Tomorrow morning I'm going to apply for a state-funded In-Home Caregiver.
This because I just now put a pot in the microwave rather than on the stove. I've been doing stuff like that quite a lot lately. Happily I clued in before I actually nuked it.
If my only problem would be burning down my home and those of my two neighbors I wouldn't need actually home care, just meal delivery. But that's part of that same program.
I have nothing against capitalism: what we seem to have nowadays is Corruptism.
Corruptism is the collecting of wealth no matter who or what.
Need another dollar? Bribe a politician to make the laws favour corporations over people.
Need ANOTHER dollar? Cut wages and hours.
Need ANOTHER dollar? Layoffs.
It use to be that employers made, what, 400X what their employees made? Now an employee has to work 2-3 jobs just to live while the 'boss' feeds the pork to make ONE MORE DOLLAR!
A little more kindness would see us in a better world.
I'd like to see politicians start thinking of the people who voted for them.
Lets get back to basic Capitalism: Corruptism is not working.
A federal judge sentenced Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen to three years in prison on Wednesday following Cohen's guilty pleas to a number of political and finance crimes.
Those three years would be followed by three years of supervised release, and Cohen also is subject to forfeiture of $500,000, restitution of $1.4 million and a $50,000 fine.
...Cohen told authorities that Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women ahead of Election Day in 2016 to keep them quiet about sexual relationships they said they had had with Trump — allegations Trump denies.
Federal authorities call that a violation of campaign finance law — one for which Trump also may be culpable.
Later, Cohen admitted that he and other Trump aides continued negotiations with powerful Russians about a potential real estate project in Moscow well into the 2016 presidential campaign.
Cohen had told Congress in 2017 that the talks ended in January, but his subsequent admission meant that Trump's aides had a channel open with Russia even as Trump was becoming the GOP front-runner and was denying he had any ties to Russia.
Michael Cohen Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison Following Plea That Implicated Trump
I'm not yet doing this every day but tomorrow I'll do sing scales before work.
The first time I sang scales I measured my range. I don't recall what it was but I will say I was quite dismayed at how narrow it was.
Today I only sang from C below middle C up to middle C and back. Once I'm confident that I can do so really well, and to project effectively I'll add just one note above and below.
It's not raining so I'll sing around eleven but only one or two sets. I have a shrink appointment in Vancouver at three and just want enough to buy a coffee t drink in her waiting room.
I hear by proclaim December 11th a National Day of Prayer in remembrance of those that died in the HORRIFIC December 11th attack. On this National Day of Prayer, we join together to offer gratitude for our many blessings and to acknowledge our need for divine wisdom, guidance, and protection. Prayer, by which we affirm our dependence on God, has long been fundamental to our pursuit of freedom, peace, unity, and prosperity. Prayer sustains us and brings us comfort, hope, peace, and strength. Therefore, we must cherish our spiritual foundation and uphold our legacy of faith. Prayer has been a source of guidance, strength, and wisdom since the founding of our Republic. When the Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia to contemplate freedom from Great Britain, the delegates prayed daily for guidance. Their efforts produced the Declaration of Independence and its enumeration of the self-evident truths that we all cherish today. We believe that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Prayer sustained us and gave us the strength to endure the sacrifices and suffering of the American Revolution and to temper the triumph of victory with HUMILITY -- so important -- and gratitude. Notably, as one of its first acts, our newly formed Congress appointed chaplains of the House of Representatives and Senate so that all proceedings would begin with prayer.
Also, I'm ordering all Flags and "whatevers" at Half Mast for the rest of the month!!!
James A. Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally, was sentenced to life in prison by a jury Tuesday after a trial that offered an unsparing view of the physical and emotional ruin he caused in this city with a burst of vehicular rage 16 month ago.
As he had throughout his two-week trial, Fields, 21, sat impassively at the defendant’s table, clad in a powder blue sweater, as the jury delivered its verdict at 12:20 p.m. after about four hours of deliberations that began Monday: life for first-degree murder; 70 years for each of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding; 20 years for each of three counts of malicious wounding; and nine years for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.
His overall sentence: life plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines.
Fields also faces a separate federal trial for alleged hate crimes related to the incident, including one offense that carries a possible death sentence. No trial date has been set, and the Justice Department has not said whether it will seek capital punishment.
Turns out that backing up first to give yourself more room to accelerate doesn't look so great when you are claiming self defense.
James A. Fields Jr. sentenced to life in prison in Charlottesville car attack
My essay "An NSFW Review of Portland's Oregon Theater" is #6 at Google for:
oregon theater
... immediately below oregon dot theater... and #8 for:
"oregon theater"
In other news, I'm working at home tonight, but didn't get started until just a half hour ago, at which point I decided so as to point out that Portland's Oregon Theater is a great place to get blown. Ten clams most night, twenty or twenty five on "Party" nights, when the management springs for vast quantities of pizza and free snacks, and more women turn up.
Be sure to get your Hepatitis vaccination and bring an economy-sized box of those little rubber raincoats:
"Suit up before you play." -- Ann Landers, "Dear Abby"
I actually woke up at four in the afternoon - as I write this it's just before 2:00 AM - but took quite a long time to come round. I was reluctant to drink coffee as it's been upsetting my stomach lately, but eventually concluded I'd waste the whole night if I didn't.
The coffee of course made me nauseous. Again I was reluctant to take an antacid - ranitidine, generic RanTab - as I suspect - _suspect_ now - that antacids make my suspected - _suspected_ - Pernicious Anemia far worse.
But I just couldn't deal with the nausea anymore so I took a ranitidine. It was not long before my stomach felt just dandy, followed by dizziness, followed by even worse nausea.
Just the one acid would _not_ have caused the dizziness or the nausea, its effect would be far slower than that.
I lay in bed in the dark for a while, eventually to feel just fine and so got back up to prepare for going to work. The nausea and dizziness set back in, so again I lay in bed, intending to work at home so as to not risk getting nauseous on the bus to and fro. Fell asleep but just for an hour or so.
I wanted some coffee when I got back up but would not at first risk getting sick. A couple days ago I was advised to eat something before drinking coffee, and in fact I usually drink it on an empty stomach so I made a Jesus Big pancake. Just one, the size of my whole frying pan you can do that if you add eggs to your Krusteaz.
("Jesus Big" is Newfoundland English for "Ginormous".)
And in fact just to experiment in much the same way as the medical hero who trapped a mosquito against his arm under a cup, then died of Yellow Fever so as to overcome the skepticism of the medical community, I had a whole cup of by now cold coffee. It's been about an hour and I'm still not sick.
I figure I would be nauseous by now, so I screwed around with my logfile analysis, only discover that some completely empty directories at warp life are getting lots of hits, so I redirected them to soggy wizards' homepage.
Tell Me About Your Day.
I'm having a good day. Not every day is good for me but today is.
Radio Paradise is playing some live Grateful Dead.
(She's a Molecular Biologist.) To Wit:
Quite likely I have Pernicious Anemia.
I quite _desperately_ hope I really do.
While it was once a fearsome and cruel way to die - one of my Great-Grandfathers died of it - while it cannot be cured the first effective treatment was the "Liver Therapy", eating vast quantities of raw liver :-0, for which Liver Therapy's three developers shared the 1934 Medicine Nobel.
I expect because I'd rather die in a fearsome cruel way that even just a tiny bit of liver - even cooked - the beneficial part of the liver was ultimately determined to be Vitamin B12. This lead to a great many lives being spared by regular B12 injections for the rest of one's life.
That I regard P.A. as likely is the result of my having experienced increasingly frequent and increasingly severe Neurological symptoms starting in May 2010 with Brain Seizures and Dissociative Fugues - more commonly known as "Fugue States" - then later Broca's - or Expressive - Aphasia in both my writing and my speech.
A week ago Saturday I was _completely_ convinced I was dying when quite suddenly and completely out of nowhere, an incredibly loud ringing in my ears - Tinnitus - was followed with dizziness so severe that even small head movements brought on intense nausea, followed shortly after by numbness in both my lips, then the soles of both my feet.
I rode in style with Lights And Sirens but found myself strangely unable to enjoy the experience.
I went to the ER _every_ time, sometimes on the bus, sometimes in an ambulance. Four CT Scans, an MRI and a whole bunch of physical stroke exams were _always_ perfectly normal, resulting in every medical or mental health professional I've ever discussed this with being completely stymied.
After that Lights And Sirens ride, I _finally_ got referred to A Neurologist With A Clue. She asked me a whole bunch of questions, I pointed out a few things that she hadn't asked about, then she gave me a more-thorough physical stroke exam.
That I'd experienced numbness in my feet led her to order a blood test for Methylmalonic Acid. If B12 is low in the blood, Methylmalonic Acid will be high. She also ordered an Electroencephalogram but they're so booked up I won't get my EEG until April.
Just this morning I met online someone with Pernicious Anemia, who mentioned that _some_ but not all P.A. patients are able to take 3,000 mcg of Methylcobalamin daily, rather than get the injections.
I'm busted flat just now - no clients for several _months_ - so I asked my brother-in-law to order some Methylcobalamin tablets for me. There are lots of different brands of these, as Vegans _must_ take B12 supplements or they'll get the very same Neurological problems as I've got.
(Vitamin pills and fortified foods always have _Cyanocobalamin_ labeled as B12. This because Methylcobalamin is hard to synthesize; two percent of the Cyano form is converted to the Methyl by the liver.)
Tuesday a week ago I was completely convinced I was _already_ far too disabled to work as a coder. Riding home on the bus I was completely overcome with grief and struggling desperately to avoid screaming in agony.
The following morning I initiated my application for Social Security Disability Insurance. I've _never_ regarded my Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder as a disability. To willingly apply for SSDI is quite a cruel blow to me.
If you have _any_ blood relative who had Pernicious Anemia, I suggested you get your own Methylmalonic Acid test. There are some other types of Vitamin B12 Anemia; in my specific case, I'm pretty sure that it was my taking antacids for nausea that triggered each of my Neurological attacks.
This because the reaction between a stomach enzyme called Intrinsic Factor and something else that ultimately results in absorption of B12 requires an acid stomach.
In addition, older folks like you and I are far more likely to get P.A. because of the degradation of our stomach linings as we age.
On the morning of Halloween, I underwent a Radical Nephrectomy of my right kidney due to a 5.6 cm Renal Cell Carcinoma. Happily, the pathologist's report on his biopsy of my now-external kidney said it had "Negative Margins Of Excision", which means that there were no cancerous cells in the normal tissue surrounding my tumor.
That I was one month later in the ER three times in just one week, all with unexplainable Neurological symptoms is I am quite certain the result of my having eaten Calcium Carbonate Antacid Tablets just like they were M&M candy every day since my surgery.
Forty days later I'm _still_ getting nauseous every single day. Just now I grew concerned about this when I learned that one's risk for Stomach Cancer is _significantly_ increased by having Pernicious Anemia. If this persists for more than the next few days, I'll schedule a visit to my Primary Care Physician so that either she can examine my stomach herself, or she could refer me to a gastroenterologist.
Some EMT suggested my brain disorders could be due to a Psychosomatic Illness. I at first agreed but upon further reflection realized that's _not_ how Psychosomatic illnesses work: they have real bacteria, real viruses and real carcinomas, but the ultimate cause is the human mind. The link between our minds and these very real diseases is as yet quite poorly understood.
Once I do have my Neurologist's final diagnosis, I'm going to dig up the names of every EMT who ever transported me, every medical professional who's ever treated me as well as every Radiologist who's ever reported on my brain scans to explain what My Sparky Brain ultimately turned out to have.
Vitamin B12 Anemias are actually quite common. That leads me to regard all those ER docs and nurses to have been profoundly clueless.
It was that my dizziness came back today that led me to ask Stanley to order that Methycobalamin. I'm confident enough that I really do have PA that I really don't want to wait for my Neurologist to order any treatment, whatever that treatment might ultimately turn out of be.
Hopefully,
Mike
Trump's "Fixer" Michael Cohen is going to prison for the crimes he committed at the direction of "Individual 1."
Who could Indivdual 1 be, I wonder.
On approximately June 16, 2015, Individual-1, for whom Cohen worked at the time, began an ultimately successful campaign for President of the United States.
Federal Prosecutors ‘Concluded that President of the United States Committed a Felony'
But now we’re seeing that in a court filing for the first time, which, as some legal observers have noted with varying emphasis on the fact, means federal prosecutors have concluded that Trump directed someone to commit a crime, which is a crime. Put another way, SDNY prosecutors believe the president directed and coordinated felonies.
And finally, some info about the lies Manafort told that lead to the destruction of his plea deal came out.
It would NOT help to consume B12-rich foods. I've been doing just that for months.
This afternoon at just my first consultation with what I regard as an uncommonly astute Neurologist, she ordered a blood test for a Vitamin B12 metabolite. I'll have to ask again what its name was, then write it down.
To more-concisely state my own HYPOTHETICAL addition to my exceedingly astute Neurologist's HYPOTHESIS. That is, I am not _yet_ cured of Broca's Aphasia, Short-Term Memory Loss, Long-Term Memory Loss, Brain Seizures and Dissociative Fugues:
I am genetically predisposed to Pernicious Anemia, a once-fatal genetic inability to metabolize Vitamin B12. It was ultimately cured by daily Vitamin B12 Injections. The original cure to Pernicious Anemia was to eat vast quantities of raw liver every single day! :-0
If I _do_ have Pernicious Anemia, it hasn't killed me because only my Great-Grandfather had it - but he _died_ of it. His DNA's contribution to my genome would be no more than one-eighth, because I had eight grandparents. But _chronic_ B12 deficiency is _quite_ certain to lead to bizarre, unexplainable brain disorders. Just eating such B12-rich foods as beef or yogurt is insufficient.
We know that chronic B12 Deficiency 707a11ee FUX0R5 the brain because from time to time, a Vegan doesn't clue in to that B12 is _only_ found in animal products, and doesn't know to eat Nutritional Yeast.
It's widely - and yes I Am Absolutely Serious - that fungus makes B12, but it does not. Rather, Nutritional Yeast is nutritious in other ways, and _quite_ tasty so it's common for people whose feet don't reach all the way down to the ground to season their food with it.
If your a Vegan, you don't eat _fortified_ Nutritional Yeast and you don't take B12 supplements then your entire brain will go totally on the fritz; it could even kill you.
If I understand correctly, while natural B12 is Methylcobalamin, it works just fine to take Cyanocobalamin supplements, which in my understanding can be economically synthesized whereas industrial production of Methylcobalamin cannot. But that's OK because it's the Cobalamin group that's the actual nutrient as employed by the body after being absorbed by the intestine.
Vitamin B12 Deficiency Anemia - in addition to Pernicious there are some other types - can cause "numbness in the hands and feet". I got a Code 3 ride in an ambulance Saturday evening: Lights And Sirens, but I'm afraid I didn't get to enjoy the ride. Among some other bizarre symptoms, I had numbness in my lips and the soles of my feet.
ALL the ER docs and EMTs are by now completely convinced that this is purely psychiatric. I made plain that I regarded its being due to My Sparky Brain as eminently reasonable, but pointed out that "Just knowing that won't make it go away".
They are all convinced that It's All In My Head because _all_ my symptoms are perfectly symmetric between the right and left sides of my body; Dr. Hamburg gave me a far more extensive neurological exam today, but _every_ component of that exam was intended to detect neural asymmetries. It Found None.
BUT!
Systemic brain disease in the case of B12 deficiency is actually a _blood_ disorder. Again my previous understanding was incomplete, in that I've read repeatedly that B12 is "required to make red blood cells". While strictly speaking true, B12 is required to make _every_ kind of human bodily cell.
That it's so crucial to Red Blood Cells is due to their average lifetime of forty days. That means our Red Blood Cells consume B12 far out of proportion to all our other cells.
Cobalamin is a key part of the process that transcribes DNA into Amino Acid Chains.
It happens that I'm quite certain that I have - or perhaps "had" by now - an l-Tryptophan deficiency. I'll explain this in more detail late tomorrow night, but my self-diagnosis I'm quite certain is correct due to my diet having been exceedingly poor since my divorce with Bonita.
Simply Put: cooking for one makes me miserable, I far prefer to each cold chili directly from the can with a spoon.
I've been working around my I Hate Cooking blockage by carefully and methodically selecting then eating vast quantities Of Truly Fat-Ass Lazy Yet Nutritionally Balanced Foods.
In the specific case, that's Chickpeas and Sesame Seeds - Hummus - Soy Beans - Tofu - and Sardines.
I've had a problem with my sardines so far, the ones I've got were cured with salt; I cannot tolerate eating a sardine all by itself. Just now I found it minimally acceptable to eat sardines on bread, but tomorrow I'll chop some up then stir them into Spaghetti Sauces.
This Time For Sure:
Nighty-Night! Don't Let The Code Bugs Byte. ZZZzzz...