K, you might not want to read this one.



So I had a doctor's appointment in Morgantown yesterday.

Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Remember that CAT scan I had a couple months ago?

Wait, that's too far ahead too...

Remember that fucking surgery I had last fucking August that was supposed to fix all my fucking problems?

I get it done and the next day. The NEXT DAY, they make me get up and walk. Yes, I know, I had to get up and walk, but Christ, I had a goddamn two-foot hole in me. Can you give me a goddamn DAY?

Apparently not.

The pain, even through the morphine, was exquisite.

I get about three steps down the hall and I feel something pop.

The last time I had something pop in my midsection all this horseshit started, so I head back to my bed and tell the nurse who said “Well he's sure moving fast NOW.” to gargle my fucking urine sample.

I didn't realize the significance of that pop.

Anyways, few weeks later I develop the MRSA infection, back into the hospital, shortly afterward the 'swelling' begins. I complain about the 'swelling' to my surgeon on no less than two occasions. The swelling and the sounds of gurgling fluid and the little lumps that I can see moving around under the skin.

You know, cause things like that kinda fucking BOTHER ME.

Well my surgeon, who was just showing up for his last few weeks at the hospital before he moved on to North Carolina told me it was nothing (on both occasions) maybe some fluid. Call them back if it didn't go away after a couple months.

It didn't go away, I started calling, nobody answered my calls.

After a MONTH of calling (during the regular business hours they themselves quoted in the recorded message) someone answered the goddamn phone.

I told her what the problem was, told her who my now-absent surgeon had been and that he'd said one of his staff members would see me when he was gone. She said she'd call back when she knew who I was supposed to see.

She didn't.

After a few more weeks I get someone on the phone again. I explain things AGAIN. She (maybe not the same she as last time) told me that they'd lost a lot of surgeons and advised me to get a CAT scan here in Parkersburg and send it up and someone would look at it and call me.

I get the goddamn CAT scan.

The goddamn hospital sends the goddamn CAT scan to Morgantown.

I don't hear a goddamn word.

I call a few more times and eventually get someone to answer again and I explain that They were supposed to get my results and have someone look at them. She seemed confused. Like I'd just asked something completely absurd.

Receptionist: “What surgeon were they sent to sir?”

Me: “I don't know.”

Receptionist: “How can you not know? Who did you see when you were here last?”

Me: “Dr. *******.”

Receptionist: “Dr. ******* no longer has an office here.”

Me: “Yes, I know.”

Receptionist: “Then what do you want?”

Me: “My CAT scan was sent up there for SOMEONE to look at and tell me what's going on.”

Receptionist: “I'll have to have someone call you.”

So after that bullshit the hospital down here tells me that everything fixed in the last surgery has come open again in one giant clusterfuck-catastrophe.

But how can that be? Things haven't changed that much since the last TWO times I saw my surgeon and he said I was fine.

A few more calls and I have an appointment in Morgantown.

That was March 15th.

Two months ago.

The appointment was May 15th.

Yesterday.

I know because I WROTE IT DOWN. I didn't just write it down, but I called my Mom and told her and arranged for a ride (because, sadly enough, her 99 Mercury Mountaineer SUV gets better gas millage than my precious automobile) and got tings rolling as soon as I could.

I go to Morgantown, two hours away, with gas at $3.99 a fucking gallon. Got there early, noonish, because I couldn't remember if my appointment was at 1 PM or 3 PM.

I ask the woman behind the counter when my appointment is.

She says July 11th.

I'd always heard the expression 'blood boiling', but I was suddenly seconds away from scalding people to death as flaming plasma shot out of my ears.

“No, (I said, maintaining my composure) my appointment is TODAY.”

And I got in. That is, of course, after they asked me my entire medical history again and who I was there to see and again through the story about how I didn't know who I was supposed to see.

And I remarked to myself, not for the first time, that it was almost like they didn't want to see me.

So I wait for three hours (which did WONDERS for my mood) and finally get to the back where all the previous conversations throughout the day had to be gone through AGAIN.

I've often wondered, maybe one of you readers can tell me, I see them writing shit down every time I have to go through this bullshit about my medical history and unless they're just doing fucking Mad Libs to pass the time you'd think one of these written accounts of my bloody saga would save me the breath of explaining all this shit more than once per fucking VISIT. It's not like it goddamn changes from telling to telling.

But we get through all that shit and I get to ask the nurse who looked at my CAT scan (the one sent two months earlier) and what they thought of it.

She explained that they didn't have it, so nobody had seen it.

I think at that point I DID feel a tiny trickle of blood run down from my left ear.

Must have evaporated into steam.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to go to the hospital and get copies of my CAT scan data myself the day before and bring it with me (after first making a copy for my personal records) to the goddamn appointment that apparently never goddamn existed.

But I am looking at the fucking note right now...

So I give her the disc, she takes it to the doctor, she looks at it, comes in and explains to me that everything fixed in the last surgery has come open again in one giant clusterfuck-catastrophe.

But how could this be? Since all the symptoms I described were present at my last two visits and I was told I was fine and sent away?

Something I've noticed about doctors, they're damn good at avoiding questions when they want to.

They avoided the living shit out of that one.

And I did ask more than once.

They WERE nice enough to explain that once I lost a little more weight they would be happy to try again. Then they set up a return appointment for July, probably the same day as the other one I supposedly had, and sent me on my way with two new hernia binders.

So at least I got SOMETHING out of the trip



Now at this point I need to ask everyone their opinion. Is it just me, or does it seem that they knew something they didn't want to share with me? Something that might have been A LITTLE FUCKING BIT IMPORTANT?

I think tomorrow I'm going to sleep half the fucking day, then get fucking drunk off my fucking ass and call a fucking lawyer.

What do you think?

You know, I say this every year (extra loud every four years) but voting is for suckers.

So we've got another election coming up.

I know this because people have given me shit all day because I didn't vote.

I didn't vote in the last one. I'm not voting in this one.

The reason I didn't vote last time is because I didn't like either candidate and since I didn't like either candidate it simply wasn't worth putting on pants and leaving the house. I wasn't going to vote for John 'Cold Water On The Groin' Kerry just because I don't like George 'The Dancing Monkey Boy' Bush. I refuse to vote for one guy just because I dislike him marginally less than I dislike the other guy.

I only ever voted in the first place for the novelty of it anyway. I believe in the abstract idea of it, but I'm not so naive as to believe that my vote (or yours or anyone else's) makes any difference whatsoever.

I'll repeat that: YOUR VOTE MEANS NOTHING.

This country was bought and paid for years ago by the people who are really running this country, and they'll be damned if they put any kind of power in the hands of the American public.

The American dream is dead. America is not a country, it's a corporation. They do not view us as citizens, we are consumers. It's ruling body formed by the corporations within the corporation. That's what capitalism does. Now I'm not knocking capitalism too hard. I definitely see it as the lesser of all the evils, it's just that where the other systems breed brutal, fascist dictators capitalism breeds economic, fascist dictators. It's a slight distinction, but I'll take it.

At best elections are a distraction. The opiate of the masses. They give you the ILLUSION of power. Our corporate overlords have already decided who our next president will be. Unless I miss my guess, and I doubt I have, the next president of the United States will be John McCain.

Now, why do I think that? Because this country, despite the times and whatever illusory progress we've made, will NOT vote for a black man (actually he's only a quarter black, but black enough to damn him) or a woman for president. Not in the kind of numbers that would give either of them a fucking Chinaman's chance anyway. Now, if the political process were real the Democrats would never nominate a woman or a black man (or any combination thereof) because they would want to win and if you want to win in this country you put your money on the rich, old, white guy. They're 43 and 0.

At first I thought, with all the negative reaction the war has generated against the Republicans the powers that be would decide to give the next election to the Democrats, fix the economy a little bit, and let the people think they'd 'saved the country' from certain doom, but that's apparently not the case. Unless they really want to piss off a lot of people and put Hillary and/or Obama in the White House
just to see the resulting riots in the streets, and riots there would be, the election will go to another Republican.

"But Ford!" You're all saying, "What if the people vote for Obama/Hillary in a giant show of solidarity and youthful idealism?" Well you'll be wasting your time, because it doesn't matter who gets the most votes because the people running the puppet show are the ones counting the votes. We have no idea of knowing who got what, especially now that many areas are switching to computerized voting machines that have no physical evidence of who voted for who. You'd have to be some kind of fucking moron to NOT cheat the results with a system that doesn't leave a paper trail.

I reiterate, your vote means NOTHING.

I should point out right now that I have no problem with the idea of a black man or a woman as President. In fact, if I believed in the process I'd vote for Obama, if for no other reason than it would piss of a lot of people. But I'm not gonna vote, cause he's not gonna win. What I'm saying is I'm not a racist or a sexist. I'm a cynic. I don't believe anything the government tels me or shows me, because everything it says and shows is a lie.

Write that down kids.

Besides, by the philosophy that everything the government tells us is a lie (and it is) then the more you like a candidate the more evil he is by virtue of the fact that he's a better liar than the others. This being the case, Obama is quite possibly the most evil man in the country.

Elections, like everything else we're shown, are just big puppet shows that exist to make us think we have some control. That's it. If Al Gore had beaten Bush in the first election we'd still be in exactly the same spot we are today because the President has NOTHING to do with policy making or governing. The whole thing about the 'controversy' over the election results was engineered to distract us from the preparation for the war.

That's right, the 'liberal' media is part of the puppet show.

Fucking write that down too.

This year the puppet show is about making the young people (whom those in our government view as nothing more than criminals) believe that they can change things by voting for change and 'change', in this case is represented by two completely unelectable candidates. It's all about dividing the people and getting them to look in one direction while they pull some really heinous shit somewhere else. It's slight of hand, smoke and mirrors BULLSHIT.

See, American politics are run like professional wrestling.

Yes, I loathe professional wrestling, yet I did work behind the scenes of a low-rent promotion for a time and was privy to the inner workings of things. Still, no one was more surprised than I at this revelation, but it's true, the characters are exactly the same. You have your over-the-top bad guy, the 'Heel' in the parlance, and your good-guy, or 'face' (shortened from 'Baby face'). They get time in front of the camera to yell loud, stupid things at one another and get the crowd all fired up.

The participants are totally transparent. McCain is the heel because he's an old white guy and he doesn't want to bring the troops home. Obama is the face because he's young and idealistic and he wants to end the war. Hillary is the asshole who runs into the ring at random intervals to hit someone with a steel chair. On the one side is the bad guy, who happens to be the champ by virtue of the fact that his party has held the belt for the last eight years and on the other side are the challengers who are successfully wrecking their faction and discouraging many of their fans with infighting and dirty tricks.

Dirty tricks that are making the face look better than the crazy, but still dividing the fanbase.

It's a big, loud, obnoxious, over-the-top spectacle with soap-opera drama out the fucking ass and people eat it up. They cheer and champion their hero, high on the idea (and the security that goes with it) that what they're doing matters. They buy into the cheap carnival song and dance because they want to. They desperately want to believe in the illusion and that gives it power. And all the while, behind the cheaply built stage P. T. Barnum counts the money and smiles.

And I'm sorry to say it, but you can't blame George Bush for where we are today.

That's not to say that I like Bush. Please don't get that impression. I hate that moron as much as anyone, it's just that I hate him for different reasons. I hate Bush because the powers that really run this country, the P. T. Barnums of the world, had the audacity to try and make me believe that FUCK UP has anything to do with running ANYTHING.

I can see the meeting. "How dumb do I think the American people are? Why I bet we could convince those stupid somnambulant (look it up) sons-of-bitches that GEORGE was running things! Someone hose him off and put his ass in a suit! This is gonna be funny as hell!"

You know, while it's nice that I can see what's going on it sucks that I'm the only one that seems to see the joke.

Wake up people. The only way to even begin to make a change is to boycott the election. DON'T VOTE. Show them the same contempt they show us.

Maybe then the cracks in the system will start to widen.

Maybe then the econo-fascists that are running things will fuck up in a major way.

Maybe then we can start to fix things.

Maybe then I'll be crowned Mary Queen of Scots...

I can tell you now that nothing will be changed by voting. Because even if they bothered counting the votes and put the real winner in office he (or she) will just be another puppet that was hand picked by the corrupt system in the first place.

Fucking wake up people!

PS: To whom it may concern, I guarantee it's cheaper to buy me off than to have me killed. Seriously, call me and I'll underbid any reputable assassin and probably most of the others as well. At least the ones that could actually pull it off. I mean, I'm no Chuck Norris, but I am heavily armed.