Category: Uncategorized

Late to the party as usual, we started watching Ryan Murphy's Hollywood on Netflix a few days ago.

I know it's gotten very mixed reviews (as does much of Mr. Murphy's work), with one reviewer dubbing it, "A ludicrous version of LaLa Land."

Whatever, Karen.

For me, it's been a wonderful and much needed escape from the awful gripping our country right now; water to a thirsty traveler in the desert, allowing me to slip into an alternate universe where there is a happy ending.

And that ending…oh my god. Tears were streaming down my cheeks during the final episode and I thought, "This is the soul of America. Fuck Trump and his flying monkeys. They are not this country. They are just loud," and when the credits finally rolled, for the first time I felt genuine hope for what will come of the turmoil we find ourselves in.

Be strong. Love wins.

I have been following this cute Spanish photographer on Instagram (@stuckkinabox aka @sergioheads) for several years now, and he posed an interesting question today:

What do you miss most about our previous lifestyle?

It's something I haven't considered specifically; it's more of just a nebulous feeling of loss for me, but I shall try to elaborate.

I think that after the past two months (has it really been only that long?) the reality of our previous existence being gone is now finally hitting home. As I've written before, things are never going to go back to the way they were before.

But what do I miss? Even though I am an inveterate introvert, I still do miss the daily human interaction that we all took for granted. I miss being able to just go out and do things without having to worry about face masks and social distancing and the possibility of being infected by yahoos who are only thinking about themselves. (Trips to the grocery store are fraying my last nerve.)

I miss whiling away weekend afternoons with Ben at Starbucks. I miss going to restaurants. I miss having the ability to go on spontaneous road trips, without knowing that once we reach our destination there isn't actually anywhere to go. I miss visiting friends. I miss going to movies. I miss going to IKEA for no reason at all. All these are admittedly small, first-world problems, but nonetheless they are things I miss being able to do.

And while I certainly enjoy the relative freedom of working from home, I do miss being able to go into the office and connect with people in person. Now one day just runs into another to the point that I really have to think about what day of the week it is. (I feel like Dolores in Season One of Westworld, waking up in the morning, gathering her supplies and heading out in the fields to paint the same thing day after day.

But you know what I miss the most? I miss every other waking thought not being about this pandemic and the damage it's doing to our global society, about Trump, about his cabal or his brain-dead zombie supporters, about masks or gloves or hand sanitizers, or about whatever the next horrific stream of effluent will be that spews from the White House. That is what I miss the most.

But, if this self-quarantine ensures that I and those I love live through this horrible period in our history, so be it. It's a small price to pay to see the new world that will spring from this nightmare. And a new world will spring from it.

…it's the little things.

Ben had training on Saturday.

Early that afternoon I got a text from him telling me he'd lost the brand new Pro AirPods that I'd got him for our non-denominational winter holiday.

My heart sank. Probably as much as his. As you know, these things are not inexpensive, and even with a piecemeal AppleCare replacement, they'd cost more to replace than the original purchase. I was not happy.

He tore his bag apart. He cleaned out his car. I tore the sofa apart and looked underneath both it and the coffee table. I went through the laundry I'd just finished up. They were nowhere to be found.

As he was about to leave training, he asked if I wanted to run out to his school to look in his office and grab dinner on the way back. I said I did, although to be honest I wasn't at all hungry at that point.

They weren't at his office. Further, we temporarily locked ourselves into the parking lot at the school because the normal exit gate wasn't remotely triggered to open; it was locked with padlocks. I waited in the car while Ben let himself out the pedestrian gate and went back into the school to try and find the key. The keys he found didn't work. Thankfully there was another teacher on campus, and she was able to trigger the entrance gate allowing us to get out of the labyrinth.

We drove past the lunch spot where the Pods last appeared on Ben's "Find My" app. Nothing.

Hey Apple, what good is the Find My app when attempting to locate lost AirPods if it will only locate their last known location unless they're actually paired to something and broadcasting?

There were a couple other places he thought they might be: two classrooms where he'd been coaching teachers Friday afternoon. He didn't have access at those particular schools, and didn't have the teachers' phone numbers, so he resolved to email them when we got back home.

We didn't stop for dinner. Neither one of us was in the mood at that point.

More rifling through the sofa cushions. More going through pants and jacket pockets.

I was in the laundry room when I heard "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" from the dining room.

I walked in and found Ben with the Pods in his hand.

"I SWEAR I went though every damned pocket in my backpack and it was totally empty!"

I started giggling. Then laughing.

"It works every time," I said. "Every damn time."

While I'd been sitting in the school parking lot waiting for Ben to get the keys I remembered something from many years ago: when something is lost, you need to chew out the Prop Master for fucking up.

"Prop Master, you've fucked up! We need this prop for this scene in Ben's life!"

This never fails. Never. I don't know how or why it works, but I guarantee that the object in question will magically appear within hours—if not minutes after you do this. Is it magic? Does it confirm the existence of an intelligence beyond the physical? Does it point out another hole in the fabric of what we call reality?

I honestly don't know. All I know is that it works.

"When Dean first met Brando in 1949, he told him he was his biggest fan and the two kissed."

My emotions™️
7am: Today I'll be more positive
10am: I hate my job, the sun and myself
Lunch: ok I think I overreacted
5pm: another stupid day is over
8pm: if I get enough sleep I'll be fine
12am: [crying] I hope aliens destroy earth

— Serg (@bonehugsnirony) February 28, 2018

Why is it that these kids who make YouTube videos where they're either saying or doing something stupid to get their fifteen seconds of fame always feel it necessary to SCREAM into the camera?

Until a little over a year ago, my high blood pressure was under control. Then my ankles started swelling, and it was traced back to one medication in particular that I'd been successfully taking with no side effects for the last ten years.

My PCP took me off of it and switched me over to another. My ankles returned to normal, but then I noticed my numbers slowly started creeping up. Concerned, I paid another visit to my PCP about two months ago. and my BP in the office was something like 185/90. She was not happy about this and gave me a couple Clonidine. That brought the pressure down (and nearly put me to sleep on the drive home, unfortunately). She added another medication (not Clonidine) to my daily regimen and referred me to a cardiologist.

The cardiologist at first didn't want to change up any of the meds. You need to lose weight and cut out salt, blah, blah, blah. I told him I never added salt to anything and he replied with a very curt, "Do you eat anything that would rot if you left it sitting out for more than a day?" I said of course. We all do. "All processed food is full of sodium." In the end, he agreed to make one small change, swapping out one diuretic for another.

So Ben and I started walking in the evening and he—very reluctantly—stopped salting our shared meals while cooking. My pressures weren't getting any better, so I emailed the cardiologist and said, "Look…my numbers are still super high and this is unacceptable. Can you either put me back on what I was originally taking (I'll deal with the ankles) or try me on something else…even if it is more expensive and has some annoying side effect?"

So two weeks ago he put me on 400mg of Labetolol twice a day. It worked. In fact, it worked too well, so I cut back the dosage. Once I did that the numbers started creeping back up and were now just as bad as they were before I went on the drug to begin with, even though I was back on the originally prescribed dosage. I emailed again (because I'm not due to see him until November) and told him what was going on.

Yesterday afternoon I started developing a headache as I was driving home from work. By the time I got home it was somewhere between a 5 and 6 on the Richter scale. When I got home I took a couple aspirin and fixed a snack. I got a third of the way into said snack and the headache shot up to a 10. I broke out in a sweat and became so nauseated I thought I was going to throw up. The whole thing felt like food poisoning to me—something I've dealt with more than once so it's not like I don't know the symptoms. While I was trying to figure out what I ate at lunch that might've triggered this (because it's almost always what you ate before the last thing you've put in your stomach), I decided to check my BP.

Holy fucking shitballs, Batman! 220/110.

So TLDR, once Ben got home we headed to the E.R. where I was tested and actually treated like a human being for a change by some of the best E.R. staff I have dealt with (at least since I actually worked in a hospital and everyone there knew me): IV hydration, EKG, blood tests, an analgesic for the headache, a bit of Benadryl, and a dose of Clonidine. Blood tests and EKG both came back normal. And while I was fighting to stay awake when all was said and done, I was feeling much better by the time they released me.

And I finally heard from my cardiologist while we were waiting to be seen. He wants me to double up on one of the other medications.

The BP was 140/77 this morning. Let's hope that holds and it isn't just leftover Clonodine in my system…

A hundred years ago the diamond industry was dying in the great depression so they said "If you're getting married and the ring isn't a diamond you're low class and not impressive". To this day people still blindly follow this idea as if it's law and not just a commercial for useless shiny rocks.

Roxy Music: Avalon (1982)

I want to see a demonstration.

Source.

I believe Ben's reaction when seeing this scene in Now Apocalypse was, "Wow!"

My reaction was the same, immediately followed by, "STARZ allowed this?!"

It was as much of a shock as the first time I saw fully exposed breasts on cable (Galaxina,  sometime in 1981).

…for more of this.

At least I now know where those screen caps came from.

I watched the first four episodes of Now Apocalypse on STARZ last night. It's good. It's very good. It's fresh, it's timely, and it's very, very sexy. Gay sex, straight sex, bi sex, solo sex…it doesn't matter, and it's front and center in these ongoing stories of a group of 20-somethings making their way through life in L.A.

And reptilian aliens. We mustn't forget them.

 

Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people." ~ Harry Truman, 1952

Sometimes you just have to wade back into the cesspool to find the gems.

Trump is like your grandmother on QVC with a credit card."

At some point in the future:

Me: Picks up my phone to call a longtime friend. Punches in the number and presses the call button.

Popup on Phone: We're sorry. It seems Michael Xavier at 555-1212 is not an Apple customer and not in our database. Would you like to allow us to add him?

Me: WTF? Presses NO.

Popup on Phone: We're sorry. We cannot complete the call as dialed. Please check the number or allow Apple to add Michael to our customer database before proceeding.

Counterpart is a show I stumbled upon last year and immediately fell in love with. Set primarily in Berlin, this modern day (sci-fi?) spy thriller tells the story of what happens when a door opens between parallel dimensions and it's existence is kept secret from everyone except for a very select group. For every person on one side, there exists a doppelgänger on the other.

It's not one of those shows you can have on as background noise while you're doing something else or whiling away your evening online. It demands your full attention or you'll soon be lost.

Last year, coming in from the beginning it was relatively easy to follow along. Determining which side of the doorway you were on was a simple matter. The wife of the main character was hospitalized in a coma after being struck by a car on our side, but perfectly healthy and active in the other. The two Berlins were similar, although some very funky architecture existed on the other side that was easily recognizable even for someone who knew nothing about the city. The other side had tech we lack, but for some reason never developed cell phones.

It's been a while since Season One ended, so my memory is a little hazy on the espionage aspect and interwoven storylines, but that being said, I'm two episodes in this year and I'm totally lost. The wife who was hospitalized is now back home and the main character and his double both find themselves trapped on the wrong side the portal after a terror attack shut down diplomatic relations between the two worlds and closed the crossing.

European architecture has become so outré lately that city skylines alone no longer tell me which side the story is happening on.

I hope at some point the writers explain the who what when why how of the crossing. There's nothing special-effects heavy about it; it resembles an underground brick-walled corridor. You go in one end on our side and emerge on the other in their world.

I was drawn into Counterpoint because of its more than passing passing similarity to Fringe, a favorite series from years gone by.

At this point I'm so frustrated I'm thinking I need to go back and binge Season One this weekend just to get reoriented…