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Learning to Draw?
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| Short story, I had one of my swelling/pain deals yesterday (Sunday). For those who don't know, I've had medical problems in the past involving my lymphatic system on the right side of my head & neck. So, occasional pain/swelling, exact cause unknown. But I know exactly what I need to deal with it: painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Those will get me through it.
I was at the office, and it got so bad that I left and tried to find a walk-in clinic that was open. Sunday, no deal. So I went to the closest emergency room, Southern Hills.
By this time the pain was really really bad... about as painful as the worst of these things has gotten. Tears were coming out of my eyes from the pain, and it takes a lot of pain to do that. Any movement in my mouth was really bad, and swallowing my own spit was almost agonizing.
So, they took me into the ER (I didn't have to wait, which gratified me). Then they start asking me a bunch of questions. Finally I made them give me a pen and paper because sometimes it hurt way too much to talk. I'm telling them the whole time, "Look, I know exactly what's going on here, it's happened before, all I need is a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory. I'll take aspirin for the fever (luckily, fever was not a major component this time, sometimes it has been).
So after the nurse asking my a bunch of questions and me having to write down some of the answers, she came around to the other side of the bed, then asked me about what meds I was on. "I can tell you" I said, meaning I didn't need to write it right now.
Then she said, "I thought you said you couldn't talk." It came out accusatory, and really if you just look at the words, it can definitely be taken as accusatory. I mean, what was the point of even saying it?
"I can talk for now." Then I thought about it, and was like, what the hell, what's up with that? Why would she say that?
"Why did you say that?" I asked. "I mean, what was the point?"
"Well, it's just that you said you couldn't talk."
"I couldn't then and I can now. You sound like you don't believe me. I mean, really, why did you even ask that?"
I don't remember her reply. Whatever.
So a little later she's asking me more questions, and the janitorial lady comes in to change out the garbage bags. That annoyed me, because I felt like it was an invasion of privacy. What really pissed me off was that she kept looking at me. It felt like she was thinking, "Wow, what's wrong with him? He sounds really funny, too." Okay, you may say, I'm projecting. But I really do think it's invasive to have a non-medical person in an emergency room when they're getting treated, *especially* when that person keeps staring at you. Finally I'd had enough, I made a shoo-ing motion and said "You don't have to look at me."
I was in a lot of pain. And even now, I really don't think I reacted too strongly. But then, I was really really pissed, because they wouldn't listen to me and were taking all this information while I was in damn-near screaming pain.
I've become less likely, recently, to let rudeness or poor treatment pass, and I was really unhappy last night and had no patience for anything standing between me and the painkillers that would help get me through this.
All that to say, I decided, a few minutes later, to say something about the janitorial woman coming in. "Y'know, I would suggest that the janitorial staff not come in when there's a patient here."
"Well, this is an emergency room, and I've never seen a time when it wasn't busy. How many emergency rooms have you been in?"
"Quite a few, actually." I imagine it was obvious that I was pissed.
So, that was the smart-ass nurse. Now, I can try to give her the benefit of the doubt, but when you're dealing with someone in severe pain, why get an attitude with them? I mean, really. Cut 'em some slack, you fuckin' moron.
Now, the arrogant doctor.
She wanted to totally understand what was happening with me. She pretty much totally ignored what I was saying about it'd happened before, and here's what I need: painkillers and an anti-inflammatory. She kept asking me questions. She looked in my ear and said, "It's really red, you have an infection." I explained to her that it was really red because my whole right side was swollen. Then she looked down my throat, and asked "I this normal, only being to open this wide?"
"Of course it's not normal, what did I tell you, I've got swelling and extreme pain."
She started feeling my throat, and I said "Don't touch on this spot, it's very painful." Of course, she touched it. "I told you not to touch that."
I'm crying from the pain most of this time, and she's asking questions and talking about how she needs to understand what's going on.
"Look, I am a very rare case, this has happened innumerable times in the past, I told you exactly what I need. I'm not meaning to be blunt, but I just need the stuff to get through this, alright?" I had my head in my hands and was crying from pain at this point. I was seriously considering just getting up and walking out, because this moron wouldn't listen to me. Understand, I've had a number of doctors look at me, listen to what I'm telling them, and agree and give it to me. This person totally disregarded anything I said. That's the worst kind of doctor. Arrogant, the patient doesn't know anything. I came real close to blowing up. I decided to stay rather than walk out, because if I went somewhere else that would make it that much longer that I'd be in the pain I was.
She left and they started an IV of morphine and something else. I'm thinking, ok, morphine isn't my favorite, but at least I'll be feeling way better. Then after awhile I realized that I was hardly feeling any relief at all. Found out later that she had prescribed 2 mg of morphine and 1 mg of that other stuff. Jesus, no wonder I didn't feel anything. They were giving me 12 mg when I had my jaw surgery. Thanks a lot, idiot doctor, for prescribing an itty bitty dose to someone who really really needs a large kick.
At one point, a guy came in and wanted to take an oral temperature. I pointed at my armpit, but he said they'd ordered an oral temp.
"No."
He was taken somewhat aback.
"They ordered an oral temp."
"Dude, no offense at all to you, but I'm in way too much pain to try sticking something in my mouth." Which was true. If I moved anything at all in my mouth (tongue, jaw) the pain jumped about 5 points.
"You don't even wanna try it?"
"Uhhhhhhh, no."
I said repeatedly to him that I wasn't trying to be rude and it wasn't anything against him at all. Even though the nurse and the doctor were really pissing me off, I didn't want to take it out on other people, and for the most part succeeded.
They said they were gonna do a PET scan. I told them, "It's not necessary, I know exactly what's going on and what I need, but sure, if you wanna do it go ahead, I'm not going to refuse it."
So after that, and after lying around quite awhile, the doctor came in.
"You have an abcess in your right jaw, it's very serious, about an inch wide. We're going to transfer you to Centennial because we don't have an ENT, and they're going to drain the abcess."
"No."
"You need to have this taken care of."
"Look, this has happened lots of times before, I've told you what I need. I'm a very rare case, I've only ever met two people in my life that have what I have, and there's no one in Nashville qualified to work on me. I am NOT having an invasive procedure. I just need-"
"Mr. Kopp, your white blood cell count is really high and-"
"Please, let me finish what I was saying, ok? Now, look, I understand that you're a doctor, I respect that. But in this one very very narrow area, I know more than you do. This has happened before, and I know what-"
"You need to have that drained, the radiologist said he'd never seen anything like it."
"Which is what I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU, I'm a rare case and I know what I need. I had the head of ENT at St. Thomas tell me he'd never seen anything like me."
"Well, we need to tranfer you-"
"No."
"Mr. Kopp, you-"
"No, you're not transferring me, and I'm not having an invase procedure." There is a real danger of someone who's not truly *expert* in the area of ENT tumors going in and well and truly fucking me up, even in a "simple" procedure. They could hit something they're not supposed to hit, and the fact that my physiology on that side is radically different from other people's makes that a real possibility.
"Are you refusing care?"
"Yep."
"Well, then, you can sign out against medical advice."
"Ok, are you going to give me what I've been asking for? Painkiller and anti-inflammatory?"
It turns out she did.
I am never never never going back to Southern Hills. I'll drive the extra half-hour in extreme pain to go to Vandy or St. Thomas. I've got a lot of experience with doctors and nurses, and I've *never ever ever* had an experience like this.
Fucknuts. | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment   |
| I *think* I got some of this (or at least the idea) from something I saw on the internet, but I seem to remember writing most or all of it myself. Dunno.
666 = number of the beast
665 = older brother of the beast
~660 = approximate number of the beast
66600 = zip code of the beast
1/666 = common denominator of the beast
$665.95 = retail price of the beast
$699.25 = Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
$769.95 = Price of the Beast with all accessories
$656.66 = Walmart price of the Beast
$646.66 = Next week's Walmart price of the Beast
DCLXVI = Roman numeral of the Beast
666.0000 = Number of the High Precision Beast
0.666 = Number of the Millibeast
(-666) ^ (1/2) = Imaginary number of the Beast
6.66 e3 = Floating point Beast
1010011010 = Binary of the Beast
1-666 = Area code of the Beast
666mph = The speed limit of the Beast
Phillips 666 = Gasoline of the Beast
Route 666 = Way of the Beast
666 F = Oven temperature for roast Beast
666k = Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg = Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
6.66 % = 5 year CD interest rate at First Beast of Hell National Bank, $666 minimum deposit.
$666/hr = Beast's lawyer's billing rate
Lotus 6-6-6 = Spreadsheet of the Beast
Word 6.66 = Word Processor of the Beast
i66686 = CPU of the Beast
665.9997856 = The Number of the Beast on a Pentium
666i = BMW of the Beast
DSM-666 (revised) = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
668 = Next-door neighbor of the Beast
333 = The semi-Christ | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| 'Nother one from a couple years ago.
You might be a dog owner if...
you know how painful it is to stub your toe on a dog bone.
dog hair in your dishes and cups is not only not alarming, but is taken as a matter of course.
you've ever had occasion to say "Don't eat the dead bat!", and mean exactly that.
you know what sniffing around a spot on the carpet presages.
you know what white vinegar is good for.
you can, without even really wanting to, tell when a dog needs to go out based on visual clues.
you automatically tune out the sound of squeak toys while watching TV.
you've ever been woken up by a dog snoring in your ear.
you understand how a cat can be viewed as a self-propelled dog toy.
you know the difference between a happy tail and a hunting tail.
you've ever found yourself pinned in bed by a dog lying on top of the blankets on either side of you.
you can add to this list. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Looked up a few older things of mine for bardic this past week. I wrote this the first time I took narcotic painkillers after I got sober. My back was totally fucked (original injury when I was 24), and I was in extreme pain. I wrote this as I felt the narcotics start to hit.
Hello again, old friend.
Once more I feel your shadowed touch
your warm embrace
and numbness given with no price asked
but that I should want more.
Need me, you whisper.
Want me more than life or love.
Recline in my embrace
and dream of what remains undone.
I will comfort you, you sigh,
why are you so afraid?
There is nothing that cannot wait awhile.
Why live when you can dream?
No,I say, no more, not again.
You are not my mother's milk,
you are not a woman's touch,
you are just a narcotic dream,
my warm and poison love.
When could I have said no?
When could I have turned you from me,
when was I not infected with you?
When was I innocent of you?
There must have been a time.
Once again this quiet war ensues,
this set-piece battle of corruption and honor
with my always impermanent victory,
from which you retreat in silence, until the next time,
with a backward glance of hollow eyes.
| | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Okay, so...
I occasionally go to Burger King when I need to eat on the way somewhere. I'm not big on fast food, for several reasons, but when you haven't had dinner and need to be somewhere, the emphasis is more on fast than food.
Not being into fast food, I don't tend to go out of my way to have a variety of fast food experiences. I'll take the burger, fries, and coke, and then I'm on the road. Another consideration is containability. Tacos... not so much. Burritos, better. An Arby's Bacon Cheese & Cheddar... again, not so much. Chicken Nuggets... pretty containable, but with suspect content. Standard burger and fries... as long as you unwrap the burger as you eat it (that part's important), fairly containable.
All this to say, I usually get a Whopper with cheese. I also take them up on their slogan of old, "Have it your way." I go for only onion, only mustard, and only ketchup. Fairly simple, and I mostly had success in ordering, being understood, and getting the correct burger.
But then I decided I wanted more mustard and more ketchup. "Heavy" mustard and "heavy" ketchup, in BK-speak. And I've had maybe a 20% success rate. The problem is the combination of "only" and "heavy," I think. I tried, "Yes, can please have a number one with cheese, only ketchup, only mustard, only onion, with extra ketchup and extra mustard." Rarely worked. Usually I ended up repeating it several times, as they repeated it back to me, incorrectly, several times. Then I tried, "Yes, hi, could I please have a number one with cheese, with only heavy ketchup, only heavy mustard, and onions." That one got me heavy ketchup, heavy mustard, and heavy onions. Whichever way I tried, most of the time I ended up without the heavy ketchup and mustard, or with those and no onions, or with just onions, or any other combination. Pickles, one time.
I thought the problem might be the drive-thru aspect of it. I do much better at enunciating than I used to, but still some people have a hard time understanding me. So I figured going in to the restaurant and ordering in person would take care of that.
Nope. The only thing that changed was that I would get to see the confusion on their face as I tried to explain that yes, I wanted ketchup, and I did also want the onions, and the mustard, and could you make it heavy ketchup and heavy mustard. Or I would make my order, they'd ring it up without question, then give me heavy ketchup, regular mustard, and no onions. A couple times I got one with everything -- ketchup, mustard, onions... lettuce, tomato, pickle, mayonnaise, and whatever else happened to be within reach -- and I imagine the people in the back throwing up their hands and just piling it all on.
It happened again today. I've considered ordering something that is not, apparently, abnormal and hard to understand. But dammit, I like heavy ketchup, heavy mustard, and onions. I'm still trying to understand exactly what it is about this combination that seems to throw everything into confusion.
I'm not knocking fast food employees in any way. It's not them. It's some bad condiment karma or something. It's like the devil's tritone of condiments. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| No, really.
Chicken head.
I came home from work today, was walking up the steps to my building, and off to the side in the grass was... a chicken head. I looked at it a bit, saying to myself, "Is that what I think it is?" Yep. It was. I brought the dog out for her walk ("Remember to keep her away from the chicken head," I thought), then afterward came back out with a dishcloth that I was willing to part with. One of my neighbors was out there.
"Have you... er... did you see... uhm... chicken head?" I asked.
"Yeh, some of the Mexicans sacrifice them." He's Hispanic, so I figure he would know.
"Like, seriously?" He kind of equivocated at that point, so I'm not sure he was totally serious. It's not a huge freak-out thing for me, though I think it's unethical and a poor path to spirituality. I dunno. Anyway, he demonstrated how they probably killed it... you grab its head and give it one or two good shakes, and off comes the body. I didn't see any blood around, so I'm thinking they didn't kill the chicken right out there, but somebody killed a chicken for some reason, somewhere in the vicinity. I picked up the chicken head with the cloth and gave it an ignominious interment in the dumpster ("Sorry, chicken," I said as I tossed it).
I've seen a lot of things happen in my neighborhood. This is a new one.
Chicken head. Yeesh. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| okay, so my friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) delta_bond posted a link to an article about a NASA astronaut named Edgar Mitchell who now claims that aliens have visited the earth (wouldn't surprise me a bit, either). So you know those hover-things that come up when you, well, hover your mouse over a link? Here's what came up:
Like I said, which of these things is not like the other?
the internet is weird. | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| I used to drink tequila and mescal. I ate the worm a number of times. I'd heard it was supposed to be hallucinogenic. Never did anything for me except kick in my gag reflex if I wasn't careful. Annoyed me terribly at the time (the lack of hallucinations, not the gag reflex).
This being the backstory to a question that just occurred to me. If you ate a bookworm, what visions would you have? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm getting about a 3 in 5 success rate for people actually understanding the "I [ketchup] Cats" sticker. So I'm inaugurating a new, slightly more self-explanatory line:
 | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| This seems the most, er, fair. Thanks to owl_tn [edit: and wintermoon3 also, sorry I missed ya the first time =) ], btw, for the promised sale = ) ... it's looking like I'm going to go on CafePress. It's easy, if nothing else. I need a little more research, and ought to actually buy a domain name so I can have my own site for fun & games, as well as to get crawled so I get into search engines.
Anyway.
Now the question is tartar sauce or cocktail sauce?
Hmmm. I [tartar sauce] [christian fish] ... another bumper sticker....
The FSM was just made for a bumper sticker like this....
Got a few others in mind too. Like, this (roughly):
...which will have the center cut out so you can have whatever you want for dinner on your bumper. Ford, Chevy, or Nissan, even.
At one point I seriously thought about making little Darwin-Fish feet so aspiring soldiers in the so-called culture war could go around sticking them on christian bumper fish. Can't quite bring myself to condone such an act, though. But damn if it isn't tempting when someone sporting a fish cuts me off, honks at me, or flips me the bird in traffic. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| Now, to my Christian friends and my Darwinian friends (and recognizing that the two are not mutually exclusive, to most people), let me make clear that these graphics are about the (over)usage of symbols vs. the (under)usage of critical thought and actual discussion.
That being said, the latest additions to my (ahem, copyrighted) bumper decoration collection:
 and 
Note the loving detail of actual fish forks and fish knives. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| I thought of this several years ago. Just decided to make it last night. I'm gonna try to have it mass-produced and sell it. Oh, yeh... as of now it's copyrighted =)~~
 | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| ... and even more ironic is the result:
cribbed from LadyBugAdria, she of the Black Adder quotes and pants-peeingly funny icons =)~~ | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'd almost lost this poem in the shuffle, the yahoo group to which I originally posted it no longer exists.
It's been altered slightly from the original.
Hello, my old friend.
Once more I feel your shadowed touch
your warm embrace
and numbness given with no price asked
but that I should want more.
Need me, you whisper.
Want me more than life or love.
Recline in my embrace
and dream of what remains undone.
I will comfort you, you sigh,
why are you so afraid?
There is nothing that cannot wait awhile.
Why live when you can dream?
No,I say, no more, not again.
You are not my mother’s milk,
you are not a woman's touch,
you are just a narcotic dream,
my warm and poison love.
When could I have said no?
When could I have turned you from me,
when was I not infected with you?
When was I innocent of you?
There must have been a time.
Once again this quiet war ensues,
this set-piece battle of corruption and honor
with always impermanent victory,
from which you retreat in silence, until the next time,
with a backward glance of hollow eyes. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| Finally got a scanner. Actually, a scanner/printer. It's okay... eventually I'll need a larger scanner (this is only 8.5x11), but for now it'll do. Plus I got it using my $500 gift card to Target that I got for buying a new Saturn. Guess where everyone's holiday gifts are coming from this year...? =)
Anyway, I spent a week+ in Ohio, my stepfather had emergency quadruple bypass surgery. Thing is, this guy's healthier than I am. He's 65 and biked 100 miles in one day last summer (or was it 50?). He's never smoked, never drank, eats pretty healthy, doesn't use salt... and then found out he has hardening of the arteries, something that's just a disease, not related to how you live. Quite a shock for him & everyone else.
(Some melodramatic stuff I decided to delete)
Chuck took a little longer to recover than some people, so though he was never at a real danger point, there was always this kind of awareness that things could slide pretty quick. After that kind of surgery, a minor complication (like a little bit of fluid in the lungs) can quickly become a major complication and kill you.
So, it was a stressful week.
During this stressful week, I grabbed a magazine. I'd brought my art stuff to the hospital with me, though I hadn't done any serious drawing, I think, since the summer. I'd tried to draw my mother while I was there in June, and it didn't come out (I think partly 'cause she kept talking to Chuck the whole time). So I knew that I need practice drawing portraits. I sat down and drew the celebrity on the cover of the magazine:
( Name the Celebrity - warning, I enlarged this quite a bit since I first posted it )
=) | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| It's 04:52, that's 4:52 AM for 12-hour people. Got my old computer from my previous job in exchange for doing some internet work for them. Had my old disks from there anyway (shh). So I finally got to pull all the stuff off them, including my scanned art. So all my old art that's already posted is now on Photobucket. Still need to get a scanner so I can scan what I've done since then. My old scanner is 16-bit and the card that runs it makes my computer go bleep and not boot. Need to see if I can get a SCSI scanner or whatever, as long as it's a flatbed, for fairly cheap.
Anyway, haven't gotten to change the links here, so the pictures won't show up yet. Will get to that.
Would like to post sometime on new developments in other areas. I found I have much more of a vocal range than I thought. I recorded myself, it actually sounds more-or-less like a normal person singing. Blows my mind. I'm the guy whose vocal chords have been pretty much shredded by tumor, scar tissue, and surgeries. And for all the times I've had it pointed out to me that my voice isn't normal, for all my insecurity about it (I hate my speaking voice, with a passion, it's just another thing that separates me from "normal" people), I've never quite given up on singing. Twenty years after first recording a song with vocals, and knowing, at the time, how painfully inadequate that attempt was, I recorded "House of the Rising Sun" and "Pissing in a River" in a more-or-less normal singing voice. Just blows my mind.
Ok, I'm tired so I'm waxing sentimental, self-indulgent, and self-involved. (Then again, aren't most blogs and livejournals exercises in literary narcissism, to somewhat misuse the word?)
I'm at the office, so I probably oughta do some work, even if it is 5am.
=) | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| As of today all pictures will be broken links. I'm starting a new job, and thought it might be considerate to not leave my artwork on my former company's server. Especially since as of tomorrow I'm no longer the systems administrator, and I'd like to keep a good recommendation from these people, so I don't want the new systems admin finding my artwork taking up company megabytes.
It'll be back up when a) I have time and internet access enough to find b) a new home for my scanned artwork.
Love ya!
=)
-T | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| I almost wish I was still addicted to narcotics. I'm gonna need them until we find out who won. And if Bush wins, I'm gonna *want* them afterwards...
No art, just predictions:
Two possibles:
1) Kerry wins by a thin enough margin in one or more battleground states that it stays in court awhile. But Kerry wins.
2) With all the new voters, the Democrats actually working together for a change, and the people of all stripes Bush has alienated (I personally know two hard-core Republicans who aren't voting Bush), Kerry will win the popular vote by a 3 to 5 percent margin, which will translate into a decisive electoral victory. Possibly edging toward landslide if he takes enough battleground states.
You heard it here. Feel free to mock me if I'm wrong. If I'm right, I dunno, send me money or offer me favors of a personal nature or something. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Learning to Draw?
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