Medicated

The big dog knows whats good for him, and thats strange, because he's a dog. How do I know this? Because he takes his pills.

Twice per day I get the small orange prescription bottle with dukes thyroid medication and shake out a pill. Duke wanders over, sits down in front of me, and complies while I tilt his head back and throw a pill down his throat. On some level I believe he knows it makes him feel better. Well, maybe "knows" is the wrong word, but there is some kind of pavlovian response happening here. Dog gets pill, dog feels better, dog is more willing to accept next pill.

Let me explain how I know that he is not just a complacent dog willing to let me chuck pills down his throat. Recently, he has been extremely itchy, so for the last couple of days I have been giving him Benadryl. THe problem is, the second the little pink pill hits the back of his throat he tries to cough it up, and unlike his thyroid medication, if I try to repeat the process he begins nipping at me. The first few times I gave him the pink pill, he took it readily, but each subsequent time I give it to him his level of protest increases. This morning I just about lost a finger trying to push the pill down his throat.

This leads me to believe that his resistance to the pink pill has nothing  to do with the taste, and everything to do with how it makes him feel.  On some level he "knows" he does not like what the Benadryl does to him so he resists taking it, whereas he comes over to me and waits patiently for me to give him his thyroid medication.

Very strange.

Insurance Scam Artists

I have been victimized by insurance companies a few times, and by providers a few times. Most recently I am being charged over $1000 for a set of x-rays to diagnose some problems I have been having with my neck and shoulder. Several of the x-rays taken were not even taken correctly, and I therefore feel I should not have to pay for these. Only makes sense.

My plan of attack:

Call 3 radiology centers and get cash price quotes for standard c-spine set of x-rays

Call radiology center trying to bill me over $1000 and get a quote for cash price for standard C-spine x-rays.

Call same radiology center and get an itemized bill.

Call back again and try to negotiate reasonable terms based on theirs and 3 other quotes.

According to my research, the high price of x-rays is usually associated with the radiologists fees for reading the x-ray. I did not have a radiologist read the x-ray, only my doctor read them, and he told me one was blurry and another was taken incorrectly for him to be able to see what he needed to see. Result...diagnoses impossible, time to start guessing.

For a change, my insurance is not at fault here. They met their contractual obligation and my problem is simply that I have bad insurance with ridiculously high deductibles. This is good news, as dealing with a large insurance company is difficult. I only have to deal with a couple of people at the billing department at the radiology center.

Even better news is that, according to my research, if I am unable to negotiate the price down to reasonable terms, I can sue them in small claims court. I have a small chance of winning if I can prove that their rates are in extreme excess of the standard in the area. From what I have read online a typical c-spine x-ray typically runs $90-$215 for the x-rays alone, plus the fee for the technician, plus the radiologist (which I did not utilize). So essentially, the tech, who spent 5 minutes with me, was paid around $800.

WOW, am I in the wrong business, that x-ray tech is making $9,600 an hour! What a great gig! I think I will change careers. I know what you are thinking. There are other costs involved. We have to pay the receptionist who took my paperwork and for the electricity to run the machine. So lets subtract $20 per hour for the receptionist, and $0.15 for the electricity. This brings us down to $779.85 for 5 minutes with the tech. Well, that is certainly more reasonable, only $9358.20 per hour is that technician making. Guess it is not such a lucrative job after all.

I will not pay a dime more than $250 for these x-rays. I wonder who they will send to represent them in small claims court? Im guessing some lawyer they pay hourly. Even if I don't win, at least I will have cost them nearly as much or more money than they are trying to gouge me for.

Im kind of like a wasp, Im not going to ruin anyones day, but I can sure fuck it up a little bit if you piss me off. And I am pissed.

Blogger Immortal

I spent a while tonight figuring out how to edit the permissions on individual blog posts such that some appear to everyone and others appear only to those invited to view them. Let me tell you something; in this world of anything is possible technology, this simple task almost wasn't. To accomplish this I had to spend a considerable amount of time on the Googler followed by a half hour skimming through a programming textbook from college. Whats that about?


With this blog I realized something; I do not like to write for other people. I have for years written on my computer and in various journals which I always manage to loose or destroy with a carefully nudged cup of coffee. I have always enjoyed my writing, both the act, and going back and reading it. Call this hubris if you will, but I am a great writer when I want to be, and when I dont want to be, well, I dont give a shit if it isn't any good because that's not the point. I also realized that, for the most part, I dont like to hear what other people think about what I write. Sorry, I dont care, its for me, not you, and in that sense maybe I erred in creating a blog. You will notice that on the posts you can see there is no longer a means to comment on them.


Back on topic: Blogger Immortal


I laid in bed last night in excruciating pain as some miscreant nerve in my shoulder was playing with a jackhammer while trying to learn to juggle knives. My mind raced up and down all of the dismal alleyways that present themselves when your tired and hurting. While exploring the unthinkable thought that the unbearable pain in my shoulder could end up being chronic neuropathic pain I thought of someone I used to know who endured unthinkable pain for a very long time. And then I thought of several other people I used to know and in a moment of complete cerebral occupation my pain became background noise to the remembrance of these people and the horror and sadness at how many have collected in the alleyways of my mind.


A teammate of mine, someone I ran countless 4x4 races with and endless practices escaped what to him must have been an inescapably abusive father and overwhelming teenage angst on prom night. You were a good guy, Nick, Tyler and I will forever be a 4x3.


One of the sweetest girls I have ever had the pleasure of knowing fought Non Hodgkins Lymphoma and the incredible pain associated with it for two and a half years before it became too much for her. You were an incredibly bright light in everyones lives you touched and no one faults you for your choice. I will always regret not coming to bid you a final farewell.


A good friends sister was also victim to the HB cancer camp with lymphatic cancer stealing her life before it got started. You always gave me shit when I came over, but I liked it because I thought you were cute.


One of the funniest and warmest people I have ever met, MC of MC's, what happened to you was truly tragic and you are missed by everyone. You come up at every get together of old friends, may we always try to have as much fun as you had every day of your life. We all wish we could have had the opportunity to help you and are saddened that none of us got to say goodbye.


Fish, I am still mad at you, but I love you and miss you.


And to the speeding duo, sometime I cant help but feel like what happened was your own willful doing, but you deserved better and your not just a statistic to me, your my friends.


To every one of you, by choice or not, by fate or not, you were robbed of that which is most precious and these are for you, I miss you all:

FADE\\\\\\

Squint and know, before the cosmos sway,

KNOW if you had that one shot you may,

take it fore your years turned gray.

if you had it in your sights today,

Your life, and your finger on the trigger lay

you would, maybe, pull away...

Now watch the world sink away

past what you knew yesterday

and everything begins to fray

your ears SCREAM

and your eyes pour RED

and everything begins swimming

till there's BLACKNESS in the fray

...so drop the music away

close your eyes, the days away.

ball your fists, the pains away.

put your guard up and SWING away

and watch your whole life melt away

TAKE that shot, just pull away!

Because it doesn't matter, you say

You are screaming now

so EXPLODE and pull and swing away

The danger becomes you this day

when you just snapped and pulled away

somebody CRIES for YOU this day

when the rains turn mud from clay

because you decided yesterday

to pull the trigger, and fade away....

It rains\\\\

It rains,

so small children play

and the beauty and innocence

who saw 21 summers but

treasured 19 only, commits

suicide in her bedroom

while it rains.

And it rains

so the small children play.

and the world crys for her

and I stand and I cry

and it rains

and it rains

and it rains

The seeker

If you go out and walk around in a moderately rural area, chances are good that you are walking right past an abundance of wild life. Chances are also pretty good that you dont see ANY of it, save for a couple hundred rabbits and the occasional ground squirrel.

The reason for this is simple, people are loud, not in tune with their surroundings, and in a hurry. After hiking for years in SLO where wildlife abounds I have learned to be keenly aware of my surroundings when I hike and as a result I see a fair amount of wildlife. Add to that the fact that I often hiked (and still do today) in mountain lion country and you begin to develop an awareness. On my hikes both here and in SLO I have seen wild turkeys, quail, roadrunners, the elusive jack rabbit which are few and far between, coyotees, foxes, bobcats, raccoons, deer, wild pigs, a mountain lion, one seemingly wild goat, rattlesnakes, gopher garder and king snakes, skinks, monitor lizards, tarantulas (I saw one tonight on my walk scurry into a hole and was able to coax it out by giving it a small twig to attack, very cool), hawks, owls, a bald eagle, ospreys, vultures and even a couple of ravens.

The most surprising thing is that of the larger animals, I have seen almost all of them with my dog in tow. My dog, mind you, is always bounding ahead, tags jingling, panting heavily with his nose to the ground....seeking. I would think that most animals would scurry off and hide at the site of a large canine steaming their way, but it is quite the opposite. Duke finds coyotees, bobcats and foxes, deer and raccoons and convinces them to stick around long enough for me to see. One bobcat threatened to fight duke for the dinner he was eating when duke sniffed him out. A pack of coyotees followed a very nervous duke back to me. Several deer came bounding out of the brush towards me with duke in hot pursuit. And I have lost track of the number of raccoons he has managed to chase up a tree or kill.

Sometimes it goes a little differently, and D in all his cluelessness goes running right past something. In these cases I think i spot them because after he passes they make a break for better cover and I end up catching a glimpse of them on the move. A few weeks ago the big dog ran right past a 6' rattlesnake that was plopped right in the middle of a trail (thank god!) and I came along in time to have to stand at a distance while it rattled its way threateningly off of the path.

Occasionally I will loose the big dog for a while, and on more than one occasion he has come back bloodied but happy.Once he returned proudly carrying an overweight ground squirrel as a trophy. I have chased the dog around a field for 20 minutes while he chased a horse and I have beaten him off of a 2000lb bull he was trying to drag it to the ground by its nose. I have been backpacking and had D get up, walk slowly to the edge of the firelight with the fur standing up on his back, head down, and growl for over a minute before pacing several times and returning to his spot by the fire. To this day I am not sure if it was a bear or a chipmunk that rattled the big dog. What I do know is that I have heard him growl scarcely a half dozen times in 6 years. My mom will tell you about having to scrape two halves of an opossum into the trash can after it was caught in the open by the big dog (or possibly the little dog and then followed up by the big dog as the little dog has a knack for pulling opossums out of trees and bushes, especially if he is wearing the cone of shame).

So if you ever have a need to experience some wild life, get yourself a hound dog, teach it a whistle command or two, and take the lease off. I promise that you will be surprised with the result every single time. I can't, however,  promise you'll be happy with it.

Class War

They are calling it a class war, Obama's plan to chip away at our staggering deficit. A deficit that was paid for on the backs of middle Americans, and their children, and their children's children. A deficit so large that every American alive today will be paying for it until the day they die. A deficit that was born from a surplus alongside the emergence of the greatest economic divide in our history. A deficit who's making made the poor poorer, the rich richer, and lowered the standard of living for middle class American's for the first time in our country's history.

Our president, ineffective as he is, has determined to attack the deficit problem with a combination of cuts to social programs and tax hikes. Tax hikes, to the republican party's dismay, for the richest members of our society. This is anathema to republican politicians because the richest members of our society are precisely the people who paid for these republican's tickets to public office. Members of the republican party who do not hold office are equally dismayed at the promised tax hikes for the rich, though this can only be explained as some pathetic dog follows master loyalty as the population Obama is proposing to raise taxes for accounts for less than 1% of the country. Basically, republicans are up in arms that Obama wants to tax people who make WAY MORE money then them. Now, if I did math like the politicians who got us into this deficit (Republicans mind you) I would tell you that this represents .5% of the republican party. However, we all know that is not how the numbers really work and thus we arrive at the crux of our problem.

George Bush decided that markets can regulate themselves and removed Laws that were forged at the end of the Great Depression. While he did this, he waged a 12 trillion dollar war in the middle east and lowered taxes. End result? The global economy crashed, yes, thats right, global.

Now President Obama is trying to unwind some of that damage and Republicans are calling it a Class War.

BINGO! They got something right for a change! It IS a class war, only, in their perpetually misguided catch phrase propaganda politics, they erred. They called the thing what it is, a class war. This probably happened because, as we have seen time and again, republicans cant do basic math. Anyone remember no child left behind? There was some funny math there. And how about this deficit? More funny math getting us in trouble.

Lets look at the republican's so called class war. They are accusing Obama of waging war on the country's rich and super rich. It is the poor, middle and upper middle class against the rich and super rich. In this class war, with the battle lines drawn and a country where 1 person gets 1 vote the math is pretty easy to do, even for our mathematically impaired republican leaders. With greater than 99% of the country filling in the ranks of the poor, middle and upper middle class battalions, the rich don't stand a chance.

It most certainly is a class war. It is a class war of the hard working thinking individuals of this country against the monied interests that would preserve the status quo and see the separation and concentration of wealth continue on its current path. So bring on the class war, because if history has taught us anything, its that societies collapse from the top down, and there is not a single example of a minority elite surviving the wrath of a dissatisfied populace.

The republicans are good at waging war. Luckily for us, they are not so good at winning them. Let the class war begin.

Into the wild

Growing up I had only a casual relationship with the great wilds of California. From a young age my sister and I were taken camping in the family camper, a 1950’s Ford F-250 pickup that had been chopped and turned into a one-off, handmade vacation on wheels by my grandfather. At one point in time it had a Ford 429 so my grandfather could pull his boat up the grades without hesitation. When I was around ten the camper was sold because it got little use and my mother deemed it an eyesore and the family outings to Mammoth, Lassen and Death Valley, to all the intoxicatingly beautiful places I had come to enjoy, promptly ended.  So too ended the relationship I had with California’s mysterious wilds, wilds whose secrets I had been too young and too distracted to discover. At 14 I returned to the high Sierras with my father for a 4 day backpacking trip. Outfitted with antiquated gear as old as my beloved camper, terrible food and a little trepidation, I embarked on a trip that would change my life. I found in the backcountry an alien and disquieting world that was at the same time strangely peaceful and homey. It was a place that played with my emotions, stirring them like eddies in the countless streams and pools we passed on our hike.

Today, every time I step into the trees, committing the soles of my boots to follow the miles of serene trails that beckon me, I am transported back to that fateful backpacking trip when I was fourteen, reconnected to the emotions I felt, and reminded of the many reasons I have continued to venture into the wilds. I believe that Man has a deep need to be in nature, in places not yet maligned by his hand, and I believe that it stems from the symbiosis we once had with our world and a need to complete that ancient and biological connection. It is a connection that no matter how eloquent and grand my prose it is nearly impossible for me to fully relate. Hiking is for me about self-discovery and how there are things about yourself and life that you can only discover by venturing into the wild.

Beautiful places immediately educe from observers a need to capture them so that they might in turn relate the power and awesomeness of them to another. This is why you see tourists greedily snapping photos of mountains, trees, and squirrels. The English language is filled with words that I cannot help but believe came about largely in response to our attempt to capture and put meaning to the explosive emotions that nature elicits in us. The story and images of a trip into the wilds is the experience of emotion itself and it is the meaning, yet its relation is a skeletal facsimile of these things.  In this way the accounting should not be an attempt to explain these things to the uninitiated or a superficial representation of them, but rather a mutual sharing among those with similar understandings. For a long time I struggled with trying to explain the way nature made me feel. I took countless pictures and scribbled innumerable descriptions, always hoping to look back and find in my pictures and words everything that I felt, distilled into something I could easily share. It is a result I have yet to achieve.

The curiosity of nature is the tendency for feelings and insights to swell and become increasingly profound the deeper into the backcountry you venture and the longer your stay there is. For me, it takes a day, sometimes two, before I can shake off the city and all of its obligations and limitation. From a physical standpoint it is like there is some minimum distance from civilization that I must trek before I begin to be restored. It takes some time and some hiking before I can fall into the rhythm of the trail. When you find this rhythm you hike without care for time. You wear the day as it wears on.

Nature can be overwhelming. It holds answers and truths that can come in a flood strong enough to wash the foundations from your beliefs. Backpacking has given me a strong suspicion that society, with all of its ugliness and problems, is an aberration, an accident, a cosmic mistake and a blight on our species and our planet. Sometimes when sitting on top of some remote peak, naked of society except for the clothes I wear and the pack I carry, I become nervous of venturing any deeper. A fear washes over me and I am gripped with the feeling that if I were to travel too deep, or stay too long, I might not be able to come back to what I know is waiting for me.  And it is the dance with this unsettling feeling for which I eagerly plan and await my next trip into the backcountry.

Marketing Madness

There is a very large, clumsy, drooling monster of a dog that belongs to me. Almost daily I am forced to choose two things to wear in the morning as often, by the time I get in my car, the first ensemble I have chosen is covered in what appears to be glistening snail trails. These trails are of course drool from my absurdly salivascious dog (and yes, I know for most of you that is not truly a word, but sometimes the language needs to evolve to adequately capture the essence of a thing, and my dog is truly salivascious).

I call the dog Duke or alternatively Big D, Big Dog, D, Double D (for drooly duke), Dummy, and the ocassional four letter word when he has managed to soil a freshly laundered and recently ironed shirt.

D has his fair share of quirks. A few years ago he was poisoned by neighbor who I subsequently threatened with extreme bodily harm should I haver catch him on my property again. As a result the Big Dog has his moments. These moments are characterized by him standing and staring blankly off into space at apparently nothing, often in a trance soo deep you can not stir him from it except by giving him a good shake.

The other of D's quirks is his stomach. The dog has a thyroid problem for which he takes medication. One of the side effects of having a thyroid problem (at least in the Duke's case) is that he also has a pretty sensitive stomach. As a result, for the last 3 years he has been on Hill's Science Diet sensitive stomach dog food. Its not the cheapest food you can buy for a dog but it is supposedly easily digestible and has premium ingredients to support D's health.

Today I went to the pet store to buy dog food and for some reason had a compulsion to check the ingredients on the bag. The first 4 ingredients were Corn Gluten, Corn Meal, brewers rice and wheat meal. The first "meat" ingredient was dehydrated chicken byproduct. What the fuck is that? Now I could be wrong but I could have sworn that dogs, and all of their wolf, coyotee and fox ancestors are STRICT carnivores. Since when does a dog need "whole grains" and a "complete serving of vegetables"?

So I started to read the labels and covers of all the other brands. The poor girl at PetSmart must have thought me insane as several times she came over to ask if she could help me find anything specific. I politely told her no, and that I was looking for a dog food that didnt have some moron in marketing as their highest paid employee. She didn't quite know what to think of that. In my searching I discovered that many of the premium brands (of which I was under the assumption Hill's was one) had some form of meat as their primary ingredient. All of them however advertised such things as "lamb and rice formula" or "chicken and vegetable" prominently on their cover.

It is a true testament to the marketing machine that people willingly and in fact enthusiastically seek out grain and vegetable filled foods for their canine companions, despite the fact that their pets do not process these ingredients and in fact just pass them through. For a period of time I fed my dog a raw meat diet. While he was on it he had more energy, a better coat and best of all, his leavings did not smell, at all. In fact, while on the raw meat diet I did not once pick up after D. The reason for this is that dogs are so efficient at processing meat that their feces on a raw meat diet turn an ashy gray after a day or two and disintegrate into nothing. Thats right, you read correctly. Not only does your dogs shit not smell like shit, you dont have to pick it up if you so choose.

I have a roommate who is a vegetarian. She likes to feed her poor dog quinoa, carrots and barley mash. Her dog limps so she feeds him vitamin paste to support his joints. He is also pretty lethargic so she feeds him some vegetable concoction for energy. I have tried to tell her that dogs are carnivores but there is no reasoning with vegetarians, whats good for them must surely be good for fido.

The truth of the matter is dog food companies put all that useless plant matter into dog food because it is cheap filler, thus serving to increase the manufacturers' bottom line. It is then the job of the marketing departments to sell this crap to you and they do! As a testament to how useless these ingredients are for your dog, consider this; when feeding my dog raw meat, by weight he ate less food on a given day. Not only that but he would rarely eat two days in a row as a serving of a chicken drumstick and a beef rib was plenty enough to sustain him through two or more days. By weight he hate about 1/3 as much meat/bone/fat as he did dry dog food.

It is appalling that marketing is so effective that people will buy food that is bad for their dog and that they will completely ignore everything they learned in school about the difference between carnivores, omnivores and herbivores and feed their dogs "a complete serving of vegetables" every day.

To everyone out there that honestly believes their carnivorous companion craves quinoa, your fucking nuts! Im sorry, but you are.