A Ride on the Wild Side with Michael Lewis Stevenson & Dee-Dee

I live in the wealthiest county in the United States.  If you look at current events you can believe that there are people in this world that are much worse…

I live in the wealthiest county in the United States.  If you look at current events you can believe that there are people in this world that are much worse off than you are.  But here in the wealthiest county?  Sure, I can intellectually understand that we have food pantries here that serve hundreds of people, but that’s nothing compared to South Sudan where the GDP per capita in 2018 is $246.  But it’s an eye-opener when you actually meet one of those people sitting along the side of the road.

When is the last time you passed a hitchhiker along the road?  It’s been a long time for me.  I don’t see them very often anymore.  I went out to do some errands and as I pulled out onto Route 50, there was a hitchhiker leaning on the end of the guardrail.  He looked like someone that might have an interesting story to tell, but I kept driving.  After running my errands I headed home and as I was preparing to make the turn off 50 I noticed, the hitchhiker was still there!  I decided to stop and chat with him.

He got up and headed towards me as soon as he saw me stop.  He introduced himself as 30 year old Michael Lewis Stevenson.  He said he was the descendent of “that famous author…you know who, right?”  He told me that he was on his way to Tacoma to live with his sister as his dog of three weeks (Dee-Dee) licked my calves.  His sister needed someone to help her pay the rent.  I have to admit the guy looked like he would appreciate some help, but I was at a loss at what I could do that wouldn’t enable whatever it was that didn’t need to be enabled.

I took a deep breath and told him that I was retired and had some extra time so I could drive him the 40 miles to the intersection of Route 50 and I-81.  He thanked me; that was 40 miles he wouldn’t have to walk.  He said he walks about 20 miles a day.  According to Google it’s a 2,704 mile, 892 hour walk to Tacoma.

We loaded his gear into the back of the truck.  Even though he assured me he was a very clean person (he had just done his wash yesterday) I insisted that he sit on a towel instead of on my upholstery.  He was cool with that.  Maybe that was waste of time.  He told me that he had been staying with this great guy who loved to feed him and had lots of weed, but he couldn’t stay because the place was so filthy.  The guy had three cats that were flea and tick infested.  Besides that “you know that cats release neurotoxins through their fur and feces that make you more attracted to them.”  I told him that I was not aware of that.  He told me that it makes rats less afraid of cats and cause them to be easier prey.  Basically cats are evil controlling animals and he would never touch one.  This was the first indication that this drive wasn’t going to a mundane one.

In case you don’t know, or forgot, cats don’t release neurotoxins.  Instead it’s toxoplasma gondii, an “obligate intracellular parasitic one-celled eukaryote,” in their feces that causes toxoplasmosis.  This is why pregnant women aren’t supposed to touch kitty litter.  It has recently been associated with the loss of brain grey matter, schizophrenia, personality changes, among other things.

Then there’s that fur.  In fact stroking a cat causes both humans and cats to produce oxytocin, a peptide hormone and neuropeptide.  It’s known as the love hormone because of the effect it has on prosocial behaviors, facilitating trust and attachment.  It also modulates fear and anxiety.  Staring into your dog’s eyes has the same affect.  Maybe if you were schizophrenic you could interpret this as a control mechanism.

As we headed out I thought I’d ask a clever leading question: “Where do you live?”  I received an answer I expected.  “I really don’t live anywhere.”  “So you homeless then?” I asked.  “No I’m in transit,” he said.  He told me that he was coming from his mom’s in Knoxville, Tennessee where his kids were.  His mom has custody of the kids.  Whenever he’s around though, they don’t respect her so she buys him a bus ticket and tells him to leave. 

Yes, he’d been married.  It had ended in with something close to a nuclear implosion.  He came home one day to find his wife nursing their son with a needle full of heroin in her hand  She told him she was so good she could stick a vein the first time even while breastfeeding.  That was it!  He said that because of this their son is now a “retard,” and she knew better!  That’s why his mom has custody of the children.  His wife did attempt to get alimony and child support from him.  According to him she cut off some of his hair for a paternity test, which to everyone’s surprise showed he wasn’t the father of his children.  He smiled as he told me that was because he is a chimera.  He didn’t find out he was chimeric until later when he was in prison where they took multiple DNA samples.

He said the court found neither him nor his ex-wife fit as parents, so his mom got custody.  He said he was forthright in his testimony and admitted that he was part of the problem.  He said it was his fault that his wife was using heroin.  I suggested that unless he forcefully injected heroin into her, it was really her choice not his.  He disagreed.  He told me that she turned to the drug after he had a psychotic episode where he thought she was a witch and preparing to kill him.  So he tied her up and dumped her in the desert.  Things went downhill from there.  Because of this, according to him, his wife asked relatives of hers who are members of Hells Angels to kill him.  According to him they tried; eight bikers took him out to the desert and “beat the hell” out of him…but he fought them off.  He waved a hand across his face and said that this is why his face is full of platinum.

Wait!  A psychotic episode?  “Yes,” he admitted, he’s schizophrenic.  Clearly he’s not covered by any medical insurance, so I had to ask him how he manages it.  He lifted a 32 oz. bottle of Powerade that he’s been holding this whole time.  Powerade?  No, of course not, it’s Four Loko.  He transfers it to the Powerade bottle so he doesn’t draw attention.  I was a bit skeptical about the efficacy of alcohol, but I’m also ignorant.  When I got home I learned that many schizophrenics use alcohol to control the unusual sounds, sights, smells and other tricks their minds play on them throughout the day; however alcohol “…tends to make hallucinations more pronounced and makes behavior a little harder to control.”

He told me that he’s also diabetic.  In fact when he has a hard time quieting those voices and images in his brain he commonly eats a couple bags of gummi bears to induce a diabetic coma allowing him to get some rest.  Interestingly it turns out that schizophrenics have two to three times the probability of being diabetic than the “average person”—whatever an average person is.

I asked him if he uses drugs.  He told me no, but he used to with his ex-wife.   Then he changed his mind and said, “maybe weed every once in a while; nothing hard.”

While I was still digesting all this, he asked me if I would mind if he charged his phone using one of my USB ports.  “Of course, go ahead.”  I asked him how he keeps a smartphone.  Is it a prepaid?  No, his mom pays the monthly fees, but when it gets stolen he has to pay for the replacement.  The phone is an essential part of his life for the GPS and maps that he uses to figure out where he is and where he has to go as well as keeping contacts for places to stay.  Since charging the phone is a bit of a logistical problem, it’s turned off except when he needs to use it.

As we passed through Middleburg (wow, all the women here are beautiful!) he gave me a disjointed narrative of his wanderings over the last year or so.  He started when he was in Monterrey, Mexico as a street performer.  He told me that he swung fireballs around on the ends of chains, but more impressive was the guy who blew fireballs out of his mouth.  They used to get pumped before performances by smoking a few tokes laced with crack.  “Man, that made us great performers!”

How did he get across the border?  He didn’t have a passport or passport card, only a South Carolina police ID.  He told me he just walked across the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge into Laredo, Texas.  He didn’t need any ID.  He turned to me and asked me to look at him.  “No one would confuse me for anything but pure American.”

From Mexico he moved onto Tampa where he was imprisoned for assault.  He spit on someone that had insulted him.  He thought that a felony charge for spitting on someone was a bit harsh; after all they do it all the time in Mexico.  He said that he used to get into a couple of fights a week when he was clean cut, but now that he has dreadlocks and an updated sartorial appearance he averages only two fights a month.  He also told me that he can take care of himself because he works out.  He usually does a 100 push-ups, a 100 squats, a 100 sit-ups, and runs three miles in 15 minutes when he’s staying in a house.  When he’s on the street he walks 20 miles a day only sleeping under streetlights and security cameras.

The poster child of the Rainbow Family

From Tampa he moved onto the 2018 The Rainbow Family of Living Light gathering in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest where he says he became the posterchild for the Rainbow Family, much to the envy of the “family earlies.”  I wasn’t familiar with the Rainbow Family so he told me that it was a group that met annually to practice for disasters.  They build a town in the middle of nowhere and celebrate living with nature.  He told me this was primarily motivated by believe in the Hopi Indian prophesy that at the end times the dead souls of the first people would come back and enter the bodies of the living of all colors and teach the world how to love and revere mother earth.

He told me that one night while there, he and a girl took two tabs of acid.  Much to his amusement she thought she was a spider and ran into the woods carrying her pet ferret and $1,000 of weed butting her into tree trunks.  He told me that when they shined a light on her she froze, just like a spider.  When they took the lights off her, she ran off again into the woods running into trees.

He sighed.  He wasn’t looking forward to the trip across the country.  He said the cops on the east coast are pretty chill, but once he gets over the Appalachians he is going to be arbitrarily harassed and arrested by the police.  They’ll throw him in jail without a breathalyzer or blood test!  He admits that for some reason he always flunks the test for THC.  I eye his Powerade bottle.  And then…when they release him from jail they don’t return his money, they issue a “non-extraditable warrant” against him, and tell him he has three days to get out of the county or he’s going to prison.

I look at him and I tell him that if I were a cop and I saw a person in tattered clothing, with dreadlocks, no teeth, and carrying a backpack I’d probably stop and check him out.  His looks and demeanor invite police attention.  He agreed but thought that was unfair.  He did tell me that he didn’t lose his teeth to drugs; it was his grandmother’s fault.  She took doxycycline before they knew it rotted out the teeth of all descendants in the following two generations.  He said his teeth were rotten by the time he was 12.  He proudly told me that he had all 28 teeth pulled at the same time without Novocain.

Luckily I survived the experience to drop him off in Winchester.  But wait, he said, “could you drop me off at a gas station?  Ah yes, his Powerade was a bit low.  So I made a U-turn and dropped him off at the Exxon station.  After we unloaded all his gear he said while looking at my USMC license plates, “Thanks for your service protecting my right to live the way I want.”

Thanks for your service protecting my right to live the way I want.
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What I Learned this Summer—Arctic Circle Road Trip Edition

I’m writing this down before I forgot I wrote it down.  If you look at my posts, you’ll notice I’ve been off-line for a while.  That’s because I spent a…

I’m writing this down before I forgot I wrote it down.  If you look at my posts, you’ll notice I’ve been off-line for a while.  That’s because I spent a little over a month undergoing treatment for my cancer followed by an equally long road trip to the Arctic Circle and back.  If you read the title you know we’re going over the trip north, not to the hospital.

I already knew that the people between the Appalachian and Sierra Nevada/Cascade Mountains aren’t the same as those that live on the coasts. No learning there—those who can’t see the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans tend to be friendlier; own more stuff made in the US, and don’t jog or bike as much (you can infer what you want from that).  I did learn that the people on the upper peninsula of Michigan don’t consider themselves the same as those who live in the mitten.  Yoopers, as they call themselves are the type of people you would expect to find in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and those places where a vehicle isn’t a vehicle unless it has a gun rack.

Yooper Snowplow in Ishpeming, Michigan
Plumbing Band based in Ishpeming, Michigan

I had never been to Glacier National Park, but much to my disappointment it’s like almost every other national park—overcrowded.  We started out early in the morning from the eastern end of the Going to the Sun Road and by the time we got to Logan Pass, every pullover was full.  Even the parking lot at the Logan Pass Lodge was closed.  The only time to really see out national parks is when school is in session.

Washing the truck under the Weeping Wall in an ad hoc parking spot in Glacier National Park
The view of Bird Woman falls from the Weeping Wall “parking spot”

Now I’ve been through Canada before, but not most of what we visited on this trip.  The most important rule of survival above 54˚ latitude is: if you see a place for a gas fill up, even if it’s a conex box and cost $6.20/gallon.  We did have the recommended additional equipment: two containers with gas, a full sized spare, a windshield repair kit, containers of water, extra windshield wiper fluid.  The only of this we had to use, was the windshield repair kit.

Who’s to complain? It’s only $4.91/gal US in Tetsa River Lodge, British Columbia

In Canada here are tons of pull offs with bear-proof trash cans.  About 25% of those have outhouses that for some reason don’t stink.  Not only is there plenty of camping (unmanned—you’re on your own), but apparently you can pull over and camp anywhere there are no signs prohibiting overnight stopping.  I only saw one place where overnight stopping was no allowed.  Clearly this is to give all those bicyclists we passed who were 80km from any structure permanently inhabited by humans a place to stop for the night.

Then there are the forest fires!  There was smoke in the air pretty much from when we left the western side of Glacier National Park until we got about 100 miles into Alaska.  Coming back again there was smoke in the air starting about 100 miles from Yukon Territories until Wyoming.  The fires were said to be the result of global warming allowing the mountain pine beetles and spruce beetle to move further north with a longer season to breed and spread.  Then there’s the drought and higher than average temperatures.

Just another fire along the road to Bell II, British Columbia
Sunset from our lodge on François Lake, British Columbia
Night view from our lodge on François Lake, British Columbia

Speaking of heat…people in Northern British Columbia and Albert north generally don’t have air conditions.  We stopped for the night in Watson Lake, Yukon Territories and were given the option of not accepting the rooms.  Due to the heat wave the rooms were 90˚F and only had one tiny window, which did open; but no air conditioning.  We took them because everyone in town was in the same boat.  I was tempted to go outside and sleep on a picnic table—it got down to 52˚F outside that night.  Buildings up there are built to hold out the -40˚F winters, not +90˚F summers.  We were provided with fans, so I slept in the very warm but bug-free room.

Just in case you were wondering, other than on the mountain tops, there was no snow inside the Arctic Circle.

Looking across the tundra to Finger Mountain, Yukon-Koyukuk, Alaska
Fungal forest in the arctic, Yukon-Koyukuk, Alaska

Then there was the drive home—when we hit Nebraska we were looking for a Tardis.  ¿What we still had Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland to drive through?  We were sure glad to be home after the 12,000 mile drive that cost $2,500 in fuel alone.  We did meet some others doing sort of the same thing in RVs and they spend over $7,000 in fuel for a similar trip.  They also complained that campgrounds are now where people go who do things you can’t do in hotels; like smoking and getting stinking drunk singing along with their howling dogs.

So what did I really learn this summer?  I learned that I don’t need to do that again unless we stretched the trip out to 90 or more days…and there’s no way I would use an RV.  Finally if you’re going to drive in Montana on roads other than I-90, you need to learn to drive with your wrist on the top of the steering wheel so you can wave back to everyone.

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#Twitter?

This is truly an indication that I’m becoming my parents.  I don’t get Twitter.  It seems to me that people use it for the same reason people buy People, InStyle,…

This is truly an indication that I’m becoming my parents.  I don’t get Twitter.  It seems to me that people use it for the same reason people buy People, InStyle, Us Weekly, etc., which I don’t get either.  Why are people so interested in the foibles of celebrities?  Why do people follow other people on Twitter, especially those they should expect will never follow them?  It seems to me that Twitter is a place to match people with self-image and confidence issues together.

I decided that I’d see what “experts” say about this.  Those that dealt with why people are fascinated with others’ lives  was summarized by Medical Daily as follows:

  1. Gossip affects the brain.  Chinese researchers asked students how each bit of gossip made them feel once they were done. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the students admitted they preferred to hear positive gossip about themselves and negative gossip about their friends and celebrities. However, while they claimed they had no preference over who they heard negative gossip about, scans of their brain activity showed otherwise.  Among these participants, the caudate nucleus — a brain region associated with pleasure and reward — showed “moderately strong” activity when the students were told negative celebrity gossip, an increase in activity when compared to hearing negative peer gossip. What’s more, brain scans also showed activity in regions associated with self-control when the participants heard celebrity gossip.
  2. People like bad news.  While celebrity bad news may be our favorite, humans are actually quite eager to read about any type of misfortune. A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for People found American news preferences have remained “surprisingly static” over the last 20 years, with war and terrorism being the subjects of the most popular headlines since the study began in 1986. News on bad weather and crime were also notably popular throughout the decades. This propensity for bad news spans the global population. A 2003 study on word association showed that people respond quicker to negative words, such as “cancer,” “bomb,” and “war,” than they would more positive words, such as “smile” and “fun.” This suggests a natural inclination toward the macabre, and news outlets know it — hence the popular journalism phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Our inclination toward bad news is also sometimes termed “negative bias.” We all possess it to some degree, and it’s actually helpful, as it’s a possible side effect of the fight-or-flight response. According to The BBC, bad news acts as a threat, signaling that we need to change our behavior in order to avoid danger. In other words, we love to see what mistakes celebrities are making in their personal lives, so we can then avoid making those same mistakes in our own lives.
  3. It provides an escape from daily routines.  Gossip does more than satisfy an innate human instinct, however — it actually brings us true enjoyment. For some people, learning about the secret lives of people, what happens behind the scenes is a way to escape from their daily routine. The juicier the news, the better.

Stuart Fischer, an emeritus professor of media psychology at the University of UCLA, says preoccupation with the lives of others isn’t exactly unhealthy. In some cases, he says, it can actually be beneficial to our psychology. People who lack social skills, for example, can use gossip as a base to bond with others with the same interests.

On Twitter use in general, Owens Thomas summarized:

The Times of London asked experts about the Twitter phenomenon, and concluded that people use the Internet message-broadcasting service to send 140-character “tweets” relating their most mundane activities because of an underdeveloped sense of the self.

The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”

“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognize you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”

For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”

Politico checked in on the service’s use in the nation’s capital, and found that the vainglorious pundits and lawmakers who crave attention in print and on TV have also flocked to Twitter. The media at large, a class of people who define themselves by the size of their audience, have turned themselves into the Twitterati, building up lists of “followers” as a reassurance that they have an importance that will outlast their dying employers.

But the narcissism of today’s over-communicators transcends one little startup, and goes far beyond the makers of media. The Washington Post profiled Julie Zingeser, a 15-year-old girl who sent and received 6,473 texts in a single month. Her mother worries about Julie’s ability to focus. Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor, worries about deeper issues.

Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wonders whether texting and similar technologies might affect the ability to be alone and whether feelings are no longer feelings unless they are shared. “It’s so seductive,” she said. “It meets some very deep need to always be connected, but then it turns out that always being trivially connected has a lot of problems that come with it.”

What do you think this about the emerging governance via Twitter?

So there!  Though I signed up for Twitter years ago I have never used it and see no need to use it.  Talk about self-esteem!

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Who reads the wall Street Journal?

Do you?  I do—I subscribe.  I also subscribe to the wickedly liberal Washington Post.  I don’t watch the news on TV or the internet because it’s all about selling ideas…

Do you?  I do—I subscribe.  I also subscribe to the wickedly liberal Washington Post.  I don’t watch the news on TV or the internet because it’s all about selling ideas and products viscerally.  Reading news allows one to take a mental break and think about things.

Anyway, yes, the Wall Street Journal is a bit conservative but clearly not foaming at the mouth alt-right, or even Fox News.  At least unlike the Washington Post it doesn’t put editorials on the front page thinly disguised as humanitarian news.  For the most part it keeps its editorial comments and opinions on the editorial page as things were originally intended in journalism.

It’s Friday and today’s WSJ includes the “Mansion” section.  I assume this says something about who they think is reading their paper.  The article on the top of the fold of the first page is “The Top 10 Upgrades to Sell Your Home for Top Dollar.”  Cool!  When my wife retires and we move to some less fast paced place, here’s what we need to do.  So what are those 10 things?  Take a look:

  1. Retractable Glass Walls.  I think there’s no need to comment on this upgrade
  2. High Ceilings.  This is an upgrade?  How do raise ceilings without effecting what’s above them?
  3. Quartzite Countertops.  Hey we already have this!
  4. Butler’s Pantry.  Say what?  This is supposed to include an extra dishwasher and an extra wine cellar.
  5. Spa Bathrooms.  Make sure you add the Toto Neorest dual-flush model, which has a heated seat, multiple wash modes and an automatic air-purifying system. Retail price: $10,200.  Wwe do have a dual flush commode.
  6. Smart-Home Systems.  I’m a bit leery of this after Stuxnet.  Whoever buys our house can see our neighbor’s thermostat and the network it’s on.  Does that count?
  7. Four-Car Garage.  We just traded in and got a new car so that we now own the same number vehicles as we have drivers; that’s not four.
  8. Barn, Carriage House or In-Law Apartment.  Where we live we need a lot more land than we have for another building on our lot.
  9. Generator.  We have a whole house UPS, does that count?  Why?  It’s a long story.
  10. Neutral Décor.  This is not possible with my wife in charge of the interior—and there’s no way I want to be in charge.

Based upon that I feel that I’m probably not part of the WSJ’s target demographics.   Though I have to admit that according to various sources our family would be part of those who own the U.S  east of Minnesota and north of South Carolina.  On the other hand “What Percent Are You?” says our family is a “4 percenter.”

Can one infer that the WSJ is aimed at those who are in the 5% wealthiest people in the U.S.?  Maybe.  Though they present a case that the income (not net worth) is more equally distributed than is claimed, even by the U.S. census Bureau.  They say in “The Myth of American Inequality” that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) using data from the Census Bureau gives the U.S a skewed Gini coefficient because it doesn’t include the $760B from the Feds and $520B from state and local governments give to the bottom 40% through entitlement programs.  If these were included in the statistics then the U.S would move from the worse of the world’s most-developed large countries to the middle of the pack; between Japan and Canada.

I’m not sure what to make of that.

Ironically in today’s WSJ there’s, “Wall Street’s Big Landlords Are So Hungry for Houses They’re Building Them.”  First off, you can correctly infer that the word “landlords” means that these house are for rent, not for purchase.  Why?  The reason is “these companies are racing to meet demand for rental homes from a wave of young families too saddled with student debt to buy, as well as from investors wagering that the suburban renter class that swelled after last decade’s housing crash is here to stay.”  What does this seem to say about the future of our wealth distribution?

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CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW????? I’M SCREAMING AT YOU!!!!

  Tomorrow is Election Day for the 2018 mid-terms. THANK GOODNESS!  I’m really tired of all TV, internet, and mailings screaming at me.  This seems to be quite a bit…

 

Tomorrow is Election Day for the 2018 mid-terms. THANK GOODNESS!  I’m really tired of all TV, internet, and mailings screaming at me.  This seems to be quite a bit different than past.  It’s more about what wrong with my opponent than what’s right with me.  Here in Virginia’s 10th District it’s a screaming contest between Barbara Comstock and Jennifer Wexton.  About two weeks ago we started getting a hard-card from each of the candidates in the mail daily.  At the end of last week that had risen to two hard-cards per candidate.  Today we got three from each candidate.  No wonder this is the most expensive election in the history of our nation.  It’s interesting that to date we haven’t received any phone calls, on our landline and cell phones, or text messages from either.

 

I’m seriously considering blindfolding myself and have my son lead me into the polling place so I don’t have to see all that crap.  Hopefully we end up with a more functional government than we currently have.

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Speaking of palindromes

  The last Sunday I when kayaking with a bunch of other guys geocaching.  We were after the “Release the Kraken” series along the Patuxent River.  We were doomed.  The…

 

The last Sunday I when kayaking with a bunch of other guys geocaching.  We were after the “Release the Kraken” series along the Patuxent River.  We were doomed.  The river was racing towards the Chesapeake Bay at about ±15 mph and the water was high enough that not only was there no embankments, but the floating dock was almost as high up on the piering as it could go..  At the launch site the river was about 100’ across and the river was full of stumps and fallen trees.  As a group most of us thought that would make it breeze heading downstream (though I was the only one with a fully developed frontal lobe, I bent to peer pressure).  ¡NOT!

 

We not only discovered that like the word kayak (a palindrome) works fine both ways.  Also like the word ʞɐʎɐʞ, kayaks don’t do well ndsıpǝ pʍou.  Sixty percent of our team, including me, got a taste of the muddy river.  Just as aside, at eight pounds a gallon (not including the dirt), do you know how much a kayak weight when it’s full of water?  All I know is that it’s very heavy.

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Did I Waste My Memory?

At my age most of my new memories are spent storing habits such as if my keys aren’t in my pocket, they have to be in the entrance way table. …

At my age most of my new memories are spent storing habits such as if my keys aren’t in my pocket, they have to be in the entrance way table.  If not, they’ve ceased to exist; at least in this universe.  So if learning includes retention, I stopped learning a long time ago—I don’t even remember my own shoe size let alone my wife’s dress size.  But looking back to the kind of learning we did in school I wonder if it’s really relevant to a productive life?  When was the last time you drew upon that all that pithy knowledge you learned from Beowulf, Madame Bovary, or Pride and Prejudice?  Thank heavens for Cliff Notes!  Does anyone remember the last time you had to use a cotangent?    There are lots of cells in my brain wasted on stuff like cotangents.  And you can forget Euler’s law which explains the simple relationship between sine and cosine using e, transcendental and imaginary numbers?  In case you forget: einx = cos nx + i sin nx.  Finally how many times have you avoided repeating a mistake because you studied history?  As Stephan Hawking said, “We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.”

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The Big C and Me

  According to my doctor one medical rule of thumb is:  In your 50’s you have a heart attack; in your 60’s you have cancer; in your 70’s you have…

 

According to my doctor one medical rule of thumb is:  In your 50’s you have a heart attack; in your 60’s you have cancer; in your 70’s you have stroke; and in your 80’s you fall, break a leg, and die in the hospital of pneumonia.  Somehow I had managed to skip the heart attack and had a stroke in my 50’s instead.  I’ve been collecting cancers since my 30’s and managed to lick them.  But that luck came to end in my 60’s.  I have acquired lymphoma as a result of my service in the Marines.  I’ve been living with it for about five years now, but it’s now time to begin treatment.

 

Last Tuesday I received my first rituximab infusion.  After receiving my prep cocktail of meds, my nurse went to get the rituximab and came back carrying it at arm’s length in front of him.  He was wearing a full-body onesie with headgear that was seriously sci-fi looking.  The bag he was carrying had a big biohazard symbol on it.

 

¿What the heck?  Was this serious or maybe just part of the hazing process?  None of the other people here were wearing any protective gear.  If he dropped the bag and it burst did mean everyone there except him would become zombized or die an agonizing antibody death as all their CD20 protein bearing cells were whoop-assed upon?  The short explanation is that all monoclonal antibody drugs can be reproductive toxic, so if any gets into your bloodstream (like mine) you could have children with three eyes or maybe even—common sense!  Since I’ve been neutered that wasn’t happening here.  If I hadn’t I would need to refrain from baby making for a year after taking the drug.

 

Everything was going fine until the beginning of the second hour (it’s a six hour infusion) when they bumped the rate up to 150 ml/hr.  Almost immediately I began shaking so much I couldn’t talk and they couldn’t get my vitals.  So I got a push of steroids and another of dilaudid.  Until then I didn’t know that an injection into your IV is called a push—I’ve received a lot of those.

 

After about 20 minutes I returned to “normal” and they restarted treatment about another 40 minutes later.  I completed the treatment without any further reactions.  That evening I felt great.  But that was short lived.  On Wednesday I started feeling dizzy, lightheaded, and breathless.  Those are “see your doctor” side effects of the drug.  So off I went to the ER and was admitted.

 

It wasn’t clear whether it was side effects of the drug or something else.  My liver enzymes were extremely high (ALT was 149, normal is 0-55; AST was 243, normal is 5-34), plus my platelets were 14 (normal is 140-400).  Beside that I was flipping in and out of afib.  None of that was good, though a short term drop in platelets is a common side effect of the rituximab, elevated liver enzymes is rare but possible.  On the other hand my white blood cell count had dropped down into the “sweet zone” as my doctor called it.

 

It’s interesting watching the interaction between the specialists and the hospitalist who was in charge of my case.  The hospitalist’s first priority was to determine whether I had had a stroke; not whether this a symptom of my treatment.  I was given NIH Stroke Test (see below…what’s happening in picture 1, what are the objects in picture 2, and read aloud the sentences and words in picture 3) every four hours as part when my vitals were collected.  After a while I had all the cards memorized.  I had every kind of scan of my brain and neck, and as the joke goes they found nothing.  I had sonograms of my liver, an echocardiogram, multiple EKGs, along with the usual chest x-rays, etc.  It’s interesting that even though I was on a heart monitor the whole time, they had to attach different leads for the EKGs.  As furry as I am, I now look like I have the mange.

 

What's happening in the first picture; name the items in the second; and read aloud the third

 

 

And another thing, my bed was alarmed!  I was stuck on this 7’×4’ rectangle of memory foam.  Even if I sat on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor an alarm would go off.  That meant someone had to come and unalarm the bed every time I had to use the bathroom.  Eventually they got tired of that and gave me one of those disposal urinals.  It takes real skill to use one of those keeping all your body parts on the bed without causing a mess.  Try it sometime.

 

I was eventually released Friday when it was determined I hadn’t had a stroke and that probably my problems were a result of my infusion.  At discharge, my ALT was down to 93, my AST 97, and my platelets had roared up to 17—a high for the week!  My next treatment, which was to be this Tuesday, has been cancelled.  I’m not sure why after all, “rituximab administration can result in serious, including fatal infusion reactions. Deaths within 24 hours of rituximab infusion have occurred. Approximately 80% of fatal infusion reactions occurred in association with the first infusion.”  That seems to mean the odds are with me, right?

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Just a Couple of Days—a wishful personal literary standard; Installment II

In the continuing series things I wish I could make up here’s some more I wish I had done.  These are from Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito. …

In the continuing series things I wish I could make up here’s some more I wish I had done.  These are from Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito.  Obviously I have different tastes than others.  Maybe you’re one of those, briefquotes.com has what they think are the top five quotes—none of them are ones I chose.

“ Well , progress . Progress ! Progress toward what ? What’s our goal ? When do we get to dust off our hands and say , ‘ Okay , done . That’ll do for now . Let’s kick back , pass a pipe , celebrate , and get down to living our lives the way they were intended to be lived ? ’ What’s progress if we can’t define the goddamn goal ?

 

The rat race is on a treadmill, and the axle’s about to bust. Would you run a race if you didn’t know how long it would be?

 

The elevator hummed an unexciting tune, monotonous and dull, like a chorus of monks meditating upon a hissing teakettle.

 

His pulmonary capacity could have blown a brick pighouse down.

 

She is simply the essence of synthetic phoniness, like a woodgrain shower curtain…

 

…pockets of panic were popping up like pimples during puberty.

 

People were freaking out like cats running from a vacuum cleaner,

 

… slower than an injured turtle in line at the post office during December.

 

Inevitably, panic was stinging my perception like a jellyfish congratulating a tourist.

 

It was quicker than the wink of a cheetah running full speed down a moving walkway at an airport, and after it had gone, it left not a breeze to hint at its passing.

 

So, ignoring the lessons of Scooby – Doo, we split up.

 

She is so fake that it seems like she is pretending to be an actress rehearsing for a role as an impostor.

 

… in a reunion embrace that would put a lump in the throat of a macho giraffe.

 

…the look of nonsense twinkling in her eye like an octopus dancing with a pair of polyester slacks in front of a fun house mirror.

 

After all, a parched man will chew another’s dirty toenails for less than a drop of contaminated water.

 

Sweetlicks: Isn’t there a commandment somewhere that says, “ Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain? ”  Rosehips:  “Yes, but there are no forbidden words. I know you’re a little funnier in the head than I am, but what do you think that commandment means? The name of the Judeo – Christian Ultimate Source is Yahweh. It is a form of the Hebrew verb to be. God is, and thou shalt not take the Is – ness in vain.”

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PALINDROME—a wishful personal literary standard; Installment I

  I have been encouraged to write an autobiography of my life since I can tell such good stories—and they’re true.  But I have a problem; everything I do is…

 

I have been encouraged to write an autobiography of my life since I can tell such good stories—and they’re true.  But I have a problem; everything I do is done ad hoc.  I can’t even remember any jokes I’ve heard except those that concern chickens and roads, or knocking on doors.  I can make stuff on the spot, but there’s no way I can do it in a planned way.  Below are quotes from PALINDROME: A LAMB AND LAVAGNINO MYSTERY (LAMB & LAVAGNINO), by E. Z. Rinsky that I collected and I wish I could come up with stuff myself.  It should give you an idea of how my hyperbolic, but true stories sound.

 

“…only to chew thoughtfully, desperately, on the end of the pen, like it’s leaking some vitamin she’s deficient in.”

 

“…her voice firming up like tofu in the fryer.”

 

“…but in truth it’s really only notable for its complete lack of distinguishing characteristics.”

 

“I’ve never bought any of that feng shui bullshit, but if it’s possible to convey bad vibes through interior space, this house has nailed it.”

 

“Of course, maybe you wouldn’t be sure if you’re hallucinating or not. Sorta like asking if you’ve ever been crazy.”

 

“Feels like my body has become something external to me, simply a burden that I must drag along with my consciousness.”

 

“My nose is running from a healthy combination of cold, general malaise, ten days of substituting heavy drinking for sleep, and inhuman stress levels.”

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