So many Tea Parties, so many Mad Hatters … . Is Sarah Palin the Red Queen? She certainly isn’t Alice and she seems to be ordering the decapitation of establishment Republicans. It’s easy to figure out that the Koch brothers are Tweedledee and Tweedledum, but the Cheshire Cat? I’m thinking the disappearing feline has to be Newt because he was here as Speaker, then gone into oblivion, and now he’s back again with depressingly obscure references to Kenyan anti-colonialism. Considering his marital history, it’s crazy to think he’s a guy who has a chance to be a standard bearer for a family values party. Jabberwocky!

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I’ve been thinking a little lately about “depression”. Not the disease itself, but the label, the word. There’s no question that there is such a mental disorder. There was melancholia long before Freud. No, I’m thinking about what it’s like to have that word attached to yourself. Considering that anyone who just doesn’t want to can walk into a shrink’s office and get that label is a weird thing. I mean, what self respecting shrink would tell you to man up when he can treat you for $300/mo for years? Not just that, but get a good bit of swag from some drug company for prescribing a pill that is less effective than going for a good walk. The “patient” or “client” gets something out of it as well. Every time you don’t want to go to work or whatever it is that you don’t want to do, you can listen to yourself whine and avoid the personal responsibility. Oh, poor me, I’m depressed. Nothing to be done about it. Brain chemistry, you know. It’s a DISEASE, you bastards, you’re supposed to feel sorry for me and not judge me and say hurtful things boohoo. I think I’ve suffered from the real thing since at least the early 80s. I’ve been suicidal and hospitalized. On the other hand, it’s been a darn useful excuse as well as a lever for some pretty crappy thinking. The problem with the word “depression” is that once it’s attached to you, once you think you have it, you do from then on. It never goes away. It never gets cured. We make it become a part of us, an ever-present pall that hangs over who and what we are as people. I wonder how much depression there is among the people of this world who have to scuffle every day just to get a few bugs for protein. Another thing about depression is this: as far as I know, it’s a disease of the highly intelligent. It’s something that attacks people who can function on autopilot and still have the brainpower to have one’s mind attack itself. Sometimes I wonder if “depression” isn’t anything more than the word we use when the words we are avoiding are “existential angst”. I wonder if the word isn’t merely code for not liking the answer to the question: “what’s it all about?” But, see, to be depressed, you’ve got to be smart enough and rich enough to ask those questions and to know on some level what it is that Sartre was writing about. You have to live in a society that’s complex enough to make Kafka relevant. Considering the first paragraph of this post, is it possible that depression is the only sane response?

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Last night, I watched the movie “Mission Impossible: III”. I know, don’t even ask me why and it’s irrelevant to the point I want to make. At the start of the DVD, they have these promos for films coming to DVD and one of the promos was for a collection of Tom Cruise movies. I was appalled. I don’t think much of Tom’s acting chops. Does anyone really think Tom Cruise is as good an actor as, say, Johnny Depp? How about Leonardo DiCaprio? Val Kilmer? Morgan Freeman? Beuller? The movies in the collection are instructive: Days of Thunder, Missions Impossible one, two and three, Minority Report, Vanilla Sky and Collateral. Oh, and lest I forget, Top Gun and Risky Business. I’ll throw in Eyes Wide Shut, even though that wasn’t in the collection. Why is this guy famous as an actor? How did he get so rich on the basis of that body of work? I hated most of those movies in the first place and in the second place, there was a total of about five minutes of acting in the whole lot of ‘em. So, anyway, I just finished another spy thriller book called Rules of Deception and so I was looking for a spy movie and that’s how I got to MI:III. I’d already recently watched No Way Out and Hunt for Red October and my spy movie collection gets real thin after Casino Royale and I’d watched that not too long ago as well in a double feature with The International. You do what you gotta do. I really don’t care that Tom’s a Scientologist nor that he jumped on Oprah’s couch, but screw the idea that he’s some really great actor because he just isn’t. A move star, yes, but good actor, not so much.

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Just in case you couldn’t tell, I’m grumpy today because my ribs hurt. I’ve been in some level of pain for more than 120 days and I mean every minute of every one of those days, I’ve been hurting more or less. The Lortab can make the pain tolerable and not debilitating most of the time, but it never goes completely away. It’s there and that’s the reality of my life right now. The fact that today’s one of those days when I’m chasing the pain instead of being ahead of the curve doesn’t really make me feel as bad as the fact that I’m just tired of being sick and hurt. The long drone of twinges in my abdomen, right shoulder and the throbbing in my rib cage is just always there. It’s been four months now and I’m told I’ll hurt for about a year. I guess it’s the changing weather that contributes but I really don’t care about that. Mostly I like the cooler and cloudy late summer and early fall we’re having here in Oklahoma, but I can’t enjoy it some days. Today is one of those days I feel like I’m at the end of my tether and I want to take Lortabs until I’m passed out, but I know that way madness lies so I really have no other choice but to soldier on. I say prayers and go for walks and try to figure out things that will get me out of the house and out from between my ears where my mind whispers insane crap that just makes me feel worse. That’s why I’m blogging: it’s me reaching out to the ether to whine instead of imposing on my friends and family about shit they can’t do anything about. Please don’t call or email me, just writing this is the therapy I need and want. Just take it under advisement and when you see me, let’s talk about something else, ANYTHING else. I do, in fact, have some social engagements this week and that means I’ve made wonderful improvements over just a few weeks ago when just getting out of the house was a dream and not a real possibility. When I’m in my right mind, I’m grateful for my progress and recovery and I believe the doctors when they tell me I’m doing amazingly well. It’s just that today I have a bad attitude and you, my dear readers, well, I’m taking it out on you. As you were.

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I know when the weather front hit my neighborhood last night because I woke up at 3:42 a.m. with my right side really hurting and I can’t seem to catch up to the pain with my meds.

I realize that I left my blog readers hanging because a lot of you don’t twitter, but I did finally get the results of my cat scan and I’m cancer free and won’t have to have chemo. I’ll get another scan in another 90 days and keep that schedule for a couple of years.

My finances are untenable with the thousands I owe the doctors who saved my life and I’m such an all American boy that money troubles give me the self-loathing yips and crush my ego.

The stress has put a blemish on my left cheek that’s gonna be a blazing red crusty monster that frightens children and makes domesticated animals bolt at the sight of my monstrous face.

Speaking of pain meds, I’ve been having opiate dreams and they can be very disturbing and very vivid. I’m not going to write about them because I don’t believe in the dream interpretation symbolism shamanism and you Freudians with your little dream books can just stuff it. As best I can tell, they seem to be about self loathing, if that makes any of you feel any better about anything. For all the Lortabs I take, you’d think I could have some really good sex dreams, but NOOOOO.

I made myself some meatloaf for dinner last night and it was pretty tasty if I do say so myself. Watched “Jaws” while I ate and that old movie still holds up pretty good. I still love the line when Roy Schneider backs into the boathouse and tells Robert Shaw “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” I first saw that movie in a huge theater in Germantown, TN, a suburb of Memphis. There were about 500 people there and it was the premiere of the film. When the face drops into the hole in the hull of the boat and Richard Dreyfuss drops the shark tooth, the barometric pressure of that theater must have dropped several points from all the breath being simultaneously sucked in; then, deafening screams in both male and female registers. One of my favorite film watching experiences. That shared audience reaction is something that just isn’t replicated watching a dvd at home or streamed onto a computer.

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My friend Jud died this week.
His memorial service will be Saturday afternoon at AA’s Western Club.
Once upon a time, he was a hard case gangster bootlegger but he sobered up and stayed sober for nearly 40 years. I always tried to sit close to him when we were at the same meeting. He was a wise and inspiring mentor to a lot of us in the recovery community here in Oklahoma City. He helped untold numbers of drunks to get sober and get a job and get a life.
I’m proud to say our last words, only about a week before his death, were “I love you.”
I hope he meant it as much as I did.
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I had a doctor’s appointment for 2:30 p.m. yesterday. When I still hadn’t seen the doctor at 4:30 p.m., I left without getting the results of last week’s CAT scan. Does anyone have a clue about why doctors seem to think this is appropriate behavior?
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I’ve been a lot more active and have felt much better this week than last. As MCARP noted on his blog, I even made a late-night rendezvous with him for coffee at Beverly’s. Last week was truely crapola in my life. Lots of pain and pain pills meant nothing whatever got done. Just as mysteriously, I started feeling better Sunday evening and got some things done this week as I reduced my opiate intake by half as the pain receded.
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I’ve absolutely loved the weather.
I went out to Lake Hefner about 9:30 p.m. the other night to drink a Braum’s chocolate milkshake, get some wind up my nose and watch the lightning display in the southern sky. Last night’s storm was too strong for me to get out of the house, but I enjoyed the wind-driven rain, the frequent flashes of lightning and the window-rattling thunder. I really get a thrill from a good, old-fashioned Oklahoma thunderstorms.
Also, sitting out on the back patio and drinking coffee in 70-degrees and a cool breeze beats the hell out of wilting in the 100 degree conflagration that can be Oklahoma summertime.
Not just that, but it’s getting to be football time. Boomer Orange Power Sooner and go Broncos!
Heritage Hall beat Cassidy last night. Congratulations, Chargers. It makes the whole damn season for my old school to win that game.
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I remain gobsmacked by politics. I look at Obama and see a wind-down of the Iraq mess he inherited, more and more Al Q leaders killed and captured in Af-Pak, the further isolation of Iran and the start of direct Israel-Palestinian peace talks and think he’s doing OK in foreign policy if not really good. At home, we’ve got the lowest tax rates in 60 years, an expanded health safety net and a rejuvenated auto industry, among other successes. On the other side, I see Jan Brewer going blank in Arizona, Joe Miller spouting nonsense in Alaska, Glen Beck being incoherent on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Newt Gingrich losing his mind over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, and wonder how in the world those guys can be ahead in the polls by 10 points. The hell with killing Buddha if I see him on the road, it’s John Galt I want to assassinate; the crypto-Nazi wet dream of Ayn Rand inspires me with loathing and it makes me want to puke when I hear his purile admirers blather on.
I guess that’s the political news from way outside the mainstream.

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