Tilting at Windmills is Wrong

"To die, to risk death, even to raise a finger for any Cause was to pennon one’s lance with the riband of Purpose, so the poet judged, and had about it the same high lunacy of a tilt with Manchegan windmills."

  - John Barth, The Sot Weed Factor

Some things we all know are simply wrong. For example, I think we can all agree that what we call the glove compartment is wrongly named. It’s wrong to believe there is a real pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I personally think it’s wrong to ascribe malice to actions that may be better attributed to unthinking stupidity.

And despite my preference for all front teeth to be present in a person’s smile, I admit it’s wrong of me to judge people with missing teeth in their smiles as gap-toothed hillbillies proudly embracing a bold personal sense of style to compensate for their deficiency in social graces.

It’s wrong to think that if we sow as war we will reap peace.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Warrants

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

― George Orwell, 1984

Awww, NSA, again without the warrants to read my email? I’m shocked. Shocked!  And strangely, I don’t feel a bit safer. Then again, by Orwell's logic, omniscient surveillance is probably complete privacy. So that's reassuring, I think. 

Keeping secrets from oneself becomes easier as we age. I’ve already forgotten what I had for breakfast, and I’m beginning to suspect that Tech Support Guy and I have some secrets in our past that have nothing to do with computers. Fortunately, our past happened before social media made it possible to publish salacious pictures, so whatever it was I think I remember will remain secret. 

Also, I can’t remember where I put the list with all my passwords in it. Can anybody help me? Bueller? Anyone? NSA?

Keep a Healthy Attitude, or at Least an Attitude

“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.”

― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

I have a friend who has familial hypercholesterolemia (Cholesterol 356; HDL 67, LDL 268, Triglyceride 179) and cannot tolerate statins because they cause severe, persistent, acute and chronic pain in the patient’s trapezius, sternocleidomastoid, levator scapulae, and deltoid muscles, as well as temporomandibular joint radiating into the skull and down the patient’s arms. While always experiencing generalized soreness and aches in neck, shoulders and arms, about once a year a bad thing happens: my friend experiences a generalized muscle spasm in one or more of these muscles that can last for days at a time. This last time the spasm lasted for every minute of 26 days and nights - which, apart from making the patient cranky, kept them from sleeping without serious meds - which, apart from creating a serious dependence on hydrocodone, made the patient psychotic from sleep deprivation – and which, apart from availing themselves of their health insurance, did nothing to relieve my friend’s dreadful pain.

Wait, maybe since my friend and I are not medical professionals and thus cannot possibly understand such big words it would be better for me to describe my friend’s neck pain using some comparisons to things regular people might understand. The muscle spasms were to a stiff neck as an ax buried 2 inches deep into the back of the neck at the base of the skull is to a gentle tap. Trying to relive the spasms by massage was like rubbing a bag of doorknobs, and as about as successful. The headache endured 24/7 was to a pressure headache as being kicked simultaneously and repeatedly behind each ear by two angry kangaroos is to a gentle breeze.

Finally, I will resort to a somewhat non-technical word that best summarizes the quality of health “care” that my friend has not received: compassionate.

Fortunately, during the past month while being shuffled on the merry-go-around of referral to no less than 7 specialists, up to and including psychiatrists who inquired about whether the patient was hearing voices, and while being denied the prescription muscle relaxants that have controlled this pain for 25 years, the muscle spasm finally subsided. While still experiencing some sleep disturbance related to weaning off the hydrocodone, my friend has regained the will to live.

Thanks for nothing, Kaiser Permanente.

Whiter Teeth for All

 The right use of leisure is no doubt a harder problem than the right use of our working hours. The soul is dyed the color of its leisure thoughts. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.


 -  William Ralph (Dean) Inge

One's soul may be dyed by one's thoughts, but the color of one's teeth is another story.

I recently had an amazing marketing inspiration for an innovative new sure-fire consumer product destined to make money for an adventurous investor. However, being a) lazy; b) capable of shame; and c) not interested in pursuing a career in the lucrative and rewarding field of lying to consumers to manufacture needs, I here generously share my product invention to pay it forward to  some other enthusiastic budding entrepreneur seeking the American dream of striking it rich without having to sell a kidney.

The product:  tooth-whitening dots. Not gel in trays, not whitening strips. Just tooth-sized adhesive dots coated with tooth-whitening chemicals.

The target market:  consumers who lack basic dental hygiene skills, those without premium dental insurance benefits; those who live in remote swamps without access to a dentist but with basic cable TV. My exhaustive imaginary in depth market research shows that a substantial subset of this demographic (mostly those who have yet to develop type II diabetes and/or those who have lost their prison dentures) have some semblance of self-esteem, and seek to preserve what remains of their looks by whitening their remaining tooth/teeth, but who are cost-conscious enough that they don’t want to spend the money for a product like a strip that would have to bridge gaps left by missing or hopelessly misaligned teeth, thus wasting a substantial portion of expensively bleach-impregnated product.

Marketing strategy: Simply advertise on a carefully chosen subset of reality TV shows. Most people who play recurring roles on reality programs that showcase the worst examples of American behavior  - from repossessing cars, to fishing with your fist, to celebrating the excesses of the hillbilly trailer trash lifestyle, have fewer than the typical 28-32 adult teeth the rest of us evolved with. Not only is the demographic who watches these shows ideally self-selected for the product, the badly behaved starring "celebrities" with missing teeth could endorse the product thus giving it even more cachet. By positioning this product in the market to whom these increasingly shameless reality shows pander - such as, the Real Housewives of Shady Cove Mobile Estates, or Championship Bum Fighters, or My Big Fat Jersey Swamp Redneck Shotgun Wedding - this idea can’t miss.

You can thank me later. 

So That Happened

“Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.”

Chuck Palahniuk

I've been feeling like crap lately.

If life is indeed a carnival, then currently I’m behind the tent where you throw ping-pong balls into goldfish bowls barfing up the cotton candy and chocolate covered bacon I ate earlier.

Being Afraid of the Dark

"For just as children tremble and fear all

In the viewless dark, so even we at times

Dread in the light so many things that be

No whit more fearsome than what children feign,

Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.

This terror then, this darkness of the mind,

Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,

Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,

But only Nature's aspect and her law."

 - Lucretius,  On the Nature of Things Book VI

I was never afraid of the dark. I especially love the twilight. When I was a child, I heard that the some native ceremonies that had to begin at precisely dawn would begin when the officiating person could distinguish a red item from a group of other dark colored items. Somewhere, I was also told that reason fire trucks were red is that red is the first color you can distinguish at dawn and the last you can identify as it gets dark. Even as a kid, I was never sure why this was important, as it seems to me you should be able to see the shape of a fire truck with flashing red lights and a blaring siren regardless of its color. My childhood suspicions about the red fire truck theory were borne out when, as an adult, I observed that some fire trucks are painted a particularly ugly acid green instead of red.

The validity of either of these factoids is questionable however, because I also clearly remember believing when my big brother told me that if I used the toilet when there was an un-flushed cigarette in the bowl, my bottom would turn yellow. Thankfully, my parents stopped smoking – or at least stopped using the toilet as an ashtray – before that happened.

Instead of fearing that there were monsters in my bedroom closet who would creep out after the lights went out, I worried instead about whether I’d be able to see a red fire truck if I was up late, or whether I would remember to check the toilet before using it. I do remember not liking to get a drink of water in the dark bathroom at night because there might be a spider hiding inside the glass. I still maintain that worrying about spiders in the drinking glass is more sensible than fearsome: and still rinse the glass out in the viewless dark before refilling it to get a drink of water.

These days, while I lie away in the sleepless dark I worry about different things.  The glittering arrows of morning don’t disperse my gloomy thoughts about unfinished chores, leftovers spoiling in the refrigerator, the litter box I should have changed yesterday, or my dentist appointment later this week. I suppose the essence of maturity is that we replace our childhood fears with equally scary but more practical stuff as we age. Or maybe we just learn that there is more to fear in the light than in the dark.

Throwing a Shutout

I was talkin’ to my girlfriend

I told her I was stressed

I said I’m going off the deep end

She said give it a rest

We’re all waiting in the dugout

Thinking we should pitch

How you gonna throw a shutout

If all you do is bitch

 - Todd Snider, I Can’t Complain

I’ve been sick. Last night I slept through the night for the first time in about 3 weeks. I feel much better today.

So, instead of bitching, this would be a good day for me to work on the quilt. 

Obliviousness Vs Incompetence

"He who knows best, best knows how little he knows."

 - Thomas Jefferson

I’ve been thinking of expanding my mission statement to encompass my dawning suspicion that vicissitudes of my life don’t so much fluctuate these days as they increasingly tend to swirl around and down like water in a flushing toilet. I’d also like to express my inarticulate rage against the hegemony of the normative discourse that persists in believing life should have a purpose. Tough challenge. Like un-homogenizing milk, or growing tomatoes.

Or like dealing with Medi-Cal.

The lovely people at Medi-Cal have sent me a NOTICE OF ACTION. These words in bold caps at the top of a page strike fear into my heart, particularly if I’m not even halfway through my first martini when I read them. While just about any office of the great state of California is run with the bureaucratic efficiency that makes IRS bureaucrats look like precision diamond cutters in Amsterdam, the people at Medi-Cal are exceeded in their incompetence only by the people at CalTrans.

The letter begins: “You told us you were moving/moved to Riverside County. Therefore, handling of your Medi-Cal case will be transferred to Riverside County…”

Yeah, no. It’s actually more likely that the Medi-Cal recipient to whom this NOTICE OF ACTION was addressed would have told Medi-Cal she had used her frequent flyer miles to purchase tickets to the moon and would be “moving/moved” once they recovered her suitcase that fell out of the rocket shuttle while delivering her to the spaceport, and that she planned to depart as soon as her size XXX adult undergarments were gathered up by baggage handlers.

If my frustration could be expressed in the form of a death ray, it would melt glass. If the Medi-Cal bureaucracy could be described as a geographic phenomenon, I would be standing at the intersection of several merging tectonic plates where obliviousness is being subducted by incompetence and binders full of revised policies no longer mitigate the damage.

So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’ll reply in writing on the remote chance that the Case Worker can read. I’m not too optimistic about this because the unsigned letter identifies the “Worker Name” as “L. Case Closed”.  Here’s my first draft.

NOTICE OF REACTION    

Dear Mr/Ms Case Closed,

Noooooo! I’m not moving to Riverside County!

While it’s probably true that somebody told you they were moving, please be assured it wasn’t me.

Here’s why:

      a)     I am unable to get up from the toilet without the help of a very strong nurse’s aid, so it’s 

            unlikely I could waddle all the way to Riverside;

      b)    Also, I’m not strong enough to break through the crust on my vanilla pudding, so picking 

           up a suitcase filled with just my prescription meds and some dryer lint is probably beyond me;

      c)    Also, I’m incapable of putting together a thought more complex than the design of a Popsicle 

           stick, let alone articulating it coherently.

      d)    And finally, I can’t remember which end of the bedside telephone to put to my ear so the 

           chances that I would be able to communicate anything more than “Hello? Hello? 

           There’s nobody there.” are about as likely as you figuring out who actually did tell you 

           they were moving to Riverside.

I respectfully request that you check your records to be sure it wasn’t your drunken whore of a mother who told you this while you were both smoking crack, that is, if you maintain actual records, and if you are ever sober enough to read them.

Fondest Regards,

Pissedoffy McTaxpayer on behalf of client M______

O – No.

It's a fast paced world; you can either be informed or have an opinion. We don't have time for both. —A Softer World

Now, I’m all for free speech and whatnot and I accept the fact that if people are free to speak they are perfectly likely to assert something breathtakingly ridiculous. But still. We have to do something about the epidemic of idiocy that is engulfing us all, even at the supermarket. 

The other day, I had to buy the current issue of O magazine. Don’t ask. I initially wanted to go to a different market than my regular one to minimize the likelihood that somebody I knew would see me buy the magazine. In the end, the law of least resistance won out and I went to the regular store down the hill. In my defense, I also needed obscure stuff that I know how to find in my familiar market.

So anyway. Looking for the particular article I wanted to read, I had to page through the entire magazine. Big mistake. Oprah has an organic vegetable garden. In Maui. And an expert stooge to run it for her and pose next to her while she stands in her field wearing $600 jeans and holding lettuce or something. She has some incredible advice for people interested in growing their own vegetables, presumably even those who can’t buy fertile land in Maui or hire a master gardener to plant and tend it.

Then, there are some apparently regular articles by Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and Suze Orman. All of them have some amazing self-help advice for people who couldn’t help themselves to move their hand from a hot stove without professional advice. This stuff is aimed at people whose lives are such a mess that they apparently couldn’t sort things out unless they listened to these pompous experts explain that their mommy was a drunk because they were a crybaby, or that their spouse’s gambling problem just might be the cause of the family’s financial insecurity.

Then there’s shit you simply have to buy, to read, to wear, to eat and to think. You simply have to, or you will remain mired in the stagnant meaningless muck of your own Oprahless life, condemned to wander around messing up your personal relationships, your finances, your complexion, your organic vegetable garden, and your spouse’s gambling problem.

I’m not a complete cynic. I’m all for feeling good about myself  -  even for having a lifestyle if I can’t manage to have an actual life. Who could argue with improving their wellbeing and intellect, and growing as a person and shit? But Christ, there are some things I can actually figure out for myself without paging through shiny magazines with bright pictures of beautiful people and advice about coping and inspiring stories and sage advice about more stuff I should buy to assure my own happiness and fulfillment.

I have to admit though, that I did learn something valuable from this experience. Like for starters, not to buy this narcissistic woman’s vanity magazine ever again. I’d rather be lost in the wilderness of my own devising than trampled in the herd of sheep blindly following her and her self-proclaimed experts with life-changing advice and opinions.