SuperSatellite

Philosophical Conundrum

// January 6th, 2009 // 8 Comments » // Buddhism, Health

Well, really, it isn’t a conundrum.  I’m just being bad, and I know it.  But I need some kind of guidance, or another sensible voice to chime in and help me along.  My problem is simple: drugs.  I’m not saying I’m a crack addict or anything, it’s nothing like that.  It’s a very basic, simple conflict of principle that I’m wrestling with.  Let me elaborate.

photo by sissyboystud

For the past several years, I’ve fought back pain.  The past couple years have been worse than normal.  Worse to the point that I’ve started having trouble managing it.  It’s slowing me down, limiting my activities, affecting my mood, and disrupting my sleep.  Late last year I flexed my job benefits and broke down enough to see a doctor.  I don’t see doctors.  I can only recollect one other time I’ve gone for a problem, when I got a throat infection about three years ago.  The doctor was fairly helpful, and among other things, prescribed a pain killer.  Hydrocodone.  It worked great.  While it obviously does nothing to fix the problem, it numbed the pain, helped me sleep, and generally allowed me to gather myself.  I am not addicted (so far), let me be clear about that.  That’s not the issue.

The issue is Buddhism.  When I decided this was clearly the right thing for me, I really tried to subscribe to it through and through.  This was about three or four years ago, and I’ve been more successful in some areas than others.  I never did drugs or anything before that, but I did drink.  I was young, and generally that’s what guys do when you’re young and get together.  Since then, I’ve not touched alcohol.  It was tough at first, now it’s not an issue, sort of.  I say sort of because the pain lately had me literally on the edge of saying screw it, getting drunk would be preferable to the pain.  That scared me.  The fact that I was nearly willing to throw away a principle that I have given myself to so thoroughly was part of what got me to the doctor.

So now here I am, taking hydrocodone.  The conflict arises from the principle that Buddhists abstain from mind altering substances.  Some people even argue that one should avoid things like caffiene.  The mind, above all, is to be cherished.  Cultivating good mindfulness is paramount to the religion, as that is the path to Truth and nirvana.  I know that ultimately I shouldn’t take these on that premise.  A prescription drug is no different from an illicit one just because it’s legal, they both have equal power to take control of your mind away from you.  But if I don’t, I’m in pain, and that on it’s own is “mind altering,” in my opinion.  When pain so totally affects your life, it’s hard to see through clearly, and I’m nowhere near having meditation techniques that can block it out.  I can offer a million rationalizations, and I know that none of them stand.  The fact is that I feel guilty about the whole situation.

I’m not sure what I need.  I want someone to tell me that I’m making the right choice, but that might not be what I actually need.  The fact is, I’m pretty sure I’m wrong, but I’m afraid of the alternative.  Suffering is a base principle of Buddhism, and I am dealing with it in a very basic fashion: physical suffering.  I feel like I need guidance for this issue, because the whole situation has left me unable to get my bearings and find the right path.  I’ve lost my mindfulness, and as a result feel exposed and unarmored, and it’s that kind of sign that tells me I’m making poor choices on this matter.  I know this might sound silly to a lot of people, you’ll just say “Take the pills if they make you feel better, and work on getting better.”  But for 96% of Americans, their religion doesn’t really get in the way of this kind of treatment.  So help me, guide me.

The Waiting Game

// September 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // Brain dumps, Health, Life and Times, Politics

After years of putting up with it, I finally went to see an honest to god real doctor about my back pain.  The past couple weeks have been pretty bad for me, and the places that the pain is affecting seems to be on the rise.  Anyway, I got in to him last week after yet another problem, and was looked over.  At first, I had to overcome the “is this person just trying to talk their way into some pain killers to feed a habit” suspicion.  When he hit my right knee with the little hammer, and the leg didn’t move, that seemed to put that to rest.  To me, that didn’t seem like a big deal, but apparently it was a concern to him.

The result was an MRI of my lumbar spine Friday, which I am awaiting the results on, and doses of Amrix and hydrocodone.  I love hydrocodone.  I love it because it works and it only costs me $1.97 a bottle.  I may not make what I’m worth dollar-wise working for the university, but the insurance is nice (though I’m still a little worried about the MRI bill).  In fact, I don’t even care so much if I get addicted to the damn pills, so long as they keep the pain away.  I’m expecting my results to probably direct me into physical therapy as a first step.  I’ll probably know today or tomorrow.

On some miscellaneous notes: production meetings have started for The Uninvited.  Show dates are October 30h-November 1st at Memorial Auditorium.  Mark it down.

I made some changes over at Penpedia yesterday.  On posts that come in from RSS feeds, I’m now only bringing in a summary, and the disclaimer is being tucked away with jQuery so that once you know it’s there, it doesn’t have to be in the way of your reading.  I didn’t want to look like a spammer, or get accused of stealing other people’s content and/or traffic by syndicating whole posts, I felt it to be a little impolite.

Anyone else tired of all the bullshit political banter yet?  Left, right, I don’t care. If you’re a politician, I just automatically assume you’re lying, so stop trying to convince me of crap in the past.  Just tell me straight up how you’re going to handle things now.

I bought donuts the other morning for breakfast, because I was feeling saucy.  Three glazed donuts now cost over two bucks!  I remember when you could get three plain ol’ donuts for under a dollar.  This economy makes me sad.  And you know as well as I do that we’ll NEVER see those kinds of prices again.  Oil costs have dropped nearly $40 from their peak, yet gas costs are only down 10%.  How stupid are people to not get up in arms over this?

Gentleman McCain

// September 4th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // Politics, Television

Holy crap! Am I the only person who has thought of this?  How creepy, right?  For those not in the know, those are The Gentlemen from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Hush.  Great, now I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight.

Gentleman McCain

Energy Drink Deathification

// August 18th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Health, Life and Times, Reviews

I made a mistake this weekend.  I volunteered to join Steve on his journey to find the worst energy drinks on the market.  I thought it’d be funny, especially when we found a NASCAR inspired yellow can called Turn Left at Big Lots for seventy cents.  As it turns out, it isn’t funny.  It’s painful and tragic.  Steve seems to think Steven Segal’s Lightning Bolt is still worse.  If there’s a drink worse than Turn Left, then there is clearly no god.  Here’s test number one:

Yes, I threw up in the sink.  It was like drinking a 9 volt battery.  It tingled and burned and was completely incompatible with human digestive processes.  In an attempt to wash away the pain, I continued on to Red Thunder.  Red Thunder is not red.  It is not red-toned.  It is not red in even the most remotest sense of the word.  It’s fluorescent yellow.  If we’d turned out the lights it probably would have glowed.

Ultimately, I couldn’t finish either can.  There is no process of logic that leads me to understand how someone can make these drinks and decide that they are fit to market and sell.  I’d use them to strip carbuerators before I’d let people drink them.  This stuff left me feeling like crap the rest of the night, like organs in my body were trying to flee in protest.

Post-eduWeb 2008 (Day Hell)

// July 23rd, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Tech, Travel, Web

Well, if there’s one thing we can all rally around, it’s that we’re (hopefully) surviving a travel day from hell getting home from Philadelphia.  At least we got off the ground though.  The only problem is, I’m writing this on my $7.95/day wifi pass at the Atlanta airport where I am stuck until 8:00AM.  At least we got time to eat something after 8 hours.

Not our plane!

The story goes like this: we got to the Philly airport in good time, about 2:45 for a 5-something flight.  The check-in guy gives us the first bad news.  We’ll miss our connection because the flight we’re scheduled for is being delayed.  BUT, there was a flight boarding to leave at 3:30 that would get us here in plenty of time.  We rejoiced.  The travel gods had smiled. But it was a cruel, evil smile indeed.  We hurried to clear security and get to the gate, and made it just in time, even though John got the business for having some Trump Ice stowed in his bag (see Brad, I told you that stuff was trouble!).

We boarded.  We sat.  We rolled. We stopped.  All of the sudden we were 15th in line to take off.  That’s not a hyperbole, like “we were the millionth plane in line to take off.”  We were literally 15th.  And now that we were waiting, storms south of the airport had blown in, and we all had to wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Turns out the travel gods built up our hope only to enjoy smashing them to bits, laughing as we sat on the uncomfortable as hell plane on the tarmac for about three hours. At least they let us up to pee.  But something about pooping on a plane terrifies me.  Like sitting on the bottom of a pool drain… (pink sock!)

We finally cleared the ground sometime around 6:30 I believe, and our one hour forty minute flight had to be lengthened to go around travel god booby traps.  The end result?  Yeah, we still missed our connection.  By ten minutes.

So, we got sent to the customer service area, which has to be one of the most god awful thankless jobs in an airport, and I called and cancelled the hotel in KC, and we’re stuck here till 8:00AM.  The bitter irony is, we’ll still actually get home about the same time, because we’ll land about the time we had planned to leave the hotel anyway.  The travel gods are actually evil bitch goddesses.  Mean creatures with giant magnifying glasses, and we’re the ants.

But like I said, at least we got somewhere.  I hear some of you didn’t even get out of Philly.  Look at it this way, where would you rather have run out of fuel, the tarmac or the air?  Yeah, I know, it still sucks.  At least I calmed down now that we’re sitting in comfortable chairs, I have internet, and a warmish bottle of Coke that tastes rigorously secured.  I also skimmed one of John’s Motrin 800 for my back.

So, my next suggestion is that I think we need an “I survived post eduWeb travel” support group.  And we need to do some kind of sacrifice next year.  I’m thinking e-mail.  It’ll be dead soon anyway, right?

Last note, uploaded the last of my pictures from eduWeb.