The line in that song...

I have this one song I've been writing for about six years. I have about three records full of stuff in the works, but it's all been stalled out for at least the past year, much of it longer than that. Anyway, this one song has this line, the only one I know is right: "I've wasted all my second chances." Hard to build a whole song around one line when the line is not something like, say, "I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's cabin," but that's the line.

So, going in tonight to find out if my new baby is going to be birthed tomorrow morning, or surgically extracted. Wish us luck. Scared and excited and happy and worried. Just a symphonic warm-up of emotions, really.

PS. Any relationship you may find between the first and second paragraphs of this post is purely coincidental.

My Stupid Neck

Today I had a test done where the basic testing mechanism was for the doctor to ask, "does that hurt?" You'd think in this day-and-age the verbal response technique would be outmoded. What he did, the doc, was stick some 4-inch needles through the front of my neck, just to the side of my trachea, into the discs between C4/5, C5/6, and C6/7 vertebrae. He then pushed x-ray contrast material in to the discs to see if they would contain the fluid under pressure, and while he was doing this, I was under instructions to let him know when it hurt. Interestingly, each disc should be able to stand up to about 100 psi of pressure. Mine failed in this order:

• C4/5 - 23 psi
• C5/6 - 56 psi
• C6/7 - 19 psi

Give or take a psi, since I was a bit sedated at the time I looked at the chart. The point is, I had contrast material leaking out of all three discs, which is bad. Right now I feel like I got rear-ended into a head-on collision earlier today. Just so you know, C6/7 hurt the worst. Felt like he'd pumped it up to that 100 psi mark, and both my arms went numb and all that manner of thing. I was fairly discouraged to see the 19 on that one.

What's next? Well, assuming my insurance plan doesn't call it experimental and refuse to cover it, I am going to have C5/6 and C6/7 discs replaced in December. Otherwise, I'm going to fight an insurance company for the next 1.5 months until they will cover the procedure, because the other option is to fuse the vertebrae together, and that doesn't sound good at all.

What's the lesson, here? Mama's don't let your babies grow up to play football. Too, if you're ever uninsured and you find yourself lying on the ground in excruciating pain after pulling a stupid downhill stunt on your mountain bike, suck it up and pay to have a real doctor treat your injury.

Can't believe I'm only 33 sometimes...

Well said.

http://glenphillips.net/blog/?p=81

Sometimes you just have to remember...

I was reading another blog this morning and (of course) disagreeing with the general premise of the argument the guy was making, and I decided to make sure I had the phrasing right in my response to the rationale behind the establishment of our American government. There's a reason we don't study the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to any great detail in our public schools. It's dangerous stuff for people to have ingrained in their thinking.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (*emphasis added)

We forget this second part, because we hear the first part all the time as justification for getting the government the hell out of our business. It's the more important part, though, the basis for my liberal thinking. We need the government the hell IN our business. History has shown us for generations and generations (and I mean long before there was a United States) that, unchecked by the people, the powerful will eventually and always become despotic. I would submit to you that the plutocracy we have become is on the verge of despotism even now.

I still believe we can turn this around. We just need to remember: we are not a capitalist society at our core; we are a democratic republic. It is the job of capitalism to create wealth, but capitalism is a rabid beast; it is the job of a democratic republic to control the beast in such a way that ensures the safety and happiness of the people. Government regulation is a requirement to that purpose, in other words.

Forget about taxes and spending. They're all - Republican and Democrat alike - going to tax and spend. All we need to be concerned about at this point is who is going to govern in such a way to secure the safety and happiness of all the people and not just some of the people. If you're like me, a struggling middle-class citizen with children, I believe this is the most important election of your lifetime. This is the turning point where we, the people, decide its time to throw off the plutocracy we've been ruled by for the past two or three decades, or resign ourselves to their future rule and watch the American dream fade to black.

79 Years Ago

I heard Thom Hartmann talking about a book called The Fourth Turning just a couple of weeks ago; the gist of it is that every 80 years or so we return to recession and war as part of a generational attitude towards wealth, ownership, nationalism, etc. We, meaning society, not necessarily America. So, on this almost-80th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash, I'm wondering if we're going to be smart enough to elect the guy NOW who's most like FDR and can maybe turn this thing around for the middle class, or are we going to stubbornly stretch this thing out another few years. Because it will happen, I think: at some point there will be a guy who'll first convince us there's a need to, then unite us behind the goal of rebuilding the nation. I just hope it's bad enough for y'all now, and we don't have to let it get worse first.

Let's hope consumer confidence is high today, anyway. I'm having a garage sale.

Fox In a Tree

Almost five minutes of my son at the top of his tree-climbing game. I don't think I could have filmed him doing anything else for five minutes that would have better captured his personality at this age...

Dennis Kucinich - Wake Up Call

Watch, listen, vote.