Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Wasted. It’s Sunday, and I’m still feeling loopy after my Wednesday dental hoedown. I’m getting better, but I still feel like a good cigar and a fifty-yard dash would kill me. Usually the cigar would do me in by itself, but the run would only cripple me. Today, though, I’m coming, Elizabeth.

I don’t know what did the most damage. Was it the trauma, from the dentist’s going into my sinus through my gums, gouging out a bigger cave with a melon baller, and filling it up with corpse bone and John-the-conqueror root? Or was it the oxycodone-killer acetomenophin mix that I gobbled because I’m such a chicken about pain. I took one five mg/325 mg tab around nineteen hundred, Wednesday, before the local wore off, and half of a 7.5/750 tab when I woke up around oh-four hundred Thursday? (I keep left over prescriptions for painal emergencies). Gotta get my beauty rest. Eighty-four hours later, I’m still paying. In my youth I had friends who enjoyed shit like this, but you’d think somebody could come up with a nice buzz that takes away the pain, and doesn’t leave that unsightly ring around the inside of my goddam skull.

Meanwhile I’ve been sipping a cocktail compounded of economic terrror (the bottom line for the whole rigamarole -- for one stupid tooth -- is over three grand), and of a sixty-year old member of the youth generation’s sense of mortality. I managed yoga Monday Tuesday and Wednesday, with a weight session on Monday, but that’s it since then. No way am I exerting myself. I can feel myself going to seed, or whatever it’s called when you’re not so seedy anymore. Projecting this into the future, I can only see more and tougher medical attention to my body, and...more...missed...workouts. This is turning me into an old man.

So I missed the Bioneers Conference. I haven't made it yet, always thought it was for rich ninnies whose lifestyles were fouling the nest, but wanted green cred. Since I started writing this blog, though, I've thought maybe that was my beat, and I should go. Maybe next year.

There’s an article about topical humor in the November Smithsonian Magazine. The author was wondering what poor Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were going to do now that the White House’s politics are more to their liking. You gotta cut the Smith some slack for being a year behind in noticing that satirists are gonna have to work harder during a Democratic administration. They’re a museum, fer petessake. They’re part of the government, too, so they’re going out on a limb even admitting that anybody ever laughed at Geor...snrrk...G...mmmpf...sorry...the forty-thir...oh my God...haha...oh, no...I can’t even say the venal, authoritarian boob’s name.

I held my nose and pulled the lever for Obama last November, but I think I would have been disappointed even if I hadn’t voted for a corporate flack. Even Ralph Nader would been out-pissed by the obstructionist rabble in and out of government that a more enlightened system would have mining for mastodon above the Arctic Circle. I don’t watch television. I hit my lifetime quota back when it was in black and white. Four PM to ten PM, 1958 to 1967, plus Saturday mornings, that’s where I vegetated. I’m saturated, so I don’t know what particular strategies the writers at the Daily Show have for dealing with the perceived “irony shortage.” But if somebody wanted to give Barack Obama and his investment-banker economic advisors a break, they could start picking on characters like Bo Pilgrim.

Pilgrim is a Texan billionaire, founder of Pilgrim Chicken, who bankrupted the company in a failed takeover of Tyson foods. The company went broke, attempting a repeal of the Thirteenth Amendment in its factories, selling out to a foreign company, and compromising municipal services in the communities around them. Workers put in rainmaker hours for chicken-plucker wages. Factories closed. Tax bills went unpaid. City utility bills trebled and services failed. When a twenty-seven year-old man wrote his hit list and took his rifle for a joy ride last March, the strapped Samson, Alabama police asked nearby Army Fort Rucker for troops (in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a law that helped end Reconstruction).

Maybe there’s no irony shortage, just irony fatigue.

A few weeks ago, in a mealy-mouthed way, I called the Republicans running for governor of Minnesota “pussies.” I still haven’t come up with another word that, in common use, is as confrontational, as contemptuous of someone’s physical, moral, and intellectual cowardice. I still think those dozen or so global warming deniers are stupid, know-nothing babies, but I’m not going to compare them to half humanity’s sex organs. Like my friend Lisa says, “It’s too good a word for them.”

Infants of the world, I say these...men, like you, are capable of growth. I’ll work on my contempt.

Weekend Gossip

I’m typing with a bulky bandage on the tip of my left forefinger. I cut it pretty badly, slicing a tomato yesterday. It hurt a lot, it was getting close to bedtime, and I had some Oxycodone left over from dental surgery (just like Rush Limbaugh).

The interesting thing was that the drug didn’t make much difference to my finger, and it upset my stomach. What made a difference was ice. We have three gadgets that you keep in the freezer for applying to injuries, one of them pretty massive, and long enough to wrap around my knee. Barbara got the inspiration about ten, and brought me one of the smaller ones. It took all three to buy me a night’s sleep, the big one taking the longest shift. I woke up hungover from the Oxycodone, the hangover’s worst feature being nausea. Another epiphany is that peppermint tea helps the tummy. I still feel like a kid after his first drunk, but I used to be pretty cavalier about dismissing home remedies. You can’t learn less.

Sam and I drove to Red Wing, Saturday. It’s about an hour south of here, on the Mississippi. We went to do some sampling for Barsy’s Almonds at Kiki’s Simple Abundance, a health food store. It reminded me of my time running a similar store, Middle Earth, back home in Macomb. Simple Abundance seems more comfortable with the intersection of nutrition and therapy than I was, which is probably more appropriate in a town of sixteen thousand. Sam is good at telling strangers about the product, charmingly explaining each flavor as completely and forthrightly as good catalog copy. On the trip home, Sam, who has built his personal computer, and designs websites professionally, told me that he believes that there will still be computers in a few years, but not as many. We were talking about energy and economics, and Sam was saying that a time will come soon when computers such as the one at which I write, and the one at which you read will be out of reach to most of us. Keep the libraries and post offices open. Red Wing is the home of Red Wing Shoes, but I could not find a brag on either company or city website, “Made in America,” or “Made right here in Red Wing.” My Red Wing boots say that they are made in the US, the UK, and Europe. Could we re-establish a shoe industry here if we had to?

We have a very efficient furnace. One way that it gets more heat to us from the gas we burn is by reclaiming the latent heat of evaporation. Water takes on heat as it evaporates, and releases it as it condenses. Our furnace condenses water from the exhaust to add heat to the house. The water has to go somewhere, and usually it drains out a plastic tube and into the drain in the basement floor. Our house was built without that drain. To compensate, and prevent puddles, our furnace installers bolted a small pump onto the furnace, and ran a tube from it to the laundry tub. The problem is that the pumps only last a season or two. Yesterday I noticed that the penultimate one had failed, temporarily putting the furnace out of business. Today, a tech put in a replacement for $272.00. Less gas, smaller carbon footprint (maybe: gotta think about manufacturing and shipping), but pump replacement adds $136.00 or more to the annual heating cost. Barbara suggested a tank on the floor, and a pump that would very occasionally distribute the water to the garden. The tech thought that would kill the plants. I knew the condensate was acidic, but figured I could buffer it with limestone gravel. The tech said there was other “gunk” in it. Any ideas?