Wednesday, March 31, 2010

these figures caught their interest

let's hear it for family values.

you can't have reached my age without having listened to republican claims that their party is the sole source for all things clean and pure in this country.

by implication, democrats were supporters of fornication, smut, and regulary lunched with satan.

needless to say, i am a democrat.

that was before marc foley, governor sanford, a few wayward senators, and any number of sanctimonious stone casters were found with industrial size quantities of viagara. you had to give them credit for being sincere when they said that it was time to get aroused about extramarital sex.

but hiking the appalachian trail has now taken a back seat to the study of rnc expense accounts.

forget the private jets and limos. ignore the fancy hotels. but the spending of two grand for a visit to a private club just is too good to pass up.

accounts of the evenings entertainment included topless women being ridden with bits in their mouths.

not an evening where the wife and kids are going to be invited.

what jay leno described as the republican idea of a stimulus plan.

others indicated that the republicans were interested in whipping the economy into shape. or reining in spending.

i say neigh.

this horsing around should stop.

the performers on stage did have health insurance.

but let's not beat a dead horse.

after all, they fired the woman who approved the expenditure.

apparently someone at the republican national committee has an ironic sense of humor.

and michael steele is back as the butt of late night comedy.

john edwards is so relieved.

but you can't feel too sorry for the republicans.

something about glass houses and all that.

but you do have to hope somewhere that tiger woods is a democrat.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

does the sun wear nikes?

i grew up addicted to poetry. it just stayed in my head and wouldn't leave.

it's not impressive when trying out for the tennis team to leap into a shakespeare sonnet, and romancing someone with the lovesong of j. alfred prufrock is not as effective as strong alcohol (something about the evening stretched out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table might be the problem).

but the good thing is that i can usually find some inspiration for most any situation. even when i don't know exactly what the situation is.

i have a ct scan scheduled for tomorrow. meet the doctor on wednesday. discuss sigmoidoscopy. that will determine if there is a recommendation for immediate surgery (good news) or chemo and radiation (the equivalent of hitting your drive out of bounds on a par 3).

i am not expecting that we will be featuring dylan thomas doing "do not go gentle into that good night" at anytime soon on this website. but even robert frost had to debate whether the world would end in fire or ice.

so i will come back to one line of poetry that seems to give me proper perspective and motivation at the same time.

"if we cannot make our sun stand still, least we shall make him run."

that philosophy just seems right to me. i love a good challenge. i'm active and still running and playing tennis pretty much every day. no change in appearance or attitude. no symptoms of any kind. so don't expect me to go around with my shoulders drooping and head down looking like eeyore in winnie the pooh.

life is like a good massage. you just don't want it to stop.

but unlike joshua, i do not expect to disrupt the journey of the sun, or slow its progress. but i can certainly require that he huff and puff a bit if he wants to keep up with me. so phase one will be that the sun enrolls in camp stern.

most of my friends who exercise with me know that phrase. run 5 miles. three sets of tennis. walk 18 holes of golf. hop on your bike. and end the day with a softball game. those used to be known as slow days at camp stern.

but the theory works even if you don't have an athletic bone in your body. make that sun run by getting as much pleasure out of life as you possibly can. including the pleasure of helping others.

sound corny? hedonistic? religious?

not to me. time's winged chariot is always closer than we would like. so enjoying the people you love and finding pleasure at every opportunity just seem to make sense.

which brings me to my dilemna. phase two of fighting cancer requires that common sense triumph over fun. i am not much of a poker player, but i know you don't throw away a royal flush even if the building is on fire, and that you can toss in a losing hand. my cards that i toss will include one of my greatest pleasures: food. not all food. but the baby back ribs, t-bone steaks, and cheeseburgers in paradise are going to be replaced by lots of arugala and bok choi.

banana cream pie and chocolate eclairs will appear only in the historic archives section of the stern house. but if i have the willpower to ignore a fresh napoleon slice, i can handle almost anything.

i am not certain that pizza and prime rib have anything to do with getting cancer. but i am willing to try things that are not in the woo woo category to get better. and if that means eating more asparagus and fresh greens than a rabbit, i'll give it a try. and joy is a closet vegetarian, so she will make all of this with enough style that i will not have to surrender all of my anticipation of dinner as a coming attraction. toss in a little baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and i am downright new age. i don't want to make the sun's job any easier. i'll do what i can to add quantity and quality to my years. and if i find that the deck is stacked against me at a later time, i will consider an all chicago dogs diet. with pork chops for breakfast and a steady stream of krispy kreme and dunking donuts being injected intervenously into my body.

not all that different from what i used to eat anyway.

and i can always add a pair of sunglasses.

Monday, March 22, 2010

ask alice

i went to underland saturday afternoon.

and alice went along (alice the minicooper, that is).

apparently i wan't alone.

about 8 zillion other people have shelled out the money to put ridiculous looking sunglasses on their heads in a dark movie theater and sit there for two hours watching the forces of cheshire cat and caterpillar versus a deck of cards.

and the funny things was that it was worth it.

let me digress. i will watch almost anything with johnny depp in it. although i really couldn't do better than about half of the last two pirates movies even if they were in the caribbean (or disney world?).

don juan de marco, chocolat, edward scissorhands.

he's had some bizarre roles. remember gilbert grape?

but he knows how to entertain. and not just with a pretty face.

but the movie would have earned the value of a ticket even without mr. depp. (i just might not have been there).

visually stunning. incredible animation. and the mix of real actors and animated ones was pulled off flawlessly.

i am old enough to remember when just animation was considered amazing. carbon dating (is that like e-harmony?) will show that i missed snow white and the original alice by a few years. but fantasia was probably around my time. although i know all of them by either wonderful world of disney or video cassettes.

the current alice is darkly fun and has a nice plot of good versus evil and a pox on the aristocracy and boring lives.

not exactly original themes, but there is a certain pleasure in watching the transition of alice from milktoast to joan of arc.

and the 3-d does turn underland into wonderland, expecially at the end of the movie.

i'm not a big technology fan. and i do not expect to own a 3-D television set in my lifetime just to watch cheers reruns and an occassional sports event, let alone hardball and rachel maddow.

but i grudgingly have to admit that it made avatar and alice slightly better.

nothing succeeds like excess. so you will now have lots of bad movies with mediocre 3-D technology trying to jump on the bandwagon.

but back to the wonderland. and what i consider to be the most important underlying political statement.

the most memorable moment of the original movie (i won't give away anything in the new one) was the mad-hatter tea party. a bunch of crazy people doing crazy things, without sense or reason.

sound familiar?

we have our own tea party now. not based on the boston celtics fans celbrating by tossing the british tea into the ocean, but by those emulating the white rabbit and his friends in downtown wonderland. obama is not a citizen. homosexual behavior causes floods and war dead. send the minorities back where they came from.

it's late. it's late. for a very important date.

unfortunately that date is the dark ages.

that wonderfully nostalgic period of ignorance and superstition.

in a land where ignorance is valued, sarah palin can be the queen of hearts.

the time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things.

not all tea party members are crazies. but there are certainly a bunch of them who make the mad hatter look like the voice of reason.

so health care passes in a form no one is crazy about and the next election appears to be a bloodletting of epic proportion.

too bad i won't be there. i'm vacationing in wonderland.

just ask alice.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

can't spell colonoscopy without a colon. period.

the sun is out. the rain has ended. new strings in my tennis racquet. all is well with the world.

well, let's not go that far.

beware the ides of march.

caeser would never have become an orange julius if he had listened to that soothsayer.

so when the time came for me to schedule my colonoscopy 12 years after the recommended date, i had little trouble accepting the march 15 date.

i'm not really worried about the results. my health is excellent. i actually went to see a doctor who is not a pediatrician for the first time and the general state of the ship was sound (although i still need to make it to a dermatologist to get yelled at for my attempts to become an aztec sun worshipper).

but the colonoscopy will be monday. not really optional, since the joys of a proctological exam not only produced embarrassment, but an abrupt command from the doctor to get a colonoscopy now since there was a finding of blood in the stool.

probably nothing. but while i have become used to accepting what fate winds up and delivers to home plate i see no reason to thumb my nose at her either.

the procedure is a snap. since my insurance company is not covering this i feel i have been pretty well reamed already, so whatever further intrusion is necessary will be minimal.

but i must admit that i am dreading the day before.

if you have had the procedure, or read dave barry's great column on the subject, no explanation is really needed. suffice it to say that you are required to flush your system with the equivalent of a bathtub filled with drano, and spend more time in the bathroom than moses spent in the desert (although it took netanyahu to subdivide it for new housing).

you take an oversized bottle of industrial strength laxative and mix with half a gallon of gatorade (shaken, not stirred). then you drink the entire thing. but just for laughs you take four more pills and a bottle of citrate of magnesia. not exactly four chicago dogs and a pizza doused with red pepper, but pretty much the same result.

sound like fun? i didn't think so either.

i am well prepared with light reading for the room i am now calling the library. war and peace, the rise and fall of the third reich, james joyce ulysses, and half a dozen sudoku books.

sunday morning will be 2 hours of tennis and exercising poodle since she will probably not want to be anywhere near me once the process begins in earnest.

but i have a confession. my real apprehension is for a certain loss of innocence. a change in perception that shakes my very soul.

anyone who knows me realizes that my affection for food transcends common sense and well being. napoleon slices. baby back ribs. a rare steak the size of cleveland. and that's just the appetizers.

eating at a restaurant is a spiritual occassion for me. a holy pilgrimage to a place where people bring you whatever you request.

i have been thrown out of more buffets than charlie sheen has been ejected from bars. there is all you can eat, and all stern can eat. restaurants have learned the difference at their peril.

life has balanced my food excesses with my obsession for sports. a few hours of tennis translates into a nice bowl of spaghetti and sausage. a six mile run and i convince myself that dessert is a necessity. and i always remember that banana creme pie has that essential potassium to avoid cramping my calf (do not confuse with veal dishes).

it is sad that i would thumb through the sport's illustrated swimsuit edition just to get to the pictures of the restaurant adds. but that july centerfold of the prime rib was something else.

but not today. or yesterday. and certainly not tomorrow.

food is no longer your friend when you are striving towards a colon that has to be cleaner than the aegean stables.

i regret to say that nothing really sounds good when i know the prospects for sunday.

i might have to start fasting now.

i wish i had started in january.

all those nice products for the cleansing sitting on the same counter where my food is prepared.

even i can say no to peanut butter pie under those circumstances.

i can only hope that after monday i will get my will to eat back. i already am thinking what i will have for the celebratory meal on monday night.

but at my back i sometimes hear time's winged chariot drawing near. or in this case, the ghosts of laxatives past.

and the idea of extra hot panang curry somehow loses its luster when you remember the hours of toil spent in getting that colon ready for a spic and span commericial.

so i am weary and wary. is lime jello really all that awaits me in the future?

is life so dear as to be purchased at the price of a dinner of blueberry yogurt?

news at 11.

the mind has great properties of blocking out horrible past events.

but swilling down a jar of miralax and gatorade is not exactly foreplay to a hackney's burger with a loaf of onion rings.

so only one solution remains.

come visit. we'll hit a nice restaurant. life will begin anew. my appetite will be reborn.

or you can enjoy the saag paneer while i sip on a cup of junket.

Friday, March 12, 2010

how long can you tread water, noah?

they cancelled our final tennis match of the season yesterday.

not sure why. it was windy with a chance of showers.

but the wind wasn't a chicago wind. oh sure. a few of the local garbage cans have identification microchips so they can find their way home when the wind dies down, but it was more of a strong breeze.

and the showers never came. at least not during the afternoon.

and not really in the early evening. a strong drizzle at times accompanied by lighting and thunder. but you weren't going to get out the rubber ducky and go play on the front lawn.

but like health care, things got a bit more interesting as time went by. the roof was louder than the television. and more entertaining (although simon cowell felt that it needed more bass). a steady rain began to fall. somewhat rare for this time of year. after all, the sunshine state is more aptly named than republicans who believe in fiscal restraint). and our rains are anticipated fondly as an alternative to having to water the tropical jungle.

but the palms were going to need scuba gear. the rain continued during the night, and when i awakened this morning, i found a surprise.

our swimming pool in the back had moved to the front of the house. or more accurately cloned itself and was now present in both locations.

water everywhere. i thought i had fallen asleep and been moved onto a raft in the ocean.

okay. so there is some hyperbole here. after all, a real rain was during typhoon paka where we had 31 inches in one day.

but this was respectable. certainly enough to keep me from checking with my tennis partner to see if today's doubles match is on. but i may call the club and see if the clay has headed to the gulf of mexico.

but the good news (i realize this is questionable) is that it gives me time to write.

there hasn't been much in the news to laugh at lately. umless the strange sickness that is congrssman massa somehow makes you laugh instead of just feel ill. i'll leave him to glenn beck.

and when your insurance company tells you that they are not paying for your colonoscopy health care is not exactly the three stooges.

there was that nice magic display in israel where the government pulled the rug out from under vice president byden. but i prefer the marx brothers if i am looking for slapstick.

some may suggest (and who am i to disagree) that since both political parties are an enormous joke that humor is always present in d.c., except for the relief provided by a snow storm that does what the tea party folks can only dream of doing.

tennis will wait until tomorrow.

i will go find my rubber ducky. and my snorkel.