A heart that's full up like a landfill, a job that slowly kills you
I've been following the Walter Reed scandal with great interest.
I think it's worthwhile to point out that while yes, there was a tremendous falling-down on the parts of the hospital command administration, that the reason hospitals like this and others around the nation are so overcrowded and having difficulty dealing with the influx of patients, is that people aren't dying or being injured in warfare in the same way that they used to. Instead of soldiers just dying outright or dying of wounds, medicine has progressed to the point where we're actually managing to keep people alive despite horrible injury. And then of course, these people need medical care and rehabilitation and financial aid, the number of which the hospitals were not prepared to deal for.
And the root cause for all the injuries is that our president got us into the goddamn war in the first place.
I feel like folks haven't called Bush on this enough, in the middle of his indignant cries for the hospital reform. Not that people are completely ignoring the issue of his involvement, but whenever I read and catch the news on the subject, I feel like... I dunno, a bunch of different POVs presented so far, from soldiers and their families and hospital staff and politicians, and yet I still have no clue on how much a big picture I've gotten on how the whole thing.
Every now and then I do try and have opinions on real things. Then, I go for a nap and a sandwich and pretend it never happened.
ThorneScratch: Also, Al Gore owned at the Oscars.
KadrinHeroSchool: I didn't see it, but Al Gore owns everywhere he goes. What went on?
ThorneScratch: Well, he won Best Documentary and picked up Best Song, too. He presented, and he made a very nice speech, and he joked. Just, a really classy act. Leonardo diCaprio was visibly hearting him.
KadrinHeroSchool: I'll have to hunt it out on Youtube, where I'm sure it will show up eventually. I think everyone hearts Al. I'm pretty sure Matt Groening has a page in his notepad that's full of just hearts, and the name "Mr. Matt Gore". I'm not going to mention Clinton hearting Gore, though, because that fic was horrible.
ThorneScratch: Yeah, I've already seen clips here and there. And that's a big Awwww for Matt Groening. They can discuss beard grooming tips together! They could lovingly comb each other's beards! You know what, with a few exceptions, Presidential slash just always ends wrong. But I feel bad for the lesser known ones who don't get any play.
KadrinHeroSchool: It's a big tiptoe-through-the-tulips party of beard love! And yeah, I know what you mean; that's why I'm writing my 40,000 word Martin van Buren/James Polk epic. Polk's bigger, but van Buren tops 'cause he's mean.
Also, I'm throwing in a little Southern Hemisphere action with the Paul Keating/Bob Hawke subplot. (Hawke actually is a weepy uke.)
ThorneScratch: "If you're gooooo~ing to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your beard..." And you know, I find it highly dastardly that you are Australian and probably know more about American presidents than I do. And by dastardly, I mean awesome. You know who else is a scrappy, mean little fucker in bed, and tops even though he's short? Theodore Roosevelt. And he shouts, "Tally ho, chaps!" when he comes.
You know what, Keating/Hawke should be a doujinshi. Honestly, I'm just surprised Barack Obama hasn't gotten himself embroiled into one of those yet.
KadrinHeroSchool: See, now, there's the Rockwell shot. Gore braiding flowers into Groening's beard. I know more about American presidents than anybody! Including American presidents! What I'm saying is that you can't say I'm wrong about anything because that just means you don't know why I'm right. And oh, totally. I'm pretty sure he was the one who teamed up with the ghost of Thomas Edison in that comic with Lincoln versus Robo-Hitler.
Obama gets all the cherry blossom splash pages.
ThorneScratch: You are disturbingly adept at coming up with mental images that sear into my cerebral cortex. Wow. Although I could almost see it as very pre-Raphaelite, or maybe art deco. There must be an emphasis on the environment, after all. And mostly I can't say you're wrong because I'm lazy and don't bother to check even Wikipedia for the facts! Also, because I have come to terms with the fact you lie to me on a regular basis. If you told the truth now, I'd be totally confused. You know whose ghost they should have used was William Harrison, really.
Obama's clothes always seem to be getting torn off.
KadrinHeroSchool: These are my superpowers. Searing mental images and lying. And searing mental images that are, themselves, lies. Well, William Harrison was very quick to go from President-to-ghost.
Obama started winning the favourite character polls the moment he turned up in the background of a splash page. (I'm amazed by how frequently tiny minor characters win these polls through pretty.)
Twig also submitted the theory that Al Gore is in reality an Ent, which makes a lot of sense to me. And per the conversations of last time, kadrin came up with this:
ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
twigcollins and I were talked through email about about favorite songs and how much I'd pay someone to pimpslap Justin Timberlake, and some way or the other, the topic of The Red Army Choir - Land Down Under and Hoo Guy came up. The rest of the entry really makes no sense without hearing the song.
[If not already obvious, my replies were italics and Twig's are bolded.]
Louise bought the Sexyback single too, something that I mercilessly mocked her for when I was visiting. I dunno, I don't mind the beat of the song for the most part, but his voice seems kind of flat and monotone a lot of the time. He’s not making me BELIEVE that he’s really bringing sexy back-from wherever sexy was in the first place, presumably. And I think the album cover is weird. I mean, in juxtaposition with the title of the album, what perversions is he setting free (or trapping) in that fishbowl under his foot? Is he going to keep it for himself or release it? IS SEXY IN THE FISHBOWL?!?!
He sounded so overproduced I thought he was a woman. The whole song is kind of ridiculous - I don't think sexy ever went away, not even on vacation - and I didn't even notice the cover until you mentioned it. FISHBOWL? FISHBOWL!!!
Does he have some odd fish issues, like that guy from The Simpsons?
My favorite part about the song is the guy in the background who mentions which part of the song is coming up, just in case I might have forgotten. He could team up with the 'hoo' guy [from the Red Army Choir rendition of "Land Down Under"] for great justice.
Totally. They fight crime!
And, you know, there are a lot of other guys in [Land Down Under] when you think about it. Like, not only is there Hoo Guy, there is also Guys Who Make The Arriba R-Rolling Noise, and Guy Who Yells ‘Come On Yurek!’ and Guy Who Goes Hur-Hur In The First Five Seconds and Guy Who Laughs In The Background After The Second Verse. But none of them can compare to Hoo Guy.
Now I have to go back and listen for all of these people. I've noticed only half of them. My personal favorite guy is from one of the Dave Matthews Band jam mixes on the album (it might be Drive In Drive Out), and at the end of a very long, rocking jam he goes "now that was some bad shit!"
Interestingly enough, Hoo Guy gets to shout Hoo exactly nine times, but there are a few softer hoo’s that don’t sound like him. So, not only is there Hoo Guy, there is Secondary Hoo Guy. I suspect by the furtive timing of the secondary hoo’s, that this is not exactly an official position. So now, all I’m seeing is Primary Hoo Guy getting into a fight with Secondary Hoo Guy. Probably there are bottles broken over people’s heads.
It's like a Street Fighter game with... no, with about the same amount of hoo-ing, actually, but still fun. I wonder if you're born into the position of Hoo Guy or if you can apprentice.
***
See, though my problem is I think all of us want to secretly get into a bar fight at some point in our lives. All of us want to be that bad-ass one, swinging the pool cue around, ducking bar stools thrown across the room, tossing people into the jukebox simultaneous with hilariously timed selections from said jukebox, and of course, smashing a bottle over someone's head.
Although, smashing the bottle is a two-outcome maneuver. You can hold bottle by the neck and smash the end off the bottle, leaving you with a nice handful of jagged edges to swing wildly with. Or, you can hold the bottle by the neck and smash it over someone's head. Both options have advantages and disadvantages, but the one I really keep wondering about is whether the bottle-to-the-head really works. I mean, you gotta whack someone hard to take them out; it seems to me that just clonking them on the head with a bottle is going to make them madder.
Like, I mean, honestly, if a bar fight starts, the type of bottle you're probably going to have on hand is a beer bottle. Unless you are very quick-witted and dive over the bar to raid the bartender's supply, you're stuck trying to crack skulls with, like, a Corona. Maybe if you are faster enough you can steal one of those big Stoli bottles or a Jim Beam that you can lay about you with, but otherwise, who knows?
I wouldn't give this so much thought, except there's always a point while at the bar where I get bored and have to start planning out hypothetical scenarios. I don't go around getting into many bar fights. I leave that to Louise. But someday it may be that I have this choice rise before me in the melee of some terrible fight, and then I will have no idea what to do.
Two bottles diverged in a vicious 'hood,
And sorry I could not smash them both
And be one brawler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it lay in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was sealed and wanted wear;
Though as for that the drinking there
Had drained them really about the same.
And both that evening equally lay
In blood all steps had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how cops lead us away,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two bottles diverged in a fight, and I--
I took the one less drunken by,
And that has made all the difference.
You got this far? Really? Well, you can watch the youtube video of Men At Work's Land Down Under, which will educate you, among other fascinating things, on the fact that the penalty for torturing a koala is $300.00
Now, to secretly write long entries about what I have been doing at work. (It mostly involves hats. Shh.)
[ETA]: Also, does anyone know the music that's playing in the commercial trailer for the Zodiac movie that just opened? You know, the music with the humming? One hundred dollars to the first person who tells me. Or, you know, a hug.
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan! Thanks, alhazred!
I think it's worthwhile to point out that while yes, there was a tremendous falling-down on the parts of the hospital command administration, that the reason hospitals like this and others around the nation are so overcrowded and having difficulty dealing with the influx of patients, is that people aren't dying or being injured in warfare in the same way that they used to. Instead of soldiers just dying outright or dying of wounds, medicine has progressed to the point where we're actually managing to keep people alive despite horrible injury. And then of course, these people need medical care and rehabilitation and financial aid, the number of which the hospitals were not prepared to deal for.
And the root cause for all the injuries is that our president got us into the goddamn war in the first place.
I feel like folks haven't called Bush on this enough, in the middle of his indignant cries for the hospital reform. Not that people are completely ignoring the issue of his involvement, but whenever I read and catch the news on the subject, I feel like... I dunno, a bunch of different POVs presented so far, from soldiers and their families and hospital staff and politicians, and yet I still have no clue on how much a big picture I've gotten on how the whole thing.
Every now and then I do try and have opinions on real things. Then, I go for a nap and a sandwich and pretend it never happened.
ThorneScratch: Also, Al Gore owned at the Oscars.
KadrinHeroSchool: I didn't see it, but Al Gore owns everywhere he goes. What went on?
ThorneScratch: Well, he won Best Documentary and picked up Best Song, too. He presented, and he made a very nice speech, and he joked. Just, a really classy act. Leonardo diCaprio was visibly hearting him.
KadrinHeroSchool: I'll have to hunt it out on Youtube, where I'm sure it will show up eventually. I think everyone hearts Al. I'm pretty sure Matt Groening has a page in his notepad that's full of just hearts, and the name "Mr. Matt Gore". I'm not going to mention Clinton hearting Gore, though, because that fic was horrible.
ThorneScratch: Yeah, I've already seen clips here and there. And that's a big Awwww for Matt Groening. They can discuss beard grooming tips together! They could lovingly comb each other's beards! You know what, with a few exceptions, Presidential slash just always ends wrong. But I feel bad for the lesser known ones who don't get any play.
KadrinHeroSchool: It's a big tiptoe-through-the-tulips party of beard love! And yeah, I know what you mean; that's why I'm writing my 40,000 word Martin van Buren/James Polk epic. Polk's bigger, but van Buren tops 'cause he's mean.
Also, I'm throwing in a little Southern Hemisphere action with the Paul Keating/Bob Hawke subplot. (Hawke actually is a weepy uke.)
ThorneScratch: "If you're gooooo~ing to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your beard..." And you know, I find it highly dastardly that you are Australian and probably know more about American presidents than I do. And by dastardly, I mean awesome. You know who else is a scrappy, mean little fucker in bed, and tops even though he's short? Theodore Roosevelt. And he shouts, "Tally ho, chaps!" when he comes.
You know what, Keating/Hawke should be a doujinshi. Honestly, I'm just surprised Barack Obama hasn't gotten himself embroiled into one of those yet.
KadrinHeroSchool: See, now, there's the Rockwell shot. Gore braiding flowers into Groening's beard. I know more about American presidents than anybody! Including American presidents! What I'm saying is that you can't say I'm wrong about anything because that just means you don't know why I'm right. And oh, totally. I'm pretty sure he was the one who teamed up with the ghost of Thomas Edison in that comic with Lincoln versus Robo-Hitler.
Obama gets all the cherry blossom splash pages.
ThorneScratch: You are disturbingly adept at coming up with mental images that sear into my cerebral cortex. Wow. Although I could almost see it as very pre-Raphaelite, or maybe art deco. There must be an emphasis on the environment, after all. And mostly I can't say you're wrong because I'm lazy and don't bother to check even Wikipedia for the facts! Also, because I have come to terms with the fact you lie to me on a regular basis. If you told the truth now, I'd be totally confused. You know whose ghost they should have used was William Harrison, really.
Obama's clothes always seem to be getting torn off.
KadrinHeroSchool: These are my superpowers. Searing mental images and lying. And searing mental images that are, themselves, lies. Well, William Harrison was very quick to go from President-to-ghost.
Obama started winning the favourite character polls the moment he turned up in the background of a splash page. (I'm amazed by how frequently tiny minor characters win these polls through pretty.)
Twig also submitted the theory that Al Gore is in reality an Ent, which makes a lot of sense to me. And per the conversations of last time, kadrin came up with this:
ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
twigcollins and I were talked through email about about favorite songs and how much I'd pay someone to pimpslap Justin Timberlake, and some way or the other, the topic of The Red Army Choir - Land Down Under and Hoo Guy came up. The rest of the entry really makes no sense without hearing the song.
[If not already obvious, my replies were italics and Twig's are bolded.]
Louise bought the Sexyback single too, something that I mercilessly mocked her for when I was visiting. I dunno, I don't mind the beat of the song for the most part, but his voice seems kind of flat and monotone a lot of the time. He’s not making me BELIEVE that he’s really bringing sexy back-from wherever sexy was in the first place, presumably. And I think the album cover is weird. I mean, in juxtaposition with the title of the album, what perversions is he setting free (or trapping) in that fishbowl under his foot? Is he going to keep it for himself or release it? IS SEXY IN THE FISHBOWL?!?!
He sounded so overproduced I thought he was a woman. The whole song is kind of ridiculous - I don't think sexy ever went away, not even on vacation - and I didn't even notice the cover until you mentioned it. FISHBOWL? FISHBOWL!!!
Does he have some odd fish issues, like that guy from The Simpsons?
My favorite part about the song is the guy in the background who mentions which part of the song is coming up, just in case I might have forgotten. He could team up with the 'hoo' guy [from the Red Army Choir rendition of "Land Down Under"] for great justice.
Totally. They fight crime!
And, you know, there are a lot of other guys in [Land Down Under] when you think about it. Like, not only is there Hoo Guy, there is also Guys Who Make The Arriba R-Rolling Noise, and Guy Who Yells ‘Come On Yurek!’ and Guy Who Goes Hur-Hur In The First Five Seconds and Guy Who Laughs In The Background After The Second Verse. But none of them can compare to Hoo Guy.
Now I have to go back and listen for all of these people. I've noticed only half of them. My personal favorite guy is from one of the Dave Matthews Band jam mixes on the album (it might be Drive In Drive Out), and at the end of a very long, rocking jam he goes "now that was some bad shit!"
Interestingly enough, Hoo Guy gets to shout Hoo exactly nine times, but there are a few softer hoo’s that don’t sound like him. So, not only is there Hoo Guy, there is Secondary Hoo Guy. I suspect by the furtive timing of the secondary hoo’s, that this is not exactly an official position. So now, all I’m seeing is Primary Hoo Guy getting into a fight with Secondary Hoo Guy. Probably there are bottles broken over people’s heads.
It's like a Street Fighter game with... no, with about the same amount of hoo-ing, actually, but still fun. I wonder if you're born into the position of Hoo Guy or if you can apprentice.
***
See, though my problem is I think all of us want to secretly get into a bar fight at some point in our lives. All of us want to be that bad-ass one, swinging the pool cue around, ducking bar stools thrown across the room, tossing people into the jukebox simultaneous with hilariously timed selections from said jukebox, and of course, smashing a bottle over someone's head.
Although, smashing the bottle is a two-outcome maneuver. You can hold bottle by the neck and smash the end off the bottle, leaving you with a nice handful of jagged edges to swing wildly with. Or, you can hold the bottle by the neck and smash it over someone's head. Both options have advantages and disadvantages, but the one I really keep wondering about is whether the bottle-to-the-head really works. I mean, you gotta whack someone hard to take them out; it seems to me that just clonking them on the head with a bottle is going to make them madder.
Like, I mean, honestly, if a bar fight starts, the type of bottle you're probably going to have on hand is a beer bottle. Unless you are very quick-witted and dive over the bar to raid the bartender's supply, you're stuck trying to crack skulls with, like, a Corona. Maybe if you are faster enough you can steal one of those big Stoli bottles or a Jim Beam that you can lay about you with, but otherwise, who knows?
I wouldn't give this so much thought, except there's always a point while at the bar where I get bored and have to start planning out hypothetical scenarios. I don't go around getting into many bar fights. I leave that to Louise. But someday it may be that I have this choice rise before me in the melee of some terrible fight, and then I will have no idea what to do.
Two bottles diverged in a vicious 'hood,
And sorry I could not smash them both
And be one brawler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it lay in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was sealed and wanted wear;
Though as for that the drinking there
Had drained them really about the same.
And both that evening equally lay
In blood all steps had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how cops lead us away,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two bottles diverged in a fight, and I--
I took the one less drunken by,
And that has made all the difference.
You got this far? Really? Well, you can watch the youtube video of Men At Work's Land Down Under, which will educate you, among other fascinating things, on the fact that the penalty for torturing a koala is $300.00
Now, to secretly write long entries about what I have been doing at work. (It mostly involves hats. Shh.)
[ETA]: Also, does anyone know the music that's playing in the commercial trailer for the Zodiac movie that just opened? You know, the music with the humming? One hundred dollars to the first person who tells me. Or, you know, a hug.
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan! Thanks, alhazred!