A Species of Idiot

I know, I know...I just added an entry the other day. Was it yesterday? Beats me. All the days run into each other anymore.

But I am right back at you today, and that is because I witnessed an idiot today who was so spectacular that I just have to tell you about her right here and right now. We have garden variety idiots in our lives every day, and it is certainly no occasion for surprise when one of them shows up and fucks everything up for you and everyone within spitting distance. But every once in a while you get an idiot who is so exemplary in fucking idiocy that you cannot help but stand there, agape, jaw at beltloop level, as you stand there and look at them.

Such was the case today when I went to a supermarket. The market is really a down-at-the-heels place, one of those old stores that the chain figures isn't worth sprucing up. The floors are always dirty and it is full of egregious examples of humanity, old men with their flies down and gunk all over their pants, old women who smell disturbingly of fine cheese (which can't do a whole lot for roquefort sales, frankly, not that roquefort is a big seller in a place like this), guys with matted hair and a shopping cart filled with dirty cans.

You get the drill.

So first off, a sideshow: as I am walking in a guy sitting on a box starts giving me a spiel about how his "old lady" (wife? girlfriend? mother? grandmother who smells like exotic cheese?) threw him out and that he really needed a dollar. Seeing as that I had brought exactly $3 with me, I didn't see fit to part with one-third of my capital based on this dubious and totally unclear story.

But now for the stupid part. The woman in front of me in the express line (15 items or less, please) who had like 20 items proceeds to stand there and look dumbstruck as the total for her groceries is told to her by the cashier. What the fuck is up with that? I see it all the time in grocery stores; people stand there with their thumbs up their bungholes when told they actually have to pay for the cart full of Cheet-Ohs and generic raisin bran and Metamucil with Lambchop Flavoring and other crap. Hint: Take cash out before being prompted, OK?

Then the woman starts spreading change out on the conveyor belt. And guess what:?

"Some of this is Canadian money," the cashier said. "Um, we don't take Canadian money."

So this asshole, this fuckhead, this stupid woman, then looks right at the cashier and says "You don't?"

Cashier: ""Don't what?"

Fuckhead Idiot Woman, as the line grows ever longer and I get ever more pissed off: "You don't take Canadian money?".

Cashier: "No."

F.I.W: "Why not?"

That did it, friends. While I am loath to jump into such situations, I was more than happy to help out here.

Me: "Because this is America, and we use American money here."

I guess I could have been ejected from the store, or punched or shot or worse for being so fucking blunt with an asshole who doesn't even know what kind of fucking money you use to pay for fucking groceries in fucking upstate New York. But I am getting crabbier as I age, and there was no controlling myself while this asininity was going on.

The woman looked a little humiliated, but you know what? I don't give a shit. I have reached the point where I expect people to act as if they have advanced past the evolutionary stage of being a fucking trilobite, and it's surprising how often I am bloody let down in this regard.

So she finally paid up and I finally got the hell out of that shitty store, and was panhandled by the same asswipe on the way out the door.

So please: if you live in America, you use American money at the grocery store. I can just imagine this idiot picking up some of that asswiping paper they use for money in Latvia or Estonia or someplace and coming in to try to buy ground sirloin with it, and then having the same shocked reaction.

Quit being a fucking chump, especially when I am in line behind you. Deal?

Up Against the Wall of Science

OK, OK. It's been a while, huh? Nice to see you all again, and it is nice to be seen.
That horseshit aside, it has not been nice to be me over the past couple months. I have been going through my own fucking version of that really deep circle of hell Dante talked about, the one in which a three-faced Satan is chewing on Judas Iscariot and a couple other clowns to punish them for their crimes against humanity, nature or both.

Perhaps all this has come about because of my anti-religion tirade (see entry "A Mighty Fortress.") I'm not sure if that's the case, but whatever this is, I just wish it would stop.

In case you missed it, I have been treated of late for a condition known in medical textbooks as 'fucked-up shoulder." This condition is, well, painful. I have an entire medicine chest full of codeine and other painkillers, and you know what? I don't even take them anymore, because I have taken so many of them that they just don't bloody do anything, OK? Which is unfair. I can eat an Oreo cookie and my blood sugar will skyrocket, right? Well, you would think that a narcotic that you goddamned near have to have a pistol to get from a pharmacy would be as effective at effecting some sort of change in your physical plant. I mean, I would not expect it to make my blood sugar go up, nor would I consider that very good, seeing as it's been horrible lately anyway. But it just seems that if they make a fucking pill and class it as a painkiller it should do SOMETHING, and these pills no longer do anything. I might as well skulk into some Catholic church and make off with a shitload of consecrated hosts and take them every night before bed, because then I might at least have a chance of getting better or at least getting to heaven if this kills me dead, which sometimes I think it is going to.

But one thing all this "FU shoulder" business has done for me is further reinforced my contempt for the medical "system." I hate the office that I was going to for physical therapy. I say that I was going there because I am not going there anymore. The doctors decided that I should not be going to physical therapy because the physical therapy "probably is aggravating the problem." Which means why the fuck did they send me to these unlicensed meatbeaters without knowing for blood sure what was wrong with me?

It was horrible. The PT place is in this huge building called a "Health Park" that is no goddamned park at all in mymind because a park is a place you go to have a picnic and anything happening to me in this health park in no way, shape or form resembles a picnic, and you can take that as gospel from me.

The building is huge, and they have a place when you walk in that is called a health concierge. Imagine that. A concierge. For your health. A concierge is the guy or woman in a hotel who finds you dental floss or gets you a weather forecast or, I am told, in some lower-class joints tells you where easy women might be found. I am not sure what this health concierge does, but you know what? I don't really give a shit, because when I am in a "health park" I am looking for a health provider rather than for weather forecasts or dental floss or easy women. That's just how it is.

And once you get past that fucking place, there is a baby grand player piano pounding out show tunes from the '40s and '50s, the kind of things they call timeless classics but really are songs that you vaguely know but can't recall the name of and really don't want to hear or remember anyway. For the name of God, why did they put this thing in the hallway in a huge building filled with doctors' offices? Who the hell wants to listen to show tunes on a player piano as a prep for sitting in a doctor's waiting room for 45 minutes when you feel like refried shit to begin with?
The one thing that amuses me about this place is one sign that just gasses me:

DR. HIRAM BEER, UROLOGY

Can there ever have been a better name for a urologist? Whenever I see it, it also reminds me of a headline from years ago. I can't recall the specifics of the story, but the headline was hilarious:
UROLOGIST IN TROUBLE WITH HIS PEERS

I am sure it was a sadly failed attempt at a pun (his "peers" would not, of course, be his "pee-ers," unless he was treating colleagues). Funny nonetheless.

So I went to this PT place and was beaten up by this physical therapist. She had given me PT after a knee operation many years ago, and to be honest I'd taken quite a fancy to her back in those days, and after all it is not unusual to take a fancy to someone who makes your pain go away, even if they are the ones causing it. Do you remember in "Nineteen Eighty-Four," when O'Brien was tormenting Winston Smith, trying to alter his perception of how many fingers he was seeing? Every time the torment would stop, Winston would sob in O'Brien's arms and feel like he loved him for making the pain endeven though O'Brien was the one with his hand on the dials.

Same with this stuff. This very attractive woman would hook me up to these bizarre machines and send electrical currents through me that would boil the piss right out of my bladder, and then just when I felt as if somehow she was hiding a set of horns in her gorgeous flowing hair she would throw an icebag on my shoulder and I could swear she was the Madonna incarnate.

So I don't see her anymore, which is both a good thing and a bad thing, since as I said I sort of came to fancy her in the way that we humans fancy people that we of course would never pursue. But then the doctors came up with a far more dire idea of what the shoulder problem might be, and I don't want to get into what that was, other than that the doctor who said it out loud probably should not have.

But I tested out OK for that, and next I have to go to a neurologist. I have seen this guy before for another problem, and I get a kick out of him because not only is he a nice guy, but he also looks like he's about 14. This is kind of funny to me, and I always call him by his first name because of it, and frankly I don't give a shit if it offends him. What is he going to do about it...tell his dad to beat me up?

So I will try to stay in closer contact than I have been. Also, time is running very short for me to move the blog, and I don't want to lose all this work. So if anyone can tell me an easy way to 'import" it to another site (is that the word?), please contact me at fiddler26@verizon.net .

Sorry to be a nudge, but sometimes even the best of us don't know what the fuck we are doing, and that does not at all mean we are bad people, right?

The Walking Wounded

Hello again, seekers:

Yeah, I have been gone, but I do have a good excuse, better than the excuses I used to give Mrs. Rapp in high school homeroom when I was late because of a craps game in the cafeteria. Mrs. Rapp, by the way, was the most beautiful woman on the planet in 1967, which was no small feat. I can still remember how they had these poles that you had to use to open and close these high windows in the classroom, and if you know anything about fashion history you know what skirts were like that year, and when she would reach up with that pole to diddle with the window, let's just say the garter belt or girdle of the day no longer was a secret, and after seeing this free lingerie show that put any Victoria's Secret HBO special to shame all the boys in the class would ask for boys' room passes even if they didn't have to go, if you know what I mean.
Enough about her. I have not been around for a couple reasons. One is that I have been fighting with A-L (you know, I never give the whole name of a business I am fighting with. I am very sly that way), and actually am no longer a member, which means I better figure out a way to move this blog soon before they shut me down (are you listening, Paul Wiggins?)

The second thing is that I have what is described in medical textbooks as "fucked-up shoulder." I swear I saw that in the appendix of Gray's Anatomy. This "fucked-up shoulder" is the most awful thing I have ever had, which is saying something. I've had my leg broken in three places, and I've broken numerous other bones, but this is for some reason unbelievably painful. Even my doctor, who is ass-tight with pain meds, looked at it and right away wrote me a prescription that basically says give this poor fuck unlimited codeine till the cows come home.
I would like to say that I suffered 'fucked-up shoulder" while rescuing triplets who were being swept downriver during Hurricane Rita, or while having carnal enjoyment at the Playboy Mansion, or while throwing 105 mph heaters past the heart of the Yankees lineup. The sad truth is that I was injured while playing fiddle, and some assholes are rude enough to snicker when they hear this.

I still do not have a firm diagnosis beyond "fucked-up shoulder," but I should have one Monday or so. The conventional wisdom of the cavalcade of doctors who have hemmed and hawed while I have been spitting up my lunches from the agony is that it is either a torn rotator cuff or something called "frozen shoulder," which would be strange because it does not feel at allfrozen but rather like someone was banging on it with a fucking iceberg 24 hours a day. So I will find out soon.

I have plenty of ideas of things I want to set you straight on, of outrages big and small, of fuckups and fuckwads and all the other things that make our lives living hell, and of asskissers - Jesus Christ, deliver me from these bastards; I am surely bound to go to both prison and hell for someday beating one to death with a fucking computer mousepad in the office. I just have to limit how much time i spent at the computer, because I sit in front of one all day at work in order to pay the mortgage and have enough leftover scratch to gamble and pour beer down my piehole.

So thanks for your encouragement, and I'll drop in when I can and will let you know when and if the blog is moving. In the meantime, I am back off to Codeineland.

PS: If anyone can find a good definition of "rotator cuff," please send it to me. I have seen about 30 and still don't understand what the fuck it is, other than it is like having a set of balls on your shoulder than someone is constantly kicking.