I know, I know, English profs are always whining that HP Lovecraft‘s use of “the Unspeakable” and “the Unnameable” is a literary cop-out, but that, my friends, is because they are English profs, with circumscribed, English prof-y lives and limited, English prof-y experiences. If they’d venture off-campus once in awhile (let alone down eldritch and unsuspected catacombs beneath the decayed megalopolis in which they scratch and scrape an oblivious, complascent living, never venturing to the secret, subterranean city) they might have their eyes uncomfortably opened; indeed, peeled, if not actually sucked out of their sockets by …
the Unspeakable.
We have, in deference to our readers of more delicate sensibilities, hidden this abomination over the jump. Before you click on, please stow all baggage in the overhead bins or underneath the seat in front of you, ensure that your seatbelt is securely fastened, and return all trays, maiden aunts, and reanimated corpses to the upright position.
It is eminently clear from this shocking video that not only are we descended from apes, but that in some cases we’re regressing. As you can see, the youngest Lohan child is a chip off the ol’ block; it’s just that we’re unclear what it’s a chip OF.
I’ve been in the hospital. Again. This time, I was supposed to pop in Friday morning and have that pesky gallbladder removed, a 90-minute procedure after which I’d be set free on an unsuspecting food chain to wreak uncontrollable havoc, in the style of Cthulhu left in charge of a daycare. SMORGASBORD!
Cthulhu says WOMEN AND CHIRRUNS FIRST
Guess what? Things didn’t quite work out that way.
The Sister informs me “that’s three for three” in the family, going in for a simple gallbladderectomy and ending up with an aerated colon in the bargain. Must be our genetic heritage of deformed gastrointestinal tracts or something (we coasters have an extra pouch to help us separate out the nutritive particles from the rainwater here). My doctor informs me she’s done over 300 of these operations, and this is the very first time she’s chopped a hole in someone’s colon without meaning to. In any case, she sewed up the hole and I am no longer holey.
As if you couldn’t tell.
That is one angry looking gallbladder
She tells me, additionally, that in her 300-gallbladder career, she’d never seen one as inflamed as mine (and remember, this woman ONLY sees unhealthy gallbladders). It was at least twice the size of an ordinary, inflamed, has-to-be-removed gallbladder. She said she couldn’t imagine how painful my attacks must have been, to which I replied that I reported them as 8/10 on the pain scale only because I’d had a bone marrow biopsy, and that was a 9. I don’t think people remain conscious through a 10.
No, sadly, they do NOT give you your Human Pearls after the operation. Gallstones seem to be a sort of cancer clearinghouse for the entire body, so if there’s cancer anywhere, it shows in your gallstones, so now they give all your lovely Human Pearls to the pathologist to brutally crush and analyze. There goes my business model, dammit.
In any case, after lying in the hospital a few days taking nourishment from a plastic bag and a hose attached through a hole in the back of my hand, getting dosed with superantibiotics (perforated colons have a nasty way of causing the worst possible infections, and are fatal quite frequently) and being bored out of my mind by my charming, sweet, but UNSTOPPABLY CHATTY roommate, I mean, seriously, I’d have my headphones on, she’d wake up, start babbling, notice my earphones were on, say “oh well, let me repeat that so you can hear” and do so, louder. Several times. All. Damn. Day. When they moved her to the physio ward it was sweet, sweet relief, anyway, after all of that they let me go, and not a moment too soon because although they did officially switch me to “solid” food two days before, the kitchen never got that notice and sent nothing but milk, tea (vile brown particle-filled stuff that would strip paint), cream soups, and cream of wheat. I tell you, I would have welcomed the synthetically cheerful jewel tones of Jello like a drowning victim welcomes a life raft. A shiny, wobbly crimson life raft filled with empty calories and pure joy.
Now, let’s back up a little (a phrase which should give one pause, embedded as it is in a blog post about the gastro-intestinal system and catastrophic colon-based events.
This is what a GT looks like, y'all. My blood is AWESOME under a microscope
“GT” is a sort of byword for a car that is sporty, racy, competitive, and stylish. So it was with not a small amount of pride that I noticed while reading my medical chart that according to a blood test from the last time I was in hospital, my “Gamma GT” levels were substantial. They were so awesome they were bolded right there on the chart, along with a whole lot of other terms like “AT” and “conjugated bilirubin” which were also in bold. And decorated with a large letter H, each of them.
which rather puts into context my medical team’s remark that, had they not tested my liver enzyme levels both when I was admitted to the hospital in November and when I was released (this figure is from the latter, when it had increased threefold) they would never have clued in that my bile duct was blocked and I had a potentially fatal, potentially SOON, situation underway.
Anyhoodle, that got dealt with. Which brung us to Friday, and from Friday the rest of this post has brung us to here. Which is about all I can think to write at this point, except that my blood is SO WAY COOLER than yours under a microscope, so suck on that while you’re watching your big screen tvs and enjoying all those concert tickets I can’t afford. MY BLOOD IS SO WAY COOLER UNDER A MICROSCOPE. Ha! Take that, Mundanes!
Well, it seems as if just EVERYONE is talking about me, all up in my bowels, including Old Dead White GuyAlexander Pope. Still, although this dude has been dead since 1744, he’s all up in my biznass and up on the facts, so it would seem, for this does indeed explain a great deal.
Memorable Audiene of the 19th of February, 1789.
Illustrated by
The NEW DOCTRINE of FUNDAMENTALS,
or a
Metaphysico-Medico-Political Comment
On a Passage in St. Paul,
“The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.” St. Paul Epist. to Corinth. x. 22.
~*~*~*~
My friend Dr. Purcell, understands by the term slow bellies, that the Cretans seldom went to stool, and, that thefaeces reacting on their blood, put them into a bad humour, and made them EVIL BEASTS, ill-tempered brutes. It is very true, that a man who seldom goes to stool, will be more choleric than another. His bile does not flow ; it is boiled over again, and his blood grues adust.
The morning that you have a favour to ask of a VICEROY, or his SEC. inform yourself particularly on the state of their bowels. If they have a free passage, it is the mollia tempus fandi.
Every one knows that a man’s character and disposition depends entirely on his intercourse with the necessary-house. The late Lord Sackville would not have urged on the American war at such a sanguinary rate, had he not been troubled with haemoirhoides in his intestinum rectum, which indurated the faeces. The Princess Dowager of Wales used to call him Rotten A—e. This nickname redoubled the acrimony of his bile, and probably cost Mr. Laurens his liberty, and Dr. Dodd his life.
That immaculate paragon of political and moral excellence, the present Premier of Great Britain, is habitually costive, notwithstanding the Bishop of Lincoln’s (Dr. Prettyman) prescription of an Ounce of Rhubarb every morn. It is very probable, that the Rt. Rev. Doctor, when SEC. to Mr. Pitt, sometimes experienced the effects of this fundamental bondage in the latter, as I have been told by Captain J—n who used to amuse the D. of Rutland with the story, that Dr. P’s first question to Mr. Pitt’s valet was, “Well! what news from the water closet?”
Many yet remember that famous Phillippic pronounced by the present Marquis of Lansdown, shortly after a difference with his quondam coadjutor and pupil, in which, amongst other strokes, we find the marquis recommending to Mr. P’s serious attention the caution of Mentor to Telemachus on, “the predominance of humour” and proposing that it be transcribed and placed at the bed’s head of every Minister in Christendom. Thus making it of equal import with the recollective rule of Philip of Macedon, in whose chamber a Lord was in waiting for the whole purpose of reminding his Kingship when he waked in the morning “That he was a man”—But to resume, if we could recur to Mr. Pitt’s diary at the time above alluded to, we she [sic] should doubtless find a ready solution to the Marquis’s counsel.
It is said our present magnanimous and generous Chief Governor ; (whom God long preserve!) is sometimes so plugged up,— that he is obliged to have recourse to Bartlet’s horse purging balls! This much transpired from his groom of the water closet, who lately bought a large quantity of Mr. Magee, who is in expectation of an exclusive patent for the sale of this valuable Apertive. It were to be wished that the day the two Houses went up with the Address, that his Excellency and his posterior’s had made a few detachments to the Water closet ;—perhaps the Lords and Gentlemen would have then hit on the mollia tempore fandi!
Temple Spectacles! A Tale For Seventeen Hundred and Eighty Nine. See ****** damn’d to everlasting Fame. Pope. By the Author of the Prelateiad. Dublin : printed for H. Chamberlaine and Heery & Co., [1789?]
Library Company of Philadelphia
O Eng Temp Spec 1789 15615.O.5
Latest HumanPearl news: Had a lightning-strike gallstone attack resulting from eating the best part of a half-box of Toffifee while under doctor’s orders to avoid fat (sugar, I knew, but who knew caramel had butter in it?). It hit at 2:05, a cold-sweat-inducing 8 on the pain scale and I was out of the hospital, home and on Dilaudid at 3 on the pain scale within two hours.
a pretentious little quadrangle, with overtones of morbid obesity
Still too woozy from my latest hospital visit to do a useful post, but very soon I shall put up a restaurant review-style comparison of the multifarious psychoactive substances the wonderful Canadian healthcare system has been doling out to me gratis. Not sure whether to rate them on overall experience or just quality of hallucinations, but definitely in there somewhere.
Today the Emergency Room doctor told me my Demerol space cosmonaut monkey hallucination was “totally awesome.” I think it made his day. God knows, it made mine.
raincoaster 