Gone daddy gone

So my dad up and died on Friday night. He went into the hospital on Wednesday and got progressively worse until they finally put him on a morphine drip Friday evening. Good times. On the plus side he didn't really suffer, on the down side he's kinda dead.

Now, he did have cirrhosis and the complications from that are pretty much what did him in. Infection, organs shutting down, the whole deal. But still, the downhill slide happened pretty quick.

I'm not sure exactly what to think of it, you know. You tell people your father died and they usually assume you're out pricing sack cloth to rend, but so far no. I'm mostly like, "Huh", which from what I understand is a weird situation. But still, that's all I got.

The nice part about having a parent die is that people can't tell you your feelings are wrong. That's pretty cool. "My dad died and you want to say I can't make myself a pair of artichoke pants?! Fuck you and hand me some thread! It's what he would have wanted!"

So yeah, right now I guess I'm in a transitional phase. As an added bonus my mom is wigging out and trying to get me to come to her place for Thanksgiving. Bonus part two, she suggested I give up being vegan for Thanksgiving so we could have a creepy trip down memory-that-never-was lane! Fan-tastic.

No, no symptoms doctor

I had my appointment with the gastroenterologist today, so that was exciting. Even more exciting was the fact that my symptoms have been gone for the past five days, without taking medication. I mainly went so the doctor wouldn't feel bad.

I mean, what the hell? Three weeks ago I feel like I'm about to die, so I take medication and feel better. Medication runs out and I feel like crap again. Take OTC meds and feel better. Stop OTC meds...and feel better. The human body is a magical thing.

So basically today's visit was me talking to the doctor about my job and where I went to school. He seemed really interested in that. I felt like he wanted me to ask about where he went to school. I think should have too, if I'd been more on top of things.

As it was I'd been sitting in the exam room for about twenty minutes half-asleep so the exam was more of a formality. I remember now that when I read his bio online that he went to some kind of military medical school in India, then finished up his studies at Georgetown. That's pretty cool.

I bet he had some great stories about going to a military medical school. Sounds kinda intense. Man, we should totally hang out. Hold on, I'm going to call him up and see if he wants to go grab a beer.

Kingdom of Loathing: Yes I'm late to the party

So tonight I signed up for Kingdom of Loathing, which is awesome. It's a browser-based adventure game with very basic graphics and, so far, tons of stuff to do. It's about one step up from Nethack graphics-wise, if you ever played that.

I tend to get hyper-addicted to a game for about two weeks and then give it up completely, whether or not I've made any progress. I don't know why, usually I just find I've figured out what the game is all about and decide it's become more mechanical than fun. That's why I can't get into WoW or the like. I love games of diminishing returns, until the return diminishes past a certain point.

But at least KoL has some fun to it. The writing is snappy, the items are interesting, and so far that's holding my attention. Who knows, maybe I'll get bored with it soon but for now it's pretty slick. I could have felt the same about Nethack except it required you to know about a thousand key commands. That shit might fly in 1983, but no more.

Oh, and KoL is also semi turn-based, which is cool, because you're limited to a set number of actions (adventures) per day (which can be augmented), so even if you get addicted to it, you'll eventually be shut out for a time.

That I like. Spreads out the enjoyment and the discovery. I'm know I haven't scratched the surface of what's available to do, and I like how the initial structure sets you up to have to wait to find out each new bit.

So I'll keep playing for a while to see what's up, but so far so good.

Thank you for being in my movie

This evening I went to Petsmart, Target, and Kroger, in that order. Not all that interesting really, happens all the time. But what is interesting, at least to me, is the number of people I saw in the Kroger who had also been at one of those two other locations. I counted at least six.

And it wasn't like, "Oh is that the same guy from Target?" No, I mean they were instantly recognizable; I had been in close proximity to them at some point. There's no telling the number of people I didn't even pass by who ended up there as well.

When I saw these people I wondered whether or not to acknowledge them. Maybe just a simple head nod, you know, "Hey you shop at Target, man. Me too. Nice." But is a shared shopping experience even something on which to base a momentary acquaintance? Probably not. Especially if they have kids, because that would look real creepy.

So what do you do? I mean, they saw me too, they know what's up. Some of them may have even told a trusted friend they saw some guy at Kroger who they'd also seen at Target. Then that friend would feign interest before turning the conversation back to themselves. Selfish prick. This means something!

Or maybe it doesn't mean anything. But it makes it feel like other people really exist, you know? They aren't just background music or filler for all of your daily experiences. That guy really needed a new blender and a cantaloupe. How crazy is that? Now he's making smoothies and washing his car and starting a new fruit-only diet and he's a real person.

I don't know, it's like when you're a kid and you see one of your teachers in public. They aren't supposed to exist outside of this narrowly defined region of your own life. That crossover is jarring. You have to accept that everyone else just kind of has their own thing, too, and that what you do in public, they do as well.

But what do they all do in private? That's where the real differences are. And as far as I know, what that is, is anyone's guess.

The Old West

Every little thing the reflux does is an answer with a question mark

So now I've got the chest pains back. Pretty sure it's acid reflux, which is pretty sweet considering a couple of weeks ago I thought I was about to stroke out. But it's also uncomfortable enough to prevent me from making an oh-so witty "stroke out" joke.

I just finished up my two week course of Protonix, and almost immediately the whole deal came back. Honestly they should just put Prontonix in the water, it would solve so many problems. Except I don't drink tap water. Well then maybe they could put it in pill form for people who don't drink tap water. Wait a second...those forward-thinking bastards cut me off at the pass!

When I say immediately, I mean 9am today. About an hour after I would have normally taken the pill. Now, granted, I drank a big hot cup of strong coffee right before it really started up, and that was probably a mistake. I think the only worse mistake I could have made would have been to chase the coffee with an ice cold habanero milkshake.

I took some Prilosec around lunchtime and let me tell you, that stuff is pretty weak. It's like the Webster to Protonix's Diff'rent Strokes. Hey, strokes! It's all coming full circle.

Fucking Boddington's. Sorry, I was opening a beer and it foamed up all out of the can. Only with Boddington's, though. Their little widget whatever thing must be Soviet engineering. It works, but you don't exactly trust it.

I made an appointment to see a Gastroenterologist next week, so that should be pretty fun. My mom works in a gastroenterologist's office so I asked her what to expect. I got two vital pieces of information:

1. They won't do anything the first visit except talk to you
2. You have a right to refuse the rectal exam

I'm no logician (well okay I am) but I can spot a slight error between propositions 1 and 2. I won't write out the whole proof here, but I will say it concludes with the line "rectal exams != won't do anything".

At least I have the right of refusal. I'd hate to think that by walking into the doctor's office I've given explicit consent to a rectal exam. Maybe that's how they used to do things back in the Old Country (by that I mean Busch Gardens), but that won't fly in my world.

No sir, up top problems get up top treatment. That's my uninformed wishful thinking, and I'm sticking to it.

Workin' for the weekend, and the one after that

I don't want to say economic times are tough, but there are some crazy mergers going on out there. I heard ConAgra just bought Head & Shoulders and are renaming it Corn Flakes. Hey-oh!

But anyways, yeah it's pretty tight out there. Jobs lost, companies folding, the whole Steinbeck. I myself have been forced to contemplate something I'd never even considered before: a portfolio website.

I know, it sounds crazy, me doing a website devoted to actual accomplishments and showcasing my considerable (oh-so considerable) talents. I wish there were a better word than "showcasing", though. Sounds so greasy. But hey, business is greasy, and I ain't about to change it.

So tonight, between hole-punching strips of woven reeds (long story), assuring my mom I still had a job, and watching the last half of what must have been the six-hour lazy editor's cut of Casino Royale, I started designing my portfolio site.

If you don't know, I'm designer/web developer, which means I can do everything but the back end. [Insert novice porn star reference here] I can design a site, build it, all that fun stuff, just not give you a database or, you know, security. Which, if you don't have a database, usually isn't a big deal. There are other people for that. They call themselves "database architects" (probably), but I call them "row jockeys".

But how does one showcase talents? It's a very gray area. And I mean that literally. You want your portfolio to appeal to the greatest number of people while at the same time setting you and your work apart. Hard to do when everyone and their sister thinks they're a designer also and any little slip, especially with color, will turn off a potential client/hiring manager.

So you end up with all these sites covered in a lighter shade of pale, with little spindly grayed-out tendrils on the page, or interesting use of gray fonts, or maybe (shock!) earth tones, as if the sum total of your creativity is like walking through a model home.

Sorry, can't do that. Not my style. What am I doing, then? I'll tell you what: white...and light blue. Suck on that, gray-babies! Light blue is taking over, like a calm sea of annihilation! Get ready, it's on its way.*

*in about a week

Sorry, Life and all that Balderdash

I was playing the board game Sorry! the other night and realized, after a few beers, that the game is a lot like life.

You have this board you share with all these other people, and you all have what appears to be a pretty straightforward path from where you start to where you need to be. You pick up your card, you move your little dudes around and everybody goes home happy, right? No! This is life, man, and it's never what it seems.

For one thing, it takes forever to even get started. It always seems like everybody else is so far ahead of you before you even get one foot out the door. And then as soon as you're on your way, boom!, "Sorry!" you get sent right back where you started from.

This is the "childhood" stage of the game, where certain people have enormous advantages over others for no particular reason, just the luck of the draw.

After this comes the "young adult" stage where eventually someone begins to look like they're doing really well, setting themselves apart, and what happens? Everyone else goes out of their way, even to their own detriment, to hold that other person back. Anybody who's different gets their ass handed to them.

While it is the most outright brutal stage of the game, it is also the most exciting. This is the part you talk about when the game is over.

This building up and knocking down from all sides goes on for a bit and results in "middle age", the longest stage of the game, where everyone ends up fairly even experience-wise, trudging along repeatedly down the same paths, playing the same cards, until by luck or guile they are able to send a few pieces Home to some kind of safety.

There's no real ganging-up in middle age, you just kind of dislike everyone and more and more work for your own safety over gleefully sending others willy-nilly back to Start. This is also where the most shit-talking takes place as you try to make your case to the other players for why it should be somebody, anybody, else, and not you, who should be punished.

But this gets tiring after a while and, upon seeing how everybody else who you started with is beginning to slow down, you too begin looking for that final push home. But boy, is that end game frustrating.

There you are on the threshold of ending it all, just one more piece three steps from relief, and you have to wait until that perfect, exact card comes up. Could be one turn, could be ten, and you never know when it'll happen. Oh! There goes ol' Joe, he's all out. All of his pieces are in a better place, I guess. But it doesn't end there for you, not in Sorry!, no, and not in life.

Everybody has to grind out their own ending, alone, cut off from the other players. There's no more switching places, sending others back. Nothing.

Sometimes you see that one person who still has a piece out. It's running around like some lost child; stopping, starting, sliding and basically making a fool of itself. So sad at that age. But you can't help them now; you're only hoping with each turn of the deck that your number is finally up.