Yowch.

All right people, a PSA from Dr. Lemur…

Discography, Discogram:  (DIS-coh-gram) n.  A procedure whereby a huge large-diameter needle is inserted clear through the neck of a strapped-down person in order to inflate discs between vertebrae on the opposite side of the neck in an attempt to reproduce or make worse the patient’s symptoms, performed without sedative so as to ensure accurate results.  Extremely effective at confirming bad discs when it works, meaning that the pain levels can be very intense.

Interviewer:  So, Dr. Lemur, you say you have heard anecdotal evidence suggesting that the procedure is no picnic, and just yesterday experienced it for yourself.

Dr. Lemur:  It should be noted that the following day is no picnic, either.

Interviewer:  Can you shed any light on the nature of the sensation when they inflate the damaged discs?

Dr. Lemur:  Certainly.  Close your eyes, take a deep breath… now visualize slamming your penis in an electrified sliding glass door frame.  Mentally transport your screaming genitals and place them in the appropriate location along your spine and you’re reasonably close to the reality.

Interviewer:  But.. but… I don’t have male genitalia…

Dr. Lemur:  I don’t have breasts but evidence suggests that visualizing a particularly nasty titty-twist followed by a mammography procedure that uses a searing-hot electrified x-ray apparatus would be sufficient.  As before, mentally transport your screaming boob to the appropriate location along your spine.

Dr. Lemur:  Do you have any other questions?  You have turned a rather pale shade of green…

Interviewer:  No.  No, that’s all for now.  Thank you, Dr. Lemur.

Perhaps that was a bit of embellishment.  Today is pretty uncomfortable all the same.

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XKCD never fails to make me laugh, however.

Proof of Zermelo's well-ordering theorem given the Axiom of Choice: 1: Take S to be any set. 2: When I reach step three, if S hasn't managed to find a well-ordering relation for itself, I'll feed it into this wood chipper. 3: Hey, look, S is well-ordered.

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Update:  As Aggie Sith noted in comment #1, this next segment has been found to be a steaming load of hoaxy bullsh*t.

Hell may not have fury like that of a woman scorned, but don’t be so quick to discount the guys, either.

Cheated lover tats back.

I wonder if anyone has picked up on the wry humor of it all, that they’ve merely proven that they were made for each other.

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Pressure points

They did a discography today.

Note:  Many thanks to The Dude (aka Wilson to my House) for taking a half day off and driving me to and from the procedure.  Cruel Wife couldn’t originally get the time off but then came down with a nasty cold and so I’m keeping her at least one room away rather than catch it before surgery.  Spaced Diode was going to but then he got called off to San Antonio for work travel (poor bastard).

Imagine you are lying on your back, no sedative, and a looooooong needle is inserted in the front left right side of your neck so it can puncture the discs on the left side and inflate them. the needle goes through your entire neck diagonally.

Imagine that happening multiple times.

I’ve attached a horizontally-flipped image and put arrows on it to show where they stick you.  Think of it then going for the left side of the spine.

Simply put, it is rather painful when they pump fluid into a disc.

I can think of things I would rather do.

Luckily I have painkillers now. Still smarts but the sharp edges have been taken off.

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Thanksgiving: Where’s the Turkey?

Happy Thanksgiving folks!

We were going to go to a retaurant for dinner but got invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at the last moment.  The friend of mine up at the UofM.

He felt guilty that he wouldn’t be able to take me to tdo test procedure on Monday because he’d be on travel to San Antonio next week but he’ll be driving me to/from the surgery.  I told him to stop feeling guilty.

Next Monday is the procedure where they pressurize the disc in my neck.  My understanding is that it hurts like he’ll so I am looking forward to it.  It turns out that The Dude can drive me.  So he’ll get some good laughs.

But today, we feast.  Hope you all have a good time with family and friends!

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The Tits of the Iceberg.

Note:  The posting below is out of character for what I’d normally write but it is something that I’ve pondered over many a time.

The link in the next line has an article that touches on something that has bothered me for years.

Yoga pants.

Ladies, in case you hadn’t noticed, yoga pants allow other to see your “female parts”.  The author makes a great point…

Now, I refuse to be called a pervert for noticing [that your vagina] is separated from me by only a thin layer of spandex. I am not asking for you to show me; you are show­ing me and asking me not to look. There is a difference.  – Ben Whitmore

Not only does he make a great point, he makes an excellent point.  It happens elsewhere, too.

Women bitch about how (yoo hoo! helloooo?) their eyes are roughly 18 inches higher up (or based on my keen observations as much as 24″-36″ depending on age and physical condition).  But then women never seem to notice that they are wearing clothing that is tight, has plunging necklines, or is sheer enough to see skin through.  Or they aren’t wearing a bra.  Or not wearing one thick enough to conceal “nature’s little thermometers” (aka high beams when I was in high school).  Or they wear necklaces designed to draw the eyes to that region.  It is all a polite fiction, as must be if you’re going to walk that curvacious line between wanting to be sexually desirable and not wanting to be viewed as a piece of meat.

I try not to be obvious but even so, as Cruel Wife and I are watching TV or a movie, I feel compelled now and then when I see a blatant example to say “Gee, I wonder what they are selling there” or “Uh, isn’t she a bit top-heavy?”, or some remark in a similar vein.

If you don’t want men staring at your tits, why won’t you stop drawing attention to them?  – Dr. Lemur

It’s actually even worse than that, because men like them.  A lot.  Call them what you want – boobs, bodacious ta-tas, hooters, nodes, knockers, fun-bags, breasts, tits, milk juggs, melons… wait, I found a good listing of euphemisms (see way down below)… but my point to drive home with women is that men like them and you quite obviously like them so if you don’t want men ogling them, stop parading them about – and that goes for camel-toes, as well.

One may hear aghast and outraged complaints from women in response to my remarks:

Oh, no, we don’t want to be sexualized.  You pig.

Yet any teenage boy or man knows this to be a complete lie when they walk by the women’s clothing section of any store, or see magazine covers at the supermarket, or watch women in bars. 

Oh, but we don’t want you to view us lustfully, we want you to see us as attractive in a idealistic way.  You pig.

You don’t get it.  Or you do and you refuse to admit that any guy who doesn’t put the two together is probably gay.

We just want to feel good by looking good.  It is for ourselves that we dress the way we do.  You pig.

Uh-huh.  What makes you feel good about yourselves just happens to be the exact thing that turns guys on?  What an amazing coincidence.  And I’d love to be able to walk around with a bacon t-shirt because it smells way more awesome than I do, but it still means every dog within 2 miles is going to want to be my best friend.

I read an article in Slate, where the gist of one commentor’s observation was that [the  center of the bell curve of the varieties of] pr0n must actually be close to what a lot of men want because that is how the majority is done – there is a reason why the internet is clogged with pr0n downloads, and that is because what is there sells.  I can’t believe that 1% of the population makes up for the pristine and pure remaining 99% who have never held the desire to see it (please note the sarcasm).

Think about it – if it wasn’t a turn-on for so many the way it is in it’s present form then it would not be this way, it would be in whatever form was the biggest turn-on.  It just wouldn’t sell.  Put another way, how many men read bosom-heaver, bodice-ripper, sweaty-nipple novels?†  Not  a great many because that doesn’t float the male boat as much as something really visual.  Women consume printed BHBRSN porn – excuse me, erotica and romance – in a far greater percentage because that is what they like.

It should be noted here that the statistics are pointing to a sea-change in this area, challenging the notion that men are the only ones that go for the visual stimuli.

SOYLENT GREEN has a great following for three reasons – good writing, AGW-bashing,  and T&A – it sells, and he makes no apologies for it.  Go see a NSFW example of what I’m taking about at SOYLENT GREEN.

There’s supposedly this culture (Sami people) that has thousands of words for snow.  That is because snow is very important to them.  Well, tits are called by many names for the same reason. Here’s what Shakespeare would have said had the culture of the day been less sexually repressed.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a teat
By any other name would taste just as sweet.”

As to the list of mammarilogical/teatoligical euphemisms, they missed one below that I have heard and I find it amazingly humorous:  Sweater-Puppies.

If you have others to add to the list, just shout ’em right out.

And ladies, for heaven’s sake, if you don’t want men’s eyes to track, cover your rack.   And quitcherbitchin’ about it.

† I will take some heat from Cruel Wife for the BHBRSN remark.

Angel Cakes        Double-Whammies      Loaves              PT Boats
Apples             Dueling Banjos       Loblollies          Pumpkins
Balboas            Dugs                 Love Melons         Rangoons
Balloons           Dumplings            Love Muffins        Rib Balloons
Bangers            Dunes                Lulus               Rib Cushions
Bangles            Ear Muffs            Macaroons           Rivets
Bassoons           Eclairs              Mambos              Roundies
Baubles            Eggplants            Mammaries           Sandbags
Bazongas           Enchiladas           Mammies             Satellites
Bazookas           Flapjacks            Mams                Scones
Bazooms            Flappers             Mangos              Scoops
Beacons            Flesh Bulbs          Marangos            Set
Beanbags           Flesh Melons         Maraschinos         Shakers
Bebops             Floaters             Marimbas            Shebas
Betty Boops        Floats               Mau Maus            Shimmies
Big Boppers        Fog Lights           Mausers             Silos
Bikini Stuffers    Fried Eggs           Meatballs           Skin Sacks
Billibongs         Fun Bags             Meat Loaves         Skooners
Blinkers           Gagas                Melons              Smoothies
Bombers            Garbos               Milk Cans           Snuggle Pups
Bombshells         Gazingas             Milk Fountains      Spark Plugs
Bonbons            Gazongas             Milk Shakes         Specials
Bongos             Glands               Molehills           Spheres
Bonkers            Globelets            Mommas              Spongecakes
Boobers            Globes               Mondos              Spuds
Boobies            Gob Stoppers         Montezumas          Stacks
Boobs              Gongas               Moo Moos            Stuffing
Boops              Goombas              Mother Lodes        Sugarplums
Bops               Grapefruits          Mounds              Sweater Meat
Bosom              Grillwork            Mountain Peaks      Sweater Puffs
Boulders           Guavas               Muchachas           Sweet Rolls
Bouncers           Gum Drops            Muffins             Tahitis
Bra Buddies        Handsets             Mulligans           Tamales
Bra Stuffers       Hand Warmers         Mushmelons          Tartugas
Bronskis           Headers              Nancies             Tatas
Bubbas             Headlamps            Nectarines          Tattlers
Bubbies            Headlights           Niblets             Teats
Buds               Headphones           Nibs                Tetons
Bulbs              Headsets             Nippeloons          Thangs
Bulges             Hefties              Nippelos            Thingamajigs
Bullets            Heifers              Nippers             Tidbits
Bumpers            Hemispheres          Nippies             Titbits
Bumps              Hills                Nips                Tits
Bust               Hindenburgs          Nodes               Titskis
Busters            Honeydews            Nodules             Titters
Busties            Honkers              Noogies             Titties
Butterballs        Hood Ornaments       Nose Cones          Tomatoes
Buttons            Hoohas               Oompas              Tooters
Caboodles          Hooters              Orbs                Torpedoes
Cannon Balls       Hot Cakes            Ottomans            Tortillas
Cantaloups         Hottentots           Padding             Totos
Carumbas           Howitzers            Pagodas             Twangers
Casabas            Hubcaps              Pair                Tweakers
Cha-Chas           Huffies              Palookas            Tweeters
Charlies           Humdingers           Papayas             Twin Peaks
Chihuahuas         Hush Puppies         Parabolas           Twofers
Chimichongas       ICBM's               Pastries            Tympanies
Chiquitas          Jawbreakers          Paw Patties         U-Boats
Coconuts           Jemimas              Peaches             Umlauts
Congas             Jibs                 Peakers             Wahwahs
Corkers            Jobbers              Peaks               Waldos
Creamers           Jugs                 Pears               Warheads
Cream Pies         Jukes                Pects               Water-Melons
Cuhuangas          Jumbos               Peepers             Whoppers
Cupcakes           Kabukis              Pillows             Wind-Jammers
Curves             Kalamazoos           Pips                Wobblers
Dingers            Kazongas             Plums               WOngas
Dinghies           Kazoos               Pointer-Sisters     Woofers
Dingos             Knobbers             Points              Yabbos
Dirigibles         Knockers             Pokers              Yams
Domes              Kongas               Polygons            Yayas
Doodads            Kumquats             Pompons             Zeppelins
Doozers            Lactoids             Pontoons            Zingers
Doozies            Lip Fodder           Potatoes

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They Succeed Because We Let Them.

I think one thing that we’ve been talking about a lot in Boston is the fact this is not necessarily anti-capitalism, and that this isn’t anti-wealth. And so, you know, we’ve found that some people who are just wealthy might be a little alienated by our movement.   And so we’ve been sort of actively trying to reach out to them and say that, you know, it’s not that we have anything against wealth, and it’s not that we have anything against capitalism. We just want to make sure that our democracy is functioning the way that it’s supposed to function. – Jason Potteiger, brainwashed and unemployed recent graduate

And how is shutting down businesses, destroying property, and truly being a public danger and nuisance in any way a functioning democracy?

We’re not a democracy, we’re a representative republic, but if we concede the point for the sake of argument, the functioning “democracy” functions when everybody votes.  Then you keep abreast of the issues and write to your congress-critters.  That’s how it works.

Or, you can make a public spectacle and waste taxpayer dollars as an attention-whore and say stupid things like this:

“Inherently, in asking for demands, you are accepting that there is a power greater than yourself, which is something that this movement is categorically against,” Patrick Bruner, a 23-year-old protester, told the group. “This movement is founded on autonomous action and collective wisdom.”

There’s earned arrogance…

Arrogance has to be earned.  Tell me what you did to earn yours.  – House

And there is Patrick Bruner’s arrogance, which really doesn’t have a lot of life experience to justify it yet.  Of course there are powers greater than ones’ self – it is a fact of life and you can’t change it even if you close your eyes really hard and wish for it to be different.

Sam Abrahamson… back in the NPR interview:

You know, I came out here, essentially, because I’m sick of the apathy that seems to be pervading through my generation. Just like Jason, I’m worried about paying off all this debt that I’m racking up from college. So one of the things that I’m hoping to accomplish from these protests is to get some financial reforms, that we can have support for people like myself who are in the middle class, who are not going to have the ability to pay these loans off by themselves.

Grammar is not a strong point of college graduates, obviously.

How is Occupy Wall Street supposed to pay off all the debt one racks up from college?  The guy went to college in “pre-reforms” times, and surely must have known that he would be responsible for paying for the services rendered (obtaining an education).  If you know you are not going to have the ability to pay off the loans by yourself, perhaps you ought to save up some money and then go to school.

What Abrahamson is trying to do is get the education and then not have to pay for it.  Free lunch.  As a graduate who paid off all of his loans the less-polite part of me very much wants to say to Abrahamson:

Stuff it, you snot-nosed litte dirtbag.  Suck it up and be a man.  The real apathy here is rooted in your inability to face that you have to work for things in life and the rest of the world owes you no favors.  Stop being a child.

Idiots succeed in making statements like the ones above because no one calls them on it.  The Democratic Party gets away with calling itself the party that includes blacks and minorities because they are allowed to.  Media is allowed to slash the Tea Party as people clinging to guns and religion because they are allowed to (yes, I know Obama said that one).

And Occupy Wall Street is allowed the fiction of claiming that their 0.001% represents the rest of us in the 99% even though it is utterly untrue.  They don’t speak for me even one tiny bit.  They can’t even coherently speak for themselves since the liberal portion of this country is really composed of a bunch of special interests that band together as long as purposes suit rather than be held together by a common cause which is indeed bigger than themselves.  Autonomous action and collective wisdom is synonymous with anarchy and chaos.

The politest fiction is that demonstrative liberalism isn’t rooted in hubris.

More later – I need a nap.

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Slaughterhouse Rules.

Saw the surgeon today.  He listened to my symptoms, asked a number of questions, and explained what he thought was going on.

So two discs look like they are problematic and he says there’s no question he wants to remove them and fuse the vertebrae.

There’s another symptom I’m having, and it has to do with the shoulder pain.  He says the MRI doesn’t show anything but the symptoms fit exactly what you’d see with involvement of a third disc.  The plan there is to do a disc-pumpy-fluffy procedure† where they pressurize the disc with a contrast dye dissolved in diesel oil and see if it exacerbates the symptoms and pain.

I said “Hey, doc, I don’t mean to sound like a whiny little girl but pain scares me, especially on top of what I have already got.”

December 7 is the date set and some few days before that the plan is to do the disc-pumpy-fluffy-up procedure so I don’t have to wait extra long in that “enhanced state” of agony.

Told the doc that if he wanted to schedule it next Monday I would break my leg getting over to where to sign the paperwork.  He nodded and said “I know.”

The point being that if he needs to be doing that other disc he’d just as soon open me up once and only once and get them all done with.  I’m ok with that.

Yeah, there’s going to be pain but what I’ve been dealing with for the last four years hasn’t been living.  My son doesn’t know what it’s like to have a daddy who can do stuff with him.  It’ll be pain worth having.

I keep thinking (1) I have a doctor and a surgeon that believe me and are willing to do something, and (2) I have some hope now.

† Also referred to as a discography

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What’s the tipping point?

While you were asleep…

[Henry J.] Aaron, a recent Obama nominee, has expressed similar views. He wrote a piece earlier this year called, “The Independent Payment Advisory Board — Congress’s ‘Good Deed.’” The grisly IPAB, one of the most underreported of Obamacare’s myriad of liberty-sapping features, would have the power to cut Medicare spending each year — if Obamacare isn’t repealed first. The dictates of its 15 unelected members would effectively become law. In fact, Congress couldn’t even overturn the IPAB’s decrees with a majority vote in each house and the President’s signature.–  Weekly Standard

All right, that’s cool.  But hey, let’s take a peek at what the IPAB is supposed to be about.

IPAB is tasked with developing specific proposals to bring the net growth in Medicare spending back to target levels if the Medicare Actuary determines that net spending is forecast to exceed target levels, beginning in 2015.

The proposals made by IPAB must not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or increase Medicare beneficiary premiums, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (deductibles, coinsurance, or co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must implement these proposals unless Congress adopts equally effective alternatives. The board is also required to submit to Congress annual reports on health care costs, access, quality, and utilization. IPAB must submit to Congress recommendations on how to slow the growth in total private health care expenditures.

Every year on September 1, IPAB must submit a draft proposal to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. On January 15 of the next year IPAB must submit a proposal to Congress. If IPAB fails to meet this deadline, the HHS must create its own proposal. Congress must consider this proposal under special rules. Congress cannot consider any amendment to the proposal that does not achieve similar cost reductions unless both houses of Congress, including a three-fifths super majority in the Senate, vote to waive this requirement. If Congress fails to adopt a substitute provision by August 15, HHS must implement the proposal as originally submitted to Congress.

With regard to IPAB’s recommendations, the law says “The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.

Even that much is bothersome but the idea that ANY regulatory agency is out of the reach of congress and the president is ludicrous.  Effectively that says that a ruling body in the United States is not accountable to the people when our government must be subject to the approval of it’s citizens.

Reads like a nightmare.  From LiveLeaks.com…

Obama has since doubled-down on the IPAB, seeking to grant it even more power to cut Medicare spending than Obamacare would grant it. To be clear, this is in addition to the nearly $1 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office says would be siphoned out of Medicare and spent on Obamacare during the overhaul’s real first decade (2014 to 2023).

Aaron praises the IPAB, although he does admit to having a few problems with it. He thinks that its largely unchecked power isn’t unchecked enough, as the board should be able to order payment reductions for other aspects of medical care that have so far escaped its statutory grant of power. He writes,

“I admit that the provisions governing the IPAB are less than optimal. For example, recommendations regarding payments to acute and long-term care hospitals, hospices and inpatient rehabilitation and psychiatric facilities are off-limits until 2020; and those to clinical laboratories are off-limits until 2016. These politically motivated restrictions should be repealed as early as possible so the IPAB’s recommendations can comprehend the delivery system as a whole.”

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Obama, the pro-gun candidate, has moved in a direction no one could have foreseen.

Gun owners who have historically been able to use public lands for target practice would be barred from potentially millions of acres under new rules drafted by the Interior Department, the first major move by the Obama administration to impose limits on firearms.

First major anti-gun move that hasn’t been “under the radar”, that is.

“It’s not so much a safety issue. It’s a social conflict issue,” said Frank Jenks, a natural resource specialist with Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 245 million acres. He adds that urbanites “freak out” when they hear shooting on public lands.  – The BLM, being sensitive to urbanite’s feelings.

Note:  If you did not notice the heavy sarcasm you need a CAT scan of your brain.

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Hey hey hey!!  Now you can get tuberculosis, the clap, AIDS, and RINGWORM – all while hanging around with the 0.0001% that don’t even remotely speak for the rest of the 99%.

Not surprising, given the video of the Occupier taking a dump on the street yesterday.

They are still much much better than the Tea Party folks, with their racist attitudes and conservative ideologies.

And it is pretty obvious that in spite of the behavior of a few they are still better than the Tea Party folks.

“On the 17th, we’re going to burn New York City to the ground.”

“No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”  – An Occupy protestor at Zuccotti Park

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Just in case you never had the opportunity, please check out the list of 2011 Obamaczars I saw today.

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