13 Years Left To Live

This picture might be related to my health. These are Carnitas. Maciza meat. High quality pork tacos.

I'm not in pain now, which is a big improvement over the period of time from 1987 to only a few months ago when I could not lift either arm above my head and needed pain killer medicine several times through the day in order to walk normally. The retired life suits me. Go to the gym everyday, eat some fruit salad and tacos, jugos, liquados, jerk off, etc. But this damn health test had me wondering if I could do it and I failed miserably. I simply can not get up. Not because of pain as an excuse but because of coordination and balance and strength. That's fucked up. This is a very vulnerable video of me trying to do this exercise so before you want to be an internet cowboy who says Oggy is a loser and a weakling then go ahead and record you trying to do this exercise and post it online. All you do is sit down without using hands or knees. Then get up without using hands or knees. Go ahead. Anyone can do it.
This woman in the illustration doesn't seem to have any problem but I can not get back up off my ass.

My prediction is that the year 2040 will be the end of humanity. That's when our Soap-on-a-rope ecology mentality will drive temperatures 4 Celsius degrees above current normal and that's it, no more food. We'll eat our own fat rolls and left over canned soup and then perish like bark beetles. The point at which we are one week from total collapse will be much like today, except our denial of evidence will be almost complete. And if my failure to stand up means I've got about 6 years left to live, then I'm going to miss the apocalypse. Actually, the test specifically applies to people over 50, so it's really saying that if I can't get up smoothly in the next 7 years, then I'll be dead within the next 6 years after that. To put it another way, I've got 13 years left to live.
I feel this is a worthy goal for November, to make a video of myself actually getting up off the ground. Maybe my shoes were the problem but I really doubt it. I do want to witness the apocalypse when I'm 70 years old.

Second Person Butchered Again

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo didn't read my previous post regarding the abuse of second person pronouns when referring to yourself. Otherwise he might not assume we all have fractured vertebrae and are trying to prepare to play football.

'It's progressing," the signal-caller said of his back during an NFL PLAY 60 event. "I think each day it gets, you know, a little bit improvement, and I think that you just keep trying to figure out what you're able to do each day. Then you go into the next and hopefully you are able to improve enough to get ready to go."

When he says, "you know" that's actually the correct use of second person pronoun because he's trying to verify that the reporter has some clue about injuries and the time it takes to heal. But from that point on he refers to this generic "you" that has no relationship to reality. This is the most frequent scenario where people abuse the second person because athletes are constantly asked specific personal questions and over time they stopped answering in the first person, even though they should since the question is specific and personal and if they answer it with a generic "you" they are framing the whole conversation in almost pre-determined, internationally recognized terms, like we can all relate. This really irks me and has me carving ceramic tile statues in the image of my disgust.

I believe it has become habitual at this point so Romo can't be faulted too much. It's accepted that if someone says, "Tony, you fractured your spine, how does that feel?" Tony will respond, "Well, you get up in the morning and you do your exercises that you have been prescribed and you take your pain meds and you and you and you....blah blah...you do this you do that." And he manages to answer without using a single first person pronoun. That's fucking insane. Do people understand how fucked up that is? He fractured his spine by getting a 200 pound knee to the back...and he'd already had spine surgery on a different part of his spine. And even though this is very specific and personal and almost no quarterbacks have spine injuries or spine surgeries, he's still responding like there is some generic "You" who is not only a celebrated NFL quarterback but is also suffering from multiple spine problems. There might be 5 people out of 7 Billion who fit that description. Tony, there is no generic "you" who can relate to your condition and circumstances. Only YOU can answer that question by saying, "Well, I'm in a lot of pain, I take medication but that only does so much and it makes me sick and tired and I have a broken back so of course I'm frustrated. But I can only progress one day at a time."

Instead, he says this:

“We’re just taking it day by day,” Romo said. “Obviously, if you couldn’t walk through, you’ll probably struggle getting ready for practice. It continues to get a little better incrementally each day. You just reassess it every day.”

How hard is it for an athlete to use the first person? Why is this second person abuse now an accepted tradition? And what are you doing about it?

Parting Glass

I had to bury this in last year.

Sail Along Silv'ry Moon

1937
Sail Along Silv'ry Moon
Key: F Major
Lyrics: Harry Tobias
Music: Percy Wenrich

If it weren't for Sammy Davis Jr. I might claim Bing Crosby as the most talented entertainer in history; he was definitely the most successful. At one point he led in record sales, movie grosses, television ratings, and radio ratings. He has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is also the significant growth ring in the American pop music tree stump that delineates the beginning of the era of "crooning" with the end of the full throat belting that we witnessed in the Harry Von Tilzer era, the pitch perfect "performance" era where Opera and Theater and Pop music fused. Crosby is the original king crooner, his performance technique is casual but professional and for the first time a mainstream audience responded to the lazy approach that was accepted in western swing and cowboy songs. This was a style almost anyone could sing. Crosby sounds like your next door neighbor, except good. Until Crosby, a recording artist was required to be exceptionally good, there are no duds prior to 1930; everyone was a first class singer. Nobody in your neighborhood sounds like Charles Hart singing Harvest Moon, but many amateur singers sound like Bing Crosby, at least in their own minds while singing in the shower. And that's the important thing, Crosby is casual, he sings sitting down, stretched in a hammock, riding in a car. I imagine Charles Hart standing with perfect posture, his chest puffed out, his jaw open wide like he's on a ship that's sinking and he wants the world to hear him. But Bing Crosby could sing with a pipe in his mouth, his character's casual personality was recognizable, and that's something that hadn't yet been accepted. Ask anyone on the street to sing a song and they will probably try to sing like Bing Crosby. Among other things, Bing Crosby proved a singer could be casual and still get his point across. Eisenhower loyalists only have themselves to blame for the popularity of degenerates like Jack Kerouac and Miles Davis because Bing Crosby was cool before cool was cool and he soon became not cool enough.

Huaquechula

The volcano has been erupting lately.

So, I want to spare some people a bit of struggle in getting to Huaquechula and back. I almost took my moped there on a rural road but took the bus instead. The moped is running great after like three weeks of work. But it's a little far to ride and I don't like leaving my moped in odd places. That decision led to some problems I'll get to later, but the initial problem was finding the bus terminal to Huaquechula. I guess asking someone would be the fastest way by old Oggy decided to hunt for it like a rooster in a barn full of mirrors. I figured it would be near the normal bus terminals on Independencia in Atlixco. I was right about that. If you are at the downtown Oro terminal then you are about three blocks away from the Huaquechula terminal. This is assuming you took a bus from Puebla. If you took a bus from Izucar de Matamoros then you should get off before Atlixco at the road to Huaquechula and take your chances that a small bus will have room.