Persistent Vegetative State

Buh bye

2008-08-25T10:40:00.000-04:00

I think this thing has played itself out, but there might be a newer more exciting blog one day. Email me if you want to know where that is. Mmkay?

Good things from my trip

2008-08-04T22:13:00.005-04:00

Leaving diarrhea behind (heh), there were plenty of positive aspects of my trip. I don't mean to dwell on the negative parts, even though they're a little easier to describe. And a little more fun to bitch about. So positively, for instance, I got to hang around with my very cool co-workers for the first week. They make all my trips better. No pictures of them this time because I suck and because I never seemed to have my camera with me.

Then there is Singapore itself which, despite the awful food and repressive regime that runs the country, is a very nice place. The people are lovely and even on the subway everyone was polite. Some other cities could take a lesson. And it's clean. Very clean. No litter anywhere. Again, I know a place that could learn a thing or two. This is no reason to go someplace, of course, but it makes a difference when you're there.

Also, the people who told me that everything is indoors were just wrong. I imagine it's possible to think that no one goes outside because of the hot weather, but a quick walk down the street reveals otherwise. Yes, I was sweaty, but I'm sweaty here too. (Not Schwetty though.) It was not unbearable so I didn't hide in my hotel when the sun was out. I couldn't since I had to work. But still, it's ridiculous to say that no one goes outside during the day.

And shopping is not all people do in Singapore. However, the malls are air conditioned so a lot of people, including, me, go inside occasionally to cool off. It's just what you do.

In Hong Kong, aside from the crowds and products and guys who really really wanted to make me a suit (there are a lot of tailors there, or at least a lot of guys who thought the shirts I was wearing were crappy and could make me a better one), I visited the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery. It's somewhere in the city, a bus and subway ride from where I was staying, and it's at the top of a hill, or course, and it appears to have about 10,000 steps leading up to it.

And indeed there appear to be about 10,000 Buddhas lining the way. I didn't count them all but just look at them all. If there aren't 10,000 then it must be pretty close.

At the top is a shrine and a few thousand more very small Buddha statues. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do when I got up there, like bow down or show some kind of devotion, but I figured that climbing the twenty million steps to the top was enough devotion. If Buddha wasn't impressed with me doing that then there's not much else I could do.

Coming down was much easier and involved a lot less mumbling "Please god get me up to the top without a heart attack." In fact, there was none of that. Ha! Take that constricted arteries!

Unfortunately there are no good pictures of the island, or me on the island, but it was tropical and full of lush foliage and exotic birds. Use your imagination. I was in a white linen suit made for me in Hong Kong and I smoked unfiltered cigarettes and sipped a gin and tonic while making shady deals with international arms dealers.

My life is a Graham Greene novel.

Singapore, land of plenty

2008-07-30T08:17:00.004-04:00

Plenty of shit that is. Jesus Christ o'mighty, there are more products in that one tiny nation than I have ever seen in all the malls in the Mall of America. Millions upon millions of things that, I would venture to guess, nobody really wants, and certainly nobody really needs, are stacked up in stores and stalls waiting for some sucker (like me) to come and buy it all. Lots of stuff. I was fairly disgusted by the amount of stuff that we as a people create and then stack up and sell. The world does not need another pair of glittery slippers or a t-shirt or a watch (although at three for $10 they are quite the bargain). So much stuff, and in such a little place. It is very crowded, but also very clean thanks to the repressive government. Yay dictatorship!

I took a side trip to Hong Kong for a few days to visit a friend who teaches there and lives in an extremely tiny apartment with his wife and two kids. Hong Kong. It's like Singapore only a million more times more crowded.

And really, that's one of the major themes of my trip. It was crowded, which means that there was always somebody in my way or somebody up my ass (meaning that I was probably in other peoples' way plenty of times too).

The other major theme was diarhhea. Yes, it was one of those trips. The first four or five days were fine but then I had about ten days where I needed to be close to the terlit. I still managed to get out and about without shitting myself, but it wasn't too fun. It wasn't the fault of Singapore or Hong Kong, just something in the water or the food.

Speaking of food, I was really looking forward to some good eating but it was unfortunately pretty disgusting. For instance, while avoiding the delicacy of fish head curry, after a few days of eating overcooked noodles in some kind of brownish viscous fluid ("sauce" I guess), I was sick of it all. I blame my intestinal trouble on some suspicious vindaloo that I had, and had I eaten the "internal pig organ soup" I might be blaming it on that too. Feeling the need for something familiar, I did have a hamburger. Unfortunately, it was what they call in the ham world "bone in." So yeah, my burger had something in it like a bone. Not good.

My one safe place for food was the occasional Japanese restaurant I found. Sushi is delicious and Japanese places tend to be quiet and not have TVs blaring and people yelling in crazy languages that I don't understand. So aside from sushi, I did not find the delicious food I had hoped for. Whaaa.

One highlight came at the end of the trip. I spent a few days on an island wiggling my toes in the sand and reading all the rather heavy books I schleped with me. Ralph Steadman's book about Hunter S. Thompson was good, while Don DeLillo's Americana was a crushing disappointment. I had high hopes. I'm sure it seemed dating and full of insight in 1971, but now...not so much. The other books I brought were mostly fine and did the trick of entertaining me for the long flights. No need for book reviews.

So what did I learn? Well, this was a working vacation after all, and I observed that a lot of people I work with seem to have Asberger's syndrome (or something like it) that makes them just not recognize social cues or make them act like real dicks sometimes. I'm not sure how else to explain it. I think guessing that they have Asberger's is fairly generous because my first inclination is to just think that they're just real dicks, but what they hey, I'll go the extra mile and say they're fucked up in the head.

I also learned that I don't want to eat any more meat. I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick, and if it didn't, just thinking about it does now. So no more meat for me. And Eulalia, ever the supportive partner, when I told her this said, "If I put a nice big hunk of meat on a plate in front of you, you'd eat it."

Hey, thanks baby. That's the kind of encouragement I need.

After a little research...

2008-07-10T00:21:00.003-04:00

I finally have a plan. After Singapore, which I'm sure will be lovely and awesome in its own way (despite the influx of statisticians), I was thinking of heading to Kuala Lumpur just because it's close by and is a major city and is probably pretty interesting. However, thanks to my Lonely Planet guide, I discovered that KL is a bit of a mess and doesn't have all that much to offer except for food and those Petronas towers, which I'm not all that interested in anyway. So I crossed that off my list. Do I need to see another big city? No.

Fortunately, there are some islands off the east coast of Singapore where the water is pristine, the beaches are nice, and I can sit and veg out for a few days, which I will need after this conference. It's always stressful. Booze is expensive so I will either have to bring extra money or content myself with being sober most of the time. Being alone in a strange country, this is probably for the best as my last trip abroad resulted in much drinking and more than enough punching. No need for more punching.

I made the not-very big decision to not bring my computer on the trip, but I will still be blogging in my non-computerized blogging device. Depending on the availabilty of internet cafes in paradise, blogging for the next two weeks will be spotty, probably on the order of what it's been for the previous two weeks. At least I'll have better stories though.

I hope.

Leaving soon

2008-07-06T16:00:00.002-04:00

Just six more days until I get on a plane for my interminable flight to Singapore. I guess I should buy myself a nice Lonely Planet guide so that when I do actually get there I can do something besides go to meetings and hang around my hotel with statisticians.

Two people who had just been there recently gave me some insight on Singapore. One said, "Do you like shopping?" I said no. "Well then," he said, "you'll hate Singapore."

Great.

The other person told me that everything is inside. Everything? Yes, he said, everything.

I know that can't be true. The whole place is like a mall? Blech. All I want to do is eat sushi and vindaloo and I guess if it's 120 degrees outside this would best be done indoors, but there must be something that's not under a roof.

A guidebook, that's what I need. I also need more books for the plane. I have four but I am afraid I'll tear through them on the way over. Maybe I'll use the time to re-learn Spanish. (I'm sure that will look suspicious to people on their way to Singapore. "What? I thought they spoke Spanish.")

Baracking the Vote

2008-06-25T01:00:00.000-04:00

Three earnest young men came to my door last night as I was ready to watch Season 3 of Weeds. One was wearing a blue DNC shirt and they all were holding clipboards. The guy in the middle began right in on how important it is to vote Democratic, etc., as my head nodded up and down, up and down, and before it fell off I had to stop him and assure him I'm on board, I'll vote for Barack, and did he want me to sign his petition for whatever?

Well, the Republicans have raised over 20 gajillion dollars for their campaign, blah blah, money, money, reverse current trends, fascist policies, Bush must go, McCain is an extension of Bush, yadda yadda...

Ok, where do I sign?

Well, we're collecting money for---

I don't have any money, sorry.

But in order to stop the Republican machine---

I have a kid in college, a gas tank I can't fill, a basement that barely keeps out the rain, and I owe the city my left nut in back taxes, I said. I don't have any money for you but thanks for stopping by.

Well , for a contribution of as little as $25 you will help to ensure that Mr. Obama . . .

I don't know what's wrong with me that I didn't just close the door. I even talk to Jehovah's Witnesses when they wake my ass up on Saturday mornings. They don't want money though, just my soul, which they can have if they find it. When I said I don't have money and he kept trying to pry it out of me, the fragile deal that is polite conversation was kind of over. Soon enough I felt the strong urge to be in front of the tv with a beer trying to forget all the reasons I can't give Barack $25, so I had to be the jerkoff and end it abruptly. It's awkward to leave three people with clipboards standing on the step as I lock the door, made slightly more awkward by the fact that they were in no hurry to move on. Maybe they were stunned at my callousness. Maybe they aren't used to hearing No.

So I didn't give Barack any money. Is it really necessary to raise more money at this point? Obama can't possibly lose, can he? What would it take for him to lose? I figure he'd have to be seen giving bin Laden a hand job at this point, or wiping his ass with the flag.

Anyway, the money would be used mostly to buy more tv commercials. Unless he's making commercials like this, he's not getting my money.

Dismal Swamp

2008-06-24T23:23:00.004-04:00

It's one of the best names for a place ever: Dismal Swamp. Why can't more places be called what they are? I refer to Sacramento as Craptown, for instance, but that's just because it fits. I doubt it would ever officially be called that. Philadelphia is already rightly called Killadelphia. But Dismal Swamp is an awesome name.

Unfortunately it's been on fire the last three weeks.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Catherine Hibbard says the fire is 70 percent contained. But she says it will continue to smolder and its acrid smoke won't go away any time soon.

Hibbard says firefighters are pumping in water from ditches around the swamp to dampen the ground, which will help hold down the smoke.

The blaze has burned 3,474 acres since it started June 9 when a piece of timbering equipment caught fire.

Apparently the swamp is largely made of peat, which burns. While we were in Virginia, when the wind was blowing from the south, an acrid miasma enveloped everything. But it came and went all day so it wasn't so bad. It did not affect my backhand, though, which remains awesome.

Things

2008-06-18T23:05:00.006-04:00

Wow, I still have a blog. Unfortunately I have no thoughts whatsoever anymore. Work, that execrable thing I do every day which sucks the life out through my nostrils very slowly, has. . . um, sucked the life from me? Honestly, I'm brain dead. I finish one journal and two more get dropped on my desk. What am I, friggin Sisyphus? Apparently.

But I've been listening to the audio version of Lush Life on my way to and from work so that takes the edge off a little. My mind used to wander when I tried listening to books in the past, but I guess there's nothing else going on up there so I'm able to pay attention now. Plus it's a good book. Maybe the audio version of Mill on the Floss was just a bad idea. If Richard Price had written Mill on the Floss I would have liked it more.

Also, and unrelated, I need a new banjo. I've had this one for a couple of years and the action is a bit too high. But my ass is broke so I'll have to pick on this thing a while longer. Plus I have to learn how to play the kemençe that Eulalia got me in Turkey. If I could figure out what kind of scale it has. If I could then figure out how to do more than make freaky noises with it. How am I supposed to do all that and go to work at the same time? Dang.

Fuck it. We're driving to Virginia on Friday for some eating, drinking and tennis. Yay! I'm sure I'll return home refreshed and rejuvenated.

As I'm facing a 24 hour trip to Singapore in a few weeks, I'm looking for books to occupy me in the very likely event that I can't sleep for 24 straight hours (possible) and the movies suck (probable). So far I've lined up Ralph Steadman's biography of Hunter S. Thompson, Phillip Schultz's Failure, and Sister Ships by Joan London. Will these be enough? I'd rather not have to read over someone's shoulder on the plane. I guess it might be a good chance to practice the kemençe and entertain my fellow travelers.

Superstar!

2008-06-11T22:16:00.006-04:00

I got a notice that Transformers 2 will be filming on campus this week so please stay away from the following locations. . . so naturally I headed to said locations to check things out.

Making a movie apparently involves a whole lot of standing around doing nothing. While I did not spend my entire lunch hour showing how well I too can stand around and do nothing, I did spend maybe 10 minutes showing off and doing nothing better than any of those other jokers. I was all over doing nothing and standing and whatnot. And I was sure that someone like a producer, who I imagine is a heavy guy in a white suit chomping a cigar, would see me and say "Hey you, yeah, the guy doing nothing. You wanna be in pick-chas?"

But that didn't happen. It was mainly just a lot of nothing except equipment and trucks and people waiting for something to happen. I was dressed better than all of them so maybe I intimidated them. Or maybe they overheard me thinking to myself "How did robots from another planet get into this school?"

So then I only had 45 minutes to go read something that I wanted to read so my brain wouldn't atrophy from reading what I get paid to read, and I moved along.

Now reading: Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon. So far so good. Despite comparisons, though, he's no Jim Thompson. But that's ok, no one is.

Then I went back to work and the rest of the day was kind of a blur. I think changed a subscript 1 to a subscript i about a million and a half times. Because someone had to.

Earliness

2008-06-04T00:44:00.002-04:00

My baby has a 6 a.m. flight to the west coast. I could go to sleep for a few hours, or I could stay up until we have to leave. If I go to sleep, I might not ever wake up. Rather, I might not wake up until it's too late. That wouldn't be good.

I'm opting for staying awake since it sucks balls to wake up after only a few hours of sleep.

Such a short visit, but she'll be back in July. She leaves me with some awesome new ceramic creations, new music, and a warm fuzzy feeling.

We talked about Eudora Welty at dinner. She's read all of Tom Stoppard. My kid is so much smarter than I am. She goes to Italy in September.

WAAAAA

My ride

2008-05-30T09:00:00.003-04:00

If you have to drive five hours each way, it might as well be in comfort.

I decided not to take the Grand Marquis to Vermont, even though it has successfully made the trip several times already. But past success is no sign of future performance, as they say, and if my car were a stock, I would still own it because it's awesome, but few others would. That notwithstanding, it would probably have been fine since it now has a new radiator, but gas is fucking $4 a gallon. This Suzuki dealio made it on less than a tank each way.

My guilt about renting a fucking SUV was ameliorated by the fact that I didn't worry about breaking down and all the youngster's stuff fit inside without standing around deciding what to throw away and what to tie to the roof. So for once we didn't look like the Joad family on our way west.

On the road

2008-05-28T22:49:00.004-04:00

Heading to Vermont tomorrow to pick up my youngster and her pottery and paintings and some maple syrup and then burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles all the way back home desirous of everything at the same time, never yawning or saying a commonplace thing.

AWWW!

Sun

2008-05-23T12:11:00.005-04:00

The plants are finally getting some. Me next.

Me and my dignity

2008-05-23T10:46:00.004-04:00

There's a woman I've known for at least 15 years who claims now to be 38 years old. Awesome. She was two years older than me when we met, which means that if my math is right, and it never is, I just got a lot younger myself.

Seriously, I always tell people I'm at least 10 years older than I am. Now I look good for my age. Isn't that a better strategy?

Oustide

2008-05-22T11:34:00.004-04:00

My neighbor rang the doorbell this morning, and when I opened the door, Ralph ran inside.

Is that your cat?, he asked.

Yes, that's my cat. He was outside?

Yes, he was sitting on the step all morning.

I looked back at Ralph. He was in the living room frantically licking himself. He looked up as if to say "Wha?" I have no idea how he got outside. I got him a fresh pipe cleaner (he loves pipe cleaners) to remind him that there are no pipe cleaners outside, no matter how long he hunts for one. He should stay inside.

I did not offer my neighbor a pipe cleaner. I might leave one on his doorstep.

Vibes

2008-05-21T21:15:00.000-04:00

Had drinks at Tangerine with Stephen. He is casting and soon to be directing a musical in NJ. He asked me to play the part of a coach (or a father, I forget). I declined even though it requires no singing or dancing (he thought I declined maybe because it didn't require singing and dancing, but no). I think the entire rest of the cast is in high school or recently graduated and I just don't want to spend large amounts of time over the river with children who aren't mine. They're all about drama, and I can't deal with another social disaster at the moment.

At a party last week, before my surgery, while I still had some gall and a bladder in which to store it, I drank a lot of beer and whiskey and entertained many with my bon mots. Then some woman I don't know asked me if I am gay. I don't know who she was or where she came from, but there she was, chubby with purple hair and was dressed like Madonna in the 80s. There was an appalling lack of charm about her. She may have had a mustache as well, but I could be just remembering her that way.

No, I am not gay, I said. And why would you ask me that?

I don't know, you just seem gay, she said.

Ok, but even so, is this an ice breaker of some sort?

I'm just saying that you seem gay.

Let me swallow this jizz and we'll talk more, I said. Or maybe I just smiled and pretended to be more interested in the cracker I noticed on the table and then wandered away from her by pretending to see someone I had to talk to. Maybe she was just trying to be provocative. She was sober, I think. I was not. Maybe I missed some subtle queue and she was in fact charming.

No, not likely.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure I wasn't sucking a cock at the time so I don't know why it was necessary to ask me if I'm gay. As if there was any doubt, I point to the above-mentioned musical in which I do not have a part. It doesn't get any straighter than turning down stage time in a musical.

People are such douchebags.

30 Days

2008-05-18T10:14:00.004-04:00

One benefit of recovering from surgery is that I feel slightly less guilty about sitting my ass in front of the tv since it hurts to get up and down (who knew I used so many stomach muscles in my pre-surgery days?). I've opted mainly for the down position. While aimlessly flipping channels I came across reruns of the show 30 Days wherein the guy from Supersize Me does stuff for a month. In one episode he and his girlfriend live for a month on minimum wage. They immediately start out at a deficit because it costs money up front to get an apartment. Their jobs suck, they have medical issues and go to the emergency room which costs hundreds of dollars, take the bus or walk everywhere, take second jobs, and basically end up owing more money than they make. In short, they're fucked from the get-go.

Since I am prone to catastrophic fantasies anyway, I shit a brick thinking about of what would happen if I lost my job. I don't know that I'm qualified to do very much except for what I do now. If I didn't already have my job, I would never even know this sort of things existed. In fact, my job didn't really exist as it is until I developed it into what it is, and that took a long long time.

So what would I do?

Umm...weep? Yes, probably, although that doesn't pay what it used to. I don't have parents I can live off even for a little while (damn you Mommy and Daddy). Welfare? I don't even know how much people get on welfare. Is that enough to live on? It must be since people do it. The Times has an article about more and more people trying to collect on crime tips to the police for reward money. I could do that, but then I'd have to be a little more aware of crime. Manual labor is always an option and probably what I'd end up with. But I think I'd be bad at that. I don't have a gall bladder for fucks sake.

I feel like my job could go away at any time. I've felt this way for a long time, and it hasn't, but I don't know why. I probably shouldn't feel so insecure about the job, but it reminds me that I need to make some kind of contingency plan. I have two more years until the youngster is out of college so I should start thinking of something else to do just in case.

Hey, who wants to buy a poem? I'm not finished my novel yet, but I have lots of poems. Also a couple of plays. Hmm, maybe time to start an itinerant theater troupe. I can travel to remote villages and entertain the masses with ribald tales and fancy banjo playing.

Ok, problem solved.

Rock out with my gall bladder out

2008-05-17T14:16:00.002-04:00

I usually hear about these things after they happen, but Frightened Rabbit will be in town next Saturday, which is enough time for the pills to wear off I guess. Also enough time for me to stop yacking about my physical ailments. Maybe. Time will tell though. Time will tell.

How's that stomach Cugat?

2008-05-15T23:31:00.003-04:00

Well it's getting better. I discovered (through my continued obsessive reading about all things gall bladder) that the doctors had to pump my up with CO2 in order to get in there and poke around. This explains why my stomach was distended considerably more than usual. I thought I had actually gotten fatter since the surgery. No, they inflated me like a balloon. How pleasant.

So aside from enjoying the lovely pharmaceuticals I've been swallowing like M&Ms, I watched Rescue Dawn (in the middle of the day!), the awesome Werner Herzog Vietnam movie. I want to like his movies a lot more than I do, but he's hit and miss for me. Grizzly Man, for instance, was one of my least favorite movies, and while the d00d who went to Alaska fits the profile of a Herzog character perfectly, he was pretty annoying and I honestly wished he had gotten eaten by the bears a lot sooner (as a character I wished that, not as a person; there are very few people who I truly wish to be eaten alive; I just found this guy irritating and completely inarticulate and uninformed about bears, and most other things about which he opened his yapper). Maybe if it weren't a documentary it would have been better. Maybe I just saw too much of myself in him. Maybe deep down I know that he's the gentle hippie I was destined to become if I had not graduated high school, joined the Marines, gone to college, got a job, had a kid, got another job, traveled extensively, learned languages, and had a gall bladder operation. Whatever, Rescue Dawn is really good.

I also read four Moliere plays. They're great, but god help me if I ever have to sit through one of them. Beckett has more action. Moliere is very witty though, very clever, and I bow to his superior ability.

I also read O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away. Why haven't I read this sooner? Nobody told me to. I've read all her stories but for some reason I never got to the novels. She only wrote a few so it won't be hard to soon say I read them all.

And I will say that. Soon.

Apparently I have to go back to work tomorrow. I wonder if there's another organ I can...no, there's not.

Goodnight gall, goodnight bladder

2008-05-14T21:33:00.000-04:00

Surgery is over, gall bladder is out, and I am finally home. Due to some bleeding I had to stay overnight in the hospital. Apparently the gall bladder was stuck to the liver and when they yanked it out the bleeding began. So I stayed overnight which was fine due largely to some wonderfully mothering nurses with their ice chips and morphine. I was hoping for a sponge bath but perhaps I set my sights too high. Nurses don't do that I guess. But nurses work hard and whatever they get paid it's not enough. I was largely silent in my delirium so it's not like I was bothering them, but I could hear people vomiting and groaning elsewhere and if I had to put up with that every day I'd go nuts. So more money for nurses. And more sponge baths for patients.

Morphine, by the way, is awesome and I can totally understand why someone might get hooked on it. I felt really good in addition to not feeling any pain, and when they switched me to percoset that was fine but morphine, yeah, a little euphoria going on there. That's not something I have every day.

And then I guess because I'm inappropriate or stupid, or both, when I got home I took my prescription to to the pharmacy, and when he asked me what I need, I said, "Some delicious percocets please." The lesson I learned today is that the pharmacist (who sees me just about every morning waiting for the bus) doesn't like to joke about drugs. My bad. Now give me my drugs bitch cause I need to get high and go online. W00t!!1!

Where I've been

2008-05-12T15:58:00.003-04:00

Not having my gall bladder out, that's where. I get that done tomorrow. Until then I just spend time dreading the idea of being cut open, albeit with very small holes. But taking off my clothes and being knocked unconscious...I'm drunk when that happens. But I can't be drunk for surgery.

I was drunk this weekend though, which is usually a good thing, but this time not so much. I shouldn't go to parties where I only know two people because, even though I meet some interesting people this way, I also meet some douchie people who kind of ruin my day, and I can't seem to get drunk enough to make that go away.

Douchie people aside, I've also been carrying buckets of water from the basement to dump outside. Something is going on with the drain spout out back and a pipe connected to it which hilariously empties out into the basement. I'm no expert, but I think letting runoff from the gutters drain into the basement is a little, shall we say, foolish. But only if it rains, like it's been doing the past three days. Otherwise I'm sure it's a great idea.

In the meantime, I will carry buckets of water until someone cuts me open.

I sobered up for this?

Irish Alzheimer's

2008-05-02T12:10:00.002-04:00

On NPR today a guy with a new book is talking about memory and I remembered (duh) that someone said I have Irish Alzheimer's: I only remember transgressions. Not completely true, but not completely false either.

However, I prefer the other saying that the Irish ignore whatever they can't drink or punch. That was kind of my experience when I lived in Ireland. Lots of drinking and punching there.

Also in St. Petersburg. That experience is still a bit Rashomon-like. Did I insult a guy in a bar? His woman? Did I spill his drink? Did I then spill my drink? Maybe I was completely innocent. I prefer to think that Russians are sensitive souls and are easily offended by things like spilled alcohol.

The one thing I do know for sure is that I bleed profusely. Important to keep in mind next time I drink among strangers. But I drink to forget so who knows what will happen in the future?

All I know is that tonight I drink copious amounts with Lithuanians who are friendlier than Russians, and that's all that's important. I have never been punched by a Lithuanian. Not that I remember anyway.

Lies!

2008-04-27T17:20:00.008-04:00

To be fair, there are no Hillary posters in the neighborhood to deface, but still. Ron Paul?

And someone (or maybe--probably definitely--the same person) knows something about him that I don't. (You have to click the picture to see the truth written on his forehead.)

Just for future reference, a nice wide Sharpie makes for a whole lot better defacing. This looks like it was done with a Bic. I've done my share of poster defacing in the past and I always had a Sharpie in my pocket.

Also, I was just glad to see you. I'm the whole package.

That said, Ron Paul is a doctor and I might vote for him if he would take out my gall bladder. And if he didn't make me pay him in gold.

My Gall Bladder Myself

2008-04-26T19:02:00.002-04:00

Funny thing happened when, after a week of calling and waiting, and finally being told officially that yes, I have gallstones. I was told to get them out as soon as possible and was referred to a surgeon. I was asked first if I have preference for surgeons and I said my only preference was for someone who could successfully locate said organ and then, with equal success, remove the fucking thing. In short, no, I do not have a surgeon on retainer and would thus need my doctor to recommend one. So the girl who works at the office gave me the name and number of someone who does this all the time.

After leaving a message at the surgeon's office, I got a call back and the woman asked me when I want to schedule my colonoscopy.

Eh? Is that necessary? It's not really connected to my gall bladder.

She says, "We do colo-rectal surgery here."

Oh my. Well that's very different than what I need. Ok then, back to my other doctor.

Haha, the office is closed until Monday. Please call back.

Oh I will. You can bet I will.

I wonder if my doctor was even looking at the results of my tests. For all I know, he could have me confused with someone who has...I don't know, a really diseased ass or something.

In any event, no more attacks since I've basically been eating veggies and everything low fat. And I'm slightly less fat too so in that way we're all winners in this.

Last night was at a Moroccan restaurant with about 25 of Eulalia's teacher colleagues, something I usually avoid lest I be subjected to endless discussions of English department protocols and tales of student papers, but given there were so many people I could move around when that sort of thing started.

Then the belly dancer showed up, which made it vastly more interesting than if, say, a juggler had shown up. I drank a lot, she made me dance (she made me, I swear, I would never dance in public. Never!)

Sometime during the belly dancer's shimmying the guy next to me was talking about Ralph Nader and getting him on the ballot, and yes, he should be allowed on the ballot, I voted for Ralph before, he's the only one addressing the real issues, etc., and before I knew it, this morning the doorbell rang and there he was, the guy from last night, he was in my living room with a bunch of petitions for me to get signed. He wants me to stand out on the street and collect signatures for Ralph.

Wha?

Apparently I will agree to anything if there is a belly dancer and a bottle of wine in front of me. I smell a conspiracy.

Also, I'm not collecting signatures. I love Ralph and all, but I hate being approached by people with clipboards while I'm going somewhere, and I'd rather not be on the receiving end of that hatred. Our democracy needs fixing, but I don't think I'm going to be the one to fix it.

However, if Ralph can recommend someone to take out my gall bladder without going in through my ass, I'll get him some signatures.

These days

2008-04-21T15:28:00.002-04:00

In the absence of anything meaningful to say, a song I never really liked until I heard this version of it.