Haunted

Sometimes, most unexpectedly, you become haunted. Not by spirits of the dead or anything like that. Not even mistakes, although they can bedevil you. This is a different kind of ghost.

You may feel there is absolutely no attachment to the images forming, against your will, in your mind. Yet, for some reason, there they are. Refusing to give any significant respite, they relentlessly repossess the thoughts in your mind, bending them to their image.

You may even hate this imago in the whole, but there is something about it that eats at you... lures you out of your disdain, speaks to you in electrical, musical ways and mesmerizes. You remind yourself of the thing(s) you dislike, focusing on the disgust you feel. It's no use, though. The will of the ghost spins and colors until the thing you hate, which, until now, was weighing in your gut, flutters like a butterfly in your chest.

Grab Life by the Horns

Life is so fleeting. You should live for today. It would be nice to know how to do that.

Do They WANT ME DEAD? Do You?

If you weren't aware, last July your faithful blogger friend was diagnosed with oral cancer. There was a surgery to remove it, a couple of months of recovery, and quarterly doctor visits since then to make sure it doesn't come back. Loads of fun.

After surgery, the doctor indicated that radiation was about the only way to treat it, as oral cancer is very resistant to most treatment. However, radiation will kill your sense of taste and leave you with a burnt-out hull of a tongue/mouth. Doesn't sound fun. Doctor advised against it.

Perusing the website of my girl, I found this from the U.S. Government's National Institute of Health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20516734

Guess what? Pot kills oral cancer. I don't do drugs at all. I barely take aspirin when I have a headache. I am not going to smoke pot, or take whatever form of THC is prescribed in the states where it is legal. It is ILLEGAL nationwide and you GET FIRED for taking it, anyway.

Apparently employers and the government want people like me to die. If they KNOW IT CURES SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL ME, and they BAN IT: That means they WANT ME TO DIE. I think it's just that simple.

If you're curious, my girl doesn't, and never has done, drugs of any kind, either. After her grandfather suffered with cancer for years, before succumbing to it, she began collecting data. Most of it, like the information about oral cancer, is directly from the government's own research.

This led her to the discovery that our own government KNOWS and PUBLISHES information about cannabinoids' cancer fighting properties. Yet, for some incomprehensible reason, it prohibits it on the SAME LEVEL as toxic, addictive substances, nationwide. It really makes one question the intellect or perhaps the level of wickedness of those who know this information yet continue to let people die.

If you think this is ok, I'll assume you hate me and want me to die. Thanks for that. Sleep well.

This is her site:CannabisData.org

New Moon, By Jove!

It'll eventually smack one of the other 78 or so... sometime in the next billion years.

There You Go Again

Once again, here we are. A little glowing touchscreen blasting photons at tiring eyes. Why?

The first entry on this blog was written on a big ole' 15" cathode ray tube monitor. The first 'Tonewah' page was written on a Compaq Presario with a tiny processor, probably around 25Mhz. It cost around $700.

The next machine was a 500Mhz no-name home-built box. It cost $500 to build and utilized the same CRT monitor until it got a video capture card. People's minds were blown when they'd see the 32" Sony displaying Windows and internet videos... long before Youtube or even Google Video and way before wide-screen aspect ratio flat panel displays. It was recording live TV like a VCR long before TiVo or any other dedicated DVRs existed.

Digressing...

The Tonewah page was hosted on a local server. It was a lot of fun. FTP programs, dial-up, memory upgrades... Half the time was spent fixing or figuring out. Good times.

Everything is so easy, now. There is software to make your html/CSS. Software to make images... no MS Paint required. Uploads are all done automatically via the web. The local connection, considered slow now and soon to be upgraded to 200, is 100 Megs a second. To say it beats the crap out of the 9600 kbps modem on the Compaq would be like comparing a tricycle to SpaceX. The old external 56k US Robotics modem got a lot more use but would still be a Vespa in comparison.

Maybe that's why it's hard to get excited, anymore. All of the complex, varied, time-consuming techniques and skills you had to learn to make things happen are now obsolete. Anyone can sign up to Wordpress, Blogger or one of the myriad new services and instantly do stuff way more visually stunning than the mid-90s wanna-be webmaster could imagine... and they can do it for free.

So why are we here, again? That may be a question better answered by a psychiatrist. Or a preacher. Or the devil.

Do you know?

Scheduled Visits

Gotta see the doc in the morning. Routine, though; just a scheduled checkup. Nothing new.

Maybe the dozen or so readers of this blog would be interested. Maybe not. Maybe they're annoyed.

Either way, enjoy not having to go to the doctor on a regular basis while you can. 2 years ago a regular schedule of doctor visits would've seemed like a foreign concept. It's still pretty weird.

Curious as to where the dozen or so estimate comes from? Google provides very basic statistics for hosting this blog. Included are number of unique visits, country of origin and what browser/os combination. No IP or other tracking, just basic stats.

Here's what it looks like (click to enlarge):

DAY

WEEK
Not exactly burning up the internet. There are about the same number each day from the same browser/OS combinations for me to guess around a dozen. Purely a guesstimate, though.

No one comments, anymore. There used to be a few regular commenters. One of them indicated that the blogger format made them unable to post comments. Sorry if that's the case. I've never had that issue.

Off to bed for me. Need sleep to look good for the doc. Gotta avoid unnecessary doctor concern. No need for pointless poking and prodding.

Andy Taylor on Due Process

I love this story, too:

I wrote a long discourse to go along with this video, but erased it. Point of it was that if someone heard or knew everything you say or do, with the context removed, it would break their hearts. Especially if they had you put up on some pedestal.

Think of the things you've found out about others that completely changed how you felt about them. That's exactly how people feel when they think they've found out something negative you said or did in confidence. Long story short: That's why we have a right to privacy.