Keep It To Yourself!

Note to this guy and everybody like him: You don't want your nasty stanky smoke in your car, what makes you think I want it in my air? Roll up your window or stop smoking you nasty [deleted]!




And, to the guy in the nice new Mercedes in front of me on the way home: If you don't want your nasty butts in your ashtray, what makes you think I want them on my Texas?! Don't throw your trash on my ground, just  stop smoking already!

Have You Ever . . .

Have you ever been so not-awake as you walked around that blinking your eyes caused an auditory sensation?  Right after the bad part of a bad dream last night my Darling Wife woke me up and told me she thought one of the kids was crying.  I got up and walked to their room, and listened by the door.  Silence.  I went in and found only solid-sleepers.

 

On the way to their room, when I blinked as I was walking,there was a fuzzy noise with each blinking of my eyelids, I kid you not.  The noise I heard as I walked back to the Master Suite was an airplane.  An airplane with a strange engine noise that sounded like a child crying.

What Difference, At This Point, Does it Make?

No, I'm not going to bag on Secretary Clinton for trying to shirk responsibility for the four dead Americans in Benghazi.  This is about our BFFs the United Nations Peacekeepers.

Turns out, the difference it makes is THOUSANDS of dead Haitians.  Dead of Cholera, which was unknown in the Caribbean before the UN's Peacekeepers brought it with them from Nepal and dumped it with their kaka in the biggest river in Haiti for people to drink and to bathe in.

According to this piece by Johathan Katz, the UN were pointedly NOT interested in investigating the source of the outbreak because they already knew it was they who were killing those Haitians.  But hey, the dead haitians are black and poor so there's no need to talk about them on the nightly news! 

(which, of course, is why you should get at least some of your news from Instapundit, where I saw this story)

Stupid Crazy Paranoid Parents Don't Want To Vaccinate their Kids!

I mean, what could possibly happen?  The government said it was safe!  It's not like your child is going to develop narcolepsy after getting the new swine flu vaccine, right?

...oh, wait...

Please let's nobody panic and stop getting measles vaccines, okay?  But maybe, when the latest scare-of-the-week disease comes out, you might consider not taking the first vaccine that comes along. Oh, and -for once- I am VERY glad that the US FDA doesn't like to approve stuff just because a scare is on, and/or just because Europe is doing it!

Don't Tell ME What To Compound, Sister.

Every once in a while I rub up against the government in a way that makes me want to scream and commit acts of violence against people just trying to do their jobs. I went with #2 and #3 to get my usual "your largest quantity generic 30mg pseudoephedrine tablet" at the local pharmacy counter and the girl asked me who it was for, as I was paying. I indicated it was for #2 and #3, and she was thrown totally off her game. She asked how old #2 is and I told her.

She came back with a timid " . . . well, you know he has to be at least 12 years of age . . . "

I told her " . . . or I could give him the liquid preparation (that they carry on the shelf above the box of pills I'm buying) or I could grind it up and give it to him in something else like y'all would do."*

she continues to ring me up as I am pretty obviously not having any of her jive and very obviously over 12 years of age, but she says " . . . but . . . he has to be at least 12 . . . "

After we exited the store, I did a little brainwashing against unreasoning government that started with "that lady said she wants you to suffer with allergies for four more years . . . "

********

*What I also could have said was: "Excuse me but I can't help noticing you are rather young. Perhaps it has escaped your notice, but current recommendations and guidelines for administration of pseudoephedrine to children are based on questionable science and unquestionably bad legislation, due to kneejerk politics instead of logic. When you were still in high school, I would come into this very store and purchase -(turn around and point) right off that shelf over there- a tiny bottle called Infants' Tylenol Cold that was magic when used as directed on THIS boy (point at #2) when he was a few MONTHS old. I know that people are stupid and can't think, but I am not people I am a Person and a Man besides, and I know how to calculate doses based on weight just fine, and I read my labels to make sure I don't give anyone a fatal dose of anything. Which would be a neat trick with sudafed, now that this blessed wonderful drug is behind the counter and that crap phenylephrine which does nothing is on the shelf and the kids of America can't breathe. I happen to know for a fact that dosed by weight THIS kid (point at #2) takes one red pill and gets better. THIS kid (point at #3) takes half that much from (point at shelf behind counter) that bottle and gets better. Look at my face. See how the beard is cut, note the shape of the glasses. Remember this face and do yourself a favor. Never talk to me again about how old my boy should be before I give him the thing that makes him able to breathe.

But I didn't. One would hate to be escorted from the store for being mad at our Elected Heroes to the pharmacy clerk.

FIVE Beetles

Nextdoorneighbordude took his kids swimming a while back. Next morning, his son had a sore ear. Swimmers ear, they thought, no worries. A bit of witch hazel and rinse it out and . . . there's an antenna in the kid's ear. The emergency room people said a) that'll be $500 to remove your free bug, and b) don't feel bad it's the FIFTH one this week. The drought drove this one kind of beetle to seek wet places where they could find it, to include the sleeping childrens' ears full of water apparently. Eww.

What Communist Horseshit is THIS?

I got a letter in the mails, saying that because my health care payment insurance provider of choice did not meed the "80/20 Rule" they would be refunding my plan 3.2%. It turns out Uncle Sam himself is offended that anything less than 80% of my insurance premiums should go to actual medical care. 20% profit LIMIT? I thought. No friends, it's a 20% administrative amount limit, the maximum they can spend on salaries, sales, and advertizing. Profit is nowhere mentioned in the letter.

WTFPPL. If they aren't making a profit, why would they stay in business? Makeup companies get a 50% margin and we love them but health care payment insurance can't make a buck for their trouble?

This is due to the Obamacare law. I know that because it was on the letter and the two-page FAQ they sent with the letter. This probably-half-a-million-dollar mailing was paid for by my health insurance premiums (but only 20% or less of my premiums!). Oh well, I'm sure they couldn't have found a good use for that money anyway.

It sucks watching my America swirling down the drain like this.

So, What About It, VFD?

Next February, if the Republicrats don't take the Senate and maintain the House (with decisive majorities in both) there will either be another Deem-and-Pass shenanigans sessions to un-pass Obamacare, or sometime between now and the end of 2015 somebody will die in the fight over who gets to say if individuals must buy insurance. In a gunfight. Perhaps with some of those 16,000 new IRS agents and their new sawn-off shotguns.

You can't force some people to buy bygod-ANYTHING. If you try to force them to do what they don't want to do, they will use their own force right back. Why do you think small arms have been selling better and better every year when the rest of the economy is in a Depression?

I don't want a bloody war in my United States. The way things are going, however, one can almost hear the whine of attack helicopter engines spinning up . . . to go kill some "loud people" who just refuse to pay their penalty taxes.

********

Borepatch, a bit surprisingly, is giddy as a schoolgirl over how bad this decision is for the Democrats. We'll see.

Stop Me If You've Heard This Already!

The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money! :rimshot:

:crickets:

In related news, Greece has a socialized healthcare system. The government pays, mostly. When you go to the pharmacy, the cost is from 0% to 25% for your pills. That is, until the government ran out of other people's money last month and now pharmacies are not being reimbursed for medicines. Now pharmacies have started charging full price for medicines when people go to get their prescriptions filled.

Note that, as a Capitalist I would love this all to pieces, except that the bottomless-bucket-of-money insurance plans have driven the cost of medicines through the roof. You can't have a half-free market work right.

God Forbid

I had some funky vision, couldn't really see right in my right eye. I cleaned my glasses but it wasn't that. I tried to keep working but it was getting worse, distracting me that I couldn't see right in the center of my vision. It was like I had looked at a bright light, but I hadn't. I was wondering WTH was going on, and I started seeing a quarter circle of light, which spread to the right, got bigger, and eventually was made of chevrons sparkling like rainbow tinsel. VERRRrrrr strange. I hit up my boy Mr. Google and he told me this is not me going insane (not necessarily anyway). By the time it was over, I was pretty sure it was a scintillating scotoma and hoping a headache would not follow. Thanks God no headache followed, but it did freak me out a bit and I didn't feel like working after that. Oh, and that was first thing in the morning.

Oh well. I guess it's better than knowing what it is from prior experience, and anticipating a headache afterward.

You Got Bad Vibes, Is Why

"They" say that we all vibrate. Everything vibrates, just a little bit, not so you would notice, but everything moves. Also that most of matter is empty space. Stuff looks solid but the atoms of which everything is composed are mostly void, with a few small charged particles whirling about. They're small and close together, but still.

So?

So I gotta theory.

The reason you can't walk through walls is that you can't vibrate the right way. The reason you can't see through them is that they vibrate the wrong way. You can pick up a radio station by making a crystal in your radio vibrate the right way. That is easy. If you could change your own body's resonance, could you walk right through a wall? If you could change the harmonics of the wall, could you see through it?

Jesus knows how to do everything, right? Especially after he was glorified, he can do whatever. So why is it a big deal that he knows how to change his resonance to match the house and walks in on a closed-door church meeting?

Troy Hurtubise invented the Angel Light but he doesn't know how it works. I'm thinking maybe it changes the resonance of the walls you shine it on, just enough to allow light to pass through. And if you do the same thing to a living creature, or anything electronic, it dies. Then he had an engineer help him change it into the God light, and it's curing cancer.

Compare the amazing unknown with what happens when folks know what they are doing, and it's like "real" scientists are taking baby steps. Using sound and light to image disease progress is hardly reversing brain damage and curing cancer, but they know what they are doing.

If you could change your resonant frequency to make you lighter than air, or so that air moved over you, could you fly? If you tuned in a lightning bolt, could you shock a bad guy? Would that make you a wizard - or a scientist?

Then The Parrot Said:

A lady walked by a pet store on her way to work. There was a parrot in the display window of the store, and it said "HEY LADY! YOU'RE UGLY!" She ignored it. No use getting upset at a stupid bird, after all. The next day, she walked by the store and the bird said, "HEY LADY, YOU'RE UGLY!" And the next day. And the next week. Finally, she had enough and turned in to the pet store.

"Your bird," she said to the shopkeeper, "has been insulting me every day for the last two weeks as I walk to work! I demand that you do something about this!"

"Yes, ma'am," said the shopkeeper, "he won't do it again, I promise."

The next day, the lady walked by the store on her way to work. Then the parrot said:

"HEY LADY!
.
.
.
you know!"

********

So here we have the latest case of some hideously fat woman suing an airline. She says it's just not faaaaaair that she sometimes catches a surprise price-doubling when she has to buy an extra seat. Bonus points because "sometimes" she doesn't have to buy an extra seat and sometimes she does. This has happened several times before.

Well here's a news flash: "HEY LADY . . . you know!" You who are disgusting fat bodies did NOT get that way by accident, and well all know you are not surprised by your own girth.

Now you tell me, how is it fair to the guy in the middle that he paid the same price for a seat as the cows on either side?



If you take up as much room as two people, and are heavy enough it takes double the gas to haul you as it does two people, you need to be paying double. Every time. You should be thanking Southwest Airlines that you don't have to pay double if there is an empty seat next to you, tubby.

I take note of your being offended, and am offended at you in return. Suck it up, and pay double. That's what you get for being overfat.

You know, that plus diabetes, heart attacks, bad knees and ankles, stares from small chilren, and broken chairs at Starbucks. Gee, if only there were a way for this not to be a problem for you . . .

In Which I Alienate My Crazy Readers

No, you don't need antidepressants.

You need to cheer up.

First, get some sleep. If you're not tired, exercise and then get some sleep. Exercise enough and you'll be tired enough for a solid night's sleep. Get a good solid night's sleep for three weeks in a row before you see a doctor for your emotional whatevers. EVERYTHING is worse when you're tired.

Get a better diet. Specifically go outside during daylight hours. Make sure you have plenty of magnesium so you can uptake the vitamin D you produce, and enough calcium to deal with the D once you absorb it. Stop eating out of boxes, and stop eating stuff that costs more dollars than it takes minutes to produce. Simple meals, lots of fresh foods, not the same cardboard you've been eating. Get tested for gluten and MSG sensitivity. Drink at least a half-gallon of straight-up WATER every day.

Face reality. Your mom is dying. Your cousin is gay (but not for you). Your dog is also gay. You should have a different job, house and car. You don't have enough money to support your lifestyle. Your spouse thinks you are a jerk for good reason. Your life sucks. Acknowledge it and take positive steps to change it.

If all that won't get your sorry ass un-depressed, get your calcium and parathyroid hormone levels checked. Get scanned for various autoimmune diseases and cancers. If you can't get your emotions in line when you are well fed, rested, and don't have any circumstantial problems, you are physically ill somehow.

But what you 99.993% certainly Do Not Need is a chemical straight jacket. Numbing your emotions (at the risk of increased suicidal tendencies) is not the same thing as being well. Merely Functional is no way to go through life. Fix yourself!

My Neck! My Back! My Neck and my Back!

I hope it's just delayed-onset muscle soreness from some serious rasslin' with the sewer snake the other day but I've got a sore back.

and?

I NEVER get a sore back. I pick up stuff heavier than myself at work and shrug it off. But the other day I woke up on the wrong side of my side and today I went to pick up #4 from his bed and (as my Darling Wife says) I got a twitch on my back.

So (boo, hoo, hoo) instead of going to a baby birthday party I'm on the couch today all day. Probably go and get some aleve later, and take a long hot bath. I've got a hot pack on the hot spot just now and it helps. But we'll see.

Thank God I'm not a commercial crab fisherman. That show Deadliest Catch is keeping me from going mad sitting down and those guys are frikken nails.

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For those who didn't catch the reference in the Title, you have obviously not watched Friday. These few seconds are a cultural icon on which you have missed out! This video clip has some language, so watch the volume control.

Wait-and-See Method Strikes Again

My Darling Wife had about the worst mittelschmerz EVAR earlier. She got kicked by a toddler right in the wrong spot on the guts and bang she was hurting. She retired early, and I had to carry her to bed. Later, I carried her to the restroom and back as she obviously could not walk. Verrrr bad, mmmkay?

Kid fell on head? Wait and see.
Does this cut look infected? Wait and see.
Is it the flu? Wait and see.
Appendicitis? Wait and see.

Well, maybe not that for that last one, but there was no vomiting and just now after a couple of hours of sleep she got up again to make another restroom visit. I went to help when I heard the bed creak and she was walking unassisted. So. Thanks those of you who prayed.

********
For those who won't click the link: Mittelschmerz is German for "I feel as if I've been stabbed repeatedly in my guts in the vicinity of my inside-the-guts lady parts".

Captions For The Win

This is timely, in light of the current lawsuit. The people who grow corn would like you to believe their commercials telling you that High Fructose Corn Syrup is the perzact same thing as table sugar. Your body can't tell the difference, they say. You know who can tell the difference? The researchers who did this study at Princeton University.

Well, it turns out HFCS makes lab rats fat. It also makes you fat, somehow even though the corn industry says it metabolizes the exact same as cane sugar. Riiiight. Anyhow, I showed this picture around the office, and I was NOT the only one who was thinking this. You are not supposed to laugh.

Google does horrible things to image quality to make the picture fit. Click the picture to see it full size.

Safety Gear for the Win

I just saw a crash on the teevee. Two guys on dirt bikes made a jump and collided in midair and came down from what looked like maybe 25 feet, to the dirt track below in a jumbled heap with their motorcycles. One guy bailed and landed on his feet and he was able to ride away after half a minute. The other guy landed pretty much on his head and it looked like he had a 350lbs bike fall on him. He was able to scramble off the track and bawl out the other guy, then he collapsed, and after a minute or so he walked off the sidelines with medical personnel.

As he walked away from the camera I noticed he had what looked like a HANS device (or something very like it) on his back. That cat would be DEAD a few years ago. Paralyzed, at best. Now, he's spitting mad, spitting blood, and holding what are probably several broken ribs. He'll need a new helmet, maybe a new vest, but not a new gravestone, yet.

Let Them Eat Cake Dirt

Scientists: early exposure to germs makes you (potentially) healthier later. Your grandmother was right and your helicopter mother was wrong, and that's why you are sickly. Now kick your kids outside and stop spraying that stanky disinfectant all over the place!

Tinnitus Successfully Treated . . . Faster Please

A few too many gunshots, a few too many turboprop engines, and a few too many large pieces of plate metal being dropped lead to tinnitus. Ask me how I know.

Anyway, in a "why didn't we think of this before" moment, it seems there is a therapy undergoing trials in which most of the people get relief from their tinnitus, compared to a 'placebo' therapy. They play back for people, what the people say their tinnitus sounds like. For hours a day, for weeks, then off and on for a few months.

For £4,500. You can buy a decent synthesizer and an ipod for less than that, though, so enterprising DIY'ers with tinnitus might be in for a personal triumph if this proves as easy as it sounds.

Hat tip to Instapundit. Who for the last day appears not to have mentioned the French Jewish school shooting at all, either - like the rest of the US press.

What Happens When You Go to Get A Dental Crown?

This is the day for Crown #3. My memories of crowns #1 and #2 were somewhat fuzzy as I typed, but I was rested and not high on pain medication for this one. This tooth did not have a root canal filling.

Total time: 2 hours
Total cost (AFTER insurance): $881.50 That was $140 for the buildup, the rest for the "noble" white gold crown, and this is the entire cost to me from anaesthesia to final fitment and a 1-year guarantee.

I showed up early and they had me go over the patient consent and disclosure forms, because it's a new year. Then I went pee (very important, the next hours will be busy) and was escorted right back to a waiting chair.

The assistant took my blood pressure and pulse, then put some numbing gel on between the cheek and the gum by the tooth in question (#19) and left a gauze pad to cover/hold it in place. We went back to the operating suite.

The doctor came and looked at my mouth, and injected some pain killers. I was left for the medicine to numb my jaw for a few minutes. Then the assistant did a "cold test" where they spray some super-duper-duper-cold liquid on a q-tip and touch the tooth they will be working on with the cold stuff. If it hurts, you're not numb. It wasn't (it NEVER is, for me) so they left me a few more minutes. After I failed another cold sensitivity test, the doctor gave me a BUNCH more injected anaesthetic. The very worst of these was only a slight pinch, because she makes it her business to not hurt people. At one point, as she was using both hands and a lot of arm strength to inject the stuff, I felt one of my nerves go all fuzzy and that was the one that was not going numb before. A few minutes later, I was ready to go.

They took some pictures with a little digital camera the size of a toothbrush. It has little LED lights on it that are very bright, and is no-kidding shaped like an electric toothbrush.

I was made to bite down on a tray of goo that took a minute to set up. The tray was as long as all my molars and wrapped around to the incisors, and the goo was smeared liberally inside. This was the first mold, to capture the shape of my tooth before they took any of it away. It also captures a faithful mold of all the other teeth, but we just needed a mold of the one tooth. This comes in handy, later.

The assistant placed a clamp around the tooth to hold a dental dam (a rubber sheet to keep bits of teeth out of your mouth and your tongue off the dentist's fingers). The clamp pinched something and stung, so she repositioned it. The dam was installed by stretching a sheet of rubber around the clamp, then putting the corners of the sheet on a metal "U" shaped frame to hold it open. She didn't like the way it set, so she pulled it off and tried again, this time leaving the dam off. She told me "close your mouth" and put something between my teeth. I held it there for a few minutes.

The doctor came and had me open "wide, big-big wide" and the thing between my teeth turned out to be a couple of "bite this with your mouth wide open and it will stay wide open" spacers. The doctor put one on the other side of my mouth, and the mouth was comfortably held wide-open until they were pretty well done with me.

The doctor re-installed the dam and gave me some wraparound sunglasses to keep bits of old filling and whatnot from getting in my eyes, and got out The Drill. She drilled out the (big) old filling and all the cooling water spray and bits of filling were sucked into a suction tube held near the tooth by the assistante. The doctor made some clucking noises to herself and they put a marker dye in there to see if there was any decay and she drilled some more. This was the only spot of decay in my mouth at the last checkup, right beside a "leaky" old filling. The filling in this tooth was pretty deep. The doctor said she could see the pink of my nerves through a thin section of tooth at the bottom of the now-open cavity. They packed the cavity with "buildup" material and used another toothbrush shaped instrument. This was an ultraviolet curing lamp. The filling was cured and the tooth was strong enough to proceed to cut off the remnants of the natural crown.

This was a full-coverage crown instead of a partial or a filling or inlay, because the tooth had vertical fractures on all four faces. When they were getting the tooth ready to receive the crown, they had to grind down the top of the tooth to get rid of the cracked areas. One of the walls of the cavity was "eggshell thin" and it felt like dull, heavy pressure on my tooth as they ground down that fracture line. This lasted less than a minute and got better as they got past the more heavily damaged part. The spacer, dam and clamp were removed.

The crown will be a gold part, and less tooth has to be destroyed/removed for a gold crown than for a porcelain crown. They didn't have to take the margins way down, so they didn't have to cut my gums. This meant no seeping gums and no need for a followup visit to take a final impression.

The final impression is a higher-resolution goo that gets better detail on the mold. You bite down hard on what feels like silly putty. For five minutes. Your jaws get tired, then they come in and pull the stuff out. The doctor examined the mold made of my teeth, pronounced it good, and something amazing and magical happened. The first impression has come back into importance.

The assistant squeezed some tooth-colored paste out of an applicator syringe into the hole my tooth made in the first-impression mold. The mold was then put back into my mouth and I bit down on it. The paste was soon-to-be-solid temporary crown plastic material, and it was formed perfectly to what was left of my tooth by this procedure. The plastic set up, and the mold was removed. Excess plastic was picked out by the fingers and metal picks of the dentist's assistant. She then removed from my mouth and ground the excess plastic off the temporary crown (for this is what had just been made). She had me tap-tap my teeth together and listened, then put the crown on the tooth with no glue. The sound was different. Tap-tap on some marking paper, and then she pulled the crown off. A bit was ground off the crown, and she put it back on the tooth stub. Better. Some temporary adhesive was applied and the crown was glued onto the tooth.

They gave me a do-it-yourself kit to reglue the crown on in case it comes loose. They set up another appointment, I made another head call, and I went to work.

I had taken ibuprofen before I went, and it wore off while I was at work. I took more. The worst pain is where the needles were poked into the gums for the anaesthesia, and there is a general soreness on that tooth as well as the teeth that were pushing for an hour against the mouth holder-opener thing that kept my mouth open. These are very slight pains, compared to a proper toothache.

The scary part, and the painful part: none. I trust these people after having dealt with them several times now, and they didn't let me down. There were a few "pinchy" moments but nothing that actually hurt.