Media Saturation

I have never been fond of goals.  I don't know if it's a cause or an effect that I don't really have any goals.  I've got some nebulous aspirations that might be considered goals, but as far as concrete goals with measurable success ... nothing.

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"  I hate that question, because I haven't planned five years out.  What's the point?  Had you told me five years ago that I'd be sitting here blogging about any of this stuff I'd have laughed my ass off at you and asked if you'd considered working with the drugs.  Summer of 2005 my dad was still alive and my youngest was still in diapers, I had the job I've got now but my boss was a co-worker who'd just started the job a few months prior and we were working in Pasadena instead of Burbank.

Continue reading "Goals" »

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AKA Sex: A Feasibility Study

 Discovery Health was on the tube last night.  They ran a show on sexual ... maladies?  They had a sex addict, a PGAD sufferer, a semen allergy and a sexsomniac and in one of the segments they cited a figure claiming the average person has sex 60 times a year.

 In college, I once had sex 30 times in 8 days.

 Lately, though, I have been having sex way below average (and possibly below-average sex, but let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Continue reading "Beat It" »

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Why in the hell I'd put this out on the internet, I couldn't say.  Then again, realistically nobody has any idea I'm writing this stuff here, and anybody who does have an inkling already knows me and wouldn't be (very) surprised.

I suppose we'll start with titles.

Feel Like Makin' Love.  I Want You to Want Me.  Talk Dirty to Me.  Urgent.  Need You Tonight.  I Melt With You.  Closer.  Spread.  Gett Off.

Continue reading "Musical Fantasies" »

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I had started a derogatory scan for Biblical internal contradictions -- I was seeking the book of Genesis, chapter four, for the classic example -- when something tapped the back of my mind on its shoulder (I never professed to understand internal anatomy) and reminded it of a comparison an ex-girlfriend of mine made.  It was simple and innocuous at the time; we had seen Edward Scissorhands in theaters for probably the second time as a couple, and she remarked that her mother didn't understand the fascination when self-same mother had wept during Camelot.

I don't know whether the source of her mother's anguish was the metaphorical tie with the Kennedy Administration or if it was what we had assumed.  I am sure she knew her mother well enough to correctly attribute the tear-jerking aspects of Camelot with the same aspect of Edward Scissorhands that gutted us even through repeated viewings.

Continue reading "Falling From Grace" »

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Looks like it takes a vacation to bring me back to blogging.  I don't think I've had any major revelations or gained substantially new insights, I just "have time" to blog now that my boys are playing with Elder Boy's best friend and I am in earshot but out of their way.

The old insights hold true: I'm horrible at remaining in touch with friends and loved ones, apart from a very select few.  Just as I don't "have time" to blog, I don't "have time" to reach out with a quick phone call or even "thinking of you" email.  Is that any way to treat people you've held dear to your heart for years?  That was rhetorical.

It has taken me a while, but I have finally gotten back into participating in my own life.  It's time for me to stop being absent from others.  Maybe I'll start after I get back from this doctor's appointment ... seems I was a few years absent from my GP as well.

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Because if it wasn't maudlin, then it might be something completely different.

Today is the two-year anniversary of my father's death.  That still doesn't seem real.  Not that it's been two years, that I will never see him again.  That he is gone from our lives.

He isn't really, he's kind of omnipresent, but intangibly so.  Smaller Boy will at odd intervals (seemingly as non-sequitur) say something like, "Your father died."  Yes, he did.

I love him for that, but it hurts.  It just means that he is processing in his own way, much as I am in mine.  He is remembering in his own way, much as I remember in mine.  If the emotional gravity is there (as it is for me), he hides it extremely well.  That is why it hurts; I don't know what his grandpa will really mean to him.

Hell, I'm still figuring out what my father really means to me.

Continue reading "And now for something completely maudlin..." »

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Continue reading "Dialing 9-11" »

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Continue reading "Been meaning to write." »

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Continue reading "Well, that took a good long time" »

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I didn't call my father today (chatted with Mom after leaving her voicemail last night), but I didn't blog yesterday either, so I'm doubly delinquent.  Yesterday the decision was to try removing the line from his neck, letting the fungus heal, and then presumably reattaching a line.  If I'd called today, I'd know whether that was done yet or if they'd gone a different direction.

He's still on the liquid diet, but was vomiting again yesterday.  For breakfast, they gave him a (styrofoam) cup of hot water, but no tea bags.  For lunch, they fixed that by giving him a tea bag and no hot water.  For dinner, they got him another tea bag, and still no hot water.  They say tea settles the stomach, but he didn't get to find out yesterday...

He's hoping he'll be out by July.  I concur.

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In her primary blog, my lovely and talented wife once posted an item on the evils of high fructose corn syrup.  Now, regular readers (my lovely and talented wife, anyway) know that my father is in the hospital.  He's being treated for a couple of infections and the cancer that led to the surgery that led to the infections, and he's in the part of the treatment where they're monitoring everything closely and giving him a liquid diet.

Liquid diet in this case amounts to broth (beef, chicken, see the variety?) and juice (apple, grape, see the variety?), although they have upped the ante and are including tea and coffee.  They're leaving out the Gel-Treat that is frankly no treat (and is on the short list of foods he is NOT dreaming about).  Today's lunch included cranberry juice which, as he noted, had corn syrup as its first listed ingredient.  After today's lunch they noticed his blood sugar was high; he pointed out the juice, and they countered that all the juices have sugar.  Today's dinner came with apple juice, which he pointed out had ingredients listed of apple and water.

He had gotten one unit of blood and was waiting for a second.  Let's hope those are low in HFCS... 

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Age has a way of putting things into perspective.  I'm not talking about misspent youth or anything as noble as a global understanding.  I mean that those things that you'd roll your eyes at and still somehow retain (perhaps from all that time spent mocking them) start to make sense, or worse, come out of your own mouth.

'At least you have your health.'  'If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.'  Health can be hard to define, but its opposite -- sickness, if you believe traditional wedding vows -- is pretty straightforward.  Of course, disease can take many forms.

Take, for instance, conjunctivitis. 

Continue reading "Trifecta" »

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Yeah.  Another day, another infection -- this one yesterday's, apparently.

Dad now has some form of thing going on with his blood.  He's also getting weaker while they work out what it is and what to do about it.  Part of the reason for that is of course that they've popped in a new main line, this time in his neck, but while they make sure they did that right he's not hooked up to the IVs or his pain button.

He's still entirely lucid, though, and their chilled mattress appeared to be doing something towards reducing his temperature.  It's good something they did was having some effect, because it was maddening to overhear the nurses in the background asking questions and taking no action... 

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Today was a slightly better day for my dad.  In the words of his doctor, he's getting better inch by inch.  The tube got to stay out, and with the help of some Mylanta his broth-and-apple juice lunch got to stay down.  So did his broth-and-grape juice dinner.  Bit by bit, he'll get to experience denser liquids and eventually soft foods as his stomach gets reacquainted with things other than gas and bile.

Continue reading "Liquid Lunch" »

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That's my dad.  He runs a store -- I'm wearing the T-shirt now, and have a pic of the neon logo elsewhere on the site -- that the Downtown News has voted Best Smoke Shop.  He has done so much for so many for so long that the artists he champions are giving back in his time of need.  He doesn't make a lot of money (part of the reason he's being treated at the VA hospital), but he has a lot of friends.

Today was a better day for him.  His old nemesis ("that fucking tube") has been removed, after more typical VA shenanigans, and he's back in the general population again.  This is good, because it means he can have more than two visitors at a time.

Continue reading "It's Better To Be Loved" »

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As I've already written on one of my other blogs, my father has cancer.

Why start another blog with this?  Because it's been dominating my thoughts lately and it's about time I explore the reciprocity of the situation.

This time was different.  The first three times, it was a disease that snuck up on him and manifested itself as tumors that could be removed surgically.  Granted, not all of every tumor was excised, but each time the brunt of it was gone, and each time the remaining pain was related to post-operative healing (abdominal surgeries, all).  The first two times it was decided surgery was the only viable option, it was widely held that chemo and radiation treatments would be ineffective.

The third time, after the surgery they opted for radiation treatment.  They had left bits of tumor in after the second surgery, rather than remove a kidney, and those remained after the third as well; they wanted to see if there was another way to treat what was left.

This time, they thought there had been enough advances (and the tumor was in a scary enough state) that chemo and radiation would help, and that the surgery would be on a resultantly smaller tumor.  Chemo, on an intensive in-patient basis, eventually made him completely bald but did not halt the growth of the cancer.  Radiation, for six weeks of outpatient treatment, left him progressively more tired as it had the last time he endured it, but apparently had as much effect as chemotherapy.  Finally, it was time for surgery.

Continue reading "Cancer Has My Father" »

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Continue reading "Poohsticks" »

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A blog.

Christ on a stick, I started blogging in 1993 when I would write "my book" and then literally mail chapters to friends of mine as I completed them.

Then, for rather obvious reasons, I stopped.

Why start again?  Why now that it's so trendy it's played?

Continue reading "Gotta Start Somewhere" »

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