spidermoon.net cobweblog

temporary relocation

2009-04-10T19:03:00.002-10:00

things are getting scarce here, as far as me recording anything at all. but i've been spending any "writing" energy on facebook and twitter, like every other stupid human on this planet.

so for now find me at facebook, look for jaz jones as my identity. and at twitter you can find my scarcity of stuff under the name of jezebel vanity. hope to see you there.

twit

2009-02-19T05:24:00.002-10:00

ohmygod.

it's official. i'm a twit now. http://twitter.com/jezebeLvanity

chess words

2009-02-05T04:57:00.000-10:00

jezebel: wrath is a definite buzzkill.
Intltax: Which is your least favorite?
jezebel: my favorite deadly sin - pride
Intltax: Yep, and proud of it!
jezebel: it was your forking creation
Intltax: And now you're forking me? :)
jezebel: that last bishop did taste a bit like fishbait
Intltax: Is that a reference to this game? :) As soon as I played my last move I realized I left my bishop hanging. I still think my chances are decent, but handing you a piece on a silver platter didn't help things at all.
jezebel: i'm having visions of a bison approaching the edge of a tall cliff and i'm that bison ...
Intltax: Good...a rational preference.
jezebel: dead people are the life blood of flowershops. it must go back to when flowers were needed to mask the scents and sights of rotting corpses, before chemistry got discovered. i was raised in a mortuary, next door to a flowershop. thusly, i do prefer flowers before my demise, thanks.
Intltax: I call it "flowers for the living."
jezebel: thats the synonym for "beware the end is near." thanks for the extra pressure
Intltax: You are certainly playing well.
Intltax: You are certainly playing well.
Intltax: Thanks for the link...I will take a look at it.
jezebel: http://www.bestoftheleftpodcast.com/wake-up-freak-out-%e2%80%93-then-get-a-grip/
Intltax: Keeping a wary eye on it. The statistics I hear are alarming.
jezebel: do u have any opinions on climate change?
Intltax: Well, I said our paths were remarkably different...we are certainly alike in the respects you mention (probably being human is a given).
jezebel: actually, i don't see that much of a difference. like it or not we're both human, both do chess, live in a corporate-oriented culture. what specifically do you see as our differences (on any level/perspective: human, political, spiritual, etc.)
Intltax: Yes, my life story doesn't sound very much like yours, don't you agree?
jezebel: diverse paths?
Intltax: Yes, thanks, I received the message. I will post a reply later...thanks very much. Yes, watched the debate. I like to switch channels to see the biases of each network of pundits...all over the board last night.
jezebel: not possible. speaking of impossibilities, did you watch the lipstick pig lady debate? on another subject, i trust you recieved the message i posted
Intltax: I don't mean to pry, though, just trying to make the game even more interesting. :)
Intltax: Haha, I don't understand everything on your homepage. That's why I asked directly. :)
jezebel: maybe i'm krazy, but isn't all that info on my home page here? if not, i'll be happy to fill you in, flattered as well, as for now i'm running out of time on the chess clock and i have twelve more boards to visit before they turn into pumpkins .......
Intltax: I sought to be general to allow you to fill in the blanks as you please. Failing that...do you live in Palestine or are possibly Palestinian but living elsewhere? Are you in a profession? Are you happy with your life? :)
jezebel: is currently: amazed, deflated, bedazzled, befuddled, bemused? but seriously, concerning your question, as mr. spock might say, "please, specify."
Intltax: So how are you doing? Aside from my reading the blog, would you be so kind as to tell me a little about yourself?
Intltax: I wasn't sure if you got it back....that's good.
jezebel: i'm not sure what you read, but i have recovered any material i lost its reposted i think. but thanks anyway for your interest. or lack thereof.
jezebel: i'm not sure what you read, but i have recovered any material i lost its reposted i think. but thanks anyway for your interest. or lack thereof.
Intltax: I actually tried reading your blog, and read about the loss of posted messages. I am not a blogger myself, but I think that so many people are is an interesting phenomenon.
jezebel: aloha Intltax
Intltax: Hey!
Welcome

Forwarded from seattlepi.com: 44 takes office with blunt rejection of 43

2009-01-21T20:52:00.001-10:00

jezebeL (evolution1959@gmail.com) has sent the following story
to you from seattlepi.com.

Comments from jezebeL:
celebrate the de-gagging of helen.

---------------------------------------------------------------

44 takes office with blunt rejection of 43
Speaking to more than 1 million people on the Mall in front of
him and to millions more around the world, President Barack
Obama delivered a tough inaugural speech that must have made
members of the outgoing Bush administration squirm.

* Read the full article at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/396800_helen21.html

---------------------------------------------------------------
Keep track of what's happening around the Northwest at
http://www.seattlepi.com -- updated all day and as news breaks.

jezebeL has forwarded an article to you from CommonDreams.org: So What Have The Palestinians Got To Complain About?

2008-12-31T16:46:00.003-10:00

shame on who?

So What Have The Palestinians Got To Complain About?
by Mark Steel

When you read the statements from Israeli and US politicians, and try to match them with the pictures of devastation, there seems to be only one explanation. They must have one of those conditions, called something like "Visual Carnage Responsibility Back To Front Upside Down Massacre Disorder".

For example, Condoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 Gazans were dead, said: "We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible."

Click here to read more ...

moo who?

2008-12-30T14:43:00.006-10:00

A Change We Can Believe In - Dumping Industrial Agriculture
by Jim Goodman

As 2009 approaches, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) notes nearly a billion people a day go hungry worldwide. While India supplies Switzerland with 80% of its wheat, 350 million Indians are food-insecure. Rice prices have nearly tripled since early 2007 because, according to The International Rice Research Institute, rice-growing land is being lost to industrialization, urbanization and shifts to grain crops for animal feed.

Click here to read more ...

flowers to dust

2008-12-07T05:33:00.008-10:00

speaking of death and destruction. human corpses are the life blood of flowershops. indeed it must go back to times when sweetly scented foliage still was needed to mask the ghastly odors and sights of rotting corpses, before chemistry and shovels got discovered. being raised mostly in a mortuary, next door to a flowershop, has consequently swayed my preferences toward taking the extra time and slowing down, if not completely to stop, and smelling the flowers as many times before my demise as practically possible, as opposed to depending on sporadic donations after the fact. happy pearl harbor day.

homo sapiens sapiens: a planetary blight

2008-12-01T14:50:00.007-10:00

Getting Real on Climate Change
by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger

The wave of optimism that American environmentalists rode into 2008 reached its zenith sometime around April 22 -- Earth Day. Green was everywhere, from the pages of Sports Illustrated to NBC's Green Week to a new cable channel, Planet Green. Armed with an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, Al Gore announced a $300 million global-warming advertising campaign.

Click here to read more ...

murder a turkey for jesus.

2008-11-27T15:11:00.004-10:00

Thanksgiving We Can Believe In
by Steve Hendricks

Seven years before Tisquantum (Squanto, to most of us) helped the Pilgrims recover from their disastrous first winter in America, he was kidnapped by an English cod fisher and fur trader who was diversifying into the human trade. Tisquantum and other stock were shipped to Spain under hatch, a murderous passage, and most of the survivors were sold into slavery. Tisquantum was among the lucky, rescued by friars before he could be auctioned, though perhaps held a few years to ensure his salvation by Christ.

Click here to read more ...

2008-11-26T15:06:00.005-10:00

Kafka and Uighurs at Guantanamo
by Ray McGovern

"There is no right to due process for an alien who is not here," insisted the 44^th Solicitor General of the United States, Gregory G. Garre, proudly representing the President of the United States. Garre is a teacher of the law, you see, and was attempting to show a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit why one of their colleagues had overreached.

Garre claimed that U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina had exceeded his authority on Oct.

Click here to read more ...

and the humans slumber ...

2008-11-16T14:21:00.006-10:00

The Animals and Plants We Cannot Live Without
by Richard Gray

Nearly 17,000 species are now considered to be threatened with extinction and 869 species are classed as extinct or extinct in the wild on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. In the last year alone 183 species became more endangered.

Now, in the face of the growing threat posed by environmental changes around the globe, five leading scientists are to argue whether there is a single type of plant or animal which the planet really cannot afford to lose.

Click here to read more ...

my sentiments exactly

2008-11-11T01:57:00.005-10:00

America the Illiterate
by Chris Hedges

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés.

Click here to read more ...

if i were to vote ...

2008-11-04T15:22:00.006-10:00

Only Nader Is Right on the Issues

By Chris Hedges

Tomorrow I will go to a polling station in Princeton, N.J., and vote for Ralph Nader. I know the tired arguments against a Nader vote. But there is little disagreement among liberals and progressives about the Nader and Obama campaign issues. Nader would win among us in a landslide if this was based on issues.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081103_only_nader_is_right_on_the_issues/

on earth

2008-10-24T01:13:00.004-10:00

this life on earth continues to become curiouser and curiouser, thank you alice. somehow i expect the looking glass is about to be shattered, but at least it lasted this long. sometimes that is the biggest surprise ever.

it's only fair. this species is way too devolved to be allowed to continue on its present course. hopefully it won't totally extinguish itself in the process of choosing the correct path to follow.

burn baby burn

2008-09-20T15:22:00.003-10:00

On Climate, Who Will Lead by Example?
by Derrick Z. Jackson

ANOTHER SOBER warning that we are mice preparing for our own drowning is on my desk. The more I read it, the more I laughed as to what politician would dare pay attention. We might be the mice of climate change, but the pols are the rats on a sinking planet.

Click here to read more ...

august aloha

2008-09-01T02:03:00.005-10:00

welcome to the twilight zone. this is the beginning of september. it is also the ending of august. august was thirty-one amazingly mesmerizing days long and many monumental and momentous things happened. but nothing got written in this joynal during august. so that's the way it is sometimes in the twilight zone. aloha september.

spare change?

2008-07-31T21:49:00.003-10:00

people tried to give me money this month. this month of july. and my dad turned seventy years young. a very good thing for sure. most of the rest of july was just another case of human beings being self-serving idiots by trying to get something for basically nothing.

but i don't want to write about that now, even if it is an interesting tale. other things are more important at the moment. i will return to relate my tales of having money thrust at me in a penile way by both genders of homo sapiens sapiens--a sad, sad failure of a species.

george carlin is dead

2008-06-23T05:15:00.002-10:00

george carlin died.

shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-sucker, mother-fucker, tits.

what reason is there now for those of us remaining to continue?

rip gc

what time

2008-06-01T00:47:00.003-10:00

now and forever, may 2008 will always be a momentous month for me because it is the month that i stopped wearing a round-the-clock timepiece.

i've worn a wristwatch since i was a youngster kid. always knowing exactly what time it is becomes an addiction of sorts.

since i don't really need to know the exact clock time every moment of every day at this time of my life, i decided this would be a good time to end yet another addiction and lose this mechanical piece of time strapped to my wrist, tethered to my very being, so to speak.

that lapse was a couple of weeks ago now. so far, the world from my perspective seems about the same as it always was. i haven't noticed much of a change--no dangerous time warps, except for my generally being late for everything. luckily that's not usually a bad thing in honolulu.

years ago in florida i began taking lessons from my feline huntress, sade, a zen master for sure. i started trying to be more conscious of being aware of and living in the moment, in the now so to speak as did she, the sage magi sade. no matter what the time, it was always there, my awareness of the clock time, so i was in the now but also still on the clock.

for now those years ago have passed, and presently, as of now, i pretty much am living in the now. never fear, i'm not totally out of temporal touch. i still know the approximate clock time, but not the exact time, 24/7, not for now. now instead of a pre-programmed glance down at my wrist, if the need compels me, i must actively search for the nearest available mechanical piece of time.

presently, the time is always new and always now, whether good or bad, but whatever the time it may be, or may seem to be, as of this month, currently, the time is now.

*thanks again to one of the first on the list of my numerous feline zen masters, sade, whenever and wherever she may now be. thanks to her for getting me to notice this in 1991, the palindromic time. also thanks to my ever-presently purring z.m., ume prudence, who continues with me on this never-ending adventurous study of all that is the eternal now.

welcome to the revolution

2008-05-01T10:51:00.002-10:00

Hawaiian sovereignty seekers take over palace grounds

By MARK NIESSE – 11 hours ago

HONOLULU (AP) — Native Hawaiian sovereignty advocates briefly chained shut the gates of a historic palace, saying they were reclaiming land of the Hawaiian monarchy that was stolen during the overthrow of the kingdom more than 100 years ago.

Unarmed security guards from the Hawaiian Kingdom Government group allowed only Native Hawaiians, students and the media to enter the Iolani Palace on Wednesday. Tourists, employees and the general public were kept out for hours until the conflict was peacefully resolved and the palace grounds reopened.

Hawaiian activists have long used the palace as the site for protests of what they call the United States' occupation of the islands, but never before had they physically taken control.

"This is our seat of government and always will be," said Mahealani Kahau, who was elected "head of state" of the group seven years ago. "As long as we have breath to speak, we'll be here.

About 60 people arrived at the palace Wednesday morning, sealed the gates with chain-link locks and hung yellow signs stating: "Warning! No trespassing. This is private property."

Police surrounded the palace, which is next to the state Capitol, but didn't force their way inside the fence. The protesters were locked out of the building itself and didn't do any damage to the grounds, which they consider sacred.

After more than six hours, the protesters agreed to end the blockade. No arrests were immediately made, but state officials said the protesters could still be charged. Protest leaders had said they were prepared to be arrested and would go peacefully.

The Hawaiian Kingdom Government is one of several Hawaiian sovereignty organizations in the islands, which became the 50th U.S. state in 1959. One of the most visible signs of protest across the islands is upside-down Hawaii state flags on display at members' homes, signaling distress.

"Hopefully the occupation today will make the people aware of the history of the Native Hawaiian people and the attacks on their land," said Trisha Kehaulani Watson, executive director of Kakoo Oiwi, another Native Hawaiian group.

The ornate Iolani Palace is operated as a museum. Hawaiian King Kalakaua built it in 1882, and it also served as the residence for his sister and successor, Queen Liliuokalani, the islands' last ruling monarch. She was later imprisoned there.

It was neglected after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and restored in the 1970s as a National Historic Landmark. It includes a gift shop and is open for school groups and paid tours.

The protesters said they wanted to re-establish the palace as the seat of their government, and they plan to meet there daily to conduct the business of a sovereign Hawaii. They pledged to return Thursday, although they said they won't restrict access to the palace again.

"This is the manifestation of the frustration of the Hawaiian people for the loss of sovereignty and land," said state Sen. Kalani English, a Native Hawaiian who met with the protesters and brought them food. "This made a statement. It got the word out about the plight of the Hawaiian people."

Kippen de Alba Chu, executive director of Iolani Palace, said the building was originally used as the royal residence of the monarchy, not as the seat of government.

Only after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was the palace renamed an "executive building" to show that the old rulers were powerless, he said.

"It is historically wrong for any individual or group to state that the palace is to serve as a government building," Chu said. "We welcome any group who would like to celebrate the history of Iolani Palace and Hawaii's monarchy in a historically appropriate manner that embraces all visitors."

About 40 students from Halau Lokahi, a Hawaiian-focused charter school, joined the protesters, blowing conch shells and reciting Hawaiian chants.

"This is a crucial spot. This is where much of the injustice took place," said Hinaleimoana Wong, cultural director at the school.

The last significant conflict at Iolani Palace before Wednesday occurred in 2006 when sovereignty advocates clashed with flag-waving Statehood Day celebrants trying to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

On the Net:

Iolani Palace: http://www.iolanipalace.org
Hawaiian Kingdom Government: http://www.higovt.org

portals

2008-04-30T02:36:00.003-10:00

x
x
x
______

x

dateline:

2:09 30-Apr-08

april possible possibilities... or not.

listed below is a mere pittance of available possibilities stumbled upon in a small few of my adventures this month amidst a tiny segment of the vast expanse about the podcasting galaxy in the universe of the unknown dimensions throughout the interdimensional online virtuality which may exist in a contiguous form or not and definitely not recommended for all or maybe even any... except for the first, the root of all evil? which i say see now.

the root of all evil? - richard dawkins online documentary ...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9002284641446868316

http://paradigmresearchgroup.org
http://prg.org
http://facebook.org/skepticality
http://thebiblegeek.com
http://freethoughtmedia.com
the "new week" podcast - bbc.com
flock of dodos - doc.
http://drawnbypain.com
the eleventh hour - doc.
http://secularism.org.uk
porchlife productions
seeing through the fence

notes

2008-03-31T23:11:00.003-10:00

a few notes from my march 2008 daily offline notebook:

3/4
contact with beings of light -- amazon.com

"capturing the light" dvd.com
- dorothy izaak - http://capturingthelightdvd.com

3/11

1/3 of all mail is junk mail
this equals 100 million trees per year.

we will spend 8 months of our lives sorting, reading, trashing junk mail.
every five minutes two acres of old-growth forests are cut for junk mail.

go to http://donotmail.org and sign the petition to stop the junk mail.

3/14

today's grocery receipt :

2 local avocados
1 bunch organic kale
1 organic romain lettuce
1 deli spicy hawaiian pastelles
1 westsoy soymilk
2 hau'ula/hamaikua (local) tomatoes

3/16

"a secret of the universe"
-steven gibson
"an unnatural order, the roots of our destruction of nature"
-jim mason

dinner:
steamed kale
steamed yam
served over polenta w/ sauteed garlic

3/18

speciesism - the assumption of the superiority of humans over other animal species, especially to justify their exploitation.

3/19

more groceries:
organic romain lettuce
hau'ula/hamakua tomatoes
vegenaise grapeseed (fake mayo)
hummus
one yam
fresh carrot juice

factory farming - an industrialized system of producing meat, eggs, and milk in large-scale facilities where the animal is treated as a machine.

http://unhappycow.com
http://insidedairyproduction.com

Little Kingdom -- excellent indy music

3/18

http://meetyourmeat.com

read this essay: robert bass "developing a negative"

3/27

easter - return of nature, spring equinox, back to lengthing of the days, fertility, eggs, bunnies
read: robert price "the incredible shrinking soul of man"

3/30

http://freedomofinfo.org
http://ufophysical.com

... and so it goes.

So? ...

2008-03-24T02:51:00.000-10:00

A Note from Michael Moore

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Friends,

It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn't it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised?

4,000 dead. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America.

And where is Darth Vader in all this? A reporter from ABC News this week told Dick Cheney, in regards to Iraq, "two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting." Cheney cut her off with a one word answer: "So?"

"So?" As in, "So what?" As in, "F*** you. I could care less."

I would like every American to see Cheney flip the virtual bird at the them, the American people. Click here and pass it around. Then ask yourself why we haven't risen up and thrown him and his puppet out of the White House.

The Democrats have had the power to literally pull the plug on this war for the past 15 months -- and they have refused to do so. What are we to do about that? Continue to sink into our despair? Or get creative? Real creative. I know there are many of you reading this who have the chutzpah and ingenuity to confront your local congressperson. Will you? For me?

Cheney spent Wednesday, the 5th anniversary of the war, not mourning the dead he killed, but fishing off the Sultan of Oman's royal yacht. So? Ask your favorite Republican what they think of that.

The Founding Fathers would never have uttered the presumptuous words, "God Bless America." That, to them, sounded like a command instead of a request, and one doesn't command God, even if they are America. In fact, they were worried God would punish America. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington feared that God would react unfavorably against his soldiers for the way they were behaving. John Adams wondered if God might punish America and cause it to lose the war, just to prove His point that America was not worthy. They and the others believed it would be arrogant on their part to assume that God would single out America for a blessing. What a long road we have traveled since then.

I see that Frontline on PBS this week has a documentary called "Bush's War." That's what I've been calling it for a long time. It's not the "Iraq War." Iraq did nothing. Iraq didn't plan 9/11. It didn't have weapons of mass destruction. It DID have movie theaters and bars and women wearing what they wanted and a significant Christian population and one of the few Arab capitals with an open synagogue.

But that's all gone now. Show a movie and you'll be shot in the head. Over a hundred women have been randomly executed for not wearing a scarf. I'm happy, as a blessed American, that I had a hand in all this. I just paid my taxes, so that means I helped to pay for this freedom we've brought to Baghdad. So? Will God bless me?

God bless all of you in this Easter Week as we begin the 6th year of Bush's War.

God help America. Please.

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

thought leap

2008-02-29T23:07:00.004-10:00

as the final fragments of 29 february 2008 fade fast, thought leaps.

why have leap thought? why even write this? who, besides me, is ever going to read it, or even care that it was ever thought about?

then again, the chance to jump from thought to idea, idea to thought, on leap day, only happens once every four years. why not have leap thought?

shaboom

2008-01-31T00:21:00.000-10:00

the past month has been a decent january indeed it seems, for some reason. the chinatown year of the rat is quickly approaching. the weather has been a bit chilly and rainy, which reminds me of seattle, my favorite city. not because of rats, its the precipitation. except for the really cold rain, which is why i eventually fled the city for a warmer climate. but i miss the almost daily rainy weather of seattle.

this past month, luckily, and enjoyably, it's been rainy like seattle (sort of). and at times it even seems cold, but nothing like the bone-chilling cold that seattle can be at times.

yesterday a part in my coffee pot broke. it was the press part of a french press coffee maker. so i took the bus to the mall on a hunt to find a replacement part. hunting is exciting for me, it always has been since my childhood days when i went on fishing and hunting trips, mostly with dad. nobody had a replacement part per se, but luckily i found another, inexpensive pot made by the same maker (bodum) that had the same part, so i just bought that coffee maker and cannibalized the part i needed. it's much less trouble and cost and time spent than it would have been ordering the exact part over the internet and paying extravagant shipping charges, and waiting eternities for it to arrive by boat, or air or whatever, which would have cost more than i paid for the entire new pot.

the hunt was a success. and it was fun just going and doing it, considering the rainy temperant conditions. i've lived here long enough by now to know my way around. so getting from place to place by bus, or whatever method of transport, becomes an adventure instead of a major undertaking. and i can truly say, since i drove an automobile for over ten years, that it is much more pleasing to me to be able to take public transport instead of hassling with the personal automobile petro-culture.

life is such a dream, shaboom shaboom.

the curly tale at the end of the year of the pig

2007-12-31T00:42:00.000-10:00

giving dietary recommendations is not a habit of mine. as a matter of fact i am no role model as far as any dietary regime goes. finally again my diet is strict vegan, after a self-imposed bout with macrobiotics, a.k.a. ovolacto-ism for insane reasons i have not understood as of yet, except for that old lame excuse which began as a reason to enjoy the local hawaiian cuisine with no guilt, when i first moved here, which finally became a ball and chain. i've mostly learned to beware the hawaiian diet, the same for most modern cuisines. it's just way too meaty for me to indulge. but taro and poi are good things.

happily, over the past few months, i've finally reawakened due to external factors like maybe the environment, social behaviors and such, and am strictly vegan again as of last month and this time it is until the day i die, no more going back. but that's about all. my diet has never been ideal, no matter what i ate or didn't ate, however it is definitely several steps above diet coke and pretzels, which i would never do. i have learned to be quite the cook over the years. my problem is in variety. i get in ruts and stay in them for too long. but they aren't bad ruts.

why go back? mostly for political and social reasons, the same as before, but mostly because i was feeling massive feelings of pseudo-hypocracy that came to a climax last month during the annual festival of turkey holocaust, even though i wasn't part of it, other than being a fellow human, i wasn't being hypocritical or even having any urges to be. i was merely an observer, not a participant. but i think i was feeling guilty for the actions of many of my fellow humans who are continual participants and will never even consider being vegan.

i never called myself vegan after i stopped being. my diet became macrobiotic and that's how i referred to myself. but as time passed i began to long for the times when i was living a vegan lifestyle. i realized i had switched to macro simply for reasons of apathy and laziness, so i decided to take control of my non-impulses and get some sort of code back into my life. returning to vegan-ness seems to make the most sense of all the things to do. at least that's my excuse for now. what else is there? get religion? hah!

as for well-rounded, it may not be completely nutritionally balanced, but it's no less nutritious than my diet ever was and my diet was never that great in the nutrition department, except for when i lived with michael, the closest thing i ever had to a live-in vegan chef and husband. but i no longer have that luxury, the blessings of a provisional and loving spouse while residing in those cities of emerald, saint augustine and seattle, are now nothing more than sweet memories.

really it was hardly any change at all, mostly mechanical. i had almost already reverted back to completely vegan, all the difficulty of change happened for me 20 years ago when i changed to vegan from being omnivore all my life. i was happy to remain strict for six years and would have continued indefinitely, but the social gang i was a part of fragmented and ritually shed all our habits and lifestyles to begin anew, and we all went separate geographical and worldly ways.

the macro thing happened to me and i've been macriobiotic, but not strict vegan all the time since, not omnivore, just not-strict vegan. so this time no big deal at all, because the most i was ever being non-vegan since then was the scrambled egg breakfast of years ago (the thought disgusts me now) or a slice of cheese (likewise disgusting) maybe a rare nibble of caviar, or a mahi-mahi sushi roll. it was macro and that's the code i was going by. but now no more. i have returned, gone vegan, and was and am so happy to do it.

this is the end of the year of the pig. officially now pork is dead meat. the cows are gong mad, all dairy products are merely mucous. what remains of the fish is full of heavy metals.

it's ume sushi for me from now on. this is not a new year's resolution. it's a fact.

2007-11-22T17:08:00.000-10:00

thanky hapsgiving

high-speed samhain

2007-10-31T22:40:00.000-10:00

22:02 31-Oct-07

today i got up early and met the cable guy to install wired internet. i'm trading it for wireless internet because i'm trying to avoid unneeded microwave transmissions and can always use the added speed of cable.

everything went well. the cable guy disconnected the wireless connection and plugged my computer back into the big snakey cable tit while i drank coffee and observed.

after tcg went away, i started cleaning up the mess. that's when the fun started. i collected all the used wires from the various electronic discarded devices like modems, adapters, etc. i realized the now defunct wireless modem wire was taped to the computer power adapter cord. in my inane, half-asleep halfway caffienated condition i cut the cords apart.

unfortunately more than the tape got cut. the scissors completely severed the computer power cord before i had the chance to stop them. a few minutes later, the already strapped battery ran down and the computer clicked off. everything went quiet. there we were, with a brand new internet connection and no more computer. so i decided the closest place to try and get another adapter was the radio shack a couple of miles away. off i went. it was still earlier than i usually wake up and i was on the way to the electronics store.

happy halloween. at the radio shack an employee dressed as a zombie pirate informed me they didn't carry that brand of adapter, and sold me some solder, wire strippers and a soldering iron. i went back home, in the rain, thank goodness my wheelchair still had power, and started trying to solder. i lasted about five minutes when i realized this would never work. wrong type of wire, wrong type of person, hopeless situation, etc.

then i realized there was a computer store the opposite direction from the radio shack, about the same distance away. so i called first, and learned they did have replacement adapters. off i went into the rain again. at the computer store, i learned i needed the computer model number to get the exact replacement. they forgot to tell me about that on the phone i guess. so i got the best guess of adapters available one hundred dollars ago and came back home. on the way i stopped at the market in chinatown and got food for dinner.

of course it was the wrong adapter. so i checked the model number on my computer and went back to the store, in the rain. at the store, i said hello again, traded my merchandise, said good-bye again and came back home again to put everything back together again. after things got back up and running, it was time for dinner, my first meal of the day.

it's nice to be able to get broken things repaired in less than 24 hours, no matter how many showers it takes.

trick or treat

cycles

2007-09-30T22:39:00.000-10:00

another moon cycle in this grandmomma clock is complete.

for the past about three years, around about this time of year, something happens to me, usually something rather physically traumatic. i don't understand why. the first year i lost consciousness and fell outta my chair and onto the floor resulting in several fractures.

the next year i woke up in bed in the middle of the night with broken bones. i have no idea how it happened. before sleeping, when i entered the bed, i was quite well. this never happened before, getting assaulted in my sleep, or whatever it was.

last year, the day ofter an earthquake, i woke up again with broken bones. it happened either during or soon after a mild aftershock, with no earth tremors perceived by me at least. the tremors of the original earthquake did no harm to me.

is this some earthly connection with my bones and the geographical/geophysical volcanic environment here? only who knows.

i just hope i don't wake up dead in the next few weeks because of it. pele please be kind.

cool not

2007-08-31T23:47:00.000-10:00

on the cheerful subject of global warming, here's the latest: it seems from various scholarly studies, that the food habits of the human species are the major heating-up factors on the planet. these factors are factory farms and the livestock they feed, breed and slaughter.

the human species is killing itself by clearing the forests to make grazing lands for the livestock, and since the forests are now gone, they are unable to filter the carbon from the air. in the newly created pastures, the livestock continually eat and fart and belch methane into the already polluted atmosphere.

then we take the doomed livestock to market on carbon burning vehicles where they end up in the factory farms where they make more pollution with refuse of every sort... and then we transport them again to supermarkets and restaurants for the carnivors of the human species to consume.... or something like that. and what does it take to escape that vicious circle? easy.
become a vegan misanthropic pariah like me, no problem.

and that's today's tale. please don't tune in tomorrow.

the melting plastic age

2007-07-31T23:31:00.000-10:00

31-Jul-2007

today i decided to stop being so bothered about all the things wrong with me due to old age or whatever it may be, and start living out the rest of my days not fretting so much about my mortality.
since i wrote this i'll probably wake up dead
tomorrow. is that magical thinking?

don't misunderstand. i have no plans for exit yet, for now it's mostly still a big freakshow funhouse to me. frightening at times yes, but at least i get to be a tiny part of humanity, which, in all its zillions of moments of embarrassment, has indeed survived thru the sands of time. we did the stone age, iron age, bronze age, the god age, the atomic age, the space age, et al. humanity has come quite a way, relatively.

so now have we at least arrived? are we there yet? where were we going, anyway? one thing, we definitely made it to the synthetic age.

unfortunately, combined with global warming, we now have to contend with the emerging new era with all its goods and bads.

welcome everyone, to the age of melting plastic.

summer of depleted uranium

2007-06-30T11:59:00.000-10:00

the season is here, but it's not that hot yet. i expect it to get warmer. i doubt i'll get an air conditioner for my window. i'd rather breath warm fresh air. conditioned air is not very pleasant to breathe, however cool it may be. i'd rather inhale thc-conditioned air. let the air remain warm, it's a better choice for the season.
the problem is the military. it's dumping more war residue off our shores here in the islands. depleted uranium is no fun in summer, or any other season. silly war people.

freakshow

2007-05-28T16:30:00.000-10:00

i've never watched an episode of 'american idol.' freakshows interested me more when i was a kid. it's not like i'm against them or anything, i do enjoy them sometimes. i suppose that being a freakshow constantly has something to do with my lack of interest in other freakshows. i get plenty of that energy, i don't need more through the television, not from 'idol' anyway.

one of my favorite things to do when i'm out and about, usually going for a stroll to the market or some such thing, i usually do that several times a week, one of my favorite things is when i pass another pedestrian on the sidewalk and they are going the opposite direction, is to turn and look after we pass each other and see how many are turning around to ogle at me, the freakshow. it's amazing to see how many actually do turn for another look. it's even more amazing to see them see me turn around and stare at them staring at me.

welcome to the monkey house

2007-04-13T02:35:00.000-10:00

once upon a time kurt vonnegut was alive and he was one of my favorite writers. as time passed he grew old and eventually he fell and couldn't get back up. now kurt vonnegut is dead. he is still one of my favorite writers.
and so it goes.

bus pass away

2007-03-31T22:58:00.000-10:00

2215tuesday
this march was a long one, thirty-one days. but i got a few things done. i got a really big monitor for my tv/computer, havent had to use my reading glasses since. and i spent the last few weeks going through the ritual of getting a new handi-van cripple bus pass. my previous one expired years ago and i just never got it renewed until last week. i dont usually use the cripple bus, but a pass allows me to ride the regular bus for free, plus i needed to get across the island for an appointment and i didn't want to take the regular bus all that way. it would have been a really long ride. so i re-registered and got a cripple bus pass. i thought it might be a fun adventure. but it was just another beauracratic nightmare, luckily i had a good attitude throughout the entire process and even the frustrating moments were entertaining, almost humorous. now i have a cripple bus pass till 2011, unless of course global warming melts enough ice off greenland and/or the polar ice caps, hence washing us hawaiians off the map completely. the need for a bus pass of any kind will simply go away.

dancing with dragons

2007-02-27T09:31:00.000-10:00

residing in chinatown can be adventurous at times. this month was chinese new year. it is now year of the boar, also called year of the pig. those born under the year of the piggish boar include me. it seems the chinese lunar zodiac runs in twelve year cycles and 1959, the year i was born, is the pig cycle.

i was even forced to fight dragons during this year's celebration. i thought the party was over on the previous evening, but the next day, when i went downstairs to get something to eat at a nearby thai food place, i found myself in the center of yet another parade. it was like nyc times square on dec. 31, too many people. when i tried to cross the street to get to the eatery i had to dodge dancing dragons, in a manner of speaking. it was so exciting....

and the week before all that happened, mom and dad came to visit. they brought my younger brother's three daughters, two teens and one post-teen. it was a good vacation for us all. but at last, it's nice to be back to abnormal. thank goodness, the excitement is over, for now.

hero worship

2007-01-10T17:44:00.000-10:00

greetings

The last ten days or so I have been the lucky recipient of a lot of well wishing. For my 60th birthday, New Years and for being an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2007.

I have to say it has been really nice greeting the dawn picking the same old clothes and used up socks off the floor and stumbling into the world in search of coffee, encountering friends, neighbors and passerby all with a kind and encouraging word.

So I want to thank everybody as well as send out a few encouraging words myself. A new year begins and it gives us an opportunity to reassess ourselves, physically, emotionally and spiritually. There is no reason at all why each of can't take stock of ourselves and better our situation. For instance just simple things like eliminating fast foods, soft drinks and excessive salt is a start. Drinking more water. Getting one's teeth cleaned. Saying a simple thank you or grace before eating. Going through our possessions and letting go of what we really don't want or need. If one has vices and can't give them up, just cut down. Start with the small things and as you feel better about accomplishing them, add more challenging things. It's an elemental concept but sound. Sometimes we ask so much of ourselves that we feel defeated before we begin.

Don't defeat yourself. We are lucky to be alive. I always think of the Jimi Hendrix line "Hooray I wake from yesterday". Just being alive is a gift. We can build on that thought every day.

Well, happy new year. And thanks everybody. I am going to take my own advice and change my socks.

all good wishes.

patti smith

a pleasure

2007-01-01T22:38:00.000-10:00

chore number one is complete. i have cooked, photographed and consumed, in that order, a meal of blackeye peas (w/garlic) on brown rice, all slopped over a slice of toast, with lots of condiments of course. actually it was quite tasty. that's because i'm a good cook.

so i've kept alive the tradition, for one more year at least, of blackeye peas on new year's day. you are welcome, my pleasure.

old bones

2006-12-30T22:23:00.000-10:00

the year comes to an end. this writing funk continues. i don't know why. i don't really care. but i do feel guilty for not writing. i know i should be writing. that's part of the reason i don't write. could this mean i'm too reactionary?
i'm not making any new year's resolutions, especially about writing more, or less. i don't do well under pressure.

i'll continue this journal next year sometime. january sounds like a good month to look toward.

----

one of the few comedians i ever really enjoyed was red skelton. he was always a real person, even when he was being funny.

"I don't hate my enemies. After all, I made 'em." -Red Skelton, comedian (1913-1997)

fractured update

2006-11-01T23:01:00.000-10:00

1 november 2006 11pm

fractured femurs.

been pretty busy. not much time to write lately, that's all. it'll be a surprise if i remember everything that's happened, so much going on. might have to add some things in later notes if i leave them out here, but here goes.

a social worker here came in a couple days ago and told me i would only be able to stay here at pacific rehab a few more days for insurance reasons, as i suspected. she said she was trying to find me a place like a nursing care center. i told her "good luck" i tried to do that last time and they wouldn't take me because i was too young and scary to the old folks. but she seemed to think she could. so i told her "sure, try your heart out."

in the meantime, i can transfer to and from bed and the toilet with help at this point, the help i need is getting the leg rest they built for my chair off while holding my legs up and keeping them from bending down per dr.'s orders and because the splints hold my legs straight, keeping my knees covered and jointless.

i feel like eating now. in the meantime, i went to the neurologist yesterday and he checked me over for possible shunt blockage as a possible reason for waking up with fractures for the third time in as many years now with no memory of the event. he said i really needed to be seeing a neurosurgeon but his educated guess is my shunt is ok. i have an appointment to see a neurosurgeon and get an eeg to make sure everything really is clear. the neurologist says he doesn't think i've been having any seizures, a good thing.

today i went to see the ortho doctor who saw to me in queen's hospital. he is a good man because he admitted my xrays are unreadable to him and i know better about the healing of my bones than anyone else would. so he allowed me to take over my own case and washed his hands of me, thank goodness. he allowed me to remove the splints and leg rest which were not much more than torture devices as far as i was concerned.

my left leg feels like it is getting better, right leg feels sore still. my therapists and i went on a community outing, a bus trip to aloha tower and downtown. and it was no problem. that was before i took off the splints and legrest. so now that my legs are back in their normal position things are much better. i'm able to transfer myself to and from bed myself now since no one needs to hold my legs up and remove the legrest, that's good. i can almost transfer myself back and forth from the toilet with no help. things are already much better and i haven't had the splints off one full day yet.

i'm working my hardest to be able to go from here in a week or so straight back home without any nursing care center in between. i'm able to do real therapy now since no splints are hindering me. it's a bit painful so far, but it's the first day and it's pain i can deal with, am familiar with. not the torturous legs straight out stuff. me feet are back on footrests where they belong (still swollen) and those two weeks in splints helped me heal a lot i'm sure.

therapists and i will go on one more outing to my apartment later this week to make sure everything will work right there, and i'll probably have visitors every few days for in-home visits and stuff like when mom was here last. the good thing is i already have a hospital bed, i own it now. the main thing will be toilet transfer, and if i master it here, which i'm in the process of doing now, then home will be a breeze.

speaking of breezes, it's freezing cold in this rehab joint at night and i just wanna be warm and out of the air-conditioning. so home sounds real good right now. jimmy and terri came by a few days ago, brought my coffee pot and beans so i'm good for now, drinking coffee all night to stay warm. and i can finally eat the food here which is actually pretty good.

i think i will be able to make it at home alone. i have no exact dates as of yet.

those are the high points of the last few days. jimmy and terri are taking care of the cat and plants and things and are here for me when i need them. the weather is rainy, so that's a good thing. i go out daily for exercise and fresh air. my therapists couldn't be better. eeg happens nov. 7. by that time i should be home, unless they let me stay here that long, which i doubt.

how many things have i skipped? who knows. day starts early here tomorrow so i'm gonna drink more coffee and try to get a couple hours sleep. hah.

haven't gotten much sleep lately, but that's normal for me. by the time i get to bed it's time to get up. watching lots of late-nite tv, hoping my cat is ok.
ok, i'm rambling now. more later.

rock and roll

2006-10-15T13:26:00.000-10:00

15october2006

an earthquake shook oahu this morning about 7:15. it rocked and rolled the bed i was sleeping in and woke me up. the rumbling lasted about 20-30 seconds, maybe less. it felt like the building i was in kept rocking after the quake, or the quake continued at a lesser rate of quiver for a few seconds after i initialy thought it was over.

finally it stopped and the cat came skulking out from under the bed in a crouching position, unsure of just what had happened.

i flicked the tv to a local channel, but the satellite tv was acting all jumbled up, like it had just been in an earthquake or something. i couldn't get any local channels, so i tried to get cnn or one of the cable channels. i remained still half-asleep with the remote in my hand, trying to tune the tv for a couple of minutes more. then color bars came up on the screen. immediately after that the electricity went dead. everything came to a stop.

and so it remains.

honolulu is in a coma. the entire island of oahu has no electricity for the past six hours now as far as i can tell.

i went back to sleep about 7:45, hoping the power would be on when i woke. but at about 9:00am a security guard from my building knocked on my apartment door and informed me of the island-wide power outage.

so i fed the cat and made some coffee. the coffee was my first non-electric adventure. i realized there were no ground coffee beans, since i normally use whole beans and grind them as needed with an electric grinder. the only useable coffee i had was an old, long-ago opened can of french market coffee that i never used but had around basically for decoration. nevertheless, i used a scoop of that and heated the water on my portable gas stove. i use a french press coffeemaker, so the rest was easy. i drank some of the old, stale coffee. but it's cafe-du-monde, so it was drinkable, and could have been much worse, so i was relatively content. i forced myself to eat a bit of muffin so something besides just old stale coffee would be all i consumed for a while. i could barely eat one bite, must have been nerves.

when the security guard was here he was knocking on people's doors and telling them there had been an earthquake, and to stay in their units. i laughed when he told me this. i'm already a prisoner anyway. no electricity, no elevator, and i live on the sixth floor of a tower.

so now we wait, while all the food in the fridge goes bad.

stupid leaders

2006-09-30T23:34:00.000-10:00

it's deplorable being a u.s. citizen these days. too many people suffering, dying at the hands of democracy gone wild. we let our stupid leaders lose control, and now things are spiraling off like a billion malfunctioning bottle rockets.

good-bye september sweaty and hot.
i'm not complaining. i've just had enough for now. resume the global warming later please. thank you.

read me

2006-08-20T14:07:00.000-10:00

according to booktv.org, 'according to the white house, the prezident has read twenty-eight (28) books since the beginning of this june.'

amazing.

paint

2006-07-29T19:20:00.000-10:00

recently, maureen dowd offered one of the best and most conveniently-concise descriptions of gwbush's steadfastness and immutability no matter what, right or wrong be damned, i've ever seen.

dowd said, "it's not like watching paint dry, it's like watching dry paint."

ex-xtian revelations

2006-06-30T22:44:00.000-10:00

ever since childhood, i wondered what the citizens of germany felt like during ww2. now it's like i almost understand what they were going through. it's easier to see how it happened, how it could even happen to entire civilizations or worlds.

it's truly a blessed feeling to be here now and possibly witness what is the beginning -- probably more like the middle -- of the end of a civilization, maybe even a planet. it's like the next best thing to immortality.

what's amazing is, the actual humans that are most probably bringing on their own destruction, and most everyone else's, as i write this, are the people of god.

most of them don't even understand what's happening.

happy hurricane

2006-05-31T22:01:00.000-10:00

fox-y reality?

new orleans is sinking an inch a year.

condoleeeeeza [proof the universe has run out of souls for all the new critters] is secretary of state.

indeed

2006-04-30T22:38:00.000-10:00

it seems the blogosphere hasn't been the most successful for me as far as environments conducive to productivity or proclivity. maybe later.

ginger biscotti

2006-03-25T00:46:00.000-10:00

things are looking up all over.

the rain seems to be slacking for the time-being. maybe more people won't get flooded in the biblical sense. this island continues to float.

but my mail account is getting heavily spammed and may be causing problems. this is no big loss. i rarely check the mail at that actual mailbox since i have it forwarded to the the other account. i was unaware of the spam attack.

the apartment inspection flunked. after it was over, i asked the inspector if it passed. he said yes. he lied to my face. a few days later i got a letter in the mail from him saying it flunked. maybe i frightened him.

the reason for the repeat mails is because the maintenance guy found the oven hood problem, the one that caused the flunk of the inspection.

it seems the oven hood wasn't working because it had no power. it was weak. the circuit breaker was simply breaking the circuit and the inspector was too stupid to figure it out at the time of the inspection.

in the process of discovering the thrown breaker, the maintenance guy benevolently threw the wrong switch and cut the electricity to my bedroom hence notebook while i was in the process of mailing mail.

things got really screwed up for a while. the battery kicked in, nothing lost but time.

inspector general returns wednesday to reinspect the oven hood to be positive it really sucks and he's not getting generally scammed.

the voucher my survive yet after all, and the island still hasn't capsized.

xwords

2006-03-21T00:28:00.000-10:00

nytimes x-word solution 17 mar 2006
reordered

usa usa no bidet.
edsel errors, bas estas ash pipe dreams.
etrade whatever the renter cost.
emme rene prada bel umps teri prier blue.
jeans pose evenhanded, guess ed's parakeet shores,
rope lasagna splints hit poles at mild trumped up charge.

moons

2006-02-28T23:28:00.000-10:00

another new moon has come and gone and another fat tuesday but it's a skinny fat since katrina's visit. it seems like yesterday since all those things happened. yesterday the moon was new.

the new moon before this present one was about one moon (cycle) ago. katrina blew through new orleans about six moons ago. the last fat tuesday was about twelve moons ago.

yesterday?

time is so confusing.

patti candyslice smith

2006-01-28T16:21:00.000-10:00

patti smith lives.

that's not really news or anything, unless one is one of her many admirers.

nevertheless, proof of her life and mozart's death, as it might or might not be called, is in this latest entry on her mailing list.

here are some of her latest words.

greetings

it's been a long time since i have written. i am in paris and it is friday january 27.

i am lucky to attend the premier of don giovanni on mozart's 250th birthday. a truly revolutionary fellow, he wrote the overture the night before it debuted. he had to drink a few flasks of wine but he did it.

a genius at making the establishment shudder as he approached deadlines, he played piano the opening night laughingly, shouting the proper notes to his fellow musicians. what a guy.

please celebrate. you must have some mozart laying around. i have the requiem. let's all play him together.

i send all good wishes. i am well and wearing fine black socks i bought in rome near the vatican.

life is good and better with mozart,

patti smith

ritual superstition

2006-01-01T23:58:00.000-10:00

after cooking and consuming dinner, when rinsing the french press, i remembered the black-eye peas and today, january one.

the consumption of black-eye peas is required on the first of january. if not, the coming year will be sheer hell -- or something like that.

i had prepared for new year's day days ago and got a special high-quality, organic can, with the peas inside pre-soaked and everything, but forgot to prepare the peas.

i checked my watch. it was 9pm, i had three hours before midnight when everything would surely turn into a pumpkin, since i had forgotten the black-eye peas. i finished rinsing the remainder of the caffe press, rinsed out a fresh pan, opened the can of peas, emptied the can into the pan and onto the cooking pyre they went.

it is a bit surprising, black-eyed peas serve as quite a satisfying after-dinner apertife. the peas were delicious. this newly created ancient dining ritual with a twist was a triumphant relief.

now i know, as i'm being washed away by a tsunami or smashed by the city bus or whatever happens, or doesn't happen, to me this year -- i'll at least be sure it wasn't because of the misbegotten black-eye peas.

old year

2005-12-31T21:37:00.000-10:00

happy old year. this is the end of 2005, good-bye, so-long, farewell.

hopefully, i will now rarely hear someone say, "two-thousand and five." when they should simply have said "twenty oh-five."

people didn't say "one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine." they said "nineteen, ninety-nine."

what comes after nineteen?

twenty, not two-thousand.

i can understand the novelty, the change in century, blah, blah. i got caught up in the y2k hype for a while.

but enough is enough. five years is long enough. let's begin this year the correct way.

exit 2005 (two-thousand and five).

enter 2006 (twenty oh-six).

no more nukes

2005-12-27T20:19:00.000-10:00

it's a celebration, a rite of passage. the microwave embedded in my apartment died with a whimper a few days ago and i'm glad. now its rotten corpse is gone and in that old atomic spewer's location, a plant resides dead center.

a plant is a much more pleasant thing to behold than a microwave oven. i barely considered replacing the monster with another equally horrific appliance, as i have what seems like dozons of times before. as each day passes i realize it would be a waste of time, money and space, ethics and logic.

copper collagen

2005-11-27T14:04:00.000-10:00

i posted this in oitribe, my oi'er group. it seems every oi'er has a newsgroup these days. . . newcomers welcome. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oitribe)

for a very long time, i've been greatly attracted to copper for earrings, bracelets, anklets, necklaces and many other things. for a while i thought it was just a style thing.

it was almost like a chemical "attraction" to the copper. i began to crave it, sort of like a favorite food. then i learned of the connection between copper and collagen. maybe the copper helps "soothe my craving for collagen."

copper stimulates and increases the production of collagen.

copper is an ingredient in some skin care products. skin is much healthier with lots of collagen, it seems.
lack of collagen in bones is closely interrelated with osteogenesis imperfecta.

as a child i saw my grandfather (non oi) wear a copper bracelet for arthritis relief. i suppose that's one reason why i made this connection later in life. so i wasn't surprised when years later, the pain in my wrist, as a result of oi, indeed was lessened by wearing a solid copper chain bracelet.

i've always wondered why there isn't more research in this area, related to osteogenesis imperfecta. anyone else?

here (complete urL below) is a link to more information about copper, collagen and bone, plus lots more stuff.

http://www.skinbiology.com/copperpeptideregeneration.html

samhain

2005-10-31T20:27:00.000-10:00

i wonder what happened to all those above-ground cemeteries in new orleans when it flooded after the hurricane. they were one of my favorite things about that city when i lived there. i'm not sure why. maybe it's because i was raised in a funeral home.

i went out for breakfast to a restaurant this morning. the usual waitress was there, dressed as a witch for halloween. she's an asian woman, her costume was all black and she wore a wig of long, silvery-white hair. i complimented her, told her it looked good and she should wear it more often.

"thanks," she said, "but it's so hot."

grandma chris

2005-10-19T21:20:00.000-10:00

my last surviving grandmother died yesterday.

she was a cool person. she was my dad's mom. my mom's mom died a few years ago. so now, no more surviving grandparents. oh well, at least i'm still surviving.

grandma chris, that's what i called her, was one of my first role models. she was a good one. i have so many wonderful memories of life with her that if i listed them all here, we'd be here a long, long while.

unsubscribed

2005-10-10T17:41:00.000-10:00

this blog is no longer subscribable. google's subscription service or whatever it's called is just too complicated for my itching, swelling brain.

maybe some other time..

meanwhile, i was almost killed by my chessboard.

more details later.

just wondering

2005-09-26T07:35:00.000-10:00

if i'll ever have the urge to write anything again. or if i'll ever write anything worth reading in the first place.

it really doesn't matter. i really dont care.

just wondering.

katrina's fodder

2005-08-29T22:41:00.000-10:00

**from the archive ...

screw the baby
(with migraine as muse)

NEW ORLEANS-
LOWER GARDEN DISTRICT
1980

--by jezebel

CHAPTER I

The following is a true-to-life account of a person's sanity slowly seeping into a cesspool of oblivion:

Silently sitting and studying Saturday's superfluous edition of the daily crossword puzzle, grabbing and grasping for any knowledgeable piece of vocabulary that possibly might fit, or come close to fitting inside those geometrically-grotesque cuboidal designs, he struggled while the radio blared the latest contemporary country and western. The words were slowly emerging and fitting into place--but not quite fast enough. The paper started pulsating, the perfectly-square squares were mutating into rectangles of horrific proportions, building pyramids of tiny people. Parading up and down, in and out, right and left, north and south.

The pain was unbearable, but tolerable as long as he payed attention to the radio and concentrated on the lyrics of Dolly Parton.

He remembers blacking out ten times over, then awakening to a completed puzzle full of words and senseless phrases like ipso-tipso, screwthebaby and kissthelight socket.

Has Jesus returned? Is Gabreil tooting? No, I just wanna know that word.....shasher, skasher, stasher, smasher, SMasher, that's it!

Probably not another living soul will have an experience as filthy and sickening as his, no way could any American-born, bourbon-belching citizen survive as hideous an experience. And what comes next? Silver padded cells reeking of last night's wet dreams and purple fantasies? Straight jackets laced and knitted by wrinkled old women reliving years and years of drug-induced euphoria? Shock treatments prescribed in wards of screaming/yelling shaven-headed imbeciles patiently mopping up their own vomit? What a future....
The future is there to be dreamt of with the realization that one more day might never come. Planning and saving with fervor and excitement in the idea of tomorrow and the next hour. Snakes don't have it so good, they just writhe and wither in the dust of yesterday.

His sanity fades with the daylight and seeps away into the darkness of tonight, the rising moon glares brighter than the noonday sun of August. Shortly there will be no more flesh, just bones and skeletons passionately crashing together with the raucous rattle of loose teeth in broken jawbones. Hair is no longer a problem since it fell out months ago. There is nothing left to cut--except maybe his own throat--a vessel gorged to the top by life's uncertainties and death's endless possibilities. Dreams of execution and unbearable tortures racked his brain throughout the long night, too many sleepless days have led to the complete and total disintegration of rational thought. The only reality now is the one of the rat-infested alleyways and black, stinking garbage piles next door. The only escape is sleep and that is a horrible nightmare of wretchedness. There is no escape, only acceptance. ####

toilet-water gumbo

2005-08-29T22:29:00.000-10:00

perhaps my most recent place of habitation in new orleans, twenty-five years ago, a basement apartment/refurbished schoolhouse, in the lower garden district off st. charles street, is no longer there now. but it served me well when i needed it.

those were the days, now probably underwater, for the moment at least, thanks to katrina.

it's just as well after all, everyone needs their toilet bowls flushed once in a while.

intelligence

2005-08-27T19:41:00.000-10:00

Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the 'dumb' animals made for the hills.

-B.R. Myers, author (1963- )

hiroshima

2005-08-07T18:44:00.001-10:00

sixty years ago the u.s. grew into a much larger terrorist government than it ever was before. it dropped a nuclear weapon of mass destruction on a large city full of civilians.

and then it blackmailed the rest of the world with nuclear power for the next half-century, threatening to use it on them if they don’t behave. but now the tables are turned. the u.s. is not the only holder of the power.

now any tom, dick or terrorist can acquire a nuke and pack it in a suitcase. no b-24 bomber required for delivery.

one civilian is now able to bring the u.s. or any other government to it’s knees, possibly it’s demise.

what goes around comes around.

abducted

2005-07-16T20:03:00.000-10:00

... by aliens, may 29, 2005. beginning to regain my senses, slowly. it's been a long trip back.

amen awomen achildren acrowd and seven loaves makes for lots of chaos.

it's an abbot habit

today is the first day i can remember not waking up and having to immediately start working on my "things to do to catch up for lost time due to probable abduction by aliens" list. maybe now will have some time to write and play chess for a while ...

not exactly completely caught up with everything, probably never will be completely, but that's ok. just so i'm caught up enough to not be worrying about it from the time i wake up every morning.

not much else new. fractured arm is slowly getting stronger. other arm, left wrist is getting more arthritic from overuse.

constantly arranging and rearranging furniture since abduction, got more of those plastic stackable containers to make tables with, a few more blue now, to go with the previous few pink, so i have some more cheap pink and blue plastic fake but easily transportable coffee tables topped with wooden chessboards, but not necessarily chess pieces, only sometimes.

plants are growing, or at least sprouting leaves. hot weather otherwise. not enough rain.

nevertheless, religiously going out mostly once a day on errands, strolls, general taking of the air, etc. getting plenty of sea breeze and too much bright sunlite.

living on papayas from chinatown markets and home-cooked eggs and toast, for supper, sometimes tofu. miso soup and brown rice for pseudo-balance of sorts.

take-out, mostly indian and arab food. but yesterday's greasy grilled cheese on whole wheat from the bread/coffee shop for supper last nite was enough to bear for years. vanilla ice cream is still the best for that deadly midnite snack.

all lubricated with lots of organic french-pressed espresso/french roast cafe beans w/chicory.

toast

2005-06-20T20:31:00.000-10:00

my god, my god,
the world is on fire.
my god, my god,
let it burn, let it burn.

xoxo
jezebel

quaker

2005-05-22T06:09:00.000-10:00

the earth supposedly quaked here, slightly. possibly the water gurgled a bit, off the shores of oahu, friday morning.

if i felt it, i never realized it was an earthquake. but that's not surprising, since it was no biggy, as far as earthquakes go, only 4.1 on the quaker scale.

besides, this is downtown chinatown honolulu and my abode is a multi-twenty-something-story tower, so things are always swaying and rumbling in my world.

at the time of the quake, i probably just thought it was a rubbish truck emptying a dumpster, or dock sounds from across the thoroughfare at pier 13 in the honolulu harbor, and passed it off as normal city noise and vibration. i don't remember feeling anything moving abnormally.

but that's ok. i sensated my share of earthquakes in seattle while living there and have no urge to re-experience those feelings.

as earthquakes go, this latest one we've all now survived was quite boring actually. there wasn't even a resulting tsunami. i haven't inspected closely as of yet, but i dare say there are few, if any, new cracks in the sidewalks to be concerned with avoiding next time i take a stroll to where ever.

maybe the quake was a warning -- get prepared for the big one to strike sometime soon, or far in the future, when we least expect it.

after all, whether we like it or not, mother nature always gets the last laugh. let us hope.

old smokies

2005-04-22T22:38:00.000-10:00

no more burning bushes on top of old smokey, earth day be damned.

an air national guard hanger outside of knoxville was the nearest tennessee sanctuary from possible hail in the smokies where the current presidential flame cared to scorch the earth today.

soon after passing more environmentally damaging legislation full of doublespeak, he cancelled his earth day celebration/speech at the great smokey mountains "because of possible hail and thunderstorms."

it's a mountain range for god's sake. wouldn't any sensible person expect there to be a threat of rainy weather in the vicinity of a mountain range?

why schedule the trip in the first place? they obviously never intended to attend, that presidential gang of cronies.

it was all planned for looks. they promoted the speech to be held in a location where the threat of stormy weather is almost always a given conclusion.

then they simply waited till the last possible moment and cancelled as planned.

supposedly, there's a popular saying in d.c., "what goes around, comes around."

it's not nice to fool with mother nature, gang of george.

-jvt

new moon moaning

2005-04-09T23:42:00.000-10:00

at times it seems the perplexities of complication confound us of the simple mind.

yet it is the perplexity of the simple that most confounds those of the species human who might notice such things.

the remaining ninety-nine percent of the crowd slovenly sops and slurps at troughs provided by overseers.

after all is said and done everything sounds like everything else -- inexplicably -- all to begin again, repetitions countless.

this apparently mutates into something -- tangible -- until it resumes evaporation, fading ultimately, evanescent into the ethers.

-- jvt

bonk

2005-04-02T10:18:00.000-10:00

lyrics from the beatles' "maxwell's silver hammer" popped inside my head at the popal demise. now they are stuck inside my head. thanks john and paul. and that song is not even about the pope.

also, one harkens back to the star trek episode "miri" where the kids do a chant, "bonk, bonk, on the head ..." while chasing kirk around with clubs.

but the best quote for the day i've been able to come up with so far is --

"knock three times (with a tiny silver hammer) on the pope's head if you want me...."

air

2005-03-28T20:10:00.000-10:00

at times, when conversing with friends or trees, or the cat, i stumble over the phrase, "going for a walk" or "taking a walk" since i do use a power wheelchair and haven't actually "walked" for over thirty years.

it's not embarrassing, not to walk. on the contrary, it's actually sort of fun to buzz around in a chair. nevertheless, it is a blatant lie, whether malicious or not, to say i "went for a walk."

luckily, i recently overheard an old phrase that has fallen out of common usage, which offers a reasonable alternative to the conundrum presented above.

it seems, near the end of the nineteenth century, a common ritual for people to do was to go out-of-doors, into the fresh air and proceed on a morning, mid-day or evening walk, otherwise known as "taking the air."

however, it gives me (or anyone else who rolls, hops, ambles, scoots, creeps, crawls, drags-ass, crab-steps or whatever it takes to move oneself from one place to another and then back again for no particular reason other than just to do it) it gives us something else, something new to say, something lively and fresh.

it's not so boring as, "going for a stroll" or "riding my chair," which appears childish to the mind's eye, at best.

so the next time you go out for a senseless, meandering trip, doggy wee-wee, hysterical escape from depression -- whatever -- remember you're not just taking a walk anymore.

indeed, you're going for a walk, but more importantly, however it's done, whether on one's hands and knees, or even horizontal (and still breathing) you are taking the air.

yet, what a lucky few of us there are who will do it without ever even having to take a step.

it's alive

2005-03-21T08:15:00.000-10:00

the first entry (2004 august) of this current incarnation of cobweblog, mentions the loss of two years worth of posts at the previous cobweblog.

this two years of lost journal entries prompted me to move the blog to this new location, here at blogspot.

however, in the meantime and subsequently, the lost-in=cyberspace files at the previous blog have been recovered, thank goodness. they are not much to speak of, or even to read. but at least they are no longer lost.

please feel free to browse the resurrected lost-in-cyberspace files at the previous cobweblog location.

this changes nothing. the previous blog is resurrected, but only for storage and perusal of the previously lost files. it remains dead for most other uses, unless of course, another use comes up.

in the meantime, the new journal continues to plod here, slowly but slowly.

nevertheless, it does continue.

the list

2005-03-12T19:53:00.000-10:00

subscribe to: spidermoon.net

cobweblog

2005-03-12T16:43:00.000-10:00

if this blog is so exciting to you that you just can't miss a single post, then please don't hesitate to sign up now.

send your email address to jezebel@spidermoon.net and type "subscribe" on the subject line.

you will recieve each post as it becomes published in this blog.

rip hst

2005-02-26T22:05:00.000-10:00

mark morford, a journalist for sfgate.com is one of my favorite columnists. so i had already read this article, one of his most recent, before it got redelivered to me today by a friend.

it's getting posted here so as not to go completely to waste.

hst rip

2005-02-23T15:22:00.000-10:00

the suicide of hunter s thompson seems to be making waves in the media.

today i heard some anonymous talking head on tv say, "before he shot himself he said he wanted his remains to be cremated, then shot out of a cannon."

i'm not sure if that's a true story or not, but it's indeed thought-provoking.

thompson wrote a column for espn magazine in his final years.

this collection of articles is some of his last work.

what's gonna happen when the last radical dies? indeed it could become a bushworld. hopefully that wouldn't last too long. it would burn itself out sooner or later. no nightmare lasts forever.

yet.

checkmate

2005-02-21T16:13:00.000-10:00

nothing so final,
bitter, finite
as the end.

black and white
no doubt will
merry meet again.

sooner better,
in the next life,
on familiar board.

gonzo

2005-02-21T03:59:00.000-10:00

it's the end of the world as we know it.

hunter s. thompson killed himself yesterday.

that's one less authentic observationist and commentatior of modern society among those pitiful few remaining.

mecca

2005-02-19T16:20:00.000-10:00

went to ala moana shopping mecca mall today and got three octagonal pint glasses to replace the various and sundry others broken and unreplaced over the past few months. (the final two just this week, suddenly reducing my remaining pint-size drinking-container choices to plastic).
alas, now i can continue drinking soy lattes all afternoon from non-plastic.
crock-a-doodle

third

2005-02-14T22:56:00.000-10:00

ok this should be it. this is the same boring article stored in a third space. i know no one can tell what the heck all this is about. but i don't care.

go to 3blh for a really boring time.

but at least it all works now and i can do it for real from now on. thank you for the indulgence.

second try

2005-02-14T20:50:00.000-10:00

testing testing number two two

like the title says, here's a link to the same article, slightly different copy, stored at a different storage space. hopefully no banner ads this time.

blah

testing testing number two two too

storage test

2005-02-14T04:14:00.000-10:00

ok well, better late than never. instead of continuing to bloat my email inbox with daily lists of things to read (i've got copies of articles stored there from years ago) i'm gonna start listing it and keeping the links here, like i should have been doing all along.

but changing the format and colors here inspired me i guess. something did.

copy of first article for the day:

blahgs

let's see if all this frikkin trouble has come to anything at all.

ok ... well this is a big failure. i've gotta find somewhere to store this stuff where there isn't adds....

ok later maybe. at least i got started.

carnivale

2005-02-12T19:43:00.000-10:00

for those who care and for those who don't, the 7 feb 2005 episode of wirx radio station's weekly interview with one of the main characters of carnivale -- brother justin -- is hereby posted via this decoding carnivale link so gleefully provided here.

carnivale is possibly the most entertaining and thought-provoking tv show on the planet at the current time. but that's just my unbiased warped opinion.

click the link for the 7 feb transcript of the show. maybe you'll think so too, or maybe not.

ao come to decoding carnivale for a behind-the-scenes, so to speak, glimpse of hbo's tv series, carnivale.

i'm not a member, but one can also read & comment on this interview on the Official Clancy Brown Fan Club Weblog -- URL:
http://clancybrownfanclubblog.blogspot.com/

end of ridiculously unabashed idolatorial promo

dear

2005-02-10T17:18:00.000-10:00

mom,

did the fightin' chicks do anything special since this is the year of the rooster in china? maybe that's why they won.

what is a cheergirl? what happened to cheerleaders?

the plants are doing fine, or at least they seem to be okay. they are green and i've been watering them daily.

my healing is going well. no extra pain meds needed.

went to welfare office (two blocks from here) yestrday for a recertification application appointment. hopefully i passed.

i moved my bed even more sideways today to where it's head end is pointing out the window, toward the bay, and the spare wheelchair is wedged between the bathroom door and the very foot of the bed, instead of on the side.

thanks for the heart card.

the new coffee grinder and french press arrived today. so i've been assembling all that stuff and learning to use it.

i put an extension cord in the kitchen so it's easier to plug in the coffee stuff. i don't have to climb up on the counter every time now.

how does the over-the-stove fan/vent turn on? the switch you showed me does not seem to be working.

the weather's getting hot again already. it was a short winter, unless it cools off more later.

happy valentines.

final grind

2005-02-03T20:18:00.000-10:00

my coffee bean grinder came from together to apart, ate it's own guts out and violently died right in front of me a couple days ago. so i've been trying to recover from that trauma.

i ordered a new, better grinder today. have been drinking french press coffee in the meantime, using the spare, not espresso grinder, and like it so much now i also ordered a new french press coffeemaker to go with the new grinder, for a change from espresso from time to time, which i actually found rather refreshing over the last few days during this latest traumatic event.

mutant media

2005-01-30T16:01:00.000-10:00

stop wasting your reading time reading
simple print.

use your ears, listen to your books

evolve and mutate

into the next century.

(multi-tasking required)

whimper

2005-01-03T09:52:00.002-10:00

it's sad, almost surprising, that i didn't make any posts here in this blog the entire month of december, the end of the year especially.

the first part of the month i have a decent excuse for because mom was here and i spent all my extra time with her. but afterwards ... i suppose i was just recovering still. it was the first time i was alone since november one, so i had no one to fall back on except the cat.

still, i'm faced with all that month of blank space. i'll try and fill some with correspondence. we wrote back and forth to dad a lot because mom was here. maybe i didn't dump all of those messages yet. we'll see....

today so far i've made espresso, oatmeal, more espresso. plus a few odds and ends, like stopping in the bathroom, etc. plus i did the dishes and stuff. the oatmeal and espresso dishes. and for now, i think i'll go make some more espresso. then maybe i'll see if i can dig up some old correspondences.

oh, plus i'm gonna stop the bedroom door from banging. the wind is blustery today and it's a nice breeze but things are banging. so i gotta add some padding here and there.

amateurs

2005-01-01T15:48:00.000-10:00

hey mom, i took a shower today... it's the first shower i've taken since before you left. so that makes it a grand total of what ... three showers since halloween? surely it must be a record of some sort.... so that's why i'm mentioning it. it's sort of a small almost-momentous occasion.

everything went fine. didn't get stuck to the porceline or anything. the new nozzle still works well, no leaks.

i've taken so long because i just haven't felt like physically moving my body, especially my legs, around very much. but i've been feeling more agile lately, more energetic. my legs seem to be less swollen too.

i know my arm is better because i've been noticing it's much easier to jerk espresso. and getting in and out of bed seems less of a pain.

the weather here has been socked in for the last two or three days. all the amateur fireworks poppers got pretty much rained out. so that was a good thing. they did start popping enough to become annoying and fill the streets with black-powder smoke smell around 9:30pm so i just turned on the sirius disorder satellite and the fan and went to bed.

i was awakened at midnite by bigger, louder explosions, professional fireworks. the weather had cleared a bit more and at like annual clockwork every new year's at midnite there's a great fireworks show shot off over honolulu harbor at aloha tower.

the annual fireworks view out my bedroom window is spectacular, and it was obviously loud enough to wake me last nite. after the fireworks show, about 12:30am, i went back to bed.

about 5:30 am i woke up. after espresso, before sun-up i opened an organic cans of black-eye peas, added a few cloves of crushed garlic. later that morning i cooked it, jerked some more espresso and had breakfast.

pow-wow

2004-11-20T13:54:00.000-10:00

finally getting things straightened out on this end. had a pow-wow with some hospital case workers, admins, and a couple of really good friends who are social worker-wonderwomen from safe haven (a homeless crazy person shelter) representing me. they've helped me before with housing and stuff.

i will be getting discharged wednesday 24 nov.. my mom is coming from the mainland monday 22 nov. she'll be staying in my apartment starting monday afternoon and then will live with me a couple weeks or so till i get healed sufficiently to be independent again. i'll be getting all kinds of services, hospital bed, adapted commode, visiting nurses, etc. to help mom take care of me.

so mom and i will be staying in my apt and she'll be helping me recuperate. much better than this sterile hospital. my only concern now is my cat. i have these horrible visions that she has crawled into some corner and died. but my friends say that she is fine and they've been taking care of her. so maybe i'm just a nervous nellie.

billiards

2004-11-19T02:44:00.000-10:00

today has been very eventful here in the hospital. many ungood things happened as far as social work and insurance. i thought they might be turning for the better. but now it looks as if things are turning for the worse again.

my nursing care changed back to skilled, to where my insurance will again cover it, after it got downgraded on nov 13. but it seems my "physical therapy" which means dragging my body into my chair from the bed, will be ending tomorrow which plunges my insurance back into the "useless" category.

for now it seems i'm only going to be able to remain here in the hospital under skilled nursing care one more day or so, and then be discharged. the saga continues ....

it feels like i'm about to reach the end of my rope and beginning to dangle..swinging in an arc wider and wider until i end up smashing into other things like a shattering billiard ball.

one problem is i don't have a doctor familiar with me or this OI disorder in it's adult form, so it seems i'm having to try and educate yet another medical facility again on my own, or maybe i'm just being a wimp. this is becoming a bad habit. yes, it's all my fault. i didn't acquire a decent ortho or family dr when i was healthy, uninjured and now that i am injured, no one wants to touch this case or even talk with me about it for reasons ranging from bureacratic to anything else they can dream up. mostly fear and ignorance i think.

plus i use medicare which keeps getting switched on and off depending on how i get classified by physical therapists, occupational therapists and whoever else puts in their two cents. so, in a nutshell, this hospital just wants me to go away and they are about to succeed in sending me back home so my cat can take care of me. actually, that doesn't sound like a really bad thing to me at this point.

as i remember, it wasn't easy to get a good orthopedist when i was healthy and unhurt. i didn't really need a dr. at the time, so i just kind of momentarily gave up and did that procrastination thing and let life happen, until bang, now i'm hurt, marooned without a decent orthopedist on my side to advocate my wants and needs.

another problem is that my admitting physician, is an orthopedist, but not very familiar with adults with OI -- only children. plus, i've been so frank and forthright like usual and can appear to be bitchy at times so that no one except the actual caregiving people who work with me every day and know my real personality are able to relate with these dilemmas, much less side with me. the administrators, bureacrats and bookkeepers simply don't want me around because of my medicare status.

so i'm on my own here and going down the tubes fast once again. of course now i'm trying to find a doctor and a social worker on my side, but it's practically impossible and way too late from a hospital bed. it seems i would learn from experience, but not yet. so it's into the cracks i fall. i deserve this i suppose. but that's not going to stop me from fighting till my last breath and trying to continue to survive. i'm not quite yet ready for the kivorkian method.

it seems this is just like any adventure ... good, bad, ugly. that's how it should be i suppose. tune in tomorrow for, "as the stomach turns."

carny

2004-11-17T21:34:00.000-10:00

things are going about normal here. it's a carnival.

dr. chang poked his head in my room this morning and asked me if i'd found anything out. wait -- that's my question for him. so i've pretty much given up on pacific rehab as an option. the employees here (nurses, nursing assistants, etc. the real people) tell me things have changed for the worse at pac rehab in the past couple years, whatever that means, hard times i guess.... chang does look pretty frazzled. all he's told me is they have criteria they must meet to accept me.

haven't seen ortho dr. murray for days. i'm beginning to lose any trust in him (never really had much). so i won't be surprised if he discharges me any second.

am beginning to feel like an authentic local now, indebted for zillions to the state, impoverished. so that's a badge of honor at least. i'm eating too much. what'r u gonna do when they serve three meals a day and there's nothing else to do but eat? so i'm getting fat. have given up on bm's. bedpans are too painful. but my bones are healing, so a couple more weeks and i should be good to go -- where? not sure yet.

my wheelchariot got delivered this morning, sans charger. batteries are almost completely dead. but at least the chair's here. my physical therapist, i use that term loosely, is so elated. now he thinks he has something to do. forget physical therapy, all he's ever done is get me able to crawl to the edge of the bed so i can get in the chair. now that it's here, his goal is to get me in that chair and wa-la i'm cured. so he practically dragged me into it today. it did feel good to be out of bed. i drove it nowhere because the batteries are so dead.

so he told me that was my homework for the evening, get the charger. my friend riley says he will bring it friday if i can't get it some other way before then. no worries.

therapist thinks once i can get in my chair all i need is meals-on-wheels to be independent again and survive alone no problem, hah. he wants me outta here so bad, i don't know why. maybe it's because i hurt his feelings on the first day we met by telling him he had no idea what he's doing, which is true. or maybe somebody's putting pressure on him. poor kid. i did talk him into massaging my shoulder a couple minutes today because it's all tensed up from being stuck in bed. he seemed confused.

people are such morons....

i'm living in a sitcom. haven't had this much fun since green acres on the big island at hilo med center when i arrived in 1995. unfortunately these oahu people are a bit more sophisticated, and a bit more difficult to deal with. but that's just more of a challenge for me.

what better way to spend world war five? the political world is in a death spiral. can't expect things to improve much. no wonder the market is doing so well.

the staff here are still great, but i think even they are getting a bit tired of me. no one knows what to do .... too much fun. case manager's still trying to find a foster family to take care of me. so far i've been visited by only two, both with multiple brats. i told the case managers no way will i live with kids. so they're still looking. as time passes i will know more exactly about dates. for now it's still just a guess..

b-day

2004-11-16T15:51:00.000-10:00

jezebel - 3
case manager - 0

it seems my pig-headedness is paying off. being a player of chess rewards me again, or maybe it's a blend of poker and chess and the bluff i'm better at than other people here.

my supreme bitch of a case manager who dares not to smile, else it might break her face -- the same one who threatens me daily with eviction -- came slinking into my room a few minutes ago, leaving a telltale trail of silvery slime in her path, and informed me that she finally spoke with april (my apartment manager) and had finally made arrangements to pick up my wheelchariot from my apt tomorrow sometime. i suppose she's finally realizing i'm not playing games with her (very much) and that they will never get rid of me until they start listening to and believing my words and get me back into my wheelchair. duh.

so at least it looks like i may have won that round; however, in the long run it might mean my quicker ejection from here, it still feels good to see her defeated in all her bureaucratic glory.

i graciously god-blessed her and told her thank you as she slugged back out the door as fast as she could with nary a reply.

so maybe i'll get my chair tomorrow if i'm lucky and can begin physical therapy to begin my own journey to who knows where.

they also d/c'd my morphine this morning so i demanded to see a pain specialist until they actually sent one to my room, and i persuaded her to put me back on morphine, if only orally (as opposed to the IV) so i'm now on the oral kind of liquid morphine. not quite as effective but much better than the oxycodone tablet form of crap they were trying to get me to eat which had very little relief on my fractured-femur pain.

as the morphine drips ...

2004-11-14T13:04:00.000-10:00

there is much in that statement, "gotta love OI."

after living with it 45 years, i'm again frequently
reminded how painful it can be. a fractured femur,
tibia and humurous have been reminding me of
this since halloween, forever still my favorite and
most holy holiday. not to mention those old friends
like needles, bedpans, ignorant nurses, stupid doctors,
etc. but living with these things gives us a perspective
few others on this planet will ever know. personally
i feel blessed to have these experiences.

this is what life really is about.

who cares what kind of car speeds us around, the sparkly
bling we have on our fingers, or how beautiful and buff
our bodies are? (except for mine of course, which is
naturally attractive, no matter what situation).

a pinch of bitchery now and then (as long as one doesn't
go overboard) can be one of the few things besides 'time'
that is very healing at all.

i've had one of those arms that kept breaking out of
it's pins and plates. i stopped trying to fix it and now
it's just fine. and then later in life my tibias started doing
it, spitting up their metal. when that happens, it's time
to tell the surgeons to put down their knives. it's just a
waste of their time and energy and your money and pain.

the best thing to do is find an orthotics department to build
you an exoskeleton. plastic is a good thing. give your bones
time to knit, regroup and heal.. stop chopping.

outer skeletons are nature's successful way of total protection
(invented by god herself, or one could also say evolution,
whichever you prefer). i learned this long ago when i was
a university student of invertebrate zoology. invertebrates
are the most successful assortment of species on this planet,
they all live inside shells of one sort or other. inner skeletons
are an evolutionary trial and error. and thank goodness,
medical science has taken a lesson from this in orthotics.

most times they take a while to get used to, but in the long
run, you'll ask yourself, "why didn't i do this ages ago?"
at least i did.

after things do eventually heal, and they will, then you can
reconsider surgery if you even want to at that time. but in
my case, i didn't even need it after wearing orthoses on my
lower legs for just a few years. orthoses even helped me stand
and walk a bit better. now i wear nothing, and this is the
first real fracture i've had in my ankle since i had the pin
removed decades ago.

why grasp for perfection when you know that is ultimately
an unattainable fantasy? pins, plates and bone grafts are
for healthy tissue, not this collagen-starved balsa-like
material we possess. that's just my two cents.

on my end, it's sunday here. the social-worker-powers-
that-be say they are discharging me tomorrow. to where?
no one knows. maybe home to my cat, where we can die
together in peace. i'm about to the point now where it
actually sounds quite inviting as the days pass here.

my last chance is for the famous rehab center of the pacific
to take me in as a rehab patient, and i don't get word on
that till tomorrow, and i'm not holding much hope that
it will even happen. tomorrow is my eviction day from
this hospital. how's that for cutting it close?

i don't deny it's frightening. but i've faced worse things,
and the people who threaten me have no idea who or
what they are up against. yes, they still might prevail
over me, win this bureaucratic battle, but i will have
gained more from it in the end as far as personal strength
(i already have) than any of them ever will.

that's why i appreciate bearing this OI albatross. it provides
personal strength for me that few other homo-sapiens will
ever know.

maybe that's why i feel no need for any formal religion.
hey, at least i'm not in iraq killing babies. what kind of
personal fullfillment or religious necessity does that provide?

after i realized i had again bitten the linoleum, hit the
uncarpeted floor and broken my bones again, i wasn't
even really very upset. i just knew what had to be done,
so i crawled to the phone and called the ambulance.

at least i didn't panic and cause countless other forms
of earthly life to suffer an even worse fate than i would
ever know.

look at george w. and all his brainiac friends. they got
so scared of a few rogue militant religious zealots, that
they became crusading military religious zealots themselves,
brainwashing their gullible patriotic citizenry with bibles
and crosses. now they're sacrificing their own countrymen,
most of whom are young enough to be their own children,
plus they are burning down the garden of eden and
polluting it for thousands and thousands of years with
depleted uranium.

what kind of logic is that?

jezebel

--- In oitribe@yahoogroups.com, "Kelly" wrote:

> Speaking of bitching! I broke my arm in January...
> wouldn't heal...had surgery in June with pins and plates.
> Friday more x-rays and it's broken again/still! I'm so
> OVER THIS! I'm back on the bone stimulator, off of
> therapy, on pain meds, and waiting a month.
> Looking at probably surgery at the end of the year
> for more bone grafts!
>
> Gotta love OI!
>
> Kelly
>
>

vent

2004-11-13T12:45:00.000-10:00

it's like i've been written off, dripping with increasing speed through the cracks.

never have i been up against so much NON communication. does anyone know what'shappening? i'm beginning to think not.

the staff, the nurses, nursing assistants, etc. here are all very wonderful to me. but above that levelt here is nothing. it's like i'm being kept in the dark as a form of punishment for not having a family doctor.

since i normally don't follow the rules of society i get punished with no communication from anyone who knows what's in the future for me. becausei'm normally a "healthy" person, rarely get sick, don't eat their chemicals, i don't need a doctor, and now they all band together to make me pay.

what's the deal? i'm saving the state from having to spend money on me most of my life, and when i need them, they just ignore me.

ok, i'm done venting now.

no, i don't feel much better.
-----------------

fall

2004-11-13T11:52:00.000-10:00

falling through the cracks here.

maybe the powers that be are just punishing me for being a freak and causing them to be confused.but i feel like i've been swept to the corner and into the dustbin.

wasn't that a sex pistols song?

"like flowers in the dustbin, we're the future. no future."

definitely beginning to remember why we are the way we are.

this is a really intensive refresher course.

long live OIers, martyrs of the medical world.

bureaucratic bullshit

2004-11-12T12:54:00.000-10:00

i'm not positive, but things seem to be coming to a head here, not a good head, more like a really bad pimple, a volcanic cancerous cyst.

the last time i heard from dr. murray, the bone dr., the one who holds my fate in his hands because he's the admitting dr., was yesterday morning. he promised me he wasn't gonna discharge me until they find somewhere for me to go where i can be cared for till i heal.

in the meantime, i'm still waiting to speak with dr. chang from pacific rehab, so i can stay there, instead of here at the hospital, which i think would kick my medicare back in and pay for things. but chang seems to be avoiding me, so i don't know. ortho dr. murray has not come by today yet to see me either, since all these delays happened, so i don't know his plans for me. he knows i have nowhere to go if discharged and seems to be on my side and nicer than before. maybe he's waiting for chang as well, before he comes and talks to me.

so i'm still waiting to talk with murray and chang about my fate. medicare called me today and verified that as of the thirteenth, tomorrow, my status has been downgraded to custodial care, which medicare won't pay for, so the bills start coming to me tomorrow nov. 13, unless i move somewhere else and get re-classified -- happy birthday to me.

i'm still waiting on my friends to deliver my wheelchair and clothes, they should be here sometime today, but that's what they said yesterday and they haven't shown up yet. they haven't been very available lately either, so i'm not sure about their plans any more either. i'm afraid my cat, which they are supposedly feeding, may be starved dead, unless they've made other arrangements that i don't know about. so far they have always come through for me, i don't doubt their sincerity, just their scheduling and communication skills.

i left a message on my lawyer's voice mail, saying i was in dire need of a patient advocate, besides the email i sent last week, and i haven't heard from him either. he may be in south america on a case, i'm not sure.

there's a medical-care foster family who wants to take care of me if i'm discharged, so i might have to go live with them until things become more stable, and wait till mom or dad comes here. that's a decision that won't be made until i find out about dr. chang's and dr. murray's decisions. but the foster family wants me for longer than just a few days, so they might not even agree to that, or i might not be able to bring myself to agree to that option because they are so scary to me -- xtian meat-eaters. but i will if i have to, if i'm gonna get discharged to nowhere.

clear as mud? me too. right now i'm fantasizing that dr. murray is trying to help me find somewhere to go; hence, the lack of communication from him.

more later.

hospitaling

2004-11-11T19:59:00.000-10:00

plumbing the depths of
feces, emesis, urine and blood.
making the best of the worst.
and what to do with the wasted?
feed them morphine.
the world is my akole.

jvt

fractured update 2

2004-11-08T19:49:00.000-10:00

everything's going as expected.

the bureaucrats here are trying to discharge me, but i have nowhere to go. i can't go home because i need care till my limbs heal more, about 4-6 weeks more. but the people here say queen's is an acute care center and i need to go to a long-term care facility, like a nursing home or something, and they say they aren't able to find placement for me.

so i'm just waiting to see how and where the axe falls. time will tell. tune in tomorrow for days of our lives, or as the stomach turns.

but hey, it's an adventure at least, what more does life have to offer?

you're fired

2004-11-06T15:54:00.000-10:00

i was brought to this hospital by ambulance about a week ago. since i don't really have any formal ortho or family doctor, i was just assigned one here at the hospital when admitted. my assigned bone dr., a balding, middle-aged man with too much attitude, is a jerk.

since i have been here i've seen him only about 3 times and every time, we've gotten into a shouting match and he ends up walking out the door in a huff, me not to see him till 2 or 3 days later. it happened again today, but i finally got him to realize (before he walked out again) that he splinted my leg in the wrong place, not high enough above my knee. a few hours later, one of the hospital ortho residents came in and rewrapped my leg, correctly.

during our latest shouting match, the dr. told me i was the most difficult oi patient he's ever had to diagnose. (obviously, since he splinted my leg wrong) and that he's the one who admitted me to the hospital, and i never even told him "thank-you."

i almost started laughing, but instead, i kept my cool and told him i very much appreciated him admitting me in my broken condition. he walked out again after that.

so i told the resident about all that and he was flabbergasted at my story. i told the resident, who was very nice, that i felt i needed a second opinion for the rest of my stay here, and he agreed. so as soon as i find another halfway decent doctor, i think i'm gonna pull a donald trump and tell my current one, "you're fired." i've never done that before, but i think this is the time to start a new trend.

after all, i do have some self-respect.

fractured update

2004-11-06T13:24:00.000-10:00

today is promising to be an interesting day already.
my orthopedic dr. came in this morning and we got into --another-- shouting match. i asked him what's the problem and he said he never had anyone with oi as old and difficult as i am.... he's very difficult to communicate with.

after he left, i asked the nurse for a list of doctors so i can get a second opinion, or just fire him and get a new dr. , but still haven't received any other options yet. my nurse says they just don't know what to do with me because i'm presenting so many different problems. i asked for a social worker but still haven't seen one. now it's saturday and the social worker is on call for emergency only, so i'll probably have to wait till monday i suppose.

my bone dr. seems to be as frustrated as everyone else ... he says he getting a general medicine dr. for me since i don't have one and all he can do is bones. he has no idea what to do about all my other problems, which seem to be mounting. he finally read the cat scan they took of my leg and realized i was telling him the truth when i said the splint is in the wrong place. the nurse says a resident will be in soon to resplint my leg. then hopefully the fracture wlll be stabilized. till then (and hopefully afterwards) i'm still on a morphine drip which is causing urinary problems, so i'm hooked up to a foley catheter. i also have skin breakdown on my butt plus my other problems.

so i guess i'm just being an impatient patient, and wanting things to happen too fast. one good thing, a very wonderful cna came and just finished giving me a bath for the first time in a week so i feel better at least. and my dr. has been gone a few hours so i'm in a better mood now. unfortunately my arm is getting sore from all this typing so i'm gonna have to stop for a while.

happy birthday mom

2004-11-06T01:19:00.000-10:00

... and many, many more.

xoxo