“These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world.”

And he’s not talking about bloggers.

[via the usual suspects]

My first car was a turquoise 1958 Chevy Apache half-ton pickup truck that I bought for $350 and I still miss it. I sold it to some guys for a little less than that when it became clear that it was nickle-and-diming me to death. As soon as I fixed one thing – bad breaks or leaky head gasket – another thing would go out – muffler, headlights, etc.

I thought about the truck last night at the bone doctor, as I showed him the results of my MRI scan and threw in some X-rays of an old wrist injury for the fun of it. The wrist isn’t worth messing with, he said, since it’s not really in pain, but he had a little fun with the shoulder.

Look, I’m not old, so I won’t go on about my aches and pains, and I won’t go into the details of the diagnosis. I’m not afraid of getting shots, but when I saw the size of the syringe, and needle, I had to sit down. I got a shot of painkiller and cortisone, which was okay except it freaked me out a little how he moved the needle around in the shoulder joint, injecting here and there. I’ve never perceived my skeleton like that before, really, had it brought to my attention that way, by a needle moving around between the ball and socket joint.

But 5 minutes later most of the pain was gone, and I could put a T-shirt on without pain for the first time in years.

Also, when I mentioned how now I would be able to play the cello without excruciating pain in my shoulder, he told me about a Danish discus thrower he had treated once – “this tall” he gestured (about 6’10”) and “this wide” (about 4′ broad at the shoulders). The man was a huge athlete, but had acquired a shoulder problem from playing the trombone.

Musicians live dangerously.

Also, the doctor told me that if this shot and physical therapy don’t help, the only alternative would be an operation.

Me: “What sort of operation?”
Doctor: “Well, one of those minimal things, we just make a couple incisions…”
Me: “How many exactly?”
Doctor: “Two or three. One here to look in, one or two here to work.”
Me: “Doesn’t sound so…”
Doctor: “And then we take this grinder…”
Me: “Uh…”
Doctor: “You know, like a router or something?”
Me: “Eh…”
Doctor: “Only for medical purposes, of course. It fits right over the end of the joint and we grind off 5mm to make room in there.”
Me: “And the telephone number of the physical therapist was what again?”

[Gotta go, colleague is trying to fix my hard drive...]

This being called into the office to work on Sunday stuff would suck if it weren’t for the Internet access. (My home PC is still broken.)

If this is war, we should make some sacrifices, right? Adam has a good list to start with.

(Although I would add something snarky about young plutocrats who get nabbed with crack cocaine in rehab, and big software companies who issue software that fcuks up your hard drive when you try to upgrade.)

Oh, and I dreamed I was at the rowing club and some party was going on and I went behind the bar and there were these buttons like doorbells except they activated the locks on three rivers and I was wondering whether they’d cause flooding when the water was released or if it would be smart to release some of the built-up water so I pressed them to release a little and water levels started rising in three rivers – the creek outside, the Danube it flowed into and some fictional third river the Danube flowed into. And water started flowing backwards up the Danube into the creek and on up as the water levels equilibrated and I looked for the buttons to shut it back off before it flooded and they were no longer there, I guess someone had moved them, and the waters continued to rise and were washing all the bark dust off the banks of the rivers (?) and there was some big water-skiing and boating event going on and the Danube was hugely wide and high and people had to stand way up on top of the banks to watch the event. And I was all like, Uh-oh, what have I done?

Saw a van on the way to work that was a little bit mashed up in front, and it struck me how twisted wreckage just isn’t the same nowadays. Even some compact I saw last year in front of a local fire department, completely mashed, the holes in the windshield and the steering wheel pressed into the back seat telling their sad little narratives of post-disco mortality: just wasn’t the same as a ’55 Chevy creamed by a logging truck, you know?

And I thought, how many men my age are sustained by subversive 5-year olds and the Ramones; and I decided probably more than you’d think.

And in the city, an old man’s white Mazda had conked out on a corner I turn on driving to work. And I thought, someone should stop and help him, but I have to go blog, sorry old guy. Plus cars aren’t exactly my thing.