bak 2 wk

moving right along. yesterday I went back to work. It was oddly comforting to be wrapped up in my protective little cubicle, like a little borg drone, jacked back into the law "firm" (pun intended) teat. work floods in, work trickles out.... (ok maybe i'm not so fast...). Aside from the fact that my boss kept smiling at me, (and he NEVER used to smile at me) nothing has changed. Because I was in a different office a month before surgery, people assumed i just got back from that office.

my underground cancer status is safe. Unless they happen to check out the joan crawford-stiff-backed walk i've got going...

fun & games

thought I'd pass on some of the things which have been occupying my mind of late.

First, a really cool site which lets you build and animate little robots made of nothing but lines and joints. See sodaplay.com (courtesy of The Ex, who sent me this site).

Then, yesterday i visited van cortlandt park, and saw the riverside riding stable. Lots of great horses, riding lessons, horse boarding, right here in da bronx! Of course van cortlandt park is also great for running. I like the whole riverdale area too. nice.

Osamu Tezuka, who created both astro boy and kimba the white lion, childhood obsessions of mine.





Tomorrow i go back to work, so my delightful slacker pastimes will probably have to cease. sigh.

Dead Malls and the Homeless Problem

I just had a brilliant idea. Why not use all the dead malls as housing for the homeless? You could put bunkbeds in the Strawberrys and Limiteds, use the abandoned Wendy's and Brown's Chicken as kitchens, and use the sears appliance sections as laundromats.

This would accomplish several things.
First, the homeless could be protected from the elements and kept comfy whilst sleeping in a different place each night, which, you know they love to do.

SEcond, you could keep track of them (perhaps using the abandoned Wizs and Radio Shacks as control centers). This would of course be for their own protection from asshole kids who like to take baseball bats and tire irons to them (and not for any nefarious, big brother like purpose....of course).

Third, you could organize the less helpless homeless denizens to protect the mall property itself from vandalism.

Fourth, you could have a built in labor force to take care of small repairs in the mall, and maybe even to do some gardening and flower arrangement.

Fifth, you could develop a small army of recovered, healthy homeless, eager to protect their land.

Sixth, you could have play wars between various malls, say the Dixie Square Mall versus Randhurst, in which your little army develops its skills.

Eighth, you could then unite all the homeless malls, and TAKE OVER THE WORLD....BWAHAHAHAHEHEHAheh heh uh uh, um. choke. cough. I, er, meant um SAVE the world..., yeah that's it...

ok ok i didn't mean any of it. It was a drug and fear induced dream.

So, did i ever tell you my idea for terraforming strip malls....and developing new species of plants that thrive on linoleum and french fry grease?

I'd walk all night just to buy you a new pair of shoes

or maybe i'd run.

I just walked about 2 miles. First real walk apres surgery, and it felt good. I walked along a short section of trail in back of our apartment which is really pretty, mucho flora and fauna. Sometimes I stopped, shut my eyes and moved my arms like I was running, trying to visualize my running form. Hey, whatever gets ya through.

today, the worries about the future surface. Too soon, i tell them, i'm not recovered from surgery yet! Don't i get a grace period? Seems I don't. This constant worry is probably why i HAVE cancer in the first freakin place. All that black shit has to go somewhere.

nonetheless, here's to running, even if you are running scared. May I run again soon, and long.

we like tha sun*

Sleeping after this surgery is not easy. I have to be propped up 45 degrees like an enbalmed corpse at an open casket funeral (hands gently folded, expression serene). perhaps, given my condition, that was not the best analogy to use, but, well, it does evoke the position.

However, I did manage to sleep quite well last night, using my unusually gifted kinesthetic sense to contort myself into positions that were only mildly uncomfortable, whilst maintaining the requisite angle. Ah I knew my dance career would be good for something besides knee aches down the road. And I woke up feeling only slightly kinked, and required no percoset to get out of bed.

Pink and Abby helped, by flailing about on the bed in paroxysms of sun worship, waving their legs like upended bugs, attacking each other, squirming to be petted, and otherwise comporting themselves in such an embarrassing and ridiculous manner as to make it impossible to lay about fretting about dying.

The sun's out, i guess that's what all the fuss is about. I think sometimes I have seasonal affective disorder, in that, after a few cloudy days I tend to be even more morose than usual. When the sun comes out, I, like the cats, get irrationally happy for an instant or two.

*rathergood's megahit, paraphrased

notes from underground

not exactly underground.

more like i'm on the second floor, with a nice view of a gravel roof and some cars parked in a lot. There are lots of nurses with various tubes and clear plastic bags, the contents of which they like to put into you. There are moving beds and expanding socks which massage your legs, and little, cheery measuring cups in the toilet for seeing exactly what comes out. (i guess they like to keep track of the in/out ratios).

Bloggrilla is out of surgery, walking and talking. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, the whole thing was so novel to me that it was actually kinda fun. But NOW i'm ready to gtfo (get the fk out).

I am percosetted and ambianned beyond all recognition, not to mention virtually boobless (however, I do have some very prepubescent looking buds. Which is not unpleasant). My skin is greasy, my hair is very 1980s electroshock looking, I walk like joan crawford with a rod up her butt, and I do not give a crap. Now for someone who is as self conscious as I am, this is highly unusual.

Oh, and upon waking from anasthesia, the most pressing question on my lips was: "do polar bears have tails?"

the mind is indeed a strange thing.

Update and sad note:
another thoroughbred faces surgery:
poor pretty guy. Hope he makes it thru surgery and has a long, happy career impregnating mares.

blade running

tomorrow is slice and dice day. I go "under the knife."

I have a confession to make. I was raised by a rabid christian scientist and so have not really even had my share of normal doctor experiences. Never took aspirin growing up, never even had novocaine at the dentist.

Ok ok, things have changed since then, after all, I rebelled early and hard against anything vaguely christian science.

But still, my experience of doctors is limited. And tomorrow i have major surgery.

Yeah, i think that qualifies as scary.

I'm a jeepster for your love

today i felt so good all day that i can't even believe that i have the big C. In fact, this may be a relatively cancer-free post.

I was downloading some music yesterday and came across T.Rex's "get it on, bang a gong." Now I was a wee thing when I first heard that song (which tells u that I'm old), and, to quote another old rocker (lou reed) "my life was changed by rock and roll."

Well, perhaps my life wasn't changed, but I loved the song immediately. Unfortunately, it must not have been top 40 or perhaps it was plunging from high rotation or something, because i didn't hear it again until years later. I mean, perhaps decades. And the trouble was, I couldn't understand the words the first time i heard it, so there was no way i could find out what it was. (It was also hard to find things out in those days. I am continuously amazed by the fact that I didn't have a computer until I was in my 20s and no net until...well you can guess when).

So. flash forward. the next time I heard that song was at a loft party in williamsburg (when it was still cheap). I met a man at that party who later became a boyfriend, although not a very good one. At any rate, a friend and I were the manhattanites in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and attempting to charm the art school dropouts, when someone played that song and I lost all vestige of sophistication. I grabbed my friend, forgot about boys and went to dance to the song. That moment of elation got me saddled with a bad two year relationship and my life shifted again.

fast forward again to now. Now some slicked up version of that song is on a TV commercial featuring some women walking around in flouncy dresses and slow motion, probably trying to charm some B-school dropouts.

At any rate, i downloaded it.

So, why is this blog titled "i'm a jeepster for your love?" I dunno. I don't think I intended to write about bang a gong. But, it's another good one from TRex, so there you have it.

cancer-free posting (lest you forgot)

doom and gloom

I have been told I should be blogging about the current situation in my life, but I've been loathe to do it, because 1. it's mind bogglingly awful (for me anyway) 2. my tendency with health issues is to go underground like a wild animal to nurse my wounds; 3. I've kept this blog deliberately light, because, hey, it's more fun for me to blog about random happenings and cool science news than it is to reveal the cracks and dark underbelly of my real life; 4. I have trust issues and hate to reveal weakness; 5. It scares me to talk about it.

Having said all that, here's the windup....
and here's the pitch: I have cancer. Just diagnosed. Won't tell you where yet, perhaps I could do a guessing game to keep things fun. Guess where the cancer is? Peekaboo! I didn't see you! you snuck up on me you little devil you. Now we'll see who's boss...

At any rate, I've kinda kept it secret because people get weird around cancer. Suddenly they look at you as if you have those little x's in your eyes like in the cartoons. Or they act as if merely by getting cancer you dropped 100 IQ points. However, there are perks. The sympathy card is EASILY played. As is the "opt out" card. I can now, without fear of seeming antisocial, opt out of ANY social event I want to. Also, of course i have a built in excuse for being a. cranky, b. tired, c. completely incompetent.

And, even tho I'm having surgery on friday, I'm still running and/or doing yoga every fcking day, and plan to all thru chemo and whatever other treatment it takes to get this thing outta me.

so it's not all horror and gloom. Mostly I try not to let myself go into the inevitable bad place. Mostly, I'm ok. mostly.

It's a good day when the waves aren't dark,
but instead, play at your feet,
like hungry kittens chasing your ankles.
Until something gathers on the left,
and leans in -- old, yellow, cracked.
Rusted hinges and broken engine
laying there, wind whining through.
And you wake up with a taste in your mouth
like waking from the dead.

icy tales, random museums

Incredible journey:
Pink and Abby brave the elements in this compelling tale of two kittens who cross an icy, post apocalyptic landscape in search of the human who once gave them tuna.







the happy ending has them snoozing, and dreaming of past struggles and triumphs on the ice, a la Island MacKenzie











Humans were not built for too many choices. Marketing is a very very recent phenomena. our ancestors couldn't possibly imagine having a choice in what they ate or wore or did. Choice disturbs our limbic brain. It causes anxiety and cancers. Nothing was ever accomplished by anyone who had a choice. go ahead. prove me wrong.

But, choice is here to stay. so we need to evolve new brain circuits to handle it. Perhaps we can recruit some other organs such as the liver, or heart, to process choices. Perhaps new senses are in order. New implants. Borg technology, or AI interfaces. I, for one, am fully, FULLY prepared to embrace the new transhuman paradigms. Sign me up. Right away, please, there's not much time.