Uncategorized

Minor Hunter S. Thompson Moment

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

With gentle yet precise shove, I am pushed out of a door into the proverbial never-ending hallway filled with more doors than Monsters Inc. I see my shadow tall in front of me. I don’t recognize the shape. Who is that creature relegated to a cliched semi-hallucinatory state after browning out for over a year to the borderline intolerable?

The ceiling immediately opens up and it starts raining bowling balls. I am mesmerized by the vibrant rainbow of colors tumbling from the sky. I cannot feel the devastating impact created as they pummel my body. Blow after blow bounces off my flesh producing a visible mark and audible wince of pain without response from me. I continue to marvel at the large, polished orbs designed to knock down anything in their path. Finally, as I watch its entire descent from the imaginary sky, a psychedelic tye-dye ball painted with a big smiley face hits me smack between the eyes.

The pain is immediate and radiates down through my body to reach my very core. All the while the ball that struck me is laughing wildly through its now demonic smile. I try to run for cover but there is none unless I open one of the endless doors.

I grab the nearest door knob only to be met with purple slime coating the knob and now my hand. It is impossible to turn it. My movements become frantic and breathing is difficult. There is no air in my lungs to produce a scream.

When I look over my shoulder, I see the bowling balls have morphed into the Wicked Witch of the West’s evil, flying monkeys. They are headed straight for me and their creepy Oz theme music blasts my ears.

I pull back and thrust shoulder first into the door and it cracks open. The thought of trying another door without slime all over it never occurs to me.

My successful escape from monkeys borne of bowling balls is met with an involuntary belly flop into a giant pit that resembles the dungeons at ChuckECheese filled with those bacteria-ridden balls. Except this pit isn’t filled with balls, it is filled with millions of over sized pills. There are capsules the size of my foot, round, powdery tablets that could be used for frisbees, and gelcaps that look more like garden globes than medicine.

The more I struggle to find the edge and climb out, the deeper I sink into the morass of pharmaceutical phalluses. A loud, creaking sound emanates from below the infinite quick sand of drugs and the farther I fall, the louder and screeching it gets. I try to turn my head downward to identify what is generating the now piercing vibrations of high pitched metallic squeals.

That’s when I see it.

A massive hypodermic needle with a shiny tip that glints so bright I have to shield my eyes. My attempts to remove myself from this nightmare shift into high gear to avoid being stabbed with a shot bigger than my beat up old station wagon. The more I grab at the capsules and tablets, the closer the needle gets to my ass. I am like the last salmon in the river willing itself against the current, desperately trying to make it across the final rocky rapids to freedom.

Of course, I don’t and am deeply punctured through the junk in my trunk up through my torso until the once shiny tip emerges from inside my skull covered in gray tissue, dripping with blood.

It has not killed me and, as I reach over to take a bite out of one of the football sized gelcaps,  the only thing that comes to what is left of my brain is “Wow. Wonder what would have happened had I tried to fight it out with those damn monkeys?”

—————————————————————————————–

p.s. Can it be a Hunter S. Thompson moment if I reference Monsters Inc.?

Let them eat steak

/ autumncircles / 9 Comments

I recently came across a familiar situation where I was faced with the opportunity to not do something I didn’t want to do. Toss in a little bit of having to do something I needed to do, but am not generally good at – and you have the makings of yet another blog post.

Let’s see how I fared, shall we?

In case you don’t know, I suffer from many “issues” one of which being I have a very unstable stomach. Food, which is supposed to be my friend, can in many ways be my worst enemy. Not only do I have the pudge-potential syndrome, I also have the irritable bowel one. Food choices are critical to ensure I do not end up writhing in pain for days. However, food is also my go-to mood adjustment device. Happy? Have a cupcake. Sad? Eat an entire bag of potato chips. Enjoy camaraderie? Scarf down enough Chili’s chips/salsa/ranch to feed a small nation. Totally depressed? Eliminate food altogether – which is clearly as harmful as eating too much.

[If at this point, you are thinking I need some sort of therapy – please, please refrain from suggesting that road which has been traveled ad nauseum. ]

This bit of background leads us up to the other evening when I was having dinner with some folks I am very close to. Food issues already range from the comical to the serious over the course of my life, so the fact that I have dire choices I am faced with making three times a day plus in between snacks only enhances any sort of meal-enticed environment around others because I then have to throw in the fact that I believe my choice must not offend or upset anyone, in anyway possible.

For many reasons, one of which being I had recently had the stomach flu – considered akin to a near death experience for IBS folks, I was not feeling all that great when I arrived at the dinner. It was soon revealed that we would be dining on good old fashioned steak and potatoes. No other choices offered.

I immediately thought, “Ouch – red meat on an already fragile stomach? Nope, cannot do it.”

Which was immediately followed by, “Fuck. This means I have to say something about it. Fuck.”

For just about anyone else, the solution is simple – state that you cannot eat the steak but would be delighted with the baked potato and be done with it.

If you have read more than one blog post from me, you also know I do not consider myself anywhere near the realm of normal. Telling someone that I am unable eat what they have prepared or don’t like the way they cut my hair or think the brakes they installed are not quite right or disagree with them over anything in general can be as difficult for me as brain surgery is for a statistician while at the same time producing some sort of self induced traumatic esteem injury.

[Again, if you have that tiny little urge telling you to suggest therapy for me – please don’t, pretend you did and simply allow me my eccentricities.]

I gave it a try anyway and said that I would not be able to eat the steak due to my stomach still not being totally healed. Whew! Look at me – gonna be tummy cramp free!

Then, when dinner came and my plate was being loaded and even though I’d been very clear that I was not going to eat steak – I was offered steak like parishioner is offered communion. I, again, said, “No, thanks. Remember, my stomach?”

The steak was held out in front, hovering in the air like a Matrix special effect by a pleading host.

“Are you sure? Just a little bit won’t hurt you will it?”

Did I maintain my commitment to my internal organs and refuse to eat the steak?

Or did I crumble like a tin can under the weight of an 80 ton tyrannosaurus rex crashing through the jungle on its way to a veggiesaurus slaughter?

Giant F-Bomb Alert – Seriously

/ autumncircles / 2 Comments

I’ve never had a warning at the start of a blog to actually ward people off, but tonight’s post needs a big, fat “L” for language. So, please, if you are one of my young relatives who’ve never heard me curse or a co-worker who would look at me differently tomorrow – please stop reading now.

And know that I believe there is no such thing as a “bad” word – after all, Shakes told us a long time ago that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” I’d like to add that there are some words that most perfectly express how one is feeling by intonation and intent, no matter who deems them “offensive.”

Before you go – in tribute to a great blogger and her friend, check out Clusterfook and SecondHand Tryptophan. And not just today’s posts, but all of them to learn about these folks. There are some amazing humans out there if you surf long enough.

Now, seriously – if you are one who will be offended for whatever reason by reading my use of the infamous F-Bomb – then please surf along and I’ll be sure to post another happy-go-lucky, f-bomb-free entry soon enough.

Are they gone? Did they click away as they were told to? Are those left ones who understand that sometimes there is only one glorious word that can adequately express a feeling – whether it be joy or torment? Well, good because I would just like to say:

FUCK!

And un-fucking-fortunately, this fucking use of the perfect fucking word is not being uttered in any realm of fucking joy.

It is not even being fucking used about my own fucking life.

Fuck.

I learned tonight that a fellow blogger who also happens to be one kick-ass human from all fucking blog-accounts that I can tell is about to die from her fucking cancer. I, like anyone else who reads her blog, have known she is dying of cancer, but we literally were told tonight that the end is fucking any day now.

I do not know this person. I have only recently even become acquainted with her blog, and yet, I’m fucking pissed that fucking cancer is about to fucking take her from the world we know so fucking early.

I fucking hate cancer. It has taken quite a few in my family alone.

Not sure why I feel the fucking need to rant on about this, but I am fucking saddened by this turn of events for this woman. She is a wife to a great dude, like me. She has kids, like me. She loves to write whatever the fuck she wants, like me. By reading all of the comments of random viewers and more importantly the ones by her Power of Blog, she has some great fucking friends, like me.

How fucking human of me. She is the one fucking dying, and I’m fucking whining about how it effects me. You know what’s even more fucking ironic? This woman who is dying would totally understand my fucking reaction and embrace it, not judge it. We need more fucking people like her, not less.

We all have the ability to take something as fucking scary as cancer and turn it around into what it would mean in our own lives. Being human, I am fucking pissed that she has to go and leave her family and friends and blog world without her future self. Being selfishly human, it fucking scares me into thinking about my own fucking mortality and that of those I love.

But for Lisa and her family right now, it is just not fucking fair.

Fuck.

So, please go – visit her site. Read about her life and death. Read all the comments posted out of love for this life that is about to be over. Then kiss the ones you love and tell them that you love them. Say it often. And not just because they may get cancer some day, but because you love them and everyone deserves to hear how much they are loved…

And, please forgive my little fucking rant.