( 11:15 AM )
MVP
So, now I know why people don’t go to the doctor for checkups. You’re feeling fine, no problems or issues. You figure your yearly checkup is going to reinforce the notion that you’re a vision of health. Beyond your four-cups-of-coffee-a-day habit, you live a pretty healthy life, full of nutritious food and exercise.
Then a standard EKG test on your heart reveals a noise. That noise requires another doctor visit, this one to a cardiologist. You spend an hour on a cold table, hooked up to another monitor, that listens and measures all the goings-on in your chest. (I forewent my usual morning coffee to keep my heartbeats nice and mellow.)
A couple of days go by and you get a call from the doctor, who reveals that you have something called Mitral Value Prolapse.
What? Me? But I’m a vision of health! How’d this happen? Was it the coffee?
Turns out it’s pretty common, and I’ve probably had it since birth. MVP is just an irregular opening and closing of the mitral value. It doesn’t pose any kind of danger, and simple makes more noise than a typical mitral value. The only precaution required is to take antibiotics before any kind of surgery, including dental procedures.
Even though my doctor said it’s no big deal, I did a bit of research on the internet and found all these support groups for people with MVP. Support groups? Am I going to need a support group for my disability? “Oh…my mitral value was slamming shut all night. I didn’t get a stitch of sleep last night...”
( 10:00 AM )
Baseblogs
Blogs spawning blogs. I thought about blogging today about this guy that walks to the train station everyday at the same time I walk. Really semi-interesting (thus semi-not-interesting) story. I’ll save it for another day. Today, I read a couple of blogs from Brandon and Webb about baseball, and decide to ramble a bit myself on the same topic.
Go Yankees….whatever. It’s really tough being a Yankee fan when there’s really no competition in the division. I mean, when you look at the Yankee schedule and see that they’re playing division rivals Tampa Bay and Baltimore over 30 times this season, you can pretty much chalk up 25 wins before the season even starts. Play Boston and Toronto another 30 times, chalk up another 20 wins. Throw in some Detroit, Cinci, and Mets games you’ve got another 15-20 wins. Before the season even starts, the Yankees are pretty much guaranteed 60 wins.
Boston and Toronto have pretty good teams, but they not gonna win the division over the Yankees. And they know it. So, during spring training, those teams are pretty much targeting the wild card spot. They don’t even care what the Yankees are doing, they’re looking at what Cleveland and Seattle and Oakland are doing.
I’m happy for Brandon and the Royals. It’s fun and exciting watching your team do something good (for a change). I catch a bit of the Yankees game almost every night, but I know they’re going to win. Sometimes I secretly find myself rooting for the other guy, the underdog. Or if the Yankees are doing the usual, pounding on the opposition, sometimes I’ll switch over to the Mets game and take pity on a team that really needs it.
( 11:33 PM )
Saturday night
I started to blog about Saturday night's events, which included the Joe Jackson show, but it turned into a lengthy story. The short version is – we had a good time. For the longer version, click here.
( 3:27 PM )
JJ at the Warsaw
Big weekend coming up. Several 2 Walls Webzine writers are getting together on Saturday night for a creative sit-down. There will be food and drinks and – oh yeah – we got Joe Jackson to play for us.
Alright – Joe was playing at the Warsaw in Brooklyn anyway, so Webb, Greg, Stephane, Chris and I decided to have our little meeting there. I’m not sure how much creative work we’ll get done, since some of us are bringing our significant others and there will be drinking involved (and my wife’s been known to table dance when she drinks). But I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
My wife and I don’t get out very often (you can blame the kids for that) and it’s been nearly three years since we’ve stepped foot in Manhattan (but we see it every other weekend from one of the bridges as we cross over to Long Island to visit the in-laws). An even bigger crime is, I can’t remember the last concert we went to. (U2 in ’94?)
So Joe Jackson at the Warsaw is a big deal for us. The Warsaw is suppose to be nice. A relatively small venue, holding about 800, with general admission tickets, so everyone gets the same chance for seating.
The thing I’m excited about most is, the idea of hanging out with 800 Joe Jackson fans. You see, I don’t know, and never met, any other JJ fans, outside my little circle of friends. And here’s a bit of inside information – Fitch, Orcutt and myself use to play in a band about 10 years ago, where we covered several Joe Jackson songs, including “Look Sharp” and “On Your Radio”. What was cool about covering JJ was, nobody really knew his music, but the songs were cool and people thought they were ours.
I picked up Joe’s latest album in preparation for the show, and on Chris’ recommendation. It’s not bad. I definitely feel the old Joe style on this new album. I’ve only listened to it a few times, but I think Graham Maby on Bass is the major reason for the “Look Sharp” similarities. Anyway, we’ll find out on Saturday. The real questions is – who’s gonna write the review?
( 8:35 PM )
U.S. Crimes Against Humanity
In reference to Matt’s 4/1/03 blog about U.S. crimes against humanity, I think Matt forgot to mention all of the conspiracy theories including the government’s prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor and September 11th.
I’m not going to pretend the U.S. government is guilt-free of human rights violations – but if we’re going to compile lists of individual countries’ atrocity histories, then we could talk all day. China, North Korea, Peru, Ecuador, Russia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, half of the countries in Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines – the list is endless. And I don’t want to believe Matt is comparing the deaths of 6 million Jews by the hand of Hitler over a short 11 year period, to what American military and scientists have done over the past 200 years.
Let’s just agree that the human race is a very, very bad species.
But I don’t think its fair to compare apples to oranges – make that apples to grapes – when talking about historic human atrocities, like the holocaust, or the most recent human rights violations conducted by the Iraqi regime over the past 20 years.
Perhaps I missed the point of Matt’s essay. Are we to sit idle and reflect on our own misgivings, clean our own house (of past ghosts?) rather then quell the current crimes against humanity going on in Iraq? Perhaps Matt doesn’t believe Iraq is guilty of such crimes. Just another American conspiracy?
Yes, America is guilty of making mistakes or committing outright crimes against humanity. But that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to end or prevent similar crimes elsewhere.
( 10:42 PM )
Light observations
Putting aside all of the horrible aspects of this war for a moment, I’d like to make a few light observations.
If you’ve ever had DirecTV or some sort of satellite television, you know that the slightest, above-normal breeze will knock your reception right off the air. Yet 700 Tomahawk missiles and nearly 2,000 sorties dropping a countless number of bombs on Baghdad has been unable to knock Iraqi television off the air. Hmmm…I wonder if they offer a “family package”?
Aside for the obvious “in-cahoots” relationship between the military and the national news agencies, have you noticed the ridiculous local affiliate news channel coverage of the war? One of our local Connecticut stations managed to scrap up enough money to send a reporter as far as Saudi Arabia. “I’m standing in Saudi Arabia – and if you look in the distance, you can almost see a puff of smoke from today’s bombings. Oh…wait. That’s just a big puffy cloud.”
And now we’re getting weather reports from the Middle East. Almost as if, “Hell, we failed miserably predicting the weather in New England this winter, so let’s try guessing the weather on the other side of the planet.”
What’s next? Traffic and sports?
“This morning’s commute into Baghdad is brutal. Giant bomb crater’s appeared overnight on the Saddam Hussein Expressway. There’s a lot of rubbernecking going on near the Jihad Interchange as commuters slow down to grab a glimpse of the burned out shells of Republican Guard armored vehicles.”
“Coming up after the break – all of yesterday’s scores and highlights of Taliban and Al Queda searches in Afganistan.”
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