Humor, New Word, Whimsical

The B List

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My neighbor’s dogwood kept me up all night. Its bark did, anyway.

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The Rule of Vocabulary And Insults

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The Questionable Enunciation Rule

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Weird Al just got a lot richer. Congress just voted to replace the national anthem with his hit song, “Dare To Be Stupid,” and for self-explanatory reasons.

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I bought a non-area rug for my sister-in-law’s new house. It violates the laws of physics and literally takes up no room at all.

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Get out there and live a Joe-Exotic kind of life, minus the murder-for-hire part of course – unless you’re surrounded by people who listen to Luke Bryan.

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Judith Priest, local librarian, couldn’t figure out why everyone assumed she had a lisp when introducing herself.

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Tired of using boring masks to protect yourself? Just in time for the upcoming Friday the 13th, from my new line of PPE… No one will get close enough to infect you.

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Meeting doodle: each time something vague or contradictory was stated, I drew an arrow. At least now I know where we’re headed?

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“It’s not fair that Buffalo Wild Wings doesn’t get a routine restaurant inspection,” my coworker complained as he read the inspection list online.

“No, it makes perfect sense,” I replied.

“Really? Why is that?”

“Because there is absolutely no evidence that Buffalo Wild Wings has ever served food – or anything actually edible.”

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Afternoon Update: Mr. Good, aka The Cat, aka Guino, smells what I’m cooking. My wife snapped this picture moments ago, one of Guino sitting at the bar, evidently awaiting an undetermined meal. I’m on the other side of the bar, attempting to catch a picture of him. His face is illuminated by a flash from my camera, rather than the aura of my angelic yet diabolical presence out of sight to the left in the kitchen. P.S. After a delicious morning meal of beans, we had air-fried pickles for supper. The cat has so far not registered any complaints.

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Mr. Good, aka The Cat, aka Guino, sits on a mountain of blankets, looking toward me in the kitchen. The house is filled with the aroma of onions, garlic, and beans cooking in the Instapot. The cat better hide now, anticipating the aftermath of my enjoyment of 5 servings of beans.

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Stolen messenger picture: What heinous act did this cat just commit? He’s awfully comfortable as he either expresses derision or hunger.

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Stolen quote of the week: “I knew they wouldn’t kill me, there’d be too many questions from outsiders.”

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“There is beauty in the breaking,” is one of the most beguiling and contradictory observations that I keep having. The teeth of it aren’t sharp, but certainly insistent as they gnaw.

Arkansas, Biographical, Family, Guest Post, Monroe County, Uncategorized

Pies and Such

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Like most of us, my mamma (pronounced ma’am maw) never wanted to “be a bother to anyone.” On the scale of what she didn’t like, asking someone to do something for her weighed near the bottom – hanging slightly above having her picture taken. As she got older, her reluctance to ask for anything grew.
When she simply couldn’t bring herself to ask directly, she became most creative at pointing a conversation in the direction she wanted it to go. Her hesitancy to ask and her creativeness in asking indirectly was quite endearing.
My favorite all time example occurred one Saturday afternoon when my husband and I made the quick one-hour drive to visit her. Always glad to see us, she seemed a bit preoccupied that day. As usual, we carried the bulk of the conversation, but this time, during a brief lull, she suddenly inserted, “Whada y’all find goodta eat?” Anyone from the South (or a true transplant like my Illinois-born and raised husband) understands that to mean “What do you like to eat?”
Since the conversation to that point was not even closely related to food, we were thrown for a minute. To buy some time, I asked, “What was that, Mamma?” She repeated, “Whada y’all find goodta eat?”
Still a bit confused, I asked, “Do you mean in general, or are you asking if we’re hungry now?” She replied, “In general.” Finally catching on, I told her we like all kinds of food and asked, “What do YOU like to eat?” Knowing two of her favorite snacks were pork rinds and potato chips, it was amusing to hear instead an enthusiastic “I like those McDonald’s pies!”
Now fully aware of the game we were playing, my husband asks “Mamma, would you like us to go get you a McDonald’s pie?” He almost didn’t get all the words out before she was exclaiming, “Naw!! I don’t need one, I just like’em! Unless y’all want one; y’all want one?!”
My husband and I smile and glance sideways at each other. We stand (while she continues to protest she doesn’t want one unless we do) and head out the door while she yells for us to come back and get some money.
We return with McDonald’s apple pies for all. It’s hard to say who devoured theirs first, but it was obvious no one relished that apple pie more than she did.
From that point forward, McDonald’s was our first stop when we rolled into town for a visit with Mamma. The pies were cheap, but the joy they brought was priceless, and the happy memories of shared apple pies linger on.
To this day, 20+ years later, when one of us is craving something and wanting a partner in crime, the magic question is “Whada y’all find goodta eat?”

 

COVID, Death, Medical, Social Rules

In Wonderment, I Look

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This is a weird composite of thoughts, much like the one I wrote last Sunday. I’m still very optimistic overall, for ‘us’ as a whole. I have my doubts that some of us should be trusted to use toothpicks, though.

I’ve been around a few people who need a dose of Negan. Some have been angels. I’ve been a right bastard myself a few times. I used a character from The Walking Dead purposefully, though I abandoned the show a while back. This won’t be the last pandemic we face. It’s a good blueprint for how we’ll do if we don’t substantially snap the heck out of our inability to give everyone good healthcare. Though I’m a liberal, I think our biggest enemy is ‘us.’ Not because we’re separated into nations and interests, but because each of us is part of a collective which pushes the urge toward militancy and diminishes the embrace of things which make our individual lives better. Healthcare, education, and stability continue to bow in service to defense.

Who knew a virus would observe our trillions of dollars of military might worldwide and laugh? Now that we’ve winced long enough at the mercy of an invisible enemy, can we take back a slice of our resources and dedicate it to the prevention of the next one?

Given the presence of asymptomatic carriers, universal precautions are the only means to protect yourself until the bubble pops. Despite doing everything perfectly yourself, you are only as safe as your weakest link. Contact with anyone or anything outside your perfect bubble is a non-zero risk. Universal precautions are not possible on a long timeline. Those that tell us this might be angry when they do so, but they’re not wrong.

Given the false negative rate of the covid test, people who tested negative are not necessarily negative. We have to use the only test we have available, whether it is approved for that use.

If you’re one of those people who are essential and travel in the world, the probability that you’re going to be exposed approaches 100% on a long enough timeline. The Venn diagram of you amidst all the potentially contaminated people and places makes the math irrefutable.

Those who resume their careers in patient care, whether they’re nurses, doctors, aides, or therapists, need a little more praise in the ‘after’ of this. Surviving this cost them invisibly. In the future, everyone in the medical field will have to swallow their fear a bit more, as they agree to stand in the unknown.

We’re all fallible, even those with perfect intentions. ‘We’ rely on people who have to get out into the world while we’re in the bubble. I’m one of those people who have to get out of the bubble. It rarely worries me because I’m almost individually powerless to foresee, much less avoid, danger. I don’t stick the gun in my own mouth. As I tell my friends and family, I earned the right to expect the plane to fall out of the sky onto my head. I don’t walk with my head cocked in anticipatory fear.

As for those who practice perfect isolationism, you’re going to be exposed at an eventual rate of 100%. Time and necessity will insist on it.

If you experience symptoms, it will be very hard for you to get tested – no matter who you are and where you work. We’ll change that by the next pandemic. For this one, though, don’t make the assumption you can get a test. It isn’t true for most people with symptoms.

Even if you are tested, not only are you going to wait days for your result, but at some point you’re going to wonder if you are a false negative. What will help you get over the unease of being an unwitting carrier? Focus on the fact that you were going to be exposed one way or another, anyway. Much like the denizens of The Walking Dead, they discovered they were already walking around with the disease. Unfortunately for us, our condition is that we are genetically no match for the types of viruses that include the coronavirus.

We’ve been focusing on protecting the most vulnerable and of ensuring that our medical system doesn’t collapse.

Despite it being repeated a million times, this was never about guaranteeing you won’t be exposed to the virus.

You will, as will every person you’re accustomed to seeing in your daily life. All of them.

I’ve emerged from my personal experience with some strange observations about my fellow human beings; some bad, some great.

In the ‘after’ of this first wave of the new coronavirus, we must wait to see the data that we’re allowed to see: hospitalizations, intubations, # of those tested, # of those refused tests despite being symptomatic, total deaths, total deaths attributed to the virus, and a mountain of other data.

Reverence for data is important; incorrectly deriving unsupported ideas from raw numbers is to give leeway to manipulation. Science doesn’t demand perfection. It demands a relentless pursuit of ‘better,’  revision, and admission of the need to take another look.

Science can admit its error even when humans cannot. Some of us, myself included, will walk into the ‘after’ in need of more willingness to trust those with expertise to at least throw the dart closer to the target than our limited knowledge can. We’ve moved away from this a bit in the last few years.

We’ll look differently at some of those around us. We’ve  listened and watched as they’ve surprised us. Some with great acts of informed compassion, others with callous disregard. When we catch our breath, literally and figuratively, we will need to deal with what we’ve seen people around us do and say.

Those with means will have different views about the pandemic that those without savings, credit, or the ability to remain inside.

Those with family members suffering from underlying conditions will emerge with ideas, too.

Those who lost family, friends, or livelihoods will reach a distant beach, one that will take some time to come back home from.

Those with fixed ideas and hardened hearts will be untouched by the ability to consider this pandemic from the perspective of the world.

That, without a doubt, is our biggest disease.

 

 

 

Story, Writing

A Meeting Among Friends (Story)

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For the last five years, Rich and Bike took the time to meet me at Blakes Diner at least twice a week. We used the pretext of breakfast to get together. We had no real schedule. Blakes was at the epicenter of  a map of each of our houses. Outside, near the road, a sign proudly bragged, “Home of the World’s Best Biscuits.” We often joked we should sue them for misleading marketing. The biscuits at Blakes were a lot of things, but good wasn’t one of them. Each of us would meticulously order a breakfast plate. None of us ate anything except the hash browns. For purely antiseptic reasons, we doused them in Louisiana hot sauce before eating. The coffee was incredible, though. Each of drank at least four cups per visit.

Earl, the owner, was the cook. He was a retired Navy man. His idea of good food was “a lot of it.” Everyone loved him, and he was often asked to run for mayor of our quiet little town. If he missed a day, his wife cooked in his place. She was not lovable. If a tourist or someone passing through made the mistake of coming in and saying something critical, Earl’s wife had no qualms about tossing an f-bomb grenade on them as they scrambled to escape the diner. The Yelp reviews provided a reliable map to determine on which days Earl was absent.

After we initially started frequenting Blakes for breakfast, Rich casually asked Earl who the namesake Blake was. “I got the signs for free from a surplus sign shop.” It seemed like a logical enough reason for the three of us. “Why is the word ‘Blakes’ missing an apostrophe and upside down?” Earl turned away from his stove for a moment. “I wanted people to look at the sign and have questions. Curious people tend to come inside.” Rich slapped the table and said, “Good enough for me!”

Rich retired as a policeman after getting shot four times in the neck and chest ten years ago. To his wife’s surprise, he went back to college and finished his degree and then earned his accreditation as a teacher. He worked a day each week as a substitute and also tutored a few of the local kids who needed it. Bike, however, was one of those people who could earn a dollar just sitting on a park bench. For several years, he somehow made a decent living buying and selling obscure bicycle parts to enthusiasts and collectors. As for me, I retired at fifty-one. My partner bought out my half of the business we mutually owned in exchange for a comfortable annuity. I spent most of my days walking and reading. I had decided I’d get a new hobby once I depleted the town library book collection. Bike kept interrupting my plan by handing me a surprising variety of great books he found online. While I never saw him reading, I was certain he read voraciously. His vocabulary was stellar, and he loved using words no one would dare use in normal conversation. “Logomaniac,” he’d say, as if the word meant something to us mortals.

Alice, the veteran waitress, asked me, “Hey Kirk, are you going to eat your food this morning?”

“Is it safe?” I asked her, winking.

“Safe isn’t a real thing. This isn’t the Marathon Man, although I would like to pull a couple of your teeth.” Alice smiled. We did the dance of wit every time we met.

“I’ll let you get back to your other tables, Alice.” She laughed. Except for us, there were only two other diners, and both sat at the counter chatting like old friends. In this town, we figured they probably knew each other’s business already.

“Bike, Rich, you need nothing, so I won’t ask.” She placed a full carafe of coffee on the edge of the table we shared, knowing she’d find it empty when she cleared the table.

Bike quipped, “My jentacular needs are indeed all addressed, Alice.” Both Alice and Bike looked at each other as if a duel were imminent before smiling. Rich laughed, but without the habitual large smile I’d grown used to.

As Alice walked away, Bike threw his inevitable parting shot, “Were that your voice would be as euphonious as your figure is lithesome.” I couldn’t help it. I snorted, even though technically Bike offered a compliment hidden in an insult. I’m certain Alice smiled as she departed, though I couldn’t see her face as she moved away.

For a couple of minutes, we alternated between drowning our hash browns in hot sauce and gulping coffee. Like all great friends, we didn’t need an intensity of words to keep us company. Earl hollered across the diner, “Enjoy your food, gentleman!” and waved his spatula in the air in our general direction. We saluted with our coffee cups, another of our many rituals.

For fifteen minutes we gossiped. We’d deny it amounted to that outside the confines of the diner. Our conversations were stuffed with anecdotes, riffs, one-liners, and a barrage of rapid-fire nonsense once we started talking. Through it all, Rich was almost his usual self.

As I stood up and climbed out of the booth, I threw a $10 tip on the table. Bike waited until I was out before moving. Rich also stepped out of the booth and turned his back toward the counter. He took his right hand out of his jacket pocket. In his hand, he held a pistol. He laid it on the table and quietly whispered, “I need your help. I haven’t needed this in years, but I think I’m going to.”

Bike stopped and sat back down as all three of us looked at the gun. “Holy howitzer!” He whispered.

 

Business, Opinion, Product Review, Uncategorized

Pest Control

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In the “after” of all this, if there is one, many people will take skeptical looks at their spending habits. It will affect everything: grooming, clothing, food, vehicles, dining, and every aspect of our lives. It’s a safe guess that I’m not risking much to predict this. It’s going to be okay to wear last year’s pants (even if they belonged to your grandfather last year), have hair that is so disheveled it puts your head in danger of being entwined in that drooping ceiling fan you never replaced, or make ear wax candles in your mom’s garage.

One of a household’s avoidable expenses is pest control. I’m not referring to your husband, the kids always underfoot, or your brother-in-law Brad, the one who disguises all his humor under poorly crafted insults. Those are nuisances. Now that I think about it, even a beetle in your breakfast cereal is a nuisance too. (Anything is edible if you try to eat it, or so the cliché goes. Also, it gives additional meaning to the word “Captain Crunch.”)

For all those who don’t like to read closely or at all, there are exceptions to everything I’m about to write. This isn’t about those exceptions, caveats, ‘buts,’ or ‘what-ifs.’ It is about the general and avoidable overpayment that many seem driven to regarding pest control for their homes.

Note: in anonymous surveys, a LOT of people have no routine or scheduled insect or extermination service at their residence, much in the same way they pretend they floss more than twice a year or follow their routine scheduled maintenance guides. If you’re among those, that’s good: you’re saying money by not doing pest control. As for your teeth, you only need one to open bottles. That’s okay. In reality, some don’t need pest control, although you’d never know that given the way that pest control companies routinely and dramatically convince you that armies of killer ants are going to eat your earlobes during the night.

But…

If you need pest control, you already own what you need to do it safely yourself: a bit of intelligence, a willingness to do it yourself, and a bit of time to investigate my outrageous claim that you are almost certainly overpaying for pest control for your residence.

If you hire a pest control company to treat your house 4-5 times a year, I recommend that you watch how they do it. Do they use a spray pattern extending into the lawn, do they treat your attic with sprayers, bombs, traps, or other devices? Do they spray all vents, pipes, doors, seals, foundation, seams, and all other points of entry and exposure? How long does it take to complete the treatment?

It’s common to see a pest technician not wearing gloves, eyewear, a mask, or any other protective equipment. This is true even if he or she is using a wide dispersal sprayer. They wouldn’t be doing it if there were a significant risk. For anyone who embarks on a D-I-Y approach, you can buy protective equipment inexpensively. You can also learn the best methods to avoid environmental exposure.

In the best scenario, you’ll wear personal protective equipment which includes a mask, eye protection, and gloves. We’re all going to own these things for the rest of our lives. This is one positive outcome of COVID.

It is possible to do routine spraying yourself, safely and much less expensively. I didn’t believe it myself until I asked a million questions, all of which was confirmed by people doing it as a job.

Each time I encountered someone reluctant to answer a question, it signaled my BS detector. An expert would never fail to give honest information to the consumer giving them their business.

You’ll find that the average pest control company doesn’t want to tell you exactly what chemicals they use, their concentrations, or their exact methodology. Despite me directly asking two of the companies I previously used, neither would divulge exactly what they were using, the concentrations or any of the usage data. Their refusal to tell me followed their promise to send me the MSDS for any chemical, the application sheets, and so forth. One of the companies technicians told me they weren’t going to share this information with me simply because the chemicals he was using could be purchased directly from the internet. While considering engaging another company prior to going D-I-Y, the person trying to ‘sell’ me promised I would get the information. When he emailed back with pricing, I told him that I’d need a list of chemicals and all the related information. He replied back that federal law prevented him from sharing this information. P.S. This isn’t true.

Almost all of them also don’t have matrix pricing that you can use to figure out what everyone else is paying. (Square footage, lot size, attic, basement, etc.) As most of you know, any business that has commission-based sales has a huge level of wiggle room in its pricing structure. It’s precisely why such companies do so much “selling,” and why you almost never see flat pricing on their websites.

Can you imagine going to a new car sales lot and seeing baseline pricing for everything? We’d die of shock.

While you’ll pay at least $70 per treatment (and often much more), the cost of the chemicals being applied to your house is at most a few dollars. Companies have learned how much of a particular chemical is needed to maintain a bug-free environment.

You can learn this, too.

The catch is that you can learn how to minimize how much insecticide you use, including dispersal methods, concentrations, and the critical coverage areas. The chemicals available to professionals are available to you, too.

I’m not recommending a D-I-Y approach to all pests, especially termites, bedbugs or any issue outside the normal scope of routine pest spraying. There are many scenarios where professionals are required. Anyone taking my commentary out of context to state the opposite needs to take a moment to distinguish between ‘routine’ and ‘specialized’ treatments or inspections. (Having said that termite control isn’t rocket surgery, either.)

I found that some companies use bombs in the attic. Some of them use these while you are at home. After grabbing one of the empty cans, I discovered that this is discouraged, even if you are in a new home and are certain that no seepage will occur. The same is true for inside spraying, as they often spray around baseboards, under sinks, and in perimeter areas. While it may ‘safe’ for you and your pets, almost all the literature recommends not being exposed to it, especially until it is dry. But it doesn’t stop extermination companies from spraying while you’re at home.

 

-Don’t use a pest control company which refuses to divulge exactly what they’re using.

-Don’t use a pest control company which won’t give you flat pricing or single-application services. Contracts benefit them, not you.

-If you are generally capable of performing routine household repairs, take the time to see if you are comfortable doing your own pest control.

-Also, if you knew how much training, on average, a new hire receives prior to doing their first ‘hands on,’ you wouldn’t be so reluctant to try it yourself.

In my case, I paid a technician for one of the major pest control companies to use Amazon to show me specifically which chemicals are the safest and do the same function as his company. While he was at it, he showed me a D-I-Y forum that explicitly answered all my concerns. No, it wasn’t an Alex Jones website, either. Because of my enthusiasm, he gave me the information for free because he knew I wouldn’t be a customer. I paid him as a reward. Both of us left very pleased.

I bought everything I needed for 1/2 of just one treatment for a quarterly plan, or 1/8 of my yearly cost. I’m still using the same initial shipment of chemicals I originally bought, pushing the cost to 1/24 of one year’s costs.

Other than a few seizures, it hasn’t affected me at all. And I can’t feel the right side of my face.

I’m just kidding about that last part.

If you take nothing else away from this, I hope you doubt that you’re getting the best value if you’re paying a big company to come say “Hi” to you a few times a year. Even better, that you’re resolved to do this for yourself.

By the way, if you choose the D-I-Y route, you’ll need some earplugs, too. Those pest control people will shout at you for their business.

If you pay a pest control company, get the MSDS for everything being put into your house and watch how it’s done.

 

 

 

 

Arkansas, Biographical, Humor, Technology

They Call me Tater Equis

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I didn’t think it was possible there will still websites requiring names containing 3 or more letters in violation of federal law. Especially those that are critical to maintaining both public health and patient privacy. In response, I used “XXX” as my name, while technically committing a crime by affirming my identity with it. And a porn moniker, at that.

Anyone who has seen me knows that “X” should literally be synonymous with anonymous, and not merely for a reason eponymous. (I’m proud of that sentence.)

To make matters worse, I had to choose an answer that was wrong from my credit report, one which included a name I’ve never used: Equis. For those who don’t read or speak Spanish, “Equis” is how you would spell the letter “X” if you were drinking a bottle of Dos Equis beer.

I felt a little like Ron White during his telling of “They call me tater salad.”

It’s horribly amusing that while they wouldn’t accept the simplest name possible (X, one letter), they somehow have the oral Spanish translation (“Equis”) of a name I’ve never written on anything more official than spray-painted graffiti walls. I hope they never see the art piece I did. I titled it, “Orange Paintball President.” If they have, I’ll never be able to confirm my identity again.

No doubt XXX will now magically appear on a secret government list and permanent record, one I will have to recall for no apparent reason, to confirm my identity by incorrectly confirming it.

The website is huge, doing both government and private business for millions. Heck, even the IRS named me NFN X when I had just one name, and that was years ago. “NFN” means “No First Name,” at least for the IRS. They decided that using “Arkansas Idiot” would be an obvious signal that they thought I’d lost my mind. For a while, my Arkansas state driver’s license said my legal name was “Mr. X,” because our state had barely managed to figure out that computers had to be plugged in to function.

When I got a new birth certificate, I’m inclined to think that the director of the Department of Health was tempted to stamp “Accident Report” across the top of my new Birth Certificate.

I guess this virus really did take us back several decades. I did waste several minutes attempting to navigate the website’s ‘Help,’ section. It was amusingly hidden behind an icon of a laughing troll – never a good sign. I’ll get a series of emails designed to both demoralize and belittle me, I’m sure.

I guess I deserve this.

The “X” is where you’re supposed to drop the bomb. And maps always have an “X” to show “You are here.”

I’m here.

But now I’m not sure I have a legal name.

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P.S. By the time I posted this, I had already received three emails from the website, two of them completely contradicting each other and the other telling me it didn’t recognize my email as being from the planet Earth.

Biographical, Health, Humor, New Word, Personal

It Was A Real Nail-Biter

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A lot of people bite their nails.

Nail biting even has a fancy-pants name: onychophagy. The existence of such a word grants the habit legitimacy. Many people don’t know that cigarette addiction also has a Latin-based word to describe it: marlboroism. Okay, that’s not true. In my defense, it took cigarette companies decades to admit they were lying about cigarettes. By lying, I mean how delicious smoke tastes and how delightful a house smells after everything is coated in a vile sheen of yellowish slime.

It’s more common in kids and teenagers, but a surprising  number of adults are nail-biters. I should know. I’ve written before that I’m one of those ignorant dolts who is guilty of doing it. My fingers sometimes resemble the talons of an angry dragon trapped in the bottom of an inescapable well. I’ve stopped sniffing glue, being comatose by a method of self-chloroforming, and narrowly avoiding the craziness of alcoholism that has ruined the lives of literally all my immediate family. But nail biting? You’ll catch me gnawing on my nails like a starving monkey, sometimes even doing the ‘typewriter,’ a word used to describe going from one nail to the next like a crazed typist after a four-hour coffee break at a Cuban coffee shop.

“1/3 of nail biters say they have a family member who does the same,” say some studies. Which leads to the question, “Why don’t they bite each other’s nails?” It’s no surprise that the tendency to bite your nails might be genetic; that’s true of a lot of disreputable behavior, along with addictions, sneezing when exposed to sunlight, and voting for people with insanity issues. (Although I’m struggling to think of any such people in the last few years. How about you?)

If you cringed, you’re not alone. Nail biting is great for movie visuals or as a cliché, but terrible as a personal habit.

Given the hyper-focus that our unfriendly worldwide pandemic has caused, we’re working to keep our fingers out of our mouths. (Except for politicians, who are exempted, along with their feet.) Before patting yourself on the back, though, if your nails are longer than short, you’ve created a repository for everything bacterial or viral you touch. You might not touch your own face, but you’re marking your territory as you live your life.

Irrelevant note: most men are uninterested in women’s fingernails. The pandemic gives you the right to stop concerning yourself with the time and money invested in decorating your fingernails like they will be featured in Architectural Digest. If it makes you happy, please feel free. If you’re looking for an excuse, you have it.

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Some Unhelpful Tips To Stop Biting Your Nails, stolen from websites and headlines:

Amputate the tips of your fingers.

Just don’t think about it.

Dip your fingers in the dung or the blood of your enemies.

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According to science, it’s hard to distinguish the line between harmful compulsive nail biting and regular nail biting. A good rule-of-thumb, though: if you find yourself individually flavoring your nails as garlic, lemon, chocolate, pepper, and Parmesan in anticipation of devouring them, you’re probably in need of some therapy.

When I was young, I would get irritated at my mom, who delighted in punching me, slapping me, or putting her cigarette on my arm when she caught me biting my nails. I think the irony of her irritation with me failed to register for her. That I also wet the bed, was beaten like a dirty Victorian rug, or was screamed at for otherwise normal behavior, all those things seemed to overtake biting my nails as important. I forgot to mention that the rampant alcoholism and smoking seemed relevant too. I made the mistake a couple of times by saying, “I’ll stop when you put out the cigarette.” Although you would think she responded sensibly, given the track record I’ve painted of her esteemed and cultured biography, it was more reminiscent of George Foreman’s first loss to Muhammad Ali.

When I was young, I’d find myself biting my nails regardless of what I’d been doing. Disgusting as it was, it probably granted me limited immunity to a variety of illnesses. You’d be horrified to know how true this is. Since you might remember that I loved eating ashes and burned food, maybe it isn’t a shock.

I went through long phases where I conquered my impulse to bite my nails. Heroin helped me for a while. That last part’s a joke. Heroin didn’t help at all. It made me edgy as hell, not to mention unable to afford cocaine.

You’re probably going to doubt this, but I tried the bitter paint-on polish more than once. As bitter and nasty as it was, I liked the taste and aftertaste.

At more than one point, I’d decided I’d need dentures. It’s difficult to bit one’s nails with dentures. (And even harder to do so without.) I was about to buy the inserts you can put on your teeth to make it impossible to chew with my teeth. I don’t remember what stopped me. But it was probably laziness. For people who wear them, they are immensely effective.

Maybe this world-wide pandemic will grant me the motivation to figure out what techniques can help me make this habit a thing of the past. I’m sure there’s a perfect combination of timing, technique, and application. Otherwise, I’m opting for finger amputation. Is finger-stump licking a thing?

 

Love, X

COVID, Medical, Medicine, Northwest Arkansas, Social Rules

X’s Observations on COVID

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If you’re being screened for COVID19 and you see that the screeners are using temporal (forehead) thermometers, you need to check your temperature with an oral thermometer. Despite what some might say, an oral thermometer will eliminate environmental variables, assuming you haven’t been chewing whole ice cubes. While the absence of a fever doesn’t preclude that you have COVID, it occurs in the majority of cases. I’ve personally witnessed a 2 or 3-degree temperature difference between oral thermometers and other types. (*Generally speaking, of course.)

If you don’t own a pulse oximeter, you should purchase one. If you are infected with this virus, the flu, or have other health conditions, your 02 level is one of the single biggest ways to answer the question: “Should I be concerned?” It will signal that you’re deteriorating or at what point you need to call 911 or go to the doctor/ER. You should buy one of these even after our current virus crisis is over.

Additionally, the number of medical people being tested is artificially limited by how willing screening clinics are in administering the test. All those saying we haven’t tested nearly enough people are correct. You would be surprised by the number of people refused tests, even those working in the medical or emergency services fields. We don’t want to squander tests needlessly, of course. With anyone in the medical field or those who must be ‘in’ the world on a daily basis, it should be automatic with symptoms. The same guidelines for the general public don’t translate to dealing with medical workers.
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In Northwest Arkansas, there isn’t a big scarcity of testing kits available, compared to other regions. Our bottleneck seems to be the number of labs at our disposal to perform the lab tests. Some people are still being told it might be a WEEK before getting their results. Senator Rand Paul had to wait 6 days for his, and he’s a United States Senator, and he didn’t self-quarantine during that time. (That’s not a criticism of Senator Paul, by the way, in part because he is a Senator and his job duties are critical. *Someone correctly pointed out that he did go the gym and do some stupid things in the meanwhile, though.)

If you are tested, you are now required to self-quarantine until you get the test results, which is of course an improvement over the previous policy. However…

Those who have symptoms or are turned away then return to their jobs or their families, often with the misguided belief that if the screening methodology indicates they don’t need to be tested, that they are in fact, not positive and pose no risk. For the purposes of this post, assume that those who are turned away or discouraged from a test work in the medical field or another field in which their presence is ‘essential.’ They return to their lives, potentially infecting many more people. ‘Not tested’ does not equate to ‘not infected.’ For public health, these cases should be treated as positive, even absent a test, as it is the safest course of action for society as a whole to prevent needless spread of the virus. In a crisis in which the virus spreads so easily, it’s obvious that anyone working in a critical field should be tested immediately, even if their symptoms only include a fever – but do not rise to the critical level. If our medical system did become overwhelmed, which I do not think it will here in Northwest Arkansas, we’d have to reexamine that policy.

If you’re already quarantined, this won’t affect you on an individual level.

By not quarantining even potentially suspected cases as they arise, we’re creating an expanding circle of exposure. (Obviously, I’m referring to those who can’t be at home each day.) We all know that we’re almost all going to eventually be exposed to the virus. It’s not about being able to sidestep our eventual exposure. All of us will ultimately step up to the fact that we’ve been exposed.

Another concern that people are misunderstanding is the tendency toward a false negative test. (You have the virus, but the test shows that you don’t.) A false positive might scare you, but at least you’ll think you have the virus and take immediate and drastic measures to avoid spreading the disease. In the case of a false negative, the opposite occurs. Given the way the tests are performed, the margin of error is actually quite high. If you google “Bayes’ Rule for COVID19,” you’ll see that false negatives are the biggest threat for how we deal with the virus.

The truth is that many organizations say that all those tested should be quarantined on the side of caution, even though who are tested negative. In the short term, it may cause needless isolation. That needless isolation of critical medical staff will statistically reduce the spread of the virus. We already know that up to 1/3 of all negative tests are incorrect, depending on the variables in the testing system. For every 100 people testing negative, it is possible that 30 of them are actually positive.

After having said all that, a significant portion of the population has been infected and has no symptoms at all. It gives us a sense of false confidence as we proceed with our lives.

Even though you’ve not read my definition of a public place, here it is: any place outside your house where anyone other than the people you’ve been with for the last 14+ days has breathed. If anyone ‘new’ has entered your house, your house is public for 14 more days.

I don’t personally feel alarmed, even if it kills me. Many of us all are doing to do everything perfectly. Yet, it’s going to hurt someone of us badly. I read your posts and hope that we can get back to being pissed off at each other for stupid reasons.

We’re going to get a vaccine, eventually. It won’t be permanent, though. We’re going to need to invest in and trust researchers and science. We’re going to have to stop pretending that anti-vaxxers have a valid viewpoint. Maybe we’ll finally get universal healthcare. Maybe we’ll manage to achieve a cohesive non-profit nationwide collective of clinics and hospital making decisions from the viewpoint of public health.

Our hospital system will not be overwhelmed here locally. I also don’t think we are going to run out of PPE or necessary medical equipment. You would think I’d be cynical about this. I’m not though. I think we are incredibly more prepared that many areas around the United States. No matter what happens, I hope you remember after all this that I was optimistic in our ability to diminish the impact.

We’re lucky we live in Northwest Arkansas. Comparatively speaking, it’s a great place to be quarantined – and an even better place to be if you find yourself needing immediate medical care for the virus. We have an incredible confluence of food, resources, and medical clinics/hospitals to help us get through this.

P.S. Although a few people missed it, much of my post indicated it referred to those in the medical field or those who go out into the world because they are ‘essential.’ Taking this into account quells many of the comments people might make. ‘Err on the side of caution’ is a cliché precisely because it is true and fits the commentary here.