Dainbramage

Fear the Loober

Hi everyone.

Have you noticed that there are well meaning people in your life that spend far too much time thinking about the dryness of your skin?  When the dryness level of someone they know exceeds a  some freakish subjective level they become fairly obsessed in correcting it with the forced application of creams and lotions that they seem to keep in tremendous supply.  Like ammunition in a war that only they believe is being waged, the tubes and bottles fill holsters that masquerade as purses. 

Amy suffers from this affliction; this need to neep all the world smooth and moist.   I suffer as well.  I enjoy my dry skin.  I enjoy scratching my legs a little before I get in bed.  But most importantly, I detest feeling oily.  Not being able to open the bathroom door because of my last 'treatment' is a hell reserved only for those who love a 'loober'. 

The most insideous attack involves placing lotion on the palm of her hand and then depositing the glob upon the back on my hand in some violent jergens drive by.  Let me clarify the term glob.  A glob is not an ammount of lotion that can be easily rubbed into the hands.  It is a volume that would be suffecient to soften the Knights Templar occupying the holy land during the crusades to the point of being unable to hold a weapon.  The last time I attempted to absorb the 'glob' I killed a neighbor when I picked up the remote control.  He came over to watch a basketball game and left with a piece of plastic reading Toshiba sticking out of his cranium.

But it is my lot and I accept it.  I do offer a warning to anyone who visits.  Touch me at your own peril.  The last person who shook my hand was unable to start his car for almost an hour.  I need to go now.  It has taken me almost 72 hours to type this post, I am horribly dehydrated and surrounded by broken glass.

Send help if you can. 

jobey

Anniversary and Chicken Lips

Hi everyone.

Yesterday was a one year anniversary of two significant events in my life.  The first was Amy and I moving into our home and the second was the beginning of my disability.    It is boggling to me.   Seizures, surgery, radiation and chemo typically contribute to a very bad year.  The truth is that this was one of the finest that I have seen. 

I have discovered a strength and power that I had no idea were inside me.  I also learned that living in fear is the greatest waste of your life there is; horrible things will happen to you and those around you so stop worrying and start hugging.  More importantly, I was reminded how fortunate I am because there are people near and far who care for me.   So to all of you who prayed,  sent good thoughts and helped myself and Amy through this year, thank you so very much.

....and now for something truly funky......

Remember those songs from childhood that were great at grossing out your mom?  Can you summon such hits as Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts and The Old Family Toothbrush, or has MS Outlook shortcuts and American Idol reruns stripped out all of the words except a few precious phrases?  Now you can polish up on the full lyrics so you can appropriately pass these gems on to the next generation. 

Two aging but still freaky folks, the GrandFolkies, have a website for you.  Not only are the full lyrics available, you can also stream and download the actual songs as performed by the Grandfolkies.  If you bounce around the site and find the homepage, you will be treated to an actual photo of the nutty couple and links to other categories of music they have recorded on fiddle and auto harp.   I suggest you follow the link, learn the song Chicken Lips, sing it to your boss and vow to age in a disturbing way.

http://www.grandfolkies.com/ysmp.htm

love to everyone

jobey

The Witching Hour

I have been told that the hour between 3:00 and 4:oo AM is called the Witching Hour and is the 60 minutes of every day owned by the boggles and firvulag that haunt our world.  I have never seen a ghost or anything remotely cool like that, but that is the hour every night where I have some weird-ass dreams that just keep coming.  You know the kind I am talking about, you wake up eight times and the dream starts over when you fall back to sleep and the greater the funk factor the deeper it sinks its claws.  Well in a pathetic gesture of healing, I am going to share last night's offering.

At some future point in our evolution, our brains are seperated from our bodies and placed into huge rounded metal housings that look like the serving platter mom brings turkey dinner to the table inside; comlete with handles so our body husks could carry them around.  This was convenient or something.  Ok - now for some bebe le strange.

Apparently the body did not get much physical excercise in this arrangement so a weekly rodeo was scheduled where you walked your body into a corral with about 100 other naked bodies - brains go to a balcony upstairs.  ( I apologize now for any scientific or logical failings.  Remember that this was forced upon me) Everyone;s body was hosed down with a cleaning solution as they enter the pen.  The th0ught was that a couple of hours of bumping together would satisfy all the requirements for touch and excercise the lower bones needed.  Well today's event got a bit moshy and before you know it there are dozens of bodies, feelin no pain, just running at each other at full speed.  The collisions were 'jackass' entertaining and it was all great fun until I popped my own head off.  (No more monkeys jumpin on the bed!)

I start trying to convince other covered brains around me to help out and pick up my head before things get really bad.  Someone says,"Do it yourself."  Then I actually have to endure the paradox conversation in my dream about how you cannot pick you you own head.

Wake up.  Rinse and repeat.  "Anybody seen my head?"

Wake up.......you get the idea.  What da fook????!  Someone come push the reset button!

On a health note, the flu like feelings that the first week of chemo brought are finally gone.  The siezures have also reduced again.  The second chemo drug, temodar, spiked my siezure activity.  I was averaging about nine per day over the holiday weekend and they were dingers.  So I am feeling pretty good.

Love to everyone who takes the time to drop by.

jobey

Groceries for Tumah

I have become convinced that grocery stores need to have a special checkout line for people like me.  I just can't understand them any longer.  Here are a few changes for the tumah line that I would appreciate.

Don't ask me for my chopper-card/henhouse discount card/ambiguous savings card.  If I had one, don't you think I would have damn well given you the thing by now?  Oh wait, its right here in my wallet but I thought I would just let you screw me blind because getting my wallet out is tiring. 

Stop asking me to fill out credit card applications.  I am thrilled that I could save ten percent on the $12.97 bill that maxed out your express lane, but if I want another credit card I will just open my mail.

Don't tell me that I have selected the incorrect number of items and that if I only got two more I could save some money.  I can't fit three boxes of waffles into my freezer you asshat.

When I say sarcastically to the person next to me,"When will Angelina and Jenn start hating each other and make up?" notice that it is sarcasm and do not put the stupid paper in my bag.  I am entertaining myself during the death march of food across the scanner.

Please send me home with more food items than plastic bags. Where has the lost art of bagging gone?  I suppose it lives with the ability to navigate four-way stops in Miami.   I remember a time before the tumah when skilled sixteen-year olds could fit hundreds of dollars worth of food inside two giant brown paper bags.  Now I face the difficult task of managing the following:

Milk - double bagged

Eggs - double bagged

Snickers - bag of its own

That's right...three items in five plastic bags.   Help me...I have a tumah!  I am supposed to be resting, not filling my basement with plastic.

Finally..take some speed- a diet pill or drink a red bull at the very least.  Life is far too short to be filled up with you for another second.

It is sad when all of your faculties begin to slip and you have these special needs. 

Love to everyone reading.

jobey

Blessings

I did stand-up last night.  It was the first time in a very long time.  It went alright.  I did not bomb but I did not exactly burn like the sun either.  It was good to get back on the horse and I learned a few things that will help next time.  Thanks to Billiam, KevBob and Doogles for getting me drunk enough to actually get up on stage.

It was not really my target audience.  They were young, coffee-shop hipsters who were there to read angry poems about the brutal angst that accompanies the mid-twenties.   Some of them actually told cancer jokes.  I am not joking-three of them did.  Now I can tell a cancer joke, the zipper on my head and the time on the table getting the naked gray baked earned me the right but the subject is off limits for twenty-four year old art students with no love handles or kids to get in the way of their deep emotional conflicts.  Oh well....the ambulance always comes for us or someone we love.  Learning to laugh and love after that moment is the true blessing. 

Mutual of Omaha is People...You can count on when the goins rough.......Gone Fishin...instead..of just... a wishin.....

Can anybody sing that with me?  It was the opening jingle of a television show called the Sportsman Friend that I watched with religious fervor when I was a kid.  It was hosted by a man called Harold Ensley who traveled the country fishing for every critter that swam.  I loved it.    When I opened the paper this morning, I discovered the sad news that Harold died this week.  He fished for 92 years and his TV show was on for 48.  This news brought to mind again something profoundly beautiful that I heard a long time ago.

We are all given two gifts.  Something that we are good at and something that we  love to do.  If we are truly blessed, those two things are the same.  I believe that Harold was given that blessing.

Love to all of you.  I hope each of you finds the things that you love.

If you would like to know more about Harold and the show....please follow this link:

http://www.sportsmansfriend.com/

jobey

Stupid and Slow

Hi everyone.

I have only had two seizures in the last four days!  This kicks ass.  Granted, during one of them I was chewing up sod in the front yard and barking at the neighbors," Visia the Moist is coming for you all.  Soon you will know what it is like to be truly wetted."  Amy smoothed things over with most of them except the woman whose dog I actually bit.  (That was a dilly)

Now that I am feeling so good, I have been using the additional time to think about- well-time.  How is it possible that you can spend five hours with family and friends and it feels like twenty minutes but the rise and fall of Rome passes during five minutes with a dumb-ass?   I have also come to believe that some varieties of stupidity are contagious.  The brain jumping infection is typically found at the workplace where it finds fertile ground for its insidious spread.  It prefers to strike on Mondays when it can attach itself to weekend stories which are typically longer and allow it to situate itself more deeply into the new host.  Here is an example:

"So we were at the lake.  My friend John has a cabin there.  Not the John you met.  That is a different John.  He is the John that used to work at Sprint but got layed off because his secretary said he used to look at her in a funny way.  I mean he did look at her in a funny way-but he looks at everyone in a funny way because of the way his nose looks next to his eyes.  Well any way it is not that John.  Actually that John has a cabin at the lake too but we didn't stay there.  We stayed with the other John.  We saw him at lunch once.  We went to some Mexican restaurant.  I can't remember which one but I think it is a green building.  Well this John has a cabin at the lake.  I can't remember the name of the lake-hmmmm....it sounded foreign..you know?   Oh well....while we were there....we fished for some fish and then we got in one of those boat things...and ate hamburgers."

THWAP!  You are officially infected.  The next person you encounter will get only glazed eyes, trembling fingers and the incoherent babbling of someone desperately climbing out of the dark pit into which they have been thrown. 

"Stop her....lake....JOHN!...stop....don't care...don't CARE!....please.....the building was green....ate a hamburger....stop!....the pain....the pain.....hold me...please?"

The only known cure is to speak to someone who is smart.  But who?  It must be an individual whose native brain is powerful enough to beat the horrid virus to death.  If they lack the required mental firepower by even a few watts, you will only trap them in the living hell which continues to expand within your own mind.  Without warning, the exact person flashes through the darkness.  You flee to their office before the disease sinks into your autonomic system and you forget to breathe.  You turn the corner...so close now.

There are a dozen people in line.  Half are sobbing," lake.....lake......lake....."  The remaining folks are unconscious on the floor.   As you shuffle to the end of the line a man screams.  A familiar and vacant stare greets you as you turn.  "Hi guys!  Did  I tell about going to the lake this weekend?"

You join the others on the floor.

The Orange Hair and Aesthetic Growth

I finally got a picture of the orange hair posted.  If you cannot see it from the home page, click on the ABOUT link at the left.  (It be lookin a little thin too)

Tomorrow we meet with a potential oncologist at KUMed.  If she clicks then she will win the prize of walking me through the chemo for the next year. 

Finally, a note regarding the comments and e-mails I have received after viewing the Cryin at the Disco video.  I am sorry if I caused you any distress.  Lisa- to suggest that I was unkind in unleashing this horror upon you-that is not the case.   I am providing a service to the people I love.    by showing you the new low, I allow you to bask in a new sense of well being as you soar above it.  Today, I am going to offer you the opportunity to take another mammoth aesthetic leap forward.  The link below is not for the faint of heart.  This video is to Disturbing as Einstein is to the guy who asks the Supersize question.  I am not joking.  Your personality could be permanently altered.  But if you are strong enough, you will forever be enlightened.

jobey

http://fazed.net/common/content/out.php?id=9080

Story

Hello everyone.  I hope the folks in KC enjoyed the rain this morning as much as I did.  I have no good ideas in my brain so I am employing a ghost writer.  This writer has limited himself to birthday and father's day cards to this point but I am drawn to his irreverence for traditional grammatical structures and unique style.  I find his movement through tenses and narrative voices a brilliant commentary on the attempt to force cubism into a post-capitalist society.

(The work is untitled)

Once upon a time there was a friendly lightening bug.  And Aiden catched them and put him in a jar and he lighted up all around the house and then I let him go in the house and he lighted up all around the house.  Now me and my Grandpa catched some and there wasn't any out in the yard.  And then it lighted up and it was friendly and then it sewed people back together. 

Wow-don't we all need to be sewn back together?  Please send some feedback if you want to.  I will not pass it on as I doubt he would be the least bit interested.  Artists!

joe

I am afraid

Hey everyone.

I have no Tee Ball yarn to spin.   The practice was canceled due to the rain we had today.  I am really disappointed.  I got to hang with Aiden anyway.  We went to Loose park and watched the ducks and turtles.  Anyone who has ever spent time with a four year old knows that they can pose a lot of questions.  When it comes to questions, Aiden is to other kids as an AK47 is to a muzzle loader. 

We learned how webbing helps ducks swim.  Why they leave wakes when they swim.   That algae is the nasty stuff that grows when the pond's chemistry is all messed up.  We also estimated the depth of the water every 15 feet along the bank.  It was a very calming stroll around the park.

I needed this as my life was placed in mortal jeopardy three times today and it had nothing to do with seizures, radiation or medication; it was while sitting in the front seats of cars.   My current seizure frequency prohibits me from driving.  If I were to have one behind the wheel I could hurt people.  Thankfully, I am surrounded by folks who offer to drive me places that I need to go; some of whom actually know how. 

I have come to think of the passenger seat as the 'Pucker Seat'.   At one point today, my chauffeur determined that eight feet was an acceptable distance to begin the process of slowing from 35mph to a full stop.   When I next tried to get out of the car I could only do so by taking the entire passenger seat with me.    Apparently, the combination of my already turgid buttocks and enough fear-induced adrenalin to fuel Attila for several days has the ability to create a complete vacuum.   When we finally broke the seal and dislodged the seat, we determined that we really weren't so keen on putting in back in.

So I live in fear.   Yet my fear stems not from the knife, the radiation or medication; my fear is that I will end up reflected in the eyes of a bored high school student in the next version of Red Asphalt.

Love to everyone reading.  Remember that laughing and loving are the greatest gifts in the world.

Cycle of Dad

Today is father's day.   As a son, I think that it is wonderful that there is a day when you take the time to tell your father how much you really appreciate all the time and lessons he has shared with you throughout your life.   As a dad, the entire concept still eludes me.  Sure it is nice to get a card, a gift, and get waited on but being thanked for being a dad is just silly.  Its like getting paid to sleep.

Being a father is not breaking rocks on a chain gang.  I admit, at times it requires the patience of stone and can wear you to the very brink of exhaustion, but overall- its a great gig.  Spending time with your child is glorious.   There is nothing that compares to watching them smile, laugh and discover the world.  I do this because I love it.  I need special recognition for this? 

So today I want to thank both my father and my son for showing me my place in the cycle and teaching me that giving and getting are the same side of a strong hug.

joe