Not How It Always Was

I'm pretty sure I look healthier than ever.  I'm pretty sure it is a lie.
Oh well.
Played last night and almost had an attack of the heebie geebie red ant pruritus deal.  The only quick solution other than scalding shower is illegal in most states, even in this one without a card.  But there are drawbacks to that.

You have to weigh things out. The old balance sheet.
Anyway, I experiment with naproxen combined with tylenol.  Crazy.  I think it helps some.

I find it makes me short with people and I say things that seem a little harsh or almost hostile, then wonder what it was I really meant, or why I spoke at all.  So, I have consciously tempered my speech once or twice.  Mostly I just tune out and nod as if I am picking up on the conversation, but I am only catching about 53%.

Music sounds different when I am playing it.  I mean different than other times playing the same thing.  Like one wheel in the sand. Just not quite there somehow.  Crazy world.

Guess I'll go back to bitching about morons in Che T shirts and let it go.

Someone on the aquagenic pruritus email forum, got the ball rolling on a discussion of how their normal body temperature runs low.  It turns out almost everyone there runs low temp.  That was a person who also has essential thrombocythemia, like I do.  So, there may be something to that.

Maybe a way to raise my temp a degree or so would help.  I think they are on to something.  Doctors have yet to figure it out, even though there are specific university departments devoted to related conditions--the pruritus/itching deal.  I resist the word "itch" in relation to it because it is not like a normal itch situation. But I guess that is the closest sensation which may describe it.

My world has been upside down forever, but these last two years have turned it even more upside down and inside out.  My temper is returning and that may be not good.  I don't know.

I am so sick of everyone relishing the status of being victim of others and using it as an excuse for their anger, playing the self righteous game.  Women are angry. People of other than transparency and lack of color are angry.  I am angry but I cannot blame all women, all Mexicans or Cubans, or Africans, though the militants annoy me to no end.  I am just angry because I am.

And I feel self righteous for recognizing that fact, since the ones who buy into the professional victim promoters are too greedy to indulge in some introspection and admit the same thing.  They are angry because life is that way, and society and law and culture tend to fuel anger.  People prefer to have villains to blame for every little thing.  Usually it is garbage, but you can rationalize problems everywhere you go.  You can find insult in most interactions with people.

If you really want to find insult just go to memphis and experience the customer service.  But as sure as you are that the next person will be rude, you'd be slammed by the nicest person in town, and all you preconceived notions get smashed for that moment.  It is so bad.  The one in a hundred that isn't a racial warrior hating you for not being something else queers the damn deal.

That must be how things work in life.  But I wouldn't know.  I am the worst one I know at doing life. Or maybe it is civilization.  Whatever it is, I am not good at it.  You'll never catch me talking much "we" talk as if I speak for humanity.  "aren't we all?"  I hate that.,  How the hell do I know about we all?  And I doubt you do either.

.

Well, Insurance Lady is Single

And well within the age envelope.   Almost my age, but not already an old spooky person.  Some people do that, become old spooky people.  And some don't.

Hey, it is just a thought.  The lady really helped me out because governmental research and insurance and bureaucracy are not my forte.  She got me squared away on the last day of the buy or die insurance window a year or so ago.  This year she has got me up to speed on all the new mandatory stuff they do based upon age.  All the social security things, too.  That is not something I will deal with this year.

You never know.  There is some other one that asked me to go do stuff too, so I guess I am not completely hopeless.  Just not really emotionally present I suppose.  But it is nice to have some attention.  It is how I am constructed.

This week I have two gigs.  I consider each of rather low importance but they'll be fun.  I have played those spots in the past.  Money is minimal, all lower case for sure.

Plus I have practice with the two girl and stand up bass group tonight.  Both shows are with them. Then I have two more next weekend with Valor and Lace.  Those will pay a little better.  One venue we'll play is on Mt. Laguna--Pine House Cafe.  I love that place.

That will keep me off the street.

In April, one of the very best diatonic harmonica players of all time will be staying at the resort house I maintain.  I won't drop the name because that would be improper.  He is one of the pioneers of the overblow technique, which allows him to play chromatically on a diatonic harmonica.  Why not just use a chromatic harp?  Because the sound and feel is not the same.  He's also a classically trained pianist, but his deal is harmonica.

I doubt I will bother him, but who knows.  I'm afraid if I ever met him and talked shop, I'd throw away my harmonicas and never play again.

It would not surprise me if I move to Austin or somewhere in Colorado within a year or two.  Seriously have that feeling.  Who knows why.  If it was a Colorado move, the reason would be to contain the aquagenic pruritus or general pruritus associated with the bone marrow malady.  Cool temperatures, low humidity and rarified air at altitude are my friends.  But I may finally just reverse the disorder and be fine in the hot a humid jewel of Texas.  The demographic seems similar to Seattle--a place I could live also.  I may need more sunshine though.

Tanning is one of the number one things that ease the AP.  OK, initials can be annoying.  That's the lingo of the aquagenic pruritus crowd.   I may have to go out in the desert to the naked place for a day to reboot the tan.  I am not drawn to tanning beds.  Some of these people get them in their home and it is covered by their insurance.  Hell, no one cares who or what at the desert place. I prefer sun and when you suffer this stuff, you don't care about much.  Or maybe I won't.  Nothing to lose except the minimal cost.  As cheap as the artificial method.

Fatigue is a big enemy.  Oddly, the best thing for that is exercise.  Too tired to move but moving is the cure. OK.  I can do it.

Let's hope this mood swing lasts.  I'm less down than I've been for awhile.  I am aware that it is a cyclical thing.  But the periods of low and high are not often equal.  Highs tend to be shorter lived.  I know the down is made of cruel lies my mind throws out there, so I try to weather it with that in mind.

The only other people I know who seem to have the same patterns are PTSD veterans.  They have an excuse.  That is what is puzzling.  Maybe this is so I can understand them better and be of some use to my friends in that predicament.  They obviously seem to trust me more than they do most people.

Music Of The Saps

So, as I contemplate income without work next year, on top of my highly lucrative part time job-being facetious--I find I am the sought after harmonica player in certain circles.  Official harp player of the Desert Edge band, who hire me to play Country at the Grand recently, then later asked if they could list me as their harmonica player.  Also Valor and Lace, who I honestly think may go places, and Enter the Blue Sky which I wish I knew how to market.

I think ETBS needs something and I can't put my finger on it. Sande's material is not getting its just due and something on the overall sound and arrangement needs tweaking.  I like playing her stuff even so.  Partly, I know what I would do, instrumentally if it were up to me.  I keep it quiet because it would disrupt the personnel and cause issue.

And I get to play with some real heavy hitter old timers.  You don't know them.  Back in the day one opened for the Stones, Moody Blues and was on the fast track.  Long story and just how life is.  Anyway, to be their go to guy is a miracle.

And I do this while soon to be highly subsidized by the welfare socialized aspect of the state.   I know.  Everyone says, "you paid in to social security. It is your money".  And I did, but not like people who have always been on the books.  I have been on and off the books.  Off, sometimes for several years at a go.

Lots of people like it.  I never did.  I did not even want a social security number or card.  It is another buy or else situation.  They take your money and give you no choice.  That sucks.  But I guess, why fight it?  I may do OK.  Thank you America, you beautiful dying sucker state.

I'll fiddle while the country burns, I guess.  Well more like blow and suck a harmonica.

If I had made like 10k or so more, insurance last year would have been prohibitive.  Best to be fairly poor but not completely, or be making serious jack. In between and you are doomed.  Unless you get a government paycheck. Work for the state and you are in good shape.  You should thank the suckers in this country too.  Someone has to pay, you know.

Of the groups that claim me as a member, I'd say that the least experienced but youngest of the bunch has the best prospects of being able to make a living at it.  In country music.  Texas country.  That is my feeling.  I think Sande is worth a bundle if I ever figure out the angle there, though.  Totally different, but I love some of the songs.  Very lyric intensive.  Just cool stuff.  As packaged now though it seems held back.  Well when you are paying me more, next year, just for being here, I will work it out.

Thank You, America

OK, it looks like, if I can swing some relatively minimal money--not much more than I spent per month on cigarettes, at some point---I can enjoy all the medical hooplah I want with no money out of pocket except a few bucks for prescriptions.

How crazy is that?  It's the whole medicare and part F and this part and the other.  It is nuts.  This is not considered entitlement in some circles.  I know I never made enough to pay for it.  If I progress to the next level I could cost you people some bucks.  And I will still be rosy cheeked and able bodied.

I suppose what I was on before officially becoming OLD old was more of the welfare state deal.  The trick was to be sure I showed a certain income, because if you are really destitute they won't let you kick in a little to ensure some choice.  I'm telling you, the stuff for the real poor is just to buy votes.  They really want you to die and they set up the bureaucracy so maybe you will.

Had I had no choices but the free HMO for po folk, my cells and platelets would have been off the charts and I think you can usually get dead before too long from the complications.  So by fudging numbers and paying very little, I got to be my own manager of what kind of doctor I would see and when.  I knew very early pretty much what the dx would be.  Research and forums online helped me see that even though it is a rare disease and all that.

People have no clue that much of the reason we need all this complicated garbage is because the same outfit providing such wonderful assistance is the same outfit that bled people dry and facilitated crony business/government partnerships and other things that screw with life.

I'll never convince people.  I know that.  They are too damned short sighted whether looking at past or future to get it.  And they cherry pick things for their arguments and twist them. So screw it.  I am happy.  They are totally paying me for what I did not earn.  I'm the grasshopper in the grasshopper and the ants story. (Typecast in that play in kindergarten--but I was a worker then till they killed my drive)

I screwed off while you worked to pay my bills once I reached a certain age.  And next year I am going to let you pay me just for the heck of it.   I will most likely live long enough to collect far more than I ever paid to sociable security.  You told me I was wrong to dislike government, biased school officials and other collectivists concerned with society's alleged precedence over individual rights.

Hahaha.  And now I agree.  You are right!  as I pick your pocket.  I am so loving this.  Who cares if you agree?  I have no kids in the vile public school debacle and theater of the absurd.  So no worry there.  I have little property of any sort so who cares if the state screws with your property.

And I ain't paying much of anything, really, as far as taxes.  I am just collecting.  I have no choice on insurance.  I can't afford a real private plan and I certainly want to be law abiding.  So, you suckers get to cover it!!  Yay.   I'm too old to draft and have no daughters so draft away.  Make girls sign up too.  You've come a long way, Baby.

Geez.  Made the mistake of trying to define rights in a facebook discussion.  The dolt--one of those who is sure he's a genius but too dumb to see he is not good a logic.  Anyway he finally said that things like education were societal rights.  ???  All I was saying is that natural human rights do not and cannot involve the labor, property, or effort of others on your behalf.  Those can be privileges of citizenship or whatever.

Otherwise you are forcing others to perform services for you or give you things.  That is not a right.  He also claimed that the founders insisted education be mandatory.

Sometimes we just have to give up.  That's OK.  He's paying my bills.  Or is to some extent, and next year I will be even deeper in the pockets of others. It is so bizarre, really.  So incredibly bizarre.

It Is My Own Fault, I Guess

Everything is probably my own fault.  That is no comfort.

I hate Valentine's day almost as much as New Year's day.   If I hadn't died some years ago and chased everyone out of the wake, I would most likely feel differently about holidays.

If this state of affairs is my own doing, then why is it so hard to find ways to change it?  If I can cause this vacuum in which I live, can I cause it to be different?  Maybe not.   But I should be able to fix it somehow.

My own company is grating on me, for a long long time.  Dozens of years most likely.  The company of certain others was great.  Why did I let them go?  Probably because I never caught up enough with myself to feel worthwhile and not embarrassed by my short comings and the chaos that surrounds my being.

Could be a lack of a special kind of trust.  Growing up where I did, with so much betrayal in my life and surroundings, I guess that could be a factor.  My tendency was to trust proven liars and jerks.  Miami was rife with shallow conformity and its own brand of cruelty.  I observed plenty of that.  I was a part of some of it, much to my later remorse.  I went along with it less that most and have never understood it very well.

I was lonely then, and I am equally lonely now.  It wasn't 24/7 lonely all this time.  If it had been, I could not have survived.   I marvel that I have managed to float along this long.  It gets very dark and empty.  That is why I have not obtained any firearms, especially pistols, since I threw one in Buffalo Creek in Greensboro, N.C.

Now I am at an age in which all the socialism forays of our misguided republic kick in.  I will likely go ahead and milk your tax money for my own useless survival.  Thank you, I guess.

I still believe that these things are not the job of government and that it is the corrupt authorities and the corrupt interests who control them that make it seem necessary.  Then it becomes a self feeding monster. Another vicious circle.   But my argument is a hundred years too late.  At least.

I whole heartedly despise the system and the paperwork that goes with anything government.  Probably my abhorrence of the public school experience left me jaded for life.  I was not the brunt of it like lots of others but I hated watching while thuggish kids made life miserable for the sane and intelligent ones, while teachers and administrators focussed on easy targets turning a blind eye to reality.  It is no different out in the world.  I watched Dade county cops ignore the drug kids of Miami racing around in jacked up BMWs and high powered sports cars, then chase after some poor workers in their beater because a tail light was out.

Happens everywhere.  It is not really race that divides these things as much as power.  If you are likely to have friends in City Hall, and raise a big stink, cops avoid you.  If you are likely to shoot them, cops avoid you.  If you are just mild mannered American with no special victim status, and you look like the sort who will just pay it and not argue, they zap you.  I saw that in Memphis.

Except there it was often racial.  Black cops in Memphis often targeted middle class crackers.  It was obvious. People knew it, but we pretend.  As always.

who cares

That is most likely why I am lost in a vacuum.  OK.

TeeVee Show Review

The Grinder.
It is worth it just for William Devane.  I find him hilarious in this.  And he's only one of the supporting actors.  Rob Lowe is typecast as a hilarious narcissist with no grasp of reality.  And the people around him crack me up.  That is all I can say.

Devane's part is not even that big, but he makes it happen.

Best of all: NO LAUGH TRACK!!!

I wish I had written it.  Then I would not be worrying about money.  And I would have made myself laugh.  And Hollywood chicks would be currying favor, trying to get a role in the show.

I'll have to write the next one.

Another Chance To Sell You On The State

Since they decided not to just honor Washington's birthday, and I guess Lincoln's--even though I thought that was overkill--they just have President's Day.  Yippee.

But why?  What is the point, other than top reinforce reverence and loyalty to so-called leaders?  I do not like most presidents.  I see no reason to honor them any more than I would have a CEO's day, or Inventor's Day.

The degree of subtle and not so subtle conditioning that we buy into to ensure we are cooperative pawns of authority is alarming.  At least to malcontents like me.  I will celebrate Independence Day.  President's?  Just because?  Forget it.

American by Birth, Socialist by Force, Southern by the Grace of God

OK. Another long title.  Why save for the body of the actual piece what you can squeeze into the title?  That's a rhetorical question.

Here's the deal with insurance.  You are a lawbreaker if you don't have it.  If you can't afford it, you then are required to take the one paid for by everyone else.   It just doesn't seem right.

Then someone tells me that you can get a regular check of some kind from sociable security.   They say, "You paid in!"   I say I did not pay that much, and I tend to wish I could distance myself from so much government oversight and intrusion into my life.  Some people like it.  I detest the whole culture, language, and attitude of most social agencies.  Most all official authoritarian agencies and entities creep me out.

But there is not much escape.  The system may give rise to lost souls, poverty and pain, but the average person seems to be all for it, and some people do better this way.  Or they seem to.  Probably people who like to talk about what "we" should do about obesity and the like.  Or those who discuss the fine points of how "our" children are "our" greatest resource.  Even if they have no offspring.

I get it more than ever than humans build upon what others have done, and are best served through cooperative effort and trade.  I just don't leap into forced communal bliss as the logical, best way to make us all happy.

Be that as it may.  If my medical status progresses at all, then someone other than me would end up paying big bucks for the next drugs.  Presently what is working is pretty cheap.  Many people with this condition either progress to the next stage of myeloproliferative neoplasm or require additional or different drugs to try to stabilize levels of various types of cells, or slow production of poorly made cells.  Those next drug types cost a fortune.

One of them is roughly $9200 for a month's supply, and the other common one is 3700 for 4 injections.  Not sure the frequency of injection but it is frequent enough to make it an expensive bet.  In those cases you have one rate if you do it yourself and one for the doctor's office; until you wrestle the system and get some sane deal worked out, according to many who have been that route.

Many people go on for years without graduating to the big trouble making stage.  I am likely to do OK.

The point is, if I did need the other stuff and decided not to just give up or to cure myself with shamans and peyote, my good and kind countrymen would be paying out the nose to allegedly keep me alive.  I may let them, but not without plenty of guilt.   In reality, and in my mind, medical treatment and being supplied with manufactured drugs is not a right.  It is nice but absolutely not a natural right.  A true right does not require others to do things like go to medical school, get up early and be at the office to serve me, etc.  Not a right.  Nice that such care is available but not truly the job of others to supply me with those services since I am a loser.

I'm becoming enough of a misanthrope to allow it, though.  I still think it is a combination of overbearing authority and corrupt cronyism and more factors which put us in this fix.  The narcissistic face of government tends to bleed people dry of energy and resources.  It is a big picture issue and most of the world is made up of grubby people who cannot see past stealing your shoes because they want them. How that plays out, long term, is not examined.

Anyway, thanks, suckers!

Some Things Are Best Unsaid

It is a matter of self preservation and pragmatism.
Mostly the hidden post was about how people paid by tax money sing their own praises like no other segment of the population.  They out priest holy men and women.  There is a piousness to the self promotion. It works over all.  Turns my stomach.

I'm Speechless

I was searching for reform school photos.  This came up.  "Yeah, man, I'm a film maker because I got something to say.  I go where the art, my muse, leads me. And it lead me to an imaginary girls reform school.  Some get tough. Some go insane.  Some die. A metaphor for life."  What could be better?