Hey. You want to read something really scary?

From Reuters, via Boing Boing:

Germany's Merck halts supply of cancer drug to Greek hospitals

You don't have to take medication every day (like me and other folks on maintenance drugs) to be scared of this.

FIST PUMP

Got the c-scope results back from my gastro. She called me at work and I knew immediately it was her: she's got the worst phone voice ever. It's very breathy in a non-sexy way, and full of monotonous, ominous portent. I don't know how she does it, but she could definitely do In The Year 2000 and it'd be SCARY, not funny.



Anyhoo. She called to tell me I am cancer-free and pre-cancer-free and whatever comes before pre-cancer, I'm free of it. Also, the ulcers on my ascending colon have completely disappeared and the rest of it has calmed down to "mild, chronic, inactive ulcerative colitis." So that's a big ol' yay, I think. Cue the Mini eggs celebration!

Urgh.

Unfortunately I spoke too soon. Our noisiest neighbors did not disappear to far-off climes for the holiday; no, they hosted a New Year's party. I thought maybe if I drank a lot of wine (okay, a lot more wine. And champagne. And beer. And found some earplugs) and turned up the PBS Elitist Classical Music New Year's Party broadcast, I could drown out the heavy bassline vibrating our shared wall. Funny how heavy bass does absolutely nothing for "Selections from the Nutcracker," eh? I know, I was shocked, too. If I was only halfway lazy, I'd make a special PBS Nutcracker-bassline dance mix and post it on youtube with video of me throwing dishes at the wall. Quirky!

Oh - and after the bass started up, someone started blowing the fucking hell out of a party horn. It sounded like a sad goose with untreated ulcerative colitis wandering around our backyard.

You know what consoles me in times like these? The fact that I got up early this morning and will now start blasting some StS Manson and NPR all while playing a lively tune on my kazoo. The only thing I lack is a giant truck to start and rev, rev, rev up at 6:01 a.m., of course.

It's really tough to be considerate of others, but as Constable Fraser reminds us, it only takes a moment to be courteous.

CON-TRO-VER-SEEEEE

One of my friends linked to Think Before You Pink and this post on Voxygen.net and thus I felt bad and irresponsible and unthinking-sheepish about doing the breast cancer facebook update shit. Yeah, I KNOW that posting a facebook status saying blah-de-blah in order to "raise awareness" for [disease/cause/fashion travesty] does nothing physical and serves more to further mindless following of the herd, just like I know that if I send my personal and financial information to that nice widow who emailed me last month, my bank account will be tidily cleaned out. I think lots of people do know this.

So why do we do it? Does it really serve the single purpose of making us feel better regarding a situation (e.g. a relative with breast cancer) over which we have no power or control? Do we just continue on with our days after posting where we like to set our purse at night or our bra snap count, because now that we've done something, we can just forget all about that person or that disease? Are we mindless clickers? Easy marks? Fools? Does this just illustrate how we don't really care about a cause or a disease or anything until it touches us or our families or where we live? I know that I certainly didn't give a damn about Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's until my diagnosis. I'd never heard of it. I haven't seen an fb campaign for pants-shitting awareness, either. HEY.

Before You Buy Pink is also helpful. And here's another post from The Stir on silly breast cancer "awareness" products, and more thoughts related to this topic. I do agree with how annoying campaigns like "Save the Ta-tas" are; when someone close to me was diagnosed with breast cancer, my first thought was not for her goddamn tits. Blah, blah, I'm so humorless, whatever.

-

Here's an unrelated link that made me boggle*:

Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?

Money quote from Iott:
"They have to take it in context. There's reenactors out there who do everything. You couldn't do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn't play the role of the Confederates.

_{*and also neatly divert from the topic of the fb/breast cancer brouhaha with a New! Angry! Item! Is there a sub-sub-subclause in Godwin's law for this?}

Posting from Hiatusland

Folic Acid Supplements Don't Reduce High-Risk Colon Cancers.

This is an interesting article. My gastro has me taking a milligram of folic acid daily, just on the "off-chance" that I get knocked up. What are the complications of folic acid and ulcerative colitis, if any? (He blithely informed me when I asked, "None. Absolutely none.") If ulcerative colitis primes someone for a higher rate of cancer possibility, would folic acid up those numbers?

Is folic acid the new formula, wheat bran, omega-three?

Am I taking valuable library science time to type crap? Well, YEAH.