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Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard

“Ouch, damn back.”

I say stronger words than those when I complain of a back pain, so why not have a formal conversation with my back?

Uh, perhaps because it cannot talk back. My back don’t give me no back talk. That sounds as if it could have been a great 50s R & B song. Which is a perfect segue because I was thinking about something from almost that long ago related to my aching back.

If there was one thing my brothers and I could agree upon, it was our devotion for “The Three Stooges” and their memorable bits. Now even 50 years later if one of my brothers mentions a backache — other than heart problems back disorders are legendary among the five of us brothers — it immediately turns into a Stooges’ bit.

“Oh, you got a weak back?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you had it?”

“Oh, about a week back.”

When your back gives you loads of misery it seems humor is a good potion to try when you don’t have something stronger on hand, like Valium or Morphine. However, a good “adjustment” sometimes helps too.

I don’t get my back adjusted anymore because I am afraid my spine would snap like a drought-stricken corn stalk. But when I was younger and would get muscle spasms in my back, a trip to my doctor or the old retired chiropractor would seem pretty helpful.

Even in my mid-20s I would get back spasms. Some probably had to do with my line of work as a firefighter. Or perhaps they came from other activities — like well, going to ice cream socials, right. My doctor was an osteopath, which is a doctor trained in medicine but takes a more holistic approach to treatment. One such approach is giving adjustments like chiropractors do. These adjustments were quite helpful. I kept getting them for quite awhile until my doctor started having his own back problems. Too bad the physician couldn’t heal himself.

I also used to go see the old retired chiropractor who lived just up the street from me. He wouldn’t practice unless someone would come by and ask, and then he only charged a $10 bill for his service.

This is one of these days I have an aching back. From what, I don’t know. I have just had these back spasms since I was a young adult. Maybe these spasms originated 30 years ago we loaded ammunition on our ship for our 3-inch cannons. The ammo weighed about 50 pounds apiece. Once, when we were leaving drydock we stopped at Seal Beach and picked up all of our ammo. I was part of a human chain loading those suckers all afternoon and into the night. Another time we loaded from a “Vert-rep,” for “vertical replenishment.” This meant unloading shells from a huge helicopter and stowing them about three decks below. I don’t know if either loading caused any permanent damage. I doubt it did. It sure made me respect the hell out of having smaller weapons to fire, if you get my drift.

I guess I will try treating myself the old-fashioned way — with an Old Fashioned! No, just kidding. I will take my medicine as prescribed and then jump in bed and pull the covers over my head if that doesn’t work. I will also try to laugh by thinking of the Three Stooges and their ridiculous bits. At least Doctors Curly, Larry and Moe don’t charge you outrageous rates and send you back for test after test after test, with seemingly no result in sight. Of course, they have no malpractice insurance either. Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck.

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Why the Democrats should not yet wave the white flag

Maybe in November we will all look back and Robert Gibbs will seem like a genius. Or perhaps we will not and instead we will see him for the schlub he appears to be while standing at the White House podium flacking for Barack Obama.

At the moment we ponder as the White House press secretary admitted on a Sunday talk show that, yes, the Democrats could lose the House of Representatives in the November election. It is always curious when one party or another signals a possible political ass-kicking. Perhaps Gibbs is trying to fire up the party as the highlighted article suggests. Maybe he is just stating the obvious.

It seems, though, that the top cats in a party shouldn’t get all negative when times don’t look so good. The party and its supporters want confidence in their leaders. Confidence isn’t a bad thing. Let’s say it a few times: “Confidence good!”

A good many people whom I know would be happy if the Democrats left together and took Obama with them. I don’t see it that way, of course. The “O Man” has had a rough stretch after what seems the shortest presidential honeymoon ever. The economy has improved, but it has done so in geologic time. Likewise the drop of unemployment to single digits. Don’t mean nothing, brother. People quit looking for work. And on and on and on. I still think that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the News Corp Noise Machine has put together one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in World history.

The right wing has shown an uncanny brilliance in turning most political news into words which manage to come back to bite the left. I say Murdoch and Co. I mean whomever is part of the “vast right wing conspiracy.” I am only joking. A little.

In order for the Democrats to maintain control of the Congress, they will need a rittle ruck. For one, that God awful underwater gusher in the Gulf needs to cease and desist. Obama needs to seize control of the clean up once it stops. He has got to make everything good appear as if he snapped his fingers and it came straight out of his ass nowhere.

Some of the Washington press, as well, need to start putting two and two together to at least make five. They are missing the easy stuff because they are so damned lazy. If I was in charge of a large newspaper chain, I’d pull my Washington reporters back and have them covering hometown community social events and meat pen rabbit shows at the local county fair. Then I’d put my best beat reporters, or investigative reporters (but aren’t all reporters supposed to be investigative reporters?) onto the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, the VA, and keep an eye on the other departments. At least faithfully read the Washington Post and Federal Times, for God’s sake.

We’d want to make sure our local Clark Kents didn’t go native either. I really don’t know how to do that other than ensure they don’t have enough money to go to the bars where all the powerful people hang out. But that shouldn’t be a problem for you newspaper execs as you know how to keep reporters in poverty and make them like it.

But we’re asking for rots and rots of ruck, at least those of us who prefer to keep the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress.

We would also need for Obama to clean his own house. His inner circle has just not clicked. We keep hearing chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is going to leave. Make it happen! Sooner and not later. It just seems Obama is not being served well within the White House. He needs someone who can deal with both parties in both houses as his chief of staff.  I can’t think of any right now, for a Fantasy White House Inner Circle League.

These are the things which come to my mind, a mere observer from way, way away from the seats of power. These are observations from someone who knows not what he says and does less than he knows why. So I suppose this is not helpful. Maybe it’s not to many of you. But I surely got it off my chest and now am a little less burdened.

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Have a nice day. No really.

King James decided to head South. And I don’t care.

It is doubtful that I am the only person in the country who doesn’t care that LeBron James took his act to Miami. He’s from Ohio and knows how crappy the weather is in Cleveland, even though the game of pro basketball is played indoors. Too bad, actually. The NBA ought to have some outdoor games like the NHL does with their Winter Classic — the 2011 game is New Year’s Day at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. I would love to see Shaq and Kobe and some of the big men shoot it out in Lambeau Field in January.

Of the most popular pro sports, basketball is my least favorite. That is part of the reason I didn’t care one way or the other about the super-hyped LeBron Sweepstakes. Sure it was a lot about LeBron saying: “Look at me.” Although the whole deal with Dewayne Wade and Chris Bosh along with the possibility of Hall of Famer Pat Riley coaching, if he returns to the bench from the Heat front office, could turn out to be one of the most brilliant moves in professional sports. Or not. I just don’t give a flying puck.

One thing I will say for pro basketball: Stamina. But that is a quality required in large doses in many other sports, yes, even in futbol. Oh, and there is one more word essential to the NBA: Money. Lots and lots of money.

Those poor schmoes in Cleveland who had their hearts broken by LeBron King James, one has to believe, just didn’t have enough money. What makes a young man stray long distances from the only home he has ever known? Money. Or the military. Or a two-timing girlfriend. Or college. Or the circus. Or San Francisco. There is a long list after all. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the “Deal of the Century” involving the Miami Heat doesn’t evolve around money. But I don’t think so.

That is because money is so, so important to so, so many people. Why this woman from the billing office of a local Catholic hospital was just plain un-Holy this morning when she called me out of my late-sleeping slumber and asked why I hadn’t paid my bill. The reason was that it was a worker’s comp claim my employers owe. But you’d have thought I had taken all of the money straight out of this woman’s pocketbook and snatched one of her babies. She ended the phone conversation with one of those really snide “Have a nice days.”

I had a lady tell me “Have a nice day” at the dump other day. As a matter of fact, she got really into telling me to have a nice day and then finally said she hoped God would take away my pain that made me so angry. I told her that He needn’t bother, that my pain would disappear in about 10 seconds when she was no longer in my rear view mirror.

Well, I’ve strayed off the path now. My whole train of thought has just jumped the tracks and started folding down a cliff like a Cajun accordion at a fais-do-do. Ay-yee!

It is time to put a merciful end to this post. So keep cool and well fed. Until next time, this is your old buddy EFD saying “Your feet only smell when someone can smell them.”

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Kudos, xylocaine, xylophone and far out, man

When I clicked over to this page I noticed the new photo and, what I call from my newspaper days, “flag” sitting at the top. This work was all accomplished by our IT Director Tokyo Paul in Tokyo. Give it up for Paul, he did a great job and I’m thinking of promoting him to Vice President for Technical Shit. I should have learned more about Word Press when I moved to it from Blogger. I eventually will.

Meanwhile, I got a shot in my knee today. It was Xylocaine which I think will eventually make me break into a music store and steal a xylophone that I will then start playing on downtown street corners for all kinds of cash money.

“Momma, did you see that man with the bloody Band Aid on his knee playing that xylophone?”

“Shut up, boy. Just keep on walking.”

When my primary care provider a.k.a. physician’s assistant gave me a shot, I started bleeding like a stuck pig beating a rented mule, to wildly mix my metaphors. It was like she hit a vein or something. Oh well, the knee does feel better. That was about all they could do for me at the VA since the PA said they wouldn’t let them order a MRI and the X-ray machine was broken. 10-4? PDQ. A lot of good an X-ray machine does when it’s broken.

Finally, one  of my favorite nut job GOP senatorial candidates, Sharron Angle, is apparently backtracking after calling the BP escrow fund to clean up the Gulf oil spill a “slush fund.” Damn, I wonder if the Republicans will have the ability to use their eyelids again after all that winking once the November election is over. We all know the Joe Barton comment was not an off-the-cuff remark. Why in the f**k is the media treating the whole matter like only Joe Barton feels the administration is shaking down BP? It’s crazy. “Way out, far out, man,” as first President George Bush once said about Al Gore.

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It looks like a Greene and kooky mid-term race

This is shaping up to be one of the nuttiest mid-term elections on record. Here in Texas you have Republicans possibly funding the Green Party. In Nevada, even a lot of Democrats would love to have just about anyone but Harry Reid back in the Senate, with the possible exception of that anyone being GOP candidate Sharron Angle. Reid and Angle are currently squabbling over the Senate Majority Leader’s campaign using snippets from previous Angle Web sites when she was going more toward the “Tea Party Look.” Hey, that Prohibition thing worked well didn’t it Sharron, and you think we should try it again along with continuing to criminalize pot?

Best of all in the race for the kookiest candidate contest has got to be Al Greene. No, not the smooth-voiced purveyor of soul and R & B, the Rev. Al Green, who gave us classics such as “Take Me to the River” and “Love and Happiness.”

Take me to the river, Alvin Green, and drown me please!

No, instead, we’re talking Alvin Green, the 32-year-old unemployed veteran who came out of nowhere to win the South Carolina Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate. Some Democrats have suspected that Green was a plant by GOP for some odious reason or the other. That would be intriguing enough, given Green’s persona is one of having been put into his present situation as some kind of Dave Chappelle character. But the topper is that Green believes he can make jobs for those in South Carolina who go work making Alvin Green, the action figure. You heard me. Action Figure Alvin Green, come to save the day in South Carolina!

I can just see those percentages of the unemployed falling like a Rocky Mountain avalanche. And only an hour ago I was wondering what the hell was there to write about.