Diversion

A couple things I've found lately, in the weird and wonderful category.

If you want to sleep in that extra five minutes, skip the coffeemaker and just caffeinate your body.

Shower Shock Body Wash is all about getting you awake and moving. Each normal-sized application gives you about 200mg of caffeine rushing into your blood stream. You’ll feel rejuvenated, energized, and you just might tingle a little. And tingling (unless you are being electrocuted by mutant eels) is always fun.

Strolling through urban centres isn't always a lot of fun but if you keep an eye out, maybe you can discover a new classification.

A project dedicated to developing a system of classification that allows stray shopping carts to be identified based on the situations in which they are found.

No Way Out

Oh, I'm going to get in shit for this one. I know it.

Except I don't care. Although it's not as articulate as I want it to be, as it could be.

I just got into a 'discussion' with someone about how they believed that the guy who killed all those students was mentally ill and the university should have figured it out.

Not because he wasn't. Or whatever.

But because I had absolutely not started the conversation and in a moment of crazy non-political correctedness made the comment that people who do things like that in full view of the public (ie: beyond any shadow of a doubt) should just be shot. That I figure he did the right thing by offing himself because I didn't believe he had any right to continue to live, in a prison or a mental hospital, in a box, in a cage, in short, on this earth.

Buddy's point was that, yanno, he was mentally ill.

So.fucking.what, I said. You can't tell me that he didn't know what he was doing was wrong. I mean, really, didn't he take a break to mail his stupid little manifesto to the news? Hello?

It was a cry for help, he tells me. Fine, I said, if a cry for help involves killing 30+ people then I'm taking the stance that it's too freaking late to help. And why should anyone help at that point? There are lots and lots of ways to cry for help that don't involve killing innocent people. That's the height of self-centeredness, which isn't much of an excuse after about 18 months of age.

Sure, there are some people who honestly are ill enough to not know the difference between right and wrong but I'm not even sure they'd deserve to live, either, when you weigh their one life and the burden on society against however many good people they manage to take out before we scoop them up, put them in a nice warm safe place and then start blaming their illness, teachers, parents, Barney the dinosaur, the bully in the second grade and God.

Maybe I'm just a bitch.

Maybe I think that we're all actually, really accountable for our decisions - right, wrong, stupid, uninformed, carefully considered and ill thought out all.

Maybe I think that if consequences were harsh, we'd deal with crap like this a lot less than we do. (ie: case i point - 4 Canadian sailors who used their Canadian Military ship to traffic drugs and the PATHETIC consequences of their actions.) These people paid less of a fine than I did. Their lives won't be impacted in the slightest. They didn't even go to jail.

Maybe I believe that some people just shouldn't get a second chance. And no, I don't know who gets to make those decisions, who gets to play judge, but that doesn't make the belief any less strong.

But, in the end, I'll stand by how I feel. Because, as far as I can see, Mr "Ihatethewealthy" there (and anyone like him) deserves no less and no more than what I think a 'suicide' bomber who puts children in the car to get past checkpoints (but gets out before detonating the car and killing the children) should get. (ooops, though, we're blaming God for that one, right? It's their religious right to kill children.)

I say, if they want it so badly, give it to them.

Death.

Preferably a quickly enacted yet painful, slow one.

Maybe I'm sounding all draconian and Vlad the Impaler here but, seriously, am I all that wrong?

Dissection of A Day

I know I'm not here. And I know y'all stop in and check on me and even, email me and ask how I am. And really, I'm okay. I've pared my life down. I've slashed and burned only the most important things.

The things important to me right now.

It's not that this place, my home in the ether, isn't important to me anymore. It is. But I've been back into RG lately and it breaks my heart to see I'm just not the same person I used to be. I'm not funny. I'm angry sometimes and a little bitter. I'm just not convincing myself in here these days and I guess I've sort of stopped trying. I'm turned inward. I've battened down the hatches and I'm riding out the storm.

Above all, I'm also boring as fuck. It's true.

I work Tues and Fridays at the unit. I work weekend evenings at the hospital. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday look a lot like today did...

7am - push Cabot-cat off my head. Do exercises before I get up. Stumble to shower. Drink coffee. Try and do something with the $60 haircut I hate. Dress.

8 am - get on the bus.

9 am - get to the hospital for test. (Today I volunteered for precision testing in the Nuclear Medicine Department for a BMD (or Bone Mineral Density), which tests the erm.. density of your bones. heh. Not much good at my age, really, except to tell me my bone density is better than a 30 year olds but it'll be good down the road as a baseline when I actually start to lose density and start breaking bones in my old age.

9:45 am - get coffee. go see Dad. go get Dad tea. Bother co-workers for updates.

10:30 am - get back on bus.

11:30 am - get off bus. Go to Dr. Olympics who does incredibly painful things to me and praises my progress and my pain tolerance levels.

11:50 am - stagger back to bus.

12:45 pm - stagger off bus and back into the hospital to check back in on Dad and refuel with coffee, trying to manage the screaming headache, numb fingers and lack of feeling in my leg caused by incredibly painful things done to me by Dr. Olympics.

1:30 pm - get back on bus to go home.

2:30 pm - arrive back home. Have nap.

6 pm - send email updates to family. Set up stuff for next day (coffee, clothes), watch a little TV, work out bus schedules.

10 pm - go to bed. Do more exercises. Cuddle Cabot. Sleep.

Rinse. Repeat.

If you've been adding as we go (or not) you can see that, today, I spent 4 hours on the bus and 2 hours actually doing things. I try to think of it as a work-day. I gotta tell you, it's an incredibly exhausting work day.

I'm either with Dr. Olympics or next door to his office in Athletic Rehab for an hour (also torture) three days a week. Some days, I do both.

You'll forgive me, I'm sure, if all my energy, patience and good will are pretty depleted.

I also saw the neurologist this week and there was good news there - I don't have a brain tumor (we knew that), I don't have MS (apparantly that was a concern at my age and somewhere in me I knew that because if you remember, I asked during the lumbar puncture when I was stoned out of my mind) and, it's not a spinal compression, stricture or any of the other big words that mean I have big issues with my spine.

That leaves, in everyone's professional opinion - musculoskeletal disorder. Dr. Olympics and aggressive athletic therapy seem to be 'my only hope'.

(What? The most painful work intensive thing EVER? I was sort of hoping for something they could just cut out / off and then send me on my way. But, you know, I'm lazy that way.)

For instance - (I'll pick the easiest two of the long list that are easiest to visualize) if I stand still and you look at me you can see that one shoulder is a full two inches lower than the other and my head is in the 'wrong place' (ie: it's farther over to the right side than it should be). In short, I'm a mess. A monster. A gimp.

But I am not an animaaaal.

On the bright side, they believe it's reversible. That they can retrain the small issues that became big big issues when subjected to the repetitive damage of basic training.

And, yesterday, for the first time in 10 MONTHS, I could pull my socks on without having to stop two or three times to breathe through the pain.

It's a long road I'm riding the bus down right now and for a while, well, silence is not a cause for concern - but for hope.

And then, by god, I'm going on bloddy vacation.

A long one.

The Longest Hours

Surgery. 1:10 pm.

An anticipated 2.5 hours.

Phone call from surgeon. 7:45 pm.

A father, the uncanny likeness of Elmer Fudd, shuffling still upon this mortal coil, this day.

Dinner waiting at home after work, a smiling comforting well-loved face in my deck chair, pool games in an old haunt, good memories and discussions of uncertain futures birthing a comfort sadly missed.

In the midst of all the things in my own life going sideways, wrong, feeling undeservedly cursed, karma'd, and, in the case of this computer - crashed, irreplaceable memories lost - life shows, at least, a little reprieve.

Faith. Rewarded. Embodied.

and that's the nature of the chase

you fall so far behind you end in first place

pass the torch this time we're running to each's own regret

there's no harm in playing hard to get

boundlessness deceives me

baby you may turn the corner yet

this is the land of a thousand words

but it seems so few are worth the breath to say

except I'll be looking after my own world

and you just keep on saving the day

i'll try to stay but it's in vain when you're far

i'm on the run to wherever you are

Word Play

Why is it when people ask me what I do for the Army and I say, "Quartermaster", I feel just a little bit naughty?

And get a craving for a cigarette?

Easter Numb Bummy

I spent a large portion of Easter weekend in my computer chair watching movies on a UK website that... well... probably shouldn't be there cause it's probably not ...strictly.... legal. And then I watched every episode of "Supernatural" that worked. Because, well, Supernatural rocks. And Jensen Ackles makes me happy.

Movies:

Wild Hogs

Ice Age, The Meltdown

Eragon

Snakes on A Plane

Stranger than Fiction

I'll bet you thought I've been gone because I'm doing interesting things?

Nope.

Just... looking for my balance.

"When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet - he gave me a .45"

-Well, that's Dad-..

"Dean, I WAS NINE!"

I hope you're all well and the Easter Bunny was good to you.

Productivity. A Miracle.

I was actually productive today.

I did four loads of laundrey, mangled my way through another couple patches of "lawn", dusted, vacuumed AND mopped and then coerced Cabot into helping me finally finish Marjorie's "Christmas" present.

*click to biggy*

I feel almost human.