S.C. Dixon-ary

Excuse me; you might want some cheese with this whine….

I slipped on some ice at the car wash yesterday, fell onto the bumper of the car, and seriously messed up my lower back. This is in an area where my doctor has been noticing the promising first signs of osteoarthritis. Damn, it hurts!

I went straight to the chiropractor who just kind of shook his head and said, “man is that going to smart…you’ll have one helluva bruise…”

The night was miserable. I am trying to get rid of a cold and, about 2 a.m. I started in with a dry, hacking cough which shook me to my soul.

Blanche The Cat lay down beside me and looked at me as though to say, “gee, if I could operate the family pistol I would put this poor devil out of his misery…”

It took me nearly 5 minutes to get out of bed this morning and more than an hour to complete showering, etc. which usually takes about 15 minutes. I had tears in my eyes most of the time and, as Paula was already gone for work, I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just stay home except that I figured I probably couldn’t manage to undress myself again and couldn’t figure out how I could get into bed, other than to stand beside and fall in.

Finally I got my boots on, a mere 15 minute task, and while lacing up the second boot, the shoestring broke. I decided a hot, amazingly creative stream of cursing to be a better alternative than weeping uncontrollably.

I couldn’t get down the steps to fill the bird feeders and could barely get the shed door open to let the dog out. I considered hooking up a block and tackle in order to get myself into the car. Hopefully the neighbor assumed the copious whimpering was just me beating the dog…

In the end I took an anti-inflammatory my doctor had prescribed once for gout, and so far it has helped keep the pain to a dull roar.
Of course I tried to stop myself from falling and wrenched my shoulder as well…

As my old friend Bill Bean is fond of saying, “getting old is not for sissy’s…”

Meanwhile, the city is tearing up the sidewalk in front of the studio; a jackhammer is running as I write, not more than a few feet from where I am sitting.

Wait! Now they have a backhoe sort of device which they are raising up to the top limits then letting the shovel fall to break up the concrete.

Now, where did I stash that Scotch???

(I suppose that, in a way, this blog only applies to folks who have seen the sitcom, “EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND”)

While viewing a bit of post democratic party debate commentary on February 26th I watched the extremely insufferable, obnoxious, loud-mouth Chris Matthews spouting his usual wildly bizarre if not unhinged effluvia, it struck me that he is the Frank Barone of the “news” industry. Loud, vulgar, and basically much ado about nothing. Frank is, at least, often funny whereas Chris is just, well, hmmmmm. Of course the biggest difference being that Frank is a broadly drawn boor: his clownishness is a simple comedy device…Matthews however is drawn as a “newsman.”

His partner in posturing pomposity is the often ludicrous Keith Olbermann. Someone on the left, obviously incensed by the success of the right’s resident big-mouth, Bill O’Reilly, said, “Lets find someone who is every bit as obnoxious as Bill but with our agenda in mind. And, whereas Bill often backs up his misguided forays with what at least pass for facts, let’s let Olbermann get away with saying virtually anything and never reprimand him, correct him or act like he’s anything other than smart.”

Thus spake Keith boy…recently quoted in a Playboy® interview as saying, in essence, that Fox News™ in general and Bill O’Reilly in particular were “more dangerous than the K. K. K.”

Uh, right. What a loony-bin.

Of course this program was a discussion show so one has to expect it to be made up of personal opinion, but the problem now extends to both network and cable nightly “news” broadcasts.

I have asked myself repeatedly just when was it that “news” suddenly became synonymous with “opinion?”

I don’t care what these knot-heads THINK, I am after NEWS…I never once tuned in to “The CBS Evening Opinions of Dan Rather”…
Well, actually I guess that I did. It’s just that for a while there I thought I was hearing the news.

Lesson learned, my bad.

Now, let’s talk about the printed media, how about THE NEW YORK TIMES…

Nah!

As tired as I was I expected I could have slept through a hurricane, and perhaps I could have, but I could not sleep through the cacophonous snoring of one Mr. Charles William Bean the 1st. Initially he would whinny, then he would bark, then he would yelp, yelp, yelp, then belch and snicker for a while. It sounded like a hoarse horse singing a duet with an upright Hoover while riding a Harley-Davidson and banging a tom-tom.
I would hiss, “Bill! Shut up!” and he’d gargle then say, with considerable irritation, “Huh? I was almost asleep!”
It went on for hours!
I can be called a lot of things, but fortunately for all of us I am not an assassin, although no jury in Britain, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, would have convicted me of throttling the life out of him had I been able to tape record his sonorous symphony of snigger-snorts (and yes, that is the second, so far, pretty damned fine alliteration on my part, thank you very much!).
(I remembered with horror and revulsion my experience with my old friend Snortin’-Roy Mitchell on our trip to New York City back in 2001 which is chronicled in yet another of these astounding, fact-filled journals of mine…he probably never knew how near a brush with death that he had…)
I turned on the light over my bed and Bill stopped snoring. For about 10 minutes. I turned on the light over his bed and he stopped for about 20 minutes. This was somewhere around 4 a.m. and I slept in brief snippets until he reached official hurricane force around 6 and I decided to hell with it, got up, got dressed, and went down to the lounge to watch an exciting BBC production concerning the sex life of the Peruvian wood boring beetle, or some other such nonsense, until the dining room opened for breakfast at 7. (more…)

ON CLONING & STEM CELL RESEARCH…

Personally I am excited by the potential good done for mankind via stem cell research and cloning. I am also glad that alternatives have been developed to bypass having to harvest these cells from human embryos.
I look forward to treatment for, if not an out and out end to diseases and maladies such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injuries and an plethora of congenital ailments.
Cloning is a reality. It is here, now, and the promise seems to grow expedientially with each passing month.
Of course as with every major breakthrough whether it be in science, medicine, technology or any other advancement to mankind, there is a certain faction out there who see all this as the end of the world as we know it (assuming always that this is a bad thing when, in reality, ending the world as we know has happened many time and as often as not has been a very good thing.)
Lister was “playing God.” So was Pasteur. Salk, Copernicus, de Vinci, Christian Barnard and just about every great thinker, researcher and inventor in mankind’s history. For my small part, I for one am certainly glad that they did.
And of course everyone knows that if God had meant for man to fly he would have given us wings which I suppose equates to “if God had intended us to drive cars we would have been born with wheels…”
No we are unlocking the secrets to DNA and, of course, “We are playing God!”
Yes, yes we are.
And whether that is a good or a bad thing rests of course on what your perception of “God” is. I think that basically the Christian-Judao-Islamic concept of God is as an omnipotent parent, a “Father figure” if you will.
(“Our FATHER, who art in heaven…”)
If that is the assumption, and I think most would agree that it is, it raises an interesting question:
If we are created in the image of our God and if our God is a loving parent, what good and loving parent do you know who does not want his offspring to learn? To aspire? To be wiser, smarter, and better…in fact the best that he or she can be?
What sort of a Father would want his children to remain ignorant or suffering in pain when it is not necessary?
Using an analogy that we see in one of the so-called “lower” life forms, let’s have a look at birds and the lesson that they teach us.
The adult birds encourage the fledglings to fly, to go forth, to leave the nest and survive and thrive on their own, and not to stay forever in the nest.
It has occurred to me that perhaps our ever-expanding knowledge and command of our world might play exactly into God’s infinite plans. I don’t write this facetiously, because I do in fact believe that the cosmic purpose of man is to improve and grow and change.
After all, if the time ever came that we could actually take care of ourselves, our planet, and our brethren; it would sure save the almighty a heck of a lot of heartache and grief.