Saturday, April 21, 2012

Self Exams & Cancer Prevention: Balls and Boobs

Today is the anniversary of the day I had my second testicle removed due to Stage 1 cancer. This simply means that cancerous cells were found, but no tumor had yet formed. Since the little fellow didn't work anyway, they performed a radical inguinal orchiectomy. That's where they go through the groin and get the testicle, spermatic cord, and everything connected to it. This was done first in 2004, for the same reason. They should have taken them both out at the same time, but didn't for whatever reason. The second was removed in 2007.

On this, the aforementioned anniversary, I've decided to post a video for young men (18 - 35) that explains how to do a testicular self-examination. It's a bit graphic, but it's really no big deal. Testicular cancer is the most preventable cancer there is, due to the location of the testes outside the abdomen. So, here's the video:



This is the best video I could find, although ideally the video would literally be done by the man himself. Still, it's a good video.

While I'm at it, I may as well show a video on breast exams, given Nancy's recent scare with a possible tumor. The love of my life could have had breast cancer. What a terrible thing to go through. So be proactive. Men, feel your balls. Women, feel your boobs. That's not so difficult, is it?

The breast exam video is part of the same series that did the testicular self-exam.



Friday, April 13, 2012

Das Ist Und Pippen

Scrumptious pipe, primo delivery system of sweet, sweet tobaccy! Thank you, Nancy!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Can't Get Right

In the past few hours it has become clear to me that I've a character flaw that makes me just one of those people who have a quality that makes them unlikable. I've known for years that I have this quality, or lack of quality. I'm not affable, and it seems that I put people ill at ease. I don't know why. I'm very fond of people.

I'm not sure what the future of this blog will be. I'm tired of feeling like the reject, the strange one, the one people snicker at and gatherings. The heat radiates off the pavement, a cool breeze descends from a tall, cloudless sky, music flows through a neighbor's window, wind in the trees speaks to some part of me that makes my heart ache, the smell of lilacs is in the air...and everything is telling me that I'm not right. I'm not quite human. It's tiring, and I welcome death, or will when it comes.

The feeling of this despair emerges from the grass or pavement, and spirals around us and leaves us at the mercy of the governing body of our own self-loathing.

There are many people whom I love, nobody more than Nancy, and she would be so much better off without her misshapen pseudo-human husband. If I loved her, I'd slit my throat and set her free. My god do I love her. You think you know love, but you don't. The love I have for this woman is unlike any other.

Some people aren't right. I'm one of the not-right ones. It's just the way it is. 

Friday, April 06, 2012

Jerkocracy

Everyone of us, at some point, is going to be a jerk in somebody’s else’s eyes - without exception. If you put a smart person amongst the ignorant, they’re the jerk. What a moron - he thinks the world is round, when obviously it’s flat - any fool can see that. No one escapes being a jerk somewhere.


It’s the people who think they’re never jerks that are the real jerks. If you look at your life, you’ve had half a dozen real friends, some acquaintances and then there’s the vast sea of jerks. You’ve befriended those who try to overcome their jerkitude, rather than deny it. Heaven preserve us from the rigid and judgmental righteous.


We live in the Age Of The Jerk. Modern society is so fragmented, that we don’t have shared values anymore. Many elderly English people remember the Blitz and the bombing of London with nostalgia. Everyone was in the same boat, united by a common purpose of vanquishing the evil Hun. No such shared destiny today.


And it pays to be a jerk - there wouldn‘t be so many if it didn‘t. The boys of Enron probably chuckled when they ordered blackouts for California while stealing their electricity. One or two of them went to jail, the rest went on to bigger and better jobs - there’s always room for jerks in the corporate world. When a regular Joe is caught stealing, he goes to jail. When Goldman Sachs is caught defrauding investors and bringing down the economy, they get a bailout and bigger bonuses on the taxpayer dime.


Donald Trump is a major jerk. In a normal society, he’d be shunned for the vulgarian he is, if only for his hair-do. In reality, he’s a bad businessman who protected himself from having to pay his contractors (the little people) by declaring bankruptcy many times over. And now he’s a big TV star. Maybe being an jerk is not so bad.


The jerky business card of a jerk.

Monday, April 02, 2012

The Bitch Tattoo And That Prick Stefano

I'm not ashamed to say it. My lovely wife has me hooked on, "Days of our Lives." Even if I only see one episode once a month, I know what is going on. It's an amazing formula. The shows on HBO are the exact opposite. Miss one episode of, "Boardwalk Empire" or "Game of Thrones" and I'm totally lost. What's going to happen if Nikki tries to keep EJ away from his baby? And Sami and EJ have a history. Does she love him? And Stefano, what a lovable prick!

And you can't beat the hilarity of product placement. Here is a scene where they subtly push Cheerios, which are not just for breakfast anymore:



It started with, "Dark Shadows." We watched one episode on Netflix, and that was it. A week later and we had watched every episode. Barnabas Collins is one sexy fellow at 175 years of age. Check him out:


As a vampire, he has no qualms about killing you, but he's more likely to look at you like that. Slow burn. And nobody ever asks why he has candles all over the house instead of getting some light bulbs.

Anyway, I got Nancy a subscription to, "Bitch" magazine for her birthday, and for some reason they sent along a rub-on tattoo. Like the ones they used to put in Cracker Jack boxes. It's a really good fake tattoo that only came off after a liberal application of alcohol and a bit of scrubbing. It looked like this, before it started to make me feel like "Bombshell" McGee and had to go:


That's all for tonight. I'm watching, "SoapNet" and Stefano just told Gina to go get his egg and bring it to him. Some kind of jewel-encrusted Fabergé thing, the stuff that dreams are made of. Gotta go!