No, you REALLY do need a fat ass if this study is correct.
Imagine that.
This might just be the end of the "Twiggy" phenomenon in modeling.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get an ice cream sundae to the range for my HR 218 quals, still fitting into my 36 jeans from 20 years ago.
....and the first commenter to say "no, that sounds more like the boogey-woogey flu" will be pursued to the ends of the literary Earth.
Got a moderate cold New Year's Day, and have failed to get better. Lots of horking lunger action. Could just be the Head Cold From Hell, but I'm reporting to Sick Call on Monday.
Haven't been able to leave the house much since New Year's, and no range trips, whadda bummer!
Also have the blahs. Big-time blahs. Can't get mad at anyone/anything. Bad sign.
Fuckkit, just fuckkit!
Something tells me that the eventual tally of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from th Iraq war could top that of the Vietnam war, on a per-man basis.
I have a theory.
In the 'Nam, most everyone had three forms of stress relief available: booze, pot and beaver (bald beavers!). When you finally got some some time off, from humping the trail and/or fighting in the jungle, or flying the unfriendly skies of North Vietnam, you usually went to the Class Six (liquor) store, got a bottle of Jim Beam for $0.90 (that's right, ninety cents) and proceeded to get wasted. Or you went just outside the main gate and scored a shopping bag full of good Thai pot for $3.00. Potheads didn't drink as much, because they had to find a secure place, and clean that bagful of pot, removing stems and seeds, and cleaning was a labor-intense job and you couldn't be wasted doing it.
After the first few shots, or that first joint, you were ready to go "downtown" to the whorehouse district, and survey the merchandise (or just go to your favorite cathouse and wait for your favorite girl to be free). This wasn't expensive, so many GIs took advantage of the "local economy".
Of course, that meant exposing yourself to the local STDs, also. In Thailand, where I flew most of my war sorties, the military and the locals came to an understanding. The local political chief was paid a bribe to have doctors administer simple tests (which the US military medical lab processed, probably) to all the girls every week, each girl being registered by the government (no, none of them ever said to me "I'm a government agent, GI, even my twat is registered") and had a number which YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WRITE DOWN AND RETAIN, EITHER BEFORE OR AFTER THE ACTION. Then, the numbers of the girls with STDs were posted on the bulletin board or even read aloud on the base (post) radio station. This was known as the "numbers game" or even "the lottery". If your number came up, you were screwed, if your Top Kick or the doctor you had to see for the shots were hard-ass. It was a UCMJ (Universal Code of Military Justice) violation to abuse your own body, since it belonged to Uncle Sam. You could get an Article 15 (Captain's Mast for Navy types) and lose a stripe or get fined up to a month's pay, but few did. You could say that it was the screwing you got for the screwing you'd had.
So, there was stress relief for the troops. According to my sources, none of that is available in the Iraq theater of war.
Gonna be some FUBAR heads on some of those boys and girls when they come home...or maybe I'm wrong, and the military has taught them how to manage their stress better than they taught us (with zero instruction).
Time will tell.
This is some no-shit serious, folks. This recall is expanding by the hour, it seems.
I have a large canned food inventory for SHTF purposes, as I suspect many of my readers have. We'd better get to checking it ALL out to see if any of it is recalled.
Botulism is a killer toxin, and if you get it, you shouldn't expect to survive.
The USDA list is here. Check the list frequently.
If you don't get the willies after reading this article, you need to get a DNA test, you may not be human.
This is just the sort of controversy that medical science does not need. If having the greed of Big Pharma hanging around it's neck like the albatross in Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" wasn't enough, credible accusations of eugenics are definitely a severe setback for the medical community, which cannot thrive and advance it's science without our support.
...but good, the gout did.
The discerning reader will notice that my posts have been shorter, and there haven't been very many of them for the last week.
That is because of gout.
For those unfamiliar with "The Disease of Kings" as it was formerly called, gout happens when excessive uric acid from incomplete digestion builds up in the blood serum, and precipitates out in the form of crystals in the joints, particularly the joints of the big toes and the knees. Since our joints are supposed to work smoothly, with lubricated cartilage on the ends of the bones, adding crystals in there is like pouring sand into your car engine: it ain't running long afterward, bro.
If you've been misinformed, you will have heard that gout is entirely related to diet, specifically a diet rich in animal protein. This is why it used to be known as "The Disease of Kings", because only the nobility could afford regular meals of animal protein in the old days, the peasants ate their groats and fibrous veggies to try to power themselves for their rude existences.
The dietary theory of the disease would be true, if we were all products of our diets, as the food faddists would have you believe.
We're not.
There are several other things that factor in, like the digestive efficiency of one's colon (warning: shitty subject ahead!). When the colon is doing a proper job, 35% of the body's digestion occurs there, which translates to 35% of the uric acid byproduct of digesting protein is eliminated there. When the colon isn't doing it's job properly, or, as in my case, one has had to have a section of the colon removed, one is already behind the curve for eliminating uric acid.
Enter modern pharmacology. Specifically, the drug Allopurinol. When it is taken into the body, it causes the protein digestion to end a step before the last one, the production of uric acid. The final step then becomes production of purines, something like an amino acid, which are very easily eliminated by the kidneys.
The problem is that Allopurinol is affected by damn near any other drug in the body, and as a diabetic, hypertensive with excess cholesterol, I take other meds to keep myself on an even keel. I have several bad discs in my spine, and I have some chronic back pain, so I take a daily dose of painkillers, currently Acetaminophen (Tylenol) to manage that.
So, if everything is in balance, I walk a thin line between any of several health crashes that, while not life-threatening, put an end to normal daily activities such as going to the range, etc when they occur.
It's when the body and all that pharma gets out of balance, usually caused by a virus of the intestinal kind, that it gets interesting, because that's when gout raises it's ugly head. Gout can be small, just twinges in my toes that tell me not to take my daily WarWalk, or it can kick my ass severely, causing me to spend days in bed, leg elevated, madly guzzling water (to try to flush out the uric acid) and trying to deal with the fact that is VERY painful to walk to the bathroom and whiz.
This past week I have been kicked. To the ground, then kicked some more while down.
I had to seek medical intervention. So, as soon as I could sort-of-safely drive, (I'm by myself as the rest of the family is touring in Japan), I motor yesterday to my HMO's clinic, and the doc listens to my sad tale, notes the swollen knee that is hypersensitive to touch (and it is MUCH better than two days ago, I'm actually on the mend), and especially notes that the affected knee is warm, almost hot to the touch.
Hmmmm, says doc, could be an infection in the knee. Gout, I say, maybe osteo arthritis resulting from gout. Could be an infection, she says, have to eliminate that possibility. Soon, a corpsman (sorry, lab tech, I had a flashback to military medicine there) comes in and sucks a ton of blood out of my arm and off it goes to the lab. Stat test, very low white cell count, no infection showing in bloodstream, anyway.
Not good enough, says doc, we have to be really, really sure there's no infection in the knee itself. I get a dark premonition. I'm right. They have to "drain" my knee. That's a polite way of saying that they are going to stick a sharpened sewer pipe in there and suck out whatever fluid shows up at the end of the sewer pipe. Really, it's only a hypodermic needle, but they quit using that size of needles on humans back in the Civil War.
Trouble is, they can't do this at the clinic, because none of the docs there are orthopods who know the knee structures well enough, running blind, to guide that needle in between the vital places and get to where the fluid is, without damaging anything permanently.
I whistle up my oldest daughter, who is about to get off work (she is an RN, on a neurosurgery team at another hospital system in the area), and she comes down to transport me to the clinic's mother hospital 10 miles away (I figger I won't be able to drive back after getting "drained", and it will be a dark and stormy night by then, with T-Day shoppers dashing hither and yon). We get to the ER at the hospital, and after ONLY about 3 hours of useless drone chores like paperwork, getting put into the triage system, etc, I get to see the ER doc who is going to do the needling.
ER doc 'splains it all, very carefully, giving me plenty of opportunities to say "fuckit, that's just too invasive for an investigational procedure", but I don't say the words. A grizzled old male nurse that I can easily envision having hauled shot-up soldiers off of foreign battlefields under fire comes in, and he is to assist. We banter while the doc sends out for the sewer pipe/needle.
I get HUGE doses of Lidocaine shot into the knee. Doc jabs me with the sewer pipe and I don't feel it, FOR ABOUT TWO SECONDS, then the needle hits a structure that didn't get any Lidocaine, so out comes the needle, gets filled with more Lidocaine, and back in it goes, hosing the pain-killer as it penetrates, firehosing it really, because this needle is about the size of a fireman's nozzle on the end of a 4" diameter hose.
The needle, expertly guided up to now, finally runs into a bone. Bones have their own nerves, not affected by Lidocaine, did you know that?
I KNOW THAT NOW, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
We do about 15 minutes of this probe-and-suck routine inside my knee, with, maybe, 5 or 6 of those max-pain bone hits. I'm no dummy, and realize after the first bone strike that if I jump again, I'm just going to get damaged more. I try deep breathing. Helps, but not much. I try panting, helps a little more, but not enough. Then I see the duck.
There's a duck on the ceiling tile, an imperfection of the tile in the perfect shape of the AFLAC duck. I start talking to the duck, I concentrate totally on the duck, and we have a fine conversation, and the nurse, doc and daughter must think I'm nuts, but I'm not jumping anymore when the needle strikes bone, I just talk to the duck.
That, readers, is a metaphysical state called "detachment", and I learned it in the USAF's POW training camp for aircrew who might be captured by ComBloc forces and get tortured. We listened to several ex-'Nam POWs tell us how they used the technique, then the instructor cadre introduced us to some pain, and we got to practice it. I was amazed last night that it still worked for me, but it did.
I got up and walked out of there, and breezed through the trip home, because the Lidocaine in the knee wiped out all the gout pain AND the pain of the needle damage, which I knew would come back to haunt me.
I went to bed at 11 pm. At 2:45 am, I got up to whiz, and when I put my leg out of the bed, I almost screamed. Gout plus tissue needle damage, plus the bone sticks, I can feel it all. No more sleepy-bye for me.
So, here I am, blogging at oh-dark-thirty, two hours to dawn yet. I started up the painkiller ladder that the ER doc left me with, and I'm one rung short of the top, which is OxyCodone, which I don't really want to have to take, because I will get hammered on it, and I still have to prepare a T-Day feast for three sometime in the next ten hours, and spiff up this pigsty of a house that I have trashed and not taken care of while down with the gout for the past 5 days.
The bumper sticker is correctimundo: "Old age ain't for sissies".
Current psychological thinking puts most behavioral problems into classes, the main one being obsessive-compulsive disorder.
There are many degrees to it.
OCD can be as simple as having to have everything in a particular place, not caring whether that place is logical or not, to gross manifestations such as some homicidal behaviors.
The psychs don't talk about OCD much in the wider sense, though, so I will.
I'm talking about OCD on a societal scale. A few examples:
All of this misplaced attention of our society has a real-world danger. There are only so many waking hours in a day, and if the idle time during those waking ideas is taken up with inane and un-necessary consideration of non-events, then there is that much less time to consider the real problems of the society, and solutions to them.
The business colleges get part of the blame here. I have lived long enough to see a complete revolution in marketing. When I was young (50 years ago), marketing consisted of a smiling lady on TV or in a slick-paper magazine ad selling you a product with simple body language to focus your attention, and maybe a lyrical slogan to wrap it up. Marketing became a big deal in the '60's, so now we have to have a multimedia circus to introduce a new product. The goal is to start a mental stampede, well before the actual introduction of the product, and keep that stampede going, deliberately fostering OCD in the prospect so that they will buy the maximum amount of the product. You could call it the "gotta have it" style of selling. It has brought us pitchmen like Ron Popeil and Billy Mays, to name two.
Using OCD to pitch products doesn't always work, though. The most famous case was the New Coke disaster, wherein the Coca-Cola company changed the formula of Coke (some say to make it taste more like Pepsi, which was eating into their market share). Legions of Coke drinkers stopped using the product and Coke took a huge financial bath. This failure of marketing strategy has been dissected minutely and is studied in every business college in the world.
The New Coke disaster has lessons for us, as well.
It's simply this: it's OK to like something for your own personal reasons. If you like the taste of a soft drink, don't change brands. If you like a political message, don't change parties.
That is called independent thinking, and it's what started this country, and it's what must continue it.
BTDT. Colonoscopy #5 in the books. Raised a few eyebrows at the front desk when I said that I didn't bring a relief driver and wouldn't be doing any sedation.
I do the nurse interview, and they fail to understand that I wasn't going to have sedation and refused to be stuck with an IV. When the nurse tried to tell me that it was a precaution, I told her how far away (8 blocks) the nearest ambulance was and where 911 was on her phone. Then I wrote it out on an addendum to the consent form and had her sign it. That convinced her I was who I was (a curmudgeon).
They send me in to dress in, and I get a size petite gown to put on over my vast ass. It didn't fit so I got to moon the entire staff and half the patients as I walked to the 'scope room. Got on the table, was covered with warm blankets, a nice touch.
Little slip of a gal sets up the ass-scope, and soon the doc comes in. Eastern European with a military haircut, perfect white lab coat and a tie. From his position at the top of the chain, HE thought it OK that I was going in concious. That finally shut the nursing staff up.
He lubes up the snake and up it goes, to the first turn. I prided myself on how good a job I did with the prep. You could have served dinner in there. He starts into the first turn. Backs and fills like a semi-truck jockey, but can't get around the turn dispite blowing me full of CO2 to the point of #9 pain.
Then he says, "Well, I guess we'll have to try the SMALL scope, it makes tighter turns." I'm glad I left my gun out in the vehicle at that point. In goes the small scope. I can hardly feel it, and he greases it around the turn easily, then a lesser zig, couple of zags and he's at the end of the colon, where we get to see the construction, like a two-into-one motorcycle exhaust pipe, that my surgeon had constructed when he took out the damaged part two years ago.
"Nice work", says the scope doc. "Who did the operation". I tell him and the doc allows as how Dr. Lehti really IS the dean of colon surgery in these parts. The snip-and-collect work is done on the way out. All I feel are slight tugging twinges as the little jaws rip the 5 polyps out of my poopchute. None of them bleed enough for cautery (electro-sealing).
I blow several juicy blasts on the netherhorn, but the doc doesn't mind because he is gowned up in plastic. He even looks at his gown each time to make sure there's no blood. Very professional.
Aside from some Class 9 gas cramps, mostly on the first attempt, this was a breeze, so to speak. A short wait of several days for the lab work on the snippets, and I'm done with this ditty.
Just opened a can of misery. Going to have one of these tomorrow. Need it due to a family history of colon polyps, and also because something let go in there a month ago and I bled badly from the butt.
Gotta get some answers.
The mizerable part is the preparation. When they shove a TV camera up your ass, the colon has to be clean. Very clean. Can't have any poo in the poochute, blinds the camera.
That calls for Colonic Cleansing. Two kinds of laxatives and power-washing, better known as an enema. No food. Clear liquids only (Scotch counts).
I'll be up all night, thank you. I probably won't be blogging all night, because Blog Station One is 47 feet from the crapper, too long a distance.
I'll be refusing the heavy sedative that they give the wimps. That may provoke a reaction from the clinic, but I've had 4 of these before, and never had the dope yet, so why start now?
Yep, I'm taking it up the ass, FOR ME! Don't get any ideas, trolls. You are refused, and the refusal is emphasized by a 12-guage, 3" magnum, 12 pellets of 00 Buck. Capiche?
Here.
This is an excellent summary, detailing the rapid sweep of avian flu strain H5N1 across the continents, the mechanisms of how the bird virus might morph into a human virus, etc.
It is written in layman's language.
It is a must-read for your planning responsibilites.
