Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Figuring It Out
The very mildest of rebels, Kalk
and Marnie nonetheless shocked
the rest of us at Recovery House
by whimsically admitting that they
couldn’t remember what they were
recovering FROM.
THAT was labeled by the social worker,
Dr Etling, as Haldac Syndrome.
The administration at the state capitol
got wind and sent a fixer.
The best! He immediately discharged both as cured from Haldacs.
Each doing very well presently, which leads wags to remark if you really want to feel better, just forget what you’re supposed to have.
Labels: disease, personality, recovery, wags
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Children with flies on their faces
Quickest example of Capitalism I can give you?
Children with flies on their faces.
In Africa, other hellholes?
Some here.
Labels: Africa, Capitalism, children in poverty, disease, flies
Monday, January 02, 2017
The Disease
Cal B acquired a mysterioso
disease. Various syndrome
labels were attached to it,
but the blood tests, and
numerous other tests, showed
nothing. Again and again.
He was dying. Spiritual cures
beckoned.
He attended one support group
meeting in a dank warehouse and
chanting.
That helped...in a general sense.
The inevitable keeps edging close.
A Specialist flown in.
He likes the nightlife.
No surprise to anyone: the World
is moving on.
And doesn't wave as it passes.
Labels: bloodwork, death, disease, medical conditions, tests
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Machines Handling Rebels
“I rather think I'd like to die!”
He was shushed, with everyone pointing
out the cameras and listening devices.
"You will make your jokes, but, don't
worry, the robots can pick up sarcasm."
"No sarcasm!"
"Even THAT statement is!"
"The rest of you live in misery with lousy
meds treating incurable diseases. All to
prolong, indeed never end, what is laughingly
called Life!"
All the machines screeched into red, spinning-
light mode.
Then the one-hour lecture as to everyone
wanting to move here. Where we had fulfilled
the dream etc.
But he still wouldn't shut up and twin robots
came for him.
Being led away, he cried. "Do your worst!
But, that must be life and not execution.
Therefore do your best!"
One robot said to the other that this rebel had
lost it! The other one said they'll take him to
the island.
Lectures will play in continuous loops.
Ten to twenty simultaneously.
And patriotic songs.
All in the defunct stadium. Enveloped by a huge flag--originally one of a corporation.
Labels: coercion, disease, exile, future, immortality, live forever, loop, propaganda, robots, spy cam
Saturday, September 19, 2015
A Nice Story
...no, really
When Jer’s embarrassing disease struck, he went to the
hospital clinic.
There, Dr Arnols treated him with the standard protocols.
And the candystripers giggled.
He missed a day at work, and his assistant foreman, Alan,
took over.
The trucks were loaded and unloaded efficiently.
On a followup visit to the clinic, the candystipers became
sweet and caring.
Alan: “What can you expect? Unpredictable. They’re
Apprentice Women!”
Definitely no apprentice, Ginnie Rockham, of Personnel,
had dropped into the hospital and silenced the girls.
Her main quarrel was the vague number assigned to
Jer’s disease. The insurance company would never
pay the claim.
It was almost as if the hospital also embarrassed.
Well, Ginnie Rockham wasn’t! And the new number designated
more specifically.
She went to the loading platform and informed Jer, and would
have nothing to do with any embarrassment whatsoever.
“Let’s grow up!” she admonished. “What else do we have to do?”
Well, there was something. A cursory look at personnel files
in Jer’s office engendered her disgust.
Thereafter she dropped by an hour a day to instruct Jer and
Alan. The main problem was that the old cards had been
scanned haphazardly into the computer. At her last visit,
she brought an IT woman, Belle Destiny-Grassley. The Destiny
had been her husband’s name, who met his in Iraq.
“I’m the walking wounded!” she warned Alan when he asked
her out a week later. “It won’t be a barrel of laughs.”
Meanwhile, Ginny invited Jer to a family picnic. “You’re the
only self-effacing man I’ve ever met.”
Other dates followed, for both men.
“You know,” Jer told Alan in a slack time, when the just-
unloaded trucks shimmered in heat, “I’m popular. Me!
With her family. I can’t get over it!”
Her Uncle Merilwill, “Murl,” finally returned an Eagles cap
he had forgotten at that initial picnic, and the men
discussed that team a full two hours.”
Jer apologized at having only beer and cheese crackers in
the apartment, but Murl proclaimed: “But the company
is Porterhouse and caviar!”
Jer shrugged. “He likes me. They all like me. And Ginny
would kill another woman!”
Alan admitted it couldn’t go better with “Ole Destiny” also.
Culture Vultures, they had hit every play and concert and
poetry reading they could find.
Then, both men stared at the shimmering trucks a full minute.
“A day at a time!” they simultaneous blurted.
Labels: Culture Vultures, day at a time, Destiny, disease, embarrassing, embarrassing disease, medical insurance, Romance
Thursday, March 05, 2015
The Celebrity
Mr Disease
When Dr Cantry asked him to represent
the disease, it sounded funny.
Actually, of course, she meant efforts
to fight same.
So he became the public face for the latter.
First on TV, where Jenny made him up meticulously.
“These new cameras pick up a flyspeck at fifty miles!”
Soon, people waved on the street.
The mayor phoned with a request to join the
Youth Sports Week Parade. The army truck
holding girl softball players became his choice
since they had more hell in them, thus least
reverential to him and his disease. Called him Dad.
The most comic deference happened at Acropolis
Lunch where Markos insisted he sit in a booth now.
Still orchestrated the usual 40's era food jokes though.
Thus pretending he didn't have a lit degree, announced:
"We have two kinds apple pie today, Apple and Pin-Apple!"
It became his turn--and he didn't do one of his fadeouts,
though he had to yell from the booth. “You call this Chicken
Soup? The chicken walked through it on stilts!"
Waiter Jellybean, started dressing as a gangster, and our
Mr Disease enjoyed hassling him.
You'd almost expect Sam Spade to pop in to ask some
pointed questions!
And one blunt one.
Labels: death, disease, food, Greek, Sam Spade, TV
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
The Hyphen
When he was diagnosed with a disease containing a hyphen, interest grew within the hospital.
Physicians visited from departments which had no
hyphen diseases.
A group of doctors even came from Buffalo, asking him questions and texting their impression to each other.
They further asked him to recommend a strip joint
and he told them he knew only of Peaches Flambé,
a Gentlemen's Club, but only because Channel Six
had interviewed neighbors objecting to sex
in the parking lot.
This news inflamed them, so much that one apologized,
"It's all the snow."
It proved time for his cocktail of drugs which brought him diarrhea and hallucination. An hour later the nurse administered the countervailing dose bearing
constipation and headache.
One day they told him he could go home and he did.
He put the drugs in the freezer because throwing
them into the toilet would be a toxic, thus antisocial, act. Friends came by with herbal teas, a few of which
he actually liked.
A year later he went for tests and they told him
he no longer had hyphen disease.
He went back to his apartment feeling comme ci
comme ca.
Death would come someday, of course, checking
into a local motel and watching a football game
with the sound off.
Then leisurely walking over, knocking softly
because of the late hour.
When he was diagnosed with a disease containing a hyphen, interest grew within the hospital.
Physicians visited from departments which had no
hyphen diseases.
A group of doctors even came from Buffalo, asking him questions and texting their impression to each other.
They further asked him to recommend a strip joint
and he told them he knew only of Peaches Flambé,
a Gentlemen's Club, but only because Channel Six
had interviewed neighbors objecting to sex
in the parking lot.
This news inflamed them, so much that one apologized,
"It's all the snow."
It proved time for his cocktail of drugs which brought him diarrhea and hallucination. An hour later the nurse administered the countervailing dose bearing
constipation and headache.
One day they told him he could go home and he did.
He put the drugs in the freezer because throwing
them into the toilet would be a toxic, thus antisocial, act. Friends came by with herbal teas, a few of which
he actually liked.
A year later he went for tests and they told him
he no longer had hyphen disease.
He went back to his apartment feeling comme ci
comme ca.
Death would come someday, of course, checking
into a local motel and watching a football game
with the sound off.
Then leisurely walking over, knocking softly
because of the late hour.
Labels: disease, doctors, hospital
