Don't get mad

i know i shouldn't do this and anyway i hate this story but this website is so funny

apparently somebody at CBS wrote a pseudo-obituary of the paralyzed woman and it slipped onto the news web site by accident before she died (is she dead yet? i don't even care). that must have been a terrifying tragedy for the poor woman; imagine reading your own obituary in the national press... but apparently she's fighting back. this other story, hilariously also on CBS, includes this quote from a full blown follower of st. francis of assisi: "Everyone is willing to write this woman's obituary except one person. And that's Terri Schiavo herself."

i should say not; she doesn't have a will.

also, did you guys realize the reason she's in a coma is because she was bulimic and had a heart attack during a wretching fit? okay, maybe she wasn't literally puking at the time, but she deprived herself so much her body spasmed for lack of nutrients and incited a bizarre anatomical reaction that cut off blood to her brain. this whole dispute about "killing" her centers on the feeding tube -- she's better nourished now than when she had control of herself! why isn't that an issue? would the catholic church be defending someone who nearly died trying to commit suicide, only the bullet simply destroyed brain function and left the hopeless sinner alive? what's the difference if you try to starve to death?

imagine if there'd been so many court appeals while jesus was on the cross. we'd have been celebrating differently last sunday, that's for sure. it doesn't matter to me. i'm jewish. i just want palestine to recognize terry schiavo's right to exist. (btw, did you see israel's ridiculous header to equalize against france?) too bad hunter s. thompson didn't survive long enough to witness this mess. but at least we know how he wanted to end his life.

alright i'll end this before i'm (s)excommunicated. it may already be too late. pray for me.

Million Dollar (veggie)Baby ?

I'm going to go ahead and assume that those of you out there who may be reading this have at the very least heard some mumblings/reporting/rumors/bloggerspeak of the Terri Schiavo case which is unfolding (but not unplugging) in Florida. Ooops, was that offensive? Stupid maybe? I guess I've just fallen victim to the outbreak of stupidity that seems to have stricken a certain and growing segment of our population....

Last week a California man offered Michael Schiavo $1,000,000 to relinquish custodial rights to his wife's parents. But wait, the stupidity doesn't stop at the "I want to buy the rights to your wife so that I can give them back to her parents" bit (which can stand on its own leg of idiocy). Oh no, everyone's favorite California business man explained that the reason for his offer was a newfound sense of "hope" he had for her after seeing a video of her and the life she leads (la very exciting one at that, what with the eating through a tube and the other vast enjoyments that come with being in a persistent vegetative state-PVS). Apparently this man, in all his vast scientific endeavors, has "seen some miraculous recoveries occur through the use of stem cells" which have otherwise been kept entirely secret from the medical community. While this man’s proposal is a bit despicable, and his knowledge of science more than lacking, it is really only a small example of some of the strange issues that are arising from this unfortunate case.

Not to be outdone by a mere businessman, members of the Catholic Church are also now weighing in on the issue, and in doing so, have opened up an entirely new forum for stupidity to be spewed and misconceptions to be had. Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, the Vatican’s chief bioethicist, has been quoted as saying that removing her feeding tube would be the equivalent to euthanasia. Statements such as this have riled up ranking members in the lower echelons of the church, leading to statements today by an Arch Bishop in Pennsylvania likening the cessation of feeding of Mrs. Schiavo to the Holocaust, and those who provide said “service” to be invoking an American Final Solution. I’m not sure if further comment on that is really necessary….

So what’s the point you ask? Why the diatribe on stupidity? Perhaps to illustrate that while everyone is entitled to their own opinion, taken in the context of healthcare they have real consequences. Perhaps instead it’s to spark some conversation about PVS as it’s an all too common condition that can be more easily dealt with if you have some of your own, informed notions of what it is. Or, it could just be let everyone know that if I’m ever the unfortunate soul in PVS, go ahead and play my Clint Eastwood – and if you can get the cool mill for it first enjoy yourself.

See the links below for any further information about the Schiavo case.

EMO

Timeline for Events in Mrs. Schiavo’s life - http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/timeline.htm

Additional links - http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/Schiavo_links.htm

The Shot Hit

I recorded a song tonight. For some reason it's a father singing to his young daughter about her mother leaving them. Don't ask me. I don't get it either. Go here and listen to "Cradle".

Enjoy! Have Fun!

The Hott Shitt

My friend Drew H. is totally back at it with another hot emo-core ballad. Click on this link and listen to "Line3". You should put on a cardigan, get drunk, listen to the song, write down the lyrics and then call the girl next door and sing the song to her. Or else you should take a shower in your swimsuit.

:-*^<3,

Sam

Pest

Then comes the blade.

The cockroach is shaken from the polymeric plane. Blade teeth crush upon it, but the surface gives way more easily than the cockroach, like a fluttering veil. In the tremor, without a taught field to hold, the cockroach loses its grip. Free of tension, free of footing. The blade swoops somewhere in the nearby air, which folds from the push. But the cockroach is grown and heavy; its wings do not pull even at calm air. The cockroach feels a strong pull from behind and is sucked away as the blade pounds the surface again, collapsing it deeply. But it is nothing for the cockroach.

Spluoaghhgfff

The cockroach is drowning. Really suffocating in the water. It is lodged. This is water, but the cockroach has not seen water like this. This is not a drop or a stream. This water is vast, it is continent. The cockroach aims its legs and its whiskers and cannot pull out. It has managed to puncture this surface, break through it and grapple with the matter beneath, but cannot break out. Cannot even reach out. It keeps its eyes above and slowly, easily as it is done, rocks its tail down enough to gain its breath.

The cockroach is alive. It continues to push its legs, waiting because it can do nothing else. It pauses, battling for position. It knows how to crawl but cannot crawl in this tractless stuff and cannot crawl into it. Could not burrow, for certainty of asphyxiation: the slick particles endlessly caving in. But can't at all, can barely evenly shift. The cockroach boils in madness. Wet up to its armpits. It suffers immobility worse than paralysis. Able to move and wiggle; totally suspended.

Recent Submission To Seventeen Magazine's TRAUMARAMA Department

A True Story by Benjamin Swetland

One day something started to grow on my ass.

Perhaps not on my ass proper and more so on that flat steppe between the small of my back and the gulley going you-know-where, but in these kinds of cases the proximity of the inevitable has an over-riding influence. So I'll just say one day something started to grow on my ass.

It was red, painful, and ambitious. I mean, it was killing me. The location of my enemy prevented me from either standing or sitting without stabbing pain. I had always heard that the Viet Cong held POWs in small bamboo cages designed to prevent their captives from standing or sitting, forcing them to squat uncomfortably for days. As I hunched in my apartment, the ongoing mental association between John McCain and my ass only redoubled my agony.

So I went to the doctor. First I got to have a nice chat with the twenty-something attendant in my gown and black socks. Then, stretched out on the examination table the physician quickly diagnosed the problem: a peri-anal abscess. Hmm. A squirmy little set of words for sure, but so much the worse when your pants are across the room and a vaguely Eastern European woman is using them to describe YOU. The prescribed cure was a thorough lancing and a course of antibiotics.

Then I got to field the anal sex questions.

Now, look. I'm not gay and I've certainly never had anal sex, but as a part of a certain segment of straight guys who wear expensive jeans I have been asked if I'm gay before. What I've learned is that the last thing you want to do is be too strenuous in your denials. Yelling about how straight you are only makes you look like a gay-baby-seal-clubbing, beer-chugging, Eminem-listening, secretly-gay-being homophobe. That or a please-penetrate-the-paper-thin-armor-of-my-straightness-and-set-free-my-unmitigated-fabulousness gay dude. So when the doctor told me that whether you believe in God or in Mother Nature certain things don't fit in certain places, I could only nod my feeble assent.

After a quick numbing shot, the doctor punctures the swelling. Not really feeling the needle, what hits me first is the smell. Some bacteria can smell, I'm told. Fortunately, she rounds out the lesson by shoving gob after gob of stinking blood and puss rags in front of my face while intermittently wiping up the stuff trickling down my ass-crack. It was like having your diaper changed if your diaper is tiny and inside of you.

Next step is to probe the abscess to determine how deep it goes and whether or not it connects to any deeper tissue. This is achieved by shoving a giant Q-tip into my body and poking it around. Does that hurt? Yes, Doctor, it hurts. Would you like a pain shot? Yes, Doctor, I would. The doctor pokes her head out of the door and calls for two milligrams of something or other, blah blah blah. Two seconds later there's a knock at the door and a staffer comes in with the needle.

And who is it?
Who comes in?
Who has the shot?

Why, none other than the small Indian girl from work whom I publicly declared my crush on in my short-lived blog on the WORLD WIDE web. With my bared ass, streaming stinking blood and puss. With my brain exploding and soul taking flight. With my communist-childhood-having doctor wiping my butt. She actually managed to appear glad to see me before sprinting from the room, leaving me to receive my proverbial peri-anal probing.

On the way out my adolescent crush and I engaged in strained small-talk, took care of the bill, and in general DENIED ALL REALITY. Anyway, turns out it was a chance infection, the antibiotics worked, the thing healed, and I feel much better.

Right?