US Chamber of Commerce Concern Trolls on Climate and Jobs

a post from The Green Miles

The US Chamber of Commerce is putting the full force of its polluter-funded war chest behind fighting limits on industrial carbon pollution set to be announced by the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday. Paul Krugman dives into their numbers and finds even by the Chamber's biased analysis, the cost of climate action would be just 0.2% of economic growth:

You might ask why the Chamber of Commerce is so fiercely opposed to action against global warming, if the cost of action is so small. The answer, of course, is that the chamber is serving special interests, notably the coal industry — what’s good for America isn’t good for the Koch brothers, and vice versa — and also catering to the ever more powerful anti-science sentiments of the Republican Party.

 Finally, let me take on the anti-environmentalists’ last line of defense — the claim that whatever we do won’t matter, because other countries, China in particular, will just keep on burning ever more coal. This gets things exactly wrong. Yes, we need an international agreement to reduce emissions, including sanctions on countries that don’t sign on. But U.S. unwillingness to act has been the biggest obstacle to such an agreement. If we start taking serious steps against global warming, the stage will be set for Europe and Japan to follow suit, and for concerted pressure on the rest of the world as well.

Now, we haven’t yet seen the details of the new climate action proposal, and a full analysis — both economic and environmental — will have to wait. We can be reasonably sure, however, that the economic costs of the proposal will be small, because that’s what the research — even research paid for by anti-environmentalists, who clearly wanted to find the opposite — tells us. Saving the planet would be remarkably cheap.

Remember, this is the same U.S. Chamber of Commerce that has fought every single Obama administration effort to create jobs. Either the US Chamber's sudden concern for jobs is a fraud, or they only care about saving jobs in the polluting industries that fund the Chamber. But you will never hear a reporter point this out, because connecting the dots has a well-known liberal bias.

crossposted at The Green Miles

Oh Look!

Our angelic Coco

Rocco, lost in thought

It's Friday — you know what this means, don'cha? I do believe that means it's time for our herd (horde) 'o' cat to make an appearance.

One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.
~ Bobbie Ann Mason

To a Cat

~ John Keats

Cat! who has pass'd thy grand climacteric,

How many mice and rats hast in thy days

Destroy'd? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze

With those bright languid segments green, and

prick

Those velvet ears - but prythee do not stick

Thy latent talons in me - and tell me all thy frays,

Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick;

Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists, -

For all the wheezy asthma - and for all

Thy tail's tip is nick'd off - and though the fists

Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,

Still is thy fur as when the lists

In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.

They stand at the door chatting, flirting, ignoring

*******

 I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

~ Winston Churchill

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

~ Mark Twain 

Skitter

Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

~ Colette 

Thelma

No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

~ Abraham Lincoln

May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the front room where the kittens are kept, Calico Jane is nursing one black kitten. I pick up my Tourister. It seems heavy. I look inside and there are her other four kittens.

"Take care of my babies. Take them with you wherever you go.” 

~ William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside

Brain Salad

Just woke from a wretched stew of a dream. Jen and I were at work — the joint was a combo of all the bad elements from the last two places we’ve worked together. Management was utterly clue-free, chaos and bad tempers abounded and, of course, the place looked like it was going the way of the Titanic without the extra added benefit of iceberg catalyst.

In the midst of all the wild, stressful bedlam, the scene shifted. My work mates and I were now all in a waiting room at MGH where I had an appointment with one of my brain crew, Doctor Michael McKenna.

Mike, suited up in his baby blue surgical scrubs, stepped in, hugged me and gave me the not so awesome news — surgery was standing in the wings, waiting for it’s cue. We just needed to wait for the stats from one last test. Results wouldn’t be ready for  eight or so hours but, for some dream-logic reason, we had to hole up right there, in the waiting room, waiting and waiting.

One of my co-workers, in an attempt to lighten the mood and promote her handicrafts, began modeling the light, airy floral print summer dresses she’d designed and sewed. Tremendously thoughtful of her — watching her fashion show surely took my mind off my brain.

My furry alarm clock landed on me just as I was, in the dream, looking around, thinking ‘wow, all these wonderful friends and acquaintances are here with me, helping me get through this crazy ass, nerve-wracking, nightmare inspiring time.’

What brings this phantasm to mind? Eh, I’m entering that MRI time of year. Summer. While making plans for visits to my Pop, vacas with pals and art viewing day trips (Lowell, NYC, North Adams!), I always keep in mind that everything's tentative. Being able to do all these nifty keen-o dealios is dependent on how I score on these upcoming tests and, ya know, these are exams that I can't study for.

So, there’ll be evaluations, analysis and appointments with McKenna, Plotkin, Lassell, Schoenbaum and...and...I’m sure I’m forgetting someone. I’m not expecting nasty news but, ya know, these meningiomas and schwannomas are sneaky motherfuckers.

I’ll relax (as much as I ever do) after that final meeting with Plotkin.
Still...You Turn Me On — Emerson, Lake and Palmer

The Village Idiot

John McCain brought out TWO VILLAGE IDIOTS and they're still hustling the American public... what a legacy!

This comment was made to a post on The Daily Kos about, specifically, that slug shitstain of a human being Sam Wurzelbacher and his staggeringly vile, mindbogglingly stupid, empathy devoid response to the recently murdered Chris Martinez’s grieving father. Seems the suffering father, Richard, upset Asshole Boy by demanding sensible gun legislation.

What’d Sam the Human Slug Trail say?
Amongst other things:

As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.

and

Wurzelbacher said the words of Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher Martinez was a victim in Friday's incident, "will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left."

Gee, Fart Face, paranoid much? How’s it feel to be a puppet for the NRA? Oh and, by the way, your leash is showing.

I bet he thought he was being all smart, diplomatic and caring when he prefaced his response to Chris Martinez’s grieving father’s statement with ‘as harsh as this sounds...’

Yeah ass-wipe, that was wicked tender of you, you dino brained, bald homunculus.

I’d, mere moments before reading the dkos piece, thought ‘I blame McCain.’ He gave us Harridan Grifter Barbie AND Joe not-actually-a Plumber — two imbeciles who for some unfathomable reason (by me anyway) seem able to whip up the low information, easily manipulated, desperately insecure, paranoid and prejudiced of our population with their astounding lies, distortions and damn lies.

Joe the brain-dead Motherfucker, amongst so many, can’t seem to get it through his shriveled, empty, useless skull that NO, no one is coming after his fucking guns or anyone else’s. What we want is some sane management.

Guns should be regulated JUST like any other potentially deadly thing.  Cars are registered and drivers are trained and licensed. Why not guns? Really — why not!

We all have to pass a driving test before we can pilot three and a half tons of steel down the highway at 70 miles an hour. Why not test gun folk for shooting proficiency and safety knowledge? Really — why wouldn't we! Makes a shit-ton of sense, does it not?

And what about background checks?
Mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System:

Before ringing up the sale, cashiers (are to) call in a check to the FBI or to other designated agencies to ensure that each customer does not have a criminal record or isn’t otherwise ineligible to make a purchase.

Great. BUT if the buyer doesn’t have a record or his mental instability hasn’t been obviously, officially, radically red flagged, the sale’s a done deal.

and then there are those big fat gaping loopholes:

When Zina Haughton, 42, got a restraining order against her husband, Radcliffe, last October — she told a court that his threats “terrorize my every waking moment” — he became ineligible to buy a gun under federal law. But he found a way around that: he bought a gun from a private seller he found on the Internet who, unlike federally licensed dealers, was not legally required to check his background.

That is how Mr. Haughton was able to buy a handgun for $500 in the parking lot of a McDonalds that he took with him on Oct. 21 to the spa in a suburb of Milwaukee where his wife worked. There, Mr. Haughton opened fire at the spa’s pedicure station, law enforcement officials said, and kept shooting until he had killed his wife and two women she worked with and injured four other women.

 Also too, assault rifles should be flat out banned. Their only purpose is to kill and do it big and broad. If you need this kind of weaponry to go after deer or pheasants or squirrels, well boyhowdy my friend, you need to find yourself another hobby. Hunting’s just not in your skill set.

As of May of last year, 2013, the number of people killed since the December 14, 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut was 4,499. That’s 4,499 PEOPLE dead in one year from guns. Souls. Loved ones. In ONE year. I suppose that number’s doubled now.

In contrast, the number of U.S. armed forces killed during the Iraq war was 4,409.
Huh. Waddya know. Apparently a war zone is safer than living in gun-drunk America. Thanks NRA.

A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday has found a “robust” relationship between rates of gun ownership and firearm homicide, challenging the National Rifle Association’s assertion that more registered guns equal fewer firearm-related deaths.

A-yup.

No one says it better than Mister Charles Pierce:

This is a country at war with itself for profit. This is a country at war with itself because its ruling elite is too cowed, or too well-bribed, or too cowardly to recognize that there are people who are getting rich arming both sides, because the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so you make sure that it's easy for the bad guys to get guns in order to make millions selling the guns to the good guys.

***snip***

That is what has come home to roost now. This is a country at war with itself because cynical people have told its citizens that their fellow citizens - all of them, because you can never tell, can you? -- are the enemy.  This is a country in which citizens make war on each other because that's what they are being encouraged to do.  

Go read the whole thing. Please, it’s worth it.

And finally, if you’ve not read TBogg’s piece, I was the NRA, please do so — it’s beautiful and sad and important. He talks of being raised in a family who hunted and fished as a way to feed the family and how horribly and hugely things have changed.

Teach Your Children Well

Nineteen-year-old Alyssa Funke, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, bought a shotgun, drove to her family's boat, and killed herself there on April 14. Students at her former high school had outed her as the star of a "casting couch" porn video, and her parents say the subsequent online harassment contributed to her suicide.

Funke, a straight-A student, did her first and only porn video—for the amateur site CastingCouch-X—earlier this year. She used the name Stella Ann, and talked with the cameraman about the sports she played in high school, her biology major, and her goal of becoming an anesthesiologist. She was 18 at the time.

The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center estimates that nearly 30 percent of American youth are either a bully or a target of bullying. However, bullying is no longer a problem that is isolated to the playgrounds, hallways and lunch rooms of schools across the United States. Instead, advances in technology have now extended harassment to cell phones, social media websites and other online avenues that are contributing to an alarming number of suicides.

A meme doing the rounds on Facebook and twitter lately:
The best thing about being over 40 is that we did all of our stupid stuff before the internet.

Yeah, tell me about it, baby! I am mondo grateful that the internet and cell phone cams were just sci fi concepts when I was a teen.

I was lucky.

I did some tremendously inane, reckless and embarrassing shit, just like all adolescents. I got bullied to hell and back in part for my indiscretions but maybe more because I was different.

I didn’t fit into any of the small, rural, western Pennsylvania high school cliques. I wasn’t a cheerleader or baton twirler type. Though reasonably bright, I wasn’t terribly bookish. I didn’t have the self confidence to survive the thespian crew, though I loved building and painting sets. And the art teacher made it clear that I wasn’t welcome to hang out with her and her select group of student artists. I was sorta kinda involved with gymnastics but DEF not a jock by any means. I was barely, disdainfully tolerated in the music department.

Lovely. Without a posse of my own, I was quite the target for the myriad mean girls.

My parents, who were absorbed in dealing with other more obviously troubled siblings, were unhelpful. When I was desperately unhappy enough to ask them for help, when I felt I just couldn’t take the bullying any longer, my mother tossed off a quick "they tease you because they like you."

What a thoughtless, unfeeling, steaming cauldron of Godzilla excrement.

When I pressed my folks, saying "no, no, that ain't it," they said "ignore them and they'll go away."

They didn't.

I knew then that, yup, I was on my own and alone. These nasty ass girls and boys could harass and abuse me into a grave and no one would be stepping in to help me.

Got it.

What I understood even more keenly, was that I had to survive. I had my out out date, graduation day, and hunkered down to wait the assholes out.

I made it. Alyssa Funke, Ryan Halligan, Megan Meier, Jessica Logan, Tyler Clementi, Amanda Todd and countless others did not.

There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Teach Your Children Well — Crosby, Stills and Nash

Go Go Godzilla

Yesterday I did something I’ve not done in a very, very long time. Too long.

I went to the movies by myself. Now that I work for a great company (Granite Print, y’all!) and have a flexible sched, I could go whenever I want, right? So, why don’t I? In part, I’m outta the habit but more, there are, or used to be, precious few cinemas with closed caption capabilities.

These now come, theoretically, in three ways:

Rear Window Closed Captioning

The Rear Window Captioning System displays reversed captions on a light-emitting diode (LED) text display which is mounted in the rear of a theater. Patrons use transparent acrylic panels attached to their seats to reflect the captions so that they appear superimposed on or beneath the movie screen.

Captiview
The CaptiView system consists of a small, OLED display on a bendable support arm that fits into the theater seat cup holder. ***snip*** The high contrast display comes with a privacy visor so it can be positioned directly in front the movie patron with minimal impact or distraction to neighboring patrons.

and
Closed Captioning Glasses

Sony Entertainment Access Glasses are sort of like 3-D glasses, but for captioning. The captions are projected onto the glasses and appear to float about 10 feet in front of the user.

I haven’t seen the glasses anywhere. I’m psyched to try them — they seem perfect. In the meantime, the Captiview is the best, easiest to use, least distracting/annoying system out there.

Since the grand deafening, I’ve only movie-ized with friends. They’ve done all the communication with theater staff for me — bought the tickets, arranged for me to have the captioning hook up and gotten us to our seats.

It occurred to me yesterday morning that this wasn’t brain surgery (duh huh) — I could do this on my own. So I did.

Mind you, this wasn’t seamless. The movie going experience has def changed.

There are reserved seats even when you’re not going to a Cinema de Lux joint where a waiter brings you a lovely glass of Monterey Pinot Noir and a warm chocolate chip cookie from Rosie’s Bakery.
Seats must be selected when you buy your ticket. Luckily, a tremendous gentleman, in line behind me, helped me out with the confusing-because-it-was-my-first-time system.
When inside, past the velvet rope, one of the staff was there to bring me to the Captiview device counter. From there, a lovely young usher not only showed me to my seat, which was bigger and posher than The Amazing Bob’s Lazy Boy, she also reclined my seat for me (!) and brought me my 3D glasses. Geez, such awesome service! (I only mention it but the movie house in Braintree is THE best. Closed Captioning in all ten of it's auditoriums and GREAT staff)

Yes, I was seeing Godzilla in 3D. I’m a sophisticated intellectual with wickedly refined tastes, don’cha know.

So then, how was the flick?

About what you’d expect from a big budget (estimated at $160 million) summer blockbuster — confusing storyline. Who was the bad guy? Was it the nuclear power plant owners? Godzilla? The M.U.T.O.s? How did we end up in Nevada — was it only for the spectacle of seeing Las Vegas destroyed by the M.U.T.O.s?  Will the nuclear device be defused in time by our steely, musclebound hero? Was it? How did anyone know that Godzilla would be the good guy? He's still hailed as the hero by San Franciscans despite all the damage and death he caused?

I had to come home and Google the plot line which helped me to see that, yes, this was an overly complicated, dense and confusing tale. ‘SOK, the special effects (in 3D!!!) were mega fab on toast points

History shows again and again
How nature points out the folly of men
Godzilla

Blue Oyster Cult — Godzilla 

The Miscellaneous Month of May

Had a dream where I was attempting to escape a malevolent wizard occupied castle. All I can remember is that there was a crew of mice, with signs, guiding me.

Helpful little buggers.

Don’cha know, next time Coco presents me with a breakfast mousie, I’m gonna be even more pained in my congratulations and thanks to her than usual.
********************

Below is the new addition to the Maderer/Grant crib. Yup, it’s a tree. A tree for inside the house. I’ve wanted one for eons — possibly a millennium or three.

We totally lucked into this babe. When Miles and his lovely partner Bethanie moved into their new digs, they found it. The previous tenants had left it behind. Sadly, they just didn't have the room for it.

I am thrilled to infinitesimally tiny bits to say the very least.

Jen, the gardening wizard, will help me care for it so that I don’t kill it off with over or under attention.  Unlike Goldilocks, I’ve a helluva time finding Juuuuuuuuust Right.

Bow Wow Wow Days

This is the unofficial start-of-summer weekend and we’re off to a dreary start here in Valhalla by the Sea. The rain showers, if not the cloud cover, should pass though and there will be trike action goin’ on.

Oni and I were looking at the evolve e² site again last night over Jen’s kick-off-to-canicular-days margaritas (chica is lethal with the adult bev chemistry, lemme just tell you). Gotta say, I’m just aching for one of these babes. Check out this vid — I could pack this beauty up and go tooling around the Isle of Skye, the Orkneys and the way northern, lunar-esque Highlands.

WANT!

In any case, here we are at the precipice of shorts and tanks season and I've got California Girls stuck in my head. No, not the Beach Boys', who I mostly despised, version. It's the wonderfully, joyously bizarre one by that ex-Van Halen dude — David Lee Roth.

Why the Beach Boy hatred? Their music was always painfully upbeat, artistically emaciated, with the emotional depth of a baking sheet. Yeah, yeah, I know...it's pop music fer fuck's sake, what did I expect? Well, when California Girls hit the charts in 1965 (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by The Stones was at #3, The Beatles' Help! was at #7 and Petula Clark's Downtown was at #6. More fun and more relateable. The Beach Boys looked like a passel of dweeb-ish, Eddie Haskell-ish, Republican voting goobers who were just itching to join a frat, date-rape an insecure sorority sister and join dad's accounting firm.

Yeah, they squicked me out, even at the sweet, tender-y age of seven.

Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the
two most beautiful words in the English language.
~Henry James

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the
trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar
conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give
it sweetness.
~John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an
invincible summer.
~Albert Camus, Noces / L'Eté

A bee
staggers out
of the peony

The dragonfly
can't quite land
on that blade of grass.

The morning glory also
turns out
not to be my friend.
~Matsuo Basho

Bow Wow Wow — I Want Candy

It's the Plumber! I've Come to Fix the Sink!

Me at 12 and Celeste at 3 in Bloomington, Indiana

I’m scads older than my smart, beautiful, awesome sister Celeste who was born in 1967, one week after my ninth birthday. She was supposed to have arrived on my big day but she was a bit delayed. Possibly, battling the forces of evil and she just couldn’t break away. That’d be SO like Celeste.

In any case, when she was just a wee thing, I’d watch television with her. She had the best shows — Sesame Street and then The Electric Company.

Both debuted well after I was in the appropriate, targeted age range BUT I could still enjoy them with my little sister.

Another fav of mine was Zoom. Celeste was a shade too young for it and I was def too old BUT again, I loved it.

Zoom encouraged children to "turn off the TV and do it!" On the show, a cast of (usually) seven kids (known as Zoomers) present or perform various activities such as games, plays, poems, recipes, jokes, songs, movies, science experiments, and informal chats on such subjects such as hospitals, prejudice, etc., all suggested by viewer contributions.

The mail-in request became a pop culture reference for its music exhortation to "Write Zoom, Z-Double-O-M, Box 3-5-0, Boston, Mass 0-2-1-3-4: send it to Zoom!". The exhortation was spoken but the ZIP code was sung.

 That's actually how I always remembered my zip code when I lived in the Allston section of town — I'd sing the Zoom song. Just in my head, of course. Hippy/Punk/Goth artist types would NEVAH have watched such an upbeat rah-rah kind of a show...right?

All three shows were produced by WGBH, public broadcasting, here in Boston.
So, what’s on now?

Design Squad

Design Squad is a PBS reality television series geared towards middle and high-school children, where contestants design whimsical machines in order to win an Intel college scholarship worth $10,000. The show is produced by WGBH.

WOW — looks FAB!

Plum Landing is a a website not a TV show. Looks mega interesting.

Take your kids on fantastic adventures to explore our world with PLUM LANDING, an exciting environmental science project from WGBH Boston that helps kids develop a love for, and connection to, this amazing and beautiful planet we call home. PLUM LANDING offers children ages six to nine and their families a collection of fun and engaging games, apps, videos and hands-on activities, to do online as well as outdoors.

China Through My Eyes

Take a trip with Ava, age seven, and Sofie, age eight—two girls growing up in Cape Cod, Mass.—as they experience fascinating events and interactions during their visit to China's Pearl River Delta.

and WordGirl!

WordGirl is a new animated series that follows the every day life and superhero adventures of “WordGirl” as she fights crime and enriches vocabulary usage, all in a day’s work. Disguised as mild-mannered 5th grader, Becky Botsford, WordGirl arrived on planet Earth when she and her monkey sidekick, Captain Huggy Face, crashed their spaceship. In classic superhero form, WordGirl possesses superhero strength with the added benefit of a colossal vocabulary. WordGirl has a family and friends who have no idea of her secret identity. As WordGirl, she battles and prevails over evil (albeit ridiculous and comical) villains.

Wow. I think I’ve just GOT to watch WordGirl for starters. I think I need to borrow some of the Grands so I can, ya know, have a good cover, a beard as it were, for my indulgences.

Why does this memory of Celeste’s tremendous, enviable kidTV pop into my brainpan now?

The Amazing Bob had to get the plumber in yesterday. OF COURSE, this bit came to mind:
                                                                                    It’s the plumber! I've come to fix the sink!

And Then There Were Two

Are you gonna come pat me now or WUT!

Gaston’s been MIA since late April. Oni saw him last week, a few blocks over from us, gadding about so I guess he’s fine. Maybe he found better, less crowded digs or a bigger feline doormat (unpossible!). Dunno but I miss him.

Coco in her castle aerie

Gus show’s his Eddie Haskell-ish mug a coupla times a week now but that’s all.

Jen and Michal have both suggested that, with warmer weather finally here, Gus is out looking for babes to shag and free range mousies to snarf.

Yeah, I expect so.

Rocco, on the other hand, has gone full metal schmooze beast. When I open the door in the morning, he’s invariably sitting right there...waiting. I step out with his brekkie, thinking he’s gonna dive straight into the bowl but no. First he must have a thousand and three pats and chin skritches. Afterward he performs his reverse tuck one-and-a-half somersault dive into the morning Sea Captain’s Choice Pâté.

One thing I’ve noticed of late — while I’m cosseting up our fierce warrior boy, he’s snatching squints into the house.  It seems clear, to me anyway, that he’s looking for Coco and not because he wants to make time with our sweet princess. Oh my, no. He’s looking to show her up — See?! Just look at all the lovin’ up I’m getting from the old broad. Clearly I'm her favorite!



For her part, Coco capers, coquets and jetés away the minute I step back inside and then, when I catch her, she gives my hands a good sniff over. You’ve been patting another cat, I just know it! How could you?!

Sometimes, when I open the front door, Coco and Rocco will sit and stare at each other through the glass of the storm door. Are they sizing each other up? Are they arguing over who’s the bestest and most beloved? Are they announcing their ownership with understated glaring authority? Are they tuxedo clad, feline Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, discussing the possible existence of gods other than Bast?

After their scrutiny fest they pretend that the other doesn’t exist.

Of course.

Rocco can be found, most afternoons, either in the beautifully overgrown deep grass of the next door yard or on our back porch — the summer palace. Coco? She’ll be up in her castle, surveying the kingdom from on high or in one of the open downstairs windows, keeping a sharp eye out for interlopers and rapscallions.

I feel safe and secure with my formally dressed guards.

PISSED!?

For the first time evah, I'm finding that I'm actually really. truly, stratospherically pissed about the Nf2. You know, the family curse that I’ve written about here, here, here and a few dozen other places. Yup, that’s one.

This isn't a wrist to forehead, woe-is-me or a Nancy Kerrigan-esque WHY ME kind of a thing. Nope it’s just straight up anger.

Yup, I'm a little slow. Why wasn’t I in a fury 33 years ago when Parker and Ojemann gave me the news?

Shock? Fear? Lost in wondering what this all meant, how my life would now play out?

Yes plus I was always focused on coping.

In my 20s, I was trying to survive that first surgery and Stan’s leaving me while I was in the hospital. I was attempting to duck my cousin Carmel’s well intentioned yet spectacularly bad advice and wretched example (only GOD can heal you. Don’t have the operation. Come with me to the faith healers! Yep, she died early and nastily from this). When the print shop where I worked in Cambridge folded, also while I was in hospital, I needed to scramble to find a new gig that would give me health insurance that wouldn't turn me down for this brand-y new to me, stunningly large pre-existing condition.

So then, my 20s were pretty action packed with the coping shit.

During my 30s, my symptoms weren't so bad — some headaches but not bad as long as I wasn’t weightlifting, only a miraculously, minor-ish hearing loss from that first surgery, my balance wasn’t so awful and I had a good shrink to help me through the emotional minefield of dealing with everything. Oh yeah and The Amazing Bob and I were a big going concern.

I was able to do pretty much anything that anyone else could (except ditch my job and run away, insurance-less, with the circus). The Nf2 seemed sorta distant-ish — certainly not as pressing.

So I kicked up my heels and started solo traveling (Scotland! Eastern Europe! Amsterdam! etc.) and taking in as much live music as possible — after all, my hearing had an expiration date. I’d hit the local clubs (T.T.’s, Jack’s, The Middle East, The Rat!) at least once a week.

My 40s were, again, about coping. I clocked in at seven major surgeries, plus some near debilitating radiation, in that decade. TAB, Jen, Oni and my awesome sister Celeste were there, supporting me throughout. I wasn't alone this time.

I still traveled but not as much, still took in the occasional show but not like before. This being due to an evolution cocktail of getting older, not being as vibrant due to all the Shootouts at the MGH Corral and, eventually, living in the suburbs — Valhalla by the Sea — versus Cambridge.

Now, in my mid 50s, I'm deaf, tippy as all hell, have a funny face and get nasty-ass headaches if I bend over too much but, all in all, I've a pretty damned fabulous, happy life.

And now I'm pissed off? C'mon...NOW?! I don’t quite know what to think of this. Maybe I just never had the time or space to be angry about me having the family curse before? Dunno.

What to do, what to do?

Today’s gonna be sunny and in the mid 60s. A nice long trike ride, for starters, seems like a good plan.