Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
What have I-What have I-What have I done to deserve this....
Even as I write this, I am in, I assure you, excruciating pain. Leaving off all the other problems in my life at this moment, let's just focus on the one that is the super funnest:
My 6mm kidney stone
So I'm technically what one would call "straight-edge." I still use the term, but don't follow all of the rigidity of the dogma. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs. I do drink coffee, so I guess I'm out as a hardliner (poor me, no pro-life homophobic boneheaded-ness). I have huge problems with taking prescribed drugs, however when dealing with a condition that Wikipedia explains as:
"Colicky pain: "loin to groin". Often described as the "the worst pain I've ever experienced"
One quickly finds a balance between the need to stay sober and pure, and the need to sleep and eat and have horrifically gutwrenching pain subdued.
I held out as long as I could, but after four miserable days, I finally checked myself into the ER on Saturday. I waited four two hours before I politely told the receptionist that I could no longer take the pain. Soon I was lying on a bed being whisked into an ER room. A doctor ran down a list of questions, and then a nurse sprinted in and hooked me up to an IV. I believe I was saying,"Um.....", as she said,"This is morphine; it will kill the pain." And as much as I detest the idea of something like that ever going in to my body (I didn't sleep for two days after I had a resection operation five years ago, and they gave me a button to push for morphine. I had to be long-windedly talked into it), I was soon at a calm I had not felt in four days. That night I actually slept, and I was really hoping to do the same thing tonight.
Before I left the ER they gave me two percocet to get me through the night, and a prescription for vikodin. The morphine finally wore off midday today, and so I quickly took a percocet once the stabbing began. Well, really I took half a percocet, as I still feel uncomfortable about all of this. Within a few hours I soon realized that this was not going to do it, and so I took the other half. A few hours into this a realized that all this had done was make me loopy, and not affect the pain.
As soon as I got home I popped a vikodin. Ahhhh, but really I popped a generic vikodin, as I could not afford the "real thing." I slid right into bed, finally happy for this misery to be over......or so I thought. An hour and a half into it, and I might as well have taken a Flintstones vitamin. I checked the bottle, and it said to take "one or two for every six hour period." After a brief debate, I decided to opt for round two. So now, here I sit, waiting for any of this terrible, degenerate, over-priced medicine to actually do anything, and I fear that wait could be all night.
I understand the process of passing a kidney stone, and I'd much rather pass it on my own without any procedure, however one cannot function under this sort of pain. As a normal, non-privileged amerikkkan, I do not have the luxury of talking to a doctor about proper medication, and then a long day of rest. I have to get up, and go to work. Which is not really something I will be able to do with no sleep.....due to unbearable pain, which magical phaeries will surely not have removed in this time period...........
When does this become worth it?
Curious how all this feels? Just watch this Discordance Axis video; it will explain:
My 6mm kidney stone
So I'm technically what one would call "straight-edge." I still use the term, but don't follow all of the rigidity of the dogma. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs. I do drink coffee, so I guess I'm out as a hardliner (poor me, no pro-life homophobic boneheaded-ness). I have huge problems with taking prescribed drugs, however when dealing with a condition that Wikipedia explains as:
"Colicky pain: "loin to groin". Often described as the "the worst pain I've ever experienced"
One quickly finds a balance between the need to stay sober and pure, and the need to sleep and eat and have horrifically gutwrenching pain subdued.
I held out as long as I could, but after four miserable days, I finally checked myself into the ER on Saturday. I waited four two hours before I politely told the receptionist that I could no longer take the pain. Soon I was lying on a bed being whisked into an ER room. A doctor ran down a list of questions, and then a nurse sprinted in and hooked me up to an IV. I believe I was saying,"Um.....", as she said,"This is morphine; it will kill the pain." And as much as I detest the idea of something like that ever going in to my body (I didn't sleep for two days after I had a resection operation five years ago, and they gave me a button to push for morphine. I had to be long-windedly talked into it), I was soon at a calm I had not felt in four days. That night I actually slept, and I was really hoping to do the same thing tonight.
Before I left the ER they gave me two percocet to get me through the night, and a prescription for vikodin. The morphine finally wore off midday today, and so I quickly took a percocet once the stabbing began. Well, really I took half a percocet, as I still feel uncomfortable about all of this. Within a few hours I soon realized that this was not going to do it, and so I took the other half. A few hours into this a realized that all this had done was make me loopy, and not affect the pain.
As soon as I got home I popped a vikodin. Ahhhh, but really I popped a generic vikodin, as I could not afford the "real thing." I slid right into bed, finally happy for this misery to be over......or so I thought. An hour and a half into it, and I might as well have taken a Flintstones vitamin. I checked the bottle, and it said to take "one or two for every six hour period." After a brief debate, I decided to opt for round two. So now, here I sit, waiting for any of this terrible, degenerate, over-priced medicine to actually do anything, and I fear that wait could be all night.
I understand the process of passing a kidney stone, and I'd much rather pass it on my own without any procedure, however one cannot function under this sort of pain. As a normal, non-privileged amerikkkan, I do not have the luxury of talking to a doctor about proper medication, and then a long day of rest. I have to get up, and go to work. Which is not really something I will be able to do with no sleep.....due to unbearable pain, which magical phaeries will surely not have removed in this time period...........
When does this become worth it?
Curious how all this feels? Just watch this Discordance Axis video; it will explain:
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
And then some days........
Well, though I have a few more post to edit and homogenize, I have nearly moved all of my musical content over to Aural Suppository. Why all of it you ask? Well, the reason that I started doing the minterviews was because artists I talked about in this blog started finding and reading through google, and while that's great, I want to create a proper platform for that outside of this more personal blog.
And on that note.......Today was the odd kind of day where you can go from Suicide, to New Order,(and I mean Get Ready, yeah, the "car commercial" album....). Maybe therapy is making my mood and emotions yo-yo, but I think it's moving in an "I-think-I-can" positive direction.
So, this morning I woke up in a distant, depressive mood, and plodded through my day with a typical melancholy. I got home, once again, totally exhausted; I have still not recovered from NCOR. I had no time to rest however, since Dan and were meeting to continue the writing process for our next theatre project, and since we did not find any concrete solutions in the last meeting, I wasn't really looking forward to it. However, once I got to his place I felt this strange energy start to rise up in me. And soon enough, I was frantically pacing around, gesturing wildly with a coffee cupped hand.
We still kept hitting a very, horribly, frustrating wall however. We kept talking about meaning, after meaning, after meaning, and in the end two things happened: we meaned ourselves to death, and I don't think either one of us had any clue what we were talking about anymore. At some point I just broke down and said "stop!" We both had researched this project, we both had written mock mini pieces to work from, and we both knew what the hell we were doing. I suggested we acknowledge this, and then forget everything. Throw it right out the fucking window. We just needed to trust our ideas, and write them without analyzing them. And what do you know, we wrote an entire skeleton to work with the group from, in about one simple hour. Good fight; good night.
Which brings me to what could potentially be a slight retraction. I may not totally quit theatre next year. It turns out that Dan is not going to grad school next year, however he is still planning to create his own projects. And while I see our theatre company experiment alot like history views the great communist experiment, I would be willing to keep working on projects with only Dan. This would mean two things for me, one is that I would be less involved with the productions themselves, and two is that most of my creativity would be spent writing. As opposed to holding up a taped together knife, while reciting lines from Hamlet, with my own drool and snot running down my face, wishing I could use said prop to slit my own throat.
Which brings me to my final argument (I don't know either..), how can I do things like this and make a living? Neither Dan nor I want to compromise our work with the commodification required by the mainstream theatre community. Work theoretically equals income, and Dan and I would be working ourselves into the ground. However I'm not sure where the income would flow from. The job I have now is a fantastic model. An LLC, collective, where everyone is an equal partner, who has equal access to all commerce, and also equal responsibility to all duties. We have an accountant, a shared bank account, benefits, paid vacation, an amazing website, business cards, palm cards, and weekly meetings to keep on top of everything. The problem is that we are providing a service; the service of dog walking. Theatre is not a service, and therefore the income source would not be the same. I know for a fact that the model works, I just need to find out where the money comes from. Sure, it would be easy to charge money for the shows, and then use that to fund more shows. However, while I need to be able to do that, I also need to be able to provide a living wage. I'm an anticapitalist, and this is way out of my territory. I've thought about grants, but where can you find someone crazy (I mean, crazy amazing...) enough to fund your projects, plus give each member about $30,000 a year to cover living expenses?
Fortunately I have my current job, and it's quite stable, but I need to start figuring this problem out (you know.....before I turn forty)
Well dear reader friends.....Ideas?............
And on that note.......Today was the odd kind of day where you can go from Suicide, to New Order,(and I mean Get Ready, yeah, the "car commercial" album....). Maybe therapy is making my mood and emotions yo-yo, but I think it's moving in an "I-think-I-can" positive direction.
So, this morning I woke up in a distant, depressive mood, and plodded through my day with a typical melancholy. I got home, once again, totally exhausted; I have still not recovered from NCOR. I had no time to rest however, since Dan and were meeting to continue the writing process for our next theatre project, and since we did not find any concrete solutions in the last meeting, I wasn't really looking forward to it. However, once I got to his place I felt this strange energy start to rise up in me. And soon enough, I was frantically pacing around, gesturing wildly with a coffee cupped hand.
We still kept hitting a very, horribly, frustrating wall however. We kept talking about meaning, after meaning, after meaning, and in the end two things happened: we meaned ourselves to death, and I don't think either one of us had any clue what we were talking about anymore. At some point I just broke down and said "stop!" We both had researched this project, we both had written mock mini pieces to work from, and we both knew what the hell we were doing. I suggested we acknowledge this, and then forget everything. Throw it right out the fucking window. We just needed to trust our ideas, and write them without analyzing them. And what do you know, we wrote an entire skeleton to work with the group from, in about one simple hour. Good fight; good night.
Which brings me to what could potentially be a slight retraction. I may not totally quit theatre next year. It turns out that Dan is not going to grad school next year, however he is still planning to create his own projects. And while I see our theatre company experiment alot like history views the great communist experiment, I would be willing to keep working on projects with only Dan. This would mean two things for me, one is that I would be less involved with the productions themselves, and two is that most of my creativity would be spent writing. As opposed to holding up a taped together knife, while reciting lines from Hamlet, with my own drool and snot running down my face, wishing I could use said prop to slit my own throat.
Which brings me to my final argument (I don't know either..), how can I do things like this and make a living? Neither Dan nor I want to compromise our work with the commodification required by the mainstream theatre community. Work theoretically equals income, and Dan and I would be working ourselves into the ground. However I'm not sure where the income would flow from. The job I have now is a fantastic model. An LLC, collective, where everyone is an equal partner, who has equal access to all commerce, and also equal responsibility to all duties. We have an accountant, a shared bank account, benefits, paid vacation, an amazing website, business cards, palm cards, and weekly meetings to keep on top of everything. The problem is that we are providing a service; the service of dog walking. Theatre is not a service, and therefore the income source would not be the same. I know for a fact that the model works, I just need to find out where the money comes from. Sure, it would be easy to charge money for the shows, and then use that to fund more shows. However, while I need to be able to do that, I also need to be able to provide a living wage. I'm an anticapitalist, and this is way out of my territory. I've thought about grants, but where can you find someone crazy (I mean, crazy amazing...) enough to fund your projects, plus give each member about $30,000 a year to cover living expenses?
Fortunately I have my current job, and it's quite stable, but I need to start figuring this problem out (you know.....before I turn forty)
Well dear reader friends.....Ideas?............
Back to basics
Okay,
So I am officially about to delete all of my music blogging on here, and move it to the new fangled blog that John and I have put together called Aural Suppository. I decided that blogging with John would be more fun than me talking to myself about rando records on here. No, no, no...I need this blog all to myself to complain about petty comings and goings in my life that are surely worse than those of a starving child in a third world country. Well, let's do the short list in the interim:
1.I started therapy
2.I survived NCOR
3.I wrote a new short piece that I am using to help write another piece for theatre
4.I am very close now to jumping the border
5.I am about to go back on health insurance
6.My phone broke, I bought another one, it never came, I bought another one, the other finally arrived, I got screwed out of $200. Fuck ebay.
7.As usual, tumult, tumult, tumult..........
But hey, I bought alot of new Martin Deny records with money I don't have, so that's good right?.....
So I am officially about to delete all of my music blogging on here, and move it to the new fangled blog that John and I have put together called Aural Suppository. I decided that blogging with John would be more fun than me talking to myself about rando records on here. No, no, no...I need this blog all to myself to complain about petty comings and goings in my life that are surely worse than those of a starving child in a third world country. Well, let's do the short list in the interim:
1.I started therapy
2.I survived NCOR
3.I wrote a new short piece that I am using to help write another piece for theatre
4.I am very close now to jumping the border
5.I am about to go back on health insurance
6.My phone broke, I bought another one, it never came, I bought another one, the other finally arrived, I got screwed out of $200. Fuck ebay.
7.As usual, tumult, tumult, tumult..........
But hey, I bought alot of new Martin Deny records with money I don't have, so that's good right?.....
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