#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN – WHAT DAY IS IT? A LITTLE VIOLA ACTION, HOW NOT TO DO THE DISHES, AND QUICK HEALTH UP-DATE, AND SOME KAFKAESQUE MASQUED BALLE FROM THE HEALTH CARE-INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY COMPLEX.

This title is more along the lines of the sort of titles I created when I posted about all of my real homeless adventures. As this is a mixed bag of my confuse-a-what™ style, which I must admit are some of my favorite things to write about. A mixed bag of random whatever. Since I spend most of my life being amused to random whatever and the attendant stupidities I, and my fellow humans commit with abandon, all to avoid the existential dread of shuffling off this mortal coil, since I don't think a cure for death is right around the corner, which would really put a strain on the “sandwich generation.”


I have noticed lately that there are several different interpretations of where we all are on the whole time line thing. I'm not talking about the differences between the Russian Orthodox Calendar, which is 12 days ahead, or 25 days behind the Western calendar. I'm talking about what moment in time we are all currently existing in. We don't seem to be able to agree on the most basic of measurements, such as, minutes, hours, and the ever important, day. Forget the Hebrew calender. There is a misapprehension there, that he who has the most years, wins, or something. Last time I looked, they were up in the 5000 + and counting.

Maybe in the Tip.it universe; I'm pretty sure Saturday was July 27th, 2013. Glad to see I'm not alone.

JC is most definitely south'rn and when he starts out “the other day, that guy, you remember, honey?...” we could be talking about 3 months ago, some teenager cashier-girl at the Checkers, and, I don't remember anything that happened this morning, so I have my own peculiar concepts of time and people, and just specificities, in general. I spend the better part of every day talking to people, who may be engaged in the most heated of discussions, but not a damned one of them is specific about time. They're a little more correct regarding participants and as to actual events? If I didn't see it, it didn't happen. I just nod and go along. Again, I feel like James Thurber, when I start hearing about Carl, from JC's buddy, Jack, who was locked in the cellar, when his maw went to feed the pigs and she dropped his cell phone, which was hooved to death and Carl nearly starved. I am not sure if Carl is someone's cousin, friend, or someone who was a friend of a cousin, or just a gruesome article on page 4 of the weekly Plant City paper; a rag that still exists. But, I digress.


The kind of time I'm talking about are the clocks or calenders in my own head, and in the heads of my friends, too. This is probably some kind of new disorder and I am sure that clinical trials are being conducted and there will be a pill for it. It will be added to the DSM V, along with “alphabet song” disorder. They have pills for laughing at morbid and mordantly funny stuff and crying at nothing; I thought that was just bad taste, and Drama Queen behavior. My shrink and I howled over that, because ain't nobody gonna take away my fun!

Karma's a bitch; it bit me in the ankle, 'cause I recycled material for a Wednesday check in.

Anyway, the time thing. Being as how I'm lazy and am not anywhere near Facebook, I'll just say this. I thought I was doing my Wednesday Check in, but it was Thursday, but it wasn't . It actually was Friday. Hell's Bells. At least, a fellow ROWer, Lynnette Conroy comforted me and said she had a similar problem. Maybe part of the confusion lies with this new drug I'm on. It tends to slow my thought process a bit, but it sure has slowed down the tremors, so I'm cool with it for now. However, it makes me no less out of it, than before. JC wanted a Dr. Pepper and I was on my way to the kitchen for something, and said I would bring him one.


I walked into the bathroom, shut the door and just stood there for about 3 minutes, wondering why on earth, I was there. I walked back out, went to the living room and sat down to eat. JC said, “What happened to my Dr. Pepper?” Oh. Yeah. Off I go and retrieve it for him. Whatever I wanted or thought I needed must not have been that urgent, because I don't remember coming back with anything else. When you start living your life by “reverse-engineering,” or using some kind of forensics voodoo, it may be times for a keeper. I've spent hours upon hours looking for shit I've misplaced, mostly by “re-enacting the crime scene,” so to speak. I always try to put it back where I know I'll find it, since I can't see it for the most part. As Dr. Phil would say, “How's that workin' for ya.” (I loathe Dr. Phil.)


So, meds are working, even if I'm just as air-headed as ever. I have been able to play my viola, when I'm “on,” and at times, it sounds like the old me. Endurance has to be built, but everything is there just been waiting. Wolf is very happy. This friend of JC's is just perfect. He's never had a private lesson, but know lots about stringed instruments and is a sponge. He damn near made me cry; he said it was an “honor to meet me and agree to help him.” Mind-blowing, but so nice to hear that.

This sounds like a report card. With all the viola-playing and fiddling with computers (I had another sick one to fix for someone) I left Thursday's dinner dishes in the sink, until this evening. I made black beans and rice. JC and I ate all of it (them?) so I left the dishes to soak in the pan, with the lid on. For about 2 1/2 days. We eat simply and fairly healthy and I don't cook that often. So I go to do the dishes and take the lid off this pan, that two bowls, 2 spoons and remnants, mind you, not a half a-serving, just remnants. Or, maybe revenants; undead-dead, because Holy of Holys, Mary, Mother of God, and Christ on a bicycle! When I took the lid off of that pan full of 2 1/2 day-old bean water, it had fermented into something so toxic, I am surprised the sink didn't melt.

Seriously, I half expected the HazMat people to show up, along with SWAT teams and the CDC. Whatever that shit was it would have made splendid tear gas for Riot Control. As a bio-chemical weapon I'm sure it's weapons-grade, because, even after I rinsed the bowls, lid and pot and then washed same, I could still SMELL IT. My ET (essential tremor) leaves me with a very poor sense of smell. But I did find out that my tear ducts and salivary ducts work just swell. So, the lesson here is, “rinse all of your pots, pans, bowls, but DO NOT leave the lid on the pot.”

That was some seriously bad ju-ju there; if I'd dropped the pan, it probably would have exploded.

Before we lurch off to the land of Kafka, I am about halfway through a DOD wipe of another mysterious laptop. I, with my usual derring-don't, of course, snooped all over the thing, before I wiped the drive. Someone's been bad, in a white-collar kind of way, shall we say. Since there are so many different ways to get around Windows laughably stupid “security” devices, it's easy to see what wasn't meant to be seen. Damn, I would so love to do this for reals, as in, a forensics computer analyst. These DOD wipes take hours to do; in essence, the tools erase all data from the hard drive 7 times. There is a complicated matrix used for each wipe. Back in the day, when you “deleted” a file or folder, you could run a global search from a C: prompt, using “?” in place of the first character of the file name. This way you could easily restore Uncle Vinny's recipe for gunpowder, or whatever. The principle is the same, but with additional algorithms to account for any possible loose end.


Once this is done, I'll (we; me and my silent partner) will load Windows 7 (meh) so the customer has a good and safe operating system. I always learn things from stuff like this. So, if I ever earn any illicit money, or want to hatch up a scheme to steal the internet, I know what NOT to do.

This is an actual error. Windows is quite possibly the stupidest operating system, EVER. JAVA and Chrome suck, giant dog balls, too.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” (“Metamorphosis”) Gah! Franz Kafka is undoubtedly one of the most influential writers of the 20^th century when it comes to existentialism. His writings dealt with and helped to shape the archetypes of alienation, parent-child conflict, characters on terrifying quests and labyrinthine bureaucracies. He was an influence for later writers, like Herbert Marcuse, who wrote “The One Dimensional Man,” although Marcuse was arguing more from the politics of such existence and a socialist one, at that, as he criticized both capitalists and communists. Marcuse championed the outsiders, the minorities of his time and his criticisms with bureaucracies are due to the oppositional nature of personal freedoms such bureaucracies inevitable bring. Enough with the socio-political-lit thing. I've been going through my own state of bug-ology recently. Or we could call it “hot potato,” where I'm the potato. It goes like this:

I am also  watching "Breaking Bad" on NetFlix. The 3rd season episode, "Kafkaesque" is one of the finest things I've ever seen, bar none.

I have a prescription that is ongoing prior to my receiving my Medicare, and my shrink, understanding that I suffer from depression, has always signed off on my paper work, so “LILLY CARES” (that's news to me) can continue supplying me with Cymbalta at 257.00 a pop every month. All of my other meds have been generic and I was with a plan through my grocery store's pharmacy that allowed me to pay 4 to 9 dollars for them.



So, with my active prescription in hand, I tried to get my Cymbalta refilled, 2 weeks ago. The pharmacy couldn't fill it, because it hadn't been added to my drug “formulary,” even though they have the prescription, the need the Dr. Auth#.  They faxed my Shrink's office, who in turn, faxed Lilly. I have about 7 pills left and yes, I DO need them. Sad to say, I have been clinically depressed since the age of 15 or 16. More existential dread. Maybe I was channeling the future me having to deal with the following bullshit.

I am so glad and thankful that I am not suicidal. That has never been an issue with me. It was with my mother. I figure I'm just either too damn dumb or stubborn, or gee, maybe I still have something to contribute, or people to pester; pick 'em.

I kept calling, and going back up to the Pharmacy, and calling the shrink's office. He practices in 2 different locations, so it's hard to get to the receptionist. She passes the buck, saying she faxed Lilly. I call the pharmacy and they got nuthin'. I'm running out of pills.

A week ago last Friday, I had to go to the pharmacy to get some of my other meds refilled (I know, such an exciting life!) and they haven't heard from anyone; no shrink's office, no Lilly. Bupkus. I talked to Dr. Jones, our pharmacist and started crying. Great! The one thing I hate, hate, hate, in the whole world! Crying! Fuck! Crying is for weenuses! I get what I came for and stepped away from the counter.

This might make me cry, but I don't know. I was so blissed-out over a tiger roaring 2 feet from me, I didn't see his buddy on the roof, until he jumped down a nano-second later. I'd probably stand there grinning like a loon, whilst being chomped to death.

I call my shrink's office; it's about 4:25. I talk to the receptionist. She's sounding rather hostile and says, “Look, we faxed the stuff to Lilly, to the Pharmacy, blah blah blah.... okay?” I held still for a minute, and then I said, “No, it's not okay.” I was being honest. I wasn't abusive, I was just being honest. I could have said, “No, it's not all right! I've been fucking depressed since I was 16 years old. My life is in the shitter and I have more ability, talent and drive in EVERYTHING, than you will EVER have in ANYTHING, and I FUCKED it all up!” But, I didn't. She says to me, “Well, maybe I can help, hold please...” and puts me back on hold, where I sit until the phones close at 5 pm, and I am mercifully killed off, telephony-wise.

Now, of course, thank God I'm on medication for my tremors because I was shaking so badly from all of that stupid bullshit. I probably needed a time-out and she deals with a lot of people who are waaaay worse off than I. I make it through the weekend, and on Monday, I get an authorization from my insurance company to be treated by my shrink? WTF? Who contacted them? I didn't. I was told that Big Pharma (i.e. Lilly) was on the hot plate for this, by everyone who wasn't Ely Lilly. I didn't ask for this. 

So, I call my supplemental insurance company and talk to someone named Sonia, who sounds like she should be a Hostess at a Supper Club in Vegas. Easy meat. When I question her regarding the authorization for the Cymbalta, she launches into what has to be one of the most hilarious I-haven't-a-fucking-clue-what-my-job-is-here explanations of all time. I ask why was I sent this letter, as I didn't request it, and I was looking for authorization for the drug Cymbalta, and that I needed no authorization to be seen as an outpatient. That had been handled 18 months ago. “Well," she oozed back at me, "we like to send those letters out from time to time, seeing as how your doctor is dealing in narcotics.”

Maybe I'm not depressed; maybe I just need to stop and look and listen to all the horrendous, stupendously bad bullshit flying around the universe. Because it just makes me cackle like a hyena.

WTF and hold the phone! Really? Seriously?! No shit. Can I get some crystal meth? How about some of that there black tar? Hey, doc, hook me up with some of that ice, I keep hearing about! I almost had a fucking cow on the phone right there. I didn't know whether this was the best kept secret since my PD or not-PD, or just some horribly awry plot line, alá "Breaking Bad." You are damned if you do, double-triple-quadruple any way you look at it. Hilarious. My money is on keep my mouth shut and blog.

Geeze, maybe Gregor Samsa had a good day, after all. Just kidding. I found a coupon for a month's free supply of Cymbalta on Lilly's website and was able to take it and get it filled, since I have a good prescription. I see the head doctor before I runs out, so it's cool and now I can get it fixed with my "authorization letter that lets the doctor give me narcotics." They better be some damn fine narcotics!