Why I Haven't Been Posting:

>
Since moving to Portland I've been weaned off the medication I was using to assuage my chronic fatigue (a disorder comorbid with fibro), and now can't get anything done. I have a ton of half-posts I can't finish, which is just as well because they would seem half-assed because I can't focus, think, ad infinitum.

I'm working on getting a shrink who can get me on Provigil and should then be able to write. In the meantime, please stop by from time to time. When I can give my un-posted crappy drafts the care they deserve, you'll be deluged with the best writing since Shakespeare.

I hope to get a shrink and some Provigil ASAP. I figure I should be back on attack in mid-April.

As ever: Stay Tuned!

Kisses!

--C. Bandini
>

Prelude To A Father-Son Conversation

>
"Jesus goddam that bus was fifteen minutes late today! Fifteen this time!"

"We gotta go or somethin'?"

"We gotta hurry."

"H'come?"

"H'come?

Well son, you know how Mommy squeezed the life from Daddy's hopes and dreams--"

"'Course Dad."

"--and how the only thing that makes her happy is Daddy's misery and on forever like that?"

"Yes, Father."

"Well, I'll tell you when we get in the car."
>

It's not funny.

>
The homeopath
went on about
the evils of
antimalarial drugs
while slurping a
Gin and tonic --
the drink invented
(as tradition has it)
so India-colonizing Brits
could take their
antimalarial, bitter Quinine tastefully.

Samuel Hahnemann
took Quinine
some time after
he quit practicing medicine
and used its effects
to formulate
his invention:
homeopathy,
and its principal tenet
"like cures like."

Which makes arsenic
the cure for arsenic poisoning,
once it is diluted (or "succussed") in
water
until the
water
no longer contains a
single
atom
of arsenic.

Which makes pure, uncontaminated
(by the time the ill person takes it)
water
the homeopath's cure for everything
and the gin and tonic-swilling homeopath
an idiotic scammer
or, more likely,
dumb enough to
have been scammed herself
into scamming other idiots
since she
holds that Quinine is evil
though it led to the invention of the
bullshit quackery
that pays her bar bills.

Quinine info: Wiki.
Hahnemann info: Wiki.
Homeopathy info: Wiki.
>

"Maybe he did touch some children, but come on, it's Michael Jackson!"*

>
*"South Park"

I've had conversations with people. Quite a few, in fact.

Sometimes Michael Jackson is brought up in the course of certain discussions. I'll inevitably say something like:

"The mammoth piece of shit fucking monster is a goddam serial child molester."

And sometimes the person I'm talking to will say something like:

"Yeah, but you can't deny that Thriller is one of the best records ever."

"BUT"?

There is no but!

The argument seems to be ("South Park" again): "Sure he's touched some children, but he's entertained us for so many years..."

That is, Jackson being evil and disgusting and really, truly, ultra-mega evil is mitigated by the fact he's a gifted performer (which I would dispute).

The shitball could cure every type of cancer, end poverty, end huger, end war, and he'd still be a shitball that needs to be locked up in a cage unfit for that pet monkey he kept around and probably had sex with.

BUT all he's done is sing and dance.

Thriller sucks and Michael Jackson can't die soon enough.
>

Faith-based healing.

>
The Chinese have compounded thousands of years worth of knowledge and experience into what Westerners call Traditional Chinese Medicine. And there's no doubt the West can benefit greatly from its many methods and practices -- many of which are based on the concept of Chi.

After all, China was able to boast a national average life expectancy of about 32 in 1950, while Western, more developed, countries had average life expectancies of 35 to 40 in the mid-1700s. And Chi remains a vaguely defined concept that lacks -- in any of its permutations -- any science to support its existence.

Nevertheless, I think it's important to heal people using both Western and Chinese medical traditions -- to use methods that have been proven to work in concert with those that have have been proven not to. We need to take a holistic approach to treating people... And to take that approach way too goddam far.
>