Knees, Ticks, and Tar Baby’s

Meanwhile, back at the ranch the knee is coming along.  Rehab therapy has begun, but I confess everytime I say that word Amy Winehouse springs to mind and I have a notion to duct tape a bird’s nest to my head to emulate her hairstylings.  I am able to get about slowly without a cane much of the time, which is nice because the cane I have is your basic brown question mark looking metal cane from Rite-Aid.  While it serves its purpose, I really wanted a cane with a Lion’s head handle that converted into a sword…sort of like King Willie sports in Predator 2.

Alas, it was not to be…but my silliness about the cane of my dreams is more than offset by the silliness I see out there in politics land…

One of the sad things about pay per ad click blogs is that they often engage in yellow journalism to drive more traffic their way.  How else to explain the reaction here and here to Tom Davis using the term “Tar Baby” to describe an intractable obstacle that once involved with is almost impossible to escape?  While it has been used as an offensive racial term, Davis’ use of the term was correct and not offensive.  I imagine that this term will fall into the same category as “niggardly”, which I discussed last year…and that soon those who argue for freedom of speech will demand that the Uncle Remus stories come off the library shelf.

Now, if folks want to get in an uproar, then I imagine NLS and others will head straight to Cherry Grove, SC, and picket this establishment. But make sure and eat breakfast first, because the food is great.

In other news, the Bwana clan went out on cub scout camping trip this past weekend, and came home with a great appreciation for mag lite flashlights, coleman lanterns, and-wait for it-at least two ticks per person.

Me thinks SWMBO is permanently off of camping trips unless the lodging includes room service…

 

Quick Hits from the Cane, er, the Crutch, Day 2

Well, the numbing stuff wore off and we are back on the crutch for now.  Wraps come off for now.

All I can say is that my doc made the right call on doing one knee at a time.

I am curious-are the folks who created Percocet the same folks who created metamucil?  Because if not, they should have been. 

Trust me when I say strong drugs need good fiber.

I hope all GOP types in the 11th district are watching the NLS Gerry sucks series…looks like a great foundation for potential oppo research!

Quick Hits from the Cane

There’s got to be a morning after…and so it is.

Left knee got scoped yesterday, and have not yet required any heavy meds.  I am now on a cane which, although metal, looks quite sporty and can be customized so that it splits into two parts and can be used a nunchuck.

While my inclincation was to go with both knees, my physician raised An Uncomfortable Truth…my weight is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay north of where it should be, and he had great concerns about me carrying this weight on two recovering knees.  So, one it was.

A Knee on wednesday, start something like WW next week, and sometime this summer get the right knee done.

First, a word to RK fans-the use of the word “cane” in my posts is to be used only during the current mobility crisis and will not pose a copyright risk.

Second, It is interesting to see how the Dem blogs are united in refusing to attribute anything postitive to Frank Wolf for the approval of the Dulles Rail Project…not surprising, just interesting.

Third, you may find it interesting that Bwana, who has not had any real surgery done since his tonsils got yanked 43 years ago, had a very interesting reaction to anethesia.  According to SWMBO, after I got the first boost of knock out stuff,  the following happened:

a) I took on a look as if I was drunk; then
b) I started telling jokes to the nurses; then
c) Finally, I broke into “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line for the benefit of the Pre-Op crowd, for which I received rousing applause.

Of course, this is all second hand-I remember none of it.  However, to paraphrase the editor of the Shinbone Star, “when legend overwhelms fact, print the legend.”

Later, friend and neighbors…

UPDATE: At 0800, the big throb kicked in…and the heavy meds came into play.  More to come…

Quick Hits from the Crutch, Part 2

Double the pleasure, double the fun!

Looks like torn meniscus on the right…and on the left, also!  So the only questions left are:

a) Do I get the knees cut one at a time or both at the same time, and

b) Will all the bloggers be sending me flowers?

Forecast: Bad knees and light blogging

The knee saga has evolved into the knees saga…hence the light blogging…

You may recall my noting a little while back that I have a torn meniscus in my right knee that needs surgery.  The decision was to put it off until some personal matters, like a church players production of South Pacific, was over with.

However, a week ago-almost to the minute-I put a foot wrong on my stairs and had a lightening pain on the inside of my knee…my left knee!

So, I am hobbled, much of the time on crutches.  One day the pain was such that I got to dance with Doctor Vicodin for the first time.

As you can imagine, blogging has not had first dibs on the to-do list…so bear with me and hopefully soon I will be back in the game at a more consistent, insistent, persistent, and productive rate!

Feder “Out of State”, Connolly “Over the Top”, LB3 in Denial

My bad knee has been diganosed as a torn meniscus. Bwana tv-fave Jericho has officially been cancelled, the Rock and Roll Nurse was booted from American Idol-guaranteeing us weeks of boring same old, same old performances…oh, and my NCAA hoops pool picks are shot to pieces.

So, we turn to more mundane subjects…back at the ranch, life is popping in the Northern Virginia congressional races…and generally courtesy of the WaPo.

Recently, the Wapo caught up to one of the prominent facts about Judy Feder’s fundraising, namely that the bulk of her fundraising to date has come from out of state. Given that this is exactly what happened two years ago, it seems surprising that the Post took this long to see that Feder has been unable to establish a reasonable fundraising base in the 10th district. Even the Federian spin on the matter is interesting…:

Feder asserted that Wolf was in her position during his successful 1980 campaign against incumbent Joseph L. Fisher (D). In an Oct. 18, 1980, article, The Washington Post reported that “nearly half of Wolf’s money has come from political action committees and other special action groups, many of them outside Virginia.”

…which does not seem to address the question at hand. Or, put another way and given the context of the article, in the midst of of a second general election campaign effort against an incumbent in a presidential year it would seem that Frank Wolf was already getting over half his money from inside Virginia.

I expect the Feder campaign to spin away from this issue as quickly as possible…although I see the possibility of Feder being labeled as “the candidate from [fill in the blank]” if she continues to focus on out of state money.

Life is really popping in Va-11. ChairGer was the target of a mailing from the Emily’s List PAC, and he was accused of “bullying, over-the-top tactics” as an elected official. ChairGer responded in a recent event by suggesting that LB3 “has a history of going really negative, really fast.” LB3 denied any part in the mailing, then said her campaign paid the EMILY list mailing expenses to put out the mailing.  But while clearly the LB3 team had a hand in the mailing, can you look at some of ChairGer’s antics and deny the “over-the-top” label?

All this happens while D-Day and LoriBlue are ignored by the media…which perhaps makes the recent “Kindler” diary at RK more significant. This post suggests that Va-11 is not a lock for the winner of the Democratic primary, and proceeds to list reasons based in GOP fundraising and geography.

In other Virginia news, the DCCC targets three Virginia GOP candidates…and in doing so gives us some of the wishfulness the democrats have for 2008. They are targeting Va-11, which makes sense as it is open; Va-2, which make sense because of the close 2006 race; and Va-10, where they say “Rep. Wolf will face a tough challenge from a strong Democratic candidate fighting for change.” The reason for the target here is “a strong Democratic candidate”. What struck me as unusual is that there were several GOP incumbents who are listed as targeted because they will face strong opposition, but the democrats won’t name that “strong candidate”. One would think they would go on and list these “strong candidates”.

Yep, tv faves may disappear and the body fail, but Old Man Politico just keeps rolling along!

Not What I Expected…

Following the example of James Atticus Bowden I took the personality.info personality test. Based on previous online type tests and prognostications by friends I fully expected ENTP, but actually came up with :

According to this website, I share the same personality type with Bruce Willis, Jimmy Connors, and Jack Nicholson. I presume this means I have the ability to trash large buildings with a tennis racket while wearing cool shades.