It's not me, it's you, @Dell!

I have been a loyal Dell consumer since 2003. My first Dell computer was a desktop named Lola.

This is what I imagined she would look like as a person. 

I killed Lola in only a few months by accidentally pouring a ginger ale in the back of her while trying to fix my router. That was totally my fault. I immediately purchased a replacement Dell, a standard tower, no frills, and I salvaged what I could from Lola and pieced together my new computer, Frankenlola.

Personification of Frankenlola. I was doing a lot of pinups at the time. 

Frankenlola lasted for many years with no incidents. I eventually passed her down to my husband and bought my first Dell laptop for $1400 with money I earned as a research assistant at the University of Florida in 2005. Her name was Lucille. I played a lot of Sims 2 on Lucille, and when I replaced her in 2009, she was literally falling apart. Unfortunately, Lucille’s replacement, whose name I can’t recall, likely because of the trouble I had with her, was the beginning of a downward trend. On November 16, 2010, less than a year old, the hard drive on that laptop died.

http://cheeseblarg.blogspot.com/2010/11/ill-be-back.html 

After much arguing and complaining, Dell honored their warranty and replaced the hard drive in their depot.

A few months later, to treat my husband, since Frankenlola was getting mighty slow, I bought him a new Dell desktop (he doesn’t bother to name his possessions).

After the fight I had then with getting the hard drive replaced (because it was close to the end of the warranty period), the computer only lasted 2.5 years, until July 5, 2013.

On Feb, 8th, 2014, I bought yet another Dell laptop. This one was named the S.S. Lil’ Mare after my friend Mary who worked at Dell and helped me pick out the system.


In May of 2017, I bought another Dell (this time refurbished) for my husband when the hard drive on his desktop failed right before finals, and 2 months later we had to replace the replacement, when its hard drive also failed. Thankfully, the seller of that computer on Amazon happily refunded the price and another Dell desktop was purchased for an additional fee. When the Lil’ Mare died on July 11th of last year, having had to buy 2 computers for my husband, leaving us no extra funds, I saved up until November to buy my current computer, Ernestine, on Thanksgiving morning. My saga with Ernestine has been so horrific that I really never want to deal with Dell, ever again.

When Ernestine broke two weeks into my ownership, I asked Dell to replace it. They insisted on trying to fix it. Fixing it was a whole ordeal. I asked them, please, I’ve only had this for two weeks, just replace the computer. At one point, as I waited with no word from the repairman, they agreed to replace the computer over the phone, but were only willing to offer a refurbished unit. For some reason, they didn’t think I deserved a new one. Desperate, I agreed. Moments later they rescinded, saying the repairman would be there shortly.

The hard drive was replaced on my kitchen table as my cat looked on and it worked poorly for January and February, and then died again, with a catastrophic hard drive failure yet again on March 8th. I asked them to replace the computer once again. They insisted it be repaired and sent a repairman to my home again when I refused to send it in to their depot. Being a writer by trade, I am not pleased with losing my computer for weeks at a time and wanted it done in a timely manner. Forty-five minutes after the repairman left, the computer broke again, this time shutting itself off moments after booting it, repeatedly. After complaining bitterly on Twitter, Dell called me and attempted the third repair, which did, to use a colorful turn of phrase, fuck all.

As a person with processing issues from a chronic illness, talking on the phone is difficult. I can hear but I can’t process speech in real time, often times. I watch TV with subtitles because my brain can’t keep up with the sounds I hear. Having to follow directions from a person with a heavily accented voice in a noisy environment on a staticy phone when I was stressed to begin with was absolute torture, and I was not willing to try again when, predictably, my computer was still broken and I was told I was not eligible to have the unit replaced. After expressing my dismay on Twitter, completely distraught, they convinced me to send the computer into their depot, where it would be fixed once and for all, completely perfect and in tip top shape. I was told the turn around would be very quick. It took 5 days just to get there. And then there was a 5 day wait to get parts to fix it.

After 15 days, I was pleased as punch to have my computer back. I am in the middle of a manuscript for a novel I am excited about that I started in May of 2017, right before the S.S. Lil’ Mare died and am anxious to get back to writing, which I cannot do on my smartphone. Imagine my dismay, reading the documentation that came with my computer explaining that my computer had been carefully fixed and tested, when my newly “repaired” computer, shut itself off within 2 minutes of booting the system to Windows.

I am absolutely livid with Dell. The computer should have been replaced the very first time that there was a problem in the first two weeks I had it. Their bait and switch behavior feels like a scam, and it is making me physically sick. That previously mentioned chronic illness is an autoimmune disease and it is highly reactive to stress. I am currently on a month long course of steroids because my immune system was attacking my joints and internal organs to the point that the low dose chemotherapy I regularly take couldn’t do the job of suppressing it as it should, and my liver was being damaged by the attack.

Over the past day, Dell has offered to send another repairman to “fix my computer right in front of me,” as if this was some sort of treat. If they couldn’t fix it in their depot that is presumably a clean room, how in the hell were they going to fix it in my cat hair filled home? Upon asking that question, they thoughtfully offered to have me send it back to the depot if I didn’t want it fixed in my home. And for that matter, what the hell were they doing with it while it was in the depot in the first place? It was supposedly tested, and yet, Windows wasn’t reinstalled when I turned it on fresh out of the box, and it persisted in the behavior the moment it was fully booted. It seems clear that they didn’t test it and that the computer cannot be fixed.

What I would really like is to be able to buy a different brand of computer so I never have to deal with Dell again, but unfortunately, I am chronically ill and my husband and I depend upon student loans and my writing and art to survive. When I don’t have my computer, I don’t have a way to work, and his loans are solely for his education and must be carefully budgeted to get us through each semester. I would love to have an i Mac or anything, actually, reliable and sturdy enough for process intensive digital art and film making. But regardless, I honestly believe that Dell needs to make this right and that seems very far off.

As it stands, they have passed my case on to an escalation specialist. I was told they would call within 24-36 hours. They called way sooner while I was out assisting my husband with a photography project for his semester final. I was told there would be a call back number direct to the specialist should they be unable to reach me. Predictably, there wasn’t a direct line. I had to answer 20 questions to be patched through to a number where I was promptly hung up on. Mr. Christopher’s phone doesn’t have voicemail, and while he assured me he would be available until 6 pm, their system wouldn’t put the call through because it shuts down at 5 pm.

Over the past 15 years, I have been incredibly loyal to Dell. As the family computer specialist, I have instructed all of my family members to purchase Dells. I have told coworkers and students and friends. I want my computer replaced. I want a machine that works and that I can work with, with the same or better specs and I don’t want another damned platitude where I am told that being frustrated is understandable but their hands are tied. This is a shitty way to do business and it would take a monumental response to rectify the damage done to the relationship. At this point, I’m just assuming even if I am able to harangue a replacement computer out of them, I will forever be disappointed and will spend the rest of my excess energy warning people away from the brand because the treatment I have received and the difficulty I have faced is something no paying customer should ever subject themselves to.

My Summer from Hell- Part Two: She's Going To Die

While I was waiting this summer to find out if I had cancer, the night after my cat got the cat equivalent of heat stroke, I got a call from my sister letting me know that she was in the ER with our mother who was about to be flown in a helicopter across Montana to a hospital in my city because she was having a cardiac event that was giving her trouble breathing. The next morning at 5:30 am, I got a call from the ICU doctor telling me to get my ass to the hospital to say goodbye because my mom was about to die.

Thankfully, the hospital is about 8 minutes from my house so I threw on clothes and booked it to the ICU where my mom was absolutely dying. Her lungs had filled with fluid and she was drowning, but she had refused intubation so they couldn't do much to help her.

I entered the room with a crowd of people around her, she was fighting them and was almost unrecognizable with a CPAP mask over her face, out of her mind from the lack of oxygen that was making its way into her blood.

They sort of pushed me forward and told me to talk to her. My mother and her mother didn't get along at all and it just so happened that it was my grandmother's yahrtzeit (that's Jewish for deathaversary, which I always thought was "yard side" as that's how it's pronounced). I grabbed my mom's hand and made her look at me, "It's 7-11, you're not allowed to die today! I'm sorry, but if you insist on dying, you're going to have to put it off so you don't share your death day with grandma."

And my mother is so spiteful that she immediately stopped dying. She did have to go have heart surgery immediately afterward to sustain the whole living deal, but as soon as I got there and reminded her to breathe and fight, she cleared her lungs and was able to be transported across Montana yet again to go to another hospital for her surgery.

It was that night when I got home from the hospital, that my computer died.

And then my husband's computer died, having just died and been replaced two months earlier.

And then I had a hysterectomy.

And then I had weird side effects from my hysterectomy like white-hot leg pain, and 96 hours of full body itching, and phantom uterine cramping that felt like it was tearing me in half.

And then my car died. Twice. (It was the alternator, and then the starter, in a week's time).

And then I found out my neutered cat was an attempted rapist when we let in a cute little neighborhood cat who'd been meowing at our door, then immediately put her out because my cat is horrible and gross, but then she stalked us for five whole nights, howling like she was using a bullhorn outside our windows which, of course, made Stevie howl inside at the top of his lungs for 5 whole nights.

And my state elected a reporter-slamming jerk.

And then I was diagnosed with a breast tumor which probably isn't cancer but might still be cancer.

And then my camera died.

And I was turned down for disability because I have a good attitude which, of course, precludes actually being sick.

And the jerks in our government spent the summer trying like hell to take away my health insurance, which would have meant that I wouldn't be able to be treated for all the Schrodinger cancer I had (or didn't have as the case may be), which I was constantly worried about, which of course made my illness all that much worse (and of course, they're still doing it).

So yeah, my summer had a lot of suckage that just kept on pooping down on me, like a way less appetizing fondue fountain at Golden Corral.

But now that I have a computer again, and  the use of a working camera and I feel slightly less like spending every waking moment binge-watching Netflix (almost done with all eight seasons of Dexter) and playing Candy Crush on my tablet to drown my woes, it is my plan to make up for lost time with content galore, which I hope you will come back for and share.

I also have an actual smartphone now (for the time being, seeing how things go for me) so I'm all over social media as "cheeseblarg" and I'm actually posting stuff, so go ahead and follow me!

So what days of the week are you most looking forward to something to laugh at? Let me know so I can get on setting some kind of schedule, please.

My Summer from Hell - Part One: The Surgery

I just got a computer, yesterday, after 5 months of being without so my first task after restoring all my files and programs is posting for you guys. Thank you, Black Friday sales for decent computers cheap enough I can afford. The last time that I was without dedicated computer access for this long was in 1994, my freshman year of college, but most people didn't have computers then, so it wasn't quite as jarring then as it is now, especially when my entire life exists online.

So I wrote on Cheeseblarg's facebook page a while ago that y'all would find it hard to believe all the shit I had been through this summer, for those of you who aren't following along there, and you probably won't, but I assure you, it's all true, and it's absolute bullshit.

My wish for the upcoming year is that I never have to hear the words, "We're afraid it might be cancer," ever a-fucking-gain from a doctor. This summer started with a mysterious mass in my cervix. I went to the doctor in June because I was experiencing this weird feeling of all of my insides dropping when I stood up for more than 15 minutes which in itself is pretty alarming, but it was accompanied with sweating and feeling like I was going to pass out. Once it got to the point that I couldn't stand long enough to shower without feeling like I was dying, I decided I should probably do something about it, so I bucked up and went to have my lady bits probed by a stranger. I mean, she was a professional, not just some random person on the street with a speculum and a hankering for some gynecological exploring.

Since scraping my lady bits turned up nothing, we went to the next step of sonic spelunking. This revealed the aforementioned "mysterious mass" and then we went to the next step of traumatizing me forever and ever, amen.

Frankly, the whole business gives me more ammunition for the idea that there is a grand conspiracy of hatred for women in this world because I cannot believe that any kind of human rights coalition would allow the equivalent to a cervical/uterine biopsy to be done to any man without general anesthetic. And I've heard that testicular biopsies are done under local and still hurt like hell, but I'm arguing that that is not really equivalent, because testes are not muscles that try to slam shut when you drill pieces out of them causing your entire body to try to escape from what's going on in your nether regions. It was really awful.  So awful in fact, that before I even left that appointment, I made plans with my doctor, before the results came back, to have my uterus and accompanying accouterments removed as soon as possible so I would no longer have a cervix so that procedure could never ever happen to me again.

And my uterus was mint, guys, never been used, though it had been remodeled monthly since I was about 10, so I don't know if I could have gotten full price for it. Anyway, it's totally lost its value now because I took it out of the box. At the end of August, I had them remove my reproductive organs (though I kept my ovaries so they can grow cysts and be generally annoying to keep me off of hormone replacement therapy), and I finally finished healing last month after one of the holes popped open in a cinematic fashion when we thought they were all almost closed.
So that's the story of how I spent 3 months worrying that I had cancer before having a hysterectomy. I didn't have uterine or cervical cancer, but my cervix was faulty and if I had kept it, I would have continued to need biopsies regularly and it would have continued to make me feel like I was dying, and frankly, I wasn't planning on using it anyway, and I'm much happier to have it gone.

Spending all the time in a gynecologist's office, of course, led to appointments with mammography. And instead of just being routine, of course, I got my next, "it might be cancer." I was supposed to be going tomorrow, in fact, to have a lumpectomy to ensure that the tumor they found in my breast during the first biopsy is completely non-cancerous, but I got an ear infection, so now I get to add two more weeks to my 3 months of waiting to find out that this one is nothing too.

And I know that countless people who aren't so lucky would love to be told that it is nothing repeatedly, but having six months of your body constantly trolling you that is mutating and is gonna kill you only to have it yell "PSYCH" after you've had surgeries and near constant stress diarrhea, is relieving as hell, but also really fucking annoying that you had to go through all of that in the first place when your body could have just stopped growing benign tumors in the first damned place.

So that's part one of my trauma. I'm thinking I can wrap it up in one other post, hopefully, next week.

That Unfunny, Un-illustrated, TMI Post.

So, I have this medical procedure on Thursday morning that I have been waiting for for 4 months now, and I've hinted at it, but I haven't really written about it, mostly because I don't feel like illustrating it, and also because it is not terribly funny.

My bladder and its bad behavior has been a subject of this blarg before, and I have been waiting all this time for an appointment to have it looked at to make sure that the bad thing it is doing is not cancer.  This is honestly the first time that doctors have ever actually said to me, without my input, "Well, it could well be cancer. We're checking for bladder cancer."

(I'm going into details here so you might want to just skip to the bottom if you get squeamish...)

I am guessing it isn't. My hunch is that I have another chronic disease and that it isn't life threatening and will just be a painful annoyance for the rest of my life. Better, but not by a huge margin.

But they want to do more than just looking inside my bladder.  When I went to my first appointment with the urologist, the very nice nurse was tasked with catheterizing me to get an unadulterated sample of my pee to test it, once again, to make sure the problem wasn't an infection. She very kindly told me everything that she was doing before she even touched me.

She calmly let me know. "I'm inserting the catheter now. I'm not going to hurt you."
To which I laughed and replied "I think you're a damned liar!" because she was a damned liar and she scraped half the length of my urethra with the catheter. I peed a lot of blood for the rest of the day. It was like paying someone to give me the worst UTI of my life.
She was still a lovely person though. Then she exclaimed, "Your urethra is TINY! The doctor will dilate that for you when he does the cystoscope."
And I said, "Okay" because I didn't have access to the internet while I was in the office to find out exactly what "Urethral Dilation" entails.

Remember how freaked out I was at having my eyeballs touched?  Yeah, I am at least 600% less pleased about having graduated tubes inserted into my pee hole to make it bigger.  I figure it is just fine how it is.  She said it would help me pee better, but I think I have been peeing in an efficient and frequent manner for almost 36 years and I am of the opinion that they should leave well enough alone.

Also, everything I have read says that patients are usually put out for cystoscopes, yet, my doctor plans on doing it while I am completely awake and aware, and seeing as my guts betray me when I am nervous, and I have fibromyalgia, so my nerves are like super mega-ly more sensitive to pain than other people's, I am afraid that there is a chance that I am going to poop on the doctor. I would be afraid of kicking someone too, to stop the pain, because I am a kicker, but I have seen the table they are going to do the procedure on, and it has straps to immobilize my legs, which means they KNOW that I am going to want to kick them in the faces.

And I assume (but don't know if) they are going to somehow anesthetize the parts of my pee system that they will be futzing with, but OMG, what if they need to do biopsies!? I just want them to put me to sleep for this.

And then there is the bladder stretching, which might be on the docket also, because they made me measure my urinary habits with a pilgrim's hat, and it seems the most my bladder holds is 8-10 ounces, where the normal person's bladder holds double that. And I read that they sometimes do that to treat overactive bladder stuff... and I also read that some people who have had urethral dilation, and bladder stretching are in pain for the rest of their lives.

Anyway, I am not entirely sure what will happen to my bladder, and not knowing things I want to know stresses me out. Not knowing, for 4 months, whether the bleeding in my bladder is cancer has made me much less jovial and desirous of writing and illustrating. Though they keep trying to reschedule on me (it has been moved twice now- they tried to cancel again today, but agreed to just do it an hour and a half earlier- and I had to wait two months for my first visit knowing that my general practitioner wanted me seen right away, also concerned about cancer) I am hoping there will be some sort of KNOWN by the end of this week, and I can stop worrying all the time and go back to seeing funny things everywhere, all the time.

In all, this has been going on for almost a year, if not longer. I'm scared, and I'm nervous, and I don't want to endure more pain. I want my normal life back. I don't want to worry about this any more, so no matter how scared I am, I need to go through with it and get it over with so I can have an answer and start treating my stupid jerk bladder. But I am not looking forward to it, and it sucks, and I want to magically be better so I can go back to just being funny.


P.S. I want kittens and hamsters and goats to hug. I think that would make me feel better. Please send a petting zoo immediately.

Pee Post

This pee post is nothing like the pudding post. For the record.

I want to know and understand the mechanism that makes me nearly pee on the bathroom floor every time I turn on the shower.  Theories are that it is operant conditioning, like Pavlov's dogs, but I have to wonder if it is the same mechanism that makes me dream of bathrooms to discourage me wetting the bed.
Am I the only one that has this? I have polled my friends in the past and it seems that  for the most part, men don't dream of bathrooms though some women do, I guess because guys have a built-in physical pee deterrent (morning wood, I mean... that is its purpose, no?).

But if you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a repeating feature of my dreams, nightly:

Crazy things happen.
Find a unicorn crafted from green banana peels.*
Kill a zombie cat who is actually one of my friends.*
Oh wait, I have to pee.
Hrm, is there a bathroom anywhere?
Oh, look, here is one, and then my brain presents me with a way to relieve myself, but there is always a hitch...

(click to biggify)

And so every night, I am treated to a new and novel variation (or four) of "trick bathrooms" to wake me up to go pee.


*I would like to reveal that these are both actual dreams that I had this week.

Operation: Mother May I?

Here I go being political again. If you think that we would be better off if the government controlled the lives of women, reading this will likely piss you right the hell off and your time would be better off spent elsewhere pretending I am just PMSing.





After reading more on proposed contraception bans and comments about how women should be at home taking care of children instead of working so we don't need things like Head Start, the following occurred to me:

I wonder how grating it would be to Republican politicians if hoards of women tweeted them every time we wanted to use our vaginas to see if it was okay with them.

Perhaps having to hear about tampons, and douches, and discharges, and masturbation, and kinky sex, or even conventional vanilla sex within church sanctioned marriages, 24 hours a day, would make them less interested in controlling our junk.

Think this might make a difference? Want to help make a point? Tweet your daily vaginal activities to your favorite Republican on twitter with the hashtag #MotherMayIGOP 

Don't have a republican in mind? 

You can start here:
@Senate_GOPs
@RoyBlunt
@RickSantorum
or do a search for your local GOP representative on the Google.

Don't have a vagina?

Be sure to share this post with your favorite vagina owner.

Disclaimer- One should never wait for a reply from someone to use their vagina. At this point, your vagina is yours and yours alone (unless you have figured some clever way to rent it out or are a conjoined twin)... take advantage of it while you still can!

Cake continues to be a lie.

Yes, I'm alive. Thank you for checking on me.  I went for a three-hour cruise on the S.S. F.U.NABLAPOMO and after several days of getting stranded on the isle of Mai Intestines Haight Me with the professor and Mary Ann, I am back.


And now that I can tentatively keep food down again, my body delivered the following message via twitter:

"I think I'd like Pepperidge Farm vanilla cake with chocolate frosting for breakfast. I don't have any but that's what my body wants."

Well, I mean, I wrote that, I don't have some internal twitterater, but it was a direct message from my body.

So I set out to find my precious Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake, directly.

And then, 4 hours later:

THERE IS NO CAKE!

Seriously, this town is like a black hole of things that JRose wants to eat.



And yes, I am aware that I can ask my store to order things, but that doesn't put the cake in my mouth when I want it... which is now.

Urine big trouble, bladder!

I was planning on writing something so entertaining today that people would have DIED laughing, but I'm hella tired and I went to the doctor today and peed on my own hand, so the death by laughter will have to wait.

Here are the events leading up to my awesome day:

And... I'll find out in two days what the hell my jerk pee maker's problem is. In the meantime, thank goodness for AZO and cranberry juice.

The Craptacular Day

I have several obnoxious and rather icky chronic diseases, which is why I am now trying to make a living by writing funny stories and drawing silly pictures on the internet instead of working "a real job."  Sometimes these diseases all gang up on me and make me not want to do a damned thing, which includes entertaining other people.  Sometimes, I force myself to do it anyway, and sometimes, those posts aren't very amusing because my heart is not behind them.  Today is one of those days.  Not that I mean my heart isn't behind this post, I just mean, I feel like crap and this probably won't be very entertaining.  And I don't mean, my darling readers, that you should to try to guess where I wasn't feeling very well in my blarg archive and let me know, because it might just insult me when you guess that a post I loved and thought was my best was crap but you know it's only because I was sick and you were just trying to be supportive by pointing out that I am not funny, and nevermind, let's just pretend like all of my posts are fried gold.

Anyway, when I am having one of these days, distraction is the best remedy for wanting to dig a hole and never come out. It helps me not to feel so guilty for not wanting to do my job, and for not getting out of bed, except to go to the bathroom 7500 times (this may be a slight exaggeration, which is clearly a symptom of my illnesses too, both the exaggerating and the bathroom trips, that is).

These are the things that are serving as my distractors today:

MTV's Teen Wolf
Yes, I know this is a show made for teens and I am roughly twice the age of the target demographic, but as a fan of the original Teen Wolf movie, I had to check it out, and since I feel about 14 years old most of the time, it appealed to me.  It is absolutely nothing like the movie though there are nods here and there, and it is ridiculously melodramatic, and I freaking love it. There. I said it. I'm a dork. Plus, Stiles... duh.

Looking up candies
I could have sworn that Whatchamacallits had marshmallow in them once upon a time. Apparently, I am completely wrong.  But there was some candy bar when I was a kid in the early 80s that had a wafer and chocolate cream and peanuts and marshmallow in the center, and damn it, I want to know what it was, because in my nostalgic memory, that was THE most delicious confection in the entire world.

And may I say, as a collector of Pez, I am really disappointed that there are no official Harry Potter Pez Dispensers.

Movie Clips on Youtube
UHF is one of my favorite movies from my youth. Weird Al is a comic genius. This clip never fails to amuse me.

By the way, "twinkie wiener sandwiches?" They're terrible. Please believe me.  It is a horrible waste of a twinkie, a hot dog, and easy cheese.

Reading

    

I'm currently reading an actual copy of  "City of Glass- The Mortal Instruments" by Cassandra Clare and "Spiderwork- A Post Apocapunk Fantasy Romance" by LK Rigel on my kindle. I don't usually like to be engaged with two books at the same time because it feels like I am cheating on one with the other, but I was reading "Spiderwork," which is the sequel to "Space Junque," both of which I downloaded for free from Amazon and am enjoying very much, when my friend loaned me the final book of the Mortal Instrument series (I mean, I think it is the final book... I guess I could research that, but I am afraid of spoilers, so I'll just not care instead) and since it is borrowed, I have set aside the other. But reading, of course, has the added benefit of making me sleep which helps with healing so I can write actual posts and not be a grumpy asshole.

Checking my emails a billion times and crying.
(I have no emails, hence the crying)
(except my mom, she writes)
(hi mom)

And that's about it.  Have anything you think might amuse me? Wanna tell me what you do to make yourself feel better when you're having a craptacular day?  I would love the distraction.

Do you want to party? It's party time!

It's been suggested, in the comments of the last post, that I have an "It's not a tumor" party.  Thankfully I was given the suggestion of having a make-believe one, because my friends only exist on the internet (that is, spread across the country and the world, and a portion of them don't even have internet access at the moment... I have friends, damn it! *sobs*). So, make-believe party it is.  You are all invited; it is a pot-luck.

I DON'T HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR!

Don't disappoint.

And don't forget, just a few more days left to get your Narwhal stickers! 

Misguided Ads: City MRI Centre

I was driving on the interstate the other evening and saw a billboard advertising MRIs.  Is this really something that needs to be advertised?  Their ad said something like "Patients love our Commitment- Doctors love our Quality!"

This leads me to wonder if there are other MRI centers where technicians just walk away part way through the procedure, leaving patients stranded in the machine.

Or if they just have a guy with a refrigerator magnet and a sketch pad doing the scans.

I mean, if you need to get an MRI, you need to do it, and if you are the type of person who is inclined towards doing what the doctor requests of you because you are in some sort of excruciating pain and/or have a tumor, etc. you DON'T REALLY need to be sold on getting the thing done. If you ARE dragging your feet on the MRI issue, is commitment and quality REALLY what was stopping you in the first place?

Pretty much, if I were in charge of advertising MRI procedures, this would be my tagline:

If you thought I was a freak before...

I, now, am both afraid of telling you guys things about me that are "controversial," since I lost at least 6 followers for revealing that I don't want to procreate, and I, alternatively, want to tell you things to weed out the people who just can't read things by people who _______________ (fill in the blank).  That being said, I have a terrible secret to share with you all, and if you have to go, I understand (actually, no I don't.... but, whatever) so here goes:

I... I don't drink coffee OR alcohol.

I know, start throwing crap at me now, but not literally, that is super gross.

For the record, I like coffee, it tastes hella delicious, mostly-- when heavily diluted with cream and sugar, but drinking it makes my stomach and/or intestines wage war on me.
Alcohol, on the other hand, does exactly the same thing to me but also makes me feel like I am completely drunk from the moment it touches my lips and though I have only been actually drunk one time in my life for real, a time when I threatened my friend with a knife while doing dishes because he tried to convince me to be logical when I was having a total emotional freakout, which is what brought on the drinking of Chambord and cream in the first place (see, I can't even make logical decisions of what kinds of alcohol to drink), I decided I probably didn't need to test my ability to act not completely insane while drunk, ever again.

I found out, recently, that both aversions are actually the result of a food intolerance, but that doesn't make up for the fact that not drinking coffee or alcohol really cuts down on your ability to socialize.  Nobody asks people out to go get a glass of bacon (and if they did, I assure you I would be totally up for it) it's always chatting over a cup of joe, or a glass of wine, or a fifth of whiskey.

But really, if  you're still reading this and haven't decided that I am so untrustworthy that you can't bear to ever read my blarg again, ask me to hang out and chat over a hot cup of bacon. I'm totally there.

Offer for social engagements of bacon consumption are subject to terms and conditions. May not be available in your area. Candy can be substituted for bacon in some situations.

It's late, do you know where your stomach is?

It has come to my attention that many people don't actually know where their stomach is. Most people who complain of having a stomach ache are not at all talking about their stomachs, but are having intestinal pain (see It's a Gas, Gas, Gas!).  I happen to be an expert on gut pain, so here is a handy dandy graphic for you, so you can identify what part is involved in case you are having pain in your belly area. Of course I am not a doctor, but I spend enough time googling, and hearing about my guts in doctors' offices, that you can trust my anatomical knowledge:

(All of my pictures are bigafiable by clicking them, if you didn't know- and this has been edited to be less funny and more accurate, in case someone decided to refer to a humor blarg in a real emergency. Note, stomach is cartoonized for cuteness.)

I hope that helps.  

But most of all, your guts are not a laughing matter, okay maybe a little bit, but if things start getting weird in there, please see a doctor. And tweet about it, people love hearing about intestinal distress on Twitter.

Care Bears: Autopsy

I suffer from insomnia on occasion and it happens to keep me up past when anything decent is on TV.  Once I have run out of variations of Law and Order to watch (SVU is my favorite), I usually turn to On Demand. And when I am exceptionally tired but cannot sleep, my ability to read things properly is GREATLY diminished. It usually turns out pretty funny, like this month on Stars On Demand, they have the movie "Care Bears: Oopsy" which I have absolutely no interest in watching, but every time I scroll past it late at night, I read it "Care Bears: Autopsy" which seems like something else all together that I don't want to watch.  Here is an imagined scene from that movie:

Super Liver to the Rescue!

I have discovered during this bout of "virus syndrome*" that I seem to have a super liver. It is working overtime to filter out any medication so that all the pain killers, anti-inflammatories, and 12 hour cough suppressants/ expectorants I take only last 4 hours.  It is not like I am going to take more of the meds before the time window is up for the next dosage, because . . . it might damage my liver - just in case it decides to stop filtering things out like a crazed weasel. So I just imagine punching it in its helpful face every time the effects of my pills wear off 8 hours before they should, leaving me coughing and snotty and miserable.

*I really think that this "virus syndrome" deserves an actual name since I (and I am sure countless others) get it several times a year.  I usually refer to it as the "zombie flu."  Any other recommendations are welcome.