Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Okay, so I've been not very good about updating my blog. Exactly a week ago I sat down to write and my back has been stuck there ever since--in not a good way. So--back problems. But just normal debilitating back problems like everyone else seems to get, have surgery for and pain management. Not my hugely more serious problem with the bleeding and the screaming that the east Tennessee medical community takes such great pleasure in observing and doing nothing about (yes, I'm still bitter, angry and litigious.).

Gorgeous East Tennessee--Where the kid you knew who pulled the wings off flies, blew up ants with magnifying glasses, set fire to kitten's tails, then ended up killing the neighbor's pets while playing "doctor", but nonetheless grew up to be a physician comes to practice medicine. Because watching people suffer intractable pain is just so damn fun and isn't it jolly when they blow their brains out?

Yeah. You can expect me to trash talk the medical community until I either get out of here or monkeys fly out of my butt or something.

Anyway, I'm back to not being able to sit for long periods of time and am unable to lift things or rise from a sitting position. This is a problem because I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. This is where 125,000 people all over the world get together and individually write 50,000 words--or a novel. I didn't get my outline done so I just started into a spec piece I had floating around. You'd like it. It's an Appalachian speculative fiction piece--sort of like one of the stories I did last October. But better, of course, because I'm writing so much leaner these days. I'm already behind on my word counts--only 3000 give or take. But I think many people are just cranking out words as fast they can, and because I've been writing flash, I'm very sparing with my words.

Friend Scott calls last night and breaks my heart spewing nonsense contrary to all of my careful indoctrination of him in the Democratic Party. I'm hoping he doesn't go all Bradley Effect on me today. Scott starts talking about how if all the people who own horses at the barn where he works for eight dollars an hour (shoveling horse poop, taking care of the horses, driving trailers of the horses to horse shows, managing the barn, sleeping with the horses--basically doing all of the labor they'd usually hire six illegal aliens to do) get their taxes raised that he'll lose his job. I mean, does he honestly think any of those rich people will give a moment's thought to exchanging "Scott the Horse Poop Shoveler" for "Juan the Horse Poop Shoveler"? In the same breath, he tells me about seeing this old guy in his late 70's working as a groom and how the guy said he'd have to work until he dropped dead because they'd never taken any SS out for him so he couldn't ever afford to retire and at least he had Medicaid now. Scott doesn't want to be that person, he says. I don't want Scott to be that person, either.

Anyway, it's just one thing that never made sense to me. I didn't fall for the whole reasoning of why oil and prices where rising and their justification for their profits being through the roof. I never fell for the reasons we supposedly went to Iraq. I don't believe the so-called "bailout" is going to do a lick of good. And I certainly, have never fallen for the concept of "trickle down" economics. It sounds like being peed upon--which is exactly what it is. Scott's too good for that--we all are. We need our middle class back.

But I'm getting ready to grab my cane and head out to vote now. I expect all of you to do so as well. Get out there and be a citizen!