Was it something I said?

I started going to this great doctor a while back who is phenomenal at osteopathic manipulation therapy. Even other doctors who have known him for years don’t know how he does what he does. He did wonders for me and my wife. Because of him much of the muscle spasms and joint alignment issues I had have been helped and I can move much better. He was even working on fixing my jaw problems. He talked to you and explained things – he taught you what he was doing and why things worked.

In August he moved to Texas.

One of his students, who is also great at OMT, went into Emergency Medicine when his fellowship was over.

The newest student, who is also great, is returning to Colorado after his residency.

Another doctor who has been a great help is leaving a different practice.

Is it me? Is it my breath? Do I dress funny?

At least before he left, the first doc brought back another one of his great students who had gone to New York. So the total number isn’t going down, but this is getting to be a habit with these guys.

Oh well, as long as my wife can keep getting the treatment that she needs.

I know that it can sound a little odd, but osteopathic manipulation therapy can be great. If you find the right doctor, and of course if you have a problem that can be treated – and you might be surprised at what can be helped with OMT – I highly recommend it.

I just can’t tell you who to make an appointment with.

Some of what happened in November

So I was away from here for awhile. The distraction was distressing news from my cardiologist. He isn’t too concerned. Neither is my family doctor.

I, on the other hand, am very upset. At the moment it isn’t anything to worry too much about, but that hasn’t stopped me. I have managed to calm down some, but the thought is always there in the back of my head.

Just after that I got sick. Oddly enough the day before I had an appointment with my family doctor.

And then there was NaNoWriMo. I did write this month and I managed to finish. It was all kinds of fun. I’m changing my meds, my head is still fuzzy with thoughts of cardiac health and on top of that I started without a plot and few characters.

Actually, it was a lot of fun. I met the word count, had more than two characters by the end and I managed to work out a beginning, a middle full of holes and an end.

No, you can’t read it. I had the inexplicable idea to write a mystery set in a different century, so now I am setting the current draft aside and plan to do a lot of research. Then it gets rewritten.

Been out of it for a while

I had some news last week that kind of distracted me and then I got sick so I've been out of it for a while. I'll resume posting when I feel better.

I did vote, though.

Too many plots, too few words

While looking at that last post to see if it posted, I realized that there were two errors in it.

First of all, I can type fast – it just doesn’t come out as recognizable words in any language known on this planet. If you want real words, then it gets real slow.

And the plot situation is more like there are too many and I can’t narrow things down enough to write only one. The question, for NaNo, is which will be the most fun.

It’s that time of year again

NaNoWriMo is soon to be upon us. In just about a week, a vast number of people are going to attempt to write a novel in one month. Just thirty days to write 50k words. In November. It’s not like there are any distractions in that month or anything.

Much to my chagrin I have not finished the novel I tried to write last year. But that will not stop me from trying again this year. A pathetically slow typing speed, mental fogginess, no energy, time consumed by doctors appointments and a total lack of plot and a dearth of characters, now those will stop me. Well, they won’t stop me from trying but success is looking iffy at the moment.

Who cares? You have to try, so I will.

Now if I only had a plot.

More on TV and some other things as well

You know that network TV I mentioned? Well, I’ve been watching some more of it. I guess I wasn’t missing that much not watching network TV very much.

It’s entertaining, but not very well written or plotted. Some of it is OK, some of it is dreck and some of it is fun. Sometimes all I want is fun – actually that’s what I want most of the time, all of the time if you think of good drama as fun. Anyway, I wouldn’t give most of the new stuff high grades. I wonder if TV is always like this.

As far as being reminded of old TV from the 60s and 70s, well, that just makes this stuff look worse. The shows I remember from then were great. These are less than pale imitations and they probably consider themselves improvements.

On a slightly different note, but not entirely, I miss the feeling of adventure. It’s just a sign of age and a shrinking world, but I was reminded it of it while watching an episode of Undercovers. The exotic locations are not – they’re CGI. Same thing for most of TV and movies. This will get me labeled a curmudgeon, but in my defense I must say that enjoy a good special effect, but not when it is being done just because it can be.

Filming in space is very difficult, and recreating the Galactic Empire on a full scale would be cost prohibitive so I fully accept special effects in Star Wars (though some of the CGI added to the old versions was tacky). On the other hand, the only reason you don’t film in Paris or London – or New York or Cleveland for that matter – is because it is expensive. When I watched Kelly and Scotty walking through Japan they were walking through Japan; the same for James Bond. And back then – geologic ages ago for you youngsters out there – it was exotic and new and exciting. Unless you were rich, there was no other way to see places like that except through TV and movies – movies mostly.

These days people travel more and we see it all the time in a variety of ways – not just Life magazine, and we have all sorts of Internet images to choose from. The glamour is gone.

Also, when I watch The Lord of the Rings, I know that the armies marching to the aid of Minas Tirith are not real and I can accept that. But when I see an average army created with CGI it loses its impact. The masses of people leaving Egypt in The Ten Commandments were really masses of people. Even the armies in a movie as recent as Braveheart were real people. That takes planning, direction, cinematography, coordination and movie making skill. Imagine how much less of a movie Lawrence of Arabia would be if made today using tricks instead of people and green screens instead of the desert.

Yes, I rant, but with good cause. Short cuts are not impressive – as opposed to resourcefulness. The difference being that one is done out of necessity and the other out of pecuniary stinginess, or perhaps insufficient talent. Maybe most people don’t care. Maybe most of the people doing it think it’s the right way to do it. Maybe it’s the only way it will get done so I should just shut up and watch it. Well, it may be the only way we ever see some things, but I find it distracting and I’m not likely to shut up.

I hope I haven’t ruined anything for anyone out there, but I just had to get that off of my chest.

Next up, hair color: fraud or fabulous?

A lengthy explanation

That last post was not meant to be all that serious, whatever the events that inspired it, but I should be clear about this.

Admitting that you have an irrational fear of people who don’t look like the terrorists who attacked us is not enough to be fired, though it should reflect poorly on your next review if you have the job Juan Williams had at NPR. A lot of people have irrational fears. A lot of people have legitimate fears. That wasn’t the point. Naming your fear on the air is not the problem.

The problem comes in when you fail to identify it as your own fear while using it to support the series of moronic fear-mongering statements made over the last few days by the people from the TV network you are on at the moment. NPR employed Juan Williams as a news analyst. That requires a certain amount of impartiality, but more importantly it requires a certain level of communication skill and an ability to dispassionately analyze the news.

Williams either misstated the fear as a good reason for O’Reilly et al to have said what they said, or it was not just his and he thought it was a valid justification. He is either not competent at making a claim or he supports fear mongering. If he did the former on NPR it is a problem with job performance, doing the latter in public demonstrates poor reasoning skills or some level of dissembling.

The fact that he said it on Fox and not on NPR is somewhat ameliorating, since NPR cannot fault him for saying it on NPR. As an NPR news analyst, that sort of comment would be wrong since it calls into question the impartiality of his analysis. The hardest part of that sort of job is keeping your personal opinions out of your commentary, but if that’s the job you sign up for you do it. But you also have to make sure you don’t do something at one employer to make the other one look bad.

NPR seems to have a strange and stringent set of rules for employees. No one who works at NPR is allowed to attend the decidedly apolitical comedy rallies to be held by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in DC on October 30th. I guess they’re afraid some politics may break out. That level of restriction would seem to disqualify Juan Williams as an NPR employee just for being on FOX. Apparently not, but, also apparently, he crossed some line they didn’t like.

It’s not censorship, it’s just a decision based on his bosses’ interpretation of what his statements say about his qualifications. Maybe they should have given him a chance to explain, but the explanation he gave today certainly wasn’t the sort he should have given to prove he isn’t actually a political hack at heart who says whatever he is paid to say. That being the case, he shouldn’t be on the air.

Let me sum up. Expressing yourself on the air is not necessarily a good reason to be fired, but being inane when you are supposed to be intelligent is.