[Ain’t] Nobody gonna slow me down
Whoa no!
I got to keep on movin’
[The mariachi version I much prefer. Unfortunately, my Espanol is insufficient to properly translate it].
This week will prolly be a bit rough… prolly. I’m not going to let it phase me though. Happy will be my mood state; it is my decision.
Yesterday night I had much frustration to vent:
1) Alleged back taxes the state of Oregon department of Revenue believes that I owe it for the 3 months I worked in California before moving to Portland in 2002.
2) Portland fire department charging me for a fire inspection that they performed in, what is now, my practice space more than a year before my occupancy.
3) Measuring and sorting 3 gigs of data that I collected over the past three years so that my boss can analyze it after my departure.
4) Several pieces of equipment in the lab that have failed for various reasons (mostly spontaneous in nature) within the past month.
5) Steady influx of medical bills for tests that I had a few months ago. Most of the bills don’t even include an explanation/justification of the charges. And, after all those tests, I’m not one iota better off than I had been before them.
It’s a good thing I have loud things to pound on on a regular basis. Sometimes I think, that without them, I’d resort to pounding on people.
My pent up frustration fueled a series furious syncopated beats the likes of which few other bands, especially one band in particular that practices on the other side of the wall, can even come close to emulating. My band, Clap Amp, generates 100% raw, and primarily improvisational, noise for which we make no apologies. We’re crass, we’re base and we pride ourselves on mocking musical convention (…what an original claim that is). Several times last night, the entire studio floor, the walls on which, ordinarily contoring under the strain of heavy vibration generated by three or four separate bands in simultaneous practice, fell silent to Clap Amp’s grooves. Don’t get me wrong. I make no claim that Clap Amp is the best band on the block in the traditional sense. However, whatever we may lack in ability, we more than make up for in enthusiasm.
Friggin’ spreadsheets have sucked out all of my eye-juice. I can’t write a good post right now… too distracted, and too brain-numbed. The only way to work is to singly devote my brain to attention and nothing more. Creativity causes disturbs my systematicity.
When I’m nervous I attempt to use big words. I say “attempt” because I often use big words with different actual meanings than what I intend to convey.
My prospective replacement is interviewing this morning and I made the above bad word choice. I don’t think she noticed, but all the same I feel like such the dipshit. Giving interviews, for me, is much harder than being interviewed.
Plus, as further proof that God really does hate my ass, the first computer I switched on this morning, to show our interviewee the programs that I’ve developed in support of my much touted-by-boss technical prowess, hard-drive crashed like a motherfuckin’ bastard. What are the odds that on this particular morning, out of the hundreds of times I’ve walked in and turned the muv on in the same manner, coupled with the fact that the sum’bitch was running fine two days ago, that the FUCKER crash. I’m not superstitious but GOLLY!
Yesterday, I needed to prove to myself that I’m not as out of shape as I think I am and alternatively, that two years back I was not the ubermench my nostalgia tricks me into thinking I was. To do that I decided I would attempt my old “Agony Run” in reverse (SE 20th to 60th and back via Salmon, Belmont, and Stark). Even though I experienced about 120% agony during my run yesterday, I figure that, in comparison to my true “Agony Run” that starts at 60th, yesterday’s was not of equal difficulty since, by starting at 20th, the first half of the run was uphill, as opposed to the actual version where the uphill portion happens during the second half.
One good thing, for which I must credit my job, is that, provided I’m caught up with work and I have enough vacation time in reserve, I can take off days to replenish my morale. In grad school I will not be so fortunate.
These images ‘move’ without animation. Happy nauseum!!!
I went back to Woodland CA this weekend to visit my family, and the last of my friends that have stuck it out there amidst prohibitively high rent, rampant conservatism and an almost complete lack of interesting things to do. Friday night turned out to be a warm, clear night (I’m used to Portland weather now so I’m easy to impress) so I decided to setup my telescope in my Dad’s backyard and took a looksee at what, I thought was Venus, and a few consellations. After that I went relaxed in the hot tub. Believe me, I did not enjoy such lavish living growing up… For the first time in his professional life, my Dad’s company has actually been able to generate surplus revenue for more than two consecutive years. What does my Dad do with this spare money? Buy toys.
My girlfriend Jane went with me this trip. My family loves her. I think they enjoy seeing her more than they do me.
I have a fairly nice bike that, prior to this visit, never made its way to Portland. So, while I was there, I broke it down, put it in a box so it could be flown back to P-town with me. My Dad took to riding my bike after I moved, and while riding it one day, the rear tire blew out on him which ended up bending the back rim a good inch out of center. If I want a bike with rear brakes I’m going to have to get the rim straightend. Otherwise my bike is rideable. I plan to ride, instead of drive around Portland this summer, during my time off.
The only real drama that took place during the entire weekend happened on Sac International airport on our way home. A Southwest baggage taker, after verifying with me that the contents of the 5’x3’x8″ double ply cardboard box that I had with me was, in fact, a bike, charged me $50 for it to be transported as baggage; we only had one other piece that we were checking in so I expected to be charged a maximum of $25 if the box turned out to be “oversized” by thier classification. Anyway, after his corpo-metrosexual ass repremanded me for having not put it in a hard case, he informed me that Southwest would not be liable for loss or damage.
“What the fuck are you going to do with it that requires a hard case and a transport fee of $50!?!… blast it into space? Shove your policy up your cornhole, fuckwipe!” I bit my tongue to keep from saying, to prevent my becoming the next outraged antagonist on TVs reality show “Airport”. The Southwest website stated a $25 fee for oversized baggage. I scowered the fuck out of thier site and didn’t find a G-darn thing about bikes being fiddy. Man, I wish I could be responsible for NOTHING and get paid for it. FuckASSes! (It made the trip ok though, so I’ll cease my rant in this otherwise happy post).
… to the living, breathing hypocricy who is blogspot user Shay, for best personifying my reasons for Getting the Fuck out of California!!! Shay, I hope your conservative lifestyle in Fair Oaks, and mischief filled weekends at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk entailing $400 “all night hang out” propositions from Daly City Fucktards is “completing” you. Keep up the great work! I hope to learn from more from your extensive wisdom in the future.
Let me just make one minute request, please stop your, albeit considerate, warnings to my good friend Crapartist about his afterlife of eternal torment. All of us venom spewing atheists know that we’re hellbound. For Crapartist though, your dogma fuels him to do, well, crazy things. Thanx 😉
What follows is an (edited) comment that I made in response Crapartist‘s recent post Embryonic Stem Cell (ES cell) myths dispelled. A Christian, Shay, responded to Crapartist, that Embyonic Stem-Cell researchers are hellbound.
I partially agree with Shay’s claim that ES cell research destroys humans… but my justification is completely different than hers. I consider myself and every other human being for that matter, to be a bag of cells that are consolidated in a particular structure, and nothing more, (ie. no spirit or any of that “BS” (to use one of shay’s terms)). Now granted, some cell bag structures, under the classification of human, function better than others (i.e Terry Shaivo) but all cell bags of significant structure likeness, are human.
So, by my definition, I argue that blastocysts from human embryos are human. Not walking, breathing, fucking adult humans mind you, but still human. Here’s why: they are a collection of cells, just fewer of them, conglomerated into a particular structure of sufficient likeness, that through time, will develop into an adult. Likeness to exactly what structure, you ask? Their structure likeness to other fertilized “cell bags” that are found in human female wombs at the same stage of development.
The process of manipulating embryos for stem-cell research disrupts the sturcture of the “cell bag” and terminates it’s natural development into maturity. This structure distortion for me, is was fucking duelists would call “destroying the body to release the spirit” or “death”. And before you call me heartless, consider that there exists much more scientific evidence supporting my definition of human than one that requires the existence of a human spirit in the make-up of a person.
If only I believed that hell exists, and that humans posses spirits that run the risk of going there; then I’d find Shay’s warnings justified. That is, by performing ES cell research, one would eventually have to answer to a higher power. And further, that it is in one’s own best interest not to do so.
[I actually do support embryonic stem-cell research, I just wanted to argue the seldom heard reducto-materialist perspective in regards to the makings of a person for this issue.]
…and other X-TREMities
Another strain of rant, that I bludgen into all those around me whether they want to hear it or not, concerns the extortionate and self-aggrandizing nature of our health care system. Outside of the whitecoat, I have been diagnosed with an untreatable ailment, that has been so eloquently named “nutcracker esoghagus”, for which I have been instructed to consult my gastroeternologist on a regular basis. Inside the coat, I’m employed as a research assistant; a job that affords me frequent contact with MDs who conduct research and provide clinical care. Through my exposure to modern medicine, both as a patient–one who is supposed to benefit from MD expertise — and as a researcher — one who labors to qualify and verify that expertise — I’ve noticed a disparity between the superhuman, supremely competent personae that MDs are taught to assume in front of their patients, and the true extent of their knowledge and ability.
Keep in mind that I am merely ‘scientifically’, as opposed to ‘medically’, trained. Ungrounded or not, by our society’s valuation, the medical profession outranks us hard science folks in the hierachy of of esteemed occupations (as if modern medicine would have progressed much beyond bloodletting without physical science). Be that as it may, I still think that my opinion has merit because my background lacks all the ego-driven posturing bullshit that is crucial in the making of a “good doctor” – that is, I was actually encouraged to express the limits of my knowledge and punished if I made a claim I could not justify.
Rather that shooting my mouth off more than I already have, I would like to share with the reader an excerpt from Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle. It’s nice to know that there is an author out there whose skepticism of modern medicine far surpasses even my own. Too bad Howie couldn’t contain his racism later on in the book; I might have actually taken his rants seriously. Anyway, enjoy:
In the Nilgiri hills of India, shortly before the Europeans came, there lived four tribes. One tribe, the Badaga, were farmers. Another, the Kota, were craftsmen. A third, the Toda were herdsmen. And the fourth, the Kurumba, made and raised almost nothing at all. The Badaga, Kota, Toda, and Kurumba lived together in delicate harmony, each supplying a vital something that the other three needed and paying for the indispensable products of its neighbors with its own handiwork. But there was one form of merchandise for which the Badaga, the Kota, and the Toda were willing to pay far more than for any of the others. Sometimes their need for this single good mounted to the level of hysterical panic; yet to us this commodity might seem the least essential of them all… …Of all four tribes, the one with the greatest economic power was the Kurumba. Living in the jungle, the Kurumba did not raise wheat, did not make household utensils, and did not provide any meat. They never even set forth to sell their wares; yet the work they offered brought the Kota craft folk trekking through the dense foliage to the Kurumba village, begging for a service that was totally intangible, one whose value cannot even be proven to exist. The Kurumba were sorcerers.
The Kota utensil makers paid regular insurance to these forest magicians. After all, the Kurumba spell weavers controlled the dark forces that could snatch you in the middle of the night and bring you down with dropsy, epilepsy, or sleeping sickness. In his classic book Economic Anthropology, Melville J. Herskvists writes:
The Kurumba exacted all the market would bear, and on occasion their demands were anything but modest. When a Kota fell ill, for example, his relatives, indicating how they had been regular and generous in sending gifts to their Kurumba worker of magic, would complain that he had not fulfilled his part of the agreement to keep them from harm. The customary reply would be that some especially powerful Kurumba sorcerer had been insulted by a Kota, or had become envious of their good fortune, and was therefore sending unusually strong magic against his victim. Only sustained effort, to be called forth by the giving of extra gifts, might counteract this influence; and since there was no other recourse, the Kota would have to give more and more lavishly.
Since nature endows the body with vast arsenals for self-defense, the majority of the Kurumba necromancers’ clients recovered. Occasionally, however, one succumbed. When a relative died, the furious Kota artisan family did not ask for their money back. Nor did they complain that the sorcery of their jungle neighbors was a fraud. Far from it. The Kurumba ‘protector’ was offered sympathy for having had to grapple with so powerful an adversary.
Later on, Bloom continues:
How backward these Kota villagers were, you may very well say. What strange nonsense preyed on their primitive minds. How fortunate we are that in our modern age few of us are this gullible. But we are.
Like the Kurumba sorcerers, modern doctors sell the illusion of control. Often when you describe your symptoms to your M.D., he gives you an indifferent look, as if no such problem exists. You are not the only one your doctor treats this way… A doctor does not generally confess ignorance. He is selling the illusion of omnipotence: the illusion that through consulting him you gain control over your body, the same illusion sold by the sorcerers in of India.
Harsh, but not without some truth.