Living With Chronic Pain (No, Beer Is Not Always the Answer)

The New York Times is running a three-part series on living with chronic pain. (The link is to Part Two, and from there you can also get to Part One. The series concludes next week.)

It's fairly basic stuff, but it's nice to see this acknowledgment of the issues involved. For the past fourteen months, I've "enjoyed" a crash course in chronic pain. Torn rotator cuffs, the doctor told me. "Not much we can do for it," he said. Bad news. And depressing, too, I discovered as the months wore by. Because that's the nightmare of chronic pain: The body hurts, but the spirit hurts more. I can't speak for others, but in my case, the pain transformed daily life into drudgery, and the "future" into a burden. Every day, I was just a little less interested in the world around me, less willing to engage with friends, family, work.

This story has a happy ending. In September, a different doctor provided a different diagnosis: bone spurs. Those can be fixed. Last week he operated to remove bone spurs on my right shoulder. He'll "fix" the left shoulder as soon as the right one heals. But for millions of people, there won't be a happy ending. Either the physical issues can't be resolved, or they lack the funds needed to pay for good medical care.

So today I raise my glass in celebration of modern medicine -- and pray for all those who wake each morning knowing that their's will be a day of pain rather than pleasure.

New Cartoon Collections on DVD

If you're my age (54), you probably grew up watching cartoons and developed an appreciation for and love of high-quality animation. Rejoice! There are some new collections out on DVD. There's also a first-rate round-up of what's available in today's "Critic's Choice" column in the New York Times.

(Tip for the day: every Tuesday, this Times column reviews new DVD releases, focusing on the off-beat, unexpected, and non-bestseller stuff. Great way to build your collection.)

Damn the Neo-Prohibitionists. Full Speed Ahead -- For Common Sense

I support ANYONE who is willing to stand up to the lunacy of the neo-prohibitionists (who, in my opinion, aren't solving a problem. They ARE the problem.) Problem is, few people are willing to, especially politicians. That's one of the most unnerving of the similarities between the anti-saloon campaign of a century ago and the prohibitionist crusade of today: Most Americans have been so brainwashed on the subject that they toss reason out the window and react with jerking knees instead of open minds.

As a result, it's tough for the voices of reason to be heard. I've written several op-ed pieces on the topic -- but none have made it to print. When I submitted one of them to the Des Moines Register's "Iowa View" column a few years back, the editors took a grand total of five minutes to reject it by email. Too incendiary - -or so I assume. But hey, I've got this blog instead.

And once in awhile, someone does break through the barricade of unreason. There's a terrific piece by David Harsanyi in this month's online issue of Reason Magazine. Here's his website/blog. His new book is Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into A Nation of Children. Right on, brother, right on.

ADDENDUM (posted about an hour after the original entry): Yikes! Someone's webcrawler is busy. I'm already getting spam from the L*iber*tar*ians (to which I add asterisks only as a way to slow the google-crawl). So just to clarify: I am not a L*iber*tar*ian. Indeed, I think government is one of the best ideas human beings have had since they learned to walk upright. Laws are good. Taxes are fine. Dumbass ideas about "protecting" me from alcohol (and pate and butter and frency fries....) are not.

Know Thy Pleasures. Know Thy Self

Okay, speaking of the marvels of the human brain (see previous post) -- I expended part of yesterday musing about "guilty pleasures." You know. The stuff we wallow in, resishing every second of trashy delight -- and believe, in our guilty minds, to be a total waste of time. For me it’s things like “Survivor." Anything by Penny Vincenzi (that's likely what prompted my musings: I'm in the thick of one of her novels right now).

What fascinates me about guilty pleasures is not that I’m apt to conceal them. (Of course! That’s the guilty part.) What’s more interesting is what happens when I confess them. People who know me are visibly startled to learn that I’m a devoted, die-hard, watch-every-minute fan of "Survivor" (okay, "Top Chef," too). (Well, alright. You can add "Project Runway" to the list.)

Those things seems so .... not me. For reasons that are lost on me, other people see me as an agressive, brainiac intellectual who devotes hours to reading "The New York Review of Books," thinks great thoughts, and watches no TV at all (and when I do it's public television or nothing).

Wrong. All of it. If someone wants to know me, really KNOW me, they need to know that I watch "Survivor" and devour Vincenzi's tales of the rich and neurotic. Put another way, guilty pleasures are a sparking-clean, uncurtained picture window into our personalities. They tell us and others more about "who we are" than our street faces. Not, mind you, that I understand WHAT our GPs tell us about ourselves. Do they reveal our child selves, now buried in adult worries? Do they hint at how we’d spend our time if left to our own devices in a perfect world where food and shelter were provided worry-free?

I dunno. But I do know that if you want to know me, know my guilty pleasures first. So. What's your guilty pleasure? And what does it tell me about you?

Music and Drinking

Okay, in a million years I would not have thought of or about this. But now I have, and I must say: the human brain never ceases to amaze me. Start here with W. Blake Gray's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. Then read Stan Hieronymus's take on the topic. I love knowing that Vinnie Cilurzo is a believer (and that his dad loved Sinatra). It's, well, just too marvelous. Too marvelous for words. Etc.

Who Knew? The Poop on the World Toilet Summit

In my former life -- okay, one of my former lives -- I wrote a book about plumbing, and the subject still intrigues me. So imagine my delight: A World Toilet Summit. In New Delhi, no less. (God, I'd love to know the number of flush toilets per capita in that city!). My virtual pal Dave Praeger is there, no surprise, and, even less surprising, is blogging about the event. All kidding aside, it's a serious subject and I love that someone besides me thinks so.