Click images for desktop size: "Old Friends" by Unknown When I was young (scary phrase that) I think I was in some sort of pain most days. Between football, baseball and surfing I was usually dinged up. (Football needs no explanation, I hope. Baseball, from always getting spiked, plowing into catchers and pulling the double play. From surfing it was mainly stepping on sea urchins, getting stung by jelly fish sort of thing.)
It never bothered me much then. It never slowed me down. Never really paid attention to it.
Maybe I was distracted or something. Now I'm growing weary of pain.
Tomorrow I have to do all the kitting of kids for the coming football season. It causes me great pain just to wash my own hair. The shoulder is killing me slowly. I'd feel near ecstatic to just have 15 minutes where I wasn't flinching and cringing from hurt.
Today I have to do a lot of exercises to loosen the shoulder. I figure the kid's will be anywhere from 4' 11" to 6' 2". I don't think it would make a good impression for me to be wincing every time I reach up to adjust a jaw pad or pump air into a helmet.
Today I have to bring up the kennel from the basement to get ready for the new foster puppy. Tat would normally be a pretty pleasurable task but now I have to worry about if I'll even be able to get it upstairs.
Yesterday wasn't a very great day. Lots of rain. Still it didn't start until after the dogs and I had our walk.
I haven't heard from the doc about my injecting myself with Lantus lessons. So I called and eft a lesson with the Pharmacist who's supposed to teach me. I got a call back a few hours later and the earliest appointment would be May 12th. I took the appointment but that didn't please me. For one thing the pain in my shoulder is neuropathic. That means it doesn't respond to acetomiaphin, ibuprofen or even aspirin. It only responds to this one pill. The pill was marketed as a mood
Click images for desktop size: "Obsession" by Michael Mobius elevator but didn't work too well but they discovered that it was great for relieving neuropathic pain.
When I looked up the pill and saw that it was a mood elevator I panicked in a small way. I thought maybe they thought I was suicidal, depressed or something and were trying to slip something past me. They doubly assured me that wasn't the case but I didn't really believe them until I managed to read the whole history of the drug.
It did a fair, not great job of reducing the pain but it also made me groggy and made my skin feel numb and tingly, so I stopped taking it. I went looking for it yesterday. I couldn't find it. Its probably expired anyway.
While I was looking for the pills I got another call from the doctor's office. They wanted to make sure I knew that teaching me how to inject myself would cost at least one hundred bucks . . . I have to wonder how hard they think will be.
I called the pharmacy I use, the cheapest one and found out that they won't fill the script for Lantus until I've been taught to inject myself. I almost asked if I had to bring a certificate. Like maybe I got a diploma; Doctor of Gluteus Maximus Stickiumus. They probably just take my word for it.
Right away I got a call from my friend asking me to make an emergency appointment with the doctor. She banged her knee a few days ago. It was causing her a lot of hurt. It bruised and was making
Click images for desktop size: "Music Lesson" by Leighton her whole body cold and clammy. I'm not a doc but I ascribe cold and clammy to broken bones. That morning I gave her a sports wrap like I'd give a kid with a sore knee. It apparently didn't help.
She got to the doctor. His word was that it wasn't sprained or broken just a deep bruise. She could expect pain for two more weeks . . .
That was a bit of a relief, I guess, but not the best news. Especially with the weekend we've got coming up. Selfishly, I now realize, it never occurred to me that maybe we should cancel some of the plans for her. I guess I'll have to rely on my friend sticking up for herself and ignoring any pressure I might unintentionally be putting on her.
I want to do the dog walk Sunday but its pretty unfair to ask someone with a bum knee to walk under cloudy skies.
The worst part of pain, for me, is that it distracts me too much. When you've got as little brain power as I do even small distractions create obstacles.

I did watch a couple of movies last night. I like horror movies. I watch a lot of bad ones in the faint
Click images for desktop size: "View of the Kiyomizudera" by Unknown hope of finding that golden moments: Karloff as Frankenstein trying to catch a sunbeam; Leatherface dancing in the dawn, dancing to the beat of his revving chainsaw while Marilyn Burns, sticky with red Karo syrup in the back of a pick up truck, provides a lilting melody of the hysterical laughter of freedom; the mad family feud in "The Hills Have Eyes", a feud crystalized in the heart of the dog "Beast" who sees it as a blood feud of revenge as he avoids thinking of his female companion dog eviscerated by the mutants.
I like horror movies a lot. Some incredibly talented guys get started in horror movies. So do some jerks. Horror always sells. Guys like me will sit in dank movie theaters, rent the DVDs hoping for the one moment of splatter that manages to encapsulate all our fears and shows them to the light. Tobe Hooper, who disappointed me like no other, made the incredibly brilliant "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" a film the critics all hated, at the time. So you can't trust anyone but your own eyes and ears when it comes to horror. Nothing else is reliable.
That said I watched "Laid to Rest". I was surprised that Bobbi Sue Luther, produced her first starring role. She's someone you'd describe as "big tits. little talent".
As a producer she did some great things. The gore and splatter were very good. The actors, except her and the killer, all worked really hard to make their cardboard characters seem to be made of flesh was well as obvious blood. Kevin Gage made a nothing character into someone likable. This got exploited pretty badly in a cruddy added on death scene at the end.
Cool special effects haven't moved me since I saw Tom Savini's glorious throat slitting scene that opened the carnage in "Friday the 13th". This stuff is cool but also really "so what".
The ending of the movie was stupid. It did one raise one interesting question. The star was whacked in the head which gave her amnesia. She discovers that she is/was a cheap prostitute so now she'd
Click images for desktop size: "Kim Novak" almost wishes she were dead. Her rage grows from her self loathing. I thought that strange.
I then watched Enki Bilal's "Immortal (Ad Vitam)". I like a lot of Bilal's artwork. The movie's gotten a lot of buzz because of its mixing of cgi and live characters. I guess the tech was interesting. The movie was not. The monsters were semi cool but the story was stupid and seemed to have no point, dramatic purpose or consistency. I can accept that ancient Egyptian gods are real, I'm willing to meet a story teller that far. I can even accept that the ancient gods sole reason for existing past creating the universe is to breed with a special type of person to create new gods.
I think if I'm willing to work that hard that the story teller has to do more than just string together some scenes of unrelated people and events. I'd have liked it if any of the characters was slightly interesting.
The story starts with Horous, the God, trying to inhabit a human body. Because of the new fad of eugenics and transposing human body parts Horous discovers that every human he enters blows up! This brings in the cops who are searching for this new serial killer. Then they sort of forget about all of that.
There's a weird love story about the guy Horous finds who never had a transplant and the chick who is the miracle who can breed a new god.
Bilal (which is the same name as the crazy mutant twin in the much better "Basket Case") throws out a whole lot of, I guess, very personal ideas about sex, love and loss. Not one of them did he explain, justify or explain. It was just a pretty boring mess that I felt was more an endurance contest than a movie.

At least the dog walk is this Sunday. I just got an email from my friend. She's as excited about it as I am, bum knee and all!