Cancer!!

I already knew. There was some reason besides hemorrhoids for my pain and blood in stool, etc. I went to my newest doctor today. When the doctor AND his nurse AND a young guy I didn’t meet before all came into the room together. The old doctor said, “I don’t like you.” He said he thought I was only bringing him a hemorrhoid problem but I brought a bad thing. Today, May 23, 2014....exactly two months past my 56th birthday, I was told that I have cancer.

At the moment he says I have cancer just inside my rectum...rectal cancer. This explains, he said, why I have had such continual pain just from sitting. No kidding. It also explains to me much of why it is that I have lost about 35 pounds in the past three months or so. It was because I was eating much less but THAT was because I was afraid to eat because of the pain that would follow in the bathroom and, no doubt the cancer has affected my appetite.

I have a PET scan scheduled for next Wednesday to determine if it has spread anywhere else. If not, he says, I may only have to have some radiation.

I know for sure that at lest one, maybe more, of my friends has cancer. It seems I have joined your club even if mine is different from yours.

At this point I don’t know how much or what kind of future I have. I have told Melinda that she HAS to get herself acquainted with driving this car. I say the following, not because I am interested in any sort of debate or argument, but only to inform any of my friends who may not know, that I am not afraid of death. I know with absolute certainty what death is and is not. I know, for several reasons, especially the wealth of neuroscience on the matter of the brain producing consciousness, that it is merely the state of non-existence that “I” was in before biological processes brought me into existence. If this were my “belief” or opinion I would say so. I do fear pain though, that which might well come before the dead part. I can only hope that I can escape most of it.

“While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.” - Mark Twain's Notebook, 1896 He is, er, was correct.

I want to tell all my friends that I truly love and appreciate you.

That Weird Guy

addendum: and as if THAT were not enough....doc also mentioned colostomy bag, which I had thought of to0, but I don't know about that yet.

Hey Y'all

As I write this, in about eight hours I will turn 56 years old. I am surprised by this. There was a time when I was much younger that it didn’t seem at all surprising to me that I would one day be 56. I was born around 5:30 in the morning, which is why I hate, loathe and otherwise detest early mornings. How rude. But there has been a lot of water under the bridge...and a fair amount over the top of it...since those ancient times. Even when I was a teenager, the year 2000 seemed impossibly far away. It was The Future. Now, 14 years into the mess I have come to think that The Future does not actually exist...and never can or will. It is always now.

A little more than 20 years ago I started, almost unconsciously, mentally marking mile posts in life. The only two actual friends I had from childhood have long since ceased. They were both slightly younger than I, one related to me by blood, one not. There were times when we were together that we would muse to each other about being old men, maybe 70, sitting on a porch in rocking chairs somewhere. Sam, the one not related to me, died when he and I were 33. That was the first time this “milestone” thing came into my head. He died of Kaposi’s Sarcoma related to AIDS. Last I heard his ashes were on a mountain in Denver. His dad would not go to his funeral because Sam was gay. I couldn’t because I had no money.

Jimmy, who was both my nephew and my cousin, died when he was 42. I don’t know an exact cause, but his doctor had told him that his body was in worse shape than an average man of 70. Apparently, mostly due to the ravages of extreme alcohol and drug use. I do know he could chugalug a whole pint of whiskey and he drank aftershave once because he couldn’t get any other alcohol at the time. As teenagers he had been beside me as pall bearers at my dad’s funeral. I didn’t get to go to Jimmy’s funeral either. I learned of his death while sitting in a truck stop parking lot in Tennessee. I had to tell my dispatcher I had to wait a few hours before I could drive again. I was already 43 by then, and so....the three of us would never be 70 and sitting on a porch somewhere.

This next milestone, tomorrow, I measure by the fact that I will have made it (see? I can be optimistic) to the age my wife Philis was when she died. She went “due to complications of diabetes” in 2008. It was a whole week, and well after her funeral, before anyone thought to inform me of her death. These “milestones” are not about just people I knew or know...people who were very close to me in life, a huge part of my life. The next such milestone for me is a fer piece...20 years more. My dad was 76 when he died. He was born in 1900. I might well make that one, though given my heart disease, COPD, diabetes, sleep apnea, depression, etc., I am not so optimistic about it. Should I make that one, the only other one I have is my maw...she made it to 87 years old. Another 31 years? Wow...that would be the year 2045.

I’ve had the front porch for several years now. Not mine of course, just rented. For several months I’ve had the rocking chair...not one of the regular kind, an old recliner...but it rocks. It seems emptier than I thought it would in some ways, though the advent of the Spazz and the Farce, as we sometimes refer to them, allowed me to have a great many more friends than I ever would have otherwise. To all of you who have been and are my friends...thank you. I hope we make it to a time when 3-D holographic presence is as common as Facebook and Youtube now.

TRB

Our Car

This is what I consider the oddest blog I’ve ever done. I have no words to express to you how much I hate and detest doing this sort of thing, and I would not, except that it is a genuine need. My wife and I currently have a ‘96 Dodge Neon. It runs ok except that I am told there is a plastic part somewhere on the bottom of the motor. This part seems to be cracked and it leaks water...a LOT of water. It has gotten so now that we can’t get more than three or four miles before having to stop, let the engine cool, and add more water.

According to MANY mechanics I have talked to, the people at AutoZone, and the local Dodge dealer, this part no longer exists at all. This means this car cannot be fixed except with another engine or another car. Even junkyards will not sell the part if they have one, except on another motor. Yeah, it feels bad to do this, especially when there are so many people out there whose needs far exceed my own. But I am a heart patient. My docs have declared me 100%, permanently disabled. We manage on my disability check and Food Stamps. My wife last worked well over three years ago. For a while, she tried hard to get another job, but she found nothing. Meanwhile her health has also deteriorated to the point that it seems very unlikely to me that she could work if she had a job. She is fighting for her disability but has not yet had any success with that.

We both have doctor appointments we need to get to and to the grocery store. That is pretty much the extent of our going anywhere...we just don’t have the money to go anywhere else. I picked this site because they seemed the most honest and direct to me. They take 5% straight-up and swear to never ask donors for anything.

At the risk of sounding like Bartles & James, “I thank you for your support.”

TRB

Hoovervilles

I’m ok now. It took getting old before my time and being declared permanently and totally disabled with bad heart problems...and the existence of “safety nets” called disability and Medicare and Medicaid and Food Stamps, but I’m ok. I have enough food. I have a place to live...a little up from being in a “Hooverville” but alright. I can go to docs and get meds. And like the line from the song says, “I get by with a little help from my friends” to whom I am deeply grateful. I don’t have it as bad as the homeless, or the severely hungry, though watching the Food Stamps be decreased and the food prices continually increase, I don’t know how long that may last. I am as lucky as I am, primarily because of dumb luck...it damn sure was not due to the decades of working my ass off.

You ever heard of a “Hooverwille”? If not you should know more about your history. During the Great Depression there were thousands of people all over the country in “shantytowns” because they had nowhere to go, often because they had been evicted because they had no money to pay rent. These shantytowns were called “Hoovervilles” by many because many blamed the president at the time, Herbert Hoover, for doing nothing at all to help people who had nothing, especially after the stock market crash of '29 which happened only eight months before he became president. He seemed to willfully disbelieve that things were that bad in the country and, like many politicians today, if things were that bad, it was only because people were lazy bums wanting handouts. There were no “safety nets” at that time...no Social Security, no unemployment benefits, no Food Stamps, no Medicare or Medicaid. Many historians agree that if this condition had not been remedied somewhat by the next president Franklin Roosevelt, there would have been a major revolution in this country.

Some politicians today, mostly Republicans but not all, say those things...it would be a huge disservice to poor people to continue their unemployment payments or Food Stamps or Medicare, et al. It is hardly only the politicians though. I will never understand the mentality - if you can call it that - of people who themselves are very poor, who have tried for months or even years to get a job and cannot, but who agree with those politicians. There are always some people who seem downright gleeful at the misery and suffering of the poor, and feel nothing for them except maybe pure hatred. Case in point: State Representative Tom Brower of Hawaii who has literally, personally taken a sledgehammer and destroyed the meager possessions of homeless people...an act which would gotten most other people arrested. He expresses his hatred for the poor and homeless. No, he’s not a Republican but a Democrat.

There may not be quit as many as there were then, but there are plenty of “Hoovervilles” all over the USA as you read this. And “around the world close to one billion people live in informal settlements or “slums.” By some estimates that population is expected to double by 2030." Source. In the '20s people came from all over the country to Detroit because they had heard that Henry Ford paid the huge sum of five dollars a day for workers. He did, for a while, and that was more than most regular jobs, but some did not realize that this job meant hard labor for 10-12 hours a day at least six days a week and there were NO breaks for food, drink, toilet or anything else without the permission of a supervisor...otherwise you were on the street again. One black man in one of the videos I watched, who lived at the time, said you could get a huge chunk of bacon, maybe a foot square or more, for something like 19 cents. You could get a 24-pound sack of flour for 19 cents. But, he asked, where you gonna get the 29 cents?

About 35 years or so after the five dollar a day at Ford, I knew first hand from direct personal experience about the five dollars a day...if you were lucky. Mine was not in a factory but cotton fields, and of course I could never make that much money because I was a little boy then. A strong man in an abundant field might manage to get $5 a day...by picking five hundred pounds of cotton. It’s been around fifty years since I did that. I didn’t fully understand then...but I would never wish that on anyone...except the billionares.

TRB

Beard

Beard For a time I sawed and scraped
away parts of myself to swirl
away and down the drain for
fear of feeling social pain
at being somewhat natural.

Slip of hand, sting of steel
another flow of crimson red
and it came into my head
of all the things to be feared
was surely not just a beard. -TRB

Therefore I must get some wine...

Therefore I must get some wine... “The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally,...” This is part of a quote I found in a Bill Moyers piece I just read. I left off the rest of it because it might date the quote a little. It is a quote from Plutarch, a man who lived in Rome just after the supposed time of Jesus. The point is to show that this so-called ‘class warfare’ we are in the midst of now, especially in America, is nothing new. It has been here for at least about two thousand years and likely much longer. The rest of the quote is... “...when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.” It is has been called a political lobbying group) Citizens United . This ruling established, in simple terms, that “corporations are people" for the political purpose of shoveling huge amounts of money into political campaigns...part of what Plutarch called “the abuse of buying and selling votes”. It probably is not too surprising to the more politically astute that such has been going on in our country for quite some time, but it was usually referred to, if referred to at all, as shady dealings in smoke filled rooms. The court ruling essentially eliminated any need for secrecy as far as the buying and selling of votes was concerned. It is now perfectly legal, because the highest court in the land said so, to buy and sell all the votes you want. Therefore it should hardly be surprising that many of the billionaires and huge corporations quite literally run the country. They can dictate what the vote shall be on most legal matters of concern to them, and there are even documented instance of corporations literally writing the bills to be ‘voted on’ by Congress. One of the major differences between the times and places in the past where the rich have ruled the peasants with an iron fist is technology. The ability to literally transfer any amount of money to any all places on the globe within seconds is a fact...that will not go away short of a major catastrophe. Global corporations are gradually (and at an increasing rate) merging with governments so that soon it will be silly to refer to those as two different things. There will absolutely be, at some point, a global government/corporation. It is as inevitable as sunrise...in my humble opinion. There is good news and bad news. This too shall pass...nothing, not even the universe, lasts forever. Perhaps more importantly, certainly more immediate, is that YOU too shall pass. So....which is the good and which is the bad? TRB 3 Here’s what is so bad about everything that happens on this earth. Death catches up with all of us. Also, the hearts of people are full of evil. They live in foolish pleasure. After that, they join those who have already died. 4 Anyone who is living still has hope. Even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! 5 People who are still alive know they’ll die. But those who have died don’t know anything. They don’t receive any more rewards. And they are soon forgotten. 6 Their love, hate and jealousy disappear. They will never share again in anything that happens on earth. 7 Go and enjoy your food. Be joyful as you drink your wine. Ecclesiates 9:3-7, (New International Readers Version)

Who, When and Where am I?

Personal log, stardate: Unknown. I find myself in what appears to be - what is claimed to be - early 21st century Earth. There are several indicators which support this, but then nearly everything now seems to be in question. Perfunctory research suggests that much of what is...or had been...known to me, is viewed as fiction in this period. The materials I find here indicate that the stardate system either did not begin until more than a century from ‘now’, or that the dating system and many other things I thought I knew are entirely fictional, even including the Q and the Continuum. But then this period itself may be fictional. A snippet from an Earth writer called Shakespeare comes to mind: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts,... Even Klingons have been known to quote Shakespeare.

I wondered if some computers here insert bits of information in one’s ‘stream of thought’ to further the stream. Yet computers here seem annoyingly primitive, as do many other things I find here. The computer I’m using now has such a tiny processing and storage capacity...I cannot use it at all except with manual input devices. But I suppose it is better than the time of Shakespeare who apparently was restricted paper, ink and the feather of a bird (shudder).

I have begun to question whether anything I have ever known in my life is truth or fiction. I cannot even specify a reliable ‘earthdate’ at this point because the date depends on which system one uses: Is this the year of the rat, of the dragon, of the monkey, etc. But those are parts of a much larger system. In what is called “the West” here, there was the Julian calendar, superceded by the Gregorian, which I am now supposed to use and which seems to be the standard for this planet at this time, though several other calendars exist and are used in various places. This Gregorian seems to be based on some amalgam of much older pagan deities, a “Christian” deity, and some degree of local astronomy, based on this planet’s moon and star, known as 'Sol’ or 'the Sun’. The current earth year is said to be 2013, but this is based completely on the supposed birth of the central character in the currently dominate religion here known as Christianity, and has nothing whatever to do with the actual age of the planet, though many here do know the age of the planet with a good degree of certainty.

It is often difficult or impossible to determine correct information on some things. I thought I had found a reference work on stardates but, as with many things here, it was not as I thought. This one seems to have reasonably accurate astronomical information, at least as viewed from this point, but I see nothing about the stardate system. The place with the most information about that is inconsistent with other claimed information, and also claims the entire enterprise is a fiction. It is called Memory Alpha which would suggest that it was written by someone at a later time than the time period mentioned. Can one have “memories” of the future or of things that never existed but in fiction or dreams? Am I somehow stuck in a holodeck program which I do not remember entering? Even here, claims of both fiction and fact.

Even my own name has become suspect. As unusual as it is the only references to Temy I find that do not refer to me seem to refer to females, often Asian; a rather disconcerting claim. Perhaps all of life for everyone everywhere in all times is only an illusion. I am tired now so I will try to rest.

TRB