Video #4

This is my fourth video of the morning that shows, conclusively, that this is an ankle problem. Please see the previous videos here and here.

This video shows me using a TENS unit, off-label, to do the work of a WalkAide, by placing the electrodes exactly where the WalkAide does. My foot moves, that is a certainty, but this is intended to fully compensate for nerve damage by activating those nerves, and this does not do that because there is an exact spot where the big toe should lift up directly, but it cannot do it and instead flings to the right. It can go up a certain amount straight, but before it finishes lifting, it flings right. The way to complete motion is blocked. The WalkAide therapist could see this and also saw how my leg responded at incredibly low settings (here, 5.0/60.0) because the nerve conductivity is still VERY good. But the way is shut, by the hip and the ankle. I need surgery. Any doctor who does not believe my four videos and their explanations will cease to be my doctor. These are not central nervous system issues, but hip and ankle issues. The hip started me down a dark path and the sprained ankle cemented me in that place. I'm strong enough, maybe even in the hip, but fighting that ankle is like doing everything with Arnold Schwarzenegger pushing back. No wonder I can't exercise and see improvement. No wonder all of my doctors and therapists (10 and counting!) have been lost and the drugs don't work.

Video 2 is here to dispel the myth of video 1 that it is a hip problem due to the apparent displacement of the knee. I hope it further emphasizes that this is not a MS problem. I start with my knees neutral in the recliner and try with all the strength and nerves I have to turn the right leg parallel to the left, but that right ankle's improper leanings swing everything right back. This is clear and obvious.

Video 3 (excuse the hairy pot-belly) is here to show that my hips and torso can exist and function in proper relation to my knee, which looked really off in the first video. Now, we can see that the problem is due to an improper knee/ankle relation.

The objections are first that it is MS, but this is physiological. The physiological problem was caused by a lack of mobility due to MS and was not fixed correctly because of MS and the hip problem, but that is no excuse for not fixing it now. The hip problem came about in 2007 as a result of MS and a knee brace worn for too long, and also brought about a lack of stability so that the ankle could not heal correctly and wound up healing with such an inward bent. None of these change the fact that there is a physiological problem with my ankle that is rendering me incapable or walking. I will press doctors to fix this ankle and threaten to cut it off if they say that nothing can be done.

This is not Multiple Sclerosis. This is an improperly healed sprained ankle that requires surgery at this point. Either that, or I cut the bottom half of the leg off. I guess that's still surgery.

Get your Syracuse Melo's straight, Facebook!

FireCo Does Sleazy Business

A week or so ago, I was hired by FireCo in Asheville, North Carolina, to sell fundraiser concert tickets over the phone. They have been granted special privileges to cold-call people from 12pm to 9pm because they are a "non-profit." The office was full of 10 other guys making phone calls. Seemed pretty legit to me.

The first red flag was that the company doesn't have any information about itself online. What little information I did find was a complaint forum. People were mostly angry about the fact that they were receiving calls, but one lady had actually gone so far as to research the percent of her donation that might actually go to the charity and help the firefighters. She came back with a startling 15% that goes toward what the salesmen are trained to say over the phone.

I asked the head honcho about it, and he slathered his response in salesman speak, but didn't deny it a bit. If $22 comes in for a ticket, the first of the money goes to pay the rent for the venue and the performer, neither of which are doing anything for free. Then, the next of the money goes to pay the operating costs of the fundraising operation. What's left over is split 50-50 between the firefighters and Fireco. If you break that down, it comes out to less than $5 a ticket that's an actual donation for what the fundraiser tells you. But wait, there's more...

Most people don't even go to the show. 2,700 was a high turnout the last time, but many of those people had gotten the tickets for free from charities and businesses after the purchasers turned them back in and accepted this as the donation that the salesman will swear up and down that it is not, even though they probably don't realize that 85% goes to operating costs and executive pockets. But wait, there's more...

Not content to stop with those profits, the company has to swindle its "employees" as well. Of those 10 guys in the office last Tuesday, only 5 remained on the following Monday: The manager, the assistant manager, the letter mailer, the b2b salesman, and one other guy who had been there a while. The others had all recently started but either left or were shown the door pretty quickly. Basically, two tiers: The insiders on the scam and the outsiders brought in to man the phones with no training for a minimum amount of time before being shown the door because they weren't selling like champions in a week or a month's time.

I became the sixth in a week to receive the good-bye handshake, only realizing then that it's probably what happened to the first 5 guys, who were dismissed never to be seen again. Sure, my numbers weren't great after a week, but champion cold-calling isn't going to occur in one week. They knew they'd probably fire me this quickly when they hired me, but they didn't care. They didn't care that I had another job offer but instead am sitting umemployed. But wait, there's more...

I had accidentally left my cellphone in the office because I was slightly startled by the firing, so I went back in this morning to pick it up. It should be noted that they had already hired all of the replacements and had mine sitting there already. The manager was very cordial in handing me my phone and talking to me about picking up my paychecks. When I calmly said to him, "It's a lousy way to do business. I had another offer," his face dropped and he scooted back over to his new employee to wreak the same havoc on his life. By the time I had finished my other errands, he had left me a message instructing me not to come in, that my checks would be in the mail. Can't have someone coming in and blowing up the scam, right?

This has been your public service announcement about FireCo. Do not give them money for their lousy concert that you won't go to. Give your money directly to the Fire Fighters. It'll be put to better use.

Tetris

This is what life has come to.

After playing Tetris for about an hour, getting all sorts of lousy pieces that force - FORCE - me to either take a gap or pile sky high in the middle, you know, those pieces that just make you curse when you see them, well, after getting about 20 of those in a row and staying alive and getting all the way back down to manageable, where I can drop 4 lines at a time, I look over at the score...and it sucks.

This makes no sense. When you get more difficult pieces, you have to use a lot more creativity, and are prevented by the game from doing big drops, and get stacked high and have to move faster. If you are given a far more difficult challenge by the structure of the game itself, you'd think the score would be higher. That goes for pretty much any game you play.

Suddenly playing Tetris for a high score feels no different than life itself. If you have it tough, the garbage piles up and makes it harder on you. If you have no money, you go into debt and lose it even quicker. If you have lots of money, you sit back and watch it make more as you scam millions in tax write-offs, and get paid insane amounts of money to take 3 hour lunches and ride in limos courtesy of your father's business connections that got you the job.

I now hate Tetris.

On Baseball

A lot of baseball purists are going gaga for the old rules as Major League Baseball has been instituting many changes and dealing with steroids.  My take on the quirks I can think of at the moment:

• Replay - I remember seeing Paul Lo Duca go bonkers because he saw that what was called a double was actually a home run according to the Shea Stadium scoreboard replay in 2007.  He refused to go to the batter's box until the umpires conferenced.  They called it a home run.  The opposing manager went bananas.  Since then, there has been a lot of grandstanding and suddenly an explosion in missed home run calls.  Now there's replay.  It's fine as long as we leave it there.  No safe/out at first base, no ball/strike calls.  Leave the calls to the umpires when they're standing right there.
• Single-admission Double-headers - Greed has removed the let's-play-two double-header from baseball.  If there's going to be forced to schedule two games for the same day, owners now shoo out everybody who paid for the first game so that they can charge again for the second.  They did one at Shea Stadium (again with the Mets?) late this year due to scheduling conflicts that didn't give them enough time between games.  I say let 'em slide every once in a while.  Maybe every team could do one a year.  Give a treat to the fans who pay for more games than any other professional sport.
• The Mound - Baseball got "boring" in the late 60's because Bob Gibson (and some other guys, I guess) was so good.  So, they lowered the mound to give hitters the advantage.  We still didn't see somebody hit 50 home runs until 1991.  After that, also in part thanks to drugs and smaller ballparks, guys started smashing the ball at Ruthian rates.  They had to change the way they used pitchers.  Now everyone's a specialist.  Put the mound back up there and watch Ryan Howard's home run totals fall as his strikeouts get him benched.
• Closers - This year, Frankie Rodriguez set the "record" for most "saves" in a season.  He's so specialized that he only comes in for the 9th inning if his team is leading by 3 runs or less so he can help win the game and also get a stat.  It's about time for the Fireman to come back, a reliever like Goose Gossage or Bruce Sutter who came in whenever the going got tough and slammed the door.  Didn't matter what inning if the team needed him.  Didn't matter if he needed to throw 3 innings.  Teams should use their best relievers in the toughest spots, not just for the last three outs of the game.
• Interleague Play - I've now seen a fair number of interleague and non-interleague games live.  People like it, it doesn't hurt much unless you count the fact that the AL proves its supremacy and the Mets (yes, the Mets AGAIN!) are in the lead in the NL East instead of trailing by 4.5 games thanks to their bouts with the fellas from the junior circuit.  I like the interleague play.  Just don't expand it beyond the current 15 games.
• All-Star Homefield - Whichever league wins the All-Star game, gets homefield advantage for the World Series.  People piss and moan because this exhibition shouldn't count toward anything real.  Well, the MLB All-Star game is the only game of its kind that actually plays like a real game, maybe even a little better.  This is because there are players who make the game for their defensive abilities and their pitching, which means that unlike the NBA, NHL, or NFL, people are actually trying to play defense.  Nate McLouth to Russel Martin to gun down the AL catcher trying to score from second in extra innings because there's no one left on the bench to run for him is pretty awesome.  People also pooh-poohed about what an embarrassment it would be if the game went past the 15th and we saw outfielder JD Drew and third baseman David Wright pitching, but I have to disagree on that point.  Both guys were ready to go all out to try to win the game for their league.  I don't see how that's a mockery.
• Ballparks - Somebody figured out that you're not going to get 70,000 fans a game, used a little supply and demand, and created Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, which seats just enough people in an intimate setting so that everybody gets a pretty good seat.  This also meant bringing the outfield fences in, which also encourages more home runs, which sells more tickets, etc.  I don't really like short home runs, but I think the new parks are okay.  Maybe a raised mound and a lack of steroids will help to curb the number of cheap home runs.  I swear, seeing Cristian Guzman go yard as much as he has lately is like watching Charles Barkley hoist so many 3 pointers when the NBA experimented with moving the line closer.

I'm sure there are many more controversies I'm forgetting, but that's fine.  It's part of what makes baseball so great.  The debate over National vs. American League, is it better for a DH or a Pitcher to hit?  Has Bud Selig been a good or a bad commissioner?  Why are Red Sox fans such assholes?  The list goes on and on.  Why did you read this post?

A day in the life

Eyes open.  Too early.  Roll over.  No going back.

Stretch.  Drag.  Blink.  Awkward.

Bathroom.  Sit?  Stand.

Hands on the walls.  One stair step.  Another.

Breakfast.  Decaffeinated.  Vitamins, 16.

Terrible television.  Scores I knew last night.

Nothing.  Computer nothing.  

More stairs.  More nothing.

Gym.  Swim.  Drag.  Curse.

.05% better.  Perhaps.

More nothing.

Friends sometimes.

Rinse, repeat.

A Day in Boston

If you looked for me today, you would have found me...

• Lying in bed, late
• Cutting up half a banana on my cereal because it was no longer green enough to eat whole
• Drinking grape juice my parents brought me last weekend
• Watching a movie as an excuse to loaf more
• Taking a shower around 3:00pm
• Spilling burrito bits on my oft-complemented new shorts while at the Purple Cactus with Gabrielle
• Judging my exit by estimated bus arrival times
• Lying in another bed, trying not to take a second nap
• Not buying a hat because the many around Quincy Market weren't the perfect image I had in my head
• Limping down Atlantic Avenue
• Saying, "Whatever you're getting, only decaf and small" at Dunkin' Donuts
• Sitting near the dock of the bay, wasting time
• Relieving myself in an alley
• Fumbling with balloons that read "Bonnie" and "Clyde" so that they wouldn't smack me in the face while trying to eat my Crabby Balls at Dick's
• Drinking Miller High Life
• Not buying anything at Urban Outfitters
• Sitting on my porch, trying not to nod off
• Chatting with my sister
• Winning 1000 Play money chips with a nut full house online
• Blogging
• Paying tribute to Gabi for being there through most of this
• Falling aslee...

Water on water

I stepped out on my porch this morning, realizing that I would have to deal with the obnoxious mechanical sounds of humanity while trying to read the book Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier.  Not so unusual, not so much of a bother, until I saw the man with the machine in question.  He had been spending the past hour or more spraying a power washer on a driveway.  He's still doing it.

Loud noises for over an hour to spray water.  It rained last night.  Think about this from a 19th Century perspective, or earlier.  Making loud noises to spray water onto water, using a whole system employing thousands of people when the thing was already wet.  The thing in question?  Natural earth that had been covered over with annoying slabs of processed stone.

For those of you that have seen my limp, it turns out to be a disease of civilization.  A lack of touch with creation.  In my quest to return to that touch, reading several 19th Century-based books such as Thirteen Moons, I can see how out of touch our entire society is.  Things like spraying water onto water become comical.  If you begin to analyze each action against its natural equivalent, you can gain a glimpse of how far we've fallen.

Anyway, think about it.  Remember, the big man's always happy to see you.

Darth Vader at the Olympics

Yes, the title is correct.  The story is innocent enough.  One of the world's fastest double amputees will be allowed to compete in the Olympics.  Hooray for disabilities everywhere!  Hooray for everyone!  The world is becoming a friendlier place!

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/olympics/05/16/pistorius.olympics.ap/index.html

But wait...

What if someone gets three of four limbs sliced off with a light saber and is thrown into a lake of fire, then wears a crazy mask with a techno-mullet and gets James Earl Jones' voice but has superhuman strength?  Can Darth Vader now compete in fencing?

What if Tommy John surgery in baseball actually gave erstwhile finesse pitchers the ability to throw the ball 100+ mph, like in Sparky Lyle's The Year I Owned the Yankees?

What about Robocop in a wrestling match?

Imagine the NBA if marijuana gave players a competitive advantage.

With all this talk about keeping sport pure from blood doping and steroids these past couple of years, how do we account for TIP's (Technologically Improved Players - a Sparky Lyle term) now?  How do we decide what's good for sport and what's an unfair competitive advantage?

The lines may never be drawn well enough.  Some new bleeding heart may enter the fray at every turn, championing the cause of the latest TIP.  Soon, there will be no people competing in their own skin, except at the Ablympics, the new competition made for non-TIP's.

And it won't matter, because it's just a game.  If we want to show our nation's prowess now, we just fly a stealth plane in the middle of the night and drop smart bombs down elevator shafts from 3 miles away, or blast them with lasers from space.

I don't know what I'm getting at here.  I guess I just thought I'd give you the heads up.  If the first woman who encouraged a man to openly share his feelings - in public - knew that one day we'd have emo music, she might have thought differently.

Signing off.  I've said enough.

A thing that I've had to ponder over the last two weeks:

The people are not right.

Let's go all the way back to the beginning and slam through the Bible in under 5 minutes.

Adam and Eve, the only two people on earth, got together and made the wrong decision.  All the people in the world got together and said, "We choose option B."

I'm sure there's more, but for the sake of time we'll cut to a posse of brothers, maybe some of whom were indifferent, maybe some of whom were aghast.  They sold their father's favorite son into slavery.  Good job, fellas.  Way to get your dear old dad to love you more.  Whose idea was that?

God uses all of his force to get a whole nation out of slavery.  All the people get together out in the desert, and what do they do?  Piss and moan.  Build a golden calf.  Fear the battle ahead when the spies come back to tell of the land you're supposed to go to.  Do EVERYTHING we can expect from a mob.  Only two guys from the whole nation got to go into that new land, and this because they had been separated for a while and got to speak to one another with clear heads.  Imagine Caleb and Joshua sitting on the mountainside, watching a sunset.

Once these people are in the new land, God has to continually inspire rulers called "judges" to slap the crap out of them because they keep making idols for themselves.  There's a whole book about it.

The people decide they want the tall and handsome guy, Saul, to be king.  Whoops.

A mob of religious guys get together and trap the town slut so they can stone her.

The political and religious leaders get together and decide to do away with a stinker of a people's leader who is threatening all their preconceived notions of authority.  Q: How can you just get rid of somebody like that?  Somebody who is developing a pretty strong following?  A: Get a mob of people together and give them a choice.  They will invariably pick the wrong prisoner to free.

They will pick the wrong person for office. 

They will follow the wrong religious leader.

They will listen to the worst music and watch the worst movies.

They will be placated.

Their empire will fall.  For this reason.

Proper Spanish

My 50th post on this particular blog stems from a phone conversation I had yesterday afternoon about tattoos. It was suggested that I get a tattoo of something happy, like a flower, on my bum. I reasoned against it.

Let's say, for instance, I go running with the bulls in Spain. This seems like the sort of thing I'd do if ever I get back in shape. Inevitably, I'd probably get gored in the hindquarters and have to go to a doctor to get stitched up. I don't want a flower out there flapping in the breeze for some Spanish doctor I don't know.

He'd be like, "What is this flower on your butt for?" and I'd have no idea what he was talking about, because he'd be speaking proper Spanish.

This is why I would not get a tattoo of a flower on my bum. The end.