“That outlook will return to bite you in the ass. Believe me, I’ve got the teethmarks in my sweetcheeks to prove it.”

— me to someone on their bright idea to disregard the rules

“Have you been growing your own ‘entertainment’ in the basement again, or did you set up a lab this time?”

— Scatta to me on TrekBBS

Yeah, that’s right. A calendar! Get yours here.

Catching up on my daily local news by reading the Useless Leader online, I was reading this article and came across this phrase: “Heroin’s purity in New England — well above the national average,” and oddly, felt a sense of pride. How ridiculous. I mean, sure, a sense of pride in having, say, maple syrup’s purity in New England is well above the national average is normal. But a tingle of pride in having some of the better heroin in the United States? I think I spent too much time working on that injection drug users study, that’s what. But they, if you’re going to do something, dammit, be good at it.

The article itself is fairly useless except to drum up fear of drug users and dealers. That’s crap, because if you’re going to fear them, you already do. Criminal activity is up? No shit! I think more folks should work and talk directly with addicts and see them as they are: human beings. Many of them will acknowledge that they’ve made a mistake or they continue to make mistakes, but that the drug controls their lives. The article talks about addicts resorting to crime to pay for their drug habit, but doesn’t go into how if it’s heroin, the crime generally comes when a person is dopesick–they’ve got the nasty withdrawal symptoms and just want to make them better. That’s also the time when an addict will most likely use a dirty needle, because the desperation is so high in that moment. Sick is the key word. Dopesick isn’t just psychological symptoms, it’s very, very physical.

Drugs are bad, Mr. Hat, mmmkay.

On another pride note…Levesque’s sister Stacy is one of the candidates (you must be 18 to view the pics) for radio station WAAF’s Miss Mantown Calendar 2007. And for some reason, I am proud of my best friend’s younger sister.

I don’t know why.

schadenfreude: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.

Word of the day because between yesterday and this morning I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it and previous to that, the last time I saw it was on some sort of standardized test. Or maybe in college. Anyrate, it’s one of those words you see that make you think I should know that that means and of course you can’t ask, because that means admitting that you either 1) never knew what it meant in the first place or 2) you’ve completely forgotten. Another word that bugs me like that is ennui: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction.

Definitions were obtained from Merriam-Webster Online.

“On a good day, Death wears a sombrero.”

—Tom D.

The question came up a bunch of times this weekend: “So, did they figure out what was making you sick?”

Here’s my answer. “No. But they figured out it wasn’t killing me.”

And there you have it. I get to have periodic tests to make sure whatever-illness-it-is isn’t killing me. Otherwise, it’s a medical mystery and I have no real want to go through more testing. Excessive sweating remains a problem, as does pulse and blood pressure. I’m certainly not as tired as I was and am getting my usual excessive energy back (which my friends must be thrilled about, I’m sure). The one med change made was switching the celexa back to brand-name from generic. That’s it.

As for the cortisone shot, my shoulder hurts less now when I’m not using it. Before the shot, it hurt no matter what, and the pain got worse from movement. Now it’s a dull-ish ache I can ignore when I’m not using it and hurts more when I use it, especially certain movements.

One day, I’ll be able to play like the other kids! It’d better not be rotator cuff damage. I tried fencing left-handed on Thursday night and it was like a drunken monkey trying to fence. In case you’re wondering, that is not a pretty sight. Entertaining, yes. Pretty, no.