Update on My Condition

Just in case anyone wondered, I'm doing better since the last time I updated this thing. The ER guys in St. Francis are idiots, so I went to see a doctor at my regular clinic. The official diagnosis was a combination of kidney stones, a muscle spasm, and narcotic poisoning from the crappy, low-grade Vicodin the guys in Poughkeepsie gave me. I'm feeling a lot beter now, but still pretty pissed about the whole thing.

Whudafuxup with Anti-smoking Ads?

I'm really getting sick of these anti-smoking commercials. I understand that smoking is bad for you, and it's good to make sure that people know about it. However, I think these anti-smoking groups have gotten a little too overzealous. I rarely watch tv anymore without seeing several of these things, sometimes multiples during the same commercial break. I ask you, how ADD-ridden would my brain have to be to see an anti-smoking ad, then actually need to see another one within the next 60 seconds to avoid forgetting about it?

Most of them aren't even ads for anti-smoking products like patches or gum. Most of them are just messages telling you to quit. It's not a product, it's a suggestion about lifestyle choice. I realize that smoking is bad for you, but it's still ultimately an individual's decision to smoke or not. They couldn't get away with that for any other lifestyle choice. If I started a multi-million dollar ad campaign telling people to not eat Hot Pockets, I think someone would get a little skeptical. I'd never do that anyway. Unhealthy or not, I love my Hot Pockets.

What bothers me the most, though, is not the frequency of the ads, but the content of them. Anti-smoking ads have recently moved away from being informative, and opted more for shock value and horror, trying to scare people out of smoking. Seriously, I understand smoking is unhealthy. I don't need to see a blackened lung sitting in a tray. I don't need to see some old guy with an oxygen mask and a huge yellow scar down his back. I don't need to see the cowboy with the hole in his neck singing about tobacco. I don't need to see severed limbs in trash cans with little signs saying "cigarettes kill more people than there are trash cans in New York." I don't need to see piles of dog shit on the street with little signs stuck in them saying "cigarettes have the same stuff in them." I don't need to see fat hairy guys getting their backs shaved to... wait, wait, I gotta stop here. I mean, fat guys getting their backs shaved? What the flying fuck?

They also changed the wording of the commercials. They used to be just a suggestion. Like, "you should quit smoking, it's unhealthy." They'd sometimes even just say, "well, okay, if you have to keep smoking, at least step outside so your kids don't breathe the secondhand smoke." There's no more of that any more. They're not suggestions any longer, they're demands. Literally, the most recent anti-smoking commercial I saw just had some old guy with a respirator talking about how much his life sucks, then a little message saying he died last year or something. Then, in huge, Tahoma 72pt bold font, they displayed the words: "QUIT. NOW." I mean, are you kidding me? They're doing everything short of screaming it. "QUIT! NOOOOOW!"

Now, all this is extremely awkward for me to watch. Particularly because I don't smoke. Frankly, I don't think I ever could. I'm too afraid. I'm terrified that as soon as I try to light up, a whole fucking swat team will crash through my window, snatch the cigarette out of my hand, stamp it out on the floor and scream in my face, "Didn't you fucking listen?! Smoking is bad for you! QUIT! NOW!!!" And then they'd taser me for no reason. I think that's the main reason I don't smoke. I don't wanna get tasered.

I'm in pain right now, and I'm pissed off

I went to the emergency room today for what I thought was a kidney stone. For those of you keeping track, something just like this happened to me the beginning of freshman year. I woke up early one morning with a terrible pain in my lower back, off the side near the kidney area. I thought at first that I just slept on it wrong, but it kept getting worse. Eventually it got so nauseatingly bad that I started vomiting. I had to go to the emergency room for treatment, and I stayed there most of the day. They gave me some kind of IV thing, and it took the pain away pretty quickly. I was out of it for a while, but I was okay and the pain never came back.

That was last time. This time, I went in with the same symptoms, and they gave me like 1 CC of painkiller. Last time I got a whole fucking IV bag. This time, half a syringe. Yeah, the pain went away for a little while. During that time, they had an MRI done, and apparently there were no kidney stones in my system. So, what the fuck does that mean? I'm in excruciating pain for no reason now? Supposedly, they think I either already passed it or it hadn't fully formed yet. I'm personally guessing the second one.

They released me and gave me a prescription for Vicodin. Good thing, I suppose, since this time, the pain came back bad as ever. The thing that pisses me off is that they can't simply give me the Vicodin. If I want the Vicodin, I have to walk across the street to Eckerd to fill the prescription. Let me tell you something: If I was well enough to walk all the way to Eckerd and back, I wouldn't need the fucking Vicodin. Outside of that, the only thing I have to deal with the pain is some ibuprofen, which I found out too late was past its expiration date. Great, just what I needed: expired painkillers to help make the nausea and vomiting worse.

So, now I'm sitting in my room in serious pain, with no chance of getting any relief, and I just puked my guts out again a few minutes ago. Maybe this is just the pain talking, but I fucking hate all of you right now.

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

I don't know what it is, but I think the act of going on vacation must have drastic effects on the space-time continuum. How else can you explain how an entire month can go by so fucking fast? I swear, I feel like I wasn't home more than a few hours, and I'm already back in school. As soon as I woke up this morning, all I could think was "God, I need a vacation."

So, I guess that's what I'm doing now. My vacation isn't over yet. I'm just taking a vacation from my vacation. So, really, I'm just back in school trying not to think about the fact that I have Calculus II tomorrow. Ugh, I think I'm getting tired just typing about it.

Anyway, I'm hoping that the fact that I'm on vacation from my vacation will help things along. Since time passes unnaturally fast on vacation, it must zoom by on a vacation squared. Hell, maybe it's already moving faster. I'll bet that by the time I'm done typing this, it will already be spring break.

...

Fuck. Guess not. How much longer 'til spring break? I really need a vacation.

Just a quick update

I haven't been on the computer much lately. I got a few new videogames for Christmas, so I haven't left my room in about 2 weeks.

And now, for a quiz to test how well you, the readers, understand me. Tell me, how do you think I spent New Year's Eve?

Okay, time's up.

If you guessed "watching the Twilight Zone marathon by himself, completely sober," you are correct.