Tag Archives: chapter excerpt

Take it from a motorcycle driver

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Have you driven down the road and noticed a change in the style of guardrail protecting you from leaving the roadway in case you lose control of your vehicle?

Let’s put the Law of Unintended Consequences to use today.

Take the cable barrier, for instance:

Let’s say you lose control of your vehicle and cause either yourself as a motorcycle driver or another person steering their iron horse to veer off the road and smash into a cables strung out to protect you.

In secondary school, a classmate was decapitated when he lost control of his motorcycle and his helmet was caught on the rim of a steel beam guardrail.

These days, if fate puts you in the hands of a cable guardrail, you may not lose your head but get limbs mangled and sliced off.

The choice is yours.

Hey, be careful out there!

I am going to walk outside and enjoy the sweet serenade of the Brood I cicada cycle, their flight paths less likely to put them in harm’s way of cable guardrails.  Maybe a few car grilles, instead.

Will catch up on thank-yous later this weekend.

A Voice in Anger

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Or, how the goons of Rocket City (the Huntsville Utilities tree trimming crew) ruined my wife’s day and thus mine.

It has been a long year.

First, my wife’s mother fell ill back last March/April and died in November.

Then, immediately following, my father’s health declined rapidly.

Sure, it’s the cycle of life and all that, but it’s also emotionally/physically draining.

Then, to make matters worse, a crape myrtle I have protected year after year from the butchery of power line tree trimmers was nearly slaughtered by the uncaring, untrained hands of those less-educated brutes who attacked my wife’s favourite blooming bush at the end of the driveway this morning.

From a 20-foot tall beauty to a 3-foot stump in a matter of minutes.

All while my mother, sister, niece and I fret over the care my father receives with the caring, trained hands of the medical staff at the local VA hospital.

In addition, an heirloom Rose of Sharon was damaged, along with two smaller crape myrtle bushes.

This, my friends, in the town that helped put men on the Moon!

So, let us serve as a warning to those wanting to move to Huntsville, Alabama, USA.

Yes, it is in the state where George Wallace stood on the steps of the University of Alabama, barring African-Americans from crossing the threshold of higher education.

Butchers still live in this area of the world.

They hide behind chainsaws and cherry pickers, taking out the frustrations of their home lives on the helpless hybrid plants growing beneath the hazardous, humming harbingers of electrical shocks and high monthly utility bills.

They exist to make your life miserable.

They succeeded today.

Where’s a city forester to provide an educated point of view about how to carefully trim trees and bushes for the health of citizens?

Today, I am very unhappy…modern civilisation has let me down.

But then again, based on recent reports of 8th graders, science is not their best subject, which leads directly (through misunderstanding a tree’s anatomy and human psychology) to why government tree trimmers have a lack of understanding the need to aesthetically please the people who pay their salaries.

Maybe I ought to lobby to fire a few tree trimmers or heavily reduce their income to balance the local government budget?

Or at least educate today’s kids to become better qualified tree trimmers in the future.

Even after writing this blog entry, I still don’t feel better.

There’s a stump in the yard where a majestic myrtle once stood and there’s not a single thing I do about it from here, except shoot pictures and ask questions later about Huntsville Utilities departmental budgets and personnel files (nothing like an inside job to build a paper trail and get revenge the cold, hard way — expense report abuse and timecard fraud are common offenses, for starters — local government officials failing the newspaper test right before fall elections).

We may be on the verge of populating space habitats, making a lot of us very busy, but there’s still time to play games with people’s lives who cross my path and upset my wife in the process…

Near Earth Orbit

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Trying to be sarcastic about sarcoidosis or small cell cancer doesn’t go over well with family facing my father’s deteriorating health condition.

Instead, I follow the advice, relayed, of looking up terminology and longterm acute care services through popular search engine technology.

My mother’s health, viewed closely by my sister, is at stake.

Sigh…

One whole thousand years from now, the details of this day are lost to modern memory, despite mass media portrayal of ubiquitous surveillance fighting against sousveillance.

I wonder how many people are unaware of factual existence not supported by fantasies, dreams, delusions and skewed beliefs.

Can we see without labeling?

Can we live in the moment without overlaying illusions?

How do we remove the “we” to be the [super]sets of states of energy that constantly interact?

And, in so doing, how do I help [to] direct medically-trained professionals toward resolving rather than speculating about [the root cause(s) of] the set of issues dogging my father on a daily basis?

All in an effort to clear my thoughts to focus on life decades and centuries from now through data-driven projections of fluctuating trends recorded in a blog/storyline?

First Rule of STEM School: Never, ever, extract or extend the results of conjecture and/or analysis toward infinity.  Safely assume trends are at cross-purposes and will either reach equilibrium or pull one another apart.  Or both.  Or neither.  All at the same time.

The “House” Effect: Or, how the CSI effects affected aftereffects

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While the Subcommittee on the Organisation of Offworld Committee-Forming Avoidance convenes its annual bimonthly meeting to finalise plans for colonisation anarchy policies and procedures, the monetary policy to end the dependence on Fiat and Dodge taxes is in its final stages of incompletion.

That’s the message I’m supposed to send today.

Sitting here in my virtual cyberself, a suit of robotic clothing that simulates my former self (the original set of states of energy long since spoiled after exceeding its expiration date), the residents of the local council estates gives me a round of applause and then a standing ovation for handing them the best performance of the “House” effect.

You know the drill, of course.

Whether one should credit the writers or acting ensemble, with special emphasis on the influence of Hugh “Huge Ego” Laurie, or thank the producers/directors, is a matter of debate long since exhausted.

A mix of dyspepsia and dystopia, cooked to a boil, cooled with a few frozen pieces of Holmesian analysis and served next to a side dish of considerably half-baked humour.  At room “temeprature.”

Garnish with kale, not iceberg lettuce, for the aftereffect is enlightening nutritious, not Titanic, in nature.  Or, at least, shocking in worst case presentational sentimental presentments.

Thanks to the behind-the-scenes folks at the PatriotStore, PatriotCafe, and construction workers wearing creatively stickered helmets at MHVAMC; Nina, Sharon and Geno; Brynn; Dr. Coffey; Danielle; Randy at German Motors; Olympus Exera equipment; evidence-based medicine; and more later…

Congrats to Chestney on the birth of her child, Shannon Elizabeth, 8 lb 7 oz, 21-in long.

Should wimpy authors of useless data analysis be banned?

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Have you ever wondered why bookstores and bestseller lists are filled with books that have no useful purpose?

You know the ones I’m talking about, authors of books like “Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and Outliers: The Story of Success“; or books by authors similar to Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, and Shooting Stars written with LeBron James.”

Do we really need another reminder that book writers have nothing better to do than waste our time trying to block our way to the Sports section of the bookstore?

Are you ready to improve your education?

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Have you considered a career in Slope, Terrain and Elevation Management (STEM)?

In today’s world, there’s always another hill to climb, another mountain to conquer, another variation in topography that’s getting in the way of progress.

In STEM school, we’ll teach you how to navigate inclines on the way to creating a plateau of easy living, where even ground allows you to set the foundation for your future factory.

Don’t hesitate!  Call now!  Lorry drivers are crowding the registration office wanting to get in on this exciting career of mudslinging and offroad fun!

Photo courtesy of Ned Jilton II (njilton@timesnews.net)

“Sheriff’s department”

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This is Blog Loudmouth reporting to you live from the metropolis of Toney, Alabama.

We had planned to interview a few phone callers about their habits of randomly dialing people they’ve googled through people finder software but decided to question their neighbours, instead.

We keep records of people’s habits in order to know which subcultures to zap, pressing a reset button that resyncs their thought patterns according to our general plan.

It has to start somewhere, including tony towns like Toney.

We’ll keep you posted.

We have rocket ship software assurance plans to complete, first…

Meanwhile, on another planet

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Here it is, I have to coordinate the Committee contracts with newly “elected” leaders like Putin and Hollande to ensure we keep our species moving in the direction on which we secretly agreed out in the open, using adverts on billboards and popular websites to describe the project plan, and then, family issues appear, like aliens from another planet, forcing me to bring forth my colleagues to measure certain people for cement shoes.

Either that, or manage their lives through closer surveillance, as usual.

For instance, I get a message like this:

Hello Richard,

Before I go into addressing your concern, I’d like to first apologize for the delay in my responding to your inquiry. Yahoo! Customer Care is committed to answering your questions as quickly and accurately as possible. However, we are currently receiving unusually high volumes which caused the delayed response.

I am sorry you have been unable to access your fathers Yahoo! account. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
I have reviewed this case and I would like to apologize for our previous responses as they were not as clear as they could have been.
As stated in the Yahoo! Terms of Service, Yahoo! accounts and any contents therein are non-transferable including when the account holder is ill or deceased. As a result, Yahoo! cannot provide passwords or access to another users’ accounts including account content such as email. To view Yahoo!’s Terms of Service click:
I hope this information helps, please reply to this message if you have any additional questions or concerns, I will be happy to help.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Account Services.

Regards,

Dalton
Yahoo! Customer Care

What am I expected to say in an electronic paper trail?  What else, of course?:

Dalton,

Thanks for taking the time to respond and explain Yahoo! policy regarding personal accounts.  I had discussed this with my mother — we talked with a lawyer who said that we could pursue a court order to gain access to Dad’s Yahoo! account but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that Yahoo! will comply with the court order.  Therefore, we’ve resigned ourselves to losing my father’s correspondence with friends and family through the years.  We hope we’ve figured out the financial transactions that were unresolved and closed them.

I completely understand the strict policies that email providers like Yahoo! have put in place to protect their customers.  However, I hope that in the future, we as a civilized society can accommodate digital wills and powers of attorney that give families and associates access to online accounts (especially as cloud services become prevalent) when critical health issues and/or deaths occur unexpectedly.

Regards,
Rick

Shall I complete the takedown of a CEO or two?  After all, Walmart and Yahoo! leadership positions look a little shaky right now, don’t they?  Maybe I should add a few email provider policy creators to the CEO guests on my version of Who’s Still Standing?!

Talk about alien encounters!

While we’re on the subject, I accepted PegLegs request to join the Committee.

See, as a marathon runner, PegLegs offers us a unique perspective.

Just the other day, she completed a 50 marathons in 50 days quest.

As a cover, that is…

She was sent to investigate a rash of reports that tractor-trailer rigs (a/k/a lorries) are spewing more than their usual black smoke trails into the air vents of overly sensitive minicaravan drivers and their spoiled brats vegetatively watching cotton candy viddies in the backseats.

Which can mean only one thing: we’ve reached critical mass in owner-operators hitting rock-bottom, no longer able to afford to maintain their over-the-road vehicles.

One step closer to the global strike by transportation workers…

PegLegs, while pounding her feet on pavement, discovered a new algorithm that tracks those who don’t want to be tracked simply by using crowd identification software to eliminate the trails of people who freely share their geolocation data, making those who don’t want to share their personal lives stand out like a hot dog stand on the last piece of Arctic ice going down the throat of a polar bear burning up in the steaming waters of a global warming sea current changing directions because there aren’t enough whales to release natural gas after eating giant Pacific squids looking for something to eat ever since Cameron’s deep sea dive poisoned the frigid depths with his hot air.

And now we return you to life 1000 years later…

Thanks to Chasity at Perkins; John, Jeremy, Peggy, Dr, Bokor, Stephanie and Brad at VA ICU; Robert at the Rave; Thomas at Chick fil A; Julie and Carla at Tuesday Morning; Esther at Hobby Lobby; Mapco.

Family Update (feel free to skip)

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Family:

Dad’s vital signs are stable in ICU right now.  We’ve talked with his doctor twice, as well as observed the whole staff while the head MD used Dad as a teaching tool for MD residents.

Here’s the summary so far:

When Dad entered the ER at the VA yesterday, he had pneumonia which presumably he contracted at the VA skilled nursing facility (or CLC, as they call it).

Turns out he also had a collapsed lung due to a blockage of mucus.  They put Dad on a respirator (called a Nellcor Puritan Bennett 840 Ventilator System) that, unlike the old iron lung (which helped to pull air into the the lungs), pumps air into or inflates his lungs — they hoped to reinflate his collapsed lung with the respirator.

Three chest X-rays over the course of last night and into this morning showed the progression of his inflated lung (first X-ray: lung was 2/3 collapsed; second one: 1/3 collapsed; third one: completely inflated), which also went hand-in-hand with Dad’s oxygen level, rising from the 70s to just about 100% oxygen saturation now.

They’ve given Dad antibiotics that treat 98% of the types of pneumonia usually encountered in hospital situations, including the VA nursing home where he was staying, so Dad’s infection should go away with time.  The mucus blockage is still there but the last X-ray showed the lung is inflated past the blockage so that’s a good thing for now.  The doctor examined Dad and thinks the lung may have collapsed a little since the last X-ray.  Therefore, Dad will stay on the respirator for at least the next 24 hours before they attempt to wean him off of respiration assistance.

That’s the good news.

While looking at Dad’s X-rays, the doctor (and radiologist) noted Dad’s heart is enlarged.   Upon further examination, it appears Dad has damage to the wall of one ventricle, a tear that resulted in a bulge at some time in the past (i.e., an aneurysm), which the doctor surmises was an undetected heart attack (MI, or myocardial infarction) that is associated with the recent reports of Dad having a heart murmur.

The doctor has ordered another chest X-ray, as well as a sonogram (ultrasound of the heart) to further detail the damage; in other words, if the heart damage is bad and Dad is unable to fight the lung infection, then we have to consider the measures we want to take to try to get Dad better.

In addition, the doctor is worried about Dad’s neurological condition.  Basically, mentally, deep down, Dad has to want to fight this or his body will not get better.  If Dad was a 20-year old man, his body could probably heal itself regardless of Dad’s mental state; however, at this point, we cannot say what’s going on in Dad’s thoughts because he cannot verbalise or visually express in any coherent manner his pains, aches or desires.

After going through Dad’s medical history, the doctor told us what nobody wants to hear but those in the medical field understand — we may never know what has caused Dad’s symptoms but, as knowledgeable/compassionate MDs, the doctors must admit they’re human, too, and don’t know everything.

The important thing is to give Dad as much of a chance as the medical staff can for him to get better, making him comfortable in the process, and let time (and God) heal Dad.

Also, Dad’s blood pressure has varied, running a little low, but hasn’t dropped precipitously low, so they’re watching his BP but don’t want to give him any medication unless they have to, avoiding complications and giving them a little room for changing his meds if an emergency arises.

Same for his agitation/anxiousness — they don’t want to overly sedate him but simply give him anti-anxiety medication on an as-needed basis so that Dad has the chance to let us know if he’s in any real pain or wants to participate in some other way in his recovery.

That’s all for now.  We’ll know more tomorrow.

Thanks for all your prayers,

Rick