Author: Dick

I will be operating under an assumption today. Please scrub in.
I spent five hours waiting to see a doctor at the VA today. When the doctor saw me, he spent about five minutes with me, wrote me a prescription and ordered an MRI. Medicine is so anticlimactic.

Those who have used the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system for any length of time come to expect long waits. I don’t know what takes so damn long, but that is just the way it is. The VA is a model for socialized medicine. And a very bad one at that.

But it isn’t just the VA that makes you wait for a doctor. I don’t think I’ve ever been seen what I would call “quickly” by a physician. If I was paranoid I would think that maybe doctors wait to see if you will die so they can say: “Hey, you’re not dead yet. I’m a hell of a medical practitioner am I not?”

I have seen and been seen by doctors from the time I was first whacked on the butt 50 years ago. And I don’t see that doctors have gotten any faster at seeing patients. Maybe they’re even a little slower. But I don’t look for any big changes anytime soon.

But here is a little capitalistic experiment to chew over. I’m not saying it would be good. It might be downright ghastly and dangerous. What if doctors had money subtracted from their fees if they did not see you in a timely manner? This happens in construction projects, such as in building big buildings or highways. The contractor is given incentives for getting the job done quicker. They have money subtracted from their contract if they don’t meet certain deadlines. I actually think such a model or something similar is being done by some hospital emergency rooms. I just think it is an interesting concept. I don’t know how much I would be willing to pay extra to be seen more rapidly. And frankly, I don’t know if medicine in a hurry is any better than medicine where time stands still.

Not once but twice this morning I awoke after having dreamed about lists. I was going down these lists and performing tasks related to them. Just what exactly the tasks were I cannot remember. It was a very tedious exercise both times. Dreaming in tedium is, well, rather tedious. Jeez, I really hate working in my dreams. Sometimes I think I may be the hardest working man in Dreamland.

“I don’t have to move to be stunning. I may be a plastic woman but I am the kind of plastic woman who doesn’t melt when exposed to extreme heat. I am cold as ice. I am sizzling hot. I want … your money!”

“Ahhh. This I cannot stand, this poverty. I am so poor I must grow my own shoes. I have a date tonight and my shoes are not yet ripe. Please excuse me while I water my shoes.”

Right guy: “It is I who am a very pretty, pretty boy. I will be a very pretty boy for a very long time.”
Left guy: “I cannot understand what you are saying because I am so very pretty. Nothing else exists in my mind except my exceptional looks. Did you say something?”

Being middle-aged now (if you go on the 0-100 scale)you tend to forget some things that might have crossed your path a couple of years ago. In a Hastings music store. In Waco.

It was there one Saturday morning that I heard this peppy, new-wave-sounding band singing how Willie Nelson and NASA and the Bush twins all wanted someone back. The song is called “Ohio” or subtitled (“Come Back to Texas”) by the self-described “punk” or “drunk rock” band originally from Wichita Falls, Texas, called Bowling for Soup. Living in recent years, first in Waco and then in Beaumont, and not a devotee to MTV I heard little about this group. But the other night I was fooling around listening to videos through the Yahoo Video feature and found an MTV live version of Ohio. And I am fully convinced we need to change Ohio to the state song of the Lone Star State.

One reason is, our present state song was probably fine for a lot of old church ladies and Daughters of the Republic of Texas to stand up and sing along. If you can stomach it, I give you a midi version here. I’m sure the lady who wrote it had her heart in the right place. But even people who have their hearts in the right place turn out material that sucks.

Now I give you the Bowling for Soup Live version on MTV that should be our state song. It’s a bit tricky getting to that video as I found out in trying to pass this along to my friend Sally in Massachusetts. But trust me. If you click here and watch the quick commercial you’ve got a better than even chance of hearing it. Be sure to follow the instructions.

It should be the state song if for no other reasons than telling the truth:

“Besides the Mexican food sucks north of here any way.”

That and the Bush twins want you back. Perhaps you can all go drinking together at Chuy’s in Austin and end up on the police blotter. Oh me oh my. I just love Texas.

All day long I’ve had a crick in my neck. This is not to be confused with a creek, which I have a photo of appearing in this post. I don’t know how such sharp pains came to be called cricks although I can see how someone somewhere used a little accent to pronounce “creek” as “crick.” I say “ya’ll” sometimes but I’ve never intentionally called a creek a crick.

It’s rather difficult driving 120 miles round trip as I did today with a crick in my neck. But to look on the bright side, it would have been a much more difficult trip had a creek actually been inside my neck. Which isn’t as strange as it may seem. It rained all the way on the drive up to my brother’s home in Newton and all the way back to Beaumont. Well, I guess it is as strange as it seems.

Oh well. Got to go to the drug store.