I Read The News Today
and the state of the union is stupid. So is the state of myself.
I Read The News Today
I don’t have much to say about the war. Blatantly illegal, stupid, based on lies—the worst of which, that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons, is routinely taken as granted by news outlets despite even the US intelligence services under Trump saying it’s not true—and certain to kill almost exclusively people who will have had fuck-all to do with it. Like schoolgirls. A lot like schoolgirls. Like a lot of schoolgirls.
Outlets like the New York Times refuse to describe lies as lies and liars as liars. You can’t use the excuse that you don’t know what’s in somebody’s mind when they lie about something that they were told the day before. Maybe the editors are hung up on Harry Frankfurt’s distinction between lies and bullshit, but you know, I don’t think so.
The war is deeply unpopular even here in the home of the war lovers and land of the saps, with fewer than 30% of Americans supporting it. Which is just another reason to think that the regime simply doesn’t give a fuck about the midterms, with all that that entails.
The state of the union is stupid.
One can overstate how fucked up this country is, but doing so takes more imagination than most people can muster.
So is the state of myself.
As for me: I haven’t been writing in part because I spend most of my days entertaining a toddler and I’ve struggled to get more than a few minutes at a time where I’m both sentient and unencumbered.
The situation is exacerbated by my insurer’s decision to quit paying for my ketamine-adjacent treatments, which regular readers will be aware have kept me relatively functional in the face of chronic depression. The shit really works, well enough that the insurance company said I’m no longer depressed enough to need it. They explicitly told my doctor and other providers that their patients would have to get significantly worse in order to requalify, and jaysus fuck have I done that during the going on three months without the treatment. Which also makes writing more difficult.
What, you might wonder, has moved me off the creative schneid? Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve finally achieved a degree of fuckedness which the homicidal motherfuckers approve of vis-à-vis ketamine. I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.
The bad news: I’ve mentioned before that I was diagnosed with stage four cancer on the day after my birthday six years ago. The initial prognosis was 18-36 months, which obviously I’ve surpassed. It has advanced a bit but the treatments have been effective enough that I’ve been able to take extended breaks from them without anything disastrous accruing.
That’s some good news! But I still have an incurable cancer which among other things has put holes in my spine, which sometimes hurts a lot.
Then almost exactly a year later I got diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Happy birthday to me! One thyroidectomy later and I’ve been thyroid cancer-free ever since, with several ensuing disaster-free day-after-birthdays. Good news!
Then this year I got a day-after-birthday call from a doctor to whom another doctor had referred me without mentioning it to me, and this new doctor told me that a biopsy done by the first doctor about six weeks ago showed a melanoma. Bad news! Freaked me out! Can’t keep it bottled up. Must write.
Melanoma is a lot more treatable now than it was even a few years ago, depending upon how advanced it is. Good news, maybe. We don’t know how advanced it is and won’t until they start cutting on it. The initial consult is scheduled for March 20, at which point I’ll have had a bit more than three weeks to stew about it. Presumably the surgery will follow in relatively short order. I had a full-on meltdown yesterday.
The fucking thing is on my nose. I really don’t want to lose my nose. The insurance company would probably demand that I be suicidal before they’ll pay to reconstruct a nose.
(Also the ketamine (s-ketamine) is administered via nasal spray. The reason the pharmaceutical company uses a ketamine mirror molecule delivered by a nasal spray is that ketamine itself is dirt cheap and there’s no money to be made. Providers can make money administering it but pharma can’t make money selling it. So they use a novel form and stick it in a nasal spray and charge just shy of a grand per dose.)
It’s premature, but I’m considering some sort of alloy nose. Maybe with Bluetooth and a camera. Or nanoparticles, so I could reshape the nose at will and fuck with facial recognition surveillance. “Are you people high? You can plainly see I don’t have a dick for a nose.”
Primal scream therapy. I’m not a superstitious man but I’m unsure how to word a desire for skipping any further day-after-birthdays without suggesting a more final solution than I want. Suggestions welcome.
Music
Pokey LaFarge, “End of My Rope”
JD McPherson, “Head Over Heels”
The Devil Makes Three, “Spirits”
Adia Victoria, “Dead Eyes”
Brown Bird, “Bilgewater”
Amigo The Devil, “Stray Dog”
Tommy & The X-Rays, “Red Right Hand”
Drive-by Truckers, “Mrs. Claus’ Kimono”
The Detroit Cobras, “Shout Bamalama”
Old 97’s, “Somebody”
Lou Reed, “White Light/White Heat”
Shovels and Rope, “Hail Hail”
Early James, “Rag Doll”
And that, Comrades, is all I got and none too soon. If you like what I do when I actually do it, please let me know and share it around. And if you really like it, please consider a free or paid subscription.
Be well; take care.
Sorry about the nose. It's probably a consequence of sniffing out all that bullshit for so many years. My doc prescribes ketamine troches which I take about every six-twelve weeks. They cost $17 a pop from the compounding clinic. I don't know if that's an option for you.
You always do a great job with the playlist, but you couldn’t have picked a better bunch for me. It doesn’t hurt that you included two of my favorite bands (Driveby and 97s).
Your post made me think of this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/u026ym/we_call_it_three_stooges_syndrome/