The biggest kick in the nuts a man will ever get is when he is sent for a CT scan for diverticulitis and the results come back saying that you have a 90x70mm tumor growing off the pancreas. Trust me, it gets your attention straight and away.
The news was troubling...was it from too much diet Coke and Pepsi? Smoking and drinking when I was younger? Those years of plumbing around chemicals and both hazardous and treatable sewage wastes? Or was it that 3 scoops of oily, dessert type, French Roast coffee topped off with a scoop of Medaglia de Oro espresso in a 10 cup pot of a drip coffee maker that you drank years ago?
You try and try to puzzle it out, then you hit a firewall. I call it the "Fuck it" moment. The moment that you get pissed that this invasive killer is in your body and then a cold sort of rage hits you. Let's jump.
You start by cooperating fully with the doctors. That seems sensible, and it is. But in the back of your mind, mortality, and for the Franciscans out there, "The embrace of Sister Death," are out there...you can almost hear Charles Durning's voice saying to Mel Brooks "We'll be waiting for you!"
So, things seem to change a bit. What was so important yesterday becomes, as Lao Tzu teach's us, "one of the ten-thousand things."
Yet at the same time, some things are important to you...your family is generally first in line in this consideration. But politics is still muddling about in your mind...let me put it this way, as shock method industrial safety people put it, "Dying is easy, folks do it all the time...what is not so easy is surviving and being all all screwed up." Pardon my example but it seems apt.
So, Social Security, Medi-Care, and disability matters are quite important to me.
Please, though I may not be so able to join the fight this time around, do not let Obama, and the Blue Dogs, and the Republicrats give away the store when it comes to those "entitlement programs" that drive the "Village Media" and the Plutonomists into foamy frenzy. Please, quite a few of us oldsters are begging you.
2, Please work for Obama's re-election. Yes, it may seem that Obama would be a Republican if there were a Rockefeller wing to that party...but there isn't. The thought of a Bachman, or a Perry taking over the nation as the Plutonimists gut the industrial heart and soul of this nation and then run away to reincorporate in some lax nation overseas is not only frightening to me, but sickening as well. Obama is our best hope for the future...it is Congress that has to do the heavy lifting as Obama has demonstrated to us time and again...he wants the "deal" as Keith Olbermann and guest put it recently. We need fighters this time and we damn well better get them, or the need for "the deal" may sink us but good! Promise me you will work for this.
3, It may boil down to us to start a mass "Political education" movement to expose whacko extremists on the Pubbie side...not with blind negativity, but with their own words and voting records. Until Buerkle, this method worked here in NY-25. It was to our misfortune that we under-estimated the financial backing that Buerkle received from the Koch's and the Anti-Woman forces. It is the misfortune of this district to be stuck with such a reactionary political time-bomb, who only looks independent of Boehner and Cantor. She isn't.
4, On a lighter note, before you run out and buy a Can-Am roadster or a three-wheel Harley long distance tourer, Please check out the machine that puts them both to shame and is quite competitive, price-wise, with Harley...The new 3 wheel Morgan, which is incredible. http://www.morgan3wheeler.co.uk/... I mean we are talking some serious class here!
5, There will be real light posting for awhile, but if someone would tell Bill in Portland Maine and the Pootie and Wozzle crowd that I am not so healthy but will look in on them as I can. I'd appreciate it. And, help the SPCA if you can.
Good night and Good luck to all my friends, hope to see you again here soon, but for now things are a touch dicey.