pain, replaced by leakage

Saturday, the pain we beyond belief.   Coffee had to poke a few holes in my skin around the  pressure wound to relieve the  pain caused by dead blood.  

By Sunday, I was getting used to living with the pain and starting to worry I’d have to wind up at a doctor to have a scalpel open up the area.  That would entail a long, long recover, and I just can’t just afford that now.  But, while washing dishes, the weakened skin opened and the wound we were trying to heal opened up  a wealth of puss and blood. O, lovely puss!.  The process of healing could now begin.

I stayed home from work today, letting the wound seep.  The stench of infection is gone, and the whole area is now healing.  The only problem is that I must now have towels everywhere I want to sit, like an incontinent old dog.

The real victim here is not me, but Coffee.  She waited for the Super Happy Family Fun Weekend for two weeks and wound up squeezing puss from her wisecracking, probably dying idiot boyfriend.  I feel really bad about that.

my extra butthole will be the end of me

Pain, and lots of it.

My behind  hurts so much. So very much.  Looks like I’m developing a new pressure sore, probably from overcompensating for the original extra butthole.

I’m taking Zinc, and I’ve finally admitted that I need Metformin, so I’m stealing Coffee’s.  At least I’ve started my sugar-fee diet today.   I got a very simple egg sandwich on wheat and I ate my bran today.  Beats the hell out of adding bacon and ketchup.

Only about 80 pounds to go.

these sound as valid as any other means

these sound as valid as any other means

my pitches for movie twists

Just saw Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch’s return to the big screen. It sucked. I mean, it would have been good if it were twenty years ago. Jennifer Lynch simply copied her father David Lynch’s style from about a quarter century ago and then tried to make a surprise twist at the end. Unfortunately, I anticipated the twist the first few minutes into the movie.

Movie twists get weaker and weaker as the years pass since the Sixth Sense. I’ve decided to pitch to Hollywood my own plots that have super twists that no one is going to see coming.

Story 1
Ten strangers are invited to a haunted mansion by it’s creepy owner.  He offers anyone who can spend the night a million dollars.  The owner locks them all in and then one by one they are attacked by what appears to be ghosts.  Eight of the guests end up dying.  Only the hero and his girlfriend survive.  The find that the creepy mansion owner is actually behind all the murders, and the supernatural attacks were all faked. They kill the mansion owner and then escape the building, finding themselves in the light of a new day.  But it turns out… they were trapped in the White House and they just killed the President!

Story 2
A man and his wife spend years fixing up a brownstone in an changing neighborhood in an unnamed city.  The wife goes away on a business trip, leaving her husband alone.  He finds that rats are gnawing through is beautifully restored building and eating everything in sight.  They chew through walls, the back of cabinets, and through doors.  He engages the rats in a battle of wits, and the rats we discover are unusually intelligent.  He turns his brownstone into a battlefield and wins a pyrrhic victory against the rats when he kills the young and their hulking mother.  Upon inspection, he finds that… the rats were actually an illegal immigrant Mexican woman and her children!

Story 3
A soccer team is stuck in a disabled airplane.  They are hungry and cold.  They alpha males amongst them plot on how to survive and decide to eat the weaker team members.  In the cramped confines of a commerical jet, they kill their teammates, one by one.  Eventually the group splits into two groups, one with our protagonist and one with our antagonist.  Moral issues arise about how many to kill, or whether to continue killing. Eventually, the antagonist and the protagonist battle to the death after the demise of their groups, leaving only the protagonist surrounded by enough corpses to last the winter and then some.  However, at the moment of his victory, the airplane door opens and… we learn that the plane had been grounded for three hours for de-icing is now ready to fly to Florida!.

this extra butthole is a pain in the ass

Great!  Now I got a hole in my butt. No, not that hole. Another hole that’s not supposed to be there.

See, when you’re a big fat slob, and you’re practically made out of sugar, your skin gets real thin.  So thin that it starts to break down, or get yeast infections.

You’d think that having more cushion for pushing would help prevent skin breakdown on one’s butt.  No, in fact the whole butt thing just gets worse.

Best I can tell, I must have developed a pressure sore.  The skin gets rubbed, crushed, and then white blood cells try the fix the problem the only way they know how; by eating anything they find.  More and more white blood cells show up for the fight against this phantom invader, and wind up eating each other and the body’s own skin. Eventually, the area gets how and the the skin gets thin and then, pop.

It was a little pop, nothing I noticed.  But now it’s not healing, and there’s a shaft leading from the surface of my body to my innards.  Left untreated, the shaft could get deeper and deeper until I develope a viewing window into my pelvis.

It smarts a bit.  Coffee is working her medical magic on it. We’ll see if I wind up getting a quick cure or a ticket to a nursing home, on my belly.

victim of gender

Two stories where I was the victim because of my gender.

First one: I’m having a smoke out in back of my office when this guy rounds the corner. I’ve seen him before. He’s clearly gay and femmy. I looked up at his face out of reflex when he passed by me. The look he was giving back was amazing.

Imagine that Felix the Cat clock, the one with its eyes turned completely to one side, the the other. That’s what his eyes were doing, and on the rest of his face was a look of please don’t kill me, you’re an ugly troll.

WTF dude? I’m weird? I’m not the guy walking around like there’s a stick up his butt and his wrists are broken while wearing a freakin’ purse!

Second story: I was going over some work stuff in the office of one my my opposite numbers. She’s is a very cute chubby girl of South American decent, young and full of energy, very engaging, and many IQ levels above me.  This makes her very attractive.  Making her exceptionally attractive today was that she was hanging her generous breasts out of a very loose top.

I kept looking at her breasts. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t undo a million years of evolution during our meeting. I was like a cat, ready to pounce on two plump mice. So, I did what any mature man twenty years her senior would do; I shut my eyes.

That’s right, I went over her work problems with her with my eyes screwed shut. I figured that she’d assume I was thinking really hard. Actually, I was trying not to get hard.

my new bff

I found a new miracle, and this is how I found it.

 

I have a recurring tooth problem that could be easily solved by yanking the cantankerous mother.  I’ve resisted though since I can usually get the infection to go away with a blast of antibiotics.  Once the dentist pulls your tooth, you’re under the gun to replace it or wind up with your teeth spaced like a jack o’ lantern.

 

Also, I’ve got some weird problem with my right foot.  I’ve injured it bad driving; some kind of repetitive strain injury.  Between the tooth hurting at the top of my body, and my foot hurting at the bottom, I’m literally squeezed by pain.

 

Until I discovered this new magic bullet; oxycodone.

 

It takes away the pain and replaces it with happy feelings.

 

All Friday, Saturday and Sunday I just had a nice happy oxycodone experience. Tooth pain, gone.  Foot pain, a thing of the past.  Coordination and judgment control, out the window.

 

Nice.

 

I’m kind disappointed that this morning I woke up without the pains, and now I don’t have an excuse to take it.

Oxycodone is the opiate in Percocet.  In Percocet, oxycodone is paired with acetaminophen.  There’s the big controversy about taking drugs that are paired with acetaminophen off the market. Abusers and chronic pain sufferers supposedly give themselves liver damage by taking drugs like Percocet with other acetaminophen drugs that one can buy over the counter.

 

There’s been quite a libertarian-style response about the FDA’s recommendation.  I like the comments over at Nurse K’s site the best.

emasculation by pollution control

I have been emasculated by the Federal Beast. Specifically, I’ve been emasculated by the Federal Beast’s demands for fuel efficiency.

I did a little research last night on my engine and decided I’d have a poke around. Check the oil, look for leaks, look like I know what I’m doing, typical guy stuff. I opened the hood, looked around and decided that I would figure out how to change my spark plugs.

I found the electronic ignition, three sparks at three weird angles and, ugh, well…

I know there are three other sparks facing the firewall, but actually seeing them is beyond the reach of even the most hardy man. They are hidden behind the alternator, the coolant overflow reservoir, and some other bullshit I’ve never seen before.

What the fuck???

I remember, maybe thirty years ago, standing in the engine bay of a 1969 Nova removing a water pump. No face on the engine, no fucking problem. Now, that’s the way cars should be, free of pollution control, computers, and weird ass sensors.

Computers should be nowhere near cars, except when you bully some Beardo the Weirdo by taking his Mac and running it over with a fatty tire.

Remember when you didn’t need a torque wrench, specialty tools, a computer and a high speed internet connection to change a radiator hose? You certainly didn’t need to remove three fourths of the engine to get to fuel filter. You could change out you’re crappy AM radio without frying the electrical system and you could install fog lights (which look cool though they are totally useless) without setting the car on fire and having the engine computer reboot to 1925.

See, you could take care of your own car, you could make many of your own repairs. You were in spiritual touch with the cowboys of long ago, who could comb and shoe their horse, or change their water pumps on the Chisholm trail.

Looking into the Gordian knot of hoses, wires and tubing, I realized that there was nothing I could do except fill the wiper fluid reserve. Later, I found that my penis had fallen off. I found it on the electric fan shroud. Totally emasculated by modern car technology.

full tilt hard on smokin’

OK, I haven’t blogged (not that anyone has noticed) for quite a while because I had nothing to report but failure.　 I failed again.

I was just so tired of being in discomfort, of fighting the urge, of thinking about smoking for maybe a half an hour at a time that I gave in one Sunday so I could finally relax.

Now I have the opposite effect; I’m tight because I haven’t quit, and when I look inside, I find no desire to quit.　 I’m even back to waking up and smoking in the middle of the night.

So this is how it happened…

I was filling up on gas at a gas station that has a mart. I was holding the pump while looking at the mart. I knew cigarettes were in the mart, peacefully sleeping until some lucky bastard bought them and brought them home to play.

I couldn’t get the idea of smoking out of my mind. It was like eight tracks of schizo smoke of consciousness. I was thinking, one, just one to get over this hump. Just one more trip to the top and I’ll be all right.

The pump clicked off, the kiosk beeped and whirled at me, I finished paying and then marched right to the mart, overpaid for a pack of stale Kools, and then ran (OK, wheezed) to my car. Coffee was so disappointed. I was so ashamed, but now I didn’t have to think anymore about quitting. For now anyway.

attacking the debt monster

I was reading some message boards about persistence and debt repayment.  This is what I did over the last thirteen months:

First, I took a day off from work and called every credit card company.  I confirmed the amount of the debt and got online access to my account.

I put the online access information into my password book and made a spreadsheet to track all my cards and loans.

Next, I started cutting costs.  I didn’t buy things, I cut back.  I started shopping more wisely at the supermarket.  I went from going to the movies, to Blockbuster to Redbox and DVDxpress to waiting for movies to come out on cable.  I saved a dollar here, a dollar there. I questioned every expense.  It has to have some great value, or make some kind of sense. I drove my electric bill down.

I targeted certain credit cards to pay in full.  I picked the two smallest balances first.  It felt great.  I reduced the number of bills coming in so I would lower the chances of accidentally defaulting. Then I started targeting cards based on the interest rate.

I then made a spreadsheet to replace my check register.  I kept nearly daily tabs on my account.  I stopped overdrafting and immediately started saving hundreds a month.

I pushed for overtime and then worked it.  Some money went for car repair, some for food, some for debt. We didn’t have enough money to pay all of our bills each month, so I cut back further.  I was lucky enough to get about ten thousand dollars in back wages.  I never saw it.  I paid out two credit cards.

I read about how to save money, and the best way to pay down debt.  I was doing it all. I got my tax refund and sent it immediately to my debt. I took back cans for money, pick change off the ground, saved coins, and paid for everything in cash.  I shrunk my debt in thirteen months from maybe 52 thousand to 37 thousand.

I quit smoking – repeatedly. Even those failures gave me some breathing room and put about fifteen hundred dollars into my pocket. I have more plans.  I use all sorts of methods; the snowball, the snowflake, and targeting balances based on balance size, interest size, or how likely the credit card company is to screw me in the future.  I suspect that I’ll pay down about six thousand more dollars in the next ten months.  It’s take that long because this is the first time in ten years I’ll have money for summer activities and for Christmas.  I searched the web about credit cards and FICO scores.  I decided to repair my credit. My credit took quite a hit from carrying all that debt.

After my next tax refund, I’ll come up with a new plan.  As soon as the smoke clears, I’ll decide what to pay next and in what order.

I must say, it was quite a struggle but I’m glad for it.  I realized how little possessions mean, how important health and time are, and how important… really important… having money is.

The biggest change was overcoming my problems with money and debt.  I shook away all the fears and shame my parents installed in my, looked honestly at the debt, and grabbed it by the horns. I didn’t let the fact that I fucked up for so many years depress me and make me look the other day, letting the debt and bad spending habits mount. I was sinking in red.  I bellied up to it and handled it.