Better or Worse?

So thanks to our State of Ohio social safety net of welfare I was able to get an eye exam.  I picked the doctor out of the provider directory because he had the same name as Deep Purple's bass player back in the Seventies and the office was close by.  When you look through this machine they flip different lense combinations back and forth and ask "Better or worse?"  until it gets so close you can hardly tell the difference.  It makes me think of all the political ads that are infesting TV lately.  Better or worse?  A thief or a creep?  A Commie or a Nazi?    I want more choices, or even a "None of the above" selection.

They put drops in the eyes to dilate the pupils so they can look inside.  It makes you very light-sensitive so they give you a little sunglass panel to help shield the peepers.  It takes a long while for the dilation to wear off and it was a beautiful sunny day.  Women used to do the same thing with belladonna (deadly nightshade) so their eyes would be big, dark, and beautiful.  I'm not sure if they used the same stuff on me or not.

By the way, a couple of days later I also got a colonoscopy but I left my camera in my pants in the locker, plus I was narcotized/sedated, so no pics.  But they tell me it was something like this.  Except they didn't find any gerbil adventures, nor polyps neither, just a bit of diverticulosis.  That's right, I got me some pouchy chitlins.  I need less stress, more fiber.

Friday Clearance On Pics & Links

Greetings, my friends!  Once again I'm devoting Friday's post to clearing out my photo archive and Favorites list.  Here's one for my good friend Lili, who posts over on FEARLESS NESTING.  (Hey the pic reminds me of her white pumpkins!)  It's the 10 in 10 Diet.

The 10 in 10 Diet is a total system that makes it easy to transition off meat and cook healthy food conveniently while keeping your grocery bill under $150 a month per person, and reducing our contribution to climate change – think 10% reduction by remembering these 10 key points. It's a way to fast track to a simpler, more peaceful life. It's totally possible to really enjoy food while eating more like the majority of people in the world.

Too many people live just the way the Fat Cats & Corporations want them to live.  To live they way you want, you have to be as self-reliant as possible.  Check out Adventures In Self Reliance for some neat do-it-yourself projects, especially the food.  She has a recipe for Homemade Survival Bars that sounds pretty good, plus fruit leather and such.

You can see what nature thinks of fences.  Robert Frost's poem said "good fences make good neighbors" but he seemed not to agree with his own poem's character who said it.  I feel the same.  I haven't really been all that fond of neighbors since I moved out of Mom & Dad's place next door to Nanny & Grandy, and there was no fence betwixt.  Now, I've been called all kinds of hippy and anarchist for my views on property but my old pal George Carlin reminds us that we all need a place for our stuff.  He says if we didn't have so much stuff we could just walk around.  I got too much stuff - do you need any of it?

Did you ever feel that life was sending you coded message?  Ones and zeroes?  Just me, huh?  It figures.  If your Adobe Flash Player app seems hard to decipher you can get help, and make sure to protect your privacy and security.  You can also get lots of help with your Bleeping Computer.  Vigilant Citizen deciphers the occult symbols in modern buildings, songs, videos, and movies.

I'm not sure what my little friend here is up to but you can Enhance Beneficial Insects With Native Plants, highly recommended by my bee-keeping friend, Dr. Dan.  Maybe I can identify the little guy with Discover Life, a tool that has over a million and a quarter species pages.  There is also a huge amount of material at Encyclopedia Of Life.

Meet my friend Horace Wyche.  When I first met him he was a pretty skinny dude, then he made the decision to get fit.  He can help you do the same with his Hoss Innovative Fitness Training.

Injury report update

So-called legitimate journalists hate bloggers and belittle us at every opportunity, saying we lack credibility.  Therefore, I want to counter that and give you a news update on the young woman who fell in the fire when my band played 2 weeks ago.  As a reminder, I was singing on stage and happened to be looking right at her as she toppled backwards into the bonfire.  As a matter of fact, I was singing at the same place this past Saturday night and I flubbed the lyric because I flashed back to the image of her falling! Initial eyewitness reports said her hands were dripping burned flesh like a melted candle.  That perception may have been a bit distorted by the excitement of the moment.  A reliable source tells me that her name is Amy M and she suffered second degree burns to her hands but also broke her wrist, requiring a couple of pins to hold it together.  Kudos to Paul F who was standing close by and wrenched his back when he quickly yanked the fallen Amy from the bed of hot coals.  Way to go Paul!

Friday Clearance on Pics & Links

I have such an archive of photos that I'd like to share and an overcluttered Favorites collection in my web browser that I'm going to post a clearance, hopefully each Friday if I can be disciplined.  Hey, it could happen!

I don't get how people are nostalgic for the Reagan years.  He fulfilled my college economics professor's prediction that he could not both cut spending and reduce taxes, thereby tripling, maybe even quadrupling the national debt.  You call that conservative?  Hmmm.  More like setting us on the road to debt slavery.   And what about the treasonous conspiracy that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair?  Selling weapons to Iran through Israeli intermediaries?  That just shows you that those people are loyal only to money and power and just use patriotism as a mask in public.  They even dealt drugs to fund their adventures while cracking down on Americans with their empty "Just Say No" sloganeering, pushing for drug testing to get a decent job, and putting many more people under government control by jail, parole, and probation.  Such hypocrites!  Such massive corruption!I can't believe those people are still walking around free!  People may not realize that there hasn't always been a middle class.  Labor unions have been an important tool for working people to better their lives, at least until the labor leaders became Fat Cats themselves.  Even though old Ron was big in the union when he was an actor, he struck a blow against working people when he broke the air-traffic controllers strike.  Reagan proved to be a tool of the Fat Cats.  He sold us out in favor of the elite: "Mission Accomplished."

So our power seems to have been handed over to Big Brother and our wealth seems to have been shovelled into the coffers of the elite super-rich.  But they only take good enough care of us to drain us further.  All us peasants have to join up and show our masters that we don't need them.

 "5 Doomsday Scenarios For The U.S. Economy" was posted in early September and already seems a bit out of date as the foreclosure fraud scandal grows, currency wars loom, and jobs are still scarce.

I first started this blog with the tagline saying "That Crashing Sound is the collapse of the middle class, or maybe it's just me" thinking that I was firmly in that group.  As I studied it more, it looked as if the party was over before I got there.  People can't even agree on what "middle class" means, it's such a wide range of income and social indicators.  Here are 6 Signs That You've Made It To Middle Class.  Do you fit in?  Remember, a mortgage is debt, not ownership.  And don't get too comfortable:  here are 22 Statistics That Prove That The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America.  I feel so wonderful at being validated!

There is a new word in our language:  99er, meaning someone who has exhausted all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits with no more extensions.  You may hear news reports of a drop in unemployment, which ignores these people.  Perhaps even worse you may hear the newsreaders say these people have given up looking for a job.  And in related news, here are the 2009 Federal Poverty Guidelines.  How does your income compare?

The super-rich people have been buying gold literally by the ton, abandoning the stock market to computers doing high-frequency trading, as much as 70% of all trading volume, getting price information 30 milliseconds before the rest of us and making profits on the tiniest of changes regardless of the value of the stock, while us peons are told to buy and hold for the long term.  Glitches in this system have also spawned a new term in our language:  Flash Crash.  Savings accounts used to be the way to go until they crippled them to give practically no return on investment.  This was done to force us to take risks in the stock market.  We have no security net for those risks.  The big players get their bailouts.  Socialized loss, privatized gain.  That's the real transfer of wealth that people should be worried about.  Oh yeah, this happened under the Bush regime but Obama seems no different.  Another tool of the elite.

Health Care At Last!

So we're finally broke enough to get welfare.  I've had zero medical care since corporate America chewed me up and shat me out about three years ago.  I've had zero infectious disease since I've not been cooped up in an office breathing other people's air, touching other people's keyboards, or sharing cells in a call center.  But now we're covered and we're catching up on those over-fifty type things we're supposed to worry about.  Dig that generationally appropriate Bugs Bunny bandaid I'm sporting.  Nobody ever messed with Bugs without paying a heavy price.  Mel Blanc, one of the most under-rated actors ever.  Anyway, they gave me a tetanus shot and threw in an adult pertussis booster, since we have baby Logan in the house.  My arm swelled up like Popeye and I felt kinda crappy for a couple of days.  I did it for little Peewee!

Speak of the devil!  That child loves to be nakey.  I don't know where she gets it ;-)  Logan recently had her 3-month checkup, can you believe it?  Her growth is in the 80th percentile for girls her age.  She's doing great, learning to coo and starting to roll over, switched to soy formula and gulping it 6 ounces at a pop.  We'll do a feature on Logan and relatives again soon.

This is the view of Clifton from the window of Good Samaritan hospital where Marcy had her colonoscopy.  They snipped out one polyp and the biopsy came back OK.  She also had a mammogram at Mercy Mt. Airy.  They had some concern about one of the images so they called her back for a retake.  After a closer look they decided it was granular tissue, not to worry.  Marcy goes back to her doctor later this month for a followup.

OK, back to yours truly.  My blood pressure had been reading pretty high at those machines in Kroger and the doctor verified that.  They did an electrocardiogram in the office and showed me a big spike on one of the charts that was about twice as big as they like to see.  They said it was a sign of left ventricular hypertrophy, basically an enlargement of part of my heart from pumping against that untreated high blood pressure all this time.  To determine the extent of the enlargement, they sent me to Mercy Fairfield for an echocardiogram of my heart.  I had seen sonograms of Logan in utero, and this was pretty much the same.  They even have a doppler funtion that can shade different directions of blood flow red and blue to make sure the valves are working properly.  Really neat.  I guess I'll get the results when I go back to my doc later this month.  By the way, my doc prescribed lisinopril for the high blood pressure, and it seems to be working well.  The Kroger machine recently said about 104/74, the lowest reading I can remember in my life!

After the echocardiogram I figured I had fasted long enough so I stopped back in the doctor's office to have blood drawn for my lipid profile.  From my own past tests and current family conditions I expected my cholesterol and/or triglycerides to read high.  I've even been trying to write a song, "My Cholesterol Is Higher Than My Credit Score," but my doc called and said it was fine.  Must be from eating lots of olive oil, avocados, nuts, whole grains, and sushi.  I still need to get the numbers when I go back so I can compare to my credit score, just for kicks.  I also have appointments scheduled for an eye exam and my own colonoscopy - I can't wait!  I'll keep you posted.

Fantasy at Pier 27

So it was Homecoming Weekend for Ross Senior High School, time to get back together with the guys and dust off those old classic rock songs for a gig at Pier 27  (formerly The Farm).

We've all known each other since the mid-Seventies and played in various combinations together in various bands. We played under the name "Fantasy" for this job.  I never was acually a member of Fantasy back in the day, but it holds some dear memories for some of the guys and they hoped the name would be recognized, so I was cool with it.  Left to right that's Randy Campbell, Ron Gray, me, Paul Roberts, and Mike Sawyers.

We played outside on a cold and damp night, so I layered the turtleneck & silk shirt & leather vest and was comfortable.  The hair helps.  I got more hair in my ears than some of the guys have on their noggins.  The rest of the guys who actually play instruments had those little chemical-pack hand warmers to keep their hands ready for action.

You may notice I had a little podium thing off to the side for the song list and some of the lyrics.  They say the whatchamacallit is the first thing to go.  I guess we're all a bit long in the tooth.  Much of our conversation at band practice pertains to arthroscopic surgery and blood pressure medication and such.  Old Grandpa has still got it though!

Paul & Mike, guitar duel.  Foghat maybe?

Referee Randy is ready to blow the whistle on Ronnie for a tempo violation.

Mike broke a string about three songs into the performance.  Doh!  Had to grab his spare guitar.

It was a fun night but at one point as I was singing Grand Funk's "Closer To Home (I'm Your Captain)", I looked out into the crowd and witnessed a woman toppling backward into the firepit, her hands naturally plunging into the blazing hot bed of coals and her hair catching fire.  The people nearby yanked her out at once and she ran, probably to get some cold water on those hands, what was left of them.  Somebody close by said he saw the burned flesh dripping off her hands like a melted candle.  But of course, the band played on, and we soon heard the siren of an ambulance speeding to her aid.  I hope she will be OK.

Hey, somebody filled Paul's glass guitar slide with tequila - better empty it so you can play that solo you got coming up...

That's Pauls daughter Tara getting a pic of her daddy jammin.

Go boys go!  I'm behind the camera where I belong.

So I cut off Paul's head but he still rocks!

Lights are on but nobody home.

We shared the stage with some more Ross boys, Okeanas, known as southwest Ohio's premier roots-rock band.  Any band named after my blessed little hometown had better be good, and yes they were.