Love Stinks

Press the button. Make the call. Send the e-mail. Write the letter. Send the text. Save the pictures. Smell the clothes. Feel the warmth, the cold. Forget it. Never forget. Let it go. Try again.

Loving someone that's lost can be a truly awesome experience, but not in the sense of how that word is misused these days. The transcendent power of the chase, of conquest, of loss, whether by choice, luck or misadventure, has no peer. Every emotion is wrung up and tasted like bile. No paranoid corner dark with anxiety is revealed to be less than knowing. And still, the mind seeks and hopes, forlorn and withering against the truth of it.

So much worse when the chemistry is undeniable. That was it - the singularity of oneness collapsed into a black hole of separation. The laws of the universe prevent the rejoining of what man hath put asunder.

But wait: there's more!

If there's a will, there's a way. A stitch in time saves nine. A penny saved is a penny earned. Oh, who is today's fool? Lover, come back to me? Fat chance.

Too many words, too much lost time, too much hurt - all are expedient excuses when the potentials are there to be exercised. It boils down to a decision that it's just too much damned work, too many damned compromises and, by the way, the grass is looking a damn sight greener on the other side of the fence. Today. Right now. Why wait?

Live, love, laugh.

Yeah, whatev.

The adult thing is to let it go, admit the mistake, decide to move forward, decline defeat, embrace the future.

Yeah, whatev. Again. As if. As if the face could escape memory. As if that memory would simply fizzle away in sparkly confetti, reassembly denied by nature. As if the sound of your voice, your bell-like laugh, your ruddy cough, your breathing, heavy and deep with sleep could find its way into those dark corners where demons wait and snuff out your absence. As if.

No walk alone is without you. No meal without a thought of your provision. No feeling without the sense of a ghostly touch from you. No wind without your scent.

There can't be a goodbye. Apparently, it's not allowed. Yet, the die is cast. Shut up!

Lighten Up, Will Ya?

A little humour to brighten your day:

Two cannibals are eating a clown.
One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"
______________
Man with a strawberry stuck up his bum goes to the doctor.
The Doctor says "I'll give you some cream to put on it."
______________
"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The green, green grass of home'."
"That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"Well……..It's not unusual………"
______________
A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only cling film for shorts.
The shrink says, "Well, I can clearly see you're nuts."
______________
Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
One says, "I think I've lost an electron."
The other says, "Are you sure?"
The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive."
______________
Answer phone message:
"If you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key…"
______________
A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?"
"Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him." So, he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth. Finally, he says "I'm going to have to put him down."
"What? Because he's cross-eyed?"
"No, because he's really heavy."
______________
Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese.
And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them.
It's either my mum or my dad.
Or my older brother Colin.
Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu.
But I think it's Colin.
______________
I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.
______________
My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli. He was pulled in by a strong currant.
______________
A man came round in hospital after a serious accident.
He shouted,"Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!"
The doctor replied,"I know you can't. I had to amputate your arms"
______________
I went to a really energetic "Seafood Disco" last week and pulled a mussel.
______________
Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.
______________
A man walks into doctor's office.
"What seems to be the problem?" asks the doc.
"It's … um … well … I have five penises," replies the man.
"Blimey!" says the doctor, "How do your trousers fit?"
"Like a glove."

Logs

"Lair" is a blog that exists to express random thoughts and often, things that Lincoln would have put in his desk overnight only to be ripped up in the morning. Lincoln was a smart man. I'm not Lincoln.

Schweinekoteletts

God, am I stupid. I'm probably the stupidist person I know. I'm just so unforgivably stupid. Really, really stupid. Stoopid stupid. And just plain dumb.

What the hell was I thinking? What? Why do I hatch these plans and convince myself that they really should work, that these gargantuan scenarios which I love so well are the best compromise between what I should be doing and what I want to do? What screw is missing in my mousetrap of a brain that causes to be missing the critical cog that should easily direct me to an actually fruitful conclusion? Huh? I want to know?

Here is where I am.

Here is where I should have wound up. But no, not me. Gad. So stuuuuuuuuuuupid.

And yet, I still have hope. Hope that it will come out all fine. Hope that my more rational mind tells me is an extension of the delusion that had me put myself on this path in the first place.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take much to snap me back to reality. A few recollections thrown into the mix of my already overheated and constantly recycling mind, the resulting plunge into a depression on the realization of the foregoing which, in turn, solidifies my belief that the klaxons in my head screaming "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" are tuned to just the right frequency to capture my full attention.

Not being alone in this experience DOES NOT make it better. Either side of the good or evil teeter-totter that seems to be applicable to any decision and choice I've made absolutely sucks. And I mean that I'm not in this alone since thousands of years of poetry, prose and song support that particular observation.

And do you know why I'm in this tizzy? Maybe you or you don't, but you do and that f•cking pisses me off all the more, at myself, of course. Oh, well. F•ck me, I guess. Stupid.

The problem is that I got just what I wished for - a date with the cruelest mistress of them all: fate. Please, Mistress, command me to do your bidding though I am unworthy. I beg your forgiveness for my snivelling nature. Please forgive me for anything I might do to displease you now or at some point in the future, no matter how unreasonable your expectations may be. Please grab my party bits and slam them flat with the latest Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.

In return, I will spank you until your bottom turns the color or the great flag of the People's Republic of China.

No? That won't do it? Screw you, then. I have free will, you know. "Will he?" they whisper, collectively wondering how far he could go. Free will. Free Willy!

Dangle, dangle, strangle: I had thought this the modus operandus of a variety of female types I had encountered over the course of time, but I was wrong to limit this concise observation and will now include ALL humans. And yes, it would be convenient to blame the rest of the world for my apparent lack of open-minded scenario-building, but I can't, simply can't. I note this only because I now realize that I was absent that day where the politics of dealing with human beings and learning to go with the flow of same was taught.

Destiny has a funny way of not always being all that random. I am a planner and I hate that which could be attributed to fate, karma or some other thing unseen that corrupts the plans of men. It makes me think of Tulsa and how bad things were there and how bad they probably still are and then, some hidden prose rises like a bad meal of boiled steak and beans and I read this, from a time far away and a place long ago:

You ever see a bird.
And you're like, this bird is mine.
So, you say to yourself: "This is mine. I own this." The map and the intention mesh. You feel kind of smug.
So, you see a girl a grrlllllllllllllll, tits and EVERYTHING.
And the seeds of desire are sown, because they're seeds and that's what we do with seeds, sow.
The next thing you know, she's telling you about the boyfriend, but you've seen her pupils dilate, and before the night's over, you're covered in mosquito bites and her sweat and spit and she smells like hope.
But that never happened because you're not stupid enough to try to smash a clam. No, who wants clam shards in their mollusk? Otters. Gulls. A two item list. But, you've got your ears open. Words and confidences fan out like. Reinforcing signals emerge, lapping against the edges of your GOLDEN BOWL OF LUST.

"Hi!" You squeak.
"Would you like a cigarette?" she asks. But you haven't smoked in months. She reminds you of a shady lane. So you take two cigarettes worth of drags, and it's all you can do not to blow on her pooch whenever she lifts her arms.
You lean over and smell her and nothing, bills, personal oblivion, dissatisfaction with your career, any kind of setback in the past, even murder, rape, cowardice, betrayal, whatever, it doesn't matter, anxiety melts away.

She tastes like pot but those eyes are anything but distant.
Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes.

And you come to the conclusion that after all this pursuit, all this sex, and need and hunger, that you've reached an endpoint, you've finally jumped a shark.

"Where you from?"
"Indianapolis."
"Are you expected back?"
"Later or never."
"Where you headed, baby?"
"The bottom of the sea."

Yes - I have to dredge up every emotion, every experience, every conclusion, every hope, fear and regret and I have to set them all out like a sorrowful buffet and sort them out once and for all, this time, with no endpoint in mind. And make some new choices, I think, including accepting the possibility that I won't make any choice at all. On the other hand, status quo is pretty boring. I don't do boring.

Blow the dust off your crystal ball and shine it up, will ya? Where thou goest, I shall follow. Oh, geesh, now I have to think something up. It never ends. Never. Not ever.

What Are You? Deaf?

I just saw Andrea Bocelli in concert and I don't know why. It was in Las Vegas, was all drippy with Spanish and Italian love songs and was topped off with guys holding torches that jumped into the fake canal at the casino where the concert was held, all finally decorated with fireworks a la Seaworld. Somebody's idea of a good time, I suppose.

Aphorism

The very best thing about having your back constantly up against the wall is what it can do for your posture.

If I Was Not Me And This Was My First Go At A Blog

Here we are broadcasting from high atop Mount Palomar, which is home to the once-famous Mount Palomar Observatory, located in the beautiful San Bernadino mountains. This is obviously a great place for a telescope since there are more stars here than anywhere else!

You know, I was thinking about doing the MySpace thing, but I changed my mind. Everybody's doing it. "Do you have a MySpace page? Do you? Do you?" No, I don't freakin' got one. Why should I be like every other loser on the planet, right?

So, I'm starting out on this blog thing and I'm saying to myself, what do I have to say? The first thing I come up with is "um, um, um" and so, that's the title of this blog. I call it a blog thing because I hope it will be something more than just words, like pictures and videos and stuffs. I have a german friends that calls stuff "stuffs." I correct him, but you know foreigners aren't too smart, that's why they can't speak English good.

Anyhow, I work like everybody else but I'm looking for the Next Big Thing. I don't know what that is yet but that's good because if I knew what it was then everybody would too and then it wouldn't me the next big thing. Right? Right? So, like, I'm looking for opportunities that I can exploit, which means that I can make work for me with luck and hard work. I can't work on the gluing machine at the box factory forever even though I probably will make supervisor next year when Gus (Fussy Gus) throws in the towel and finally retires. Or dies.

In the meantime, I'm looking for a special lady. You know, someone who can be there, can cook good, likes to go out, wants to take care of my kids, or I mean, our kids and stuff. She's gotta work too until I hit on that next big thing I was talking about before, but it'll be alright.

Right now, I have a pretty okay job, my brother's still in Iraq and when he comes out, maybe we'll open a detailing shop together. He might stay in, though. We didn't have the chance to talk much since he joined up, He wanted to get away from being a kid brother, I guess and now he's a big man, a soldier and all that. You gotta respect him for making a big step with his life. But we both graduate from high school though I have to admit that he's smarter than me, but I'm better with the girls! Sometimes I wonder if he's maybe a fag, but I don't think so. Anyway, my Father would never talk to him and my mother's heart would be broken into little pieces, like she says, 'cause then he wouldn't have grandkids. But I could make up for that!

So, I could see that happen. Me running the business and him working the customers and running the crew, He would have experince, right? Being that he was a sarge and all. So, that would work out pretty good. But I don't know. He got a lot of money for college from the Army so I guess that's what he might do. Then he might be running the business and I'll work my charms on the customers! We could sell rims, too and stereo installation. Who knows how far we could go? But, by myself, I don't know. It would be too hard with a new wife and kids. We'll see.

In the meantime, there's a girl I like but she's way older than me. She's Latina, which is bangin, and she's got older kids, like in their twenties and whatnot. But she is so bangin, it's sick. She is like a Latina princess. And I know she works next door cause I see her come in around lunch time and she leaves way after I quit work. I know cause sometimes I waited for her. Sometimes I could see her through the factory windows, too, when she parks at the end of the lot, and she's just sittin in her car and I think she's crying. She just looks like she's shaking and sobbing. I wish I could go out to her and comfort her, but I know I would scare her and maybe she would think I'm a stalker or something, I don't know.

But she has long black hair, huge bazongas (I don't think I can say "rack" or "tits" here) and some sweet thighs that I'd just like to sink my teeths into. Jesus, she is too much. And a guy like me? At my age? Oh, you know I could keep her satisfied and stop her crying. You just know it. But she's pretty old and that's okay, cause I know she must like movies and dancing and stuffs. I think one day soon I'm gonna ask her out or at least let her know I'm available, then she can make the right choice, know what I mean?

Anyhow, I'm gonna cut this short since this is my first time and all. My boss is a woman and she is a bitch on wheels. She's not mean but I swear she's into S&M cause she will torture you until the product ships. Her name's Carla, but all the guys on the floor call her Carl cause she might as well be a man. She's my mom's age, but sometimes she dresses a little slutty, which is not respectable for a woman, okay? Yeah, she looks okay, but with a woman like that you gotta be careful that she not gonna break your dick off in the process. So, she wants everybody in early tomorrow even though it's the day before Thanksgiving and who wants to work anyhow? So, I better not be late or she's gonna hook my nipples up to the forklift charger. She probably like it, too. ;)

I'm gonna try to tell my story like you're ready a diary, so when stuff happens or occurs to me, that's when I'm gonna fill this up. Probably, it'll be pretty good stuff to read, I don't know. Okay! Chow for Now as they say in Italy!

Mystery Solved, Sort Of

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? I wrote about the phenomenon of "earworms," that is, songs or tunes that enter your brain and just keep repeating over and over again. I've had a similar experience for the last thirty years or so, but with words, specifically, a phrase and the beginning of a joke that I was concocting back in my lost youth. I think about them every day. Not compulsively, not to the exclusion of all else, but without fail, these things will enter my conciousness, not associated with any particular thought or activity, and simply sit there, poking me, until they go away. Now, one issue has been at least partially resolved.

In the early eighties, I was playing with a band on tour in the Southwest. Before a show in either Phoenix or Flagstaff, I can't remember which except that the town started with a eff sound, I was driving with the other guitar player from one place to another and saw the following bumper sticker on the back of a burgundy red Chevy pick-up truck:

NO PITE, NO JODA

"Hey, look at that. What the hell does that mean? " I said to my pal. " He peered at it through his turtle glasses which he only wore while driving, though he was more or less as blind as me and neither of us wore our specs while performing - how vain. He read and repeated the words aloud and said, "It's no Spanish I ever learned. Maybe it's Portugese. They're a little similar." The light turned green, the truck made a right and the image of that tailgate with that inscrutable message was burned into my mind forever. When we got to where we were going, I recall asking around. There were plenty of native Spanish-speakers, but no one had any idea of what it meant.

As time passed, that phrase echoed in my mind once a day, like a storm horn, only quieter. I would ask just about anyone I encounter, if I knew them a bit, if they had ever seen this phrase or whether any of the words might be something they'd run across in the past. No joy. I went to the library, asked the help of librarians, spoke to a Spanish teacher, a professor of Portugese, who told me that the word structure wasn't Portugese. My Dad, who spoke at least five Slavic languages plus German fluently and a little Italian, too, in addition to English, had no clue whatsoever. I had a girlfriend during that time who was brought up in an Italian and Swedish-speaking household and it rang no bells for her, either.

NO PITE, NO JODA

The phrase haunted me into the dawn of the internet age. Before there was Google, I searched out the phrase in whatever search engines or portals were available - AltaVista, AOL, Compuserve, Yahoo - you name it. Nuthin'. Later, I Googled it, many times over the years as the Google database grew and grew. Finally, I asked a Rican, a Puerto Rican, that is, who is fluent in their brand of Spanish, which, for some probably macho-nationalistic-my-fubol-team-is-better-than-yours-and-you-don't-even-have-a-team-puta reason, other Spanish speaker deride and denigrate. That's their battle: I just want to know what the heck this insidious phrase means, already.

So, here's what it means:

Don't beep (your horn), don't mess with me.

Alternatively, the second part of the phrase can mean "don"t f•ck with me" when used with emphasis.
It's simple, it makes sense and yet, no one could help me with this for thirty frickin' years? Hmm, maybe my PR translator is dead wrong. So, I asked around, but this time, I sought out Carribean Spanish speakers - a Cuban, a Dominican and another Puerto Rican. "Oh, si, sure I can tell you what that means," said the Cuban. "It say, don't press on me, don't bother me." Okay, so, his English wasn't so good, but that's close enough. The Dominican said, "You shouldn't say that to someone who speaks Spanish unless you wanna get cut. It means, like, 'don't push my buttons, don't whistle at me, don't f•ck with me'. So, like a girl might say that if you're, like, gittin' on her at the club, you know?" Thanks, Oskar. And finally, the proof that countrymen often stick together because they more or less are tightly bound by culture and history, the Puerto Rican told me, "Sure, that means 'don't beep at me and don't mess with me." It's not that hard to figure out. What was that? On a bumper sticker?" Tip o' the hat, Ramon.

Of course, now I'm wondering how this particular bumper sticker relates to history. Was it just a clever phrase like, "Please don't tailgate and we won't meet by accident"? Or was it the battle cry for some union battle or in defense of the rights of migrant workers or grassroots support for an obscure town council seat in a dusty Arizona or New Mexico hamlet. Three decades ago, that is, so long ago that contemporaries will have forgotten what the fight was about and, in hindsight, the contested matter was really not such a huge deal after all and so, in turn, no real record exists, except maybe for the Sun Star Herald Intelligencer's newpaper archives where a grainy, yellowed photo shows the sticker being proudly displayed at a rally of some kind by a youngish dude in a white straw range hat with a bristol-white smile and his future entirely ahead.

It's possible, I guess, but I'll probably never know for sure. It's yet another fact that I can't verify. Sigh.

At the beginning of this thang, I mentioned there were two things that had been stuck in my head and I will not disappoint you. The joke I started so many years ago and cannot finish, starts like this:

Two Jews walk into a bar.

Go from there. Go ahead. Try it. You will fail. I have failed, miserably. Maybe I should find another Jew and walk into a bar and just . . . see . . . what . . . happens. Not fer nuthin', but Tyler and Calvin, fairly typical, at least IQ-wise, inhabitants of "truth by consensus" websites like ask.com (notice no link, okay?) can't figure it out, either:

So, clearly, it's not just me. I will make you a deal, such a deal like you have never seen before in your LIFE! Help me put this last "brainworm" to sleep and I will do something nice for you. I don't know what yet, but I will figure something out. Now: GET TO WORK being funny.

Roto Photo

Prepare to DIE!

I wrote last week about all the nasty men and women I had to visit, the ones in white coats. Last Friday's appointment with Mr. GP, MD, DO, FACS and all that was a lengthy one indeed - two hours, in fact. Since no one asked, okay, someone asked but who knows if I'll be talking to her anytime soon, let alone before I croak, here's the rundown of that very fun morning:

I was prompt. I promptly wrote a check for my copay and I was promptly whisked into Exam Room 9, which was all the way at the back of the facility. I'm guessing that my screams would be less apparent to those who shuffled, hobbled and we dragged by purportedly loving family members into the waiting room after my early arrival, hence, the placement. The nurse promptly appeared and took my blood pressure, which was too low, then, too high. She asked me if I was nervous and I explained that I had White Coat Syndrome and that I thought this was sort of like taking a test you know you didn't study for and was likely to fail. She looked at my chart and gave me a wan smile, with slightly pitying eyes. "It's okay. The doctor will be in, in a minute." I'm not sure if she inserted that comma in her mind when she said that, but that's what I saw floating in front of her when she said it and so, I am reproducing it here so that there can be no grammatical ambiguity about what I imagined. Really, with that particular sentence structure, one is trapped. The second "in" can't be left out, right?

Anyway, as I always do, I got the full soup-to-nuts (literally) work-up, including a fresh and digital EKG. I think the nurse was fixated on my nipples when she was applying the electrodes. Or maybe, I was imagining it. No, I'm pretty sure my nipples would be dinner conversation at Nursey's house:"Well, I must say I've never seen such puffy nipples on a man. They looked a little like baby plums. You know, those tiny Japanese ones? No, the plums, I mean." I should mention that I got to don what must be the haute couture for Le Monde de Medécin, that is, a white garment made of what I believe was Bounty, you know, the Quicker Picker Upper, modeled after what could only be described as a samurai kimono, only without the cool designs evoking bamboo or leaves or carp.

Promptly thereafter, the doctor came in, not making eye contact, as is his practice. I guess I make him nervous. Instead, he rolled up to where I was perched, on the edge of the examining rack, er, table, at roughly ball level, tapping away at his wireless laptop. He asked me to detail my latest experiences and I told him about the increasing arrythmias and the exhaustion. He looked at the EKG, my EKG, on his laptop in silence. I thought he was about to say something House-ian, but, no luck. He asked me about my Hep C. I said, "Whut? Wrong disease, doc. What else have you got in there?" "Sorry, sorry, maybe the software did it. So, you've never had gout? Or gall bladder problems?", he said, fearing that his software was making him look foolish, which it was. "Nope, happy to say that I don't have what Pam Anderson's got, but at the same time, I really haven't had the opportunity to have her expose me to it." Recovering, he said, "Well, at least you don't have syphilis." Mild chuckle from Dr. P. Then, without warning, he jumped up and stethescoped me and listened in a number of spots, but particularly at my carotid artery, specifically at the junction where the artery splits off to go internal to the structure of the neck and external, closer to the skin, if you will. And he listened again, shhshing me when I started to say something. "Something going on there at the carotid bulb. Hmm. Hmm. Okay, first things first and then we'll order some pictures. Could be nothing." Could be nothing? Could be? Garshck, Doc, let me down easy, will ya?

And he continued to poke, prod and tickle. I avoided eye contact so he wouldn't think I was liking it too much. But, c'mon, for the patient, a doctor's visit is pretty intimate. After all, how many people do you know have you come by, grease up a finger, shove it up your butt and say, "Feels okay, no problems there at least?" Oh, you do? Really - how often? Hmm. Wow. Got any pics?

Then, he ran down one treatment that I was to enjoy for two weeks to follow. This involved swallowing GIANT green capsules. I hate pills. I CAN'T F•CKING SWALLOW THEM without thinking I'm going to choke to death and I almost always gag them back to the surface. Ech. Ecccccch. I hate it so much. And then, of course, I have to swallow them all over again. Eeeeeeek! So, I made up a joke about it. Here it is:

A guy goes to the doctor and the doc tells him he has Hep C or maybe gall bladder disease, but at least it's not syphilis. The doctor tells him that he can cure his problem, but he'll have to take these huge-ass pills for two weeks. The good news is that if he takes each and every pill as prescribed, he'll be permanently cured. The bad news is that if he misses even one, the treatment can't be repeated and he'll die for sure. So the guy takes all of this very seriously and decides to follow the doc's advice to the letter. But he hates pills, can't swallow them, never could. He tells the doctor this and the doctor says, "Well, you're in luck. I can either prescribe the pills or you can get suppositories." The guy decides to man it up all the way and goes for the pills. Two weeks later, he comes back to see the doctor and it turns out he's completely cured. "Yep, doc, I decided to take it like an hombre and I took every last pill." And the doctor says, "Pills? You mean suppositories, don't you?"

Yes, it could be funnier. Please write in with your lame suggestions on how to improve the world's second most wonderful joke. Next!

Now this part is no joke. I went down to the corner drugstore, to get my fair share of abuse (Rolling Stones reference - yay!) and to also get the prescription. You see, the highly trained staff at the doctor's office called it in so that it would be ready upon completion of my one minute and forty-five second drive from their office to the Wrong Aid. When I arrived, it was not ready. I wandered the aisles, peering at the stacks of Ramen selling for five times the cost of what was on offer at SlopRite and considering whether I indeed might need a Vince "I Can't Do This All Day" Shlomo-endorsed nut chopper, As Seen On TV. Wait - I though TV was obsolete.

Eventually, I wandered back to the pharmacy counter. I wasn't loitering too close, as the junior Mr. Gower, likely hailing from Islamabad rather than Bedford Falls, might "accidentally" put a wee bit o' poison in my supposi-, um, capsules and then he'd cuff me on the ear and twenty years later, I'd be standing on a bridge on Christmas Eve with some dude named Clarence and who wants that, right? As I approached, I straightened my spine to make my gaunt and withered frame more erect, open and less evocative of Plague. The rotund servile behind the apothecary's till, oh, God, I'm slipping purple, sorry - the fat broad behind the money machine - oh, gee, now I'm gone all Chandlery at the wrists. Okay - the "lady" behind the counter said, "May I help you?" I'm certain she needed to be hitting the Alzheimer's meds because I was just there, not twenty minutes ago. Am I that forgettable? Jovially, in my best mock-hippie voice, I said, "I'm here for the drugs, man, the drugs!" She chuckled at this, asked my name, I announced it and Ahmed The Dealer (the pharmacist's name has been changed to protect me) snapped at her that they were working on it. She turned to me and said, "He's working on it. Should be a few minutes." Sometimes people do the darndest things!

My pretty pills were soon ready to be cashiered. What I got, though wasn't correct, I thought, and it's not because I dropped out of Brooklyn's BA-MD program thirty years ago so that my ex-ex-wife could go to nursing school and actually graduate and instead wind up negotiating entertainment contracts nor is it because I've now seen each and every episode of House at least once nor is it because I was a devoted follower of ER and St. Elsewhere, though I still think the ending of the latter was bogus and I stopped watching the former three years before the finale. No, the drug was wrong because it started with an "A" rather than with a "D" and no, there's no generic for this stuff, that's for sure. So, on my way to have my scalp conditioned at the El Cheapo Barbershop, I called the doctor's office and told the now-harried deceptionist that I believed that I had received the wrong stuff and could she check it with Il Doctore? She asked me what I got. I told her. "I am pretty sure that this stuff will destroy my kidneys. Should I take it anyway?" Of course it wouldn't do that, but I was certain that it was wrong. She checked the computer. The same computer that had me suffering from Sleeping Sickness and elephantitis and colic. And Hep C, which ain't hep at all, daddy-o! "Yes, that's what the doctor ordered and that's what we called in." Grrr. Confrontation time. Oh, how I hate confrontation. "I'm sorry," I started, mildly insistent and meekly indignant, "but could you actually ask the doctor, just so that we can be sure that Sodium Cyanide is certainly his intended treatment? After all, my last check hasn't cleared yet." Don't get me wrong, she was nice about it, but I'm pretty sure that anyone else would have missed this. A doctor prescribed it, a pharmacist filled it: what could be wrong? "Let me call you back," she said on returning, "since I have to send the doctor an IM?" Interesting - an instant message within the office because he's with another patient, I first thought. Or, maybe, when he was purportedly peering at my EKG, he was actually finishing up a round of World of Warcraft.

My scalp was being soothed by a stylist I used before who is a dead ringer for that native girl from Avatar, only she's not blue, when the deceptionist called back twenty minutes later. The message was panicked: "Mr. X, DO NOT TAKE THAT PRESCRIPTION!. You are right, it's the wrong thing. DO NOT TAKE IT. I've called the correct prescription in. The doctor has verified that you're correct. Thank you." Five minutes later, another call and then another. I really should have called back and whimpered into the phone, "How could you do this to me . . . I trusted you . . ." and then just let the line disconnect.

So, I returned to the Belle Salon de Pharmacopie and got myself some new and equally gigantic pills. And, of course, there was the warning which I've now heard before one too many times, "These are likely to make you feel a little sick . . ." This time, I have been quite lucky, since, except for some very interesting poop, I'm not doing too bad. I'm thinking that all those pills might be piling up in my throat, stuck. Ack-ack!