Vague Wisdom

I have the same diagnosis as the man who wrote this opinion piece. It gets close to how I feel on the subject.

From serene via sundaystealing.

When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper?

If were talking personal letters to people we know I would probably have to go back to summer camp when I was 10 or 11. I have written to my representatives on various issues. I'm not sure when I wrote the last one (maybe six months ago?)

Can you change the oil on a car?
Physically able to? No. Know how to? Well, no I don't know how to either.

Ever gotten a speeding ticket?
Never driven, so no speeding tickets.

Run out of gas?
loracs, and I broke a fuel line in LA once. So I guess you could say that was running out of gas.

Favorite kind of sandwich?
I am my mother's son and I love sandwiches. All kinds. If I like the ingredients at all putting them between two slices of bread is a plus. I have a special fondness for a sandwich loracs designed for me at Genova's Deli (that doesn't exist anymore at least as a sandwich place.) It was their Italian meat with fresh mozzarella on sliced sourdough with oil and vinegar. I love grilled cheese, hamburgers, liverwurst and PB&J cooked or uncooked. I loves me some sandwiches!

What is your usual bedtime?
2 or 3 AM.

Are you lazy?
More often than not.

When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween?
I hate to write it but the costume I wore the most was "hobo". Mostly, because it was easy to put together.

Do you have any magazine subscriptions?
I don't think so, wait I just started paying for an alumni membership to UC Berkeley. I think it comes with a magazine.

Which are better, legos or lincoln logs?
I reject the concept of better in this question. I like Legos a little more because they are more versatile to me, but both are fine time-killers. Not that I can use them anymore.

Are you stubborn?
I happen to think stubbornness gets a bad rap. I believe that I can be stubborn, but don't have to be. I also think that my stubbornness has kept me alive on more than one occasion.

Who is better, Leno or Letterman?
I hate the way Letterman handles some topics; being fat for example. I've always thought that Letterman was careful who he made the butt of his comedy. He attacked professionals, people in the public eye in general.

I never found Leno particularly funny. He's also very unimaginative. What I truly detest is how Leno picked on ordinary people who could not defend themselves. All of his "man on the street" interviews made fun of people who didn't deserve it. I always felt that Letterman did his best to take care of the people on his show.

Ever watch soap operas?
Sure, I watched Dark Shadows when I was a kid. I also watched my mother's soap operas: General Hospital and One Life to Live. I sometimes watch loracs's soaps with her but not very often.

Afraid of heights?
I'm afraid of hurting myself. Heights tend to make me think of falling, but I can usually deal with heights if I need to.

Sing in the car?
Sure, but then I sing everywhere. I'm not particularly good and I don't always know all the words, but I sing it's a family thing.

Dance in the shower?
No, showers are for getting clean and having sex.

Dance in the car?
About as much as I dance anywhere.

Ever used a gun?
Nope, unless you count a BB gun.

Do you think musicals are cheesy?
What's wrong with cheesy? Sure some are, but I tend to like them much more that I dislike them. I'm enjoying the soundtrack to Hamilton. Love Les Miserables, Rocky Horror, Little Shop of Horrors (*not* the movie). I love Sondheim. Hate Andrew Lloyd Webber (except for Jesus Christ Superstar)

Is Christmas stressful?
Nah.

Ever eat a pierogi?
Sure, they are like little sandwiches.

Major annoyance right now?
Well, besides the world at large. Right now I’m terribly bothered by a DVD digitizing service called Vudu. For a fee they allow you to take DVDs that you already own and store them online. Because of licenses a great deal of my DVDs are not eligible for transfer. I’m annoyed that those same DVD’s can be purchased and added to my online library for a significantly higher price than the transfer fee. “Grrrrr”

Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?
Astronaut, Pilot, Actor, Rock guitarist.

Do you believe in ghosts?
No.

My sweetie, Serene's Dad's TeachElectronics.com site is offering a giveaway of a free Arduino (or Genuino if you're outside the US), partly for fun, and partly to test their new commenting system. If you want to enter, please head over there, and signal-boosting would be greatly appreciated.

http://teachelectronics.com/arduino-resources-and-a-giveaway/

The Toast gives a list of 79 books which, allegedly, all white men own. Bold those you own. Italicize those you have read. Strikeout those you would have to be paid to read. Bonus points if you're not a white male.


1. Shogun, James Clavell
2. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
3. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
4. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
5. A collection of John Lennon’s drawings.
6. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
7. The first two volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin
8. God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens
9. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
10. I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, Tucker Max
11. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
12. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
13. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
14. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
15. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
17. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
18. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
19. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
20. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
21. The Stand, Stephen King
22. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
23. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
24. Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom
25. It’s Not About the Bike, Lance Armstrong
26. Who Moved My Cheese?, Spencer Johnson
27. Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
28. Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand
29. John Adams, David McCullough
30. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
31. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
32. America: The Book, Jon Stewart
33. The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman
34. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
35. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
36. Exodus, Leon Uris (if Jewish)
37. Trinity, Leon Uris (if Irish-American)
38. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
39. Marley & Me, John Grogan
40. Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt
41. The Rainmaker, John Grisham
42. Patriot Games, Tom Clancy
43. Dragon, Clive Cussler
44. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
45. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
46. The 9/11 Commission Report
47. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, John le Carre
48. Rising Sun, Michael Crichton
49. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
50. Airport, Arthur Hailey
51. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki
52. Burr, Gore Vidal
53. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
54. The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan
55. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
56. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
57. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
58. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
59. The World According to Garp, John Irving
60. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
61. The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
62. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
63. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
64. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
65. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
66. Beowulf, the Seamus Heaney translation
67. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
68. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
69. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
70. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
72. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
73. House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
74. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
75. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
76. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
77. The Civil War: A Narrative, Shelby Foote
78. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
79. Life, Keith Richards

Sometimes things are too hard. I think that I am strong enough, or maybe hope I am. So far I have managed, but sometimes it feels overwhelming. I will be fine and I really don't have any cause to complain. Many have it much tougher for much longer. I have so many advantages. I see things coming my way that are massive and uncaring and they will come whether I'm ready or not. I'm not ready, nor will I be, no matter what I do. I must just trust that I will cope or accept failure with grace. Grace I have never had. I want to be the shield, I want to be the support, but I'm sure I will be neither. Perhaps the best I can do is not be an additional puzzle to solve.

Take this list, remove a thing, sort it by how much you like the things, add a thing at the top, a thing in the middle, and a thing at the bottom (preserving the sortedness, pedants): This version is via wordweaverlynn.

(most liked)
My music
A slice of sourdough bread fresh from the oven
Handknit scarves
Porridge (if Cream of Wheat counts)
Going up into the mountains
Getting something in the mail that isn't bills
Tidying
Steam locomotives
Emptying the dishwasher
Wandering
Twitter
Thermal underwear
Firefox upgrades
Cleaning the refrigerator
Doing paperwork (like tax forms)
Getting a seat on the commuter train
Celery in a stir-fry
Getting up early
Eating paper
Uber
Undercooked Aubergine
Fear
(most disliked)

I've been disabled all my life. I have not always known why. I don't mean in that, "Why me, Lord?" I mean I didn't have a diagnosis. Not for lack of trying, especially in the beginning. I went through all kinds of tests and back then doctor's were very... let's say "creative" in testing nerves and muscles. No MRI's then either. A test called the nerve conductivity test, takes a special place in my nightmares to this day. Add to this the fact that the hospital we could afford was a teaching hospital. I didn't visit my doctor once without a gang of student doctors poking and prodding me without so much as a how do you do. Then there were all the conversations about my medical health being had all around me, but no one actually talking to me. All of them assuming that I couldn't follow the conversation when I always could. All these things made the medical profession difficult for me to deal with. It's taken a while and to be honest, some big changes in how medical staff are trained to deal with patients to make it even possible for me to have things like a regular doctor.

So my relationship with healthcare is not good and I have largely avoided hospitals including neuro-muscular clinics that might know a little bit more about my disability than a general practitioner. After my pneumonia four or five years ago. Concerns about how my disability was progressing started getting more important. And with a lot of internal struggle I finally got myself to the MD/ALS clinic at Stanford to see what they could tell me. I dreaded it. I was pretty sure there was no good news coming from the clinic, but I am a grown up (sort of) and feel pretty good about this step.

I went to the clinic once and did all right. The clinic doctor asked me whether I wanted to get the genetic test to confirm my diagnosis. I'm old enough that when I got diagnosed there was not a test. Diagnosis was largely a collection of symptoms that suggested I might have this or that disability. I'd been given a diagnosis at 16 but had really done nothing about getting more information. So I said sure let's get the test. They took my blood and I just got a phone call from the clinic a day or two ago. In the time between taking the blood and getting the results, I did feel odd. Not worried or anything. Certainly nothing like the one HIV scare I went through, but just odd. I thought to myself what if I don't have what I have? What would that mean? So very much of my life is a part of my identity as a person with a disability. It's not like I'm not disabled. I clearly am. Whether or not it's the diagnosis I think it is. Anyway, like I said, I received a call recently from the doctor that confirmed that I have what I always thought I have. Nothing has changed, no real treatment. Certainly no cure, but it definitely feels more real. That might not be the right word, more solid, more sure? In another way it makes me kind of laugh. When a doctor calls you on the phone in a very serious voice and tells you that your diagnosis (the one you've had for 40+ years) has been confirmed. It isn't exactly big news anymore, but still it's a part of me now. I know it is part of me and not just a possible part of me.

This article by Marilyn Golden gets to some of what I worry about when it comes to legalizing assisted suicide.

It's official FOGhorn 1 went out. Check out the SF convention I'm chairing. I'd love to see everyone there.

FOGcon 5

Aftermath by Owen Baillie

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This was a decent attempt at a zombie novel. I don't think I liked the different types of zombie introduced by Mr. Baillie. Unless the different types becomes a bigger deal in future installments, they didn't seem to effect the plot much except that every now and then a zombie got identified as a type 1 or 2 or whatever.

It also seemed strange how much time went into resolving old relationships while zombies were doing their best to make a snack out of them.

I'll try the next book in the series.



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