Guessing Games

Well. I haven't written on here very much - at all? - about what has been going on in my life lately. Not that I have many readers - 2, 3? - and not that they don't already know...

Over the last two months, I've been having some severe stomach/abdominal pains. About a month and a half ago, it got so bad after three intense days that I had my parents take me to the emergency room. Some morphine and a CT scan later... they decided I did not have Appendicitis. Or a bad gall bladder (so they said). The word that they mentioned was Colitis, and possible Crohn's Disease. I was recommended to a gastro-intestinal specialist, given some Vicodin for the pain and some antibiotics to kill the inflammation they saw in my large and small intestines.

Well, I saw that doctor, and he recommended I have a test done where they stick a tube down my throat, blow dye into my stomach and bowels, and do a CT scan to see the results. He also said if I was feeling better, I could play the "wait and see" game. I didn't want to have to blow my system out with drugs to get ready for the test - I was already having lower bowel pain and issues from all the sickness, as it were - so I decided to play wait and see.

(INTERJECTION: for clarity's sake - I was not supposed to eat spicy or greasy foods, which I did my best to stay away from, for the most part. Also, the pain - my stomach hurts in general, but there is also a severe cramping and bloating that comes with it. Sometimes the bloating gets so bad that I feel like my insides surely will burst, and sometimes, I wish that would happen, as some kind of release from the pain. Read more below. End Interjection.)

Long story short: I was back in the emergency room within a week, almost two weeks exactly since the first time. I called my family doctor to get more meds, to no avail. The gastro-intestinal doctor denied me meds, too, and said to go to the emergency room (or so his nurse said). So, back to the ER I went, where I had another CT scan (this time with contrast dye) after a failed half-hour of trying to get my IV in. I ended up getting sick and vomitting in the hospital, after which I felt much better.

The second emergency visit prompted my stomach doctor to rush me in for... a colonoscopy. Now, I really had to blow my system out. This was about two weeks ago. It was miserable, I was and still am so sore from all the havoc wrecked on my system. Long story short: they found two polyps, sent away for biopsy, came back negative. No cancer, no evidence of Crohn's disease or Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I was given a clean bill of health - this past Tuesday.

So why did my pain return on Thursday? Part of it is surely my fault - I ate pizza on Tuesday night, I was so hungry (couldn't eat for 36+ hours) and I was craving something tasty. But, they said all the inflammation was gone, no trace of it. So, I thought, in essence, I was cured.

Turns out they may have been looking in the wrong place.

Since the ER does me little good - it's basically a chance to get high powered pain meds like Morphine, which works incredibly well but wears off and doesn't prevent the pain from returning - I decided to tough it out this weekend when the ailment returned.

Now I've got an appointment, as a consultation, to deal with my destroyed lower bowels on Monday, and the original Stomach Dye test that I turned down on Tuesday. Hopefully, we'll start figuring out what this IS, and not what it is NOT.

In the meantime... I am trying to keep my spirits up. This has been the first really bad medical thing I have had to go through. It's starting to get to me, to get into my head a little bit. I can't describe that... it's just odd to not be able to escape your pain. Pain medicines, the ones you buy over the counter, even the Vicodin they gave me, they all don't really work. They just tear my system up even more, which starts this whole thing over again.

For now, I am hanging in there. My life has been pretty disrupted, but I am game for the next steps... hopefully they can find out what is wrong, we can treat it, and I can move on. Keep your fingers crossed.

We Built The Pyramids

So... is geek really chic? It's a fun question. Is it now cool to be into video games, dungeons and dragons, striped shirts, big rims (glasses, not wheels), science fiction, and corduroys? Why not - what there is not to love?

After spending a good amount of time - in a short while, mind you - blitzing through the wonderful television series Freaks and Geeks, I was rewarded with The Big Bang Theory Season One, a gift from a friend that, well, kept on giving. Regretfully, I have not had time to watch the "Guided to Geek Chic" bonus feature - busy as I am downloading WoW patches and re-watching the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica in order to prepare for watching said show's fourth and final season - but seeing that the BBT season collection had such a thing as a featurette on Geek dress made me... start to think.

Now, I am a geek. Maybe not in the painfully obvious, and overblown, ways that the characters in BBT are, and a little less High School, and more a mixture of both the geeks and the freaks, as in Freaks and Geeks (my slavish devotion and rabid obsession with music gets me awfully close to freak territory - then again, the useless, nearly depthless amount of useless knowledge I possess about music probably swings me back towards geek - it's not physics, but I promise you, it's big and impressive...). But a geek, nonetheless. I own my fair share of esoteric geek material, such as a pretty fine collectioon of Dragonlance novels (and game materials), way too many BattleMechs, a bunch of the original Final Fantasy games for PlayStation (FF1 and FF2/4 being my faves), and Firefly and BSG and CSI seasons on DVD. We won't get into the bad movies I love.

TV shows like BBT make geeks fun, make 'em look cool. But me and you? We're not cool. Well, I am, but that's a different story. Then, it struck me... maybe I'm not geeky enough! I mean, this whole new geek world is supposed to be full of opportunities for us, like sex with scientific girls who play violin, and making out with cheerleaders, and all that jazz. I mean, am I missing something? Am I just too plan ordinary?

I have always been a fence sitter, one foot on one side of the yard, one foot in the other. I was never a full jock, never a full geek, never a full freak, never a full church kid. I was always somewhere in the middle, able to surf the social channels of high school with (relative) ease. Now, I got picked on a lot when I was younger, but as I aged, that changed, and by my junior year of high school I was pretty damned comfortable being the almost-jock/nerd/geek/churchkid/freak that I was. Does that mean I was everything and nothing, faceless, too homogenized to be exciting?

Nowadays? It's all rock music mixed with folk and metal. It's (not often) lifting weights afterwork and running on the treadmill mixed with (more often) weeks of being lazy, or (less often) walking the dog at that park or shooting hoops by myself. (and summer means hiking!!) It's Battlestar Galactica and World of Warcraft mixed with lots and lots of college and NBA basketball, cheesey and crude Judd Apatow movies, less crude but still corny Cameron Crowe movies, and The Who biography on DVD. It's t-shirts and jeans and work boots mixed with... sometimes a button down, but usually not much else. Maybe a sweater. It's geeky, boxy glasses mixed with a fading hairline and a goatee with the chin-strap, teeth all brushed and body all showered. It's fit everywhere else mixed in with a little beer tummy. It's cranky, silly humor mixed in with tempermental driving mixed with rapid fire wit and backporch, beer-and-cigarette philosphy, and long, late night conversations with good friends.

So, what I am trying to say, is that I am cool while being geek. Who know's if it's chic. Who cares? I can't quote physics equations, and I can't quote baseball statistics. I ain't tall, don't have good hair, and don't dress GQ. But I've got skillz on guitarz, Gheis and Choppy will make mince meat out of your Hordemoh little druid thing, and I can tell you that one of the original Beatles managers slept with the Beatles original drummer's mom, despite being 20+ years her junion, and whilst her son was still drumming in the band. Godspeed, Pete Best's mom. Godspeed.

Teenage Dirtbag?

Sigh. Drama. I thought geek was supposed to be chic? But seriously, listening to young people talk around my office, I always pause and wonder... how did we get this way? How did it get this bad?

I wonder when we're going to start appreciating people again. Maybe I am not the one to get on a soapbox here. I have a friend who constantly calls me out for not doing as much as she does for me. Sometimes I think that is just projection - we can't be everywhere at once. But many times I know she is right.

As I traverse the daily landscape of my life, I frequently forget about people who should be on my mind - a friend I haven't spoken to in months in the hospital, a friend far away who's mother is ill, making time to do something with my best friend from high school who lives right down the road from me - and instead focus on my own problems. That, I suppose, is human nature. And, I suspect, so too is prioritizing - participating in one friend's life more than another, and doing more for someone who means more to you than you might do for another friend. Sometimes, we might not do or say much but still feel a strong bond of friendship. I don't think the difference between one friend and another is a matter of slight or anything personal. Again, I suspect it is more human nature, and how strong we perceive our bonds of friendship to that person.

Bah. This was supposed to be a fun post, but conversations I overhear at work stick with me. They make me wonder. Making fun of a kid, ostracizing him because he didn't know how to ask you out, that's just bullshit. Relations between the opposite sex are hard enough on their own. Add in meanness and suspicion... and I swear, that kid is FAR BETTER OFF. Because I wouldn't wish some of these people, on their best day, on my enemies.

Which just reminds me... we all make fun of other people. Someone makes a terrible face, or does something silly, or makes some hideous cheese blunder, and we're off to the races. And that's ok, because life is full of funny moments. And it's ok to laugh at other people, even at their own expense. Some people DO dress themselves, after all... and they chose that? Wha? But, I digress. There's a time for everything, a season, so the song says. Just don't forget to have a heart and be a real person when someone else is being serious, and laying themselves on the line. How would you feel if someone told you that you were too fat to date? Or too short? Or too tall, too skinny? What if they laughed in your face and said you were too white, or too black? Too normal? Too strange? A simple no will do. Have a heart, people. For God's sakes or your own, I don't care which. Be good to each other!

Note to self: be good to others. Grow, live, learn, love... and have a good time.

And I Must Refuse Your Test

Reflection. It's like a really good drug that sometimes screws you up, and sometimes fixes you. Depends on your mood? Maybe. 2008 was my "big year of reflection." You know, getting all of the baggage out of the way, seeing which ways things might swing, putting to bed lingering issues, moving forward.

2008 was all of that, and more. But life is kind of a cycle, is definitely a journey, and is truly better with experience. Sometimes, living from the blood machine can be painful, as much as it can be uplifting and joyous. Happiness comes in waves. Yes, general happiness can be ever-present, and more so than since 2005-ish, I was pretty damned happy last year, generally speaking.

Reflection continues, however. Small my table... often, seats just one. Gets so crowded, and there's no fun.

You love what you love, people. And I love a lot. A lot of things, I don't or can't love - it's not in the cards. And we are fickle, selfish people. Nothing new there. I believe in the goodness of mankind, and have for a while. But I also believe it takes one helluva effort to get man out of his own way - his goodness only goes so far as his selfishness will allow.

My take on personal relationships: see above. Friends and lovers: see above. Family can be so much easier... it is easier to be selfless to ones you've loved and been with your whole life (for some, and notice the qualifier "loved" - not all family works this way. for the rest: see above).

We're all wanting something. The world throws a billion tests our way, along the way. Religion, politics, death, love, friendship, sex, food, work, you name it. Road blocks. Yes, road blocks to some of those very things - love can interfere with love, can and will. Be a philosopher. It works. Think it. Feel it. Put one foot in front of the other. Step over the road blocks? Isn't that easy, not usually. But... maybe.

It is tough to be a searcher. But call me The Seeker - I've been searching low and high. I hope that I get what I'm after... before the day I die.

Past, Present, Future... Karl.

It sometimes makes little to no sense, but sometimes, when you are sick and hurting and bored (and lonely), you start to take stock of what is going on in your life. And maybe because you're sore and not feeling hot, everything feels like a little kick to the shins or a punch to the gut, or a knee to the groin. It's not that there is no hope; it's just that you feel stuck. I worry like that - worry that I'll end up a fat, bald, lonely Karl, like Karl from Aqua Teens. I've got my sweatpants and my girlie mags and and beer and my hookers paid off in quarters and nickels and dimes. Sometimes I worry that's how I'll end up.

Girls don't scream about how cute I am. My health is failing, my hair is receding, my gut is growing despite my half-hearted attempts to shrink it. I'm a little bitter, but mostly just worried. No companionship sucks.

Sometimes I feel like I am going nowhere with my life, because I am going nowhere with my job. I make dick.99, which makes it hard to save, go back to school, pay off bad credit decisions made when I made more money, etc. I can blame the economy, but some of it is my fault. Problem is, sometimes it feels like a lot of it is my fault. My job makes me feel like a mindless drone, a poor monkey, a goes-nowhere Karl.

Sometimes your friends surprise you, and then again, sometimes you wonder who your friends really are; sometimes they piss you off. Sometimes you piss them off, too. Happens. But sometimes they are just Karls too.

People fail, I get that. Life is as much failure as success, and it's how we handle BOTH that really defines us. But as I look at a non-existent love life (for christ's sakes, my ex-girlfriend - who doesn't consider ours much a relationship - showed more concern about me being in the hospital than my current semi-girlfriend, who doesn't seem all that interested in me at all), as I look at others moving on and up and work, as I look at friends leaving, at I look at my financial situation growing dimmer, as I look at friends hurting and none of these things changing in major positive ways... I just don't want to be a Karl.

Radio Free Indiana

In the 90’s we were wired and well connected, put it all down on technology and lost everything we invested.

You’re so pretty when you’re unfaithful to me!

Look at me, I can write a melody, but I can’t expect a soul to care…

Balancing, I need to keep it all in some perspective.

Come around…

Oh what the hell I’ll tell the story again.

It’s all one big blur of lights and action…

It’s as inevitable as the fall.

Left home virgins, came back vampires.

Got killed by 10 million pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey.

And you might have once existed, and my memory’s been twisted.

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.

This is how the time goes, in an ordinary town.

The 411 in my area code has got no listing for me, and all my mail sits there in the post box, it seems I’ve lost the key.

Getting older makes it harder to remember we are our only saviors.

Your head will collapse if there’s nothing in it, and you’ll ask yourself ‘where is my mind?’

Stuck inside my head again, hoping that this never ends, I wouldn’t mind.

She said ‘I’ve laid beneath lovers but I’ve never gotten laid.’

Everything you make here hides behind the bones you wear.

Solve for "Y"

Because isn't that really what we're always trying to figure out? Why?

I've been asked questions. I've asked myself questions. And, with questions, always comes doubt. Always comes the need for answers. How do I really feel? What do I really want?

Sometimes in my life, when I have ignored the questions, some really good things have happened. Sure, some bad things have happened too. But the whole idea is to live this life, rather than think my way into or out of the direction life chooses to go.

Someone recently told me, "thinking is good. Some people don't do it much." And yeah, that's true. But there's got to be a balance, too, of being spontaneous, of not giving a shit when that attitude isn't harming anything.

We don't always have to solve for Why, because sometimes the damn equation, and the damn answer, don't matter as much as question itself.

Say What You Mean To Say

What would I say to you if I could say anything to you today, with no consequences, with no reprisals, with no regrets or worries? It depends on who you are…

You? You are my best friend. I love you and wouldn’t be the man I am today without your friendship. We’ve been through a bit; we’ll go through a bit more. I always know I can count on you. More than anything, I am proud of you and proud to call you friend.

You? You are the best parents a person could ever hope for. The other part of who I am today? You’re responsible for that. I love you both immensely. I am so scared to lose you. Mortality faces us all I know. I hope I get married in time for you to enjoy it. Mostly, I just hope you know how much I love you and how wonderful you have been, all the years of my life.

You? Yeah, we’re still friends. You pissed me off. Give me time. You are a good person. We’re far too much alike, thus we understand each other. Be cool and be patient, and please don’t punch me for saying that.

You? You blew it. I’m not sweating it – really. But the answer is no, so don’t ever bother asking. You had your chance, and, in classic hockey-chant style, “YOU FUCKED UH-UP!”

You? There isn’t much to say, is there? Wes? Really? After all this time? You better than to start that with Cory I suppose… but damn. Four years is a long time to go through with people then completely disappear. Then again, five years is a long time to wait to reappear.

You? Here’s looking at you, kid.

You? You’re my freakin’ roommate, dude. You play WoW way too much sometimes. But I love you. I think you are going to be a great whatever the fuck you decide you’re gonna be. And I hope you remember me when it is time to write books. For now, let’s watch some Bebop.

You? Dude, Murphys. I am glad we’ve got that connection. You make work much more fun than it should be. I know this sucks; it ain’t no Cali. But come on – hopefully I make Indy a little more fun. Seriously though – thanks for being a great mentor. You’re self-made and I look up to you, and appreciate your advice.

You? Ah, yes, you. You are on my mind, more and more lately. This is such a strange time period for you, for us. I like you, a lot. I wonder how you feel about me. I am starting to feel like there is something to lose here, and that scares me. I’d miss you, and that scares me. There is so much more to learn about you. I want to take the next step, but I’m not sure what that is. I wonder if you want the same thing. Let’s see where it take us.

You? Who the hell are you? Get off my blog!

Lump Sat Alone In A Boggy Marsh...

... Totally motionless except for her heart!

Interesting things abound.

Balancing Act

Waiting. It's a balancing act, measuring your desire versus your needs, desire versus time.

Time is on my side? Yes it is?

Maybe.

I'm happy. But want a little more?

I like it. I like where it is going. Just eager to see the next step, to round the next corner.

It's comfortable, though.