For the first time ever, I’ve been popping pain killers.  i’ve dabbled with lortab or vics for a couple days after surgeries.  But never popped. My back so inflamed every muscle up and down my left leg has been spasming and firing. I think its muscular more than sciatica, getting some relief walking around with my stim unit strapped to my leg, groin, back or ass.  Its been a pleasure for the coworkers to see. Having a pad slide down your crotch during the drive and then fishing for it and ripping out the short hairs en route is another awesome carnival game.

The severity is totally my fault - hiking Petrified Forest, unpacking all day, riding the trainer a couple hrs, chopping down a tree all after the onset of pain.  Its been so long, fortunately, that i’ve had a good injury i sorta forgot how bad i am about rest.  Two trips to my chiro and i was still a wretching ball of nerves and tension and could not sit still for 30 seconds.  Driving there was more dangerous than dui. I had to goto the PCP for the scrip, even though he basically rubber stamped me when i gave him my chiro’s number and asked him to call.  That was weird. Too easy. I got all pumped up to lobby him: “um…doc? remember 2 months ago you checked on my golf-ball-sized hyperextended finger, and i didn’t even want a tylenol? so could you set aside any guilt about  meth destroying families in Apache Junction and pharm parties in Las Sendas aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand score me some shit?“  Then the PCP offered me the whole candy store.  So this is regulation?  For the record, my single 30 pill bottle of vicodin that I got in early ‘04 after getting a pin in my thumb still had 11 left when this started. And since getting the meds was so easy, i sorta got kinda peeved about the $25 copay and another hour of sizzling rippling inside-out electrocution while waiting for my dope.  Why cant i buy pharm-quality stuff whenever i want? The hoops i had to go through are token, and I don’t misuse when easily available. I am not a problem.

I do get that its an addictive substance, i’ve got friends who love to party on vics, i foresee people using it like aspirin and coffee and getting hooked. I totally get that it needs some safe instructions, after playing Uomma Donna in ‘00 8 weeks post-knee surgery. I played really well on Saturday, with the help of a lortab, then another that night and another before Sunday’s game.  On Day 2 the first time i planted coming down from a catch, a bolt of white lightning shot up my leg and blinded me, and i dropped the disc, and cursed out the other team in a horrendously inexcusable spirit foul. then i didn’t walk for 2 weeks.

Maybe some restrictions are good, treating something as a little dangerous.  Getting it when i legitimately needed it was not a big deal, and lack of access contributes to lack of exposure.

*smack*

*smack**smack*

That’s a hard one for a libertarian to take, and as much as i ponder it i am simply not sure how availability, legality and exposure all ultimately translate into problems or lack thereof, vs satisfaction and freedom of choice and holistic integration into society.  Would meds eventually be treated like ibu, but stronger, with the occasional OD the price of convenience for so many other people? Calling John Stuart Mill? spill in the Pharmacy aisle, bring your utility mop. i’m not into meds and i dont have a problem with them, and am just not so deeply troubled by the nominal effort to get them. my perspective however is only one of many.

As I was narrowly avoiding car accidents on the way home, and further ruining the clutch, I got a message that the drug test i might have to take will not happen (without several weeks notice) as the position has been filled internally.  How ironic! Time to test out the Green Doctor while i waited for CVS to get me my prescription smack!!!

-

pot sucks for pain!

-

it did nothing but make me hyper conscious of the cage match going on inside my leg.  Those scenes of maggots eating stuff? they were not eating, they were all dressed like Nacho Libre and going superfly off the top rope, nonstop, down my whole left side.  For me, meds work like meds and pot works like pot.

I am quite certain it works if you have glaucoma, steady chronic pain, no appetite or energy, if you need to feel floaty and fresh to forget your terminal suffering - a low-level pain reducer.  maybe i need the indica instead of the sativa, or the other way around. It works for many ailments, just not the kind i get myself into.  some people cant handle pain pills, or use them differently; pot does not relieve my acute 10-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10 pain.  7 yr old vicodin FTW!

This experiment certainly highlights my bandwagoning on the medical marijuana bandwagon.  I’m all for it, cause it will be easy to get and not worry about  being a criminal just to enjoy a “drink”.  Getting it will be about as much effort as getting meds, which is about what’s involved in getting it now, except you don’t call it pot in email.

Riding up the gondola in Telluride there were 2 older couples from Texas pondering CO’s medical mj law.  They had no experience with pot, and were cracking jokes about how advocates acted like it heals a broken leg. But not all smarmy and FOX-Newsy, but like simple people of the land intaking the rare air.  It was hysterical listening but trying to act like i wasn’t listening. like that could happen in a gondola.  Maybe they figured I was gettin’ dirty I was cool wit it. which is kinda true. but beside the point! It was so genuine, and totally poked some reality into the holy grail of medical mj  - does anyone at all believe that its *only* about medicine? You don’t see people so passionately lined up for more liberal dispensing of vicodin in the name of freedom. I’m still totally cool withthe compromise, its worth it for de facto decriminalization.

So how is it that something i don’t abuse,  i dont have a problem with mild restrictions on it? But something that, by many definitions, I do abuse and personally don’t find medicinal i think should be totally legal, while willingly ceding some control just so we can get it decriminalized?  My libertarianism again donkey-punched!  When i thought a smoke might fuck up a job interview, and didn’t want to be the punchline in a dumbass stoner joke, i stopped for months snap snap np. The only thing i can’t stay off of is a bike, which is why my back pain is hanging around. we’re all largely happy with the meds model and the more-liberal alcohol model.  The current restrictions are not all that burdensome, for some things we all agree do some things. I surrender my philosophy for a good buzz.

Each punishment for DUI is its own unique slice of shit and sodomizing; the interlock is wiping your ass with a tender hemorrhoid. A several-times daily pinprick of impassioned annoyance, which mostly faded after 2 months, followed by a long numbness and resignation. On busy days with many errands, it was a stomach bug with nonstop ass-pissing on the tender hemorrhoid. After spending a year in the car with it, you’d think i’d have characterized it or nicknamed it or bonded with it in some Helsinki way. Nope. Fuck no. Never was anything more than an object. Refused to take a picture. Used the same mouthpiece for 12 months, covered it for a year with the same shirt in the floor of the car, which I subsequently will give to Goodwill and erase all memories of it. I refused to waste a single extra calorie on it - my silent protest. Around the 4th month, they upgraded the unit’s firmware and shaved 20 seconds off the startup time. I could not confirm this other than by noting the version on the splash-screen. There are no usenet forums for Intoxalock. This was the closest i allowed myself to get to it; the rest was strictly business.

Every month or so I make a visit to the Interlock SuperStore for recalibration. Calibration = status reporting to the DMV. The employees service you quickly, quietly, doing their jobs as invisibly and sans chit-chat as possible, not wanting to deal with your frustrations or excuses or sob stories. I heard plenty of them waiting in the lobby. A lot of people don’t take the thing seriously enough, or their situation seriously enough, or the thing sneaks up on you with its extremely imperfect accuracy.  I took the interlock very seriously, but i still had a few agonizing brushes with the rules and bullshit fines due to its imperfections.

The interlock’s boundary is .03 - blow over and you can’t start the car, blow over while driving and you get hit with an $85 fine.  Blow over 5 times in a 1-2 month calibration period and you get hit with another year at $80/month. I had about 8 overblows the whole year.  The first was the day after Memorial Day when i woke up and blew .06, then went back to bed and went to work 4 hrs later. Nothing wrong with a good drunken bbq, i didn’t drive, and i learned what buzzed the next morning feels like.  The next 3 overblows came in one 5 minute period of disbelief when I blew .32 15 minutes after starting the car at .29 and having finished my 3rd beer in 3 hrs 30 minutes prior to driving (that cost me $85 in fines).  2 came when the thing was so heated up in June it registered .15 on half a beer and immediately went into its own reboot cycle.  3 minutes later it registered .037, 3 minutes later it registered .018 and let me start the car.  That made me late for daycare and cost $25, and terrified I’d get another year sentence I begged Beckie to believe how little I’d had.

1 overblow came after the Squealer - I had a shot and a beer after the race, rode my bike 10 miles and with .012 bac (half a beer, given my body weight) drove the car to the awards ceremony where i nursed a 20 oz beer for 1.5 hrs and then blew .035.  Even though it was probably a legitimate reading, it really pissed me off . I was following all the rules - out with my friends after a great day, but drinking responsibly, with a plan for getting home legally, safely, having suffered with the interlock for 8 months. i was over .03 by about 2 sips of beer and my bac was coming down, fer crissakes!! I’VE LEARNED MY LESSON, LET ME GO HOME ALREADY! I stood around the bar for another 15 minutes til i got under the line - picking my ass in the parking lot, organizing my trunk, cleaning garbage and cheerios out of the backseat, too embarrassed to go back inside. I wanted to to yank the damn thing out of the car, but that anger lasted about 10 seconds til i forced the numbness back over me. Much better than looking at the calender and chafing. this is how niggaz do hard time.

The final overblow came driving home from the 12 Hrs at Night in Prescott, 10 days before my sentence ended.  I had blown 0.0 for an hour and a half when suddenly it registered .037 on a rolling retest.  I pulled over and restarted it in 5 minutes and it read 0.0 again. This was a physiological impossibility that would cost me another $85, despite it being 100% the machine’s fault! Best i can figure there was a splash of leftover beer in a waterbottle that i drained before refilling it with water a few minutes before the sample, and the thing’s accuracy goes to shit in the heat.  Maybe it was aided by the grapes I’d been eating, the garbage in the trunk, my disgusting teeth having ridden bikes all night, mine and Kila’s b.o… Even though 1 oz of beer could not possibly affect me, even though there were 10 people who knew i drove up and drove home alone, even though i printed my race results and took them to the Interlock Superstore to prove where i was, even though I printed a copy of Beckie’s plane ticket showing she was out of town and took a video showing I was alone in the car, even though the employees knew me by then and looked me in the eye and told me they believed i was telling the truth: there was no leeway.  The policy of the Interlock company is that a violation is your fault, period.  You have no grounds to appeal, guilty without a chance to prove innocence.  The only consolation is a rolling retest failure over .03 but not over .08 does not impact you with the DMV.  I finally just paid the fine and gave up arguing.  It was the final ass-raping, just 1 week before I got the thing removed; the crowning reminder that you are a fuck-up and a criminal if you get a DUI, and your relationship with the car and the law is all uphill for the next 7 years.

An interlock is not really there to keep you under .03, its there to punish you for having anything to drink at all.  If you press them, the employees at the Interlock Superstore acknowledge that the thing is frightfully inaccurate and that any alcohol can register a .03 reading, that your reading can swing wildly over 2 immediately consecutive samples, that food and sports drinks and mouthwash can set it off.  I saw all of this randomness first hand, and it made me seethe with anger and shake with fear.  If .03 is the limit, gawdammit that is what I should be allowed!  A true .03 limit, when tested accurately, I had very little trouble obeying.  Amidst the self-loathing and self-doubt I’ve been struggling with since getting arrested, going a whole year with safe driving and no impairment has been very empowering.  The absolute undeniable benefit of the interlock is teaching me to plan ahead, know how much i’ve had, and make good decisions about having a drink. In that regard, its been an excellent experience. All but one of those overblows were, fundamentally, situations where I had some drinks responsibly before getting back in the car - the fines and inconveniences were the extra negative reinforcement, the catholic nun with a ruler, just to be sure you were listening.  I’m going to buy a breathalyzer for my own usage, its far cheaper than a dui. I’ll say, yet again, that I shouldn’t be 40 with 2 kids and have gotten myself into this situation. I have used this time to reform, I’ve gotten stupid good at knowing my bac at any given time, I’m relaxed and confident that I won’t make this mistake again, and that I can enjoy a social drink and still obey the law.  For all the rest, there is taking turns driving with my wife, or riding my bike.

The hardest part, the most depressing part, is facing the daily reminder of the might of the State and seeing the system stacked against you. Over by .002 - guilty! Interlock misreads your sample - guilty! How can something that has such consequence be so unreliable?  With thousands of them in use every year, how can this wantonness be allowed to continue?  The answer is no one in the legislature gives a shit whatsoever.  Once labeled a criminal, you simply don’t have the same rights as others. This is something most blacks or hispanics have learned at an early age, and it certainly changed my outlook on the patterns of power in our society.  Get into an accident - the cop is gonna be looking for my dirty laundry long before the next guy. Run into AZ’s “Zero Tolerance Per Se” DUID law, i’m going to jail for a month. The corresponding teaching moment is i have become a much calmer driver, more conservative, less confrontational, less obvious, wanting to go 72 and just blend in, like a mexican-american in AZ under the cloud of SB1070.  The car is a big fat probable cause, and alcohol aside, the smartest thing to do is realize you are the cat’s plaything when driving it.

Things can always happen to me, but it won’t be me making it happen. I am reformed, and a much-improved citizen of the road, despite all those evil ex-addicts in Shame Training saying it was impossible. Now I just want to rejoin society, stop over-thinking every time I start the car. I want to drive my F150 on a road trip with my buds, having had it for only a month before my foolishness made it off-limits to me everywhere but Mexico. I want to park the Prius in the hybrid spot at Fresh & Easy. I want to take the Acura for an oil change and a car wash; I’ve avoided both due to the risk of the mechanic missing the rolling retest and screwing me with the DMV. Then I will change the registration to Beckie’s name only, so cops scanning plates won’t profile me.

The last few weeks with the thing are coming when its over 100 degrees outside, but I am placid and numb enough to look past 30 seconds of roasting in the car til it lets me turn on the AC. At least the Acura could roll its windows down via the remote control, a feature none of my other cars have, or the kids would have cooked and I’d be going to Child Services along with Justice Services. The responsible parent alternative — ironic, given how i got into this situation — would be to leave the doors open while I blew my sample. This would have given the world an even better view of my shame: at work, in front of daycare, in my driveway. I don’t think anyone who mattered saw me all year long. Hunching down like doing a one-hit on a ski lift looks almost normal when you are starting a car. You could be checking your messages, finding something for the kids, getting a drink of coffee. By the end of the sentence I just didn’t care anymore. You see me, you don’t, i made a mistake, i’ve learned from it, fuck it, whatever, I’m moving on.

and here’s some backstory. I struggled for months over publishing these or not. There is a downside if any potential employer searches my blog, but other than e-paranoia i found that unconvincing. I desperately need there to be a positive upside to all this, for my friends to learn from this, for my story to be public so I’m reminded never to do it again. Maybe the increased sensitivity i will feel in being outed will keep this experience painfully close to me, and bring me some meaning and some closure.   If nothing positive comes out of this, I am the loser all those miserable motherfuckers in Shame Training and MAAD say I am.  But I’m not.  So here it is…

• An Evening of Hospitality with Sheriff Joe
• Consequences
• Shame Training

Fuck it, whatever, I’m moving on.

The McDowell Mountain Aquatic Center has given me much to think about, especially since I have a mild chubber pretty much the whole time I’m there.

*ahem*

• If you look good, and your boobs are fake, you look really good.
• If you don’t look good, and they are fake, you went to the plastic surgeon instead of the gym. You do not look good - perfect boobs look freakish with cottage cheese thighs.
• If you look good, irregardless of boobage, you look good.

This is expressed symbolically as follows:

OO + | = :)!!!

OO + () = :(!!!

oo + | = :)!!

Can you believe this shit!?!?!?!

graphic I made in 1999 after our trip to Greece

May 10, 2010 edition of The Economist

I’m not all that big on reposting, but this is amazing.  So now think about all that clean air, and all that legal weed.  Coincidence?

 http://www.flixxy.com/netherlands-rush-h…

i’ll give it to myself 27 of July.  first time i’ve looked up since december.

Arizona passed this bill that, as best I can figure, sez this: treat any situation where you think a person maybe here illegally like…you are seeing a robbery. The only glitch being a bank robbery usually involves guns, scared people, loud alarms, and the Screen Actors Guild. An illegal could be pretty much anyone in Arizona. Drive a shitty small car - possible illegal. Working outside - possible illegal. Enjoy tacos - possible illegal. Anyone carrying money could be the bank robber; anyone who is brown now has a big target on their back.

Governor Brewer promises all police will be trained in illegal recognition. I’m sure that’s very very conforting to anyone who is not very white and blond, pigmenting in their probable cause. I have heard that no 4th Amendment rights, per se, are violated by this since being here illegally is illegal. At least we did not dip into our depleted state budget for 6-pointed gold stars.  Governore Brewer is an idiot, and thinks this will all blow over.  Really, Beckie attended the conference she spoke at the day after this colossal act of stupidity became law.

Is she playing chicken with the federal government to try to get immigration reform?  I think she is not that smart.  I think she is just cow-towing to the peckerheads on the right like Russel Pearce, who now are somberly rejoicing in church that Janel Napolitano is gone (another idiot, but at least a Democrat to balance).  The hatred is amazing.  How can you bury your head in the sand and hate 30% of your population?  How can you try to stop a simple market force? I don’t like the negative externalities and criminal enterprises that our country’s backward guest work policies engender, but I’m not willing to give up protection from unreasonable search and seizure over it.

There are calls to boycott AZ.  Boycott conventions, boycott spring training.  MLB has been notably silent on moving the 2011 All Star game, which is understandable.  They selectively pay attention to issues, and keep their brown men down too. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the financial backlash further damages our broken state economy?  Wouldn’t it be ironic if the need for funding helped pass the medical marijuana law?  I predicted that AZ was moving towards a day of political reckoning - maybe extinction, maybe evolution.

Seriously!!??!?

Are you fucking shittin me?

Apparently not:  http://salsachallenge.com/

Why not a breadmaking challenge?  A toffee challenge? A sticky rice challenge?

Seriously…are you fucking shitting me?

I see this at work all the time - the “Idea” people just love to talk. Most of them are the first ones to get fired when times get tight. The best companies I have worked for have balanced the talkers with the geeks, marketing in tandem with engineering.  The failures did not.  You know politicians are lying if they are talking, yet somehow we felt 25% of our GDP could be master-planned by politicians?

The health care bill is a terrible idea, for no other reason than the debate has ceased to be about economics and has become about philosophy.   Our country combining the ideals of freedom and welfare\charity\opportunity\fairness are what makes it unique and wonderful.  But i dont think dwelling on it, as all the pundits are doing, will be all that revealing or all that interesting after a few days - the issue is as old as philosophy itself, and at least to this grad-school dropout, irresolvable.  I think the only rational thing to do in that situation is stand back and let individuals make decisions.   Several facts are undeniable:  economies are more efficient when they are primarily driven by individual choices and incentives at a micro level, and correspondingly, master planning an economy will always fail in the long run.  I just can’t believe that everyone has gotten so wrapped up in the ideology that they’ve lost sight of the economics.

I think a health care system can work in several different models, the articles and studies paraded around 6 months and a year ago convinced me of that.  But no analysis or plan has been able to fully operate with the consistency that either a free market model or a social justice model requires to not be broken, including our current one.  I personally do not find the current system broken as much as bent, and am furious that its been destroyed for an unproven plan. I won’t even paint the exterior of my house because its too big a job for someone with no experience, yet we want to master plan 25% of our GDP?  Its complete political conceit to think we are capable of that.  I thought Obama was more moderate and more grounded, and I am regretting trusting him with my vote; I always knew Pelosi was an evil political backroomer.  At least the Republicans who represent me in Scottsdale all seem more centrist than the far-righters in Mesa, cause I guess I will be voting for them again. I’m sure I’m not alone. Once again the Democrats have handed the Republican fringes the ammunition they need to become empowered, by acting like the crazy pinko fringe everyone dreads.

The Roman empire collapsed because it was built on slavery and expansion, and when there was no one left to conquer and fuel the machine, upward mobility became equated with comforts and lavish non-essentials rather than actually moving up.  Citizens became content to let 3rd parties do their fighting.  The country was no longer hungry, it did not defend itself, and it collapsed.  I don’t know if that is a fair parallel - its certainly a great goal to provide everyone health care, but 25% of your GDP managed by politicians?!?!?  Its unprecedented in history that we have the technology and means to invest that much in our health, that a life can cost so much, and is worth so much.  If you view that as a lavish non-essential, we are en route to being another tired European economy.

Why did the system need to be overhauled, and not just fixed?  My approach would have been cost standardization within each provider, greater cost bearing by the patient to remove the obscurity of a 3rd party payer and incentivize different choices, and a designation of a “welfare” level of universal service but not even attempting to make it the same as a private level.  Less cost shifting, better incentives, more transparency, but no re-architecting.  Its easy to say a family should not have its savings wiped out because of 1 illness, but what costs does that impose on every other family?  If you make $30k a year, and have 5 kids and the last one has some half-million dollar condition…how can you impose your need on your neighbors?  If we didn’t have such amazing technology developed in the past few decades, this would not even be an option for the 30k family…how did it get to be an entitlement?   Inexpensive and vastly effective prenatal care or immunizations for everyone makes sense as we are a wealthy nation, but the 1% and the corner cases and all the money invested in the last 6 months of life is the giant SUV or 60 inch TV that no one needs.  Its hubris to think we can address these catastrophes, its hubris to think we can scheme around a way to pay for them.  People die, resources are finite, why did this issue become about philosophy and not about economics?  We make these tradeoffs with everything else in the world.  Will the person who does not buy insurance or the 19 illegal immigrant crammed into a van be denied service now in the ER?  If they are not, then all arguments about fairness in the new system go out the door, and it proves itself to be just another bullshit Democrat big government powergrab.

One democratic pundit suggested that we are heading for a consumption tax to make up for the revenue gap this plan will cause.   Oddly, opponents of consumption taxes are often the same people who champion the poor, since the poor often have the least choice in using discretionary income.

Time to starting hiding my income in Switzerland.

because I am overcaffeinated or overstressed or ADD or too American, my brain won’t sit still.  I can not focus on the ginormous pile of money that moves from 1 place to another and the other ginormous pile of stuff that moves back, I am fixated on how Kila can get out to deuce and the tools i will need to install it.  And as soon as I’d bought them, I could not stop thinking about painting G’s room.  She wants a castle,  maybe with grey and pink and white sponge brushing, and some rolly green hills in the background, and some sky.  and then every person who comes to visit can buy some damn colors and paint in a rainbow or a unicorn or some yodas and shit. I am too busy to think about more than the grey\green\blue\white\pink\black paint i need to buy.  I may end up shopping for paint, before even having figured out how to buy a hand truck.  I’ve got a steam cleaner covered, but i can’t remember if that was before or after the hand truck.

I took Kila out for a dog ride last night, and convinced James to come along, there was knowledge yet to be dropped.  Dropped it was.  He rode some stairs for the first time woot woot, as did I - the new Bucket List item is now old, and my links are getting localized like my rides and my time on the trainer and the dog rides.  Kila spatted with coyotes and javalina in the same night, and got nipped by at least one of em.  Recounting these awesome details this morning and this evening got me through the rapids, at least for a day.  I dug deep for 1 more hour on 1.5 more projects to finish the 4 insane work toxins I’ve caught today.  The current ride is the trainer, which is not nearly so potent, which is probably why i find beer makes it all tolerable again.  And my housewarming gift to myself, cuz my back is gonna kill me.