But That's Not The Way It Feels

The MRI I had last week has revealed that I'm a big baby. The report was replete with terms like, "normal," "slight" and "Stop wasting our time."
Ha ha, of course it didn't say that last bit, they got paid for their time.

It's Alive

After a long gestation period, Earth Girls Love_____ has a website. It can be found at earthgirlslove.com
Once there it is possible to purchase Earth Girls Love_____ merchandise. So far, it's just their highly regarded organic lip balm, but very soon other items will be available, so check back often.

Coming Full Circle In A Tube, Which Is A Full Circle

Since that time I was born, I've always thought of myself as claustrophobic. Last week I had an MRI. I was nervous, anticipating being entombed in a metal tube. But I loved it, entombed? More like enwombed. 

I don't know what the MRI revealed even though I looked at the images on my computer. I mean it's obvious I have bones and even a brain, but I don't know why they seem to hate each other. I may have to show them to a doctor despite my sense that that never helps. 

I've been staying home from work this week because I've been running a fever. I'm starting to feel better. But, one way or another, I might end up seeking medical advice. If I do, I hope I can find someone better than the Cuomo/Christie Duck Dynasty Doctor. 

Maybe They Should Put A Bag Over Their Heads

The Republicans are more hypocritical than a Pharisee sharing a pulled pork sandwich with a harlot and a moneylender, a harlot, a moneylender and a pig. They are hyperventilating about the two cases of Ebola that have developed in this country and railing about the administration's handling of the epidemic of two cases, complaing because the Ebola Coordinator is a coordinator and not a doctor
In the meantime, they have blocked the appointment of a new surgeon general because he had the audacity to say that the plague of gun deaths (thirty-two per day) is a health issue. As if people dying by the thousands every year, isn't a health issue.

By the way, eloquence is harder than it looks, antithesis will arrive when I think of a suitably epigrammatic one.

We Should Doff Our Don

When our Congressman was young, he might have been effective, but now Young is just a bully and a buffoon, and according to an editorial, possibly insane. 

So, I think that nails polyptoton, next up, antithesis. 

You're A Poet And You Don't Know It

...is something that no one ever said to Shakespeare, because he was a poet, and he did know it.

I preordered a book, The Elements of Eloquence, to try and make this blog more interesting and my arguments more compelling. Now it's arrived.  The author, Mark Forsyth, says that even a genius such as Shakespeare used these techniques to improve his writing. Actually, Mr. Forsyth says that Shakespeare was not a genius, but a craftsman who learned the figures of rhetoric and deployed them skillfully. 
My plan was, and still is, to sneak the different elements into the blog and let the praise pile up. Chapter One introduces the simplest one: alliteration. And it turns out, I have, in a prior post, used that one, to wit, Don Young is a bully and buffoon. 
I'm hoping that now that you've heard me tell it twice, and in an alliterative approach, Alaskans, that 
we can end this poor player's strutting and fretting; that he could be heard no more. I don't know if all lives are tales told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but that definitely sounds like a Don Young news conference.

Oh, What A Noble Mind Is Here O'erthrown!—

Last night I was winterizing my new bike with my usual aplomb, putting on a fender and studded tires. I was satisfied with the work by the end, although not every bike mechanic needs a hammer for the installation, probably because they're not as creative as I am, or possibly they have better impulse control.
Anyway, when I came out this morning to go to work, one of the tires was flat, and I woke Leah up and told her she either needed to drive me to work, or find a way to her job without using my car because I didn't have time to walk. It wasn't till much later in the day that somebody asked me why I didn't just ride my other bike. "Alzheimer's, I guess." I was planning on playfully riffing on that with the Hamlet quote above, but I couldn't remember it! Ah, Google, the demented's little helper.

Space, The Final Frontier, Or A Cold Infinite Emptiness?

When I used to feel maudlin, this was pre-Zoloft, of course, (I'm a Post Maudlinist now ) I would see the moon (this was the original moon before the current sequel craze, i.e. Super Moon, Blood Moon, etc.) and imagine that the people I missed were looking at it at the same time.  I doubt they ever were, but check out this completely unrelated item, Emo Phillips is going to be in Boston on November 14th, and exactly one week later he'll be in Cedar Rapids.

And speaking of being maudlin, or happy or whatever feelings humans have, I always thought one of the flaws in the Vulcan psyche is (or was, or will be) that if a being has no emotions, why would they do anything, "What's my motivation?" Now, I've been (or was) vindicated. Listening to a book by an autistic author, I heard her cite research that shows that people whose brains have been damaged in a way that removes their emotions are incapable of making decisions and are essentially paralyzed. When I heard that, I felt.

I Thought This Would Fit In The Last Post, But It Didn't.

Adam Smith wrote in the Wealth of Nations (fine, I never read Adam Smith, but neither did you, so how are you going to argue with me) that in a free market as we pursue our own best interests, there is an invisible hand that makes the economy better for everyone.
Unfortunately, we now live in an oligarchy and their lobbyist lackeys. The invisible hand is now just an invisible finger to poke us poors in the eye.

Can't We All Just Get Along? No, Stop Asking.

According to NPR, because Alaska is a cheap media market, with a vulnerable incumbent Democratic senator, we have been inundated with Koch brother (and other's) money to sway the election. TV programming, the mail, our front porches and telephones have all become unusable extensions of the campaign with  the result that Alaskans are enraged. At everyone.
It's not just the negativity that grates, it's the cognitive effort to have to keep listening to the Republican ads, and then mentally debunking them.
For example, the ads try to tie Begich to Obama's "failed" policies without naming them. Are they the ones that brought unemployement below six percent? Are they the ones that (using the Republican blueprint, credit where credit is due) got health insurance to millions of uninsured people? The record stock market? Killing bin Laden?
They certainly don't want to talk about their own record. While they bemoan the national debt, they shut down the government rather than even discuss raising the taxes on billionaires that pay at lower rates than the middle class. They don't want to discuss the policy that led to the invasion of Iraq, at a cost of over a trillion dollars, a war that was so mishandled that it created ISIS. Although they do seem eager to get back into that war.  Do they want to talk about their voter suppression or their views on legitimate rape?
I only mention this as confirmation of the NPR report, we are enraged. Unfortunately, as a red state, most of us are enraged at the wrong people.