It occurred to me this morning that it's been quite a while since I posted one of my patented long-winded rambling updates here. I'm about due for one, don't you think? So, if you're really wanting to read this, I suggest finding a comfortable seat and maybe go brew yourself a cup of coffee first, ok?
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Are you sitting comfortably with the refreshing beverage of your choice close at hand? Good, because here it comes.
It also occurred to me that I have never really mentioned my chiropractor here. This is a terrible oversight on my part since she plays such an important role in the continuing health and well-being of the GiddyIguana. See, I've had a lifelong history of back problems, most likely resulting from a hemivertebra in my thoratic region (the T4, for those who know these things.) For the rest of you who aren't chiropractic students, a hemivertebra is essentially a birth defect in which one half of a vertebrum never develops. It can cause very bad scoliosis, to the extent that paraplegia may result. Fortunately for me, all mine has caused so far is a history of back pain and a mild-to-moderate case of scoliosis which I never managed to "outgrow" like most people do.
Furthermore, my condition has been exacerbated by the two major automobile accidents in which I've been involved since 1999, the two knee surgeries I've undergone since 1997 which have forced me to favor one leg over the other, my almost-legendary weight fluctuations, and my history of just being just a big, goofy, awkward, accident-prone guy. And the fact that most of the jobs I've held require me to be on my feet, carrying heavy objects, and climbing ladders all day is certainly not helping either.
Unfortunately, I have never held a job that offered health insurance, and chiropractic care is usually very expensive. So I was very fortunate to wind up at a university only five minutes away from Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic. For a mere $12 per visit (reduced to $8 for college students), anyone can receive chiropractic care from one of their highly-skilled interns (always under the supervision of a board-certified Doctor of Chiropractic.) I've been seeing Danielle Morgan there for almost a year now, and it has made a world of difference for me. I'm far healthier and in far less pain now than I ever have been before. So if you haven't looked into chiropractic care before, I highly recommend doing so. I'll be seeing Danielle again later this afternoon, in fact. Thursdays at 2 pm...I never miss it.
___
In completely unrelated news, I had another of my patented Strange Dreams (TM) a few nights ago and I thought I'd entertain you all with it.
It starts out with me at an election-night party for the Democrats. The returns are coming in, and we're doing terribly. None of our candidates are winning, and all I'm seeing is one consession speech right after another from all the candidates I've worked for all season. And to make matters worse, there are these three little punk kids there (the street-hockey-playing demons from the movie Dogma, in fact), who are rubbing salt in our collective wounds by talking shit about us, our candidates, and our Party all night. All I want to do is to beat them senseless, but I really don't see the point...I'm too depressed by what's going on to make the effort.
So then it's the next day. I'm recovering from my post-election hangover when I get a phone call telling me that we're all living in the Political Matrix, and it's my destiny to get to The Next Level. Now, of course, I have no idea how I'm supposed to get to this supposed "next level," so I'm just befuddled. So I wind up walking down to a bar and talking my problem over (like I always seem to do in these dreams) with some Jamaicans. They tell me they know exactly how to do it: I'm supposed to go to the back bedroom of an apartment on the eighth floor of this one particular nondescript gray building and hang Ethiopian and Jamaican flags on opposite walls. When I do, a portal will open up behind the Jamaican flag, which I can then walk through, taking me directly into The Next Level.
So that night (time progresses fast in my dreams, apparently) I go to this bedroom and hang up the flags, and sure enough, when I pull aside the Jamaican flag, there is a big swirling blue vortex there behind it. I stand there and look at it for a while, but decide not to go through with it. I realize that if I do, I'll then be beholden to the Rastafarians--whenever they come to me and ask me for whatever "favor," I'll have to grant it to them since they were the ones who got me to The Next Level in the first place.
So then I leave (it's a bright, sunny day again...as I've said before, temporal continuity is not one of the stronger points of my dreams) and go to this nice little cafe, not unlike the waterfront restaurants at Harbourtown on Hilton Head, SC. My waitress is a very attractive but slightly overweight middle-aged Latina lady named Roberta. She tells me she knows exactly how to get to The Next Level...she's been there, in fact. She had slept with an old, white, Southern politician (Strom Thurmond-esque, I would call him in retrospect) who had then shown her the way to get there. And if I'll follow her, she'll take me there. At which point, she pulls out a ladder, climbs to the top of it, and disappears through the ceiling. So I stand there, staring at the spot through which she'd disappeared, and think. Now, I am very tempted to follow her, since it's such an easy way to get there. But if I do so, I'm beholden to someone else once again. Sure, I'd get to the next level, but then I'll have to do what the old white Southern politician tells me to do since, by proxy, he was the one responsible for getting me there. So, instead, I just pay my tab and leave.
And then it's night again. (Hey, it's my dream...if you want continuity, go watch an actual movie.) At which point, Neo and Trinity (yes, straight out of The Matrix) confront me. Neo tells me that I am the Chosen One, and they are there to help me get to The Next Level. So, we go back to the nondescript gray apartment building, and who should be sitting out front but the three punk kids who were harassing me way back at the beginning of this dream. But this time, they're just sitting there, minding their own business. Neo tells me that the way to get to The Next Level is to attack these kids. At which point, Neo and Trinity grab two of them and begin beating the ever-living shit out of them. I grab the third and start screaming at him. I demand that he talk some shit now! Come on, fight me! Give me a reason! But, of course, he wouldn't. The only thing he'll say is, "You're vile." Nothing more. He won't fight, he won't run, he won't even resist. I get flustrated and shove him into a nearby light pole, which his head hits with a resounding gooonnnngggg. And at this point, I feel really bad about what I just did. I want to get to The Next Level, but I don't want to get there by beating up a defenseless kid who's not giving me any reason to hate him. So I help the kid up, help patch up his head wound (since he was bleeding pretty badly) and walk off into the night, alone again.
And then I wake up, never having gotten to this elusive Next Level.
Now, the symbolism in most of this dream is pretty obvious. This dream, clearly, is all about my desire to get into politics ("The Next Level") and my inability to get there from my current position. There are several options open to me, however...
I could basically whore myself out to the special interests, as represented by the Jamaicans. They could get me where I want to be, but there's no such thing as a free lunch...I would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of whichever corporations funded my election and would basically be obligated to vote whichever way they dictated. So that's not a route I'd choose to take.
I could ride someone else's coattails, like our current congressman Bob Inglis did (who in this dream is rather amusingly morphed into a Latina waitress named Roberta.) The problem is, there aren't any politicians here in South Carolina who I'd really feel comfortable affiliating myself with. So once again, I'd be sleazing my way to the top and selling myself out to interests I'd rather not associate with. So once again, my own ethics are getting in the way of my career.
The third option is I could play their game: I could run a really dirty campaign. I could go on the attack against the Republican Party (as represented by the three kids) and emerge victorious as the dirtiest player in the game. The problem is, I'd rather get there on my own merits rather than being selected simply as the lesser of two evils. And, although I do have major issues with the current direction of the Republican Party, I have still been known to vote for (and even work for) the occasional Republican. I'm more interested in individual candidates and the issues involved in a particular campaign than I'll ever be with party labels. So attacking an institution that's not doing any real harm to me is just beyond the scope of what I'm willing to do to promote my own self-interest.
So will I ever manage to find a "fourth way"? Will the Chosen One ever reach The Next Level? Stay tuned...
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Are you sitting comfortably with the refreshing beverage of your choice close at hand? Good, because here it comes.
It also occurred to me that I have never really mentioned my chiropractor here. This is a terrible oversight on my part since she plays such an important role in the continuing health and well-being of the GiddyIguana. See, I've had a lifelong history of back problems, most likely resulting from a hemivertebra in my thoratic region (the T4, for those who know these things.) For the rest of you who aren't chiropractic students, a hemivertebra is essentially a birth defect in which one half of a vertebrum never develops. It can cause very bad scoliosis, to the extent that paraplegia may result. Fortunately for me, all mine has caused so far is a history of back pain and a mild-to-moderate case of scoliosis which I never managed to "outgrow" like most people do.
Furthermore, my condition has been exacerbated by the two major automobile accidents in which I've been involved since 1999, the two knee surgeries I've undergone since 1997 which have forced me to favor one leg over the other, my almost-legendary weight fluctuations, and my history of just being just a big, goofy, awkward, accident-prone guy. And the fact that most of the jobs I've held require me to be on my feet, carrying heavy objects, and climbing ladders all day is certainly not helping either.
Unfortunately, I have never held a job that offered health insurance, and chiropractic care is usually very expensive. So I was very fortunate to wind up at a university only five minutes away from Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic. For a mere $12 per visit (reduced to $8 for college students), anyone can receive chiropractic care from one of their highly-skilled interns (always under the supervision of a board-certified Doctor of Chiropractic.) I've been seeing Danielle Morgan there for almost a year now, and it has made a world of difference for me. I'm far healthier and in far less pain now than I ever have been before. So if you haven't looked into chiropractic care before, I highly recommend doing so. I'll be seeing Danielle again later this afternoon, in fact. Thursdays at 2 pm...I never miss it.
___
In completely unrelated news, I had another of my patented Strange Dreams (TM) a few nights ago and I thought I'd entertain you all with it.
It starts out with me at an election-night party for the Democrats. The returns are coming in, and we're doing terribly. None of our candidates are winning, and all I'm seeing is one consession speech right after another from all the candidates I've worked for all season. And to make matters worse, there are these three little punk kids there (the street-hockey-playing demons from the movie Dogma, in fact), who are rubbing salt in our collective wounds by talking shit about us, our candidates, and our Party all night. All I want to do is to beat them senseless, but I really don't see the point...I'm too depressed by what's going on to make the effort.
So then it's the next day. I'm recovering from my post-election hangover when I get a phone call telling me that we're all living in the Political Matrix, and it's my destiny to get to The Next Level. Now, of course, I have no idea how I'm supposed to get to this supposed "next level," so I'm just befuddled. So I wind up walking down to a bar and talking my problem over (like I always seem to do in these dreams) with some Jamaicans. They tell me they know exactly how to do it: I'm supposed to go to the back bedroom of an apartment on the eighth floor of this one particular nondescript gray building and hang Ethiopian and Jamaican flags on opposite walls. When I do, a portal will open up behind the Jamaican flag, which I can then walk through, taking me directly into The Next Level.
So that night (time progresses fast in my dreams, apparently) I go to this bedroom and hang up the flags, and sure enough, when I pull aside the Jamaican flag, there is a big swirling blue vortex there behind it. I stand there and look at it for a while, but decide not to go through with it. I realize that if I do, I'll then be beholden to the Rastafarians--whenever they come to me and ask me for whatever "favor," I'll have to grant it to them since they were the ones who got me to The Next Level in the first place.
So then I leave (it's a bright, sunny day again...as I've said before, temporal continuity is not one of the stronger points of my dreams) and go to this nice little cafe, not unlike the waterfront restaurants at Harbourtown on Hilton Head, SC. My waitress is a very attractive but slightly overweight middle-aged Latina lady named Roberta. She tells me she knows exactly how to get to The Next Level...she's been there, in fact. She had slept with an old, white, Southern politician (Strom Thurmond-esque, I would call him in retrospect) who had then shown her the way to get there. And if I'll follow her, she'll take me there. At which point, she pulls out a ladder, climbs to the top of it, and disappears through the ceiling. So I stand there, staring at the spot through which she'd disappeared, and think. Now, I am very tempted to follow her, since it's such an easy way to get there. But if I do so, I'm beholden to someone else once again. Sure, I'd get to the next level, but then I'll have to do what the old white Southern politician tells me to do since, by proxy, he was the one responsible for getting me there. So, instead, I just pay my tab and leave.
And then it's night again. (Hey, it's my dream...if you want continuity, go watch an actual movie.) At which point, Neo and Trinity (yes, straight out of The Matrix) confront me. Neo tells me that I am the Chosen One, and they are there to help me get to The Next Level. So, we go back to the nondescript gray apartment building, and who should be sitting out front but the three punk kids who were harassing me way back at the beginning of this dream. But this time, they're just sitting there, minding their own business. Neo tells me that the way to get to The Next Level is to attack these kids. At which point, Neo and Trinity grab two of them and begin beating the ever-living shit out of them. I grab the third and start screaming at him. I demand that he talk some shit now! Come on, fight me! Give me a reason! But, of course, he wouldn't. The only thing he'll say is, "You're vile." Nothing more. He won't fight, he won't run, he won't even resist. I get flustrated and shove him into a nearby light pole, which his head hits with a resounding gooonnnngggg. And at this point, I feel really bad about what I just did. I want to get to The Next Level, but I don't want to get there by beating up a defenseless kid who's not giving me any reason to hate him. So I help the kid up, help patch up his head wound (since he was bleeding pretty badly) and walk off into the night, alone again.
And then I wake up, never having gotten to this elusive Next Level.
Now, the symbolism in most of this dream is pretty obvious. This dream, clearly, is all about my desire to get into politics ("The Next Level") and my inability to get there from my current position. There are several options open to me, however...
I could basically whore myself out to the special interests, as represented by the Jamaicans. They could get me where I want to be, but there's no such thing as a free lunch...I would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of whichever corporations funded my election and would basically be obligated to vote whichever way they dictated. So that's not a route I'd choose to take.
I could ride someone else's coattails, like our current congressman Bob Inglis did (who in this dream is rather amusingly morphed into a Latina waitress named Roberta.) The problem is, there aren't any politicians here in South Carolina who I'd really feel comfortable affiliating myself with. So once again, I'd be sleazing my way to the top and selling myself out to interests I'd rather not associate with. So once again, my own ethics are getting in the way of my career.
The third option is I could play their game: I could run a really dirty campaign. I could go on the attack against the Republican Party (as represented by the three kids) and emerge victorious as the dirtiest player in the game. The problem is, I'd rather get there on my own merits rather than being selected simply as the lesser of two evils. And, although I do have major issues with the current direction of the Republican Party, I have still been known to vote for (and even work for) the occasional Republican. I'm more interested in individual candidates and the issues involved in a particular campaign than I'll ever be with party labels. So attacking an institution that's not doing any real harm to me is just beyond the scope of what I'm willing to do to promote my own self-interest.
So will I ever manage to find a "fourth way"? Will the Chosen One ever reach The Next Level? Stay tuned...
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and fuuuuuuuuck Georgia State troopers!!!!!