Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Maybe I can't write something better than that in my sleep.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your arguments prove irrational.

Monday was my first  day of work (for this year) at a baseball game, and really, I have nothing to say.  It wasn't bad, I got blisters from my new shoes, the home team lost, the weather was hot but not hellish, and I made $250.

I was talking to Malaya on ICQ Monday night, and telling her some stuff about work, and I realized that I seldom talk about it on this site since it's just so old hat to me.  If I were brand new there, and seeing everything with fresh eyes, I would have a ton to say, since it would all be interesting and different.  But since I've been there for so long now, it's just all a boring blur and I have no comment. A full time astronaut probably has the same "all my stories are old" by the time he's done a few jumps to Jupiter, even as the rest of the world is intensely-fascinated.

Well, I ain't going to Jupiter any time soon, so try and make do with what you see here.

My mopey depression is mostly gone now that I've actually been there for a game, and the money is nice, but I'd still rather not do it.  After work I ate everything in sight and had a big energy burst going until about 10pm, when I almost completely ran out of gas and crashed, able to do little more than surf some news and yawn and stretch.  Malaya called around 1am, just to have a quick chat before she went to bed, and when next we looked it was nearly 4am.  Time does fly on the phone.

So as a consequence of work, laziness, phone conversation, and other unnamed issues, there is not yet a photo section. I hope to get it done Tuesday afternoon before work, or after work at the latest.  And as usually happens when I start working a lot, I get a more intense (than usual) desire to write fiction, as my some day published novels will provide me with income and take me away from all the mucky muck.

Hypothetically speaking.

Here's some news stuff.  There are pictures below, but not a whole huge amount of commentary, since it's 6am already, and I'm half asleep.

¤ Interesting article about the heartbreak of clarinetist's wrist. And other unusual musician repetitive stress injuries.

Musicians' injuries are as numerous as their instruments: fiddler's neck, tuba lips, violinist's jaw, horn player's palsy -- even guitar nipples and harpist's cramp. The poor bagpiper is threatened by fungus that often grows inside the instrument. And the flutist? "The flute is a biomechanically impossible instrument to play," says Scott Brown, chief of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and a musician himself.

Like athletes, musicians tend toward the "no pain, no gain" philosophy of practice, craning chin to violin and maintaining other unnatural positions for hours on end. Reflecting on the hand injury that derailed his legendary concert piano career nearly 20 years earlier, Leon Fleisher told an interviewer in 1985, "There was something macho about practicing through the pain barrier. Even when my hand was exhausted, I kept going. Although I thought I was building up muscle, I was, in fact, unraveling it."

I must admit that I had never associated "macho" and "pain barrier" with "piano practice", but hey, you learn something every day.

The tragic thing is that the medical treatment from traditional doctors has ranged from bad to worse.  Admittedly, the musician's problems are unusual; a normal person with a strained pinkie can pretty much ignore it.  A concert pianist might as well have a broken arm.  But US doctors, with their usual insistence on drugs and surgery, and their habit of ignoring causes of problems, can be more harm than help.

Three years ago, finger-style guitarist Nicholas Thompson, an editor with Washington Monthly magazine, was derailed by wrist pain after playing gigs every weekend and practicing two to six hours a day. His doctors treated him for carpal tunnel syndrome. For 2 1/2 years, Thompson endured acupuncture, steroid shots, wrist braces, massage, huge doses of ibuprofen. At work, he tried voice-activated software, a pen mouse, typing while standing up. Nothing helped. The last doctor wanted to operate. Thomson declined.

Recently, he moved to New York, where he saw a doctor who had treated some musicians. The doctor referred him to an Alexander technique teacher who completely changed the way Thompson played the guitar. The transformation was almost instantaneous. "It seems to have cured all my symptoms," he says.

This article was on several blogs I read Monday evening, and it's easy to see why. The story is that a group of about 70 people were doing a peace rally in Louisiana.  They had permits and everything, and their plan was for a short march to a local amphitheatre to give a talk about things.  Some local right wing radio talk show host found out about it, and got on the air urging his audience to go down and shout at the peace demonstrators.  Screaming ensued.

You'd like to think that it was an open exchange of views.  Unfortunately the quotes from the radio station fans are astonishingly ignorant and deplorable.

Along with plenty of American flags, several of the signs they carried demeaned the marchers: "Protesting this war while our troops are being killed is equal to treason," read one. "You should all be shot."

Richard Condon, a morning show host for rock station KOOJ, said he wanted the hecklers to "put these goofballs in their place."

"This has been going on since World War I, and it's the reason they have the right to feel the way they do," Condon said, pointing at the peace protesters marching down Stanford toward LSU.

Despite that right, he concluded, "I think these son-of-a-buggers deserve a bullet in the head."

This followed his proclamation to the crowd at the beach about American military aims that ended with: "And it's about time we nuked Canada's ass!"

Does anything this idiot is saying make any sense?  What's been going on since WWI?  Protesting war?  And he is actually publicly encouraging murder for people who oppose the Iraq Attack?  And how the hell does Canada come into play?  They have troops and ships in Iraq now, supporting the coalition effort, despite most of the population opposing it.

And obviously the DJ is just a jackhole trying to appeal to other jackholes, with his "nuke Canada" remark, but um, don't you think there would be a few environmental problems with nuking Canada?  I.E. fallout? Being as almost all the major cities in the country are very near the US border, and all.  I guess losing Detroit and Seattle would be okay, so long as we didn't have to hear politicians from a nearby country point out how well Dumbya lives up to his name?

Peter Arnett, a reporter working for NBC in Iraq, was fired for making some controversial remarks, though he was immediately hired by a UK paper. As is often the case when someone says something "controversial", I have no idea why what he said is wrong or upsetting.

Arnett's misfortune was more clear-cut. Just as he was making a career comeback by helping lead NBC's war coverage to the top of the ratings, he was fired for participating in an interview on Iraqi television on Sunday in which he said the U.S. military would need to rewrite its war plan.

"America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war," Arnett said on Iraqi TV. "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance."

The interview sparked outrage from NBC, its sister cable news outlet, MSNBC, and National Geographic, for whom Arnett was formally working. Arnett had become a hired gun for NBC when the General Electric Co.-owned network pulled its own team out of Baghdad.

"It was wrong for (Arnett) to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview," NBC News President Neal Shapiro said in a statement announcing Arnett's dismissal. National Geographic called it "a serious error in judgment and wrong." MSNBC president Erik Sorenson went so far as to say Arnett's interview was "arguably unpatriotic."

So what did he say that isn't factual?  Half the generals in the Army are saying how Rumsfeld micro-managed their planning and forced them to go in with too few troops to get the job done, the advance has bogged down, there are huge problems with supplies troops are going on half rations, etc.  Maybe that's not completely "failure", but it's certainly not a stretch to call it that.

And then the comments by the NBC News President are very odd.  What the hell is a reporter supposed to do if not report the news?  He's reporting his view of things and relaying the general perception from the scene, with some opinion thrown in.  Isn't that what you want from a reporter?

Now obviously they just don't like what the man said, since the major US networks are all very pro-war and Bush's lap dogs.  I'm just surprised to see them demonstrate it so publicly, I guess. I mean god forbid we have a real reporter or two in Iraq, giving us any sort of opinion or information that the Pentagon doesn't approve of in advance.

The first one is here, and yes, that's me. Nearly naked. Again.  Who is a whore?

However the camera took longer than it was supposed to, and I was just giving up and getting up when it at last clicked.  This sorta cool blurry thing is the result.

What I found interesting is the way it blurred.  Rather than all of me being blurry, it's mostly my body, with my face closer to in focus, and then my hear in crystal focus, for some reason.

Plus I sorta like my face in this one; I look rather chiseled, almost Greek God-esque.  And that's "god-esque" not the near sound alike, "goddess."

How exactly I moved so that my lower body was streaking (pun intended) and yet my head was still, I do not know. I suppose a clever photographer could do this sort of thing on purpose.  And someone skillful with Photoshop could take a normal image and give it this blurry sensation. But as I am neither, I must count on luck and impatience to create my artistic works.

 

Piss on that, eh?

A friend sent me this pic via email. I have no idea where she got it, but I thought it amusing enough to post here. Yes, that dog appears to have a furry straw for a penis.

Reminds me of my first wife.

Lastly, we have this image, which is wrong on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, the caption. "Defender of Freedom".  So Orwellian.

The Allstate pose of the holy gleaming hands is pretty weird also.  Is God like actually cupping his hands over a soldier?  Can't God just ensure that no bullets come his way, or create an impermeable barrier that lasts forever?  Hell, most video games can do that, why not God?

However the sickest thing about this is the soldier.  It's like Baby Marine, so cute 'n cuddly with his tiny machine gun. What's up with the baby face, and the sparkly heavily-lidded eyes though? I mean he looks about 7. Would you feel safe with this child "defending freedom?"  I get the feeling that they had a ton of left over bodies from some recent angel or young boy statue, and figured they could slap together a military outfit and move a few thousand of them and a handsome profit.  Which they'll probably net in the end.

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