I seem to be gaining ground.
Health wise, that is. Geographically, I control around as much territory and resources as ever, and the stalemate is almost old enough to vote.
Did the Wound Care thing this morning. Had a very new and nervous nurse along with Vivian, the Wound Care Technician (or something like that) who takes care of my feet when they need debriding or whatnot.
And boy, did the wound on the heel of my left foot need it. Initially I was surprised to see Vivian because she had shaved down the one on my right foot quite recently, as in less than a month ago. So I wondered WTF.
But I hadn’t considered the wound on the left foot. It hasn’t needed to have the dead skin and callous removed from it very often in the past.
In fact, when Vivian or one of her colleagues has worked on the right foot in the past, the treatment of the left one has seemed downright perfunctory.
But whichever nurse it was that put in the request for Vivian’s services knew what the heck they were doing because my left foot needed it so bad.
As in, Vivian had barely touched it with her neato little “sharp ball on a stick” tool when big curls of dead skin started raining down, making it look like somewhere a pencil sharpener in dire need of being emptied had exploded.
So it feels good to have all THAT gone. My foot breathes better now.
And just in time for Summer!
Which reminds me : I need to trim this mop on my head soon. I want to have the maximum amount of ventilation possible for this heat sickness prone cranium of mine before the next “hottest summer ever” hits us.
I don’t want to end up in Afternoon Hell every day like I did in years gone by, when the heat would make some part of me that’s right between my eyes and above the bridge of my nose swell up and press again some important bit of my forebrain and make me feel dizzy, nauseous, “out of it”, and very, very ill.
That’s what heat sickness is like for me. For the real Afternoon Hell though, you have to add in that my sinuses are going berserk because of all the pollen in the air.
So there is even less room that usual for the part of my head responsible for all this to expand, and it’s basically pushing down on two balloons full of snot.
I swear, I did not set out with the intention to gross you nice people out today. Sorry.
So yeah. I do everything I can to keep that shit from happening. Largely, that means hydrating very aggressively and keeping the fans on all the time, and never laying down without one pointed directly at my forehead because that is the center of the badness when it comes to my heat sickness.
Um, so, to sum up : I am feeling better. Etc.
This is so fucked up that I just have to document it.
With my McD’s order tonight came a free cookie and a note.
The note goes on to say thank you for your patronage blah blah, but leads with, and I quote, “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. “
Holy shit, MacDonald’s. is that a threat?? Was that meant for me or your employees? This is some serious psycho controlling boss level shit here.
I mean, it’s not even subtle enough to be considered propaganda.
Makes me imagine employees reading this and deciding it sounds like a great idea. Being without a job sounds WAY better than working in this crap factory!
Anyone want to help me shoot a pro-unemployment PSA?
I want these pricks to understand that you have to treat employees well enough that poverty doesn’t seem like a better option.
Our inability to sacrifice
I have this fun theoretical I like to ask people at a party or similar gathering because it really makes people think.
And this makes me very popular and I have lots of friends. No really.
Anyhow, it goes like this : What if Clarke-level aliens came to Earth and offered to solv any of our big problems – cancer, global warming, people who put regular garbage in the goddamned recycling bin – but only if we agree to sacrifice something from our lives that really hurts to lose.
What would you be willing to give up?
An example might be : we’ll take all those greenhouse gases out of your atmosphere but only if you, as a race, give up chocolate.
Or we will give you a foolproof cure for all forms of cancer, but as a species, you are no longer allowed to have lawns.
So what you give up, and for what?
It is fascinating to me to observe the unexpectedly enormous can of worms this question brings up. Not only are people flatly incapable of answering the question, it makes them angry at the aliens.
People are upset by the very idea of having to give something up to get something. Societal programming means live in a constant state of false austerity which causes us to believe that whatever consumer goods we have now are just barely enough for us to get by and therefore losing anything at all would basically doom us.
This way,. consumer capitalism keeps us constantly wanting more. After all, if what we have now is just barely keeping us afloat, then surely that next purchase – be a latte or a Maserati – will make things so much better it will be like a backstage pass to Heaven.
And it doesn’t matter how often that turns out to be completely untrue and the new thing only makes us happy for a short while then leaves us feeling even emptier.
This is addiction we are dealing with, and addictions make you do bad things just to get that jolt of pleasure from the reward center of our brains.
It’s a corruption of our fundamental drive to survive. The drive, like I have said before, that makes a hungry animal eat and makes a horny animal fuck.
These pro-survival activities activate that all important reward center and thus the organism is instantly rewarding for doing things that aid its long term survival.
But we over-brained monkeys have found lots of ways to get that reward center jolt with way way less effort, and our brain rewards us for that, too.
Our primitive systems say, “Oh, what a clever animal you must be to get so much reward for so little effort. Here, have even more reward!”.
And you feel not just good but like you’re getting away with something smart.
This is the root cause of “laziness”. The pleasure of laziness is entirely dependent on having some sense of the work you are avoiding doing.
WIthout that, laziness would just lead to boredom.
Anyhow, back to the aliens.
Clearly, this are some smartass Twilight Zone aliens here just to fuck with us. They know what this kind of question will do to us.
Some people I have tried this on even, quite seriously, suggest that they would whine to the aliens about how unfair they are being, and say “Why do I have to give up ANYTHING AT ALL?”
AIn’t that the million dollar question. What makes us so incapable of even imagining sacrificing anything at all in order to get something incredibly valuable?
And how does this connect with people who are mad about taxes?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.