doubting thom

This evening I have an appointment to get my hair cut. My last haircut was January 3, when I used the Grooming Lounge gift certificate Jeff had given me for Christmas. And even then I didn’t get my hair cut very short, so it has continued to get rather shaggy and curly. The Bozo bits on the side are really starting to drive me crazy.

However, I can’t decide whether to just get it trimmed and keep it longer and curly–which is a little more frustrating for me in terms of the manageability, but at the same time prompts quite a few compliments from my co-workers–or get it cut really pretty short like I wore it as recently as last summer (like the pix from 2003 and 2000 at the bottom of my stats page). With the current style, a few weeks ago Jeff and I had mused, and today my boss’s boss said much the same thing, that I look like I should be wearing a houndshair jacket with elbow patches, carrying a pipe and teaching creative writing at a small New England liberal college.

I don’t know if I had any pix of me with this longer hair online, but as I was checking, I discovered that the site I was using to store all my online photos (hundreds of them, captioned and arranged into albums)–PictureCD.com–apparently has deleted them all anyway, with no warning and no explanation. Sometimes I feel like Bad-Luck Schleprock. Cornelia has some online from our dinner together, but in them I’m always inadvertently situated so that my head is against a dark background, making it impossible to see my hair.

Headache? But honey, you wouldn’t want me to get cancer, would you?

A U.S. study suggests that men with a lifetime average of ejaculation of 21 times per month were one-third less likely to develop prostate cancer then men whose average was only four to seven times a month, with the reduced risk starting at around an average of twelve times monthly.

I particularly love the cheery last line of this article from the New Scientist:

Frequent sexual intercourse and masturbation protects men against a common form of cancer, suggests the largest study of the issue to date yet.

The US study, which followed nearly 30,000 men over eight years, showed that those that ejaculated most frequently were significantly less likely to get prostate cancer. The results back the findings of a smaller Australian study revealed by New Scientist in July 2003 that asserted that masturbation was good for men. …

[Australian research Graham] Giles notes that neither study examines ejaculation during the teenage years–which may be a crucial factor. But he says: “Although much more research remains to be done, the take home message is that ejaculation is not harmful, and very probably protective of prostatic health–and it feels good!”

Mmmm… Finally the scientists discover something that feels good is actually good for us. It sure is a nice change from the usual “x causes cancer” news.

Another television show to get the axe this past week was CBS’s legal drama set in 2030, Century City, which wasn’t really all that good, to be honest. I watched it anyway for its mild sf-genreish components, but mostly because of the delightfully adorable Ioan Gruffudd and swarthily hunky Nestor Carbonell.

Gene notes that in the wake of Fox’s sudden and immediate cancellation of the wonderful series Wonderfalls, they’ve already excised all mention of the show from their web site (there used to be a Wonderfalls-specific site at http://www.fox.com/wonderfalls but that URL now redirects to the Fox home page).

Wow. They certainly didn’t waste any time.

First of all, I’m glad I visited the site yesterday; I hadn’t been to it previously. I had suspected Fox might do this, so I wanted to see if there was any media there that might be worth hanging onto, and indeed there was a cute (if low-resolution) Flash movie of the music video for the theme, which I found in my cache and copied to another folder in order to keep.

And I also found some extremely limited information still available at the FoxNow site. Most intriguing of all, though, is the following:

Performance Highlights:

WONDERFALLS had a solid sampling in its first 2 weeks, averaging 4 million viewers. The series delivers its best performance among teens on Friday night, ranking #1 in its time period. WONDERFALLS is also popular with young men, ranking #2 in its time period among Men 18-34.

Source: Nielsen, NTI 03/12-03/19/2004

So on their site, they claim successful ratings. But in their decision to axe the show, they cite abysmal ratings. It’s like listening to the Bush administration. Oh wait, it’s Fox. Same thing.

I hate the cafeteria at my office. In the greater scheme of things, of course, it’s pretty unimportant, but on a day-to-day basis it does have a fairly significant impact on my own happiness.

At the main office for the Department of State downtown, they have an incredible cafeteria, with more than a dozen separate stations, including a fresh seafood bar, Tex-Mex, wraps, Greek, sushi, Chinese, Italian and more. Then there’s the separate deli, ice cream shop and espresso bar downstairs from the cafeteria proper. Moreover, while they’re not in the heart of the DC business district, they still are within a few blocks of a number of other eateries. Here, on the other hand, we do have a beautiful site–and I certainly can’t complain about the commute, being less than two miles from door to door–but our cafeteria sucks, and the management of it leaves a lot to be desired. And there’s nowhere within a reasonable walking distance, so if you want to eat off-campus, you have to take your car.

I finally did stop buying coffee here at all, after continually being frustrated by arriving at 8:30–only fifteen minutes after the official start of the workday–to find that they already were down to the bitter and burnt dregs of a single urn, especially when a small cup of this mostly water goes for nearly a buck fifty. Granted, I still buy the occasional espresso drink from the ubiquitous coffee shop chains, but I chafe at what must be obscene profit margins anywhere coffee is sold. And when they started charging $1.00 for an orange or banana, I stopped buying fruit here as well.

I’ve still continued to go there for lunch most days, though, despite the constant frustration. Today was not atypical. The cafeteria is ostensibly open until 2:30, yet arriving at 1:00 I found that while the sign at the soup station promised clam chowder, which is one of only two things I think the cafeteria does well, the other being their wild mushroom bisque–the soups actually are catered by Au Bon Pain, rather than by the overall cafeteria catering contract, so no real props to them for this mere soupçon of success–there was no clam chowder available. So I moved over to the sandwich line, where the special of the day was listed as cajun tuna salad. I ordered the special, to be told that they had no cajun tuna salad. I asked if she meant that they did not, in fact, have the item listed on the sign in front of her–a small letter-size piece of paper attached, non-permanently, to a small easel sitting on the counter that could readily be taken down, turned face down, turned around, etc.–and she agreed that they did not.

A couple of months ago I asked for the listed sandwich special–a turkey sandwich with a bottle drink–without paying enough attention to the price printed on the menu. It was only as I checked out and was told the price for the special that I realized that its price actually was higher than the cost of all the individual items added together. Yet the cashier insisted that I couldn’t buy the drink and the sandwich separately, since together they constituted a “special.”

Not surprisingly, I noticed today, while looking especially for them, that they’ve removed the comment cards and box.

I really should try to bring my own lunch and just boycott the cafeteria altogether. It’s too bad, then, that I’m essentially a lazy bum.

Thanks to ChastMastr for pointing out this good albeit surprising news, and for leaving a comment here the other day noting it as well:

Employees are protected from discrimination based on their sexual orientation, the White House says.

The White House position, made in a March 31 statement to Federal Times, appears to contradict recent statements by President Bush’s appointee to the office that handles such discrimination claims.

[Federal Times, March 31, 2004]

I previously had noted (in February and again last month) that the new director of the Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, had taken the position that the federal government does not protect against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Last week, though, after nearly 80 members of Congress sent letters to Bloch asking him to reverse his decision and received no response, they then wrote directly to President Bush, asking him to clarify the Administration’s position. Via a spokesperson, the White House responded:

Longstanding federal policy prohibits discrimination against federal employees based on sexual orientation. President Bush expects federal agencies to enforce this policy and to ensure that all federal employees are protected from unfair discrimination at work.

The Washington Blade has a longer and much more detailed description and analysis of the issue.

So I just received some spam that attempted to come across as a personalized email. However, the spammers didn’t have my primary email address, but the one I created just for use in connection with my blog, or when I comment to other blogs. So the subject line of the email read:

“Save up to 50% on downloadable software, Blog.”

Jeff and I have been following the terrific new series Wonderfalls from its first airing; a darling of the critics, too, the show was everything that network television usually is not: charming, smart, witty, funny, human and so wonderfully quirky. We loved it. In fact, I turned to Jeff after the first episode and said, “It’s too good, and I love it too much; it’s bound to fail.”

And Gene said much the same thing when he blogged about it last week: “[I]t’s on Fox, and I feel certain that they will not give it the attention it deserves. It’ll probably go the way of Futurama, another brilliant gem that got the Fox treatment.”

Sadly, we were all right, and oh too soon. As [my] Jeff told me earlier this evening, and as [the other] Jeff just reported in his journal, the show has been cancelled, effective immediately. Sigh.

Thirteen episodes have been produced, but only four have been aired. And that’s all we’ll see, unless the brilliant folks responsible for it are able to get them aired elsewhere or, more unlikely, get a DVD released. I’m wishing them success.

Fox so sucks, and not in a good way. Thank goodness for HBO, Showtime and the other satellite/cable channels, where intelligent and even provocative programming can find a home; network television is almost entirely superfluous in our home.

These are the mantras that Sarah Vowell, brilliantly wry observer of American life and politics, whispers to herself as a reminder that bad as things are, they can always be worse.

“Andersonville” is a code word for “You could be one of the prisoners of war dying of disease and malnutrition in the worst Confederate prison, so just calm down about the movie you wanted to go to being sold out.” “Texas School Book Depository” means that having the delivery guy forget the guacamole isn’t nearly as bad as being assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald as the blood from your head stains your wife’s pink suit. Though, ever since I went to Salem, I’m keen on “Gallows Hill.” As in, being stuck in the Boise airport for ten hours while getting hit on by a divorced man with “major financial problems” on his way to his twentieth high school reunion is irksome, but not as dire as swinging by the neck on Salem’s Gallows Hill.

[from The Partly Cloudy Patriot, the wonderful book I’m reading at the moment, borrowed from Jeff]

So today I’ve been trying to find my own mantras as I deal with another day from hell, from the really petty missing guacamole-level things, like the fact that my hosting provider’s servers would choke anytime I’d submit any HTML-based form–to edit a comment, add a new blog entry, or change a template, say–if it had HTML code in it until just a few minutes ago, to the really scary messy stuff, like finding out while I was at the doctor’s office–after sitting waiting for 45 minutes before they got to me at all–that despite the presence of completed forms in my file, the annual receipt of renewed welcome materials from the insurance company, and even the reality in my hot-little-hand of a membership card from them that says I’m covered through December 31, 2004, apparently I do not, in fact, have health insurance nor have I actually been covered for the past two years. So I didn’t end up seeing the doctor after all–the office offered to let her see me for a lot of extra money and a ton of additional paperwork including a request to record my complete medical history again, even though it’s already in my file, but I was so tired, angry and frustrated by that time that I finally just walked out in disgust. I’d only decided to go to her because I thought the paperwork and hassle would be minimized; I don’t actually like her or prefer her care.

My HR and payroll staff are still trying to figure out what happened, and why I apparently have no health insurance, but tell me they won’t have any answers before Monday. Here’s hoping I stay healthy and safe at least through the weekend. I’ll say one thing for this experience, though: Right now I feel nothing but a warm hypertensive flush in my face, and blood pounding in my neck, temple and ears, all of which at least has taken my attention away from the pain and pressure in my balls and gut, for now.

Andersonville. Gallows Hill. “Fallujah,” I whisper to myself. Things could be worse.

Recently I haven’t been posting very frequently. There are probably a few reasons. One, to which I just alluded, is that I’ve been maintaining several other “quicklinks” blogs in addition to this primary one, and on those I’ve remained reasonably active (they don’t require much thought, really, since they’re primarily just pointers to resources, with fairly minimal analysis), taking away some of the time and energy I normally would spend here.

I must confess, though, also to having been in something of a funk, a particularly introverted mindspace, or both; and “having been” may not be the most accurate verb tense, since I’m still at least partly in that state of mind. There are several potential contributing factors to this, one being that I’m in a bit of a hypochrondriacal, anxious place right now, experiencing a range of distressing and physically very uncomfortable symptoms most likely indicating some problem with my prostate. Most likely it’s just a benign prostatitis of some sort, but now that I’m in my 40s, and given that my dad experienced a number of prostate-related problems before (though ultimately unrelated to) his death, including one potential (the lab results were never conclusive one way or the other) course of prostate cancer and a partial prostatectomy, I’m stressed and worried, which obviously aren’t at all helpful. As a result, I’m sleeping fitfully, and then falling asleep on the couch early; I’m not eating much or well; and I suspect I’m coming across to others as distracted, cranky and/or (more than usually) self-absorbed.

And I’d been putting off making an appointment with a doctor. I never completely connected with the doctor I was seeing a few years ago, up to the point I was laid off; I felt that while she wasn’t openly judgmental or critical, she didn’t seem completely comfortable with my sexual orientation, and there was also sometimes a language barrier, or at least an understanding barrier, with English not being her first or best language. I truly believe she’s a perfectly competent physician, but I just never developed the kind of rapport and comfort I’d have preferred. Especially when it comes to dealing with urogenital issues.

Since late 2001, I hadn’t seen any doctor with the exception of those who examined and cleared me as a likely kidney donor for my father in late 2002 (though that turned out not to be necessary, as a cadaveric match almost miraculously was located two weeks before our surgery was scheduled in January 2003) and hadn’t yet identified a new primary care physician.

So today I finally went ahead and made an appointment with my previous doctor anyway; she is, at least, a known quantity, and she accepts my current insurance plan. And, amazingly, she had an appointment slot available tomorrow afternoon, so I don’t have to wait as long as I thought I might to find out what’s wrong, and start addressing the uncomfortable symptoms as well as the underlying cause, whatever it may be.

Sigh.