My Friend Aaron, The Final Cylon

My friend Aaron has pancreatitis. Acute pancreatitis is when your pancreas malfunctions once and after a while it calms down and you live a normal life. Chronic pancreatitis is an ongoing condition. You live your life in constant pain waiting for your pancreas to try to kill you again. His condition is chronic. Over the past several years he has to deal with shunts and scar tissue and pain.

His doctor decided to try a new pain medication that is injected once a month and costs $2500 a shot. His insurance company said they would pay for it but only if the doctor kept it in stock. If he got it from a pharmacy and took it to the doctor for injection, it would not be covered. This medication is so rarely used and has such a short shelf life that no doctor on planet earth keeps it in stock. It took him about a month to work it out between his doctor and his insurance company, but thanks to his persistence they agreed to pay. He got his $2500 pain shot.

Unfortunately it didn't work. He wound up back in the hospital due mostly to pain. His doctor didn't seem to think there was much point in continuing the injections. So they came up with a new plan, to surgically bypass his pancreas for a while.

He called me from the hospital this morning. He is now officially a cyborg. They put a feeding tube through his stomach into his intestines. This is to keep him alive while tricking his pancreas into thinking that he hasn't eaten so that it will stop making digestive fluids. The hope is that his pancreas will rest and reset itself. The tube has an electric pump that periodically squirts liquid nutrients into his guts. It apparently can be carried around in a backpack.

So he isn't supposed to eat anything for 6 months. No solids at all. It won't hurt him if he does, but it will defeat the purpose of punching a hole in his stomach and snaking a tube to his intestines. He can drink water and stuff but he has to be careful not to drink too much. If he does, he has a separate tube that will drain his stomach into a catheter bag.

I'm going to visit him tomorrow and I absolutely can't wait to make fun of him. I mean dude, really, the guy has tube to drain coffee out of his stomach. How nasty sick is that? What kind of friend would I be if I didn't try to make him feel self conscious about it.

Done for now.
rob

The Perils Of Procrastination

Well, work on the Ford has ground to a halt. I had hoped to have the power steering working this week but no such luck. I've owned this car for about 12 years and the power steering has been broken that whole time. I've been gathering parts for it but never got around to putting them in until now.

The original power steering pump was bad when I bought the car. It had burned up after one of the hoses went bad and caused all of the fluid to leak out. So I bought a new pump and hoses 11 years ago and put them on a shelf in my garage. Then we moved and I put them on a shelf in my new garage.

The problem with waiting all this time is that other things have had time to go bad. Replacing the pump and hoses when I bought them probably would have prevented this from happening. Now I just have to live with the consequences of procrastination.

I finally put in the pump and hoses on Tuesday. Jason came out to help me by starting up the car and turning the steering wheel back and forth so I could bleed the system. He's 12 so getting to sit behind the wheel and start the car was a pretty big deal for him. And it was nice to have him involved.

But I knew something was wrong almost immediately. The fluid was coming out foamy as if it were sucking in lots and lots of air from somewhere. So I had him stop turning the wheel while I climbed under the car to have a look and sure enough the control valve was pissing fluid everywhere. The control valve is the part that directs the fluid from the pump to where it needs to be. If you're trying to turn left, the control valve sends the fluid to the part of the system that helps you turn left. There are hoses on the control valve as well that can, and in this case, have gone bad.

These are all parts that were easily obtained from any auto parts store 12 years ago. Now, not so much. I was able to get a rebuild kit from a place called Dearborn Classics, the one stop shop for old Ford stuff. But that means waiting at least a week for the control valve rebuild kit and another 3 weeks for the hoses because they were out of stock.

All I want is for my car to work right. Is that so wrong?

Done for now.
rob

Got Your Back, Dave

I just read an AP story bashing David Letterman for all of his past comments about political sex scandals over the years. The writer, Frazier Moore AP TV writer, seemed to think that Dave was a bit hypocritical for making fun of politicians when he was also behaving in a not so gentlemanly manner.

But what did Dave really do? He had consensual sex with coworkers, who were of legal age. There has never been a single harassment claim against him. Not in the whole time he has been on late night TV. That sort of punctuates the whole consensual aspect. I think that's how he met his wife. If he continued this behavior after they got together, that would be wrong, but it would really just be a personal matter between him and her. Cheating is not cool but its not criminal either.

Vitter and Spitzer solicited prostitution. That's a crime. Foley solicited sex from under aged boys, also a crime. Craig had plead guilty before his scandal even broke. Sanford used state funds to pay for trips to see his girlfriend. Certainly unethical, possibly criminal. And Ensign - don't even get me started.

So is it OK for a guy who engages in bad behavior to poke fun at those who are criminal and unethical? Why not? I've been doing it for years.

Done for now.
rob

Are These Guys For Real?

Pat Toomey was on "Morning Joe" this morning. I couldn't help being fascinated by the rhetoric. Forget the birthers, deathers, and tea party silliness. Even sensible Republican policy seems ridiculous to me.

Toomey was going on and on about how we (the country) were headed in the wrong direction. Not in a psycho way. It was a reasonable, amicable debate about economic policy.

Even still, how reasonable can it be to promote tax cuts for big business and deregulation as a cure for the economic crisis that was caused by tax cuts for big business and deregulation.

Tax cuts and deregulation are a failed policy for economic growth. They have the opposite effect because they promote wealth generation without giving anything back. Growth can only happen when people with money spend it. What we used to call in the eighties "trickle down economics". But since corporations are not expected to be good citizens, they use tax breaks to pad there bottom line instead of expansion. They use deregulation to take risks with impunity. Nothing actually trickles down.

I am not an educated man. But I'm no doorknob either. If I can see the flaw in Republican policy, why can't they? Are they just naive. Do they really believe that corporations and insurance companies will do the right thing if given the chance. What? Really? Even Alan Greenspan, one of the biggest supporters of deregulation, has testified that he was wrong. It just never occurred to him that banks and insurance companies would behave in an irresponsible manner. He seemed shocked that they would put profit ahead of the good of the economy.

But that's what they do. Corporations act in their own self interest. If they make money, it is not their problem if everyone else is starving. Republicans call that the free market.

I call it just plain stupid.

Done for now.
rob

Fun With Old, Rusty Things

Had a pretty productive day. Spent it with my friend Boog working on my car. It's a 1968 Ford Torino GT fastback. Brenda says that I'm getting a new car one piece at a time. Had to change the timing gear a while back. Ford decided to coat the gear in plastic to make it quieter, but after forty years the plastic went went to pieces.

But this created a secondary problem. Where did the plastic from the timing gear go? Well it turns out it ends up in the oil pan where it can block the filter for the oil pump. So we had to remove the oil pan and clean it out. First of all, YUCK!! Forty years worth of oil, rust and gunk in my hair. Second, a big fuck you to the engineers at the Ford Motor Company. I've become convinced that they use some form of magick during the assembly process. They cast a spell on the parts that causes all tapped holes to move 2 mm off center in any direction if they are ever disassembled to ensure that they will not line up when you go to put them back together.

We put the front end up on ramps and put chocks behind the back wheels. Safety first. Then we took out the bolts from the oil pan. Naturally it wouldn't just drop out from under the engine. So we unbolted the motor mounts and jacked up the engine off of the oil pan. That allowed the pan to clear the oil pump. And bump right into the sway bar. So we had to unbolt the sway bar and move it out of the way. With almost unheard of good fortune, it came loose without any real trauma. Generally, when removing parts from an old car you can expect every fourth bolt to snap off.

So we got the oil pan off and began to clean it. This may have been the nastiest thing that I have ever done in all of my years of working on cars. It was even worse than brake work which leaves you covered in soot and always draws blood. There was gunk layered on top of crud on top of ick on top of grime coated with old motor oil. First we tried degreaser with scraping implements. Degreaser my ass. We finally switched to gasoline with green scrubby pads. That did the trick. Oil pan so clean you could eat Coco Puffs out of it. Then a quick shot of Ford blue. I figured that I may as well paint it while it was out cause I'm never taking it out again.

We reversed the process to get it back in. The air turned cold, the wind howled ominously carrying the distant chants of a coven of witches employed by Ford. Every bolt hole shifted 2 mm off center. My big assed screwdriver of doom helped to get the motor mounts sort of lined back up. When working on my Ford, I always keep my big assed screw driver and a hammer near by. The hammer is just for anger management. Shear force of will got the pan bolts to thread. Bolted the sway bar back in place and the horror was over.

Changed the oil filter, added six quarts of Quaker State 10-40 and started her up. Nothing gushing out of the bottom. Yet.

Maybe tomorrow I'll fix the power steering. Or sit around in my underwear and watch T.V. I don't know.


Done for now.
rob

Foul Language

I set up this blog and tagged it as adult content. I did this mostly so that I would not have to watch my language. I didn't want complaints in case I dropped an f-bomb now and again.

But I didn't have any foul language or adult content in my initial post so I thought I would pop back on and do a bit to justify the adult content tag. So here goes.

FUCK - FUCK - FUCKITY - FUCK - FUCK!!!! God damned mother fucking fuckballs. Pig shit slurping piece of fucking fuckmeat. Stupid , ass licking bitch cunt.

But enough about Glen Beck.


Done for now.
rob

Welcome To The Dollhouse

Well, I finally had to break down and start a blog. I've resisted this because I was sure that no one would be interested in what I had to say. I mean, I've checked out blogs by people who, like me, were of no real significance and found that I was not interested in what they had to say. Why should anyone feel any differently about me? Then I realized that I don't care if anyone is interested. So I may as well join in. Plus it will give me a chance to brush up on my writing skills, something that was at one time finely honed, but like any skill, diminishes if you don't practice.

This will be a blog about nothing in particular. I plan to rant about politics, movies, dvds, home life, pretty much anything that pops into my fevered little brain.

For instance, today I watched "Bubba Hotep" with a friend of mine. If you haven't seen this little gem I strongly recommend it. It is an independent film from 2003 starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley. It also stars the late Ossie Davis ( yes, the grandpa from "The Cosby Show") as Jack Kennedy. They do battle with a mummy at a rest home in Texas.

This is a role that only the king of "B" movies could pull off. I don't want to give too much away because it is something you just have to see to appreciate.

Also I want my god damned government health care. That's right. From "B" movies to socialism without a segue. Try to keep up people. I dare you.

From the inane to world politics, tune in for a laugh riot thrill ride that is fun for the whole family.

Done for now.
rob