Tongue In Check

When it comes to the internet, it always seems like I am able to find something interesting while looking for something else. For example, this morning I noticed that my blog stats were going crazy again. Everyone and their mother was coming here looking for “Kathy Lee Gifford’s nipples.” Well, honestly, who in their right fucking mind wouldn’t be spending all their free time looking for Kathy Lee Gifford’s nipples, but why today? What makes today so special?

So I went looking for Kathy Lee Gifford news. Turns out she is going to be back on TV sometime soon. I really could care less. I was hoping that maybe she had agreed to do one of those old lady photo shoots for Playboy or something. I could care less about anything she is going to be doing with her clothes on. Anyway, while looking for information about Kathy Lee Gifford’s nipples, I was subtly lead to stories about celebrities caught out in public without make-up. Don’t ask me how those two things are even remotely related because I haven’t got a fucking clue, but apparently they are somehow. Sometimes it’s best not to think about such complicated matters.

I found these pictures interesting in a “now I get to feel better about myself kinda way” and I thought I should share them with you in case you need to feel better about yourself. Glamor is not always what it is cracked up to be.

See for yourself.

This is Renee Zelwegger with and without make-up. Who cares? She’s ugly either way. Christ, she couldn’t even make Kenny Chesney stop blowing guys.

This is Charlize Theron with and without make-up. Either way, she’s hot. I bet she could make Kenny Chesney stop being gay.

This is Cameron Diaz with and without make-up. Man, considering the pimpleage in that picture on the left, they must have to put that make-up on her face with a trowel.

Lisa Kudrow with and without make-up. Wow, this shatters a whole lot of fantasies.

Daryl Hanna with and without make-up. She looked better as a mermaid anyway.

Drew Barrymore as a meth addict and after treatment. Let’s face it, she only looks good when she is making out with other girls. Otherwise, I’ve got no use for her.

Pam Anderson with and without knockers make-up. Who cares? She’s got knockers. She probably has to put those things on engine stands when she takes her bra off at night. Otherwise she’d be sweeping the floor with them.

Naturally, I have found a few cases of “with and without make-up” on my own. These may or may not be as shocking as some of the ones you just saw, but they are at least informative.

Below is Al Sharpton with make-up.

Now we see Al Sharpton without make-up.

Here’s the lovely Hillary Clinton with make-up.

Now we see Hillary without make-up. Quite the difference, huh? Where the hell is Bullwinkle?

Now we can see the lovely and oh so smart George The Bush with his very presidential make-up. Isn’t he just the best thing that ever happened to America?

Now check out George without his make-up. Man, what a difference a little make-up can make.

Speaking of lovely and intelligent, here is Ann Coulter with her make-up. She’s hot isn’t she?

Now check out Ann without her make-up. She’s just a natural beauty.

Below we see the lovely and talented Barack Obama wearing his presidential candidate make-up.

And now we see Barack without his make-up. All I can say is Holy Ears, Batman. Maybe we will finally get a president that will listen to us. I mean seriously, with ears like that, what choice does he have.

Of course I always strive to give my readers exactly what they come here for and this post will be no exception.

Here we see Kathy Lee Gifford with her nipples.

And now we see her without her nipples. Wonder where they went? Maybe that is subject matter for another post.

Christ Almighty, it took me this long just to post another picture of Kathy Lee Gifford’s Bon-Bon Nipples?

I must be slipping.

So I have decided to try this new Windows Live Writer for doing blog posts. I have been fiddling around with it all day long and I still haven’t decided if I like it or not.. One nice feature is that it supposedly is a WYSIWYG interface so where you put text and pictures on the screen is where they show up on the blog post. We’ll just have to see how that works out. I am also interested in seeing how the fonts feature works out because I am not at all impressed with bloggers fonts and all that fucking around with HTML code is getting really old.

If I die tomorrow, I feel safe in saying that yes, now I have seen it all. What the hell is it with some people?

I watched a really great movie today called We Own The Night. It stars Eva Mendez and Joaquin Phoenix. this movie has everything I like–sex, Eva Mendez, violence, Eva Mendez, intrigue, and Eva Mendez’s breasts.

A good friend of mine lives in Houston Texas. We have worked on and off together since the late 80’s. I don’t have a brother, but if I did, it would be Bruce. I held off telling him anything about my little kidney issues until I had all the information from the tests, etc. It was really hard talking to him about it and he took it pretty hard. He has offered to come up here for the surgery, but I have assured him that it won’t be necessary. Besides, I want him to save his vacation time for another fishing trip in the Florida Keys in the winter.

He and I worked together in New Jersey for a while and had some pretty wild times. Stories we’ll never be able to tell our grandkids, that is for sure. There was this one night—shit, I can’t tell that story. Statute of Limitations and all that crap.

Anyway, Counting Crows tells the story way better than I ever could. Now we’ll see how well this stupid Windows Writer thing works.

After a solid week of having every part of my body tested, the results are in and other than a “mass” on my left kidney everything else looks fine. In other words, whatever it was that is there hasn’t spread anywhere else. That, my friends is good news and apparently all of your good wishes have paid off.

My surgery is scheduled for the 21st of April and after that, I will be exactly one kidney lighter. Once they remove the kidney and determine what the “mass” is, they will determine how best to proceed with treatment. Naturally one word they keep throwing around is “chemo.”

I have to tell you that is going to suck for me because when it comes to my hair, both head and facial, I am the most vain mother fucker you will ever meet. The prospect of being hairless just sucks. Perhaps I shall buy a mullet wig and some of those Groucho Marx glasses. Either way, you won’t be seeing any pictures of me from that time period. I probably won’t even leave the freaking house.

Here’s the weirdest part though. Even though all of the tests are fine and showed that otherwise I am in good health, the bone scans showed evidence of two previously broken bones.

Okay, here’s the thing. I’ve never had any broken bones before that I know of and considering that one of the broken bones was my left tibia, you would think that I would know this. Wouldn’t I? The doctor seemed a little surprised that I had no knowledge of a broken left rib and broken left tibia but to my knowledge, it never happened. I mean I know I was drunk a lot for most of the 90’s, but seriously, don’t you think I would know if I had a broken bone somewhere. It would hurt, right?

Anyway, just wanted to give you an update and thank you for your good thoughts, prayers, and kind wishes. It seems to be working, so keep up the good work.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Want to see a picture of my diseased kidney? Here it is. Here’s another view.

Here’s my 3rd grade class picture. See if you can guess which one is me. (Hint:I’m not a girl.)

Update: Nobody guessed right, so I thought I’d give you a hint per Joey Polanski’s recommendation. I’m the only 3rd grader in this picture with a goatee!

The last few days have been a whirlwind of tests and visits to doctors and emergency rooms. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to a day of laying on my ass and doing nothing.

Yesterday afternoon after my second MRI, Jackie and I stopped off at Target to pick up a few necessities. Besides, they have a Starbucks in Target and that was certainly a necessity (the coffee, not the Starbucks). Since I am fairly certain that 99.999% of my readers have never had the misfortune pleasure of shopping with Jackie, let me just say that no matter how little you think you will need, you will come out of the store with exactly 10X what you thought you needed and at least half of the excess will be stuff for Carmen.

We bought her a new blanket because she only has about a dozen of them. We bought her a new bed because she only has about a dozen of them. On the way home, I talked to my wife about our trip to Target and her first words were:

“Please don’t tell me you bought another bed for that fucking dog.”

To which I replied:

“Well, it was more than just a bed. Oh so much more.”

Most of you probably don’t know this, but Carmen is a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. She likes to think of herself as Sherlock and often calls me Dr. Watson. Naturally, this called for an outfit which Target was more than willing to provide for a price.

Okay, I admit that this is not really a Sherlock Holmes outfit. It is more like Elmer Fudd, but since my son is actually Elmer Fudd, we had to convince Carmen that this was a Sherlock Holmes outfit. She bought it hook, line and sinker.

Here Carmen is with her trusty side-kick Fred. Fred is actually Jackie’s dog, but Carmen seems to think that he belongs to her.

Here’s Carmen without her Sherlock Holmes/Elmer Fudd outfit on. Fred looks stoned in this picture, doesn’t he? It is so unusual to see him sitting still. Normally he is bouncing off the walls. Jackie must have given him some kind of dope to get this picture.

This is either a picture of Fred and Carmen, or some strange two-headed dog. I’m really not sure which yet.

I got a new hat at Target. What do you think? My son wants to steal it. I told him to get his own 9 dollar hat and leave mine the fuck alone. Oh yeah, that’s Carmen guarding me with her life. She may look like a docile little Chihuahua, but if you reached over to touch me, you’d pull back a bloody stump.

Oh shit, it’s nap-time.

This will be a very tough quiz, but I think you guys are up to the challenge. One of the following pictures does not belong. Please tell me which one and why.

Contestant Number 1

Contestant Number 2

Contestant Number 3

Contestant Number 4¹

Contestant Number 5

Contestant Number 6

Please keep your eyes on your own work and no talking to your neighbors. You may begin when ready.

¹Please be gentle with contestant number 4. When this surgery is over, I intend to ruin that picture.

As I have mentioned on here before, I am a huge fan of irony.¹ Recently though I seem to have witnessed more than my fair share of irony. It’s like God wants to give me something to laugh about, or at least shake my head about, in the midst of this shit storm I am weathering.

Earlier today my phone rang. It was my employer, the Mormons. See, the thing is, I haven’t said anything to them about my kidney problem yet. I mean I figured that they have been paying me since last June for doing nothing, so what’s a few more months and if this all works out the way I hope it will, it’ll be over and done with in a few months and maybe by then they will have something for me to do.

Seems that news travels fast in the business I am in and they had already heard about it. We had a long positive inspirational talk and at the end of it, they told me they would pray for me.

What?

Pray for me in the Mormon Church?

Of course I am not complaining. I mean I will take all the prayers I can get. I mean honestly, I’ve even tried to pray a few times myself in the last week or so, but my mind wanders so that what starts out to be me begging God to unsmite this smitten kidney of mine ends up as some twisted fantasy involving me, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Padma Lakshmi.²

Christ, after that last image, I’m not even sure I can finish this stupid post.

Oh yeah, catheter. I can finish the post.

Anyway, the irony fairy paid me another visit in the form of my mom dating some guy. My dad has been dead a couple of years now and since she is by herself, I figure it is okay if she dates someone because it means less work for me. Turns out she is dating the father of one of my high school rivals. We fought over the affections of a girl that looked just like Peggy Lipton from the Mod Squad.³ I won, but in a way I lost. She was a huge pain in the ass and cried all the fucking time.

I’m not sure what makes the fact that my mom is dating the father of one of my high school rivals ironic, but somehow it does. Maybe it is just another piece of the puzzle falling into place or the closing of some long forgotten loop, but either way, it is ironic.

One further piece of irony is that my kidney Dr. is some kind of Arab. I am not exactly sure what his lineage is, but I am fairly certain he is related to Osama Bin Laden somehow. For those of you who have been regular readers of this blog, you know that I freely admit that I have some sort of built in aversion (some may call it a prejudice) toward Arabic people despite that fact that every single one I have ever met in real life I have found to be genuine and sincere and just about as nice as they can be. I’m not proud of my prejudice by any means, but I just can’t help it.

Now I am placing my life in this man’s hands.

Do you suppose the Universe is trying to teach me a lesson and if it is, can I just take the test now and if I pass avoid the class altogether?

Oh wait, that was college. This is real life. There is no testing out here.

This concludes this week’s lesson in irony. I hope you took notes. There might be a quiz later in the week.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a video about things I probably won’t get to do…..for a while. It involves irony and shades of gray.

¹Christ, what haven’t I mentioned on here before.
²Of course the inevitable tug of the catheter tube when the worm begins to stir brings that fantasy to an abrupt and immediate halt.
³HAHAHA, if you remember that show you are as old as me.

For a myriad of reasons, I’ve never had much to do with the whole medical industry. There’s just something about people that go to school for 8 years and then get a license to “practice” medicine. Personally, I would think that after 8 years, one would no longer need to “practice” ones craft. You ought to have that shit down by now.

In the last week, I have crammed almost 54 years of Dr.’s visits into the span of 7 days. I have had MRI’s, CT-scans both with and without contrast, countless blood tests, one gazillion blood pressure evaluations, and all kinds of urine samples. A full grown mountain-man with a big bushy beard held my penis is hands for the love of God. For the record, my penis who happens not to like full grown mountain men with bushy beards made every effort to escape deep within to the confines of my abdomen. There’s simply no explaining the actions of your penis to another man.

Me: “My penis doesn’t like you.”

Hairy Bearded Mountain Man Nurse Trying to Fondle My Shrunken Penis: “Your penis is pathetic.”

Yesterday I had a minor problem associated with my catheter. You all wanted to hear about my catheter didn’t you? Good, cause you are going to. Anyway, I went to the ER to get it fixed. See, the thing about catheters is if you leave them in, they can become plugged. Once that happens, they aren’t able to perform their intended purpose. To get around this, the Dr.’s throw around dangerous and completely laughable “solutions” like “self-catheritization.”

Dr.: “We are going to show you how to catheterize yourself.”

Me: “I can’t even take my own temperature Doc, so I am pretty sure that ain’t going to happen.”

So in the ER, they opened up my catheter by connecting the business end of it to a high pressure fire hose and shooting me up with sterile water. Have you ever had your bladder filled from the opposite side? It’s a whole new experience . The whole process takes about 1 minute and after that, I felt like a new man as the saying goes.

Here’s where things get weird (as if having a high pressure hose shoved up the end of your pee hole is not weird enough). My wife, The Queen of Poland, was there with me. She has been in a lot of pain the last few days for undetermined reasons. In the back of my mind, I thought her pain sounded very similar to the pain of kidney stones, but that would be just too weird.

To make a long story short, she checked herself into the ER and found out (after considerable hours of waiting) that she did indeed have kidney stones. Seriously, aren’t we the couple?

On the other hand, a few months back I had an abscessed tooth and, not to be out done, a few weeks later my wife came down with an abscessed tooth. Coincidence? I think not.She is a copy cat. I don’t know why she can’t get her own diseases. I spend considerable time, research, effort, and energy trying to come up with some unique disease I can call my own, and what does she do? Fucking copies me.

Maybe I have it coming though. Back when my wife was pregnant knocked-up with my daughter Jackie, I gained 50 pounds over the course of the 9 months that she was pregnant. I went from 140 pounds to 190 pounds over about 8 months. The summer before my wife was pregnant, I gave up smoking and started running. Yes, that’s right. You heard me. I went out running every day and could run a mile in about 6.7 hours. I got quite good.

Then when winter came (sometime around early September back then because that was before Al Gore invented global warming), I quit running and developed a new diet plan. I became convinced that beer and Hagen-Daz ice cream made for the perfect diet. I ate a pint of Hagen-daz chocolate-chocolate chip ice cream and drank a 6-pack of Stroh’s beer every day. If you want a diet that can make your face look like a beach ball, this, my friends, is the diet for you.

Shortly after my wife gave birth to my evil beautiful daughter Jackie, I realized that I had two choices. I was either going to have to lose weight or buy new pants. Well, I hate shopping with a fucking passion, so I opted for the whole losing weight thing. I went to the Dr. and he used complicated words like blood tests, blood pressure, exercise, salads, urine samples, fruits and vegetables, cholesterol, liver disease, and he might have even mentioned something mind boggling like diabetes, which in retrospect, the Dr. pronounced it as “die-beetis” very similar to Wilford Brimley in that commercial.

Being healthy is very complicated. I needed to devise a new plan.

I left the Dr.’s office after that little meeting feeling a bit dejected. Health, I thought to myself, is something that people have to work at. It’s going to require a lifetime of effort. On the way home I stopped off at a bar called Big Daddy’s. The place smelled like some other-worldly combination of sweat, John Deere axle grease, and sex. Is it any wonder I get a boner every time I see a John Deere tractor? While sitting there at Big Daddy’s enjoying an after Dr’s visit beer and thinking about all the things I was going to have to do to get healthy, I glanced over in the corner at the lonely, yet oh seductive, cigarette vending machine.

I bought a pack of Camels without the filter and sat right there and smoked the whole pack that very afternoon while drinking copious amounts of beer and fantasizing about covering the waitress in axle grease and salad dressing. Hey, I had to make an effort to be healthy, and I figured salad dressing was a good place to start. Within 6 months of that fateful day, my weight was back down to an acceptable 150 pounds and until certain recent events have smacked me in the face like a speeding out of control freight train heading down a 20% grade, I never looked back at some of the wrong decisions I might have made along the way.

A good friend of mine once told me that in your hour of need, you find out who your friends are. Turns out those words are very true. I can’t even begin to tell you of the phone calls, emails, and just general nice things that people have offered.

In the last week I have had to deal with things I never wanted to deal with. Because of my less than healthy lifestyle, exposure to some of the most dangerous chemicals in the world, and generalized fear of all things medical, I have avoided Dr.’s and hospitals and all things medical like a drunk avoids sobriety. Or a politician avoids truth. Or a Mormon avoids reality.

Now I have to depend on a doctor to save me from the ravages of myself. It’s not going to be easy, but since Wal*Mart does not offer a self-kidney removal kit, I have no choice.

I am going to do my dead-level best not to turn this into a cancer blog unless there is some kind of award I could win for it. No, just kidding. I may not post every day for a while because I have a lot to do over the next month or so. Hopefully after they yank my kidney out and put me through the modern day version of a medieval torture chamber, we can get back to regular daily postings of hot chicks, crazy chihuahuas, retarded politicians (and I mean every fucking one of them), Mormon goofiness, and crazy nights of drinking.

Okay, truthfully, there will never be anymore crazy nights of drinking posts and I think that bothers me the most. Apparently, and I didn’t know this before, but the reason The Supreme Tinkerer of The Universe gives us two kidneys is so we can shred one of them with heavy drinking. Once you get down to one kidney though, you pretty much have to take care of the remaining one by drinking disgusting things like water (even though fish fuck in it) and other non-alcohol containing liquids.

Oh the horror!

One of my favorite old west legends is of Tom Horn. When he was standing on the gallows waiting to be hanged for a crime he probably didn’t commit (he just felt like defending himself was a little beneath his dignity so he never bothered), he looked out at the crowd of people waiting to see him step onto a cosmic rainbow from the end of a rope and said “I’ve never seen such a pasty-faced bunch of sons-a-bitches in my life,” and then the trap door opened and he fell through.

I’m not sure why I am telling you this except that when I was talking to the Dr. this morning, those words kept going through my mind.

Let’s just keep having fun with this–okay? I need all the diversions I can get for now.

Do you suppose if I drank water out of empty gin bottles, I would feel better about all of this? Probably not, but it is a thought.

Update: My Dr., Dr. Osama Bin Hafez Abdul Jabbar Hussein, just called and said that he thinks that if all the female readers of my blog would send me pictures of their boobs, my chances for a speedy recovery would be greatly improved.

I think you should all follow the Dr.’s orders.

Notice that I specified “female” readers. I felt I had to do that because otherwise I am sure that Angryman and Atlas Cerise would be sending me pictures of their boobs and that, my friends, would be quite disturbing.

I will never buy another 7-Up product for as long as I live.

Seriously. Worst Commercial Ever.

It’s even worse when it is on TV because that woman’s scream is at a much higher volume than the rest of the commercial.

For those of you that have not been subjected to this travesty of advertising, I envy you.

P.S. This won’t be a problem since I never drink 7-Up anyway.

Back in April of last year I was living in Utah when I came down with what was diagnosed as a kidney stone. Well, I don’t know if it was so much diagnosed as it was the fact that the young Mormon Dr. just didn’t want to deal with a non-Mormon whose soul wasn’t worth saving.

Anyway, after the initial problem, I didn’t have any more “kidney stone” problems until October of last year. It came and went with a minimal amount of pain and agony. A few weeks after that, I had another one. It was a little different. Not so much pain but a lot of having to pee. That lasted for a few days and then all the symptoms kind of went away. I must admit that I haven’t felt myself since that last “kidney stone.” Something wasn’t right, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling great. A little hungover from a few Vodka and tonics the night before, but otherwise, I felt okay. I sat around watching the morning news, playing on the computer, and having my morning coffee. Pretty typical stuff.

Then, all hell broke loose. I’ll spare you the gory details.

Yesterday I felt better and decided to continue ignoring the problem in hopes that it would once again go away. Really, I just wanted to make it through St. Patrick’s day. This morning, however, things took another turn for the worse and I decided that despite my morbid fear of all things Dr and hospital, I thought it might not be a bad idea to go to the ER. I called my wife and she left work and came home and took me to the ER where we spent the entire day. I was poked, prodded, felt up, CT-scanned, poked, and then felt up and prodded even more.

Oh, and then there was the catheter. Jesus. The catheter.

Anyway, to make a long story short, they found a mass in my left kidney. The Dr.’s at the local hospital weren’t equipped to make the final call on what it might be or the extent of the butchering treatment that might be required, but they have made arrangements for me to go to the U of M hospital for additional, and even more detailed poking, prodding and 3D imaging.

The Dr. said that this will likely result in some form of surgery to remove and or correct the problem. One bit of encouraging news was that he said that this wasn’t an “urgent” situation–whatever the hell that means because in my mind, mass=urgent.

I have given my daughter Jackie the “keys” to this blog in case I have to have something done urgently. She will be able to update you via a post on here.

Even though I have never met any of you in person, you all mean a lot to me. Even you lurkers who never comment. This blog and your comments have helped me forget about some troubling health issues over the last few months. I thank you all and will do my best to keep you informed. I may not be in much of a “funny” mood for a while, so please bear with me.

Or is that bare?

P.S. If I don’t get around to any of your blogs as frequently as I normally do, I hope you’ll understand.