My review of W. Somerset Maugham’s masterpiece OF HUMAN BONDAGE reminded me of “Petey Peter the Garlic Eater,” a poem I wrote and which was included in POEM MAN, a children’s poetry book my family and I published back at the turn of the century.
Maugham’s classic novel and my less-than-classic poem both discuss, in their one ways, the important matter of addiction and dependency. In Maugham’s story, we find that, because of the protagonist Philip Carey’s love for Mildred, a love so strong she becomes his addiction (his bondage), he nearly destroys his own life. In my poem, we find that both Peter Peter’s excessive love for pumpkins and Petey Peter’s excessive love for garlic, addictions in their own rights, destroy, if not their own lives, then the lives of those around them.
Petey Peter the Garlic Eater
Petey Peter the garlic eater
Sat right behind me in class.
And if he wasn’t busy boisterously burpin’,
He was busy passin’ poisonous gas.
I couldn’t concentrate on my studies
Because of the stink he emitted.
As a result I failed all my classes.
As for graduation, I wasn’t permitted.
Now, if you’re a lover of riddles and rhymes
You might just remember his name.
Cuz his great, great, great, great, great, grandfather
Is famous for a name just the same.
But their names are their only sim’larities,
For they both liked to eat different treats.
Old Peter Peter preferred to eat pumpkins,
While it was garlic young Petey did eat.
Though I can’t imagine eating pumpkins
Unless smashed and baked as sweet pies.
But I do wish young Petey had eaten them,
Cuz his garlic breath always drew flies.
But pumpkins, too, can bring trouble.
It’s cuz of pumpkins old Peter lost a wife.
I guess if you do too much of anything
There’s a chance it could ruin a life.
It’s cuz of Petey’s stinky garlic breath
That every single class I did fail.
And it’s cuz I dropped out of grade school
That I eventually landed in jail.
But as for Petey, he invented a breath mint.
And it earned him a million or two.
And he married the great, great, great, great, great, granddaughter
Of the old lady who lived in the shoe.
An offering from POEMS FROM THE RIVER, a collection of my poetry that will soon be released.
~~~~
We War
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.
The decayed and degraded state
of moral and patriotic feeling
which thinks that nothing is worth war
is much worse.
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight,
nothing which is more important than his own personal safety,
is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free
unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
~ John Stuart Mills
We war, don’t we
We warriors
We worriers for the world
You, Red Death Warrior
You mobilized
You sanitized
Purified to perform ancient rights of battles
And to stake patriot claims of fragile freedom
In hearts alien, hearts eternal,
Hearts ignorant of all you know
You know
You know
You know, noble warrior,
While you wander through the heaven of Hell
Raking the shit scattered pieces
Of bitter and broken promises
Into neat, heaping piles made ready
For the devil’s dusty full bin,
I, Warrior of The Forgotten Peace
Arming my chair of flaccid command
Long for the glory fight that I never had
The fight I will never know
The fight you will never forget
You know
You know
~~~~
I would like to congratulate and thank all who courageously sacrificed their identities, and in some cases, their lives, in order to proudly and honorably serve their nation while Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was national policy.
September 20, 2011, will be a historic day for our country, and a special day for me.
It will be historic because the United States’s discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy will finally be put to rest.
And it will be special to me because I hope to release my novel THE SEA TRIALS OF AN UNFORTUNATE SAILOR on that day in honor of the historic event.
But, like the cup half empty kind of guy that I am, I won’t believe either will happen until I actually see them happening…
But I’m hopeful it will all come true.
I can hardly believe that DADT is finally coming to end because it has been a powerful presence in my life since my decision in 1994 to work outside my career field of telecommunications, and outside of my comfort zone, to become a navy Equal Opportunity Advisor. My duties as an EOA required me to become thoroughly familiar with the DADT policy and to facilitate seminars and focus groups regarding it at navy commands throughout the Western Pacific. A key element of my training was not to just remind sailors that they could not ask about someone’s sexual orientation, but also to make it very clear since it had become an issue in the military that, just because their values or stereotypes or perceptions or prejudgments motivates them to do so, doesn’t mean they can harass or abuse or murder someone who they perceive has a sexual orientation that is contrary to their beliefs. I use the word “perceive” because rarely do homosexuals violate DADT policy by telling others, especially others hostile to their lifestyle, about their sexual orientation. Consequently then, the most likely way a homophobic person can be motivated to act upon his or her (mostly his) homophobic tendency to want to harass or abuse or murder is by perceiving a service member to be a homosexual based upon the perceived homosexual’s behavior or personal characteristics. Facilitating the discussion of such a sensitive, and often combative, nature for three years was very challenging, yet very rewarding for me.
If I can hardly believe that DADT is finally coming to an end, I can only wonder how one feels who loves his or her country so much that he or she was willing to join the military knowing that the DADT policy required him or her to suppress his or her identity and sexual orientation in order to serve. (Normally, because I am a man and because I choose a male identity for myself (It’s a gender thing, you wouldn’t understand…probably.), I would not bother with all the “he or she” and “his or her” distraction; I would simply just write “he” or “his,” just as I would expect a female writer to just write “she” or “shis,” I mean, “sher,” I mean, “her,” but I feel in this situation, it is important for me to highlight and reiterate the fact, in an effort to remind everyone, that both men and women have chosen to make this enormous sacrifice for their country. Talk about Patriots. All you heterosexuals out there go ahead and try imagining what it would be like to not only not be allowed to tell others who you love, but also to not be allowed to completely express your love to the person whom you do love. Hard to imagine, isn’t it, since it’s our privilege to not have imagine such an absurd way of life?
And I can hardly believe that my novel is finally going to be released because it, too, has been a powerful presence in my life for nearly as long as DADT has been. Consequently, I find it hard to believe that in a few short days I will finally be able to call the project complete.
And I also can hardly believe that my novel is going to be released on September 20, 2011, since it is only a few short days away and, because of a few issues I am contending with, I still have yet to complete the publication review process with the publishing service I am using. So, at this point, September 20, 2011, is more like a target release date than a set release date. But we’ll see.
Regardless of whether my novel is actually published on September 20, 2011, or not, the date will always be special to me since it was DADT, or more specifically, since it was all the harassment and abuse and even murder that was inflicted on so many service members because of DADT, that provided the unfortunate impetus for why I wrote the novel to begin with.
Yeah, it’s another one of those piss and vinegar kind of days…
I mean, Come! On!
Without even mentioning my slowly deteriorating and dying lungs, it’s bad enough that I have lost most of the feeling in my lower extremities due to the neuropathy that was brought on by all the chemo I got juiced up with to treat my leukemia, or that I lost most of my ability to smell or to taste to only our tight-lipped God knows why (my doctors sure as hell don’t know), but, because of the reemergence of GVHD due to my decrease in prednisone dosage, do I really need to now start losing my ability to see, as well?
Jesus Holy Christ!
And Mohammad, too!
(I’ll leave it up to you to determine whether those pleas are requests for spiritual intervention and/or guidance or just blasphemously rude exasperated expletives.)
And it’s even worse than bad enough that not only am I slowly losing my vision to a deeper and deeper foggy blur, but is it really necessary to have to lose it in such a painfully annoying way?
I mean, come on! That’s just a bit beyond the boundaries of good taste, as one of my favorite former clients used to often say whenever things got really fucked up on the job. (I’m sorry if me saying “fucked up” offends you, but I only say “fucked up” simply to keep this little aside paragraph in the spirit of things that one of my favorite former clients used to often say.)
But I mean, Holy frikkin’ Buddha, come on! Can someone just please give me a goddamn break?
When I wake in the morning, my eyes, especially my right eye, feel as if they have a big chunk of jagged glass in them. Seriously. I’m not exaggerating. Well…maybe a little. But still, it takes several hours until the pain associated with the stuck in the eye feeling diminishes enough to where it only feels like there is a modest chunk of rock in them instead of a big chunk of jagged glass. But regardless of how it’s described, it always feels like there is something stuck in them and it drives me absolutely frikkin’ crazy.
And then, I guess my eyes figured since they aren’t needed to see so much anymore, they decided to stop producing tears. My eyes are now constantly dry as a brittle bone. As a result, they burn so badly it feels as if they are being, not bathed in their natural tears, but rubbed down and cured with salt each time I blink.
And then, the slightest amount of light or breeze feels as if someone is thinly slicing into them with razor blades.
Pure torture.
Pisses me off and depresses me so because, all my life the sun was always my most bestest buddy, but now it is my worstest enemy. Not only can I not stand to even catch the slightest glimpse of the sun anymore because it is just too painful, but ever since my bone marrow transplant I can no longer risk getting sunburned because, at a minimum it could screw up my graft, and at a maximum it could kill me.
Sorry sun. I used to love you, but now I must hate you.
Let’s see….what else do I have on my docket of “poor me” gripes and whines for today?
Oh yeah, the medicine.
The docs have me on four different types of meds to treat my eye gvhd:
1. Artificial tear drops.
2. Drops that are supposed to help my eyes produce tears.
3. Steroid drops that are supposed to help suppress and slow down the damage done by the gvhd.
4. And an ointment that I squeeze into the eyes at night to help keep them moist while I sleep.
I could not survive without the artificial tears. I am constantly dropping them into my eyes. It’s a pain in the ass to have to do it, what seems like, every five minutes or so, but it’s a vital pain in the ass. And the ointment feels pretty good. But if the drops to help me produce tears and the steroids drops are working, I sure as hell can’t tell. The only thing I am sure that they do do is make my eyes burn and my vision blur even more than normal.
Here are a couple of examples of exactly how much my eyes burn: 1) My nose is always runny because of the burn. I couldn’t figure it out at first. I thought maybe I was coming down with another infection. Very annoying. 2) The burn from the dryness must really warm up the surface of my eyes because after I drop the artificial tears into them and then put my glasses back on, the lenses fog up a little around the eyes. Seriously.
I dread it when it comes time to have to put the pain producing medicine drops in my eyes. It takes a good hour afterwards before my eyes return to “normal.” Unfortunately, the supposed tear producing drops go in twice a day and the steroid drops go in three time a day; so, for about five hours out of each of my day, I get to self-inflict even more pain on my painful eyes.
Fun.
And you know what scares me the most from all this? It’s that I am having a harder and harder time doing what I love to do so much, and that is this, what I am doing right now.
Writing.
Working on the computer.
As I wrote this pathetically whiny draft on a Word document in a completely darkened room, I literally could not see anything much more on the screen than a glowing blurry mass of white characters. The characters are white because even the light, especially the light, from the computer is torture, so I have to invert the colors of my documents so that the page is black and the characters I type are white.
You should see how ridiculous I look right now as I prepare this…all squinty-eyed and mouth opened, glasses pushed up on top of my thin and disheveled-haired head, face pressed up as close as possible against the screen in a near-failing effort to read the crap that I’m typing.
Expect to see, which I am sure you do, see things with your eyes that is, and expect to see with them even more annoying typos in my junk than normal.
Yeah, it’s all getting really hard.
And stressful.
To be honest, I don’t know how much longer I can do it.
Write, that is.
It is just hurting too much.
And I suppose, as I continue to reduce prednisone dosage, it’s only going to get worse.
And if I can no longer write…
especially after all my life wanting to have the time and ability to be able to write full-time like I have been able to do since all the cancer fun started…
I don’t know what I will do.
But I do know I will be very sad until I figure it out.
Rahm Emaneul, President Obama’s first Chief of Staff, was famously quoted as saying, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste” in response to the financial meltdown of 2008.
I imagine most would regard that quote disdainfully—a little too Machiavellian for their pleasant palates, perhaps.
But you know what? It is that exact mentality towards life in general that I have tried to apply to my life over the years, and I have been trying even harder ever since I was diagnosed with cancer and lung disease.
Because let’s face it, regardless whether your palate prefers pleasantries or not, the saying that we all know, every single one of us, that expresses so well about the horrible inevitables that life sometimes trips us up with is not “Flowers Happen!” or “Perfume Happens!” No, the saying we all know and have probably even declared from time to time in our sometimes horribly inevitable lives is:
“SHIT Happens!”
And do you want to know why we say it?
That is a rhetorical question because I know you all ready know.
We all know the answer because no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we study to get good grades, no matter how many hours we put in at work to make the money that we use to build our little nests for which to lay in our little eggs, no matter how well we plan and believe we are prepared for all the horrible inevitables we find in our paths, sometimes life can really stink.
And sometimes it can really, really stink. Sometimes life can be so smelly our noses cannot even become desensitized to it. Sometimes the smell is so bad it seems like it has become our permanent atmosphere. And in order to survive, we have to breathe it in no matter what, knowing that each breath we take is poison and will make us gag, or even kill us.
Now that is one stinky life, in my blurry view.
Fortunately for me, one of the side effects from all of the shit that has been happening in my life lately is that I lost both my sense of smell and taste.
Pretty handy when life smells so badly that you can almost taste it.
Shit happens. Yes it does.
Another less offensive way to those whose sensitivities are easily offended, and less poetic, too, of saying the same thing would be to say that life is nothing more than moving from one crisis to the next.
I guess how we manage life, then, is dependent upon how we define and deal with crises.
I am not sure how you define and deal with yours, but I define my crises as “inevitable opportunities” and, like I all ready more than alluded to with the title of this article, I deal with them by exploiting the hell out of them.
For instance, this blog is nothing but a pure and simple exploitation of the biggest crises that I have ever faced in my life.
I have been exploiting the hell out of my cancer and lung disease as much as I can. Hell, I tell you exactly as much in my cheeky, self-infatuated, hand-written blurb about me under my obviously intentionally depressing looking picture of me, used only to get you to feel sorrow for me so that you will be more compelled to read my exploitative writings.
But, there’s more to the exploitation than that.
I may sarcastically say I am exploiting my disabilities by trying to get you to feel sorry for me, but what I am really doing by all that nonsense is attempting to cope with my insecure feeling of trying step out in my new life as a writer and an author. It’s all pretty scary for me.
What I really mean when I say I am exploiting my disabilities is that I am trying as best I can to take advantage of the opportunities my crises have provided.
And the opportunities are many.
Do you think I really would have been able to pursue my life-long love of writing as aggressively as I am doing now had I not become stricken with cancer and then a chronic, debilitating lung disease?
Do you think I really would have had the time to share each day and grow in partnership and friendship and love with my wife and children had I not become stricken with my diseases?
I think not, so I am exploiting the hell out of my disabilities by waking each day looking for new ways to love more and to be more loving and to continually grow as an individual.
I could give many other examples of how exploitative I am and how I am not letting my crises go to waste, but these will do for now.
And sure, sometimes the smell of the crises in my life are so overwhelming to me that I become numb and despondent from the smell, but those days, too, are nothing more than smaller crises that must be dealt with in the same manner as all the others: by realizing that no matter how hard I try to be positive and productive, sometimes it—my life—will just hurt too much and I am going to become deeply depressed and I am going to feel so sorry myself for being so unlucky and I am going to feel so resentful towards you for being so lucky and I am going to sit in my cocoon-like chair and let myself sink into a almost inescapable (so far) black hole of depression.
It happens. I get depressed. And I realize it will continue to happen to me from time to time until a cure is found for my lung disease.
But I accept that it will happen.
And when it does, I will deal with it by exploiting the hell out of it.
~~~~
Oh, by the way.
Now that I got you feeling sorry for me…
How about reading [download id=”7″] and letting me know what you think of it? 😉
Why do I have only until September 20, 2011, to complete and release my novel, I hear you ask.
Well, how else can I best exploit for my own bloated self-interests the pain, suffering, and humiliation of thousands of those who served their country during the course of the life of the humiliating DADT policy than by releasing on or about the date of DADT’s death so that I can best leverage the public’s increased interest in the issue a book with themes that attempt to illustrate the same pain, suffering, and humiliation that those who served their country during the course of the life of the humiliating DADT policy experienced, I answer.
Key word in all that bumbling nonsense in the last paragraph: “attempt.”
But fear and puke not, for those of you whose stomach I just curdled:
And I certainly do have much woeful work on the novel yet for me not to complete between now and September 20, 2011.
Until then, you can check out the first five chapters of THE SEA TRIALS OF AN UNFORTUNATE SAILOR at the “free reads” page, if you feel so inclined and/or charitable to my cause.
We’re down and in desperate need of a two-out rally.
So what are we waiting for? Should we go
for the win and swing for the fence?
Or should we just drop our bats,
grab our crotches,
and wait?
Just wait for someone else to come along and bat clean up?
Just wait for them to come along and clean up all of the shit
our silence has created?
Should we wait?
Just wait for the president and the congress and the
governors and every other sleazy politician to knock
the dirt out of their spikes and lead the rally?
Or should we, instead, wait for Wall Street and the
chambers of commerce and the boards of directors
and the unions and even the goddamn Junior Achievers
to stop sucking each other off and let them lead the rally?
No.
I’m tired from waiting,
and I’m sick from feeding on bullshit
and shallow metaphors.
It’s time for movement.
It’s time to say to hell with our condoning silence
and rise up.
Hey you!
Yeah, you in the corner with the pencil.
You, the unassuming bard whose verse speaks in whispers.
It’s time for you to rise up and write the words that need
to be written.
It’s time for you to sharpen your pencil and to tear
and thrash at the page till it bleeds and screams out
in desperate fury.
And when your words are read the readers are shocked
and angered and filled with such passion and rage
that nipples harden and balls retract in their sacks.
So rise up!
Check your zippers and march.
Listen for the rhythm ‘cause no one is leading
and no one is following.
There’s just us.
You Me Her Him We, Each confused and disoriented but
Each coming together and marching in one
Throbbing Mass of Poetic Fervor.
So rise up!
Rub the crap from your eyes and focus.
Breathe deeply then grab hold of today and straddle it.
Dig in deep with your knees and spur the bitch till it bucks.
But be ready ‘cause when it bucks it’s gonna buck good.
And when you fall and taste the dirt don’t spit it out.
Taste it!
Chew on it and swallow.
Because that’s why we are here:
to taste the flavor of today
and determine what ingredients are missing.
So, if your heart’s not pounding
and your hand’s aren’t shaking
and you’re still just sitting on your ass
waiting for someone else to do your work,
then close your notebook and break your pencil
because you are dead.
But if You feel the Passion
and if You feel the Rhythm,
then know that it is You who will do.
In Japan, today is the forty-ninth day since the death of my mother-in-law, “Mother,” “Okaa-san,” “Obaa-chan,” Seiko. Today is a special day where, in Buddhist ceremony and belief that on the forty-ninth day after passing the soul is no longer bound by karma, Seiko’s ashes can now be permanently interred. Unlike her funeral ceremony where many of Seiko’s family and friends and admirers attended to show their love and respect for her, today’s ceremony is a smaller, family-focused occasion.
How I wish I could be there with the family today to also show my love and respect for her, and to be closely surrounded by them all during this time.
But I cannot. So I think fondly of her and I pray for her and I pray that the pain of her passing will quickly ease for those of us who love and miss her so.
Seiko embodied and lived the values and qualities in character and of action that I wish I possessed as an individual and that I wish I had been able to live throughout my life.
I would have liked to have drawn a picture of her to include here, however, no matter how hard I try, I find that my eyes are too bad now and my hands shake too much that my efforts to capture her beauty, not just her physical beauty, for that she certainly had, and for which her daughter, my wife, also possesses in a very close likeness of her mother, but mostly it is Seiko’s spiritual beauty, which was profound and deep, that, regardless how well my eyes can focus or how steady my hands can draw, I am unable to, nor would ever be able to, capture in one of my feeble drawings.
So I share my loving memory of Seiko in a poem, a poem that falls well short of capturing the good and positive life that she lived, a life which touched and comforted so many in so many different, known and unknown, ways, but a poem which, nonetheless, comes closet to expressing my feelings and my love for her.
Seiko, may God continue to, and forever bless you with Eternal Peace, Happiness, and Love.
Like Incense, You Burned
Like incense, you burned
true, steady, reliably,
patiently purifying the world around you
with a bright, burning intensity and passion
and unending purpose
that only the gods could comprehend.
Like incense, you burned,
not for yourself but for life,
all of it.
You burned with love for each of us,
for everyone.
You burned with a love that transcended all boundaries
and all languages,
a love that transcended space and time.
Like incense, you burned,
and as you did
your presence permeated its surroundings
and filled it with your sweet soothing sensitive balm,
a healing balm,
a mystical balm,
a beautifully fragrant balm that will last and linger deep within the senses
and the soul of the universe
for all eternity.
When meeting with someone with whom you are consulting and seeking advice from and relying on for critical information, someone like your doctor, it is my belief that you should not leave that meeting without asking him or her at least one question.
Funny thing about those paradoxical little buggers, though…questions, that is, not doctors…is that it seems that the more we know about something, the easier it is to formulate and ask questions about that something; yet, the less we know about it, the harder it is for us to come up with questions to ask about it.
Well, that’s usually how it is for me, anyway.
And I don’t know about you, but for me, even sometimes at my old and calloused age, and no matter how many times that rusty, dull saw “There’s no such thing as a stupid question.” is drawn back and forth across my grainy, knot-holed brain, if I feel stupid about asking a question before asking it, then it is really hard for me to get up the gumption to get the stupid question out.
I don’t like Stupid.
It hurts too much.
And, at least for me, far too often.
Oh, and brother…and sister…let me tell you, you should have seen what a nervous mess I was in high school whenever I wanted to ask a question but felt it would make me look stupid(er) if I asked it, which pretty much encompassed just about any question I wanted to ask all throughout high school.
Not pretty.
I am not so bad about asking them now because, long ago, I embraced and (as is evident by all of the ridiculous nonsense that is going on in this ridiculous blog) even began exploiting my ridiculousness, right along with my insecurities and fears…and yes, even my infirmities.
Over time and after a lot of uncomfortable suffering, I have learned that the best way for me to face and overcome all my insecurities, fears, and just about anything else that makes me feel foolish or awkward, is to break them down in my mind as far as I possibly can, no matter how serious or sad or sickly they may be, right down to the ridiculous.
I mean, come on! How ridiculous is it that a six feet five-inch, former 230 pounder, former somewhat burly and excessively hairy self-proclaimed (remember now, I said former) “Manly man” could be afraid to ask a simple question, regardless of how stupid it is?
Pretty frikkin’ ridiculous, that’s how!
And that’s all there really is to this breaking-things-down-to-ridiculous thing.
But in defense of my former self—no matter the size or strength or amount of body hair one has, Stupid, armed only with gnawing and piercing barbs of doubt and indecision, will whip just about anyone’s stupid ass just about every stupid time.
But back to my ridiculous attempt at explaining how ridiculous just about everything serious in life can be…come to think of it, I should change the title of this ridiculous blog from here is where it hurts to TAKE NOTHING IN LIFE SERIOUSLY…SERIOUSLY!
Nah, that would be a seriously ridiculous thing to do, wouldn’t it?
Anyway…
And once I have broken down my insecurities and fears and, yes, even my infirmities, to their most purest state of ridiculousness, I then can happily, and often giddily, laugh at them and ridicule them for their ridiculousness, and then exploit the bloody hell out of them like I so frequently do, mostly right here on your friendly neighborhood “here is where it hurts” ridiculous blog.
So yeah, I do not really have a hard time asking stupid questions anymore.
Howeeeever…depending on the situation or on whom I am directing the stupid question to…
Every once in a great while, I just might have a hard time getting the gumption up to get that stupid question out.
Stupid me.
*
When I was diagnosed with cancer, a form of leukemia called Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia in Blast Crisis with the abnormal Philadelphia Chromosome (a real tasty mouthful, huh?), everything happened so quickly and the chemo and the steroids and the other drugs were pumped into me immediately and so often, and because I knew so very little about cancer in general and CML in particular, not to mention all the procedures and protocols and pokin’ and proddin’ that it takes to treat it, either I did not or I could not ask the questions I now feel I should have asked about something as devastatingly important as was what I was then going through.
All I could do, as I pathetically lay in my hospital bed while wrapped in my chemo and drug-induced blanket of fog, which I would occasionally and nervously peek out from under to stare blankly back at all the surreal, masked faces of my family and friends and doctors and nurses and social workers and cleaning staff and food attendants and anyone else who floated in and out of my room at any given time and who whose gracious mask-muffled encouragements sounded strained and distant, while their eyes spoke loudly with the voice of their heart of their concerns and their uncertainty and their fears, was to feel deeply and pitifully sorry for myself.
That constant sorrow took just about all of my energy, leaving little for the care or concern to ask the questions I probably should have been asking.
To cope with my lack of care or concern, and so that I could focus on feeling sorry for myself, I kept telling myself that I had little to worry about regarding this cancer thing because I was being cared for and treated by THE Johns Hopkins University Hospital, which was repeatedly voted as the number one health care facility in the nation. At least that is what all the self-promoting, self-congratulatory posters that were plastered everywhere advertised.
Well, as we all know, regardless of an organization’s reputation, even if it is one of sustained superior performance and results such as JHUH says of its reputation, they are still filled with a fallible and fickled species called humans who, while known to do some pretty fantastically wonderful things from time to time, are also known to do some pretty ignorant and stupid things just about all the time.
So, regrettably, in some part because I probably did not assume enough responsibility and make enough effort for my care early on to ask the questions I probably should have asked my doctors, and, in more than some part, because of a few stinkers of medical professionals who were involved in my care and treatment from just about the beginning of my cancer diagnosis and who, I firmly believe, excelled at mismanaging my said care and treatment in an exceptional manner, I feel that my health condition is worse off now than it should be as a result of our collective “efforts.”
And that is how I have come to my belief that one should never leave the doctor’s office without asking at least one question.
Here’s a quick question for you:
What do you call the medical student with the lowest GPA in his or her graduating class?
Doctor, of course.
And here is another revelation that dawned on me during all of this cancer and subsequent Graft Versus Host Disease, stuff of mine:
Doctors, as smart and highly trained and impressive and sometimes, not always, but sometimes, intimidating and overbearing as they are, are, fundamentally, only high paid consultants.
When we get right down to it, they can only make recommendations and give advice, they cannot decide for us.
Only we can decide what is best for our health.
And for us to decide what is best for our own health, we must have as much relevant information possible to make the best decision possible.
And as smart and highly trained and impressive as most of our doctors truly are, they cannot yet read our minds.
For them to be the best consultants to our care and treatment they can be, and for them to be able to provide us with as much relevant information possible so we can make the best decisions possible, and regardless whether they want to or not or don’t have time to or not or are too tired to or not or whatever or not, we must ask them the most relevant questions we can ask.
Some of these relevant questions will be deep and probing, and others will seem shallow and stupid, but all must be asked in order to prod and pull the genius-matter free from our doctors’ very big and very expensive brains so that it can be reconfigured and presented to us in a way that we mere mortals can understand.
Asking relevant questions to very smart people like doctors, is tough, especially if these doctors are specialists. These stereotypicallybedsidemannerless barons of the brains are so smart, in fact (and in fiction, sometimes, too), that they probably have forgotten more about their area of expertise than we could ever attempt know, even if we factor in the internet. And when we do not know much of anything at all about the subject that we want to or need to know about, it is even tougher to ask relevant questions. And when we are afraid that by asking a question it might make us appear stupid, which may just be the case, then that is just about the toughest question of all to ask.
But, we must find, or fight, our way through all that toughness.
And if, even after we have gotten over our fear of looking stupid, we still cannot for the life of us come up with one single relevant question to ask, then at a minimum, at the very least, we should ask:
“Hey Doc, if you were me, what questions would you ask you to help you, er, I mean…me?,” Whoa boy, now this question has me confused.
Let’s try running through that question again.
“Hey Doc, since I cannot think of any relevant questions to ask you, how ’bout you tell me what questions I should be asking you so that, with your answers, I will be able to make the best health care decisions possible?”
Or…something similar, but hopefully much less discombobulated, to that effect.
Not the word I really wanted to say but it has somewhat of the same meaning and impact I was looking for.
Although, it surely does not nearly have the versatility of usage and universal appeal like the word I wanted to use does.
I guess I could have used COITUS! instead of FORNICATE! to try to express my frustration, but COITUS! has even less of an impact I was looking for than even the replacement word of FORNICATE! has, not to mention its even less raunchy meaning. For, as I am sure you know, COITUS! only means sexual intercourse in general, whereas FORNICATE! means sexual intercourse with someone whom you are not married to.
Sexual intercourse with someone whom you are not married to—now that’s raunchy with impact.
And I just had to say something raunchy and with impact right now because I want you to know right from the get go exactly what direction this post is headed.
So, if you are not in the mood for a pissed off raunchy post (Another one?), you may just want to back click yourself slowly away from the site right now before you or anyone else gets hurt.
…
Okay. That seemed to do the trick. It looks like all of the sissies have now departed.
It also looks like the site is now pretty much empty.
And that means that all of us who are still here, the one or two of my three regular readers, one of whom is me, are here with the foreknowledge that it just might get ugly up in here.
So, would you like to know what it is that has me so burning mad that I felt the need to entitle this madness (mad-mess?) of a post with a less-than-satisfying, makeshift expletive?
No, it’s not the fact that some liberal Brit of a nutjob recently tried to cream our proud Aussie-American Rupert Murdoch right in the pie hole with a shaving-cream-filled-pie.
That certainly made me mad, don’t get me wrong, someone attacking such an defenseless upstanding ruperty Robber of an All global corporate Baron AMERICAN WINNER! like that.
But, as mad as that attack made me, it didn’t quite make me cussing and burning mad.
What does have me cussing and burning mad is the attack that recently happened in Norway.
But it is not just the fact that Norway, one of my most favorite and one of the most idyllic and previously-unscathed-by-all-the-madness places in the world, was just brutally victimized by a senseless act of terrorism that has me burning mad.
I am more saddened and hurt about that than I am mad right now—though, again, don’t get me wrong, I certainly am also mad—that the great and beautiful country of Norway, a country I once was honored and fortunate enough to visit for two blissful weeks, although not in a terrorist capacity—I MEAN TOURIST!—not in a tourist capacity, but in an official, (and occasionally a wee little drunken, but merrily so), navy capacity during an extended two-week port of call, was ruthlessly attacked and that all of the great and beautiful Norwegians whom I love dearly are now suffering so from the attack.
My heart and prayers truly do go out for all Norwegians, for I truly do love them and their beautiful country.
What has me cussing and burning mad about the attack, though, is how it made me instinctively and without a doubt think, just like I always do whenever a First World country (We had a little First World discussion going on on my facebook page (FOLLOW ME!) the other day and it got me to thinking. And upon conclusion of the thinking that it had gotten me into, I concluded that the term “First World” has such a superior, almost racist ring to it, no? Sure it does. Because someone from the First World probably came up with it. Some circa 1950yish or 60yish, poli-sci, internationally relating, racist without even trying, media, spankin’-and-wankin’-the- wonker, wonk, probably. But hey, don’t blame me for using it. I am not the word genius who comes up with these catchy terms. I am just a lazy First World slug who repeatedly parrots whatever he hears on FOX (I just want to publicly (because the Lord knows we all know that He sure could use the publicity) give thanks to God right now for giving us FOX…and, by extension, Rupert Murdoch; for, without FOX, or Rupert, what else and who else out there is there that is so readily and rightly available for me to use in this type of an example for this type of a poorly penned (I would have used the word “typed,” seeing that is exactly what I am doing to this fornicated up blog post of mine—typing up this fornicated up blog post of mine, not penning it up, that is—but I had just used the word “type” twice now, one only four words ago and the other, not quite as only, ten words ago (counting back from the word “penned” located directly before this parenthetical expression, not the word “ago” that is somewhere (I’m not exactly sure where because I am starting to get confused) within this parenthetical expression, that is, and, although “type” in both of those two instances are used with the same meaning, they are used with a different meaning than the word “typed” would have had had I had used it (Huh? Holy cow! I’m not sure if you had noticed, but there sure are a lot of hads back there. I just used three, nearly consecutive, hads and, although I’m no English major—Crap. Come to think of it, yes, I am an English major…or, at least, was one once a long time ago, so long ago, in fact, that the major now has less than minor impact on my memory—anyway, despite my apparent waste of an English-as-a-First-Language degree, as far as I can tell, I think I used all of those nearly consecutive hads all correctly…and completely unconsciously. I bet if I had tried to come up with a sentence that had had three, nearly consecutive, hads, I would have had a hell of a time doing so. And had I had done so, I am not so sure I would have had been able to do so without having had used the hads incorrectly. (Such crazy kooky English we speak.)) instead of “penned,” had I had used “typed” instead of “penned” then there is a chance that I may have seemed and sounded rather redundant, and I certainly do not want to be accused of being a redundant blogger who repeats himself; besides, “penned” seems to have more of a broader context in meaning, one that has the connotation of, not just the act of penning, but also the act of conceptualizing the ideas and ideals behind what is being penned, than does the more specific sounding “typed,” which only connotes images of some dork like me with, like a dork, both of his pointer fingers sticking out while they hover over the keyboard in search of innocent and vulnerable letters to repeatedly poke and victimize in a slow, tortuous—tortuous as in Chinese Water Torture tortuous, only instead of using slow, dripping water to torture the innocent and vulnerable letters, I use both of my dorky-looking pointer fingers—repetitive ritual. And, if you hadn’t noticed, I kinda have a p-thing going on.) politically postured pretentious parody of a post?) or reads (mostly just the well-crafted, and by well-crafted I mean overly sensationalized, headlines) on Drudge.) gets attacked, that the attack was really somehow directed at America, which, by extension, means that the attack was also somehow directed at me, because I am, after all, an American, aren’t I? And I think all of this immediately upon hearing the news of the attack and without knowing who perpetrated it and why.
And it is that, that immediate and reactive and wholly unwanted and unwelcomed thought of mine, which has me cussing and burning mad.
Why?
Because I (And by I I also mean America, because, like I all ready said, we, America and I, that is, are both one and the same, right?) am so very sick and tired of not only feeling responsible for all of the mesmerizing mounds of BS that are piling up all over the globe, I am also, and even more so, very sick and tired of being blamed for creating them.
So much more so that I am cussing and burning mad about it.
But what is a broken boy like me (I know, I know. I’m pathetic.) to do about this cussing and burning madness?
The only option I see available for this broken boy like me is to parody—I mean pronounce!—the only option for him is to pronounce, as loudly as he can, in a public forum for all to hear if he is so able, so that he can, at least therapeutically, anyway, and perhaps, somewhat metaphysically even, relieve and release himself of this madness (mad-mess?).
And, just by coincidence, here we all are, right smack-dab in the middle of my public forum.
So, on with my parod—pronouncement!
The way I see it, we get the hate and blame for all of the global mounds of BS for one reason. And it is the same reason that McDonalds gets so much of the blame, or, better yet, that FOX, meaning Rupert Murdock, gets so much of it as well. We are hated and blamed for all of the global mounds of BS, not because of any specific crime or injustice committed by us, per se, but simply because of jealousy.
The rest of the world is jealous of us.
We are hated and blamed by the rest of the world for all of the global mounds of BS just because we are so good at being successful, just because we are Winners!
And because we are such winners, all the Losers in the world hate us for it.
Period.
End of story.
End of that story, maybe, but not this one that I have going on right now.
This one continues…and continues…and continues…I know, I know.
Heck, it is the people and organizations and countries like Rupert Murdoch, like FOX, like America, that put the FIRST in First World to begin with.
In fact, the First World has been so completely successful in all that it does, that we do not even use the term Second World anymore. We kicked the ass of those second place Second World losers so thoroughly and completely that we knocked the Second World term right off of the metaphorical geopoliticalmediamarketing map and when referring to any other world other than the dominant First World, we jump right down to those poor, helpless Third Worlders, because we First Worlders certainly do not want to be accused of being insensitive to their needs and dependencies.
And, heck again, we use these genius word terms (just because the smart people use them , which means these terms must really have some import and gravitas so we, us notsosmart people, had better use them, too) even if we don’t really know what they mean, or meant and now have come to mean.
Is it my fault that the First World (So what in the blasted Christmas Christ do these “World” terms really mean anyway? While I do not know what they are meant to mean to you, I know what they are meant to mean to me when I use them now, and that is for the First World term to mean and to embody all of the successful, industrialized countries like, like as in they want to be like, America, which is, a Winner!. Nobody uses and cares about the Second World term anymore. And the Third World term is reserved for all of the rest of the world’s hapless Loser! countries. But, if my drug-induced fog of a memory (I know, I know. I’m pathetic.) serves me correctly, which is highly doubtful (Of course, I do have google (garbage) (at my) disposal) that I could endlessly use for free of charge (except for the slight cost of chronic and irreparable brain cell atrophy from neglect) if I really wanted to check for accuracy. But I don’t really want to check because I am lazy; plus I rather like having my drug-induced fog of a memory (Pathetic, I know.) to fall back on and blame in case and when that I am wrong, I am almost pretty sure that the original meanings of the Ordered World terms were slightly different, tasting less of a sweet, economic corporanational success story flavor and more of a bitter, geopolitical alignment, East-Coast-Bloc-West-Coast-Bloc-I’m-gonna-bomb-on-their-sucker-punk-ass flavor, where the First Worlders were the countries that, right after World War II, a REAL war, aligned themselves with America because America is a Winner!, and its democratic principle and values in its principled fight against evil wherever it may reside. Second Worlders, back before the Second Worlders got their asses waxed all over the geopolitical map and it was still a valid term, were the countries that, right after World War II, a REAL war, aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, back when some, mostly useful liberal idiot Losers!, still regarded the Soviet Union as a Winner!, and its evil principles and values in its principled fight against what it regarded as evil, meaning, of course, America and the rest of the First World countries. And then there were the hapless Third Worlders who couldn’t make their minds up as to what principled -ism they should believe in right after World War II, a REAL war, or which Worlders, First or Second, they should align themselves with, so they remained unaligned and forever stamped as indecisive Losers! And of course, once one (be it a person or a country) is labeled and that label is stuck like glue right across one’s forehead for all to see and to respond to accordingly, then sooner or later the labeled one eventually will also begin to respond accordingly to what the label promotes him or her or it to be. Once that has happened, the label is no longer a label, it has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, keep your chins up Third Worlders, you all are frikkin’ prophets! How cool is that? But all of that is old news. All that is what those World terms used to mean, at least as far as my drug-infested mind can tell. All I got to say about that, and then some, is thank God we don’t have to worry about all that “what used to be” crap anymore. We only have the First and Third Worlders left, and we only know them as the respective economic Winners! and Losers! that they have come to be, and to which lively, yet somewhat redundant (Damn it! I hate being a redundant blogger who repeats himself.) discussion we return…) in general and America in particular won the Cold War and became the only remaining, to coin the catchy phrase from the recent navy marketing geniuses, “Global Force for Good” (Whoa boy…that’s a dandy. Way to go navy.) and sole Super Power? It certainly isn’t my fault that’s for certain. You know whose fault it is? It’s all of the global losers out there who let us wax their asses all over the geopolitical map who are at fault and who must now abide by and put up with our, our as in America and the rest of the America-wannabe-First-Worlders, many United Nations-filtered dictates and orders, orders and dictates similar to the ones our, our as in America’s, compulsive and stressed-out and somewhat done-in from being over-debted and under-appreciated parents (read: First Worlders), our single or double or traditional or non-traditional-bordering-on-the-verge-of-perverse parents who, often and with (lack of) purpose proudly yet prudishly pronounces (what’s with all Ps today?) to their confounded and uncooperative sparkle(s) in their eyes (read: Third Worlders) something that sounds something like this out-of-tune-because-of-overuse ditty of a dictate: “Do as we Winners! say you little Losers!, not as we Winners! do.”
So don’t blame me, meaning America, meaning the First Worlders, meaning all of the Global Winners! for all of the mesmerizing mounds of BS that are piling up all over the globe, blame them, meaning the jealous America haters, meaning the Third Worlders, meaning all of the Global Losers! because the impetuous Loser! bastards did not do what I told them to do, they went ahead and did what I did, instead.
*
Okay, so looking back on this pig of a post, I guess there really wasn’t as much cussing as there could have been.
And there certainly wasn’t any raunchiness—well, perhaps the post is a little raunchy in the pornographic exploitative FOX news sense, but it certainly is not raunchy in the “Oh yeah! Kurt’s about to share some hardcore skin videos with us!” sense.
No, it is not raunchy in that sense at all.
And if that is what your expectations were when you plunged into this not-quite-a-cesspool-but-certainly-not-spring-watery-pure-either of a post, I apologize for overselling you with my blatant attempt at hooking you and drawing you in with promises of much cussing and raunchiness.
So, in an effort to make up for the error(s) of my way(s), I offer you the following video, a little something that may just satisfy those unfulfilled desires and expectations of yours that drew you into this mad-mess of a post to begin with.
But please be warned.
This politically pornographic video may just do damage to your sensitivities…all of them, every single last one of them…especially if you are an American.
Therefore, if you do not want your sensitivities damaged, and especially if your sensitivities are of the sort that are easily damaged, do not watch this video.
And even if your sensitivities are of the sort that are not easily damaged, please seriously consider not watching this video because it, my friend, is a serious heavy hitter, one that is looking to specifically target your sensitivities, especially those that are easily damaged, and especially those that are American.
But, then again, if that is the case, if you are an American with overly sensitive sensitivities who becomes hurt whenever the error(s) of your, and by your I also mean America’s, way(s), regardless of how good and well-intentioned this way(s) was and is or how much money you spent or spend on it, just like a good Christian (country) should, to ensure it reaches its intended destination, which is the helpless and poor Third World recipient who should be ever so appreciative of your benevolence but who probably isn’t because he or she does not yet understand the current market value of Christian (country) values, are pointed out to you, then perhaps maybe you should go ahead and watch the video after all.
But do not say I did not warn you.
May God bless us all, especially our Norwegian friends who are hurt and suffering, and whose idyllic innocence has been forever taken away, at least it has been forever taken away from my heavy heart and sallow mind.
