Hell Today

In honor of the coronation of the Lord Of The Lies today, I bring this gift of music:

Link to song

Fits, no?

Personal vs. political.

I'm not sure what I want to do with this blog yet. I'd planned on writing only about political events, of which our horrid Iraq invasion dominates over everything else, but sometimes personal events become the focus of one's life. So here you go.

I drove down to San Diego last night because Leina was in the emergency room again for the second time within a week. She's going to have her gallbladder taken out, but in the meantime the gallstone pain has become extremely bad, and she was hoping to be admitted for surgery last night. There are, however, no surgeons available until early next week, so she's still going to have to wait a few days. So we're back to waiting.

After this ER visit and one several months ago at Olive View, my observation of emergency rooms, for those of you who watch "ER" and might be curious as to what it's like in real life, is that patients in real life are treated with much more respect and attention than is shown on TV. The ER nurses are incredibly intelligent and attentive, and even doctors, who from my life experience in general are most adept at listening to the sound of their own voices, do take a few extra minutes in the ER to listen to a patient and answer questions.

A few months ago, I was impressed, even awed, at the skill of the doctor or psychiatric nurse -- I'm not sure which because we were separated by hanging curtains between ER beds and I never saw either party -- at Olive View Medical Center who lightened -- no -- lessened, dimished, relieved, alleviated -- the fear of a patient who had checked into the hospital trying to "detox" from alcohol addiction. I was sitting about four feet away during the conversation, and I wish I could give you what I heard verbatim, because I was awestruck at the empathy, understanding, and competence of the nurse/doctor, and I thought, if I ever had to go through any kind of scary experience in an emergency room, I would wish to have someone like this nurse/doctor at my side to allay my fears.

Unlike "ER," patients in real-life emergency rooms are not dismissed as body parts.

Like "ER," the doctors talk too much. All doctors talk too much. They need to learn to listen. Perhaps all doctors-in-training should serve a few months in the Olive View emergency room to learn the art of listening.

I am not a prolific writer.

I am not even that big a talker.

So you should know that the impetus to my starting this blog was that of John McMullen starting *his* blog, and my little copycat self padding softly and stealthily behind in his footsteps.

John Mac has a huge amount of common sense, a respectable amount of "street" smarts, and so many years of computer knowledge that he has had to escape many times from kidnappers seeking his genetic lines for the latest generation of Mentats*.

He always has something interesting to say, and your life will be diminished by not hearing his thoughts.

So go here, and come back and say hello to me after you have spent 500 years following all the ideas you found on John Mac's blog.

[*] Heheh, I just read "Dune" for the first time :)

On Zephyr Teachout's comments, here's the bit that bothers me:

On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean.

Is she implying that Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong would have otherwise said mean, nasty things about Howard Dean? That's highly unlikely. Ms. Teachout should consider the impact of her words more carefully before sharing her thoughts with the world -- unless, of course, she is herself being paid by Karl Rove, in which case she's doing a bang-up job of creating dissension among Democrats.

As far as consulting -- Is someone paid as a "consultant" for the purpose of influencing what that person (Moulitsas or Armstrong) says, or for the purpose of asking that person for his or her best ideas to help create a winning campaign, including constructive criticism? As I understand the word "consulting," and as both bloggers themselves have described, it was the latter: they were paid to continue with what they were already doing, which was writing about Dean and other candidates, and sharing their ideas with the Dean campaign on how the candidate could best present himself and his ideas. In other words, they were hired to give advice and assistance directed towards the Dean campaign, and not to serve, as in the case of Armstrong Williams, as hired mouthpieces for statements directed at their audiences.

If anything is learned from this minor but interesting mini-scandal, it should be from the aspect of the candidate as well as from the aspect of the blogger. Perhaps a candidate's people should consider possible future interpretations of their actions, and how any paid position should be described and defined, before offering money to their supporters. Yo, Zephyr?

(Written a couple of weeks ago)

A sad day. Leina's Grandma Grace, her dad's mom, passed away today. She was the bedrock of her whole huge family and they are going to be lost and in pain without her.

I hate death. I hate it. The only compensation is that death never wins, not for one second, over life. Think about it. The very nanosecond that death occurs, new life is created by the very act of death. Life always -- always -- wins over death. So fuck you, death.

So I had a little talk with God about this.

I said, look, you know, this death thing really sucks. Why do you inflict it on us? Why did you give us life if you're just going to take it away? I mean, I can understand why plants have to die: they decay, they form new soil, and new plants are able to grow. But it doesn't work that way with people. You don't need us to die in order to grow new anything. So why don't you stop doing this to us? You've changed your mind before when you did something mean to us. Why don't you stop making us die?

So God goes, well, look at what would happen if you didn't have death. You'd have so many people on earth that there wouldn't be room for anybody. You know, I tried to help you out with this overpopulation problem, first by making some people gay and then with birth control pills back in the 50s, but you people just don't seem to take a hint.

I said, yeah, but it's not like you ever talk to us directly and just say what's on your mind. Like, every time we try to guess what the hell you want, we have to figure out all these contradictory riddles from dusty old two-million-year-old books. So why don't you come down here and give us a hand and talk to us once in a while?

God says, I had enough of that crap when I did the Jesus schtick. After that I decided to retire and let you all figure things out on your own.

So I go, and you've been bored ever since, haven't you?

God was quiet for a minute, and then he goes, well, you know, maybe I could use something new to do with my time. I'll think about it.
.........

Anyway, I hope Grace, who is in heaven, will put some pressure on Jesus, Zeus, whoever is running this crazy universe, to show a little kindness to the human race. Look at Grace! She never did anything mean or evil to anyone in her life! Why don't you be more like her, you Insane Rulers of the Universe?