Pride goes before a fall.  Hubris is met inexorably by Nemesis.
 
Considering the number of times I have fallen flat on my face, you would think that I should have learned that by now. 

This little gem is not written for any one of you in particular.  It is solely intended as a personal reminder for the royal "we", me and myself. 

For you younguns out there, should your moccasins happen to be a little worn, try them on for size.

This morning I was reading the September 5, 2005 issue of Fortune, not a magazine that I often read.  In there was a first person article, which caught my eye.  It was entitled “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” delivered as a Commencement Address in June this year at Stanford University by Steve Jobs. 

As a college drop out, Jobs founded Apple in his parent’s garage when he was 20, but was ousted from his own company when he was 30.  Almost a generation later, he returned to Apple to eventually give us the I-mac, and the I-pod.

In his speech, he offered in essence, three lessons:

1.     “Learn to connect the dots – Place your trust in your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

2.     Love and Loss – The only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.  Don’t settle.

3.     A lesson before dying – Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

My name is not Steve Jobs, and neither is yours.  But it would not hurt for us to “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”  

The phone rang.  You picked it up, and answered with your usual cheery, enthused, diplomatic, courteous, deadpan voice, “City Morgue, Undertaker Doe speaking, how may I be of assistance?”

“This is Doktor Upperyouass.  I was reading in Scientific American about this new treatment regimen.  What can you tell me, in this Age of Aquarius, when the Moon is in the Seventh Sun, about Mycoxaflin in combination with Vipercillin in the treatment of the dreaded Fungusamongus?  And while you are at it, can you tell me the nephrotoxicity profiles of both drugs, and how they may interact with the patient taking Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra?”

Now, blessed as you were with your lightning quick mind, you instantaneously reviewed what you had gleaned from the Stimulus-Pause-Response Theory.  You were just given a stimulus, and because you had been so well trained, you felt the necessity to develop a pause, before you responded.  It was in that pause, when humanity, your humanity, hung in the balance, during which all decisions, great or small, could be made.

Almost immediately, you came up with the one of the following best guesses: 

(a)     “What kind of numb nut are you, Doctor?  Upperya be your name!  If I knew the answers to your questions, would I be sitting where I am sitting?  Would I not rather be propping my feet up on my desk at some CDC cubicle, resting on my laurels, instead of being harassed by the likes of you an hour before midnight?

(b)    “Hey, Doc, you are barking up the wrong tree!  This is the City Morgue.  We deal with the grateful dead, and the nearly dead.  None of our rocket scientists here would know what you are talking about?  Are you sure you dial the right number?  Did you overdose yourself on Preparation H?  Or are you brain dead also?”

(c)     “Ahem… Anyone taking Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra at the same time would be having a serious problem.  He would be spending his time in the horizontal practically 24/7, hopefully not all by himself.  Fungusamongus would be the least of his concerns.  Just ask Irish-Red, and he would be more than happy to bring you up to speed!”

(d)    “Excuse me, Doctor, I am afeared that I do have the answers to your questions on the top of my head.  At this time of the evening, seeing that we are overloaded with dead bodies, our staffing does not allow for any detailed research to adequately answer your queries.  Surely, I don't expect me to blow smoke up your ass, do you?  Now, if you would call back in the morning, and ask to speak with our Clinical Supervisor, she would be overjoyed to answer all of your questions.  So take a hike, Bud!?”

Let just say, hypothetically, that my aging mother was admitted to your hospital.  A hundred years ago, her good doctor, plucking out of thin air, prescribed a certain brand of toilet paper for her to wipe her ass whenever she had the occasion to go to the potty.  Since then, she would only use this particular brand of toilet paper, from her nearby Mom and Pop Grocery Store down the street, made available for her by special order because she was such a wonderful customer.  Now that she was in your hospital, she wanted to use the same brand of toilet paper, because when she had tried all other brands and generic variants, they caused her to break out in a rash.  In your esteemed institution, you stocked “Don’t Squeeze the Charmin” and “White Cloud”, but those goodies were apparently not good enough.  So when you cared enough to offer the very best, not necessarily the very finest, you would bend over backwards to serve and please my mother, especially in light of the fact that the good doctor insisted, and you did not want to have your pants sued off by my aging mother for developing a rash as a result of using your store brands of toilet paper, would you not?

In the process of attempting procurement, you discovered that toilet papers were under the strict monitoring of the DEA (that’s the Drug Enforcement Agency to you sophisticated) for possible abuse, and they fell under the Controlled Substance Act.  So even if said toilet paper could be found, another hospital might be reluctant to lend you a hand, much less wipe your ass with it, considering the legality and paperwork involved.  Undaunted, you called at least a dozen hospitals in your greater metropolitan area anyway, all the way to Timbuctoo, looking to see if you could borrow this particular brand of toilet paper, because it was an emergency, didn’t you know?

So after a dozen phone calls, involving at least twice the number of people, including the good doctor, the nurse, you, the working stiff who was so fortunate as to receive the call in the first place, the department supervisor, the Clinical Coordinator, all the way to Mr. Big Himself, plus the string of other gofers and hanger-ons at the other institutions, plus the Mom and Pop Grocer, who was now closed, expending umpteenth man-hours all told, only to find that nowhere could this particular toilet paper be found!  As a result of this Herculean effort, you called the charge nurse back, who called the doctor, who then tried to explain to my mother why she should have to develop a rash after she had to go, instead of suing the pants off of her doctor and your hospital.

Incidentally, my mother would only gum on properly aged Kobe Beef, imported from Japan, so never mind bringing her Black Angus Filet, USDA Choice New York Strip, Prime Ribs, T-Bone, Porter House, or the holy terror known as London Broil.  Now if she could not have that particular aged piece of Kobe beef, she would become constipated, she could not go to the potty, her eyes would become so jaundiced because her shit would be oozing out of her sockets and other orifices, she was liable to sue your pants off again, for medical malpractice, for lack of proper medical care, and blatant disregard for patient safety, her safety.

My mother, I took your name in vain in order to protect the innocent as well as the guilty.  She was 93 when she died a number of years ago, after having her leg amputated as a complication of diabetes at the ripe age of 91.  May God have mercy on her soul, if she had one.  She was an indigent.  She had never heard of Kobe, Black Angus, along with other such nonsense.  She was so poor like all the peasants around her; she used pieces of newspaper, if not her hand, to finish the job after Nature called.  She was a hard working woman who lived until she died, and her life was more than long enough. 

One of the problems, or perks, of having worked in the same place for a lifetime, is that I know where most of the potholes are, and where some of the bodies have been buried.  The setup has never been perfect, but somehow we have rocked along, year after year, surviving a number of administrations, without any drastic deconstruction.  Not too hot, not too cold, sort of lukewarm, and if I were Goldie, I would have loved it.  The "Steppenwolfe" would have considered ours to be the ideal place to have an accident while shaving! 

Between the personnel changes, within and without our department, the revolving doors through which people have been scooped off the streets, the contagion of the lack of training, lack of motivation, and generally lack of brains, problems are continuously being created while solutions are continuously being implemented to solve them.  Almost every day there are challenges.  Almost every day there is a new wrinkle.  Often the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.  Communication is skimpy, frequently at a need to know basis only.  As a result, many members of the staff, myself included, are clueless as to the latest developments, what newfangled polices have been instituted, what new items have been acquired or relocated, what old items have been deleted or substituted.  One would almost be inclined to think that ability of playing Sherlock Holmes might be an inherent qualification of employment.  It makes perfect sense to middle management to keep the majority of the gofers in the dark.  That way it gives rise to their sense of power by being in the know, exercise their authority of selective distribution of critical and/or current information, and conveniently allows for the shifting of blame whenever necessary.  The madness to the method has been illuminating.

Every week, or so it seems, I ask myself the same questions.  What can I do?  What should I do, with the remaining time that I have left of my life, the years ahead, presuming that I should live to the average lifespan of a transplanted Oriental male?  The answers have yet to be forthcoming.

Now that I have totally overdosed on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, day after day, night after night, every hour on the hour, I can hardly move myself to turn on the television, CNN in particular, to which I was glued for the first week after that historical disaster struck.  In short, I was depressed to the point of catatonia; vicariously like of course, and trying hard to imagine what the hurricane victims had to endure to survive.  Frankly, sitting in the comfort of my humble hut, away from the hustle and bustle, not walking in the moccasins soaked in the sludge that is the contaminated water, with decaying human and animal bodies, feces, excrement, oil and chemical spills, and fast brewing bacterial flora, how could I possibly have any fucking idea?? 

If there is one good thing I can salvage from this Act of GOD, whose mighty arms swept away in hours what took decades and generations of blood, sweat, and tears to build, it is the resiliency of the human spirit.  Already the air is seething with talks of rebuilding of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, especially New Orleans, regardless of the costs.  After all, we, as taxpayers should be overjoyed to shoulder the burdens and ecstasies of reconstruction, seeing that most of us have been selectively blessed to escape unscathed.  As the cliché goes, it’s a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon, we will be talking about some real moola.   

Congress will soon pass a bill for an initial down payment of say, 50 Billion dollars, for the clean up and the rebuilding efforts for New Orleans and part of the Mississippi Coast, with more federal funds to follow as needed.  Besides, can we not always print more greenbacks, in God We Trust, which will eventually double our standards of living, only for us to find things we need or want costing twice as much, while our purchasing power will be less than half of what we used to boast?  The logia, should you stop to think about it, is inescapable.  Thank GOD that HE did not wipe out Washington, D.C., what!

It may be difficult to believe that after the information overload in the last few days, and the long distance emotional shock and trauma of watching television, the first thing I did upon awakening was to turn on CNN, for the continuous wall to wall coverage on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The first thing I noticed, jarringly, that the O'Briens, both the anchor and the roving reporter, were extremely aggressive in the posing of their questions to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Governor of Mississippi.  Instead of giving people who are doing the job of coping and everything they can for this natural disaster, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the nations's history, the benefit of the doubt, they were both adversarial, impatient, interrupting, wanting to hear themselves talk, before sufficient time was given to the respondent to fully answer their questions and/or elaborate on those anwers.  It was one thing, their job, to ask the hard questions, but quite another to be second quessing, Monday afternoon quarterbacking, and in a couple of cases, nit picking, when the magnitude and the logistics involved in dealing with the aftermath, in an ongoing crisis, where, however much planning might have been done, no one could actually prepare for the "real" thing, which surpassed all expectations.

Now, I must return to my regular Hurricane Katrina Aftermath viewing.

My faith in the Divine has never been strong.  Whatever remnants which still haunt me have been completely obliterated by what's happening in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  My mind has been boggled.  What took years and generations to build were wiped out in a matter of hours.  Personally, numbness has set in, despair may soon follow.   

A decade or so ago, when I drove along Interstate-10, and passed through Gulfport, Mississippi beach front, I thought to myself, "Self, this is really the kind of place you would like to live in.  Maybe you ought to move here."  Was it a good thing that I did not often act on my impulses?  There, it is said, but for the Grace of God(???) goes I!  Searching high and low, over, under, and in between, digging through the miles of rubble, and treading the stench of the rising water that is New Orleans, vicariously, through the televised medium, where is the grace, the goodness, and the God in all that?

Having lost faith in the gods, or God, if you must, how soon will we humans lose faith in ourselves? 

Reflecting so, it may be prudent for me to rephrase and pose that question for myself only.

Because it is not happening to you, you don't have to think about it, or you don't want to think about it.  But for the past two days, I can't seem to tear myself away from "it". 

In the comfort of my dry, air conditioned living room, hundreds of miles away, I have been glued to the tube on and off, watching the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, the destruction wreaked in it's path, and the aftermath which is just beginning to unfold.

A generation or so ago, I attended and graduated from a one horse college in northern Louisiana, and I had been to New Orleans on a number of occasions.  Naturally, by last Sunday afternoon, when all the weather gurus feared that the Big Easy had a distinct possibility of suffering a direct hit from Katrina, my attention was seized, even though I had lost touch with any friends and classmates I had once known in Louisiana.  Hurricane Camile in 1969 was a bit before my time, and the damage done therein was to rehash an overused word, devastating!  Katrina was, by all estimations, twice as big and as powerful as Camile.  Prior to landfall, one observation I made, almost casually when I made it - if there ever comes a direct hit, New Orleans as we know it, there won't be much left.  This was the Big One, the one we've all feared, the once in a lifetime, worst case scenario, according to the Mayor of New Orleans.  Let us pray, that the storm would steer east, and hit Mississippi instead, or at least away from the French Quarters.

And the Lord, taking His name in vain, awaken up from his slumber, did raise His Almighty Finger, and pointed Katrina to swirl just a little off course, east, at the last hour, and total destruction of the Home of the Saints was spared.  Now, the gambling casinos in Biloxi, Mississippi will be wiped out instead.  Just think of the mileage that the Religious Right can make out of this act of Divine Intervention!

Several things struck me, metaphorical speaking of course, during the witnessing and the unfolding of this drama, from a safe distance.  Words and phrases such as Armageddon, of unprecedented, historical, and biblical proportions, the most costly in terms of billions of dollars, the interruption of oil production, and how YOU will be affected by the subsequent high price of gasoline, were being brandished left and right.  In the meantime, people have died, people are dying, and people will be dying because help from FEMA, The American Red Cross, State and Local rescue teams cannot get to them because of the flooding waters, accumulated debris, power outages, and impassable roads. 

It was postulated that a million people in the greater New Orleans area managed to heed the dire warnings and evacuated.  Theoretically, that still meant that several hundred thousand residents did not.  There are people who could not leave because they were physically unable to, poor people with no money, no transportation, and no where to go.  And there were die harders who believed they could ride out the storm.  The death toll in Louisana and Mississippi, currently reported by AP to be in the dozens, is expected to rise dramatically (what euphemisim!) in the days to come.  Then how quickly and miraculously it dawned on me, it was not necessarily the storm itself that killed.  It was the aftermath.  No food, no water, no electricity, no phones, no gas, no help, contaminated water everywhere, not to mention the thousands of water moccasins and the trillions of fire ants evicted from their homes too.  And what about the million people who did evacuate?  What, if anything left, will they come back to?  How are they going to survive in the meantime, stranded in hotels, motels, truck stops, and gas stations along the roadside waiting for help to arrive.  And where do you relocate a million people practically over night?

As a result of the infinite wisdom of our Divine Maker, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, rather than New Orleans, was the hardest hit.  Which begs the question: why did anyone have to be hit at all?  Job would have asked, and supposedly he did. Why did the sun shine on the saints and sinners alike?  Why did the wicked prosper while the good die young?

So, I ask you, believers in the True Faith one and all, The Almighty, All Powerful, All Knowing, All Present, and All Merciful, WHY?

And, I ask you, what kind of problems do YOU have?

Yesterday I received two t-mails, requesting to be “friends”.  Once before, I had made the mistake of blindly accepting, but this time I took a quick gander at their “profiles”.  It turned out they were, not one, but two, both 13 year old girls!  One of them actually left a comment on my previous post, declaring she often feels the same way as I do!  Amazing, incredible, absolutely certifiable.  Now, I ask you, gentle reader, have I written anything recently that a 13 year old can remotely relate to??

Note that I have nothing against 13 year olds, because I too was 13 year old once, about a hundred years ago.  I simply wasn’t as smart, or as quick as the 13 year olds we manage to bring up nowadays.

For the record, I have little, if anything, in common and can relate to, with a 13 year old.  The only exception, in fact, the very idea that in a few years I should be able to collect my social security, unless it shall go totally bankrupt, when my monthly stipend will allow me to dine for a Happy Meal at McDonald’s at least a couple times a week, is already floating my boat all the way to top of Mount Olympus.

If you are indeed 13 years old, and you know who you are, please stay away from my blog, because I am liable to use a four letter word on occasions, although the ten and twelve letter words are usually not in my every day vocabulary.  There is a good old Anglo-Saxon four letter word, which is so rich in meanings, so blatant and subtle in it’s implications, depending how it is used in context and inflection, as a remark, question, exclamation, query, adjective, adverb, or a noun, that can be so expressive for a particular instance where no other word can suffice.  I am almost tempted to use that word right now, in a rhetorical question of sorts.  But no matter, never mind.

Then it occurred to me that I might have been the blessed recipient of a sick joke or prank which had been played on me, or other unsuspecting and hapless jokers like me.  Let me tell you, if you are indeed 13 years old, and ready to rumble, there are plenty of 20 something, 30 something, 40 something, all the way to old geezers in their 70s, who would love to get their greedy, grubbly little hands on you, revel in your unbridled innocence, and much more. 

However, should you be, (and my imagination is on overdrive here) some crooked, brain dead, numb nut, FBI wannabee profiler, masquerading as a 13 year old, hoping to get lucky in catching up with a potential pedi-phile, and there are thousands of them out there in la-la-land, hiding in their closets, I say, move on, Bud, you are barking up the wrong tree!  To borrow an often used declaration from my dearly departed, I would not have dreamed of anything to do with a 13 year old even if you pay me.  Hey, I am not paranoid.  I am simply pissed off, to no end.

Finally, if you are in fact who you say you are, a 13 year old girl, or boy, then go hang out with friends of your own age, listen to your parents, stay in school, don’t accept any candy from strangers, don’t go along with any joy ride, or else, the truth and consequences of your daring may, and can, be every bit as gross, as horrifying, or as life changing, as beyond your wildest dreams.

"The only way to have a worthy future is to create it."

You wake up one day, and realize that more than half, or in fact most, of your life has already gone, slipped through your fingers like so much water.  What have you really done with it?  If there were indeed a Maker, and you should be asked to give an account of yourself, how could you even remotely justify your lack of accomplishments?  How did you manage to squander all those years, all those opportunities, when you had youth, enthusiasm, vibrancy, or perhaps even beauty once?  How did you fail to utilize even a tiny fraction of that divine matter, that gray matter if you must, that transcends all energies, that lies dormant between your ears, that fourteen ounces or so of convoluted gray matter, give or take, that in totality is so much more powerful that the speeding locomotive, and so much more capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bounce?  And where did you think the locomotive and the buildings originally come from to begin with? 

No singularity of purpose, lack of discipline, dissipation of energy, lack of follow through, those are the vices of the herd, to borrow from Ian Fleming, as in Dr. No. 

Now you finally wake up to the fact that time is on the wane, that there is not much time left, and in most likelihood, not any significant time left to speak of, what can you do?  What will you do?  What must you do? 

And how and then, you ponder the Taoist philosophical question, or rather the assertion, of why do anything at all?  To do by not doing, nothing is out of place, and nothing gets done.  Why be troubled when you can sit, with absolute serenity, by the bank of the river, and watch the bodies of your enemies wash by?

What if you can see the future, your future, in the present, will you still want to see it?

Maybe it is a good thing that we can't see the future, at least not exactly.  But is it not a good idea to visualize a little of what is likely to happen in advance in the days, weeks, months, and years to come?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Thus spake Convention Wisdom.  In the other words, let's take the path of least resistance.  Fail to plan, plan to fail.  Same difference. 

As a result, we are constantly looking in the rear view mirror, assessing our future prospects based on what had already happened in the past.  We become complacent by default, thinking that whatever modicum of creature comforts we have grown accustomed to will always be here for our enjoyment, and presto, with a wave of our magic wand, we shall drift all the way to mountain top, and achieve enlightenment, the brightness of being.  Not having a care in the world, little do we know, the world does not stand still for no one.  Out of nowhere comes the Mack Truck.  The reason we will get run over is because we did not see it coming in the first place.  Our eyes are peeled to the forever present, on the telly, on the Internet, on how to spend our next paycheck, if it isn't spent already.

Okay, so our future may not be all that bright.  Maybe we are geared to repeat essentially the same year's experiences, over and over again, until we get to lie in the horizontal with the white lilly clasped in our hands.  Hindsight is congenital.  What we can all use is a just a tiny bit of Foresight.  To see the possible future in advance, and do our best to prepare for the various contingencies and eventualities.  It's almost a novel idea.  How do you like the Washington Delicious?  &nb sp;

Am I ready for the Mack Truck?  Not quite, but almost, which counts in horse shoes, and what else?   

This list, the Top Ten Jobs for 2004-2005 Graduates, according to AOL Today, of training a round peg to fit into a square hole, is most depressing.  For those of us astute researchers who may have found the Internet to be the mother of all information sources, ahem, are we sadly disillusioned!

Job Function    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;     Average Salary Offer
Accounting (Private)    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;    $44,564
Management Trainee (Entry-Level)    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   $35,811
Teaching    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;  $29,733
Consulting    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         $49,781
Sales    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;    $37,139
Accounting (Public)    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  $41,039
Financial/Treasury Analysis    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;    $45,596
Software Design & Development    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;    $53,729
Design/Construction Engineering    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;    $47,058
Registered Nurse    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;    $38,775    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ; 

Late night after work, I was about all in.  Instead of the peace pipe, I vegged out on the couch with a bit of munchies, in this particular case, slices of cold roast beef from the Deli at Wally World, and a dollop of the good stuff, strictly for medicinal purpose you understand, grabbed the remote to the idiot box, and started a bit of channel surfing.  Isn’t that what most of our modern species do in this technological day and age, especially for those who lead the unexamined and uninspired life?  There was the PC of course, but then after having ensconced in front of my workstation six or eight hours or more in a stretch, somehow my PC just did not have that drawing allure any more in those wee small hours.

The fare offered from seventy or so channels of basic cable was discouraging to say the least.  Generally I skipped all the infomercials, and the religious programs.  Pleasure and Pain, Fear and Greed, abounded, meaning everywhere.  There are always people ready to get their grubby little hands into your pocket by preaching eternal hellfire or brotherly love, good ole Christian values, or how you can make yourself a million a week from next Tuesday without doing a lick of work, or tone up your bodies like the models who are compensated to appear sexy, desirable, and oh so cute.  But they are highway robbers just the same, with more than larceny in their hearts and souls, wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, recycling old wines by putting it in new bottles.  Buy me, donate to me, save me, make me beautiful, fuck me, for four easy payments on your plastic, which has already been maxed out many times over, you will be lead to the stairways to Heaven.

Speaking of sheep, I caught a few minutes of a musical channel, VHI, MTV, what’s the difference.  A rap band was jamming at gale force speed, doing their moves which had long lost their freshness and originality twenty years ago.  The guys donned baseball caps with the visors turned to the back, complete with dark sunglasses, and the girls had rhinestone studded bras, with toned mid-riffs showing off, and tight tight pants to shake their booties, an accepted non-conformity conforming to the non-conforming.  On stage, the lead dog, I mean dude, as he certainly looked like a dude, with glistening skin and bulging muscles, actually wore his pants all the way down, below his crack, to show his designer boxer shorts he had on underneath.  That getup was already old ten years ago, but then apparently no fashion icon had guided him, and to the streetwise numb skulls who made up his entire entranced audience, chanting in unison to the quote music unquote, it made them no never mind.  It was still cool, or should it be sick, in today’s vernacular.  If there were lyrics, then the batteries on my Bel-Tone must have gone completely dead.  At least, I did not pick out any ten or twelve letter words.  Hey, this was after all, duh music channel, family entertainment at its finest.  No, it was the beat, the rhythm, get down, swaying your hands in the air, making like you were really with it, jostling in the jostling waves of sweating human bodies, having simulated copulation with your rags on, be one with the moment, ignorance was bliss, oblivion merged with nirvana, an army of zombies, after the Dawn of the Dead, hurry head long towards the final exit, the slaughterhouse, where all sheep have been destined to go.  This is the generation we have been counting on.  This will be the generation to which our humanity will pass the torch.  No sirree indeed, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Then I caught more than a few minutes of “Truth or Dare”, on BRAVO no less.  But my musings on the Material Girl will have to wait for another more inspired time.  

Last night after work, I finally finished watching the movie "The Hours".  If I have to admit, being a man, I just didn't "get it" at first.  It was, like, seeing a cubist painting by Picasso for the first time, all angles, and fish eyes staring at me, I had not clue one.  Then, slowly, it dawned on me, what the painter, and in this case the writer, (Who's afraid of Who?) was trying to tell me, help me "see" beyond the obvious, and I was pleased to go to sleep afterwards with a small measure of satisfaction that I did finally "get it", at least to a certain extent.

All good stories culminate in death, and you know of course from whence that came.  Why did someone always has to die?  To make the rest of the remaining ones appreciate Life.

In the living words of Wordsworth, "Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory inthe flower, We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind ..."

In a society which prizes youth and vitality beyond anything else, for a woman, or even less so for a man, you have to be drop dead confident of yourself to appear older, uglier, plainer, or sicker than you really are.  It is like the kiss of death long before the Grim Reaper has arrived.  And it was not simply in the acting, but the editing, the slow, haunting music, the slices of lives unraveling.  It is probably not a movie you want to watch, especially before retiring to sleep at night, because you may not sleep, thinking about death and dying, and before and after that, about getting old. 

And if you dwell on that, that too can become one of your phobias.

I have plenty of phobias, and this is but one of legions.

After an idyllic hiatus, I had a lapse in my Alzheimer's and decided to put forth a blurp.  Lo and behold, my very first visitor, or guest if  you would, graced me with this beautiful and poetic comment, which defies my ability to comprehend.  Normally, I would not encourage the further esoteric musings of such a misanthrope, a devotee in various forms of ethnic cleansing, with the dignity of a response.  Yet this particular dropping I found to be particularly pungent, so I thought it may amuse others to feast their eyes upon it and draw their own conclusion.  Your comments will be greatly appreciated.

» NightBreed Thursday 08.18.05 [2:41 pm]

when god destroyed the world with the flood .. how did the world repopulate itself?? did moses fuck his own kids and did they in turn fuck their own kids???

O, Brave New World, that has such creatures in it!  Let Allah Be Praised!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to watch "The Shawshank Redemption" again, probably for the third or fourth time.  Towards the end of movie, Morgan Freeman, in a poignant role, was talking to himself, reminding that one could either get busy living, or get busy dying.  Who would have thought such sage words could have come out of Stephen King, well remembered for his treatment of the macabre, who mostly exhibited a twisted and deranged mind.

Recently SP asked me, by way of our serenpiditous conversations, what might be some of my dreaded fears, or phobias.  Off handedly I replied that I did not think I had any.  On second thoughts, I qualified my answer by describing one of my recurring and consciously suppresed fears or phobias, and that is to be forced to return to the place of my birth, that little rock of an island where people are stacked on top of another, packed like sardines in subway cars and other forms of public transportations, where the seas of humanity, and the waves of breathing, yakking, sweating bodies jostling one another, compelling one to either move on or get trampled upon.  That is a phobia not conceived of by most people, especially those living in this great and glorious country of ours, the land of free and home of the brave, where wide open spaces are the norm rather than the exceptions, where you can fly over hundred of miles in any direction most anywhere in the Continental U.S. and often not see a single soul, be it human or animal.  Yes, to be packed like sardines in a can, already cooked, along with other sardines, is that not the metaphysical equivalent of what's happening in some of inner cities?

Now that I have a little time to reflect and think about the subject, I have many other fears and phobias, not the kinds that a grown man is supposed to parade around that little sphere of influence, not to mention the lifestyle, which he has grown accustomed to. 

To quote Ursala Le Guin, "To be in favor or disgrace, is to live in fear."  and "To live until you die, is to live long enough."  

Here are some of the things I've learned from my car purchase adventure:

1.  The typical markups on new vehicles range from 18 to 25% depending on the type, make, and model of the vehicle.  The markups on "used" vehicles are substantially higher.  Many "previously owned" vehicles are acquired via auctions at fifty cents or less on the dollar and they are then turned around to be "sold" to an unsuspecting public at slightly below "Blue Book" retail prices to give the illusion of an attractive bargain. 

2.  On new cars, the MSRP, Sticker or Invoice prices, are also misleading because dealers often get them at below Invoice prices, along with volume discounts and other bonuses and incentives.  I am reasonably certain there is no car dealer, new or used, who will sell me a car at a loss.  There are many fixed overheads, which have to be paid, along with the salaries and commissions for the manager, the sales people, the finance people, and all the supportive secretarial staff.  I simply need to know how much money they are going to make on my ignorance and lack of negotiating skills.

3.  To use a hated phrase, there are many ways the new car dealer can skin a cat.  (I happen to be fond of most cats.)  Padding the sticker price is the obvious first gimmick.  The added on options are the next bunch of miniature profit centers.  The leasing versus owning scenarios is another way to eventually get the buyer pay a lot more for the same car than had he bought it outright to begin with.  The trade in allowance is yet another way to massage the numbers to fit that square peg into the round hole.  But even when the price has been negotiated down to a mutual seemingly agreeable figure, when I have written out the deposit check, and start to think seriously that I may have bought a new car, there is the finance game to be played, and depending how ready, willing, and able to play that game, will result in how much more I will eventually have to pay for my jalopy.

Early on, during one of my preliminary trips, I made the mistake of wandering into a previously owned Euro-car dealership, loaded with Mercedes, BMWs, Jaguars, and Porches, which had advertised a spiffy looking Mitsubishi Eclipse GT for sale at what seemed to be a reasonable price.  Out came sauntering this salesman in his power outfit for Florida, and I was told forthwith that said vehicle had long been sold!  And besides, I was standing in their lot, which only featured cars at $30K and up.  If I were interested in the price range of the Eclipse, I should wander over to the other side of the main drag where another used lot car was located.  In other words, “You are on the wrong side of the track, Bud!”  Obviously, he did not want to sell me a car that day, because he had immediately jumped to the conclusion to read the book by the cover.  I smiled at him, and did not wish to enlighten him.  In truth, I had been leaning towards a new car purchase already at that point.

Happy July 4th to All, and Greetings from The Asylum!

As some of you may be aware, since "Beautiful" went the way of all flesh, and her almost immaculate body will soon be parted out to an antique dealer who offered me a song and a dance for her remains, I have been doing some research on the acquisition of a replacement vehicle for a couple of weeks now.  I am now excited to report, that on the 29th of last month, I arrived at my conclusion and signed on the dotted line.  Yippeeeee!

Decisions, decisions, decisions.  Should I go for a new or a previous owned chariot?  Do I want a vehicle that is “fun to drive”, or should I choose one that is more sedate, but noted for its reliability and safety features?  Should I live now, and forget about tomorrow, or should I at least think in terms of next month, or next year, in the event I should celebrate another birthday?

After some debate with myself, at this juncture in my life, I decided that reliability, and probably along with affordability may be my governing criteria.  No longer do I drive fast anymore.  Speeding tickets are rather expensive, and I despise having to attending driving school, plus getting my car insurance jacked up in an eventual accident.  And the question of a new car versus a previously owned late model was finally settled after deciding on a particular make and model, and the pros and cons of warranty, peace of mind, initial and deferred maintenance, versus the difference of a few thousand dollars, when in monthly payment terms, it will not that too much beyond having a dinner night out in a nice, medium priced restaurant.  In sales terminology, it is called breaking it down to the ridiculous, or funny money, which shall be illustrated shortly.

Since I have not purchased a car in almost ten years, the sum total of the different fact finding trips and finally negotiating sessions have been one fascinating learning experience.  Having crossed swords, however briefly, with a number of lightweight salesmen, as well as salesmen who's been around since Noah built The Ark, I can understand and appreciate why used car salesmen categorically have such a stinking reputation.  Maybe one in ten of such exotic specimens show some semblance of honesty and integrity.  The rest attest to the dictum there is a sucker born every minute, and the price has little relation to value.  It is what the traffic would bear, and how much gouging may be viewed as conscionable in order for the salesperson to sleep at night.  Let me say, without any reservation, that as a car buyer, I am NOT going to win in any negotiations.  I simply need to be aware enough and understanding enough not to be taken to the cleaners completely.

This mini saga is to be continued...

Not long ago, I went to attend another seminar, and it provoked some of my recurring thoughts.

If you had not known by now, I am basically a quiet, introverted person, most of the time.  I grew up in a place with humanity packed like sardines, thus I have developed an innate allergy to crowds.  I spent most of my young life standing in line, and I had sworn to myself, even without knowing that I did, that if I did not have to stand in line one more than, that would be just fine with me. 

Being in front of an audience, big or small, can be interpreted as the exact opposite of standing in line, because I will be hanging out there, two sheets to the wind, with my knees trembling, and nothing but hot air escaping from my trap.  Public speaking, a requisite for aspiring leadership, much less that of entertaining in front of a crowd, is something I have yet to attempt.  If I have something I feel strongly about to say or impart, I am capable of putting in my two cents, in my somewhat incoherent fashion.  But generally, I believe I am better off in a "one to one" situation. 

It is said that in any seminar, the potential, would be leaders, or the wannabes, usually sit up front, many in the first row, to catch the pearls of wisdoms that rain forth from the speaker's mouth, or to grab that hundred dollar bill held forth by the speaker as a demonstration of who is capable of taking decisive action, and what it means to take action, despite making an apparent fool or spectacle at the moment.  For me, I tend to hang out in the back row, in the corner, to blend in with the furnishings if you would, an unknown face in a crowd, not one you would normally pay much heed to, so that I can doze off if necessary, or to observe the rapt attention of my fellow inmates, how mesmerized and captivated they seem to be, bewitched by the razzle dazzle, the half-truths of nothing but the truths, and the occasional, rare instances of enlightenment, of being touched, or better still, being struck, as an emotional heartstring has been pulled, a siren has gone off in the head, or a sledged hammer has just landed squarely on my thick skull. 

Most of the time, such audiences are like sheep, ready to be programmed, lead by the designated shepherd, either to the Promised Land, or the slaughterhouse.  Everyone is there for his or her own reasons, to use or to be abused, to gain or to lose, to escape from the mundane of everyday living, the drudgery of the moment, the chance of spiritual uplifting, or the praying of salvation and redemption.  If you were to observe keenly enough, you will witness the whole spectrum of human drama in action, unfolding the fear and greed, the dreams, hopes, aspirations, along with apprehensions, befuddlement, and outright insanity. 

Am I on a row, in this stream of consciousness type of letting it fly, or what?  Suffice that this bout of diarrhea at my finger tips should cease and desist forthwith! 

Did you know there is a new wonder drug that has been out on the market for sometime? 
First the good news:

Enfuvirtide, also known as T-20, is the first of the newest class of anti-HIV drugs called fusion inhibitors; the first new class of drugs developed and approved for the treatment of HIV since 1996. It is a synthetic 36-amino-acid peptide derived from the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein gp41 and it interferes with the entry of HIV-1 into cells by inhibiting the fusion of viral and cellular membranes. The use of enfuvirtide should be reserved as a salvage therapy for individuals who have advanced disease, are treatment-experienced, and continue to show evidence of ongoing viral replication (i.e., show resistance to current HIV treatments). Enfuvirtide should be used in combination with an individualized antiretroviral regimen. Enfuvirtide remains active against HIV strains in patients who have previously received and developed resistance to other classes of antiretroviral agents. In clinical trials, patients receiving enfuvirtide in addition to an individualized antiretroviral regimen were less likely to experience virologic failure or relapse compared to those receiving an individualized antiretroviral regimen alone; patients whose virus was sensitive to a greater number of antiretroviral drugs did demonstrate a greater sensitivity to enfuvirtide. At least 98% of patients who use enfuvirtide will develop injection site reactions to varying degrees, with almost 85% of patients developing the reactions within the first week of use. Patients should be appropriately counseled regarding injection site reactions before enfuvirtide therapy is initiated. Enfuvirtide was granted accelerated FDA approval on March 13, 2003, and received traditional approval by the FDA on October 15, 2004.

Then the bad news.  This drug is available at the acquisition or wholesale cost of over $1,600 per dose, and prescribed therapy is administration twice a day.  So we are talking at least $3,200 per day, never mind how much it would cost the patient.

My question is:  are you willing to pay for it?

And the answer is elementary, my Dear Doctor Watson, you already are!

Editor's Retraction:

For everyone I may have offended, I sincerely apologize for making a big mistake, and causing such controversy.  It was an serious error on my part when I first noticed the costs on a computer screen and did not see the word Kit.

I have since researched the drug more thoroughly.  The acquisition or wholesale cost is about $1,600 per KIT, not per dose.  Each kit contains 60 doses or a month's supply.  The annual cost of therapy is therefore over $20,000, not over a million dollars. 

Simon and Garfunkle wrote "The Sounds of Silence" about a hundred years ago.  Their lyrics can still be illuminating.  The absence of words is not necessarily an indication of a lack of interest.  It can also be a reflection of the contemplative mood which finds a person steeped in.  Nothing to worry about though.  All is well with me, relatively speaking.  Same song, largo tempo.

As a matter of fact, I have been slightly under the weather, only in the sense that of philosophizing.  My inner reconstruction is proceeding at my neck breaking, racing turtle pace.  I am chipping away each day and making small measurable progress in reasonable time.  Unlike Michelangelo's "David", what I should eventually chip away that is not "David" will not set the world on fire, and be so ever lasting, if one should consider the endurance of five hundred years of weather and humanity to be eternal.

Are you keeping your inner light and fire going?  How are you feeling about life right now?  As most gurus, ranging from shamans, snake oil salesmen, to motivational speakers and self-appointed experts, have pontificated, we are but physical manifestations of our thought processes.  Think good thoughts, and and we manifest them outwardly in desired results, eventually.  Think poor thoughts, and we manifest the results of them also.  In the long run, as one noted sage had observed, we shall all return from dust to dust.  Life is but a dream, the dream of the butterfly, emerging from the cocoon to the fleeting beauty and wonder of a fluttering lifespan.  And when we awake, did we dream to be a butterfly, or were we butterflies dreaming to be mortal?

So, there, see, nothing to worry about.  I am still alive, kicking, sometimes in the vertical, yet often in the horizontal, as of late, taking in a bit of hibernating in the beginning of Summer.  You keep yourself kindling as well, my dear friend, whoever you are.  May the spirit that was once yours will be yours again.