Travel is what I want to do with my life. I want to go places and see things. Tourism isn’t what I mean either. Just seeing the same things other people can see or will see so that I can impress them when I know about it too, doesn’t seem like fun to me. I want to mention places that no one else has heard of. I love Anthony Bourdain’s show as well as Andrew Zimmern’s, though his not as much. It also may explain my love of space and space travel. The downside to seeing the world is that unless you are quite well off, it is incredibly costly, rather uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous. A good friend of mine wants to climb Everest which is a great example of all three rolled into one. My unique health concerns also preclude me from being nearly as daring as perhaps I once was, but I don’t think it will keep me out of all travel. I mean no more so than any other limiting factor would. One new factoid I just read about however just might make me think twice before I whip out my Passport…Baggage. I have learned to travel light and it seems that the further from civilization you get, the less you actually need to bring. (Material possessions are for westerners.)
I know for a fact that people are stupid. It is intrinsic in us. We have no instinct, we have no skills. Everything humans accomplish is a learned ability. It is why we had to learn to write while other species don’t. Imagine your surgeon trying to do a Liver transplant without ever reading a book, but only “shadowing” another surgeon for a period of time? Actually the more I think about it, the more feasible that seems, but I tell you what..I don’t want to be there first patient. So when I see that there were 25 million pieces of luggage lost for good last year it doesn’t really surprise me. But that breaks down to a total number of 3000 pieces per hour! I have no way of knowing just how many people fly each day but with each state averaging lets say, 3 major airports operating each day, then that means 20 bags/airport get lost each hour. That number small as it may be is still fairly large and you could say that maybe half are due to human ineptitude. So that leaves 1500 bags per hour getting truly lost, stolen, or misdirected by the airlines. This leads me to just one conclusion.
Never check anything of value. Ask DJ’s, they know. DJ A-Trak blogs about his travels often and he makes sure that when he gets on a plane he always carries his most essential items. I also love how the list above does not include employee theft or Plane crashes. If I had to do a break down it would look like this:
- Human Idiocy: 42%
-Airline Mistake: 51%
-Theft after check in (by security): 15%
-Pirates: 13%
The maximum value insurance will cover for a lost bag is $5,000 USD so make sure if you’re carrying around your gold brick collection that you spread it around. Though with gold coming in at right around $1,100/oz and most bars weighing in at 400oz…you may want to find some other way of transporting those things.
Well Pregnancy brought at least two good things for Britney.
I make no secret that I don’t really like to celebrate anything. I think part of it is that I never learned how to celebrate. Nothing I’ve accomplished seems all that impressive. I have a bachelors degree*, but so do most of my friends and both of my parents. That’s not extraordinary. I had a heart transplant at 23 and walked away just fine. Well I suppose that’s good? But Kyle does the Ironman. So that’s nothing major. And that kind of does it for my list of things to brag about. And that says it all if you ask me. I don’t even consider most things to be celebratory matters seeing that, no one ever taught me the human condition begs us to sweat the small stuff because we aren’t promised the big stuff. “Be glad you graduate highschool, because college ain’t for all of us.”, or “Be glad you woke up today, tomorrow is not promised.”, and my favorite, “it’s your birthday week, do whatever you want.” I just feel cheesy celebrating some things ya'know? If I get my JD, or pass the California Bar I will try to be excited, though that will make me just one of 222,000 others to have done the same thing.
One of my idols growing up, who everyone thought was lazy, but really was just misunderstood taught me a lesson once that has a lot to do with this I think. Everyone knew he was super talented and so they expected crazy accomplishments from him. Sometimes he delivered, sometimes he didn’t. But to me one quote was all it took to prove he was the hardest working man in the game. After a practice one day a reporter asked him a question. “Randy, you just won the NFL Offensive Player of the Week…again,Where is the trophy?” His reply, “In the trash.” He explained that he didn’t keep small awards because unless you win the big ones in life the rest are irrelevant. In college football the highest honor for Receivers is the Biletnikoff Award. He’s won it. But it ended in the same place as the rest of those “minor” accomplishments. Now maybe I’m taking this lesson too literally, but I agree. I know that the small things are fit to be celebrated but I guess I just have big city dreams because I can never seem to be happy no matter how good I have it. I don’t think it’s human nature to wake up and simply be flush with joy that the sun is out. I mean when the sun comes up I am glad it’s not the apocalypse, but there are no dances to be made. I digress.
My day of birth, or the last day I was early for anything as it’s known to my parents, came and went with so little work on my part that I just don’t feel the need to do something special. It is nice. Don’t get me wrong. But without turning this into a complete bummer, let me just say I don’t need my expectations to get jacked up for something I didn’t care about in the first place. I actually like other peoples birthdays but mine is probably getting taken off of Facebook so that next year when it comes, the 4 people who really know when it is will be the only people I hear from. The ego boost, artificial as it may be, is a short lived high the likes of which I’ve been avoiding for a very long time. (Ask me about my thoughts on Fentanyl sometime though.)
In honor of “my” day I will share this story in it’s entirety because thought it is tragic, it is hilarious and so titled...
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NURSE WHO GAVE ME AN ENEMA BOTTLE AND TOLD ME TO DO IT MYSELF WHILE I WAS HIGH ON MORPHINE.
Hello Nurse,
Given you work in a busy emergency ward, I don’t expect you to remember me.
It was a late November night in 2007 and I came in with severe abdominal pain.
This pain was on par with the labors of my children so I would like to thank you for the morphine. It stopped my screaming and gave me a decent “just peed in my pants” buzz. I would also like to thank you for the blanket you gave me when I got the chills. I would be nothing if not appreciative for the good things you did for me.
I’m not 100% certain whether it’s protocol to have patients give themselves enemas, or whether the nurse is supposed to do it.
If asked, let’s say, by a stranger on the subway,
“Hey, suppose you go to the hospital and need an enema, who would give it to you?”
My guess would most likely be nurse.
I’m still not even certain why I had the enema.
I loathed having to admit to all of you that I had pooped that morning.
Regardless, the fleet enema bottle was handed to me,
“The bathroom is down the hall.”
“Pardon me?”
“The bathroom is down the hall. You take the top off the tip, it’s lubed, you bend over, squeeze and hold in the water for as long as possible. Then sit on the toilet and let it out.”
“Okay.
I’m a nervous wreck when it comes to attempting new things, and the morphine certainly took the edge off having to put a bottle of fluid up my ass in a public washroom. Also, I really don’t like feeling mortal, and poo is just one of the obstacles that gets in my delusional ways. I’m a clean freak. I don’t use public washrooms. I don’t poo.
Nurse, I remember quite well, standing with my hand against the wall, bent over with the bottle poised to insert into my asshole. A Herculean feat, getting me into this situation, yet you… you managed to do it by simply asking and giving me the tool and meager direction. Without the morphine in my system, you would have been giving me that enema, and I would have been lying sideways on a bed with my iPod blaring, concentrating on something like the failed series “The Cosby Mysteries”.
Whether it was procedure to have patients give themselves enemas, or merely you taking a break for an egg salad sandwich and using my morphine dazed state against me, I will never know.
Hand against the wall, I took a good long look at myself in the mirror and thought, “Crunch time.”
You weren’t very good at giving instructions dear Nurse. At this point I realized I had no idea how long to hold the water in, but really, I had no concept of time because of the morphine.
Fortunately you didn’t lie when you said the tip was lubed. Also, it was thoughtful, or rather mandatory (?) that the bottle and fluid was heated a little. Nonetheless, it made the event more comfortable.
As the bottle squeezed empty in my hand, strange sounds erupted in my body. Clugs, and squeals. I inched my way over the the toilet wondering how long I could possibly hold this water in? Suddenly it occurred to me that gravity could help the situation, however, when I put my head between my ankles I was not prepared for the head rush and subsequent morphine derived spins.
I fell.
As I fell, a spray of water erupted from my body and spattered to the floor. Not much, but certainly enough to be ashamed of. I couldn’t stop the eruption so I gave up the holding part, got up and voided into the toilet.
I can’t claim I was spry in my movements, you know, given the morphine.
And I’ve blanked out and can’t recall exactly what state the washroom was in after the fall. But I did manage to clean up the mess with the paper towels available to me in the washroom.
I’m not sure how long I sat on the toilet wondering if I was done or not because it certainly seemed as though a lot more went in than came out. And like I said, you weren’t very clear with how long this entire thing would take me.
When I came out of the room I walked back to my gurney and pulled the curtain. You arrived within a few minutes. You asked if I felt better. I said yes.
I could read nothing on your face. Were enemas not your forte in nursing school? Were you a deviant? Were you put on earth to help me find my inner animal spirit? I will never know. What I do know is, that my pain was gone, and I had just gone against all of my moral excellence in that emergency room public washroom.
I’d like to quickly tell you how this experience had a positive effect on my life,
1. The following week I visited my family doctor, when he entered the room and asked, “What’s new?” I responded, “Life changed when when I gave myself an enema with high on morphine in a public washroom” And I have been a favorite patient since ever since, he even makes extra time to see me for last minute crisis with my children.
2. Giving enemas was a great skill to acquire. I had my third child in August of 2008, and the week I was due I gave myself several enemas at home to prevent the feared “shit while i push the baby out” every pregnant woman dreads throughout her gestation.
Nurse, I’d like to thank you.
Whatever your reasons, whatever they were, I am a better person for having given myself an enema while high on morphine, for unknown reasons, for undiagnosed pain, in a hospital, on my birthday.
Yours, Kelly Oxford
* - (It's on its way even though I had to whip out the PH.D to convince these fools)
It’s officially my favorite time of year!!! Where I grew up there aren’t really any seasons but it was always nice to know there were more days of school behind you than ahead of you, and that’s what spring means. It’s also time for baseball, track, and Halter top day. But today is really important for one reason in specific…It’s Spike Lee’s Birthday. Perhaps the single greatest movie maker of his era, you really can’t say he’s done a “bad” film. Shelton Jackson Lee was born in 1957 in Atlanta but his first film ironically was made in 1986. That year he was almost 30 and I was just arriving but his films have always been my favorite. He makes films the same way I would. He talks about topics that are important to him, and he includes things he enjoys personally like shoes and music…and Rosie Perez. Spike is an amazing artist who never quite found the acclaim many lesser artists did largely due I think to his devotion to making art and never really commercializing his work. For that I respect him. His life may be branded up and down, but when he puts out a creation it’s more likely to be attacking the establishment than supporting it. So in honor of his birthday I got a pair of Tom’s shoes. Which means not only will he get a pair, but some kid in the third world will too, and it might even be their Born/birth day too?
I’m sitting naked in my room writing this because I just woke up after the LONGEST nap I’ve had in a while. Well, it wasn’t really a nap, After I peeled myself off the couch around 2 AM last night, I got in bed and didn’t move for the next ten hours. During the term I never sleep in. I don’t even hit snooze. I swear. So knowing that today I would have no school, work, or other engagement I just don’t think my body was going to let me wake up a moment too soon. It felt like I came out of a coma, trust me I kinda know about such things. It was warm yesterday for the first time in months so that was nice. I always forget how ridiculously nice this town can be when it’s warm. It’s a veritable Jumanji with all the plant life and insect spawning going on in such a short amount of time. But with months of rain, all it takes is the quickest burst of sun to set things off. I walked outside after my last test and was like wow, it FEELS better out here! I didn’t know what spring fever was but you honestly feel hunkered down in the winter. It’s cold and harsh, and your body doesn’t worry about anything but staying alive, but now that this sun has hit us…how could you not feel friskier?
I wrote earlier about this week being good for me, and so far it’s shaping up to be fairly nice. I just saw the link on twitter for a review of “Breaking Bad” and that really put a smile on my face. It’s funny that this show has caught my attention because Giancalro Esposito is a new’ish character to the show. Through 2 seasons I think he’s only been in an episode or two. But in his prime he starred as Buggin’Out, the loud mouthed friend to Mookie in my all time favorite Spike Lee film, “Do the Right Thing”. Oh how things come full circle!
I think that’s it for me. I plan to do a bunch of writing over the next few days but for now I think it’s time to do another photo purge from my desktop.
Well everybody, it’s time to say goodbye. JT-Rex is back and I just want to say goodbye. I hope you’ve enjoyed my time here as much as I have. It’s been real. Here are 3 more for the road...
Photoshop is racist- Yea sure travel is fun but lets not forget that our racism isn’t like their racism. It’s a surprise anyone of color from America can do ads overseas. I mean even here stateside, Barbie knows better than to cross the color barrier for sake of sales. But over there…you can’t even show a black face when you’re advertising software. Last time I checked there was no involvement of race in opening up a word document, and the faces shown in this ad weren’t even purported to have anything to do with the design of the application, so if you were worried about a minority tainting this software with their inferior ideas…that’s not a concern you need to have.
Neck Tatz- I think life is full of choices. Tattoos are one of them that really show just what you’re path in life was, and will be. Keg stand, bong rips, one nighters…Nothing goes to show more about your character and who you truly are than what you choose to do to your body. And a neck tat’ says it all. I often wish I could have a neck tat. I think it’d be great to be able to have that look but guess what…how many dudes do you see walking around at 80 years old with tattoos on their necks? Not many I’m sure. Now this may have more to do with the place you live, or the lack of old people in your life, but to me it says, neck tat’s are for those that die young. And that’s what makes them so B.A. You’re telling every man, woman, and child around you, that you’re in it to win it, and things may end in the process but you are okay with that. More succinctly, “I ain’t never scared!” Which is dope, especially when it comes to the ladies. But you know what that doesn’t say about you…”Hire me” Life is all fun and games but to be honest I don’t know that a neck tat is something I’d want to stray to far from a college campus with. I mean honestly that thing is going to outlive its usefulness quick, fast, and in a hurry. Kinda like the morning after pill at a Pride parade. But I’ve got an old soul. I don’t see myself in my late 20’s and early 30’s being the man I wish I could have been ten years before. At that time I’d like to be well on my way to the man I wish to be ten years in the future, but with a younger mans body. I just can’t make that kinda decision knowing the shelf life of it’s usefulness is so short.
Allow Me to show you- I don’t know what you think, but it is possible that I made some rude comments about Kim Kardashian and ‘T-Rex’s inexplicable attraction to her. What’s more bothersome to me is that he has no idea what he should be looking for. I think he knows what "healthy" looks like, but like any one on a diet what comes easy and what might be bad for you are often one and the same. So on my way out, let me just say this. Kim is dumb, she is way too dumb for him or anyone for that matter. The slack jawed picture seen above just kind of cements for you what in my mind she always looks like…mouth agape not a thought in her head. To be honest that quote down there, is what makes the most sense to me in reference to her. She tweets and I don’t read it, she has a show and I don’t watch it. I even saw the sex tape on mute.
Please just please take a look at these candidates instead.
