I'm But a Childish Miami Redneck

Not sayin' that's a bad thing.  However, I am not sayin' it's a good thing neither.

It was a blast at the conference with the army of skin specialists.  Some new faces this time.  The thing that blows me away is the willingness of the guy from Coronado to oversee my path to quick and reasonable trouble shooting and resolution.  He arranged for me to again do the conference thing because he's so booked up and he can do it for free and have several others weigh in.  It was an act of kindness, trust me.

Ha!!! I don't even know for sure who you are, yet I encourage you to trust me.  That ought to raise a red flag.  Anytime the "trust me" thing gets thrown out there, when it doesn't stand scrutiny, one should move with extreme caution.

But trust me anyway, this time.

He had a whole plan of action and how to get competent and cooperative vampires on board.  I think we can have everything narrowed down by April, if I can be sane and patient.  I yelled at the smarmy stranger on the phone yesterday, but I actually think this is going to work out better.

I stopped in where people were playing music at a coffee house, but only stayed for awhile.  Kind of a way station between derma conference and home.

I'm going to send the arrogant doc's office staff a note apologizing for inappropriate language, even though the victim of my wrath has the PR skills of a porcupine.  Maybe.  It was irresponsible of them to know they were on the list yet they did not remove themselves, which one can do.

They have every right to refuse whatever form of payment doesn't suit them.  I don't blame them.  There are too many hoops to jump through, sometimes.  It is not always worth it.  They've taken the fun out of playing doctor.  I can't condone that at all.

I too often forget how well people treat me when it matters.  Back to a goof plan and people to help see it get done.  Fortunate twist of fate.

I think our last practice, last night, had some of the best moments we've had, gigs included.  It was much better, I thought.  It was nice to listen to everyone else while it seemed I was just hearing myself play, like hearing one of them.   Whatever the deal, our sound was the best ever, as were the dynamics and nature of the parts.  That is fun to do and a nice escape sometimes. Most times.

I'm not even going to comment on national events aka government follies.  WTF nation.

Arrogant Bastards

Long before the government began dancing with the insurance companies and lawyers to totally screw up and add cost to the medical industry's activities, doctors were trying to place themselves above all others in the minds of innocent people.  Serious ego issues rivaling even those of fighter pilots.  And those are some hefty egos.

So, now in the time of bureaucratic madness, all for our own good, we still encounter the arrogant unhelpful attitudes.

One of the most key people I need to see neglected to remove himself from the list of doctors covered under my insurance.  Last update was Jan. 28, and I am sure I called when I got this stupid insurance, removing me from the ranks of insurance outlaws.  They are on it.

So now we've done all this other stuff and need this specialist, or someone like him, in the loop.  I paid cash the first appointment and felt like the guy thought I was just trivial riffraff, lucky to not be beheaded for having the nerve to seek audience with his highness.  I left there with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next.  Other doctors were less guarded regarding a plan of action.

When you feel you have nothing to lose, and you are tired, and a little tense due to your body going to hell in a handbasket, one's patience can run less than thin.  I realize that I am more than capable of losing my temper and shouting at the smarmy office dude on the phone.

First they call to confirm the appointment.  Then they call later to ask about insurance, a conversation I once had weeks ago. The smarmy guy is so cheerful telling me they won't take my insurance, offering no alternatives or anything.

His lack of empathy must have tripped the trigger.  I was in disbelief.  My insurance lady and I purposely set me up on this plan because this jerk was listed.   Son of a bitch!!

You won't like my response:  ""Geesuss F****ing Keereyeste, what in f***ing hell am I expected to do with this?"  etc.  I hung up. Then called back and cancelled.
I'm screwed.  I do not seem to get on well with one of the best hematology /oncology outfits in the county. I'm angry and I'm not thinking all thins is getting better.

I am about to say screw it and just go plow through my savings, hang gliding and maybe learning to base jump, hoping to die before I'm 100% flat broke.  Trouble is I could be flat broke rather quickly.  But I am so f'ing angry I don't care about the rational thing, or even the right thing.  I hate arrogant pricks like are found in medicine, government, and anywhere they can mess with your life.  They are no smarter than I am or than many other people are.  This I know, and can prove it need be.

But I was depending on him./  So that makes it my fault.

Right now, despite my loving, cuddly exterior, I hate everyone and everything.

Oh well.  The dermatologists want to have another conference with me at center since all that aspect is changing and acting differently than before.  

I do not blame anyone for not taking any sort of insurance they don't like.  They could just say they don't want to do business with me. Fine.  But I was mislead and then treated as a totally unimportant useless waste of life.  I may think it, but I'll kick your ass if you want to treat me that way.

I feel like doing something radical like get rid of almost all but clothes on my back and car, leave this place and go-I do not know where--just go until I stop.  Middle of nowhere, somewhere in the west, I guess.  Or maybe fly to some Caribbean island. Get a little boat, sail around and finally sink.  My legacy will be an irrational F*** You to no one in particular, and everyone and everything in general.

Goddam idiot human race really blew it by letting officialdom evolve the way it has.  Government, authority loving fools.  I'm in the wrong place, wrong time, maybe wrong species.  I blew it.

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Seek and No Telling What You'll Find

That is why I am not a proponent of regular check-ups.  Don't bother me about vaccinations,  I don't know.

I do know the that the usual suspects who derive bizarre, almost orgasmic, pleasure out of finding excuses to dictate the behavior of others seem to be all excited about this latest manufactured issue.  My disdain for the "I'm part of the village, and it takes a village to raise a child, so I'll tell you how to raise your child."  people can often taint my view of a topic.  Sometimes total busy bodies and morons are right.

I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong this time because I do not want to allow myself that level of involvement.  But, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

All of a sudden we have a new political topic.  It is about as worthwhile as abortion.  No matter how you look at it.

Anyway,  I'm narcissistic enough to go along with designating my interior world as a set for a photo shoot.  Looks like a couple of minor photo bombers in the mix.  They sent those to interior photo bomb jail for debriefing to find out what they have to say.  Water boarding will no doubt ensue.

Obama or not, I am very grateful I found a way not to enlist in an HMO type of set up.  The idea that you are too stupid to know when you need a specialist, when you do know, is typical of the nanny fascists that love to run the show these days.  I've no idea if they were the same "those" days or not. These days, I have a handle on that.

I think we play a tea house in North (San Diego) County on Feb 15 and then on the 23rd it is downtown again for the Hard Rock Cafe.  I like that place.  Good food and very nice staff.  Not a bad venue for la musica de la gente!!!

Oh yea, due to changes in the condition of my condition, I get to be the Guinea pig again for a little show and tell with a group of doctors---for free.  They look at all the info and at me amd then I go and they discuss it for awhile, and then they go home, unless maybe the marriage or relationship is funky and they go to a bar or go seek professional companionship and the next day they don't have enough sleep and they are dragging.  That is how it could happen.

The advantage to me is 5 or so second opinions, and in a group of hotshots.  It is a bargain.

I'm sure it is all just my own mind so probably I can make it all change and be OK.

Looks Like Fun

I'm no fan, but what could be more fun than to be in Michelle's shoes while her hubby and entourage kiss up to woman beaters who force their own to cover in flat black sheets, or else?  I am all for first spouses staying home in silence and off the radar altogether.  This seems almost cruel, but that's what you get for grabbing unelected power and playing up that attitude of entitlement and royalty.

Inflated Egos and NonSense, Deflated Thinking

There seems to be a lot of discussion about the inflation of footballs lately.  They claim they were deflated after being checked.  Uniformly, and only the ones the Pats used.   That is the only information I have on that.  I get too bored to read all there is on the topic.

I understand they like to inflate the things at 12.5 to 13.5 psi.  It is very difficult to get that within 1 lb.   I'm curious to see what the whole process is, and where the balls go in their game journey.  It just seems highly unlikely that the Pats are eager to try such a stupid ploy.  They already have a reputation to live down.

Besides, the second half was allegedly OK, and they scored 28 unanswered points.

Whenever an event is tried in the media, you can bet you get partial facts and that the conclusions are those of a happily ignorant lynch mob.  It has nothing to do with most of us.  It may or may not be a fictitious story.  But the opportunity to be part of a mob, pretending self righteous indignation, is too tempting for most people.  They'll jump on that band wagon with both feet.  Yahoo, we got us a neck tie party!!

Another one of those evenings

I'm confused quite often because I don't know if I am somehow creating this odd state of affairs.   We better get things straightened out in a hurry.  Most of the time, you can be in tune enough to make things OK.  Sometimes mind-over whatever does not totally work.  You know where it is headed.

For awhile there I was reticent about the prospect of going to sleep.  It is better now, I guess.
Buenos noches kind of deal.
And that's that.

Horse Girls

I was wondering why I am a sucker for horse stories and movies.  Even the ones that are all horse girl-centric.  It came to me why;  those shows remind me of the girls who grew up on 66th St.  Most were older, and all were nicer to me than many females I met later.

That's right.  Back then, on the outskirts of suburban Miami, horses were all around.  It made an imprint, and to this day I am a sucker for cowgirls.  Doesn't do me much good, but that is how it is.

People Say Some Crazy Things; ps, Obama made me laugh

Seriously.  I was in my car listening to the State of the Union speech.  It sounded like one of those motivational workshops, all the sincere, yet humorous strategizing about what "we" need to do.

For awhile there I was struggling with nausea, but then he went into comedy.  What cracked me up was his assertion that all the government spying and wire-tapping, etc., was old news, and largely forgotten, but he was on it.  He didn't forget.

Obama said he was having his people look into the alleged malpractice of the agencies run under his direction (by definition).  They had been studying and looking into all this, and they were going be sure it was all transparent and report back on any wrongdoing.

That's like telling someone you'll pay them a dollar if they can guess how many fingers you're holding behind you're back.  Oops, no, you guessed wrong, try again.  If you get accused of cheating, promise to look into it and offer to do a report of your findings.  Nope, I didn't cheat.

God, people, you really do sucker for glamorous talk, ignoring the fact that maybe government officials need to back out of more things rather than expand their involvement.

He said he wanted to close tax loopholes.  Right.  Abolish the IRS?  Find a fair and simple method?  Not a chance.  The IRS is weapon number one for any well entrenched Washington politico.  Any fool has to know that.  That is why it has been tolerated.  People are afraid of it, and they use it when they can.  If he were sincere about any of his business talk, he'd be cutting the tax rate for corporations.  We have one of the highest rates which is discouraging to businesses.

Democrats love taxes and official power. And rules.  I am baffled by it.  Republicans, I haven't a clue what they want. They say one thing and do another, plus they worry about stuff that is noble to worry about, in some circles, but not the stuff of government monitoring and control.

Anyone paying close attention would realize that the speech was a flowery paraphrasing of the Communist Manifesto.  Sounds dramatic, but it is just the truth.

'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need', was sold as if it is moral and not something that takes force to administer.  No corruption in deciding who is capable of supporting those deemed needy.  Who decides? is always the issue.

For some reason, democrats I know think it is ok for bureaucrats and politicians to decide such things.   They never think they might be on the short end of the stick and be unfairly bullied by government.  They don't care if others are abused by official authority.  Unless those others can be molded into a permanent underclass and reliable voting bloc.

Anyway.  What a mess.  Mitt and Jeb--are you kidding me?  And Hillary or Pocahontas?   People want royalty so they are incapable of grasping the concepts of natural rights, innocent until proven guilty. sovereignty of property and home, etc.  That is why elections center around sound bites which are meaningless nuggets of nothingness, or grotesque slogans--if you really analyze them;  Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.  Right.  And whom should be asked?  

Anyway, I busted out laughing, then cut the radio off and went in to play.  I figured I'd quit the speech on a high note.  The one about him investigating the integrity of his operation and reporting back to us.  Obviously the majority of people are either greedy enough--thinking they will gain personally, or stupid enough to play along and believe the nonsense.

It is a time when the philosophy of the sanctity of the human being, and the innate rights one possesses from birth, competes , or tries to, with the philosophy that They owe me, and The Greater Good (as defined by whomever is in power) always trumps the rights and property of mere individuals--especially those who have no political clout and can't sick the IRS on enemies.

So far the idea that people exist by permission of the state has been hammered into the citizens and they accept that.  It is completely counter to the purest of precepts under which the country was structured.  Nothing pleases a lot of these people more than seeing the few, who don't want to be pestered by the collective, bullied and controlled by Big Brother.  It is sick but true.

If the presidential race came down to Jeb vs Hillary, I'd stay home.  Besides that being an obvious result of a corrupt system, it is like no choice at all.   I prefer Hil to Pocahontas, but that is not much consolation.  The Native American princess makes Obama look like a freedom lover.  She's the misanthrope's dream.  Those people hate the human race, I am convinced.

Anyway.  I'm glad to hear the country is doing better than ever before, jobs are everywhere, and costs are way low. Hell, they practically give food away.  Gas prices are down and we get lectures about why this is disastrous for us.  Really?  What they say makes sense, sort of.  But such thinking is also somewhat skewed.

Do you have any idea how troublesome it is when your hands will not stop itching?

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If You Only Knew; and if I did, too

What a crazy year this will probably be.   For the first time, I noticed that I am old, almost elderly, sort of.  And that absolutely pisses me off!

Few things are as annoying as people talking about getting old.  As if time being aware of one's existence is an evil thing.  The more time, the more evil it is.  That is so lame and boring.  I hate such conversations--most of the time.  Always have.

I remember people making a big deal of turning thirty or forty as if that was a huge landmark denoting the beginning of the end.  Every minute, and every event is the beginning of the end, unless it is the end itself.  Birth is the beginning of the end.  Geez.   What stupid garbage.

But, I finally realized I'm not so different from my father.  He looked younger than his years all his life, up to a point.  Then he all of a sudden looked plenty old enough, and then he was done.  I'd say I look five years older than I did two years ago.  But I go long periods without ever really paying attention to it in an objective or attentive way.

I may not even look different.  Things are different.  I'm being sucked into the medical-government-industrial complex.  And it is an ugly thing.  They want to be stewards of slow and expensive deaths, or protracted illnesses.  If they can't kill you slowly, they can at least milk you and insurance dry by conducting test after test after test until you drop over with boredom, or anxiety because you think you might get too sick to clean up your life before you kick.

On the other hand you think that maybe you made it all up, and if any test reveals hard evidence or numbers out of the norm, that you made it happen.  That is how it works.

The simple way of the world is this: some people can afford the luxury of being old and some can not.  I can not.  Not to say I want to pretend to be 25 or even 35, but I can't play the elderly role that nature expects either.  Because I've lived an unnatural life.  I got divorced. I never re-married, and the closest I ever come to landing a mate is always right at the point when they are ready to graduate John 0's finishing school for women who go on to greater things.  They should pay me.  Ingrates.

All the other measures of life that would naturally be significant are things I sidestepped one way or the other.  Just how it is.

People still nipping at my heels a bit at work hoping to steal my job.  It is bizarre and could easily give me a resentment against all gays and their mothers.  Especially since I took up for them in the past, causing them not to be banned from the place, more or less.  I was wrong.  So I hate them for their games.

That is the least of my worries I suppose, but maybe I should put it at the top.  It can be partly influenced by my actions.  This other stuff may not be under my control, and I'm not sure what to think.

To find out things you have to do things to find out facts.  That is the trouble.  Left to its own devices, the medical-governmental complex will suck you in and spit out the corpse once they've raided your treasure.  So, you have to keep them a little bit at bay.  They need to be questioned and it needs to be known that you do not think a doctor is God, is always right, and has the right to withhold your pertinent information because only they can divine the meaning of tests, values, etc.

It angers many doctors if you question anything.  Their egos, in the aggregate are almost as unbearable as those of pilots and guitar players.  And that is off the charts.

So, I have been able to make music practices and the gigs we've had.  I think my playing is going south, but so far I can fake it enough to get by.  It is a bit of a worry, but what if all the other is just psychosomatic, and has no true effect on my playing?  What if all this money is just going down the drain, and I'm a casualty of the war to convince people they need government monitoring of their health and everyone providing related services.   What if none of it is real and I'm just another stooge, plodding merrily on,  somewhere in the herd being led to who knows what?

What if all that.  How can I be sure without something concrete, beyond the word of a would-be god?  It's a rhetorical question.  I don't want to do what I have to do to find out, and I'm not too sure I want to find out.  I'm not sure what I think they'll find.  I feel like I know, but would be best served forgetting all of this and just living with the crazy itch attacks.

Now we have two types of itch things happen. One is just my hands.  Mostly hands.  The palms get red and welty and itch like a mofo.  Other parts of the hand too.  It comes and goes.  One hand or the other or both. I spray them with cortaid type stuff and benedryl spray.  It helps some but I have that stuff on my hands.  Everything keeps changing.  I think it could take me down and maybe something can be done.  I'm thinking this phase is going to be OK if I can just get everything streamlined, cleaned up, organized, and legally documented how I see fit.  Then all is OK enough.

Secretly, I'm the best natural engineer I know.  But I didn't cultivate that talent much after I quit on the cotton mill air cleaning.  I let the jerks, the insecure science types who fear new and better knowledge and truth, the unoriginal snobby creep types who think they are smarter than they are, or that it matters in cases where it doesn't,;  I let them push me out. I avoided them because I'm a dummy in many ways.  If I ever hear my brother and DC discuss intelligence again, in the self congratulatory way they do, I may punch them both in the nose.

Why someone as accomplished and smart as my kin, with such a wonderful life going, would have to stroke his ego regarding intelligence, with a guy who may be smart but is morally(by my standards) bullshit, I do not know.   Elitists have serious mental issues.

Survival SoCal

Recently, I discovered Survival Alaska on HULU.   I find it to be the best of any shows I've seen in that genre.  The contestants are a combination of genius and totally insane.

Somehow, though, there is a part of me that identifies, to a point.  Never in my life have I ever been in that kind of shape, or been willing to put up with that much pain.  But functioning in an adrenalin rush situation is when I've been at my best.  All else kicks my ass.

So, I was thinking,  I wonder how I'd fare in a Survival SoCal situation.  Navigating traffic.  Ignoring rednecks of all races.  Trying not to get spoiled by the weather and relatively laid back ambiance.  That's a tough one.

If it gets below 50 or above 75 F, the authorities start making plans for martial law and for treating massive cases of hypothermia or heat stroke.  They set up relief zones, like safe zones, places where people can go inside a climate controlled building.

But that is all smoke and mirrors.  Surviving SoCal is an elusive concept.  I don't know what it means or how to do it.  By SoCal, I mean way south.  South of L.A. where there are far more pleasant and easy going people per thousand.

The trick is that just when you think expenses are covered, either prices go up, or there is an unanticipated fee, or who knows what.   Or maybe everyone in the city gets a cold at the same time.  That happens a lot.  I know of residents who suspect chem trails are what ails them.

If I survive, I'll share how it's done.  In the mean time, I'll just say I think the state of California, with all its innumerable tentacles, is a perfect of example of the old adage, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions.".

But like always, when people involve themselves in the business of others under lamer and lamer excuses, pretty soon they are just exerting force over others with no right or reason.  Just rumor and self righteous nonsense.

Another time maybe I'll say what's really on my mind; tales of intrigue, betrayal, mortality, and love.  I just threw love in. I probably know nothing about that.

Isolation, intentional or not, is not properly human nature.  It is as bad as smoking.