Not Likely to Be Playing Tonight

For a cardiac stress test, usually they put you on a treadmill to get you all pumped and then take a look at what your heart is doing.  That I've done before but this time it was chemical.  Whoa ...

But that gets ahead of the story because the first gala event is to get a stick for an IV ... well ... multiple sticks ... or ... just think Old Man and the Sea.

That got me radioactive and the machines like radioactive because that goes around my body and they can watch it.  This part is odd but ok and then, heya, take a seat in the waiting room ... for an hour while this stuff gets you radioactive all over.

So I'm rolling with it, a bit cheesed off at Life, the Universe and Everything because they wanted me to do a fast for this ... but rolling with it.

After that, a roll through a CAT scan machine and we all love those ... but it's boring.

That was about fifteen minutes and Miss Vicky took me over to another room and that's where they shoot you up with their go juice ... but the IV didn't work anymore.

That vein was blowed out and I told them the back of my hand has worked ok so, sure, let's go fishing and (sob) no fish.

We're showing a bit of stoic coolness as one series of sticks is a drag, a second series is a pain in the ass, and a third series ... you have got to be bullshitting me!

So, nah, I'll skip playing until the morrow.

That wasn't the beauty part, tho, as the go juice was seriously strange.  I'm used to the one which makes your body feel like it's so hot but this was a different one.  This really wasn't so terrible but it was scary because it felt like I couldn't breathe and my body was ultra strange.  They anticipate panic and they were cool about it, asking how I'm feeling and reassuring this will subside fairly soon.

There's no news to report and this isn't a tale of woe so much as, holy flying salamanders, this was strange.


The first coolness is getting this out of the way and the regulars have seen the saga of the last attempt to get there.  It really is that much of a bitch.  So, success this time.  No idea of results because those will go back to Miss Kersa in Fort Worth.

The big coolness also is talking to people.  Everyone talks so easily there.  We were sitting outside in-between times and I saw this guy toolin' by on a really cool four-wheeler.  You will see every kind of wheelchair out there but this was stylin'.  It looked all Italian and had kind of a metalflake finish which sounds tasteless but looked cool.

So I was watching and somewhere in there I said 'nice ride' so he flipped back around to hang out.  He was talking about how some guy got shot over at Polk Street.  That was significant because there's another VA facility over there.  He was telling me in a way of saying it's been way, way wrong how it went for a lot of people and still does.  He said if he needs something, he will use a facility in the hospital to send a message to the director.  He said he doesn't back off, who's going to scare him after being in penitentiary for nine years.  He wasn't trying to shock me but rather he was telling me to keep pushing.

There's Randy upstairs and he was there before we got there and was still there after I had been there some time because you go in and out of the lab area and blah, blah for an hour in-between.  Yevette was talking to everybody and she was talking to him because he was bent about Syria.  Why do they announce they put fifty Americans on the ground there, they might as well have put a bounty on them.  He was saying it's crazy because you can't win anything with only an air war and it makes no sense what they do.

I'm not engaging in this as a debate because I'm listening, I really want to hear how he sees it.  His biggest problem was the idea of pulling out directly and leaving good people stranded.  The man was in-country so he knows and I didn't hear him say anything about 'damn ragheads' or so.  His only point was we can't abandon them.

I did not contest that because I wanted to know and who am I to tell him anything after he has been in-service in Iraq.  This is not 'studying the species' but rather getting to know people I respect.

After all he gave for Iraq, his only concern was I hope they will be ok.  He wants to get out but he doesn't want to leave anyone screwed-over by doing it.


(Ed:  how does this work with Gandhi?)

The Vietnam combat was largely draftees and these aren't war hawks.  America asked them to go and they went.  I have all respect for everyone out there and I suspect it's unanimous that no-one has any respect for the people who sent the military over there in the first place.


Sorry but I want you to get to know some of the vets out there because there are so many talking heads on television who sound like experts but don't really know anything.  These vets know and many were damn lucky to have survived it.  These are the people who get wasted in these wars and are why I have no idea what peace is like; I've never seen it.

I want the kids to see it and you can stop it.  The people stopped it once before.  Of course I want the kids to have peace but it sounds too sappy to say that so I go for the full-blast cannonballs at the ones who send them.  I see all the time the people who have been sent already and it's nothing like they tell you on television.


Yevette said there is no peace anywhere.  I said, sure there is ... in Vietnam.  Ever since America pulled out, the country has enjoyed peace and prosperity.  There was no Red Menace of Soviet troops spreading across the globe, it was and remains a Washington fantasy.