Author Archives: oinsketta

Unregulatable Second Amendment freedom

The sacred Second amendment reads:

 “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

Or to those looking up the text of the sacred Second amendment on the internet, the first thing you will read is the interpretation of the “Originalist” Supreme Court who decided 5 to 4 what it actually means in the original intent of the holy, infallible framers

Unconnected to service in a militia, obviously, because if they’d meant the government shall not restrict the ownership of guns for members of a well regulated militia, they would have so stated, obviously, duh!

And it’s worth remembering, Antonin Scalia was a genius.

The age of disorientation

I’ve been bothered by the increasing angry incoherence at the core of our culture. It has really gotten out of hand in recent years but it has always been headed this way. I understand that in a culture that values only money and the things it can buy, a certain amount of incoherence will be necessary to sell poisonous substances for vast profit, to sustain an unjust, exploitative, extractive economic/cultural system that is destroying the earth itself for the benefit of a tiny, hereditary minority. Without the incoherence nobody would go along with this.

A recent example to stand in for all the rest of it, little white children are butchered in a Christian school by a maniac with an assault rifle. The obvious solution is to make it harder for maniacs, and everybody else, to get rifles designed to spray bullets to kill as many as quickly as possible. The obvious question is why anybody needs an assault rifle except for mass murder, but we’ll leave that aside. So the vast majority of us call for restrictions on access to these kinds of mass killing machines. What is the argument on the other side?

Make sure every little white child in a Christian school from the age of four always has an equally powerful assault rifle with them at all times to defend themselves against such maniacs, because freedom means that everybody is allowed to have any kind of deadly weapon they want anywhere. Look, the Second Amendment guarantees it! Forget those inconvenient opening words about a well regulated militia. A brilliant and fanatical right wing judge wrote those words right out of the amendment, as his doctrine of Originalism required. So you see there are two sides to this so-called debate.

Everyday there are a thousand more examples of this kind of desperately insane crap from people with an agenda to dominate in spite of the deadly consequences to the world of their domination. We are subject to a constant firehose of incoherent, maddening, divisive, profit-driven complete horseshit, misinformation, propaganda, lies, calculated provocative idiocy, whatever you want to call it. So the incoherence has long rankled me, of course, as someone who tries to resolve vexations by pursuing agreement on the things 99% of us can agree to, and we can build on that to compromise about other things. Obviously, though, if problems could be solved that way one person would not be thought a hero and a genius because they owned more then 10 million people including millions of children who go to bed hungry in the wealthiest country on earth, and those many thousands who die needless, preventable deaths for lack of healthcare and all the other externalities of a culture of billionaires.

What I realized after my recent disorienting brush with turning into Rush Limbaugh as my frustrations with post-surgical pain my painkillers did nothing to dampen, an idiotic post surgical lack of care and concern, enhanced by oxycodone, which while it didn’t cure my pain, certainly stirred my anger, my indignation, my strong sense that all of my feelings were extremely righteous, is that the raging machine that drives this culture is disorientation.

If we can’t agree whether it’s day or night, whether we are traveling east or west, whether medical precautions are wise or a form of tyranny akin to what the Nazis did to certain German homosexuals, we find ourselves demoralized and disoriented. When people are disoriented they will cling to literally anything to give their life some kind of coherence. The irony, of course, is that, because they are disoriented, they will cling to the most incoherent possible things in their need for coherence

We want to protect freedom, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Common sense and common decency both tell us that if a little girl is raped she must be treated with the tenderest possible care, every consideration given to her health and recovery. 16th century Catholic theology, however, winds up trumping all of that, we must honor the sacredness of the rapist’s seed which has created sacred life in the tiny womb of that young rape victim. And so instead of balancing what Jesus Christ himself would have done against the right of a rapist to see his child born, six unappealable lifetime appointees, selected by a powerful psychopath from a list of people who believe they speak for Jesus Christ himself, rule that, if she lives in a certain political jurisdiction, the girl must carry the sacred fertilized egg to pregnancy and go through the agonies of childbirth even at the age of 10 or 11, for the sake of their beliefs. Their beliefs, mind you, not the girl’s, not the girl’s family, not other people who love the girl, not the greater good of society not the beliefs of anyone but the six who have the power to impose their will on everybody else in the name of the greater good, in the name of the actual son of God, according to the “one true religion” as written in the immutable, multiply amended sacred text that founded our great democracy.

If that shit is not disorienting to you , you’re much stronger than me, and I salute you, I guess. But the frame I’m seeing things in lately is that disorientation is the technique that is used to keep people from opening their eyes, becoming “woke” if you like, connecting history with the present and the future as a kind of cause and effect one might draw important lessons from in a world under growing threat from a dozen angles. What happened when people were allowed to forcibly grab, restrain, torture and hang people without consequences 70 years ago, 200 years ago, 1000 years ago is a pretty good indication of what will happen if we allow people to grab, restrain, torture and hang people without consequences today. It may be common sense to say this, but in the age of disorientation it is equally valid to say “why don’t you go fucking hang yourself, you woke, transexual libtard cuck? We burn books here, asshat.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Age of Disorientation.

One tiny encouraging thought, incoherent rage may be a successful argument in the so called Court of Public Opinion for a solid 30% of the population. But in an actual court of law, where there are only a small number of cases they can be unappealably decided by unprincipled partisan judges ignoring the law and the facts of the case (see for example our Supreme Court), angrily arguing that the woman testifying under oath that you raped her is a publicity seeking, gold digging liar hired by George Soros and other evil global monsters (wink wink, see Q) who you wouldn’t fuck with Mike Pence’s dick, will more often than not come back to bite you in Mike Pence’s dick, as a matter of law, justice and common sense.

Imagine what a curse this is

Imagine you are on stage at your junior high school, playing the piano. Your parents are in the audience, along with several of their closest friends.  As you play, your father turns to his best friend, a guy who was always like your funniest uncle who is also a guitar player.   Your father says quietly to this guy “it’s a shame she doesn’t have the discipline to ever become a great concert pianist.  We started her too late, that other girl is so much better than her.”

You will of course never hear about this, unless decades later this beloved uncle figure is suddenly rejected by your parents as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.  The transformation became necessary after he witnessed embarrassingly human behavior and your parents both felt humiliated by his moral stance.  Uncle Hitler might write something like this, like this thing you’re reading right now:

You were a musical prodigy, my dear, the independence of hands that you had at the age of 6 was as amazing as your ability to play full classical pieces by ear.  Your musical talent was mind blowing, off the charts, phenomenal. But your parents, who, as I only recently learned, are both narcissists and see the world as strict hierarchy, black and white, win or lose, glory or shame, didn’t understand that somebody with your degree of musical talent should be guided by love of music to wherever that talent takes her. 

In their ignorance/arrogance your parents decided they could harness your love of music to instill discipline in you by forcing classical piano lessons on you.  I always gave them the benefit of the doubt on this, neither one realized that the greatest musicians we know often can’t read music.  You know the long list of these Paul Simons, John, Paul and Georges as well as I do.  You hated these lessons, and the straightjacket of classical piano training, although you easily mastered everything they required.  You fought a succession of these overmatched teachers, who were surrogates for your implacable fucking parents who wound up needing to convince you, decades later, that, among other things, your beloved uncle was actually Uncle Hitler. 

I am so sorry to be the bearer of this unbearable, but hopefully helpful news, that your feelings about the unsafeness of the world are based in real experience, and you are not to blame for the hurt you feel. I’m there with you now, in solidarity.

My door is always open to you for any insight a guitar playing mass murderer who has known you since you were born can share. 

Have a nice day, and if you will excuse me now, I have to get back to my unslakable, inchoate rage and ongoing mass murder project.  I’m on a timetable here, dear, and the clock is ticking.

Love always, 

Your Uncle Adolf

I take no pleasure in this

But you might, cuck

Here’s the NY TImes with a deadpan account, the last line of which is kind of funny:

Live Updates: Fox News Parts Ways With Tucker Carlson Days After Dominion Settlement

The announcement came less than a week after the network agreed to pay $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit in which Mr. Carlson’s show, one of the highest rated on Fox, figured prominently. He was said to be surprised by the move.

Easy Enough, no?

After being told to do 180 repetitions of each of two painful knee flexing exercises two days after surgery, and being given an uncomfortable position, involving a pyramid of pillows, to sleep in (impossible to even maintain after about 120 reps that day) I was close to turning into Rush Limbaugh from oxycodone. The narcotic did not dampen the extreme pain but made me so angry I was on the verge of becoming an irrational racist, misogynist, homophobe.

I eventually found the sense to drag myself into the other room where, sitting at the computer, I eventually found this, from the National Health Service in England. This information is contained nowhere in the pages the hospital and PT folks left me with before or after my knee replacement. Item number two allowed me to go to bed and get some sleep, which is the best and only medicine when you are overwhelmed, exhausted and in pain the drugs don’t fix.

How fucking hard would it have been for someone who treated me to impart this valuable info to me, folks?

Disorientation

Disorientation is a terrible feeling.  When you lose the ability to get your bearings, to keep things in perspective, the world becomes maddeningly, dizzyingly unnavigable.  Landmarks you have always used to get around transform into weird objects without meaning.  The torture of sleep deprivation is disorientation, you can’t figure out which way is up and all you want is sleep, but enemies are forcefully preventing it.  The stuff of nightmares, that.  It is often said, and I believe it:  the toughest person in the world will be broken by the torture of sleep deprivation in the end.

I had surgery to replace a worn out left knee joint three days ago.  Before the surgery I saw on my pre-surgical medical report that I was a high AWOL risk.  There was no explanation of what that meant, of course, or even a spelling out of the acronym AWOL.  The internet provided the usual one: Absent Without Official Leave.  In anesthesiologist parlance AWOL apparently means delirium after anesthesia.   As it turned out, they were right to assess me a high AWOL risk, apparently I was kicking with the leg they had just reconstructed as they wheeled me out of the operating room.  I have no memory of this because they injected me with something that caused complete amnesia during the surgery.  I recall being wheeled down a long, cold, metal corridor, I remember arriving in the operating room.  The next thing I remember is waking up hours later, saying hello to Sekhnet, then I was in my hospital room in a deep sleep for two hours or so.

Then, no more sleep for Bonzo.  The hospital, it turns out, is not a place for those who want to sleep.  Every time I chanced to fall asleep someone was calling my name, asking if it was OK to wake me up, inquiring about what I wanted for dinner and breakfast the next day, if I was comfortable, if they could take a little blood, if I needed anything (besides sleep).   My roommate, it turned out, was unable to fall asleep without the sounds of commercial radio.  He did not use headphones. I heard him explaining to someone at some point that he didn’t like them. 

When I woke up from a brief sleep at 4 a.m. Billy Joel was playing, followed by a louder commercial.  Apparently the station was playing a Billy Joel marathon, I heard several of his greatest hits, interspersed with enthusiastic exhortations from loud voiced shills.  Finally, when I realized where the music was coming from, I got a nurse to go over and shut the fucker’s phone off, fell into a deep sleep and fifteen minutes later was visited by another concerned hospital staff member with an urgent question. I never saw the surgeon.

The amount of pain I had after the operation came as something of a shock to me.  One medical site I later visited said the pain after surgery is no worse than the worst pre-surgical knee pain.  This statement is not true.  The pills they gave me to kill the pain, Rush Limbaugh’s favorite narcotic, did not really control the pain, though they combined quite efficiently with the anesthesia to kill the functioning of my usually clockwork bowels, as predicted  By the second night at home I’d be as disoriented and snarling as Medal of Freedom winner Limbaugh himself.  The reality that I was sent home with pain pills that did not control the pain was a bit disorienting, as was the lack of a heads up about severe pain and any clue about how to find comfort, and after a second consecutive terrible night’s sleep (my Fitbit rated it 43 sleep quality, extremely poor, a new record low) I greeted the physical therapist, a very pleasant man who promised me he’d begin torturing me as soon as the paperwork was done.  He was as good as his word.

He had me do three sets of 20 of a painful knee flexing exercise.  He told me to rest 30 seconds and do 20 more.  Then 30 seconds rest and twenty more.  “Do these three times a day,” he instructed.  He showed me two other exercises with the same instructions.  The sheet he gave me advised the patient to do sets of ten, two sets, and to repeat this twice a day.   I did the math as my new knee was throbbing angrily.  He’d had me do 60 reps times three, 180 daily.   The instructions he gave me called for 20 total reps, times two, 40 a day.   What is wrong with this picture?

He then had me lie on my back and created a support with three pillows, one expertly folded under my ankle.  The underside of my knee was not touching the pillows.  The position was to reduce the swelling and allow the fluids to return to the rest of my body, aided by gravity.  “You must sleep in this position,” he instructed me, warning me that trying to sleep on my side, as I always have, would result in the leg being bent in the fetal position, which was the worst possible way I could sleep after knee reconstruction surgery.   Then he said goodbye for the weekend, arranging to see me again on Monday.

After the second set of 60 reps of the first exercise he showed me (120 for the day), my new knee was inconsolable.   I was in so much pain that my final oxycodone/Tylenol cocktail of the day could only make a shallow dent, I tried to relax in the position he told me to sleep in.  It was uncomfortable to hold the position, let alone try to sleep in it. 

I became disoriented, found that although the hillbilly heroin was not effective against the pain, it was disorienting the hell out of me.  I felt myself turning into fucking Rush Limbaugh, I was close to raging.  How was it that nobody at the hospital had impressed on me that the crucial thing was to get a good night’s sleep, no matter how I had to sleep, and that it would do no damage to my recovery to sleep with legs slightly bent.  

I angrily pawed through the surgery recovery guide the hospital had provided, searching for even a word about the pain that ALL patients experience after the surgery and the difficulty sleeping that makes an internet search for “sleeping positions” autofill “after knee reconstruction surgery”.  Nobody can sleep without some good advice and some luck, and nobody can begin to recover without sleep.  The hospital’s  guide book went directly from successful surgery to rehab, with a short stop to note that necessary pain medication will provide a smooth transition back to total health, assuming one follows the directions of the rehab folks and does the work.

As I vented, Sekhnet, my devoted caretaker, became more and more upset.   She played me a guided relaxation track which I listened to without comment, somehow restraining myself for her sake, at least as long as the track lasted.

In the end I limped into the other room and spent a while on the internet trying to determine whether I could safely sleep without harming my recovery, something that after a decent night’s sleep seems quite obvious.  I felt much better after 7 and a half hours of sleep and I have no recollection of the positions I slept in to achieve that excellent result.  But sleep was exactly what I needed.  My attitude and pain level today were both much, much better.  I am trying to avoid the hillbilly heroin, having taken only one dose today.  Fucking Rush fucking Limbaugh and the fucking Sackler family of unaccountable criminal billionaire drug pushing shithogs.

And while I am cursing despicable forces at work let me not forget fucking rapacious capitalism, concerned only with profit for the wealthiest among us and not honesty, generosity, help, kindness or anything else that cannot be monetized and transferred to those most deserving of our citizens.