dick reappeared and I pissed.

...If anyone would've taken the bet, my life was on whatever girl he came with not being the slightest bit involved with anyone...

I came out of the bathroom after washing my hands. The line for the women's went down the stairs.

I stood on a landing: "My friend just came out of here to go find us a table -- anyone have any idea where he went?" I asked, effectively, every girl on the stairs.

The girl standing right in front of me said

"Yeah, he went through there."

"Thanks so much."

I went through the door-frame-without-a-door and to the second floor's bar. I thought about how all my friends were downstairs... Christ, two of them had come all the way from the other coast just to see me...

But in my mind that schmuck was still pouring out bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch.

I sat on a barstool, turned it away from the bar, and spotted the fucker quickly. He was sitting on a couch, which was across from another couch (both running parallel to my line of sight) on which other guys dressed exactly like him sat (khakis, undershirts that clashed with their long-sleeve, pinstripe, button-up Polos, anyplace-brown shoes). And there were girls with them -- one apiece. The "bitches."

Every one of the guys was more muscular than me -- accomplishing a feat fit for a ten-year-old. But I had skill and speed... But not enough to take down three guys who, when I punched them, would end up less damaged than my own knuckles.

I turned my barstool around and ordered a Stoli on the rocks.

I exhaled from the bottom of my lungs, then turned around with the tumbler in my hand.

I was amazed to see the guy who had previously shit from his mouth leave suddenly to piss again... Or maybe to stumble around for a "bitch" who would appreciate his sensitive nature.

His presence on the couch had hid his leather bomber jacket from my view. It was draped on the couch's back.

I drained my drink and immediately began walking... slow, calm.

I had no idea what I was going to do, but found myself doing this:

I grabbed bathroom-boy's jacket by its collar and slung it over my shoulder, mid-stride.

"Don't worry about it guys," I said to the males (I would kill myself for calling them "men") on the couch, not looking directly at them, not looking away.

As I made my way to the stairs, down to the first floor and out to the insanity of Eighteenth Street Washington DC on a Friday night I didn't hurry, didn't complain when I was held up for a few minutes in the entryway by a girl who had lost her shoe on the stairs. I didn't look behind me.

I was either going to get the shit knocked out of me or I wasn't. I thought of the best position to take to cover my head and internal organs once they had me on the ground.

But I got outside and to the sidewalk to my amazement, and immediately crossed the street. I spun the jacket around my arm like cotton candy around a stick and held it close to my stomach so it couldn't be seen from behind.

Then I walked the mile downhill, home, never looking behind me.

When I got into my apartment, with the locks clacked behind me, I finally took a deep inhale and let out a long exhale.

Why was what I had just done so important to me? Why, from the word "bitch," did I have to harm that piece of shit in some way?

I tried on his jacket. Finding that it fit was an unexpected bonus...

I'm sure the douchebag chalked up his loss to a mindless act of theft...

But it's not about him and never was. It's come to be about the fact that every time I wear that jacket my shoulders go back and my chin comes up and I remember that I can overcome rational fear to do the irrational: what I believe is fair.

OF FIBRO AND NIETZSCHE!

2008-04-22T16:42:00.007-07:00

No matter how fun one's job is, not doing one's job is more so.

I e-mailed that to a friend today and found it at least as profound as "Men and melons are hard to know," by Ben Franklin.

Today I am having a migraine hangover, which my younger brother described beautifully as "like the aftershocks of an earthquake," so I'm going to keep it lazy today.

Yesterday was King-Hell Fibro Day... I finally got my blood drawn so my new doctor, like three former ones, will rule out Celiac Disease as the cause of all that ails me. I didn't mind getting my blood drawn yet again, for reasons I've explained... And maybe it will pay off to be thorough.

Very, very thorough.

Then, because I had driven in the sun before my meds kicked in (OxyContin and Klonopin), I got a brutal migraine. I spent from two p.m. to six a.m. in total darkness, except for the television I was watching, turned down to a near-inaudible level. ...Only I and dogs could have heard it. Though the light and sound from the teevee were incredibly irritating, laying in bed, sore everywhere, my head going supernova, watching it was better than not... Without the idiot box (perhaps that name isn't completely fair because most of what I watch is on History International. ...Wait, why am I showing off my geekdom?) I was left in the dark to contemplate my misery. With the tele on I could contemplate my misery and why certain books and gospels didn't make it into the christian bible.

Enough self-pity.

For today.

I recently started reading Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, and e-mailed a few thoughts about it to my friend along with my proverb. I'm simply going to publish it here and call it a day.

Please feel free to comment on how wrong I am about Nietzsche's views. I read Thus Spake and some of The Antichrist a few years ago, and am sure to be a bit off.

Recycled e-mail, do your thing!:

Beyond Good and Evil is amazing. Nietzsche starts (after a few preliminaries) by saying that truth and morals are not arrived at by philosophers through thought, but that their truth and moral constructions are simply reflections of, and a service to, their prejudices and their own way of life. So their "discoveries" are actually their preconceptions.

So he puts all previous philosophical "findings" into a chamber pot and heaves them out a window.

Then he has the balls to wonder: What about the "evil" mankind does -- which it does most often and quite well... Why isn't "evil," in effect, good, in the sense that people have no predilection to do "good" (especially "good" as christians define it)? (I'm all-but sure he does not end his treatise with the belief that all that is "bad" is "good," but reformulates what is good based on what benefits humans and humankind, their/its happiness, and that everything else is bullshit.)

Nietzsche rails against all previous philosophers for simply carrying water for the ethical constructs of their time and place. Being an atheist, he is free to move into an ethics he considers "beyond good and evil," especially as the concepts were defined by christian philosophers. In fact, I think in The Antichrist he goes further, explicitly stating that everything the christian church teaches is against the good of all people: The seven deadly sins represent the seven ways of being that come most easily to humans. We are lustful, gluttonous (basically we enjoy eating, to oversimplify), greedy, slothful, wrathful, envious, prideful.

And if we weren't all those we wouldn't have survived long enough to invent religion.

I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school until the fourth grade, and was even an altar-boy for a few years. I didn't stop attending mass every Sunday until I went to college, when I was finally able to stop attending altogether. But what eighteen years of being immersed in christianity taught me, above all, was this: that everything I felt or thought or did was a sin to some degree.

Christianity teaches that all that makes one human makes them "evil." And what could possibly be more evil, more like the mouth on the figure in Munch's The Scream than that?

Christians are supposed to choose a mortal life devoid of worth so they can have a life worth living in heaven. Nevermind that the masses living lives in poverty -- and finding fucking glorification in it -- serves all world governments to a T...

...But Nietzschean philosophy is, of course, much more complicated than that (please disregard my personal tirade to make this e-mail coherent) -- and my account of "Beyond Good and Evil" is only a synopsis (that leaves out a lot) of the first half of the first chapter -- but it's interesting as hell (and not Dante's hell, which was a yawn... How can he be thought of as the "great master of the disgusting?" Gimme Hieronymus Bosch!).

It's also given me cause to consider myself a Nietzschean "free spirit" instead of simply an amoral beast.

Which is nice.

THE SPORTING LIFE!

2008-04-21T20:14:00.014-07:00

There comes a point at which even I can't stay in bed feeling sorry for myself.

...But then I came into my office and got behind the computer and knew I couldn't write anything. Not even something completely worthless.

So the best I can do is copy a story I wrote a while ago at a friend's place when I was feeling write-tastic.

...However, this one kinda sucks. Best I can do:

THE SPORTING LIFE

"Fuck. If we don't turn off we're getting mugged."

"Calvin? CALVIN, COME ON!"

V had already crossed to the other side of the street, which I wanted to avoid because there were two teenagers leaning on Section Eight fences at 3:30 a.m. there.

"V, come here" I seethed through my teeth and across the road... But he already had resumed walking.

"Goddam you forever V -- stay close to me."

I crossed the road at a run to wrap his sleeve around my hand, trying to keep him close while he tried to control his legs and walk the straight line of the sidewalk.

I let go of him for one second as I hopped across the gutter, just after we passed the two kids ("What's up?" "What's up."). Then one of the kids was in front of me.

"Gimme your wallet."

I was straddling the yellow lines in the middle of the road.

Where the fuck was a car, even at 3:30?

Oh yeah, not in this neighborhood. Not even a cop car.

"I'm sorry -- What?"

The kid couldn't have been more than fifteen. He shoved a box-cutter (if fucking terrorists caused 9/11 with them, it stands to reason someone will fork over a simple wallet when faced with one) into my stomach, only enough to press in the skin around it.

My eyes, of course, immediately examined the tool, and I immediately saw that the possible cause of my death -- the blade -- was rusty and dull.

If I was to die it would be from infection... Possibly sepsis... The medics would have hours to put Humpty together again.

But fuck -- what did the other guy have... What was he threatening V with... How could I have let him go for that one goddam moment...

"Gimme your damn wallet man."

He wasn't acting calmly enough -- and was too young -- to convince me he had the balls to slit my throat. Only my stomach was in danger... Then again, maybe everyone who dies choking on their own blood in the middle of DC roads thinks this a few spoken sentences before their windpipe feels the wind...

"Look, that's not gonna work out."

"The fuck did your say?"

He pressed the box-cutter harder into me. At that point it still wasn't even cutting the cotton I was wearing.

...Still... What does the other guy have on V? What is my stalling accom--

"CALVIN!"

V came rushing across the street, oblivious to what was going on with me and the kid. He bear-hugged me across the street to the other sidewalk.

It was over. The kids made no effort to follow as I dragged V by his collar as fast as I could.

I made us walk a few blocks out of our way before we came to V's English basement, while trying to explain to him the danger we had been in. When he asked "What?" in utter incomprehension for the fifth time I knew his drunkenness saved both our asses.

I talked to V after I woke on the sofa and he came out of bed. I was happy to discover that he didn't recall anything that had happened past one o'clock of what was technically the same day.

It reminded me of the relief and surprise I felt when, as we shared a bottle of Shiraz before passing out after our encounter, the wine glass didn't shake in my hand.

I'M STILL ON SICK LEAVE!

2008-04-21T15:31:00.002-07:00

Tired from the moment I wake up until I finally sleep... Getting 11 hours of sleep a day... Head imploding and ex- at once... Everything aches though I barely can move...

With any luck I'll be done feeling this way by the time it's time to feel this way again, when summer shows its ugly face...

Sorry for not posting. I can't think.

SOOTHING SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA: THE SMITHS!

2008-04-17T16:50:00.004-07:00

Well, it turns out there's a Secret Garden in all of us...

No, wait, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out:

TO EVERYTHING, THERE IS A SEASON!

2008-04-17T11:32:00.001-07:00

And it's becoming spring in Whatever State I'm In. Which is making me horribly lethargic, apathetic, and given me hysterical pregnancy. I've been sleeping twelve hours of every day since the weather has gotten warmer...

No idea why the changes in weather make me feel awful (though pain is kept to 4/10 with OxyContin), but I have heard it's common for fibromyalgians.

So I'm writing to let you know I have no interest in writing.

Happy birthday!

IT'S ABOUT SUPPRESSION!

2008-04-15T23:19:00.008-07:00

A girl moved in two doors down, and was the first friendly neighbor I had had in four years of living in my apartment complex in Downtown/Logan/Dupont DC.

We went out for a drink the first Wednesday we met. In the following weeks I would stop at her place to borrow her blow-dryer, which I used as a makeshift-iron when I needed to look decent (which wasn't too often). She called me whenever she had a spider or roach crawling up her wall.

The first time she called me I went over simply to tell her that, as a rule, I do not kill things. That, whenever an insect makes its presence known in my apartment I simply scoop it up with newspaper and let it our the door.

"And that's why this place is infested!"

Sure, she was right, but I don't like the thoughts that go through my head just before I kill anything sentient.

The thoughts I have before I eat anything (formerly) sentient are all about my taste buds' alacrity... But I don't kill things myself. I let others do it in massive murder factories, which makes me somewhat morally superior to those who do not, of course...

"Are you done already?"

I should have been. I rolled up the newspaper as I stared at the bug, asked its forgiveness (which I'm sure I did not get) and killed it simply because she wanted it dead.

She and I had a drink and a bug-killing session (not on the same days... We didn't toast the insects' extinction) about once a week until one night when she called me, frantic.

A roach.

I looked everywhere in her studio and couldn't see anything. Then I moved to her dressing room/bathroom and asked

"What should I do? It's gone."

"Check everywhere!"

"Uh... Should I open your medicine chest and all that shit too?"

"Do whatever!" she yelled from a perch on a stool.

I immediately went to her medicine chest, recalling when I had seen a cockroach climbing on my own toothbrush (immediately discarded -- with everything else that was in its vicinity) in my own medicine chest, and also recalling my days as a drug addict. On what had become instinct, I immediately went for where I knew pills would be.

I found a single brown bottle, the label facing away from me, more than half-full. Saliva flooded my mouth as I checked over my shoulder and, to make sure she was still in the other room, yelled

"I don't see the thing here!"

"Look harder!" Her voice came from the same spot in the same room where I'd last seen her.

I turned the bottle around and the label shouted VALTREX.

She had herpes.

I never had been afraid of catching an STD, even when I was fucking the sluttiest girl in Whatever State University without a condom every weekday, while cheating on her and being cheated on on the weekends (and sure neither of us was using condoms then, either). (I was in the running for sluttiest guy on campus.)

But fear got me then, cold and irrational.

I came quickly out of the dressing/bathroom.

"Look, roaches can go anywhere. The one you saw is on the sixth floor by now" (we lived on the eighth).

"Stick around for a while. I have some rum... And I can't stand the thought of..." She went on and I wasn't listening.

She thought she was more attractive than she was and interesting by virtue of being younger than me. I hadn't tried to fool around with her, however, because her face was pockmarked and she was a horrible tipper. And now the bottle...

"Look, I'm not killing anything anyway."

"Big Man!"

I was closing the door behind me:

"Naturally, I realize how my inability to find and kill an insect means I have a Tic-Tac dick.

"...Sleep well."

I went to my apartment and, still irrational, took a very hot, very long shower.

it's you it's you it's you

2008-04-15T22:20:00.001-07:00

Knowing that
cuts me slowly,
jaggedly and deep--
Every minute I'm
lapping my own
blood to delay
death from thirst
and for the iron
-tasting warmth.

FIBROMYALGIA TREATMENTS: WHAT WORKS!

2008-04-15T11:14:00.005-07:00

I'm posting this so, hopefully, readers who have fibromyalgia can get to this post quickly to find out what works and what doesn't. Here's what works:

1) NARCOTICS.

OxyContin, tailored to the dose you, personally, need, for instance. But different people in chronic pain need different narcotics. Which is to write, as I have before, that some fibromyalgians will benefit most from hydrocodone, some from morphine, and so on.

The take-away from this being that the only thing that will reduce your pain by an appreciable level is a narcotic analgesic. Fuck anyone and anything that touts a "natural" cure.

Well, I got ahead of myself: Fuck anything that says it's a "cure." By definition, fibro is incurable. If you thought you had fibro but it went away through one or another action(s), you didn't have fibro and please shut the fuck up because the people who actually have it are being hoist with your petard by the thousands.

My own mother told me about someone she knows who has fibro, but who does not experience daily, constant pain. I had to refer her to the exact diagnostic criteria to show her she had a hypochondriac (or wicked asshole) on her hands (and wasn't told the name of the person because I wanted to track her down and give her a taste of the pain she, despite "having fibro," wasn't in. ...Such is the insanity induced by my pain.)

Fibro is coming to encompass too many things that it is not because of inept doctors and moronic patients.

Anyone who knows anything about fibro is a pain specialist, pure, simple. And knows: Fibro is pain. Treat it with painkillers.

There are diets you can read about that claim they can cure you. If the diet cures you, you have Celiac's Disease, not fibro. Both cause quite similar symptoms.

Please, everyone who does not have fibro, shut the fuck up so fibromyalgians can be treated properly, so the disorder can get some goddam respect -- stop keeping us in the limbo of having been diagnosed with a pseudo-disorder, while you can simply cut gluten out of your diet and live pain-free, but unable to eat pizza.

...Trust me: Fibromyalgians feel your pain, douchebag.

2) NOTHING ELSE.

Only narcotic analgesics help people with fibro.

Sure, Lyrica may bring your pain down one number on the pain scale, but the extra fifty pounds you gain that it puts on your joints and vertebra are going to put your pain right back where it was.

Cymbalta: Doctors will be happy to give you this, along with thirty-or-so pills/injections that will do nothing or next to it, instead of prescribing you narcotics. (Pain relief from an NSRI. ...If I could laugh at that I wouldn't be able to catch my breath and drop dead, blue as a Smurf...)

However it is, by its weak ability to increase the amount of dopamine in one's brain (not by increasing norepinephrine, as most docs will say) also capable of bringing your pain down maybe one point on the scale.

But you'll still feel suicidally painful if you actually have fibro.

In short: Narcotics are the answer. Narcotics are the only treatment that works for fibromyalgia.

This must be accepted by doctors, and narcotic analgesic treatment must be insisted upon by patients (please see previous posts for all the crap I had to go through to finally get chronic opioid analgesic therapy).

If your pain isn't enough to make you cry your lungs out every day for a dose of morphine or oxycodone, chances are you don't have fibro and you're harming everyone who actually has the disorder. Find out what you really have, and don't let your doctor diagnose you as a fibromyalgian despite the fact you don't have a single trigger/tender point.

If your pain hasn't made you wish you were dead since it started, please get the correct diagnosis and shut the fuck up about fibromyalgia.

Please, as this disease becomes understood, let doctors and patients realize, together, the only effective treatment for it: narcs.

To anyone who can be helped with anything else enough to matter: You don't have fibro. You're not helping yourself by being misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia, and you're hurting everyone who has fibromyalgia by going with whatever bullshit treatment you're being given (I could go into cortisol here) and finding that it helps your so-called fibromyalgia...

I understand that fibro is irresistable to hypochondriacs... Fibro is quite an easy disorder to pretend you have if you do your homework.

The problems is that you fuckers are helped with placebos, with Lyrica, with Cymbalta -- you're in studies yourselves and keeping out true fibromyalgians and making sure that our treatment stays bullshit.

To all fibro-pretenders: Just let me press down with my thumb on a certain place in your lower back for about thirty seconds, and we'll know what you have and do not have.

[Jesus, did the ire rise today. And I've been happy all day, too. ...I never know what's in my head until I sneeze it out.

Pain: 4/5. Debilitating, the best it will get... though I may want to think about upping to 50mg Oxy next month... Still too soon to say for sure -- I need to see exactly what 40mg can do, and it's been only a week now.

Anxiety: 4/10. Debilitating, the best it will get.

I would not dare complain that my conditions are managed as well as they are... I believe I feel the best I possibly can.

Still, I do miss being able to lift more than ten pounds...]

A SORT OF HOMECOMING!

2008-04-14T11:10:00.008-07:00

I had to sleep for 24 hours from Saturday and into an hour ago -- ah, sweet chronic fatigue syndrome -- so I haven't posted in a bit.

Yesterday I would sleep for five to six hours, until my pain would come back as my OxyContin wore off, then I would take a pill at the predetermined time. (Every day I make a med schedule as soon as I wake up so my OxyContin and Klonopin doses are as spaced out as they should be to make it possible for me to suffer the least amount possible.) And when the pills(s) would kick in I would go back to sleep.

Sleeping all day Sunday was preceded by my hanging out in downtown Lummox Saturday night. I dressed well -- a habit from living in DC and being taught what to wear and why by my best friend, a gay guy with impeccable taste -- which was suitable for where I had dinner... Which consisted of crispy duck with a spicy-sweet plum sauce that had been injected beneath a crispy, fried skin, paired with an IPA. With a few notable exceptions, the best thing to pass between my lips since I left DC -- by far.

But the place closed at 11, and I wanted to see if I could run into anyone I knew at the sports bar a parking lot away in the block-in-any-direction downtown. I succeeded, and hoisted a few with people I hadn't seen since high school, buying Jager shots for anyone who wanted them.

The good thing about offering Jager shots: not many takers. Especially good when one has absolutely no income...

So I walked around the bar, which was having karaoke night. Some people sang songs from the '80s that weren't even cool then. The rest sung country songs, which was what I expected.

I mingled with the local girls, and was pegged as gay, most likely, by a large number of them because I wasn't wearing jeans, sneakers and a flannel shirt. Otherwise I was written off as an outsider most likely conducting some kind of sociological experiment. Which they did not flatter themselves with -- it would make me "in the mist," and them gorillas.

The girls were stuffed into their tacky clothes like sausage into most-unnatural casing. The most attractive woman there would be considered hideously overweight in DC. (Just as I would be... While I lived in DC I committed the following crime against humanity: I didn't have a personal trainer.) The funniest thing, I thought, was that saying "hi" apparently counts as a pick-up line in Lummox, and not a conversation starter. I even thought, once or twice, that I was going to get a light beer tossed in my face for my having the temerity to simply greet women in the customary, two-letter, manner.

I hung about for an hour or so, appreciating (unironically) the differences between the scene in Lummox and the scene(s) in DC.

I especially appreciated the fact there's a place I can go to for perhaps the best duck in the United States -- a place where dressing well is expected... And blighted only by the fact that to pick up a woman there you have to be able to work magic on a married forty-year-old, which is beyond me.

STEALING GOLF!

2008-04-11T13:33:00.007-07:00

Let me preface this story by saying my parents' house is on a golf course, and we can see holes three and four from windows at the back of the home:

At seven this morning I was golfing hole four on the course, using nothing but a five iron, because I really need to figure out how that damn thing works. I've never been able to hit well with irons that aren't eight or nine.

I was out while the sun was rising and the dew was forming, knocking around about ten balls I had carried with me in my hoodie's pouch. On the fairway I watched all the neighbors' houses light up one by one as the people inside awoke and got ready for work and school. Personally, I was still awake from the previous night, going through one of my bouts of insomnia, which hit me about every other day. (I used to be on a ton of sleep meds to regulate my sleeping, but stopped taking them months ago because who wants to miss out on four a.m. infomercials and, especially, golfing practice at sunrise?)

By hitting the ten-or-so balls I had brought I was able to determine that, if I'm lucky enough to have a ball that lies on completely flat ground, I can hit a five iron reasonably straight, and about 150 yards. (...I should note that my distance is awful compared to any five year old who picks up a club for his/her first time.)

If the ball is on a downhill or uphill lie, I pop the ball up and slice the living hell out of it in the latter case; in the former case I succeed in excavating the fairway almost down to clay and zipping the ball about ten feet along the ground.

...Which looks cool at dawn. The ball whizzes along the ground, throwing the early-morning moisture off the blades of grass about ten feet high.

When I was done I walked down our road back home in my jeans and black hoodie, quite aware that if I do shit like this on a semi-regular basis the parents in my cloistered neighborhood are going to start thinking an insane person has invaded their sacred community to steal golf and bugger their children.

"All I can tell you, officer, is that if he thinks that weird Quaker-beard-thing on his face looks good, he must be nutty as an acorn."

SOOTHING SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA: THE TALKING HEADS!

2008-04-10T22:31:00.005-07:00

OK... So posting ABBA without explanation has me feeling a little vulnerable.

As a cover:

The best band ever from the best live show ever, one of the best songs ever:

Stop Making Sense!

Girlfriend Is Better!

FUCK IT: ABBA!

2008-04-10T21:56:00.002-07:00

Here's Dancing Queen live.

I could explain why it's here, why it's important to me, despite ABBA being everything wrong with everything...

But won't beyond noting: for A.E.

Now let love in...

MIGRAINE!

2008-04-10T15:39:00.007-07:00

I just woke up from a nap. Goddam my goddam head hurts so so so much ("faithful" readers can take pleasure in the fact this blasphemer is stewing in his own sin)...

...I fell asleep just before I was supposed to take my second dose of OxyContin, and am now waiting for it to kick in, having taken it within 30 seconds of waking -- four hours off schedule.

...The same migraine as every day, but unmitigated by drugs... Railroad spike through my right eye, another through the right temple... The skin and (seemingly) bone on the right half of my face and head firing nerves that yell loud as Godzilla pain pain pain... I can't stand the sound of my fingers hitting the keys but have to type, to do something to take my mind off the agony... Even if it won't won't won't work how could it ever... Pain jumps from the tips of my fingers, reverberates, amplifying itself every time it seems to bounce from one inner surface of my skull to another... Every square millimeter of the air attacking me like a million manta stings to the eyes through the simple act of seeing...

But in an hour all this will be a shadow.

How did I survive with these fucking migraines for so long without strong painkillers?

...Oh yeah, I was going to kill myself if Dr ML&S didn't intervene.

...It's a pity party! And only those who brought gifts can redeem their invitations...

IF I HAD SKATED YESTERDAY!:

2008-04-09T14:00:00.006-07:00

Yesterday I walked around the local skate park because the outdoor section just opened for the year. Then I walked around the local college's campus to see what I am missing now that I can't skate.

...Why the masochism?...

And, since I can't skate, I made up this story on what happened yesterday. I made sure the experience sucked so I wouldn't hate the fact that I'm now lame and can only walk.

...Maybe I need Heelys...

Anyway: "Yesterday":

Skating sucked yesterday... In the outdoor section, all the (wooden) ramps at the skate park were warped from the winter, and dropping in was like picking my way through a minefield... "OK I'll drop in here, have to miss those nails and that indentation (on the vertical part of the ramp, no less), then deal with the crack right before the fun box (at some parks not-so-aptly named), then immediately get my feet together for a 180 -- but have to jump before the exposed screw at the top of the box -- then land and navigate fakie (backwards) between the water puddles."

After only two hours of dealing with the not-so-fun boxes and treacherous ramps I ended up going to Lummox University. The place is even more of a skate park now than it was when I was a teenager, learning everything I know now. I was totally blown away: the perfect street course. Rails of all lengths and gradations of steepness, a huge gap to 180 over that allowed you to choose, by picking your launch spot, how far you needed to jump and how far you wanted to drop, and on and on.

And all within an area the size of a football field.

Why did I even go to the park? I already had jammed my left shoulder by misjudging my speed when launching to a disaster soul... I had no idea I would be going as fast as I was, since I hadn't dropped in on the ramp I used until that trick, and so I seemed to hang in the air after my jump, waiting to come down to earth so my skates could catch the ledge. My back skate did, but by then my front foot didn't know what to do with itself. I had almost launched the entire fun box, and I was straightening my skate out to land on the flat just when it caught the last half-foot of the ledge.

This made my front foot wash over the top of the ledge. which led to my entire body spinning ninety degrees atop the ledge, then to me taking the two-foot drop (from ledge to ground -- five feet for my shoulder) on my shoulder. At speed.

Back to the university:

I decided to give it a go at my favorite rail of all time -- an aluminum tube made smooth by thousands of previous grinds, hundreds of them my own -- long enough to make you proud you could actually lock in and ride out your grind for that long, but not long enough that if you fell you would be going too fast and hurt yourself (the rail runs down eleven steps).

I had a porn star (grind -- my balance mostly on the soul of my front skate, my back skate on the rail between my second and third wheels) locked in on my fourth try, but was a little off balance when I came off the rail fakie, my preferred may to dismount rails (the best-looking), with my left wheels not quite level with the ground. My boot was almost sliding along the concrete -- and all my weight was on that skate. This caused me to bend my knees until my ass almost touched the ground and my arms to spin like windmill blades as I attempted to get my balance onto my right skate.

Suddenly my left foot gave out entirely. My left skate's ankle strap exploded which, I soon found out, carved scrapes into my lower leg as it buckled into the skate. The scrapes on my lower leg, together, look like a shark bite.

(From pseudo-landing the grind to buckle explosion took only about two seconds, in which I covered a distance of about five feet.)

Naturally, I immediately removed the broken skate and heaved it into a wall while yelling FUCK! as loud as I could. I had almost proved to myself that I was perhaps three-fourths as good a skater as I had been almost a decade ago.

...My behavior is not kid-friendly in that it is completely childish, I thought as some parents who walked by gave me reproachful looks, holding their kid's head between them as though trying to insulate his mind from the word I had yelled. They turned away from me the moment I looked at them, vehement, likely afraid that my anger at botching the landing could be turned on them...

I calmed down an iota as I thought the situation over, seething while examining my skate: that's what the ankle strap is for: to break in a situation that would otherwise break your ankle. So I suppose I can't complain too much.

I should definitely use the broken-skate-thing as a reason/excuse to finally quit skating... But my christ it's harder to give up than smoking...

[Lots of fiction lately. I apologize, but guarantee it's more interesting than any presentation I could give of my actual life.

In case you're curious:

Pain seems to be about 5/10 with 40mg OxyContin daily, but more experience at this dose is, of course, necessary.

Anxiety with 6mg Klonopin daily: 5/10. A friend and I agreed a few days ago that "If you're not freaked right the fuck out all the time, you're not thinking hard enough."

...The things you let yourself believe to get by...]

FIBROMYALGIA + WEATHER CHANGES = HELL!

2008-04-07T18:02:00.003-07:00

I've been in my bed, balled-up into the fetal position for the past few days because the seasons appear to be changing. When there's a major shift in the weather, fibromyalgians feel like shit for some reason.

I couldn't eat all weekend, slept about 12 hours a day (which still wasn't enough), but spent quality time with my TiVo, which had been neglected since I have been reading lately... Around the time I started taking OxyContin...

(It would seem Oxy has increased my ability to concentrate rather than diminished it, the latter being what almost all doctors tell you it will do. "Do you want to be a zombie the rest of your life?"... I now am able to concentrate on novels because I can take quite a bit of my focus off how much I hurt.)

But I feel better today. Due, I have no doubt, to the fact I saw Dr ML&S today and he bumped up my daily dose of OxyContin from 30mg to 40mg.

Because my IBS was horrendous over the weekend, I'll be getting a blood test, probably next Monday, to make sure I don't have Celiac Disease. (If I do, all my problems could stem from an allergy to gluten.) Which, of course, I've been tested for a few times already, and don't have.

But I simply do not say no to Dr ML&S. The way I look at it, to do so would be akin to telling the man who just pulled my drowned body out of a pool and resuscitated me that no, he can't borrow a screwdriver.

GUN CONTROL!

2008-04-05T22:32:00.004-07:00

She got home to find me sipping syrah and watching television.

"How was work?"

She tossed her keys onto the small table by the window where we used to eat dinner together, stopped for a moment to glare at me, then went into the kitchen.

Almost immediately she was back, purposely standing in front of the TV, with a half-full garbage bag in her hand. She raised it shoulder-high and let it drop.

"What is this?"

"It's a garbage bag that could use more refuse before it makes sense to discard it."

"What did I ask you to do before I left this morning?"

"To empty the garbage from the kitchen. But when I saw what I was dealing with I thought we should throw away more garbage than the plastic that contains it."

We stared at each other.

"Sweetness, it's Double Jeopardy now and you're kind of in the way."

She pressed the Power button on the TV set.

I pressed the Power button on the remote.

She pulled the TV's cord from the electrical outlet.

"You had all day. I asked you to do only one thing."

"And I thought that one thing was ridiculous."

Her eyes were huge for her face and, terribly, all the more gorgeous and absorbing when she was in a fury...

"Get the fuck out of my house."

"I love you" -- I stood, stating a fact I had to reiterate so often it had come to insult both of us -- "I'll take the bag out."

"No. Get the fuck out of my house."

"I'M TAKING OUT THE GOD DAMNED TRASH JESUS GODDAMNED CHRIST!"

As I went for the bag she went for the telephone in the hall.

"And I'm calling my Dad. He'll be here in twenty minutes."

I knew she kept a loaded gun in the bedroom closet, the location of which she never told me in our months of living together.

"Fucking fine. Tell your Dad I said hello and that his fucking daughter needs to get back on her fucking meds."

"I'm dialing."

I yanked the door open and slammed it behind me.

The trash remained in the middle of the room.

NOW X AND I ARE, AGAIN, SPEAKING TO ONE ANOTHER!

2008-04-04T22:42:00.004-07:00

[I wrote this e-mail in a fugue...]

How I feel about you makes no sense to me...

I thought I could hate you. I thought I could live the rest of my life without knowing that you're all right.

It seems I must simply accept that I cannot.

X:

All the things you said to me when we talked last are exactly what you need to convey to your ex...

But I don't want to throw the ashes of that conversation into the wind and bring them back in our faces.

I want to write, simply, that I somehow cannot stop caring about you -- and not because I want you sexually or whatever whatever...

You are a huge part of my history. And I don't want whatever we are to and for each other to be just that -- the past and only.

It makes me feel horrible to write that I need you... Just you, to be alive, to exist, to enjoy your life... And that not knowing that you are, that you are, that you do, will take something from me... Diminish me.

I cannot understand what I have just written...

I can only surmise that I miss you.

la tristesse durera toujours

2008-04-04T20:33:00.001-07:00

Every person
knows exactly where
his heart is and
Van Gogh kept
his intact.

MUSIC TO SOOTHE SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA: THE ARCADE FIRE!

2008-04-03T08:34:00.004-07:00

This is Intervention and Wake Up (performed at the T), my two favorite songs by The Arcade Fire.

I've seen these guys twice. The first time I saw them they were on their first tour, visiting the 9:30 club in Wash., DC. Watch out for the guy with the crazy hair, the big drum, the harpsichord, the guitar, the tambourine, the kitchen sink. At 9:30 he left the stage at the end of the show by climbing the wall somehow, swinging over to the balcony and going through a Staff Only door.

Until that show I had only listened to the (first) album a few times, and liked it quite a lot. Still, at the time I was into an all-Arts-&-Crafts-bands-all-the-time kick. But a friend of mine knew if he invited me I wouldn't turn him down (I owe that bastard) because I'll see any band, within reason.

(Wow. I could knock so many bands right now... Good thing fibro fog is preventing me, right now, from coming up with any bands I hate... And recalling bands I hate likely is further complicated by the fact that I don't listen to them or think about them.)

Moving along: Since the show at 9:30 I've loved the Fire intensely (my wordplay, especially when unintentional, makes me cringe). In my not-humble opinion (all who disagree are simply wrong), seeing Wake Up live will change your life forever, and much for the better. There's nothing like screaming/moaning at the top of one's lungs in tune with thousands of people... Cathartic.

The last time I saw them I knew I had fibro. I screamed and screamed.

Everyone screamed with me.

[I likely will not post tomorrow since I will be getting back, then, from a short trip I'm taking today. I'd rather not go, however, because I forgot to take my Oxy last night and wish I had died in my sleep and was on the coroner's slab right now instead of about to go someplace and have to put on a smiley... But I am proud of myself, at least, for not doubling-up this morning...

I'll be getting back here late tomorrow night. Traveling makes me super-anxious, so I'll be drunk as hell when I return and just crawl into bed. ...That's the plan at least.

PS: The above "drunk as hell" bit was a lie. I would never drink on OxyContin, Klonopin and Prozac. What am I, stupid, and with anxiety that can't be controlled, when travel is involved, even by the holy trinity (POK)? The nerve (of me to pretend I know what you actually thought after reading what I wrote)!

MUSIC TO SOOTHE SAVAGE FIBROMYLGIA: PULP!

2008-04-02T19:07:00.005-07:00

I've been trolling YouTube and just had to post this. This song has been popping up in my head every month or so since I heard it more than a decade ago.

I've always loved this song but never have seen the video.

...So enjoy one of the best songs ever recorded and one of the... videos... recorded.

Sing along with the Common People!

DR. 9'S FIBROMYALGIA 'TREATMENTS' AND THEIR COSTS!:

2008-04-02T12:13:00.007-07:00

I received an itemized bill today that gives a near-complete breakdown of the treatments I received from Dr 9 and their costs. Please note that there was absolutely no long-term improvement in my pain during this time. (The only relief was from Demerol and an IV of Toradol. Each lasted only a few hours.)

Also please note the insane expense I had to go to with Dr 9. Please compare it with the expense of seeing Dr ML&S, who has enormously enhanced my quality of life and greatly reduced my pain:

MONTHLY:
Visit: $25 copay
OxyContin: $10 copay

SHAMELESS BEGGING: You hitting the DONATE button on your right would be pretty freaking sweet right about now!

KEY:
Trigger-point injections: Marcaine (a cousin of lidocaine) was injected into various trigger points in my shoulders and back to try to ease my pain. They didn't. At all. Most doctors seem to believe that if one's trigger points are "taken care of," fibro pain will go away. Bullshit, stupid, false info that needs to be erased.
Depo-medrol: Steroid. Ineffective.
Demerol: Heaven when given IM. Narcotic analgesic.
Phenergan: Probably used in my treatment as a sedative/pain reliever. Completely ineffective.
Toradol: NSAID: Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory: Stupid. Fibro does not involve inflammation. But IV Toradol was somewhat effective at easing my pain. IM it was useless (I received it only once IV, and so when is not noted below. Apologies.)
Tigan: Given to combat the constant nausea from my daily migraines. Somewhat effective. Given on every visit but the first few, though not noted on the bill.
Nubain: Some kind of bullshit-wannabe-narcotic. Given for pain. Not effective... Or was it? I'm having a fibro fog day... Locked keys in a running car... Please see the post on or after the day I was given Nubain to read what I really thought about it.
Benadryl: Explained here only to be thorough: Antihistamine. Why would a fibromyalgian be given this shit IV? Hell if I know...
IM: Intramuscular: This is shorthand to note that the drug was injected into my ass muscles.
IV: Intravenous: You know this and I know you know -- explaining to be thorough: shorthand for noting the drug or "treatment" was injected into a vein.

1/9/08:
Office/outpatient visit: $225
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Depo-medrol IM, 80mg: $30

1/16/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Depo-medrol IM, 80mg: $30

1/21/08
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Demerol IM, 100mg: $5
Phenergan IM, 50mg: $7
Toradol IM, 15mg: $48

1/22/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Drain/inject small joint or bursa: $125
Depo-medrol IM, 40mg: $22
Toradol IM, 15mg: $48

1/23/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Depo-medrol IM, 20mg: $8

1/24/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20

1/28/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20

1/29/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $220
Injection administration: $20
Toradol IM, 15mg: $48
Nubain IM, 10mg: $10
Tigan, swallowed, 200mg: $16

1/30/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Depo-medrol IM, 80mg: $30

1/31/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Depo-medrol IM, 80mg: $30

2/4/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Toradol IM, 15mg: $48

2/5/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20

2/6/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Phenergan IM, 50mg: $7
Toradol IM, 15mg: $48
Demerol IM, 100mg: priceless. Lame joke and I apologize: $5

2/11/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Benadryl HCL IV, 50mg: $5
IV hydration (because I was in so much pain I could no longer eat or drink -- even water -- IBS, nausea, on and on... The nurse blew out one of my veins that day, and it hurts to this one, nearly two months later): $105
IV push (of Benadryl. ...That's right, I was charged the following amount for someone pushing a syringe's plunger): $25

2/13/08
Office/outpatient visit: $70 (for some reason... Or none at all.)
Multiple trigger-point injections: $100
Injection administration: $20
Toradol IM, 15mg: $48

2/14/08
Office/outpatient visit: $105
Toradol IM, 15mg: $12
IV infusion for therapy (likely hydration): $105
IV push (gimme the syringe so I can press down with my thumb, dammit!): $25
IV all other solutions (who knows what the hell went in my vein that day): $5

READ LUNAR PARK!

2008-03-31T19:03:00.005-07:00

All I've done for the past 48 hours is sleep and read Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. Which is saying something, since reading puts me out like a light now. In college I could read four books at a time in the same week... Now I read fifty pages and lapse into a nap.

So I would read some of Lunar Park, wake up after realizing I had been asleep -- usually tipped off by the fact I was staring at the ceiling, my neck crooked over the top of the armchair I was sitting in and amid a nightmare about one of the stuffed animals I had as a child -- then immediately begin reading from the point at which I began sleeping.

And last night, even when I knew I was going to be down for a few hours, I crawled into bed but couldn't turn out the light. Both because I was compelled to keep reading, and because the novel was scaring the shit out of me.

The above simply translates to what I've already written in the title: Read Lunar Park!

PS: Though the ending is a little -- well, find out yourself (not being mean, you'll be glad you did) -- B.E. Ellis deserves insane praise for his amazingly well done matador-plunge between the shoulder bones of the memoir craze.

All is fiction.

"Memoir" should not have a shelf in bookstores or libraries. Neither should "nonfiction."

Ellis killed memoir. He killed nonfiction (for the too-many who somehow think there is such a thing). He kills (auto- and) biography, too: All the picture-painting turns of phrase we love from "nonfiction" are complete fabrications -- made up: fiction. Everything that makes "nonfiction" worth reading is the fiction in it.

Ellis is a killer, a murderer.

But he can rest easy that he is not akin to Patrick Bateman. Ellis kills out of mercy. He murders what never should have been allowed to live. ...What never really did (I could reference Lunar Park but think I hit something here and hope you will find out for yourself).

And he's done so with the master-stroke of Lunar Park.

This book received some bad press. Likely because Ellis killed modern-day gods. He slaughtered sections of bookstores and libraries -- dragged every single book in them out by their throats and slashed them.

Slaying hundreds of best-sellers is not a way to get one's book good reviews. Not by the fuckers who created memoir-hunger in the first place.

Now memoir never was. Ellis killed bullshit writing so that bullshit writing may prevail, billed as such.

Now the truth... The lies... The fiction... Can continue without hindrance.

CHRONIC FATIGUE IS A BITCH!

2008-03-28T11:35:00.007-07:00

I was up until about 6:00 this morning, and was woken up at precisely noon by my pain. I'm trying not to use sleeping pills anymore, and to get into some sort of natural sleep pattern.

Unfortunately, for someone with chronic fatigue syndrome -- which goes with fibromyalgia like peanut butter does with chocolate... In a world where the two can never be separated, though -- my natural sleeping pattern is probably one of the worst things for me.

I used to take, nightly, 200mg Trazodone, a Sonata and a Remeron. Taking all these allowed me to determine what time I would go to sleep, and kept me in dreamland for about seven or eight hours. Since I have been in Lummox, however, I have used these sparingly... Usually when I am trying to correct a botched sleep from the night before, and to go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Which means that, tonight, I plan on taking a handful of Traz and a Sonata at about 11:00 to get my ass back on track. In the meantime, I probably will have to drink a lot of green tea -- my favorite caffeine delivery system -- simply to stay awake until then. What is absolutely fabulous is that caffeine ensures that my anxiety will kick up like a tornado in the Dust Belt. And the amazing height of my generalized anxiety disorder, when it's fed caffeine like coal used to be to locomotives, ensures that not even 6mg of Klonopin will be able to topple it.

Getting by on a daily basis and not feeling like shit is amazingly difficult sometimes. Even most of the time...

But it is funny that all these problems have caused me to become extremely self-aware... Mindful, in new-new-age-speak.

So there's always some good in the bad...

What I probably should do is simply let my person do what it will: stop taking caffeine, never touch another sleeping pill. But that would cause problems... I'd be awake when most of the US is asleep, and taking naps throughout the day... A freaking wreck.

--So I take the above back. What I really should do is get new prescriptions for Traz and Sonata (the Remeron is pretty useless). Then I should be able to sleep when normal people sleep and be awake when normal people are awake... And when grocery stores, restaurants, etc. are open, which I need to be able to patronize to remain alive.

...What to do...

SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY, MY LAWYERS, MY GOD!

2008-03-27T18:32:00.004-07:00

Yesterday I called my disability examiner, and ended up talking to someone who was taking her calls for her. I was informed that my oh-so-helpful lawyers had not sent my examiner quite a bit of the paperwork she needs to make a determination re my case.

Every goddam time I call my lawyers I have to remind them that I have not lived in Washington, DC since the end of last September, and that I now live in Lummox, Jesusland.

So I told my caseworker's assistant, or whoever the hell I talked to, that my examiner needs form 1696 -- whatever that is -- and that she had not received the form listing the six-or-seven doctors I have seen since coming to Lummox.

Whoever I talked to at my lawyer's office informed me that they had not received the form listing my doctors and their contact numbers. I said this was impossible, since it was sent weeks prior to my call. I was then informed that "maybe it just hasn't been entered into the system yet since our computers were down for a few days."

Words like beautiful music...

But the assistant or whoever was kind enough to simply get my examiner's number and let me know she would call her immediately.

So maybe something is getting done.

But maybe not.

...The shite thing being that I never know what my caseworker has or has not done until and unless I call her.

If I didn't have fibro fog and could keep a thought in my head for more than a few minutes (I have to re-read what I've just written to be able to stay on-topic simply when I write these posts for crissake) I would fire my lawyer(s) and do the rest myself.

But I can't. And that's kinda the point... Part of the reason I'm seeking disability: cognitive memory disorder keeps me from being able to do just about anything for myself. The agony of fibro keeps me from doing the rest.

...Not that I'm all-too-down regarding my situation. The above is just a statement of facts. And I'm coming to grips with fibro and the limitations it puts on me so, though the above para. seems depressing, the matter I deal with ceases to get me down.

Ignorance is bliss.

...But the fucking pain is another thing...

THE TENS UNIT: GREAT FOR MYOFASCIAL PAIN SYNDROME (TMJ-ISH), NOT MUCH ELSE!

2008-03-26T06:04:00.007-07:00

"Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJD, TMJ or TMD), or TMJ syndrome, is an umbrella term covering acute or chronic inflammation of the temporomandibular joint, which connects the lower jaw to the skull. The disorder and resultant dysfunction can result in significant pain and impairment.

...

"Muscle pain can sometimes be associated with trigger points in muscle tissue. These trigger points can be localized by digital palpation, both intraorally and extraorally. This is known as myofascial pain syndrome."

The above is from Wikipedia.

Here is how I use my TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) unit to help with my myofascial trigger points, which hurt like hell, curtail how wide I can open my mouth and cause me to bite down on my teeth extremely hard in my sleep, and probably grind them a bit (known as bruxism... One night I forgot to wear my bite block, which situates a plastic pad between my molars to keep them apart like parents would homicidal children riding in the back of the family van on a very long trip. In the morning I discovered that I had shattered my back-bottom-right molar into four pieces):

I place the two-inch-diameter electrodes (sticky pads) directly on my TMJ and turn up the juice. I electrocute the hell out of the joint for only about a minute every morning and night because I'm placing the electrodes right on my trigeminal nerve, which allows one to feel one's face (somewhat important... Even if one experiences only pain from it), and if I fuck that nerve up I'll end up looking like a stroke victim... But perhaps on both sides of my face.

I should note that all TENS units tell users specifically NOT TO DO THIS. Therefore, like just about anything else I do, I cannot recommend it to anyone else.

But oh sweet zombie jeebus how much it helps...

The trigger points remain painful to the touch, but I can open my mouth wider than I have been able to in years. The electrode-application seems to function as the most effective massage on earth. I probably would have to be massaged all day, just on my TMJ, to achieve the same results.

I'd rank the improvement in my facial pain from a 10/10 to a 4/10. Pretty damn amazing.

So I love my TENS unit dearly, even though it does absolutely nothing for any of my other trigger points or pains. The relief I get from my myofascial pain is enough to make me wish my TENS unit were a woman so I could marry her. What's more, I'd switch teams and marry it if it were a guy and we lived in Massachusetts. ...Well, as long as it (he) didn't have a mustache...

That written, DO NOT USE A TENS UNIT FOR TMJ OR MYOFASCIAL PAIN SYNDROME! (Following my motto, adapted from Gandhi: Cover the ass you want to see in the world.)

[It makes sense for the pain and anxiety scales to make a comeback now that I'm on 30mg of OxyContin and 6mg Klonopin:

Pain: 6.5/10.

Anxiety: 4/10.

I see Dr ML&S April 7, at which point I hope to have my Oxy dose increased, so my pain should decrease even more. At this point I will be treated, medically, as best as is possible. This will likely mean that my pain and anxiety will both be around 3.5/10. Still debilitating, but the best that can be done, and enough to make me happy. Ish.]

MUSIC TO SOOTHE SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA: STARS!

2008-03-25T11:29:00.005-07:00

I'll never talk to X again (or write her). This, after the e-mails I've previously posted, and then a phone call that was the most uncomfortable discussion in all of human history. (Slight exaggeration...)

I tried to be nice, but both X and I seemed to realize "there's nothing to save."

Neither of us will ever care or ever wonder what happens to the other for the rest of our days... I'm not sure exactly how much I can write about someone and be protected legally, so all I will write is that I went to high school with X, and the person she was then is not at all who she is now. The complete opposite, actually, and so into herself and the capitalist dream that I can't stand it anymore.

And there's the whole being-completely-misunderstood-by-her because she apparently didn't/doesn't care enough about me to Google "fibromyalgia" even once.

So that's that.

Your Ex-Lover Is Dead seems quite appropriate here: