Adventures in Urology
Lightning trip through the urologist’s office this morning following up on what my internist diagnosed as prostatitis So this urologist comes in after I pee in the cup looks me in the eye shakes my hand introduces himself never stops moving I tell him about the three times in the past 1.5 years I’ve gone to the doctor for prostatitis dull pain in the pubic region of the abdomen becoming sharper and extending to the rectum flaring up to a sharp pain in that area and he says drop your shorts and he checks my balls and has me turn my head and cough and he says lean over and put your elbows on the table and he lubes me up and BAM anally finger-raped I’m not complaining I’ve taken it in the ass before and I kind of like it rough I just which my ex-boyfriends had lubed up that good when they did me He gave me some Kleenex with which to wipe myself clean which is more than my boyfriends ever did Comes back and says I don’t think it’s prostatitis, I think it’s pelvic floor pain, go to these people for exercise And I’m out the door
570p 7h3 V10l3nc3, Y0!
(CHICAGO) — Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley met today with several police, school officials, reverends, social workers, and activists.
Explaining the need for this summit, Mayor Daley said, “It concerns all of us, antamarrahng … again havacupa ministers and other people … just sit around an sez, ‘I-I-Is there any other solutions that we cuh we’ve lost?’”(1)
Many community leaders say they are dissatisfied with the Daley Administrations previous efforts to stomp out violence, including instituting a curfew, then making the curfew earlier when it was determined that kids routinely ignore curfews, asking parents to be responsible parents, asking them again and this time saying “please,” banning all guns within the city, achieving 100% enforcement of city gun laws by every available honest and competent police officer,(2) and asking for more and stiffer anti-gun laws.
Police officials interviewed before the summit said they would push for more police, more and bigger equipment, and an increase in salaries and benefits. The officers praised new Police Superintendent Jody Weis for planning a massive SWAT invasion into “trouble areas,” positioning rooftop snipers on every block, covering the sky with police helicopters, and knocking on doors wearing full body armor and carrying really huge assault rifles.
School officials disagreed with the police representatives, saying that a three- or fourfold increase in education funds, some of it earmarked for a new anti-violence curriculum, is necessary to get rid of violence in the city. Social workers echoed the school officials’ opinion, only replace “education” with “social services” and “curriculum” with “program.”
As the only groups not directly tied to the government, the activists and the holy reverends agreed that the most important thing was to make speeches about how the government should forcibly take the possessions of rich people and distribute them to the economically disadvantaged. The groups disagreed on two issues: whether religious leaders should be exempt from asset limits and whether daily baths should be mandatory.
For his part, Daley is reportedly intent on reducing the availability of guns in a city in which guns are legally not available. Rumor has it that Daley intends a police takeover of neighboring suburbs and Northwestern Indiana.
(1) This is an early transcript of Mayor Daley’s speech and has not yet been edited for clarity by the mayor’s staff.(2) Equal to approximately 7% of entire Chicago Police Department. For more news on this topic, see “Daley plans meetings on Chicago violence” and “Chicago police aim to reduce number of shootings, homicides“
Related Posts Elsewhere …
The Bench: "MAYOR DALEY IS PISSED"
Cultural/Evolutionary Basis of Cutting: In Defense of Self-Mutilation, part three
Cultural/Evolutionary Basis of Cutting
Human beings have been cutting themselves for thousands of years. Way back when, however, it wasn’t a solitary activity in response to overwhelming psychological stress. It was integrated into the community as a rite of passage, a ceremonial scarring to mark one’s acceptance into the adult community. Highly ritualized events like this not only provided a sense of direction and belonging, but they acknowledged the human need for intense physical experiences (pain in this case, but other ancient rituals emphasized sex, drugs, starvation, etc.) and gave those experiences boundaries of time, place, and community.
Of course, we have disposed of those barbaric traditions, because we are now too civilized and too rational to do such things to ourselves or our children. Of course, drugs (including but not limited to booze) and addictive behavior; illicit and compulsive sex, prostitution, infidelity; violence and S&M dynamics of all sorts still flourish somewhere in the shadows (and often in the broad daylight) of the adult world. But at least the children are safe. (OK, I’m being obviously sarcastic here. I won’t insult your intelligence by drawing that out.)
My own opinion is that there is nothing inherently bad about sex, drugs, or violence. (There is, of course, something inherently dangerous about them, but it’s not a moral issue.) Nor are they demons from our distant past that we can stamp out through some sort of political, psychological, or social progressivism or reactionism. In fact, we run into virtually identical problems whether we liberate these forces from the prison of moral interpretation (replacing it by either excusing excess with novel designations of victimhood or celebrating excess with a blind eye toward its dangers) or beat them repeatedly with moral baseball bats. They have always been an integral part of the human experience and they always will be. The only choice we have to make is how to work with them, direct them into channels less likely to kill us and our loved ones. As long as we refuse to make that decision, old human patterns will persist in their more destructive forms.
As long as kids have little or no sense of purpose or meaning, no sense of personal identity (you can’t tell just by the hair or the music or whether they get along with their parents), no sense that their actions can affect the world around them, sex, drugs, and violence will flourish in their world, too. Pain will be a solution to pain. Cutting will not stop. But in some distant memory, in the chemicals that flow from our glands and swim through the primordial waters of our bloodstream, all of this connects us to an age when everything made a hell of a lot more sense.
Related Posts on Other Blogs
The RecoverYourLife.com Forums discuss whether seeking help is just “being selfish?”
ModBlog shows us a journey from “Self-Harm to Self-Love” using conscious and deliberate self-branding over cutting scars, and and another “Self-Injury Scar Cover-Up Procedure” using artistic scarification.
ModBlog also has some incredibly interesting posts on ritual and/or performance cutting (Caution: Graphic, bloody pictures).
Physiological Basis of Cutting: In Defense of Self-Mutilation, part two
Physiological Basis of Cutting
The easiest place to start is with the biochemical stuff. People understand that because it seems remote enough from the conscious choices we make. To the extent they have no choice, we don’t need to ask “Why do they do that?” Except, it’s not all that clear cut in this case. But it does provide a somewhat satisfying answer to the question, “What do they get out of it?”
They get endorphins coursing through their body, the body’s own natural opioid (kind of like heroin), which does a tremendous job (usually) alleviating pain and stress, lifting mood. Same stuff released during strenuous exercise and sex. It can help manage frustration, anxiety, depression, agitation, even some psychotic symptoms.
Like any short-circuit of the problem-resolution process coupled with an intense behavior-reward complex, cutting runs into the twin problems of limiting access to other coping skills and increasing dependence on (and addiction to) the rewarded behavior. Why spend months in intense therapy and struggling to change your behavior and interactions with the world so you can “feel better” when all you have to do is cut, and you know you’ll feel better immediately? And it does. It would not be this addictive if it were that effective in the first place.
… Next installment: Cultural/Evolutionary Basis of Cutting
Is That a Bowling Ball in Your Abdomen, or …?
… or a 30-lb. benign ovarian tumor?
My wife and I watched an episode of House from the first season (Netflix DVD) last night, and it raised some questions and question-like thoughts, such as …
- Why don’t Drs. House and Wilson tell the fat married Latina patient the actual dangers that may be posed by a 30 lb. benign tumor on her ovary? Not to force her to lose weight and look “normal” (which was her immediate and loudly, angrily voiced interpretation), but to dispense accurate and relevant medical information, which, as I understand it, is part of a physician’s job.
- For the record, the most significant impact of large benign tumors anywhere in the body is due to their pressing on and displacing other organs. House’s patient’s primary complaint upon visiting the clinic was heartburn. This was found to be a result of the tumor presumably displacing the stomach and esophagus upward, allowing the hydrochloric acid to move from the stomach through the area of the esophagus normally constricted by the esophageal sphicter in the diaphragm. If the tumor grows, it will press on other organs and possibly cause more dangerous symptoms.
- Also, according to the folks at Gyn[Ob].com (the Virtual OB-GYN office), an ovarian tumor “can enlarge and its sheer size can cause an ovary to twist upon itself leading to gangrene. This is called “torsion,” and death of the ovary occurs because the blood supply is twisted off.”
- It turns out the whole episode is about medical issues that are masked by fat or mistaken for fat or underlying causes of fat (with deadly consequences). And I wonder how the Fat Nazis Acceptance Movement Ladies would feel about this episode. (I searched on kateharding.net, but didn’t find a thing.) The patient with the tumor was written as the voice of Fat Acceptance, but she was shrill and inarticulate (I mean, more than your average activist in the Fat or any other movement) and she wound up having an (pretty dumb) ulterior motive for wanting to retain her fat (she wanted to continue to appeal to the chubby chasers with whom she was cheating on her husband). Not much of a poster child.
- The patient with the tumor carried it low and looked pregnant. I once dated a woman who carried her abdominal fat low and looked like she was pregnant. She covered it up on our first date and I didn’t notice until the second. At that point, it was a little off-putting. I had not seen women carry their weight like that, not up close, and wondered if she was pregnant, which would not be welcome news on the second date.
- I really need to write shorter posts. Just for the sake of my schedule and my productivity.
In Defense of Self-Mutilation, part one
I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that’s real.
–Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt”
I wouldn’t say I’m pro-cutting, but neither am I anti-cutting. It is a coping mechanism with a significant short-term positive effect and fewer risks than some other coping mechanisms popular among people who don’t know how to cope. The Internet has a healthy population of sites and articles and posts that say much the same. My disagreement with these sites and articles and posts is that they usually lead and/or finish with “Stop Cutting!”
“Stop Cutting!” is as short-sighted a slogan, in its well-intentioned way, as “Just Say No!” was for drugs in the ’80s. (Reminds me of NWA, We don’t just say no, we’re too busy sayin’ yeah.) As a recovering alcoholic, I refuse to tell anyone else to “Stop Drinking!” regardless of quantities or destructive behaviors or deteriorating health. It wouldn’t do any good, and may backfire. After all, what the fuck do I know about someone else’s life? What makes me so much better than someone else that I can presume to tell him/her what to do? Defensiveness spikes and anger increases the urgency to get fucked up. Or, Increase the Stress >> Increase the Likelihood of the Maladaptive Coping Behavior. The truth is, an alcoholic generally is not going to stop drinking until s/he feels like it, “hits bottom,” makes a decision, etc. Even then, it’s far from easy. And, in my experience, cutting is very similar.
The biggest problem for the Anti-Cutting movement (and for anyone who deals with the issue in any way) is the biggest obstacle in the way of cutters who otherwise might be ready to put down the knives and razors. When cutting comes into a conversation, the response I hear most often from noncutters is “You know, I just don’t get the whole cutting thing, never have.” It aggravates me a little every time, probably just because it makes such sense to me, and there was always something very satisfying about cutting. It worked. For a while. But it’s difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced it, haven’t needed it. Below is my attempt.
(First, let me kick my credentials: I first cut myself at age 18 with a big serated knife in my parents’ kitchen. I don’t recall hearing about people doing that sort of thing back then, except maybe once or twice among more sophisticated city folk, and then in the context of art or performance. It was years before the current cutting “epidemic.” I continued cutting, though not as frequently as some other cutters, until I stopped drinking and drugs about 5 years ago. The last time I obsessed about cutting and nearly picked up the knife again was about 2 months ago. Now, I’m on track to become a nurse practitioner working with children and adolescents with psych issues.)
… Next installment: Physiological Basis of Cutting
Related Posts on Other Blogs
pulling out hair gives tips to cutters and friends in “Self Injury Support”
Sun & Shield says Thou Shalt Not Cut in “A Biblical view on self-mutilation, or “cutting””
Teen Issues says, patronizingly, “Wanna join the new fad? Don’t.”
the kids speak in “Multigenre Fun” on writing lives/teaching lives
the jukebox tells a story
A meets B walking along the road one day. For A, it is love at first site. B, however, is more cynical, and not necessarily in the mood, besides.
[A, upon seeing B for the first time] “One baby to another says I’m lucky to’ve met you, spreading his disease, living by his story!”
[B backs off, annoyed] “Although I’m not going back to the assholes that made me and the perfect display of random acts of hopelessness, the girls for pay dates are giving cut rates or else doing it for free.”
[A, with a sympathetic, knowing look] “The past keeps knock knock knocking on my door and I don’t want to hear it anymore.” [A pause] “Your optimistic eyes seem like paradise to someone like me—a young girl, she is shaded, bears the scars that never faded.”
[B responds absurdly] “… pink, pink, pink, pink …”
[A, imploring] “Drop your things and come inside, and leave this country behind!”
[B] “The weather’s grim, ice on the cages; me, I’m Robin Hood and I puff on my cigarette.”
[A, waxing poetic] “She says I’d prefer the moss, I’d prefer the mouth, a baby of the swamps, a baby of the south.”
[B tries to stay light, but becomes noticeably darker] “What does it mean, a mistake or two? You were protesting your innocence and you started to cry, just as I started to pee. Life is not a choice, death is the alternative, or shit you let it grow up in this fucked up world that we live in.”
[A weaves memories to soothe B] “You took me from the shelter of a mother I had never known. I found some whiskey in the kitchen and poured it in your tea. I tried to calm you. I kissed your neck and I cooled your forehead. But then we had to pause like a comma ’cause someone got stuck and bucked and family was outside with trauma.”
[B interrupts] “I don’t care for fair ’cause fair-fair’s meat. Out of 10 ways of dying, the first might cheat. I’m harder than the hardest, hardest, hard can get …”
[A interrupts the interruption] “Another cigarette, not quite through with this story yet…. More miles than money, look at our lives and it’s so funny. You ain’t laughing, are you? I got a man who makes the Devil pale. The ninth witness to the stand said she saw me burnin’ candles, got a number when you close your eyes like a real magician. Ooh ee ooh ah aah, mo mo me muh muh mo, moving sidewalks, I don’t see under my feet.”
[B ain't havin' that nonsense] “I got a tattoo of a dick on my foot, so when I kick you in the ass I’ll be fuckin’ you up. I’m feeling that I’m sober, even though I’m drinking. You have got to kick me back out into the cold and nasty weather. And maybe if i sober up I will steal a car and go to Las Vegas. Oh, the gigolo. I imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks.”
[A responds, beginning to lose hope] “If you forget how to feel, reach inside your chest. Is there a heart beating? Is there just emptiness? I’d be the king if I could say to you, ‘Cut the baby in two.’ But that night, on our honeymoon, we stayed in separate rooms.”
[B, trying to comfort and slip away at the same time] “Stab a sorry heart with your favourite finger. How smart are you? How dumb am I? Paint the whole world blue and stop your tears from stinging. She could’ve been a killer if she didn’t walk the way she do, and she do. Hear the cavemen singing, good news they’re bringing.” [Last few words delivered offstage]
[A desperate, realizing B is gone] “I’ve got a lot of things I want to sell, but not here, babe … Don’t go!”
[B, voice over] “I left a note on his dresser. Here’s what it says, here’s what it says, here’s what it says, here’s what it says: I’ve never done good things, I’ve never done bad things. I’ve never did anything out of the blue. Whoa whoa …”
Nirvana, Metallica, Rilo Kiley, Lou Reed, Depeche Mode, Yaz, Nick Drake, Spokane, David Bowie, Regina Spektor, Pavement, Arab Strap, Esham, Afghan Whigs, Dirty on Purpose, Del the Funky Homosapien, Jungle Brothers, Chris Mills & Deanna Varagona, The Replacements, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blondie, Don Lang, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Dan Hartman, Soundgarden, Billy Idol, Björk, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Pernice Brothers, Echo & the Bunnymen, Peggy Lee, Cocteau Twins
D1553d
So Big Kate says, “Yeah, I’m bored with you now, f15h. Bye.” And I don’t really blame her. It gets tiresome for me to make the effort to present a serious argument why people should take responsibility for their choices and actions, not blame it on the evil forces at work in society that limit access to information and opportunity. All the Fat Ladies over at Kate’s blog have several good points, and I understand the need to codify the differences between Us and Them for a group of individuals who have lately realized they are treated generally unfairly for no good reason. I used to take that sort of hardass political stance about bisexuality. Then I realized, even though a bunch of people care and can get passionate about it, no one actually changes his/her mind. It’s all venting, political masturbation, which is great, as masturbation is always great, but it’s so dull when people take it seriously. “My fat friends are dying from lap bands!” Hysterics. Or, a less gendered word, Drama. Show me the bloody cattle cars and mass graves, or tell me the story of an individual, or several, who got screwed by the system. Don’t make sweeping generalizations and then claim you’re not saying there is a conspiracy afoot. Don’t go all Maenad (or, less gendered, bestial) on anyone who dares to believe there might be some possible health consequences to your genetic propensities + choices, or that the surgeons performing WLS on your formerly fat friends might have good intentions and reasons for their actions, but nothing involving butchering Fatty just because everybody knows Fatty’s life isn’t worth shit as it is.
I don’t care, Fat Fatties. I like you all. I like the way you look. I like your personalities, unless you’re all politically hung up on this (or any other) shit. You’re kind of like feminists, new ones, young ones, the kind of feminists who honestly hate men just because they don’t know how else to feel in the face of recent knowledge and events. Maybe you’ll grow up someday, become human. Maybe you’ll come to accept that the world is composed of a lot of crazy shit, and sometimes it does more good to keep it on a personal level, to soften your understanding of humanity, to communicate with others as though they are not your enemy.
But if not, you won’t be worse off than most people on the planet.
70 N0 L0n63r 74lk 1n Numb3r5?
I seem to have been caught between Scylla and Charybdis. A flurry of little-considered tracking-back brought one response, from fracas, which led to that entity’s advice (very rational and well-intentioned, but perhaps, perhaps, better suited to a beginner, a kid … or perhaps, perhaps, well, read on, if you are actually there …) as well as to a friendly argument, and/or violent discussion, within the confines of my head, of which a portion is reproduced farther below.
fracas
http://fracas.wordpress.com/ | ♦♦♦♦♦♦@♦♦♦♦♦♦.com | ♦♦.♦♦.♦♦.♦… I’m going to offer you a bit of advice and please don’t take it the wrong way, I only mean to help.
The way you title your posts makes them appear to be from a scraper site. Some people check out the trackbacks before they delete them, but not everyone does. Arriving here, I see that you have a genuine blog here, have written your own opinions and offered a link to where you found the story… all good things! I realized, from the way you display other headings in your sidebar and from other post titles, that this is your style. It is good to have a style, but the one you’ve chosen makes your links appear to be from nasty sites.
Seeing a trackback that looks like this one that appeared at my blog:
(R34l-L1f3 5up3rh3r035 #2: ‘Dur64′ « f15h 0u7 0f H2O on Craniofacial Duplication: East vs West)
a person might just automatically assume it is from a scraper site and delete it, labeling it as “spam” which would make askimet [sic] (the spam catcher WordPress uses) believe that you are spam. In addition, someone might submit a report (without checking your actual blog of course) to WordPress that your site is a scraper site based on what your trackbacks look like. Then… you’d have WordPress thinking you’re doing nasty things with your blog that are against their terms of service, and they’d be warning you. You’d have to prove you’re not doing anything wrong, and it would be a hassle and a waste of time for you and them.
So… because I came here and found that you have an honest blog with original content and that you’re not a scraper… I wanted to give you a heads up so that none of these things happen to you. …
Now, I understand fracas’s intent here, and I must admit even that I hadn’t thought much about this issue—the consequences of my “style” in terms of community regulations and their enforcement. Still, the comment irked me, and for the same reason many things irk me. It brought to my attention an unresolved inner conflict, an unsynthesized dichotomy that I was just as happy to pretend didn’t exist. The blog is the particular fabric; the pattern is old, the defining of a desire and the concommitant sabotage of all efforts to fulfill that desire.
I want to be anonymous here, to scream obscenities in the wilderness or babble and drool like a baby alone in the crib. If I shit my pants, I want to be empowered to say so, without fear that anyone really cares much. When I have the notion to, out of anger, frustration, playfulness, or perversion, I want to be able to spout the ugliest, nastiest, most offensive bile, blood, and semen-stained words, without a second thought for the feelings or sensibilities of the audience. If there is an audience. I don’t care if there is.
Hence, the “coded” titles and categories, hiding the blog, making it difficult for others to discover (or to want to discover) by the ordinary means. A sort of anti-marketing, if you will.
On the other hand, I want recognition, acknowledgement, conversation, even—the devil help me—community, a thing which grieves me as much as the Christian Church and liberal politics combined. I want to pass someone in the virtual hallway and say, “Hey, nice post! Gosh, your gramma sounds like an awesome lady.” Likewise, I want others to stop me as I walk along some virtual philosopher’s path in the woods and say to me, “Hey, nice post! I never before considered the positive aspects of cutting,” or “Wow, it really is beautiful the some species of butterfly live off the juices of shit and rotting bodies,” or “You really upset a bunch of people! Wasn’t it funny what they wrote in your comments? Boy, what a hoot!”
Hence, the tags, the blogroll, the tracking back. I am starved for attention, even though I don’t like the taste.
So you see my dilemma. Anti-social, social animal; hate people, need people; despise convention, desperate for what can be got only through the judicious use of convention. “My sister, my daughter.” “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
A totally fabricated conflict, it’s true, from the depths of the luke-warm waters of my psyche. It’s silly. But it’s interesting. Understand, I’m not asking for anyone’s sympathy. It’s just interesting.
So, now, the practical question of “Shall I continue the spamesque ‘coded’ text, and risk turning off other would-be visitors, and risk the whole blog being dissolved by the WordPress Powers That Be?” I shall think about it a little more.
R34l-L1f3 5up3rh3r035 #2: ‘Dur64′
Baby With 2 Faces Born in North India
Apr 8, 10:11 AM (ET)
SAINI SUNPURA, India (AP) – A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said Tuesday.The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali’s facial features are duplicated – she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes.
* * *
Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.
Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told The Associated Press.
“Lali is God’s gift to us,” said Jaipal Singh, a member of the local village council. “She has brought fame to our village.”
Village chief Daulat Ram said he planned to build a temple to Durga in the village.
* * *
Lali’s condition is often linked to serious health complications, but the doctor said she was doing well.
“She is leading a normal life with no breathing difficulties,” said Ali, adding that he saw no need for surgery.
* * *
Singh said he took his daughter to a hospital in New Delhi where doctors suggested a CT scan to determine whether her internal organs were normal, but Singh said he felt it was unnecessary.
* * *
Let’s say Lali stays healthy, but that her unexamined internal organs and chemistry and so forth are different than normal folks’. Let’s say that when she reaches puberty, she grows multiple pairs of arms and becomes incredibly strong, that she is indeed the reincarnation of Durga and destined to become on this world the force of divine retribution. Wouldn’t that be cool?
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