Interesting analysis over at Magpie. She takes a closer look at a story about the employment & financial burdens that returning reservists and other veterans face upon their return home, and finds, buried underneath it, a story about the burden on small employers of trying to carry on in the absence of their active-duty employees. Do take a look.
Labels:
blogs I like,
it's political,
linkety link
Via Magpie, we find some sex advice from accordion players. Nice.
Labels:
blogs I like,
linkety link
So Monday is, what, day 6 without a car? I'd say it's so far going pretty well even though I live in a city with a really lame-ass public transit system, and I can't possibly rely on it to get me to work when I want to go there, let alone to shop or to do other errands in a timely manner. I'm not punctual enough for that, for starters.
I'm lucky that I don't absolutely require a car for my work. I've been riding my bike instead of driving, though I did catch a couple of rides early in the week when I wasn't really prepared for the reality of carlessness. And last night I took a cab when I wanted to go downtown and hear some music. It just seemed safer.
I'm going to try to wait as long as I can to replace it. The longer I wait, and the more money I save, the lower the car payments will be, is what I'm thinking. And for once in my life I want to really think it through and do it right, as long as I have to do it. The cars I've had in the past have come into my life like stray dogs, only they're not dogs. They don't love you back. They're not even alive. You're under no real obligation to them, as far as I can see. I don't have to take one in just because it follows me home. I don't have to go looking for a new one right away just because everybody else has one.
But, see, the truth is pretty complicated. I don't want a car at all. And I want a brand new gorgeous fast car, a really sexy alphabitch-mobile. And I want a reliable, safe, practical car. I want a car that I don't have to mess with or spend lots of money keeping it going. I want a funky old diesel station wagon, a really, really sexy one, you know what I mean? and I want to paint it red and convert it to run on vegetable oil, and I want to do all the work on it myself. I don't want to ever drive a car again as long as I live.
Why aren't there any fucking bike paths for commuters in this town? Is that too much to ask for? Should I find a different, more bike-friendly city?
But the other thing is, I really have to have a car made in the US by union workers. It's important. And I can't possibly own anything but the very most fuel-efficient and sleek little unit available. Do they even make those here? It's stupid to buy a new car. But then again it's crazy to buy a used car; there's no way to tell what it's been through, and it's just going to be endless hassles, I know it is.
And cars can't possibly be sexy, can they? I mean, it's insane to own any car at all; they're the scourge of the planet. It's immoral to own one, drive one, or even use one. And it's impossible to own, drive, or use an automobile without directly benefitting the hideous amoral bastards who are running this country to the ground and profiting from all manner of death and torture and mayhem that's going on all over the damn place.
You can see I'm not making this easy for myself. I know I'm thinking way too hard about it. That's just how I am.
I'll let you know what happens.
I feel a little silly, but nobody said anything. I went down the street to walk my neighbor's dog & I talked to a couple of other neighbors on the way. The dog, Dan, and I walked for well over an hour before I looked down at my feet and noticed that I was wearing two different shoes.
Usually when you do that kind of thing it feels a little funny, but it didn't. They're both very comfortable shoes and have almost the same texture of suede on the inside. The green, one on my right foot, is a little bit cushier, though, and the one on my left foot has way better arch support.
I was sort of distracted and a little sleepy when I left the house, but still. I guess this is what comes of having too many shoes. I really am powerless over them. Obviously. If I had any power at all I'd at least be able to choose a pair properly and pay attention while I put them on.
No harm done, though. Dan and I had a lovely walk, even after I noticed that my shoes didn't match.
Update: I was just looking at the picture again & noticed that the silver nailpolish looks great in the late-afternoon/ early-evening light. Kind of glowy and strange in the photo.
I used to think it would be a great idea to collect the dreams people had between the time the radio went on & the time they actually woke up. But this morning the dream I had was so fucking weird that maybe this isn't such a funny idea after all.
This morning Juan Williams interviewed Condoleeza Rice. I'm not a big fan of either of them. But I was just yesterday listening to Steve Earle's song "Oh Condi Condi" (lyrics below*) while I was walking the dog. And the two things converged in my head and I woke up feeling so completely conflicted and, well, unclean. I can't even describe it. I couldn't get the water in the shower hot enough, you know what I mean?
In the dream, I was (I can't believe I'm even admitting this), like, totally hitting on Dr. Rice at a cocktail party. And, even scarier, she was totally into it. I won't go into any more detail than that.
One thing I'd like to say, though, is that it kind of pissed me off when Mr. Williams asked her a question about misogyny in hip-hop music, she laughed & said she didn't know much about hip-hop music ("I'm ... too old," she said, rather charmingly), and then he followed up with something about how she is an accomplished concert pianist. It seemed to me, in my half-awake state, that he was trying to find some way to underscore how out of touch she is with "her people."
It's like the way that a lot of the white liberal/progressive types that I know get all bent out of shape when a black person is a conservative. It's like they're accusing black conservatives of "selling out" and turning their back on their whole race. But let's make one thing clear: individuals are not responsible for the reputation of their whole community. There really are bad apples now and again.
It's a variant on the racist bullshit way we white folks (and yes, I know that Mr. Williams ain't white) look at a creepy black person's shitty behavior & wonder why "those people" are like that.
I just wanna call bullshit on that. Make no mistake, it's my opinion that the current crop of so-called conservatives, whatever their color, are betraying all of us. But nobody whines about white conservatives selling out on "their" people. And an America where individual black folks are free -- and have, like Dr. Rice, the ingrained privilege & fucking cluelessness -- to be idiots (just like clueless right-wing whackjob white people) is, ideally, the kind of America where I want to live. Even though I wish they wouldn't do it, just like I wish white folks wouldn't do it.
And I sure as hell wish they didn't have so much goddamn power just now.
But let's not forget, Condoleeza Rice is a smart-as-hell, privileged, well-educated, and amazingly talented woman. Just like Katrina vanden Heuvel and Jane Fonda and Amy Goodman and Bonnie Raitt and Erica Jong and Barbara Ehrenreich, to name a few. She does, however, have some different ideas about how the world oughta work.
"*Oh Condi, Condi" by Steve Earle:
"Oh Condi Condi beggin’ on my knees
Open up your heart and let me in wontcha please
Got no money but everybody knows
I love you Condi and I’ll never let you go
Sweet and dandy pretty as can be
You be the flower and I’ll be the bumble bee
Oh she loves me oops she loves me not
People say you’re cold but I think you’re hot
Oh, Condi, Condi
Oh, Condi, Condi
Oh Condi, Condi I’m talkin’ to you girl
What’s it gonna hurt come on give me a whirl
Shake your body now let me see you go
One time for me Oh Condi I love you so
Skank for me Condi show me what you got
They say you’re too uptight I say you’re not
Dance around me spinnin’ like a top
Oh Condi Condi Condi don’t ever stop
Oh Condi Condi Can’t you hear me call
I’m standin’ in the street outside your garden wall
Pocketful of money belly full of wine
Condi in my heart and romance on my mind
Listen to me Condi don’t be afraid
I come here tonight to chase your blues away
I’ll never hurt you I’ll treat you right
Oh Condaleeza won’t you come out tonight
Pretty little Condi precious as can be
Bet you never had another lover like me"
I'm not much of a sinner, apparently. Only a 14% chance of going to hell? I'm going to have to work on this. I'd miss all my friends, for one thing. I guess it's not surprising though that my sins are mostly those of lust; I thought surely I'd do better on slothfulness:
| Pride: 0% |
| Anger: 20% |
| Lust: 60% |
| Envy: 0% |
| Gluttony: 0% |
| Avarice: 0% |
| Sloth: 20% |
| Chance You'll Go to Hell: 14% |
| You'll die from overexertion. *wink* |
What are the chances of the power supply on your PC and the engine on your car going kablooey on exactly the same day? It seems unlikely to me, but it happened yesterday, totally wrecked my day, and then was diagnosed today & another day was pretty much lost. The car is terminal, but the PC will probably be fixed by tomorrow afternoon.
It's actually kind of a relief, inconvenient as it is, to finally hear the bells toll for my poor dear car, which after all served me well for a long time. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Labels:
transportation
So I went for a bike ride today. It wasn't my first of the season, but I went with a friend who is, as it turns out, in rather better shape than I am. Plus, he has a way cooler bike than mine. I know that sounds lame, but it's really true. And I'll admit it, he's just a better and more experienced cyclist. I don't know what I was thinking.
But still.
If I were more sensitive and/or vain I would be feeling completely humiliated right now. Fortunately I do have a sense of humor a lot of the time, and scraped elbows & knees and bruised thighs will certainly heal. But I am feeling horribly out of shape and old and fat and dammit I'm not going to let that stand. Well, OK, I guess I'll still be sort of middle-aged even if I get into better shape, and I've never been what you'd call skinny no matter how fit I get, but you know what I mean.
I'm giving myself two weeks of riding alone every day to be able to at least keep up with my pal, more or less. And until the end of the summer to buy a better bike and kick his ass.
I guess I saw this one first at Feministe. I am totally not cool enough to get, like, invited to play these games but I don't generally like to wait around for permission.
1. What is the total volume of musical files on your computer?
So far it's 12.84 GB on my laptop, but only about 4.8 GB fits on my iPod at a time so I have to switch it all every once in a while. Like, who can listen to the same 1100 or so songs over and over again? The damn thing is like heroin. Give me more more more. Plus there are several large stacks of CDs sitting here that I haven't even loaded yet. I have no idea what-all's on my desktop at my office.2. What song are you listening to right now?
"Ride" by Liz Phair, from Whitechocolatespaceegg3. Last CD I bought?
Re-release of 'King of America' by Elvis Costello.4. Five songs you listen to a lot and which mean something to you:
This changes so often, and there are so many more, but I like what Mac over at Pesky'Apostrophe said about how there were certain songs she absolutely had to listen to before she went to work or she'd have a bad day. I'm not exactly that attached to any routine, but when I drive to work I frequently sit in my car in the parking lot and listen to music until I feel I'm ready to go in. I'm not ready to go in until I play the Ramones' classic "I Don't Want to Grow Up." So I guess I'll start with that:
- "I Don't Want to Grow Up" by the Ramones, on Adios, Amigos for those of you following along at home. Sometimes I listen to the Tom Waits' version on Bone Machine, which I like a little better if you want to know the truth, but for kicking my day in the ass and getting out of the car it's gotta be the Ramones.
- "Superman's Song" by the Crash Test Dummies from The Ghosts That Haunt Me. I don't know why this song breaks my heart but it does. "Superman never made any money/for saving the world from Solomon Grundy/& sometimes I despair/the world will never see another man like him."
- "So It Goes" by Tom Waits, from the Early Years, vol 2. I can't play this one at work; I listen to it though whenever I just want to cry and cry.
- "Essence" by Lucinda Williams. Not for work either. It makes me want to -- oh never mind. None of your business. It's just so fucking sexy I can hardly stand it.
- This is so corny I can't believe I'm even admitting it, but "The Mary Ellen Carter" by Stan Rogers on Home in Halifax, among other recordings. It's a song about a wrecked ship, and the guys who were on board when it sank putting it back together. It's kind of inspirational in a cornball kind of way, and makes it easier to go to work sometimes. In a different way than the Ramones, though: "And you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow/ with smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go/ turn to and put out all your strength/ of arm and heart and brain/ and like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again/ rise again rise again/ though your heart it be broken and life about to end/ no matter what you've lost be it a home a love a friend/ like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again"
I especially like the spider here at Dharma Bums' Friday Invertebrate Blogging.
Labels:
blogs I like,
flora and/or fauna,
linkety link
You know the drill - turn it on & randomize:
Labels:
music
Amanda at Pandagon and Lauren at Feministe have been discussing (yeah, as usual, I'm a little late on this) the whole idea of whether women can be authentic music geeks, or whether they just listen to what their boyfriends tell them to listen to. I am a music geek, and so are they, but they and their commenters discuss the whole issue pretty thoroughly, and it's worth taking a look at. I encourage you to read their posts and also their comments.
I had no idea how completely clueless I have been on this. See, apparently there is a popular idea out there that women who are music geeks are usually (or at least initially) only trying to impress men, or a particular man. That they tailor their musical tastes to please the men in their lives and aren't really interested on their own.
Yes, I've been uncharitable in this regard, for example when a gal I know suddenly and inexplicably develops a taste for thrash metal when she has heretofore only liked whiny folksingers -- but really even that is often (but not always, alas) just a sign that she is willing finally to expand her horizons.
And yes, it was a lover who first played a Sandy Denny record for me when I was a 17-year-old college freshman. But I was the one who asked him who the fuck was playing the guitar like that and where could I find more of this Richard Thompson fellow. And was it a boy I had a 16-year-old crush on who first played me a Tom Waits record or did I fall for the first person to play Tom Waits for me? And does it mean something weird that it was my mom who first played me Leonard Cohen, Neil Diamond, Janis Joplin, or Bob goddamn Dylan? Or my granddad who first played me Hank Williams and Patsy Montana? Or my freaking pothead cousin who introduced me to Pink Floyd and the Who? I just don't think a gal has to get all bent out of shape on account of it was someone else who first pointed her in a direction she ended up wanting to go. I mean, I've dated people who liked all kinds of crap, musically, but I never followed unless I genuinely liked it.
I guess the prevailing so-called wisdom here is that women might get into interesting music on their own eventually, but the implication is that we are only drawn into true (or even pretend) music geekdom by men. Like both Amanda and Lauren, however, I've been introduced to a lot of music by lovers and friends -- both men and women -- AND I've gone out of my way more than once to introduce a lover to something I like (and further, crazy as it might seem, I've broken off potentially interesting, um, relationships, on the basis of incompatible musical and/or literary tastes), But, like them, I can't really say that I've ever adopted/adapted any aspect of my musical taste to please another human being.
Don't get me wrong here -- I love it when a new acquaintance or especially a new lover introduces me to music I wouldn't otherwise have heard. Music is -- to me, anyway -- something so intimate and so cool that I want to share it with people I care about. It helps cement any connection that might be developing. And I know that I've introduced lots of people -- lovers, friends, family -- to new music that they have enjoyed (and yeah, I've bored them to tears). I have even had ex-lovers call me years later to make sure I heard something new that they were sure I'd like -- even if they don't want to talk to me about anything else. Plus I compulsively read liner notes and cross-reference everyone in the band (or studio as the case may be) and listen to all their other recordings, and read reviews, and talk to other musicians and geeks like myself.
I am powerless and I don't want to stop.
Yes, I'm a snob. Of course I am. I'm even a little bit prideful about never ever listening to music on the radio at all. I get a little irked when some of my more "mainstream" pals accuse me of only liking music if it isn't popular, but I do recognize that I have a few of what you could call "acquired tastes" (Leonard Cohen anyone?) that maybe an otherwise discerning person may not have adopted. But it's quite frankly a deal-breaker for me if someone I want to date doesn't like any of my favorite music at all, or I don't like any of theirs. It's just so fundamental.
One of the starting points for Lauren's post is this article in the Guardian about how women don't download music. Whoop de doo. Ever heard of records? or CDs? I almost never download anything. I'm still trying to put my whole CD collection on my laptop. And it's already about three or four times what I can put onto my iPod at any one time, and that's counting only a fraction of what I've uploaded from my ex-lovers and lovers and friends along with my own stuff.
I don't think it's unreasonable to be afraid that if I start looking around for downloadable music I will be unable to detach my ass from this chair and do anything else.
I do have a life, you know. Maybe that's the difference between male music geeks and female music geeks.
Oh, and anyone who thinks women can't be serious music geeks has not ever helped Magpie move. I don't know how many linear feet of LPs that girl owns, but it's a lot. I've carried them. She is among the world's biggest (or at least most effective) music geeks, I'm certain of it.
You know what bugs me sometimes about certain girls? I hate the way they stand there and get all girly when you do something like put a new battery in your car. I mean, I'm not very butch or anything, and I'm certainly not someone who does all my own car repairs & what have you. I don't even have my own power tools.
But some things are just easier to do yourself than to wait around until someone shows up to help you or do it for you. And what if they make the problem worse? I'd much rather take responsibility for it myself. Plus it's just embarrassing to me to feel so helpless in the face of something so simple. Like changing a tire, or putting a new battery in your increasingly decrepit minivan, or trimming the bushes around your house.
So that's why I was kind of irked when my neighbor (a woman around my own age) came out & gushed about how impressed she was that I could go to AutoPartsWorld all by myself, buy the right kind of battery, carry it out to the car all by my little lonesome, and then I was somehow able to lift the hood of my car, find my toolkit and work gloves, remove the battery cables, remove the old battery, install the new one, clean the cables and fastener clamp thingys, attach the cables (be sure to get the right cable on the right post - they're color coded to help you!), and start the damn car. All in less than 15 minutes, including the trip to AutoPartsWorld.
"Wow," she says. "I'm so impressed. I'd never be able to do all of that all by myself."
Of course she could. I can certainly understand not wanting to bother, and I certainly wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been reasonably sure it would solve the problem. I asked advice from my dad and another very competent amateur mechanic & one professional. And my sister. It was much cheaper than having it towed to the garage for them to put a new battery in it for me. And way less hassle than trying to jump start it and drive over to the auto parts store.
But I'm not exactly sure why I find my neighbor's attitude so annoying. For one thing, it took me like three days to get around to doing it, so I wasn't feeling all competent and efficient, if you know what I mean. And it was just one more thing I had to worry about in a week full of stupid and expensive things to worry about. And I was having just a bit of a hormonally-mediated worry-fest anyway.
But for me, at least, the ability to fix a simple thing like that makes me feel better. Like I can take care of myself. Plus, like cooking, it's fun! But I was talking about it to a guy I know & he didn't think my neighbor's attitude was so odd. He said he feels the same way in the kitchen. I guess it's sort of the same thing. I don't think everyone has to do everything for herself -- and it's a good thing to be able to ask for and accept help when you really do need it.
Labels:
it's political,
transportation
Via Magpie I found this link to a truly inspirational project. I'm finding it especially inspirational as I consider replacing my poor dear minivan (on which I still haven't fixed the window plus now it needs a new battery also, and maybe there's something else wrong with it but I don't know what-all just yet). The possibilities for art projects involving cars are endless, when you think about it. So much better than putting them in a junkyard, I think. These fabulous possibilities were found in Goldfield, NV, and posted in LiveJournal's Found Objects Gallery, which is kind of cool too.
Labels:
blogs I like,
linkety link
I've heard stories from people who have lost their faith. You've probably seen it happen: they successfully defend themselves for years, deflect all attacks, shun all unbelievers, and then one day they accidentally get a good look at the man behind the curtain and are completely at sea for as long as it takes them to construct a life that makes sense without whatever it was they had built their lives on: their church, their crazy family, or a certain political party. A particular dietary or health care regimen, maybe, or even an educational theory.
Sometimes they lean too hard in the opposite, equally wacky -- sometimes even wackier -- direction.
It's always been hard for me to understand all this. Faith in something, in the first place, especially unquestioned faith. But also I can't understand why it's so hard to let go of an idea once it's proved to be false or inadequate. I guess I'm way more attached to being right than I am able to sustain a particular belief. Most of the time. I guess you could say I have a very hard time letting go of my disbeliefs.
But also, and maybe more usefully, I can accept that sometimes things happen that we don't quite get. We think they are the result of our efforts, but maybe they are just accidents. Or we were messing around with something we don't understand. I certainly don't believe that we know everything -- not about medicine, not about physics, not about UFO propulsion. Surely, though, the truth is out there.
Here is a case in point -- a story of a serious blow to my habitual (and I happen to think, very healthy) skepticism.
This really did happen to me personally, and not to someone who knows someone who is related to a friend's neighbor. It's not earth-shattering by any means, but I have never been able to reconcile what happened with what I believe. Or more to the point, maybe -- with what I don't believe. And I've been reluctant to try to prove it didn't happen, partly because -- well, you'll see.
I really don't want to turn into a wacko.
The backstory: Since childhood I have experienced intermittent and occasionally extremely severe joint pain -- from the usual aches and pains in the joints of an active kid to the feeling that some alien force had injected every single joint in my body with some kind of gritty, hot, glowing, radioactive, sticky goo. Green, smelly sludge from the bottom of a radioactive pond.
There was laboratory evidence that something was going on, but not enough to say exactly what it was, and I tried a zillion analgesic & anti-inflammatory drugs (not especially helpful), special exercises (helpful in a preventive way), a kind of makeshift self-hypnosis/ attitude adjustment/ tough-it-out strategy (very useful for a lot of things), and excessive drinking (you can guess how that turned out).
I learned not to talk about it with certain types of people. You've met them. They have some kind of supplement for sale, or their cousin sells it. Or they are Deeply Suspicious of the Medical Establishment that is trying to minimize the legitimate suffering of all womyn -- or they were the ones who caused it in the first place with all those so-called "tests." Or maybe I have a gluten allergy, or lactose intolerance, or it's my paralyzing fear of intimacy making my joints lock up like that.
Whatever.
So here's what happened: In my late 20s/early 30s I went to a physical therapist who specialized in sports medicine for a recurring problem originally due to weight-lifting injury. She was very helpful and competent and seemed very mainstream, but given occasionally to include some stuff I found a little too, you know. Wooey-wooey. I can't remember what-all it was called, but it was harmless enough & didn't take time away from the good work she did.
We eventually became friends, as it was a pretty small town and we traveled in the same circles. At some point during the treatment sessions I had told her about the joint pain history, and one day she noticed I was in a lot of pain and was preparing to leave for a camping trip in a couple of weeks.
"I think you should see Mr. X," she said one day, out of nowhere. "He's a homeopath. I know he can help you."
"I've read about that," I said. "I'll probably be feeling OK in a few days. I'll just bring a bunch of little bottles of gin in case it gets too bad on the trip. Or maybe some weed. Less garbage to carry back out. I just don't think homeopathy is good for this kind of thing."
She said I was too skeptical for my own good, but that she guessed maybe I didn't want to live without my pain for some (presumably dysfunctional) reason. She'd seen cases like mine before, she said, but dropped the subject to invite us over for dinner the night before we left.
We got there, and of course you know she had tricked me. There was Mr. X sitting at the table. I looked at my lovely ex-wife and she looked at me. We realized at exactly the same time who this guy was, and we had to try really hard not to laugh.
See, we both worked for media outlets, such as they were, in this tiny little town, and we got a lot of letters. From weirdos, mostly. Mr. X was a repeat offender. His letters came in the mail or were stuffed under the doors of our offices when we were out. They were written in the requisite CRAZYPERSONALLCAPS printing, no margins or spacing, with a blunt pencil or a series of magic markers (which would inevitably dry out within a few lines and he'd switch to another one) on the back of truck-stop placemats or data printouts taken, we'd determined, from the recycling bin in the office at a nearby community college.
Turns out he taught physics there.
But his real work was trying to modify the flying saucer technology he'd seen either during an alien abduction or a more consensual visit with aliens or occasionally the story was that one had crashed on his farm & he'd had the flying saucer wreckage in his barn until the CIA or the NSA or someone from the government had stolen it, but not before he'd figured out how to modify his old Pinto's carbuerator based on the saucer propulsion technology he'd seen, and his old Pinto would get like 150 miles per gallon but as soon as he finished building it and testing it the damn CIA would steal it. Again.
Another sideline, as I soon found, was homeopathy. He hadn't mentioned this in any of the letters. I gathered that someone had successfully treated him with a homeopathic remedy for something and then asked him, since he was a physicist & all, could he explain how it worked? He'd never heard of homeopathy before, and wondered what it had to do with physics. His friend explained that the pills in each remedy were basically just sugar pills that had been dipped into a solution containing not a particular substance dissolved in alcohol, but rather the diluted "vibrational signature" of a particular substance dissolved in alcohol. Serial dilutions meant that no detectable trace of the original substance remained in the solution that would be administered to the patient. With each successive dilution, the "remedy," as it's called, became stronger, apparently.
The vibrational signature or whatever was related somehow to quantum physics, and the friend wanted to know was that maybe like the rotational energy of the atoms in the whateverthehell.
Mr. X pronounced it bunk and went back to his flying saucer project, but he got kind of worked up about these "vibrational signatures," taking the whole concept of homeopathy as an affront to the purity and virtue and essential nobility of quantum physics. So he set out to prove that homeopathy did not -- could not possibly in fact -- work, even though it had worked perfectly well for him.
The trouble was, though, that the more he tried to debunk it, the more obvious it became to him that it really worked. No, really. He was going to write a book about it just as soon as he finished the carbuerator modification in the latest of what seemed to be an endless supply of Ford Pintos, provided the CIA didn't steal this one too.
He needed the money from the invention in order to build the right labs & so on; he still hadn't figured out exactly how it worked. And he needed time to write.
I was at kind of a loss. The guy seriously creeped me out, but not to the point where I wanted to embarrass my friend or refuse her hospitality. Plus I was certain that even if homeopathy were totally legit, this guy was a wacko. I figured I could make an appointment and then cancel it later.
No such luck. He was going to cure me before dinner.
He got out a little case of tiny pill bottles and an enormous reference book and I noticed a large supply of decrepit felt tip pens in his pocket protector.
He started flipping through the book and asking me unrelated and increasingly bizarre questions and noting my answers, or noting something anyway, on little scraps of paper which he'd use to mark the page in the book but I never saw him go back and look at anything he'd written.
He licked the tip of the pen every time he started writing.
Finally he chose a little pill bottle and told me that, despite what I may have heard from other practitioners (ahem), one dose would work, and it would work instantaneously. If it was the right remedy, that is. He assured me it was fine if I didn't believe in it. He didn't either, he said, and wouldn't until he figured out how it worked. He held out a small pill & indicated I should open my mouth. He dropped the little white pill on my tongue. His hands smelled like he probably worked on cars a lot, and that's kind of how the pills tasted, very faintly.
Nothing happened.
"Well, that one's not right," he said cheerfully, and flipped around in the book some more. Was it random? Was he looking for something in particular? I kept patiently answering questions, thinking he'd probably give up at some point. I wasn't really sure what I'd do if he didn't, and everybody else had lost interest in the proceedings and wandered into the kitchen to help get dinner ready.
I don't know how many little pills later, dinner was on the table. He was undeterred, and making increasingly detailed notes on the backs of matchbook covers and fragments of gas station receipts. I was losing interest and starting to talk to my friends about dinner and our upcoming trip. I thought maybe he'd at least take a break for dinner.
"Onions!" Mr. X said suddenly, out of nowhere. "Do you like onions?"
"Yes of course." I said.
"Garlic?" Duh.
"How about eggs? Do you eat eggs?"
I had to laugh. We'd had an omelet with onions, garlic, feta cheese and spinach just that morning. I admitted as much. Everybody laughed and someone pointed out that there were onions, garlic, and/or eggs in everything on the table.
"It's sulfur poisoning. That's what's causing her pain," he told my friends and popped another damn pill in my mouth.
I don't know if you can imagine what it felt like to have that kind of intense and enduring pain go away instantaneously. I can't really describe it in any useful way except to admit that it did, in fact, go away entirely. And suddenly. Like it was never there. I'm not talking about gradual pain relief here, like when you take an aspirin and notice half an hour later that your head hasn't hurt for a while.
I try, in general, to maintain a cool and unreadable exterior, but something must have shown on my face, because Mr. X slammed his book shut triumphantly and said, "I don't know how the hell it worked, but look at her!"
By then I was a little freaked out. I mean, something had happened, but what?
Was I just tired of the procedure and something clicked in my brain or somewhere and laid off the pain just to make Mr. X stop talking? Was I finally ready to let go of my attachment to pain? Had I indeed been poisoned in childhood by sulfur and now I was somehow cured by the vibrational energy of sulfur on a sugar pill?
What the fuck?
Did the pain go away because I wanted it to, and if so, could I do it again if I had to? Was the pain even real? Had it been there to begin with? Would it be back? When? Was the first pill really morphine, or maybe some kind of alien pain-relief technology? Was this what faith healing was all about?
Dinner was good, if a little surreal. We heard a little more about the aliens, and Mr. X's efforts to disprove homeopathy and teach physics to indifferent students, and we were promised a signed copy of his homeopathy book when it comes out.
The camping trip was great. I hate camping, but I had a blast. Nothing hurt, not even in the morning after sleeping on the ground. I ran around and played with the kids in the next campsite -- to the complete amazement my lovely ex-wife, who had not ever seen me run in the four or five years she'd known me.
That was maybe ten years ago or so. You're probably wondering whether the pain ever came back. Some regular old aches and pains, yeah sure. Some were kind of lingering and intense, but they went away again. But never the gritty radioactive kind, no, not until a couple of months ago when I had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. And it's intermittent and doesn't seem to affect every single joint simultaneously. So no, it hasn't really come back in its former glory just yet. But it could.
Did the experience change my mind about homeopathy? Do I now believe that the vibrational essence or whatever of a thing can cure you of a symptom or a disease? Do I go see Mr. X or another homeopath every time I have a new symptom of something?
No. No. And no.
I just can't believe in it. It doesn't make sense. Something happened, OK. Something neither I nor Mr. X, bless his weird heart, was prepared to understand. I, however, am not going to devote my life to proving, disproving, or advocating the use of homeopathy.
I will not be converted.
It's a beautiful day here for photographing my new red boots. Here I am in a friend's backyard bathtub. You may safely ignore the whiteness of my legs.
I think it's obvious why I have a total crush on these boots: all the best features of cowboy boots, motorcycle boots (oil-resistant soles!), and majorette boots (!) plus they're red!!
I'm figuring out this photo hosting procedure. It seems to hang up if I try to put a hyperlink in the text; I can edit it all over again in Blogger, though. Surely there is a better way.
Thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerrilla for the shoeblogging idea. She posted a nifty pair of red pumps a while back, but I can't find the post just now. Her new site design looks great, though. Check it out if you haven't seen it.
Labels:
blogs I like,
linkety link,
shoeblogging
Some asshole broke my car window for fun the other night. I'm sure it was just for fun on account of there was nothing missing from the car -- not even the few bucks worth of spare change on the front seat & in the drink holder thingy. I guess I'm not surprised that they left the ratty sneakers & bag of dirty gym clothes, but they don't appear to have even gone through the car looking for anything to steal. The bastards.
Plus: the fucking doors were unlocked.
I didn't notice anything was amiss right away, but I kept hearing broken glass noise from the back. I figured it was just a loose fruit juice bottle clanking around the back of the minivan or something like that. But I eventually noticed the side back windowpane was smashed in, so I called the cops to report it. Then later I taped some plastic over it because it was looking like it might rain. I thought it would look crappy with the silver duct tape, so I tried to find some clear packing tape. No luck. But in my workroom I found a whole drawer entirely full of different kinds of tape: paper packing tape, purple masking tape, two-sided scotch tape, foam weatherstripping tape, two-sided picture-hanging tape, and black duct tape.
My car is black. I cut the plastic to the exact shape of the window (more or less), and taped it so smoothly & neatly & very securely. I gotta say it doesn't look all that bad, considering, but it's going to suck trying to clean it all off once I get the window fixed this week.
This is just twisted. Definitely not work-safe. Via my total hero The Rude Pundit.
Labels:
blogs I like,
it's political,
linkety link
Magpie has been a busy bird. In addition to lots of posts about epidemiology, politics, social security "reform," & other exciting topics (did you know that May is National Masturbation Month, for example?), she links to this great collection of postcards made from discarded library card-catalog cards. Beautiful. There's also, speaking of library books, a link to the MIT Time Traveler's Convention coming up May 7, 2005. Can't attend? "No worries! If time travel is invented in your lifetime, you can always come later. Even if it isn't, we'll have pictures and video up at this site within a week after the Convention." If you want to help publicize the event, here are some requests from the organizers:
"Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention."In case you're from a future in which the MIT East Campus Courtyard is gone, the coordinates are 42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W (that's 42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees). Convention organizers credit this excellent Cat and Girl comic for the inspiration.
Labels:
blogs I like,
books,
linkety link
