To All My Scientist Colleagues I Bid You Farewell - Hallelujah The Hills

My Brother's Keeper: Why Good Intentions are Not Enough

The Cheese Grates It: The Cheesy One's (Gloomy, Sorry) Holiday Message for 2017

Happy holidays, People, however you may celebrate them.

Apologies in advance for being a killjoy with a somber PSA. Please keep in mind that the holidays aren't happy for everybody. This doesn't make the unhappy person "bad" or "a Scrooge." It just means the holidays are hard for them.

I am having an extremely blue Christmas, partially for reasons that I'm sure most people could understand at least a bit. The majority of the big losses I've had have come in the Winter months, particularly in November. I jokingly said that I have re-named November Butt Month because nothing good has ever come of it, and people got mad at me. For fuck's sake, I'm not saying that if you have a birthday in November you're worthless. I'm just saying that I've had a lot of losses in November and this was my hyperbolic, snarky, and ultimately worthless and impotent way of striking back.

It was like an extra twist of the knife to have my Star Shower projector stolen. I don't put up a tree because the cats just destroy it. I didn't want to get another cheap string of lights because the instant one burns out, you might as well throw the whole string away. What a waste. So I got the Star Shower for something a little different. Then it got stolen, and I didn't end up getting any other decorations. 

I know it's a small thing, not like that guy whose son is getting a kidney transplant and some lousy porch pirate pilfered $5000 of very important medication that was left on his porch. I know I'm overreacting. Not on the outside, I appear calm and rational. It's all on the inside. I have bipolar disorder. My brain loves to do that shit. 

He once said that the only place he found peace was when he was playing.

I hope he is finding peace now that he is free of his very ill body.

I know people also think I'm stupid for grieving a person whom I didn't know in life. I can't really explain how or why this affected me so strongly, but it has. There is a certain magic gone from the world and the realization has come hard that I had a lot of useless and futile dreams for myself when I was younger. I was a foolish and unrealistic person.

The truth is, I would commit suicide, but I worry greatly about what would happen to my son if I were gone, so I hang on. Aside from my son and his well-being, I have nothing to live for.

Do me a favor and don't whip out the old "but, counseling and meds!" chestnut. I'll be 53 years old in less than two months. I've lived with a mood disorder at least since I hit puberty. I was nine years old when the hormones kicked in and I started growing boobs which I didn't want because I knew the gross way in which men reacted to breasts, and I started to get hair on my bits and pits. I didn't want that either. That bit of WTMI gives you the idea of how long I've lived with this shit. There's nothing new under the sun.

Just believe me that I already know what the options are and they haven't worked. I'm being honest about how I feel. Let's leave it at that.

I once learned a song called "What If A Day." It was written by Thomas Campion in the Elizabethan era. I have a horrible voice not fit to be heard by anything with ears, but I often sing this to myself. For me, it embodies the truth.

What if a day, or a month, or a yeare

Crown thy delights with a thousand sweet contentings?

Cannot a chance of a night or an howre

Crosse thy desires with as many sad tormentings?

          Fortune, honor, beauty, youth

          Are but blossoms dying;

          Wanton pleasure, doating love,

          Are but shadowes flying.

          All our joyes are but toyes,

          Idle thoughts deceiving;

          None have power of an howre

          In their lives bereaving.

Earthes but a point to the world, and a man

Is but a point to the worlds compared centure:

Shall then a point of a point be so vaine

As to triumph in a seely points adventure?

          All is hassard that we have,

          There is nothing biding;

          Dayes of pleasure are like streames

          Through faire meadowes gliding.

          Weale and woe, time doth goe,

          Time is ever turning:

          Secret fates guide our states,

          Both in mirth and mourning.

And there you have it. 

I hope you have a happy holiday. Forgive me if I don't.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Star-Maker Machine

Singer Kim Jong-hyun of the K-pop band SHINee

Death by self-induced carbon monoxide poisoning, age 27

The older I get, the more firmly I believe

That the star-maker machine is destructive

It is a soulless construct, spitting out shiny creatures

Performers promoted for the sake of profit

The more sensitive are all too often crushed beneath

The grinding wheels of the star-maker machine

~Cie~

Alien Worlds, Extraterrestrial Life. The Universe. Creation.

The Cheese Grates It: Ouchy and Barfy

I am on hopefully temporary but currently indefinite disability due to what is clinically known as inflammation of the lateral epicondyle and colloquially known as tennis elbow. I don’t play tennis. It’s a repetitive motion injury. I ignored it when it was in the early stages and now it’s difficult for me to drive or to sit up for long periods of time because of the pain. Spoiler alert: I was driving for a living.

I will finally get to see the doctor on December 4. I don’t know if the condition can be resolved with physical therapy only. I don’t know if I’ll need a cortisone shot. I don’t know if I’ll need surgery. I know what’s going on due to having gone to the ER for the pain, the doctor being cool and, after making sure I wasn’t having a heart attack or stroke, doing a brief examination and also ruling out carpal tunnel, which I initially thought was the issue due to numbness and tingling in my left pointer finger and left thumb. It’s a good thing he did, because the carpal tunnel braces were exacerbating the pain. The doctor than had me sign a “refused treatment” form so I wouldn’t have to pay, as my medicaid doesn’t kick back in until December 1. Bless this doctor, he is one of the good ones.

It’s hard for me to type, which has left me at loose ends as I like to tell my tale.

There has been something that I’ve wanted to talk about but I feel like I can’t because of the potential for creepy, horrible fan girls to desecrate this person’s suffering, his accomplishments, and the suffering of those who loved him and whom he left behind after a long and truly fucking horrible illness. I saw photos from the press release of the memorial service, and I wanted to puke all over. The memorial service occurred on the seventh anniversary of my father’s death. I was alone and a miserable ball of sick, part of me wondering why this kind of shit has to happen and why the world doesn’t just stop. 

I am not going to mention this person’s name. I have too much respect for him to make him fodder for a bunch of people whose attitudes I legit do not understand. Drooling over a bunch of ancient photos of the man when he went through something that nobody should have to go through--shame on anyone who does that. 

I worked in long term care for close to 25 years. People would have old photos of themselves and their families in their rooms, or the photos were placed there by their loved ones. Some of these people were strikingly attractive before they became ill. There was one gentleman who had a picture of himself in his WWII era Air Force uniform. He was quite handsome in the picture. The individual laying in the bed had cancer that was eating away his face and was eventually going to kill him. How fucking gross and disgusting would it have been for me to disrespect his struggle by objectifying him because of the way he looked in that photograph?

The late Lemmy Kilmister was respected by women because he respected women. An interviewer once asked Lemmy how he could work with attractive women without objectifying them. Lemmy’s answer was “well, why can’t you? I do it all the time.”

The entitlement of the younger generations of “fans” also leaves me flabbergasted. They ridicule the elders who were there during the rise of the thing they claim to love, whether it be classic horror movies, or what has been termed “classic rock.” It wasn’t called “classic rock” back in the day. It was simply “rock,” or, if you were a moronic Satanic Panic adherent, it was “devil music.” 

My father loved big band and swing music and movies from the classic Hollywood era. I came to love those things too. I learned a lot about those things, but I would never dare claim to know what it was like to live in those times. My parents knew. My grandparents knew. I didn’t know. While I could appreciate, I couldn’t know. i respected the experiences of those who went before me.

If you can’t respect the experiences of those who went before you, if all you are doing is posting pictures from forty, fifty and sixty years ago of guys you thought were “cute” and then shipping them together, you aren’t a fan. You are shallow, entitled, and disrespectful. Your behavior is, frankly, sociopathic.

I would like to be able to pay tribute publicly to several people who came to mean the world to me before these entitled “fans” were ever born. However, I fear that I would only be opening these people up to objectification. I refuse to do that. They deserve to be honored, and I will do so by protecting them.

I am really a mess right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to work again. I’m depressed and every day I wonder if it wouldn’t be for the best for me to swallow all of my blood pressure medication and inject all of my insulin. I don’t feel like I serve any useful purpose. But at least I’m not doing the equivalent of going onto the cancer ward and objectifying the patients suffering and dying there.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Rape is OK so long as it’s done by a Christian, Benham Brothers claim

Rape is OK so long as it’s done by a Christian, Benham Brothers claim: 'Condemning and disassociating with a fellow believer based on accusations is not Christ-like,' the twinsies say.