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Alien Insanity

4/4/2015

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Alien Insanity

 

It’ s been a whopping 9 months since I last updated this blog and I’d say it’s high time that I provide an update. This update is more for me than it is for potential readers, though I hope that it also provides some insight into why I have been all but unable to write about anything other than the random attempts at somewhat boring articles in the Valley Voice. I need to purge. I’ve had some very dark times over the last year and writing is crucial. I need to get my game back on! (And my therapist recommended that I do this for my own good. Thanks, Sara.)
 

I just reread all the previous blog entries from the time I was diagnosed and the last one, dated 7/8/2014, was an inadequate glimpse into what was truly going on at the time. I touched on some of the little things that were eating at me but I left out the major cause of my depression… infidelity.

 
Reading the bits about how I had the most awesome wife breaks my heart. I was so blind to so much that was wrong with my marriage and only in hindsight can I even begin to understand what may have transpired to create the situation that I find myself in today. I was head over heels in love and had no idea that my wife was suffering regret.

 

I need to add this caveat before I continue… I have done much reading on cancer and divorce and been through many a counseling session regarding this topic, and divorce is not an uncommon outcome. That doesn’t really make me feel any better about my situation, but the fact is, cancer fucks up a lot of marriages.  

 

Infidelity is a tricky term. There is sexual infidelity and emotional infidelity. They are different in form and function, but equally painful. The infidelity that I experienced was emotional, and I will never know if it was sexual as well and that’s quite alright by me. Some things are better left unknown.

 

My brain is going faster than my fingers and the thoughts in my brain are bouncing around with so many different ideas and directions that I feel the only way to unload all this info is to go back to what I feel is the beginning of the end. I have plenty of news regarding the alien infestation that still lingers in my guts, but that will have to wait for a few paragraphs.

 

I learned about my ex’s boyfriend on Mother’s Day, 2014. Yup, last May. There had been a noticeable shift in her desire to do anything around the house. No cleaning, no cooking, sparse communication. All the wonderful things she said about what truly matter in life regressed to anger and desire. The two words I heard most were “I want,” followed by any number of things that could range from “I want new dishes,” to “I want to move to Steamboat.” I was five weeks out of surgery and starting to feel somewhat human again, though my brain was still far from human. The mingling of alien DNA with my own had and still has quite an effect on my ability to think about anything other than The C Word (no, not cracker), but I was still coherent enough to notice that something was not quite right.

 

This part is difficult to write about because it opens up wounds that are still festering, but I’ll do my best to relate the sequence of events that led up to me doing the worst thing that I have ever done in a relationship… break into my wife’s phone and discover what I suspected but didn’t want to know. Dick maneuver? You bet, but it was the only way I could think of to learn what was really going on. She would not tell me, but I had to know.

 

The week that I was to begin treatment for the carcinoid syndrome and tumor control was the week that the ex had to go on a business trip. I had quite a bit of fear of what the drug may do to me physically and mentally, but I feel that I was still overtly understanding of her need to get out and live a little bit. She had become quite withdrawn and very evasive of communication with me, preferring to spend time on her phone, jumping up from her seat and running to reply to every blip, ring or buzz the phone issued. This was unlike her – enter clue number one.

 

She left on Sunday evening, I started treatment on Monday. The following five days netted a total of two texts to me a day… one in the morning and one in the evening. Short, polite, but understandable. She had checked out. I even defended her when her mom called to ask how I was doing and was so surprised that I hadn’t gotten a phone call from my wife yet.

 

She returned home early Friday and had a short nap before having to open the store at 7am. When she got home after work to a nice dinner I wanted to catch up on all that had happened over the week but instead she was very aloof and focused mainly on her phone. The only questions she asked were regarding when I was going to work on Saturday morning. Enter hindsight clue #2.

 

Saturday mornings were sacred. No alarm clocks, lots of pillow talk, catch up from the week, breakfast and fun. I was making my attempts at these but she was squirmy and reluctant, but somewhat giddy in a weird way. Hindsight clue 3. Then here alarm went off. When I asked her why her alarm was going off she said, “I’m going out with my friend.”

 

You can imagine what was going through my mind at this time, so I asked, “Who? And why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? I haven’t seen you in a week and I want to hang out!”

 

“My friend!” she said.

 

“What friend? And why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? Today is ‘no alarm Saturday!’”

 

“That guy who’s been telling me about all the bike trails.”

 

“Does this fucking guy have a name? And who the hell is this guy? And why haven’t I met him?”

 

Without relaying the rest of the conversation to protect the guilty, I left for work in a newly pissed off state of mind that left me festering all day until she came home from work at 10pm that night. I was very polite when she came home and waited for the pleasantries to subside before confronting her with my discomfort regarding this whole situation. When confronted with, “Babe, I’m uncomfortable with you seeing this guy. You were trying to get me out of the house so you didn’t have to tell me about your date, and looking back to our conversation Friday night, you were being deceptive in your questioning.”

 

No answer.

 

“Well?”

 

“Don’t worry about it. He’s just a friend.”

 

I didn’t sleep too well that night, and Sunday morning I got out of bed, went to the bathroom and saw her phone charging in the kitchen. I looked at it. Started reading the texts. She rushes out of the bedroom as I’m reading the texts from her boyfriend and gets pretty pissed off. Understandable, but not nearly as pissed off as I was.

 

A quick check on our Verizon account revealed long conversations and over 500 texts to this cock-blocking fuck-wad over the week she was gone and I was shooting cancer drugs into my belly three times a day. There were well over a thousand texts between the two of them just that month. That blew me away.

 

I should probably add that we had/have many opposite-sex friends. I have many female friends who I hang out with fairly regularly, and she had male friends who she would hang out with entirely independently from me. No problems. They all knew we were happily married and the friendships were plutonic. Awesome friends are awesome friends regardless of what equipment they possess. This relationship was not one of those. I didn’t get to read too many of the texts, but what I did read was uncomfortably flirtatious and bordering on sexting.

 

I was broken.

 

We tried to work things out over the next three months and she had told me that they were having no communication and when she’d see him at the store she’d walk the other way. That didn’t last long.

 

She was meeting him at the park, going on bike rides with him, taking hikes with him and I don’t know what else, all I have is her word, which doesn’t carry much weight with me anymore. I still don’t know the true nature of their relationship and I still have never met the guy. (Lucky for him, right?)

 

She moved out in September for a “break.” I filed for divorce in December and it was finalized March 18th, 2015.

 

This is the Cliff Notes version of the story. There was much more involved in the decision to get divorced than just her relationship with the shithead. (Really, what kind of asshole hits on a woman whose husband is being treated for cancer? Douchery, I say. Pure, unadulterated douchery.)

 

One of the main reasons I had to let go is my complete lack of desire to procreate. We had been trying to conceive for years and had just started getting serious about adopting when I got my diagnosis. My confrontation with mortality left me completely lacking in desire to raise another human, whether mine or someone else’s. I got selfish, but not unloving. Knowing that my life may be cut short by this disease made me want to travel, see more of the world, do anything other than save money for someone else’s college tuition. If I were to have a child today, I’d be well into my 60s before the little urchin would be starting college, and I don’t want to work until I’m freaking 75. No way, man. Not only did I want to live, I had to let her live the way she wanted to live as well, and she needs a kid. Divorce was the only workable solution, as painful as it was.

 

The Last Year of Cancer:

 

According to the asshole surgeon (referred to as “my new buddy” in a previous blog entry) who worked on me last April, said I should, and I quote, “Lower my expectations on life.” And that, “This will probably kill you, it can’t be removed.” And he told me that on my birthday last year after taking out the staples in my belly. Talk about awesome bedside manner. This was after he told me I was fat and he jiggled my man-gut with his finger. Wow.

 

Instead of taking that piece of shit-stain advice, I decided I’d raise my expectations of life and see just how awesome I could get. This is not an easy thing to do when one is suffering from some pretty deep and dark depression brought on by cancer, a cheating wife and a dying dog. (Yes, Medea went and caught some cancer, too, but that’s a story for a whole ‘nother piece of writing.)

 

Over the last nine months since my last blog entry, I’ve seen a personal trainer twice a week, ridden my bike hundreds of miles, I have been to San Francisco, courtesy of my friend Scott Thompson, Seattle, courtesy of another friend, Derek Dezso, Las Angeles, and probably the most important trip of them all, to Nashville to see a carcinoid specialist and awesome surgeon, Dr. Eric Liu.

 

This trip to Nashville gave me the most valuable gift of all… hope. Dr. Liu was both positive and energetic. I had already lost 20 pounds by the time I saw him last May, and he was quite impressed with my recovery and my physical condition. He ordered a few important scans that I could have done in Colorado to see if my liver, lungs or heart had been effected yet and to see if I was eligible for surgery. And the single most memorable statement of all, he said, “No problem, I can take that out.” I had watched videos of Dr. Liu performing surgery on tumors nearly identical to mine and he has a very high rate of success treating people with my alien infestation. I came home with energy and elation.

 

The bad part of the last year was that Dr. Liu quit practicing at Vanderbilt shortly after my trip to Nashville. Hope was smashed again, though there was a promise that he’d be back in practice soon, but he didn’t know when or where. That brings us to the now.

 

The Now:

 

I had my monthly oncology and treatment appointment on Friday, April 3, exactly one year to the day since my surgery and removal of the first nest of aliens. The scans that I had done in March showed that the aliens had not spread, grown or shrunk. Everything looked the same and the monthly treatments were keeping the nest from growing, which is mostly all they expect from this form of treatment.

 

Then came the good news: Dr. Liu will be practicing again by June (no guarantee, but more than likely). My oncologist has been in contact with Dr. Liu and is recommending that he see me as soon as possible. Next month (May) when I go in for my appointments, I should find out when I’ll get the necessary scans to prepare for the potential surgery. I’m trying my best not to get my hopes too high, but I definitely have a little pep in my step that has been missing for the last nine months.

 

And in other news, I’m not fat. Did that one catch you off guard? It did me. My PT guy, friend and confidant, Michael David, did a BMI test on me at my last training session and I measured in at a 14. The chart called that excellent shape for a 34 year-old. I turn 45 a week from now, so I’m pretty freaking happy about that. My goal now will be to bulk up as much as I can between now and surgery because I will be losing about three feet of intestine and colon in my next round of eviscerations. I lost over 20 pounds after the first surgery, and now I don’t have 20 to lose, so I need to eat and work out like nobodies bidness! The stronger I get, the quicker I’ll bounce back.

 

If you made it this far through this messed up story, thank you. I’ll be updating a bit more regularly now that I got all the shit I’ve been hiding off my chest. It’s hard for me to be honest when I’m lying to myself, and that is why I had to purge.

 

Oh, did I mention, FUCK CANCER!!!

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Alien Rollercoaster

7/8/2014

5 Comments

 
 Alien Rollercoaster

What a Ride. It’s been almost two months since my last post and the series of peaks and valleys since then has been about as nauseating as riding a rollercoaster after drinking a pint of Jim Beam. 



The questions keep piling up alongside the bills and the answers that come have been about as sparse as the money to pay the bills and as vague as the system that creates the bills. 



Going back to the last post – the good news post – is a good place to start. Since the octreoscans and learning that there is probably only that one remaining nest, I’ve started treatment that is supposed to increase my quality and duration of life. I’m getting a monthly shot in the ass of a drug called octreotide that is supposed to quell the effects of the hormones and chemicals that the evil blob releases into my system. The effects of this release is what’s called Carcinoid Syndrome and let me just tell you, they blow ass. Really. The main side effects of Carcinoid Syndrome are flushing (like a red wine flush times 10), diarrhea (yeah, that’s gross), and hardening of the heart valves. From what I’ve read, it’s either the cancer spreading or the heart valves that will kill me. Morbid and gross. The shot is designed to slow or stop the spread of the tumor and counter the effects of Carcinoid Syndrome. 



This leads us to the rollercoaster of crazy that is now my brain. The interwebs are a dangerous playground for those in search of answers. That said, I have spent many an hour online looking up answers to some of the pertinent questions like, “How long will I live?” and “Is there any possibility for a cure?” All this surfing has created about as many questions as is has given answers, hence, the rollercoaster. 



I have to pause here for a little background on my physical state before I get into the Q and A stuff in order to help explain my lack of writing for the last two months.  



Since the last update I have lost more than 12 pounds, putting my total loss at over 20 pounds. My personal cancer diet is one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole ordeal and I’m having a hard time adapting to the time and energy it takes to prepare and eat the necessary foods in an amount that allows me to have energy to enjoy life and enough calories to maintain a decent body weight. Between the extreme weight loss and undue stress of entrepreneurship, I am brain dead. My short term memory has taken a shit and I’m having the hardest time struggling through even the simplest tasks. Composing a sentence is reasonably simple, but has become an unsurmountable task due to the clutter in my grey matter. I have become short and terse in communication. Scheduling is such a nightmare that without my smartphone calendar (surrogate brain) I’m lost throughout the week. And even with the surrogate brain I’m forgetting the most basic items on my list and having serious problems recalling events from the prior days.  



I spoke with the councilor at the cancer clinic the other day and she said that the memory loss is normal and that it is caused by the sleep deprivation, lack of enough calories and stress. My brain isn’t allowing my frontal lobe to perform its job because I’m too busy reacting rather than relaxing.   



Right after surgery the doctors gave me a To Do List that I have all but ignored. The prescription seemed simple at the time: Get lots of sleep. Trim the schedule and make time for relaxing. Exercise. Eat. Most importantly, cut the stress out of life. Emphasis on NO STRESS! 



Yeah, that’s me alright. Especially during the spring rush at work, but that’s a story for a whole post of its own.



Another stressful event that made me unable to write was the lack of a functional workstation at home. My old and faithful laptop finally got to a point where it was too slow to be of service. It would crash regularly and working within multiple windows became a joke. It could take up to ten minutes just to save a document, and that is just unacceptable. I got almost 12 years out of the thing, so no complaints there. However, when I ordered a new one, it came flawed. After about ten hours of tech support, a new motherboard and a week of no work from home, it popped again two days later. Ten days in the shop for a complete rebuild and I’m back in action after about three weeks of computer hell. I should also mention that my work station at the office has decided that this is a good time to start crashing and freezing, too. Grrrr!!! 



Have I mentioned that I’m pissed off? There’s that. I’m pissed off that I have cancer. I’m pissed off that I’m tired. I’m pissed off that I can’t find the time to play. I’m pissed off that I can’t eat what I want. And most of all, I’m pissed off that I can’t magically fix any of this.  



It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain my positive attitude and find solace in the NOW. One of the aspects of living that has made me such a reliable and happy person is that I prefer to live in the NOW. I know there is a future, I know there is a past, but my strongest belief is that there is only NOW, and what one choses to do in the NOW is what defines a person. Instead of just doing, I find myself dwelling on the future. How long do I have? Am I doing the right thing? What did I miss? What did I screw up? Can I eat that? I find myself getting excessively angry at little setbacks that take time from my immediate needs. I’ll make plans to do something, but when things come up that cause me to have to adapt to something different I just shut down, forget and regret.  



Phew. Felt good to get that off my chest.  



The next post will be a positive post on what I’m doing to counter this pissed off-ed-ness. It’s been a fun couple of weeks and I have lots of good happy thoughts coming soon!






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Aliens II: Assess the Infestation

4/18/2014

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Aliens II: Assess the Infestation

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I just got back from Denver, having played pin cushion and Toxic Avenger for a few days in hopes of garnering some knowledge of the evil within. The bulk of this trip was spent in the Nuclear Medicine department of St. Luke’s Presbyterian Hospital – wait, cancel that. This bulk of this trip was spent trying to kill time in between appointments that totaled fewer than four hours of the 48 hours that it took to perform the tests.

I’ll cut to the punch early to avoid the lengthily soliloquy that you know will come if I don’t just spit it out now.

There were no new aliens!!! The only thing that showed up on all the wonderful scans was the remaining blob that they were unable to remove during my last surgery. That’s pretty good news.

Pour yourself a drink and dig in for the incredibly thrilling (boring) details. Have a backup drink at hand and don’t be shy to down that sucker as you read between the lines.

First, there was the shot of radioactive something-or-other (octreotide, for you those of you who dabble in nuclear meds) to make all my nasty bits glow. That was at 9:30 in the morning and took about 40 minutes of check-in and waiting for a single shot that took less than five minutes.  Then there was the wait for two o’clock so I could come back for the scans once the nukes had a chance to permeate all my soft and bloody bits. The two octreoscans took about 15 minutes each and made pretty pictures of what my insides would look like during a nuclear winter.

The next morning was more of the same. Go in for some scans, do a little waiting, get a little scanning, then do some more waiting. The doc said that they needed to get a radiologist to look over the images to make sure that they got all they needed and that they’d call us in about an hour and let us know if we needed to come back. That sounded fine. Until it turned into five hours of phone tag to find out that they needed some more images to complete their assessment. Back we went. Another half hour of laying still in a super expensive machine, followed by extreme disappointment that they never brought in the machine that goes, “BING.”

This brings me to one of the most annoying things about catching cancer. The wait. Unlike catching a cold, there’s no knowledge of the mortal questions of how long? How bad? Do I need to make a bucket list? And if so, how fast to I have to rally through it? When you catch a cold, you know that the chances of croaking are pretty slim. You’ll get snotty for a few days, maybe get a cough, or do a little puking, but for the most part, it’s over in a week. You know you’ll probably catch another cold in your life, but again, you also know that you’re probably not going to sever the mortal coil buried in a pile of Kleenex. Not so with the cancer. With the cancer, there are a billion and one tests that cost a veritable shit-ton of money and may or may not reveal any results. The leachings (blood tests) are frequent, the shots are radioactive, the test results vary from doctor to doctor and they take forever to analyze. Not to mention that my arm is bruised up like a junky and I’ve already lost about eight pounds – in all the wrong places!

Okay, okay. I’m beginning to sound a bit negative here and that is not my intention in the least. I just got the best news that I’ve had in weeks and I’m sitting here bitching about how long it takes to learn what the hell is going on beneath my epidermal armor. In all seriousness, I am horrible at waiting and the only thing worse than waiting is waiting for news that regardless of how good it is, it’s still bad. There is nothing good about cancer.

Here’s a personal story with a happy ending to tie this whole mess up. My awesome wife, Courtney and I have fun wherever we go. We are so good at going on road trips and no matter how long or short the trip is, we laugh and play, sing and dance. This trip to Denver was no exception, though much more subdued than any trip we’ve ever taken together. That is, until the drive home. The ride home to Oak Creek was one of the most surreal drives that we’d ever encountered. The tests and all the fear left us completely silent. The music wasn’t even doing what music does for the two of us. We were both in such a state of worry that even though we were together, we were completely isolated within the confines of our own brains. Conversation was stunted and mainly about obligations or time constraints. No dancing. No laughing. No singing.

Once we got home and unpacked, I started writing this update, which was promptly trashed and restarted after Courtney (smart girl) called the oncologist to see if the results of the scans were in. As you can probably guess, we had to wait for a while to get a call back, during which time the inner tension in each of our brains was something like that of a Sumo wrestler sitting on a Chihuahua.

The phone rang. I answered and put it on speaker phone to hear the nurse say that there was no added glowing alien spawn evident in any of the nuclear images!!! It was as glorious as the moment in the Wizard of Oz when the world goes from black and white to full Technicolor. We screamed, laughed, danced, cried, smooched, and then did it all again three or four more times. The relief of getting some good news after seven weeks of nothing but bad news was just what we needed to add strength to our fight.

Needless to say, yesterday was awesome. Life took on a faint glimmer of normal for a whole day as I worked, hiked with the pup dog and got to go to band practice for the first time in weeks.

Life is good, and I’m good at life. Fuck cancer.  

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Alien Invasion 2014

4/4/2014

27 Comments

 

Alien Invasion 2014

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I just walked in the door and climbed into bed at home after one of the craziest experiences of my life. I’m coming down off the morphine and coming up on the Percocet, so pardon my sloppy story telling. I’ll take it from the top…

About six weeks ago I started having some strange pain in my lower abdomen. It wasn’t anything that slowed me down too much, just the kind of discomfort that made long days in the office feel a bit funny. Kinda like that feeling that comes about two hours after eating super hot green chili. The sensation would come and go, but was always sort of in the background if I paid attention.

Then, on March 15th we had a little snow storm with a bunch of wind that kept blowing the garage door open. I went out to latch it and WHAM! I slipped on a patch of ice and cracked my ass on the stair. Ouch. I came back inside and the little green-chili-gut sensation became a little more than a sensation and I decided that maybe I should go get checked out at the hospital. I was thinking maybe a little appendicitis or something got aggravated from the fall, and remembering what some of my friends had gone through with that, I didn’t want to take any chances.

I drove to YVMC, checked myself into the ER and got a CAT scan. If you’ve ever had a to have a CAT scan then you know about the quart of nasty liquid they make you drink to make all the good bits on your insides glow… I got to impress the staff with my pounding skills on that sucker! Who’d have ever thought that beer chugging skills would come in such handy when in the ER?

After a few hours of hanging out remembering why I hate hanging out in hospitals, a nice lady came over to tell me that my appendix was just fine, but then she did the sit-down-and-put-comforting-hand-on-knee thing. “But we did find a tumor near your intestines that may be causing this discomfort. You’re really lucky you came in today, cancer can go undetected until it’s too late sometimes, but I think we caught this early. We’ll need to do some tests to see what it is and how to treat it.”

And such was the beginning of the newest and suckiest journey of my damn-near 44 years.

Since that fateful fall, I have spent more hours in doctor’s offices and hospitals than all of the combined time leading up to that day. And this is only the beginning. Shall I continue? Why yes… I’m all doped up on pain meds and I can’t leave my bed, so why the hell not?

After two blood lettings that I affectionately refer to as Leachings, a visit to a medical doc and another visit to a surgeon, I was diagnosed with a relatively mild form of cancer called carcinoid tumors. The Mayo Clinic web page defines them as: a type of slow-growing cancer that can arise in several places throughout your body. Carcinoid tumors, which are one subset of tumors called neuroendocrine tumors, usually begin in the digestive tract (stomach, appendix, small intestine, colon, rectum) or in the lungs.

Yippy! My alien has been identified!

The next step was to remove the offensive invader(s) and get them tested to see just how violent they are and how best to wage war against them. That is where I am today.

Yesterday, Courtney took me to my new uber-awesome hangout, YVMC, to see my newest surgeon buddy, Dr. Mark Hermacinski so he could perform an alien C-section. I had high hopes for a complete removal of the offensive spawn making a stronghold in my inner sanctum, but that wasn’t the case. The largest alien was so imbedded in my mesentery that he was unable to abort it. Instead, he found another nest of the invaders lodged in my small intestine, which he was able to hack out. He removed about eight inches of my small intestine, containing about three Carcinoid Aliens, and sent these samples to be tested to see just what kind of cell growth was happening and how best to treat the remaining nest.

I will be going to the Human Empire of Denver to visit with an oncologist and have yet another series alien identification rituals performed later this month. There, they will look to see if I have any nests in my lungs and heart valves, and begin treatment that I don’t yet understand nor have the knowledge to relate just yet.

For now, I am as comfortable as I can be considering the alien invasion and the subsequent slice in my abdomen. I have a great wife, a great home, the cutest dog in the world, all the green tea I can drink, and a little box of crackers to appease my love of crunchy foods. I’m on mandatory Oak Creek time for the next four days, and I get to have the staples taken out of my belly on Thursday. My emotions are pretty crazy right now, but I’m still pretty damn happy all things considered.

I’m very thankful for all of my wonderful friends and family. If love cures alien invasions, this shit doesn’t stand a chance with all ya’ll pulling for me! Thank you!!!

27 Comments

Rampant Logophilia

3/3/2014

2 Comments

 
I’ve always had an affinity for words and language. I fell in love with poetry and rhymes earlier than I can remember, though it was years before I began to truly trust the written word. After all, once the ink has dried, you can’t take it back. I can easily be out-spelled by an adept fourth grader, and my propensity to punctuate even the softest conversation with profanity or off-color humor is renowned within many of my circles. I pride myself on being able to conversationally out-swear a pissed-off Southerner, or play the dozens with the sharpest tongues in the ‘hood. (Often times to the utmost chagrin of my beautiful wife.) Somehow, though, I can manage to make such a mess out of a cliché that it becomes a whole new, yet-to-be-named figure of speech.

My love of words has done many things both to and for my life. Both good and bad. Words have gotten me in to situations that wouldn’t have come about had I not opened my pie-hole, and they have gotten me out of situations that came up regardless of whether I had a decent vocabulary or not. It’s usage, not depth of linguistic knowledge, that helps in these situations.

I find myself becoming older by the minute as I listen to the modern lyrics and the self-serving poetry of today’s world. Mainstream rap (the most modern form of poetry) has become nothing more than, “Look at ME!” and the self-aggrandizing lyrical strut of societal mutants trying to attain the un-obtainium by being harder than the guy who came before. Cash the check, Snoop Lion, there’s a new selfish brat taking your place.

This lyrical strut is the verbal equivalent of the fuel in Lance Armstrong’s bio-cocktail of oxygenated blood and steroids. (Everybody else was doing it!) It’s the need for Performance Enhancing Drugs in baseball. Baseball of all sports. Next thing you know we’ll be reading about PEDs in curling – the last clean sport on the planet. It’s the reverberating hum of human nature’s self imposed pressure to become the next great thing. Capitalism has a direct roll in this, but that’s a topic for a whole other column.

Words are murder. Words are love. Words are what make us human. Our ability to communicate complicated thoughts and theories has propelled us, as humans, to a level beyond all other species on our planet, and one that parallels countless science fiction novels. We are not alone, and it is my hope, that when we meet beings from another planet, we can communicate in a manner that allows us to maintain some dignity before we become slaves to the Grays. I won’t go too deep into my thoughts on this to avoid stirring up a conversation with my wife that I’m ill-equipped to handle.

I assure you, there is a point to this pedantic rant and it’s coming in just a second. Like my love of words, I have a deep love of books. Paper, to be more specific. I love paper when it’s covered with beautiful words, paint, toner or graphite. I horde paper in all of its forms. Loose leaves, bound and blank, 70 lb, 120 lb, glossy, matte, machine printed or hand written, I don’t care. Books store words and I love words. The joy of a new book lasts long after the last word is digested and the book is left to gather dust on the shelf. I relive the emotions I felt while reading each book when I gaze at the titles jumbled up and piled on inadequate shelf space. To point out the obvious, this is most likely why I ended up in the publishing business.

Now comes the point you’ve been waiting for (if you’re still reading this mess). I have been moonlighting at EASY 94.1 radio on Saturday afternoons up until recently when sports programming overtook my time slot for a few weeks. During my brief hiatus, station owner Don Tlapek decided to take the Word of the Day segment of my Saturday show to a daily format. Now I get to express my logophilia on the air 365 times a year! You’ll get to hear slang, Old English, rare or obsolete words, colloquialisms and more. The best part for me is that I get to dig through all of my wonderful books and papers to find fun words and sentences to entertain and enlighten those of you who still partake in the original social media – the radio!

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High on the Hero List

3/6/2013

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Growing up, I had a different set of heroes than most of my friends, or the rest of the world. My heroes were BMX flatland pioneers Mike Buff, R.L. Osborne and Bob Haro. When Matt Hoffman hit the scene, he was high on my hero list and I wasn’t even a ramp rider, but the things that kid could do on a bike were beyond belief. The drug of choice for these guys was 80’s chicks in Guess? Jeans, and they flaunted this in every issue of BMX magazine that I ever read.

I have never been a fan of mainstream sports like football, basketball or baseball. I still laugh when people refer to golf as a sport. I never recognized pro players as having anything particularly worthy of note, and therefore never had the love affair with them that so much of America seems to possess. I was always uneasy with the bully factor of sports players during my school years and seeing the special treatment kids received for having athletic talent made me a little sick. I frequently wondered why they weren’t held to the same social and educational standards that the rest of us were. They were a source of annoyance rather than entertainment.

The older I got, the dumber the pro players got. They became even less worthy of the money and status they received while their paychecks kept growing and their education kept dwindling. The class and etiquette that used to be required of pro athletes is a thing of the past. Rather than suits and an attempt at speaking well in public, it’s wife beaters, tattoos and public threats. The idea that a God would favor one team of idolaters over another because of a particularly pious hypocrite made me laugh every time Tebow would open his mouth.

You have Michael Vick dog fighting; Lance Armstrong coming clean (pun intended) for his ‘roid use; Barry Bonds getting denied the Hall of Fame for PED use; Pistorius killing his girlfriend; Tiger and countless affairs. The disgusting list goes on and on.

This is a bit of a non-sequitur, but Sports Illustrated published a 2009 study that found 78 percent of professional athletes file bankruptcy or are reported as being “under financial stress” within two years of their career ending. It’s a sobering fact, isn’t it? Especially considering most pro careers end before the players are 40.

As I skimmed Google News the very morning I was writing this article, there were two of five sports stories regarding players who got caught doping. According to many of those who get caught, it’s not who is using, it’s just who gets caught, insinuating that most players use.

I can’t help but wish we could train our children to emulate people with a little bit more integrity. Or at the very least, end the drug testing and let people who want to be science experiments do it. Let them become the gladiators that they try to become in hiding. We could have two groups of athletes – one on drugs, and one clean group – so people could compete in a more balanced tier. That way we could study the effects of performance enhancing drugs in a controlled and honest environment on people who wish to test the results.

I don’t plan on mellowing my disdain for pro football anytime soon, so I will have to be content with the heroes I have in my world. As I have grown up, my heroes have morphed a little. They have changed from BMX pioneers to the people I interact with directly on a life or professional basis. I have grown deep admiration for people who live a life that honors their values, their neighbors and the earth. My heroes have their issues, too. They may work too much, or not make the money they deserve, or maybe they like their music a little too loud. They may have different beliefs from my own, but they generally accept people for who they are, and work towards making their world a better place.

I would like to give a huge, hero-high-five to my everyday heroes: The librarians who manage the books I love so much; the cooks, waiters, waitresses, bartenders and dish-dogs who feed me when I don’t cook for myself; my biking buddies, my business partners; my brother, David, the director of the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, who followed his love of all things living to place him in a career that helps keep Colorado the Colorado I know and love; my father, Keith, who taught me to love the question “Why?” and gave my brother and me the gift of music; my wife, Courtney, who lets me be me and supports my every whim and fancy.

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Spring 'Shrooming

5/28/2012

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The first morels I find each spring are, hands down, my favorite mushrooms of the year.

My excitement begins to build as early as March, when the first of the warm days begin turning the snow to corn and I start craving foraged produce and all the nutrients it offers a winter-worn body. Then, when the snow line begins creeping up the valley towards the peaks of the surrounding hills, my excitement crescendos into an allegro composition of heartbeat, adrenalin, desire and hunger and I know I will be finding some mushrooms soon. I start to pay more attention to the exposed terra firma on the trailside as my dog, Medea, and I tromp about in the forest. We take ever increasing diversions off the main trail into the somewhat sparse, mixed aspen and fir mountainsides looking for the signs that signal the beginning of ‘shroom season. These signs are as subtle and as very flavor of the morel; the fern fronds pushing through the leaves on the forest floor, and the bright green new leaves on the Aspens. When I see these things, coupled with warmer overnight temperatures and a nice spring rain, I know it’s time.

This year’s first harvest came on May 3, the earliest I can remember. On a typical year, I mark my morel hunting by my wedding anniversary, June 11, and try to make sure that we have a few on that day to celebrate. Morel season lasts for about ten days in any given perfect habitat, but chasing them up the mountainside can mean up to a month of harvesting if the conditions are right. I usually start to find mine in late May and continue looking long after I know they’re gone in late June.

I can spend hours on the hunt. When I’m in the moment, my focus is so great and I am moving so delicately with the forest that time evaporates and the forest inhabitants become themselves, aware that I am hunting flora, not flesh. I become so acutely aware of my eyes that I can feel my pupils dilate as I attempt to distinguish the subtle difference between a pinecone, a dirt clod or mushroom. I have a theory when hunting mushrooms that the first mushroom is the most elusive. Once you learn to see the mushrooms, they begin to appear much more easily. I have literally walked right past whole patches of mushrooms, but didn’t see them until I retrained my eyes and then saw them on the way back to the car. Each trip into the woods to forage requires eyeball recalibration, and the morel’s life choice is one of camouflage, making it one of the more difficult finds in the mushroom world.
 
I would be doing a serious disservice if I didn’t provide some disclaimers and give some helpful advice for you aspiring mycophiles. First of all, many mushrooms are poisonous. Second of all, most edible mushrooms have a “look alike” mushroom that is toxic, so special care has to be taken when harvesting mushrooms to make sure the forager knows exactly what is coming home in the basket. In the case of the morel, there are two common “look alikes,” one that is mildly toxic to some people (and so yummy to others), called a verpa, and a deadly one called a conifer false morel. Once the eye is trained, these become easy to identify, but this requires skill and knowledge, and with life-threatening discomfort as the alternative, one needs to be sure.

The single most common question I encounter after a day of successful foraging is, “Where did you find them?” This is the unanswerable question, and will result in a whitewashed story of vagueness bordering on insulting. My canned answer is, “on the mountain.” To most people this means the Ski Area, but that is my plan. Every hill around us is a mountain, and I don’t specify. Prized foraging spots are not too common, especially in the morel world. I have only three spots where I can count on finding morels, and only then if I can get to these spots in the window of the morel’s short and picky fruiting lifespan. Your best bet for becoming a ‘shroomer is to befriend a knowledged mycophile, and be there on the right day, in the right season, and hope you get to come along on the hunt!

Fried Morels:
The ultimate in decadence
10 morels, cut in half, rinsed and patted dry
¼ c parmesan cheese
½ c flour
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped
1 t ground thyme
1 T ground black pepper
salt
1 lime
One egg combined with 1 T milk, buttermilk or cream
Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl. Dip morels in the egg wash one at a time and coat in the flour mixture. Pan fry in butter until brown, turn and brown other side. When frying in butter, keep a close eye on the temperature of the pan. Too hot and the butter will burn, too cool and the mushrooms won’t crisp up on the outside.

Remove the cooked mushrooms from the pan, sprinkle with salt, squeeze a couple drops of lime on each half and experience the food of the gods!

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A What?

5/28/2012

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Welcome to Steamboat’s new, monthly newsgazine, Valley Voice. You read it right, a newsgazine; part magazine, part newspaper. We coined this term sometime in the last couple of months as we were trying to define what the Valley Voice truly was. This definition is an important aspect of the work when creating a new style of print media in a world of smart phone instant gratification and modern communication. How can we be unique and desirable dressed in vintage 27 pound newsprint? What will make people use this particular piece of print media to start campfires, wrap fish or swat flies over other available trash?  Oh, or to read?

The answer is simple: put lipstick on that pig by giving it a glossy cover, lots of color, and a couple of staples.  The end result is what you’re holding in your hands:  glossy on the outside, newsy on the inside, but with some meat in some of the articles that give it a more magazine type feel. The 32 pages you are currently reading (or using to pick up some doggie-do) are just the beginning. We plan on expanding the content and creating a user-friendly modality of expression and information to entertain the local and visitor alike.

Introduction

This inaugural issue of Valley Voice consists of over 20 writers and artists. Artist bios will accompany future editions, but for now you will have the bylines to stir memories of past (and some current) publications until we get all the bios of all the contributors. I don’t want to lose sleep feeling that someone is underrepresented, and that’s just the kind of thing that keeps me awake.

There are three key members of the contributing public who I need to introduce here, because it will be one of these three people who you will talk to when you call or email the office.

Matt Scharf is the man behind the lipstick. No, not the one wearing the lipstick; Matt is the artist who will be designing the pages, most of the ads and the fancy glossy map in the middle of each issue. You can see much of Matt’s work around town from logos to car wraps (think My Wireless) to signage at some of the parks. He also created the Whiskey Chronicles Comic that ran for many years in The Local, and a number of political cartoons that ran in the Pilot and Today.  You can reach him online at matt@yampavalleyvoice.com.

Scott Ford is our financial guru, esteemed “Office Dad” (even though he has his own office down the street from ours) and the man behind the statistics. He was the management ingredient that gave us the flavor we needed to create the best newsgazine bouillabaisse a lack of capitol could buy. Scott will be doing our billing, telling us if we can afford a new can of beans and guiding us through the fun world of the entrepreneur. Scott will answer your emails in order of statistical preference at scott@yampavalleyvoice.com.

And then me, Paulie Anderson. I am the glorified secretary with a column in prime real estate. I answer the phone, listen, talk and sell.  I fill in the blanks, apply liberal sarcasm, adjust with humor and appreciate the word vitriol. My qualification can be summed up as simply as this: I like people and I like paper. My newest cyber address is paulie@yampavalleyvoice.com.

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Are you ready?

2/22/2012

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Well, this is it, kids, the moment that I have unknowingly been waiting for since August 2008. Today is the day that I get to announce that there will be a new alternative magazine to represent the Yampa Valley and all it has to offer.

Valley Voice.

This magazine has been in the mental development lab since long before Scott Glackman and I sold The Local. We had discussed many things, from a glossy magazine to an improved weekly version of our paper.

I was bound to a five-year no-compete clause in the contract with The Local’s buyer, and for three years, as I watched our baby suffer and die, I dreamed of what I would do when that no-compete ended. I thought of many, many papers, magazines, names and concepts, and discussed them all with my close friends and family often. Then, last November, after almost three years of default from the buyer, we settled.

I’ll save the juicy bits for the inaugural issue and give you an introduction to the people who made this happen.

The first link in the chain was Matt Scharf, who you will remember from the comic, Whiskey Chronicles. His artwork is readily visible around town, though it is so varied that it’s not always easy to recognize. We had been talking about doing something for many months, and when my no-compete ended, talks escalated. He finished a job that he had been working on, and was chomping at the bit to get something creative rolling.

The third element that chanced into the scene was Scott Ford. He was generously donating some time to help me with a cause I was, and still am working on (see Suicide below) when he made the mistake of mentioning that he would be willing to discuss getting on board to create a new paper.

That was it for me. My brain went into overdrive and two weeks later I was calling Scott and Matt to see if we could seriously do it. We met on Friday, February 17th, and now we’re fast-tracking ourselves into the lucrative (that’s a joke, please laugh) world of print media. From concept to print in just over a month feels crazy, but it’s coming together. I’ll take this sentence to beg for your ad dollars – we’ll give an awesome discount to anyone who signs up for a year (12 issues), and give you special logo placement as Founding Sponsors on all promotional media for the entire year. That will also include our Facebook page, website and all printed propaganda. That was two sentences. Sorry ‘bout that. (Click here to contact me without having to post on the comment section)

Valley Voice will feature many useful and fun ideas that we will unveil over the next few months. It will be a process to create something as unique and as functional as we hope this to be, so keep watching over this mud season and into summer as this grows and blossoms into something beautiful for all of us to enjoy and participate.

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Happy Valentine's Day, Ann Coulter, that's right, walk in front of that bus...

2/14/2012

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_  Ann Coulter is coming to Steamboat!

Ann Coulter’s visit to Steamboat Springs tops my list of intrigue to a degree unparalleled by previous speakers in Steamboat to date. I have a love hate thing for ol’ Ann that compares in my world to my belief that Tonya Harding was the biggest embarrassment to the United States in Olympic History. My love for the Coulter stems from her ability to counteract any good that may come from the political Right by her own self-described polemic style. She is aggressive, hypocritical, rude, selfish, arrogant, and though she is reported to have a relatively high I.Q., her ranting, religious intolerance and spite counter any positive effect her arguments may have in favor of the conservative movement. My hate stems from the fame I believe to be so wrongly bestowed upon her. She is vile. And yet, when I encounter her column, I read it, I laugh at her, and I don’t regret the waste of my time I spent reading her tripe. I would feel very different if I had paid to read her work, and refuse to do so adamantly.   

When people compare her to the Left’s more outspoken writers like Maureen Dawd, or Paul Krugman I can’t help but laugh. It’s like comparing Slayer to the Boston Philharmonic. Both play wonderful music, but they can not be compared to one another in terms of depth and content.  

Yes, I said Slayer plays wonderful music. And now I will state that Ann Coulter can better be compared to Slayer than any of the other afore mentioned writers. She possesses the same ability to shock as Slayer. She incorporates religion into nearly all of her work, much like Slayer does. And like Slayer, she has not committed to a specific religious sect, she just uses God much like Subway uses mayonnaise – on everything all the time and it doesn’t matter what brand, just so long as it’s cheap and there is a lot of it. That’s right, Ann, you are guilty of being white, you poor little misunderstood thing, you.

The most important difference between Ann Coulter and Slayer is that Slayer has Dave Lombardo to drive the force of their rants deep into the darkness of sin, where Ann’s cadence is punctuated with “Ums” and “Well” and the frequent toss of her blond main over her left shoulder to better accentuate her Adam’s apple (I think it’s a nerve thing, or perhaps an undiagnosed disease).  

The second most important difference between Ann Coulter and Slayer is that she is a hypocrite, where Slayer is just a bad-ass metal band. For example, in October 2005, Ann states, “The Democrats complain about the Republican base being nuts. The nuts are their entire party! They’re always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let’s do it. Let’s repress them. Frankly, I’m not a big fan of the First Amendment.” Now, Ann, come on. Without the First Amendment you would be out of work.   

Her religious hypocrisy is even more visible in both her physical appearance and her writing. I’ll take the easy way out and just point to the Seven Deadly Sins for this example. Wikipedia lists the seven deadly sins as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Ann is guilty of wrath (anger – the vitriol she spews regularly in her column), greed (just imagine spending her money on charity. It would go far), and pride (she typically wears a li’l black prom dress to most speeches, showing her skinny-ass legs and accentuating her boobies. That’s right. Christian boobies. She loves those things. And her blond hair. Lots of pride in that hair). To further this conclusion, here’s a little deeper evidence from the Bible (courtesy of Wiki). The Book of Proverbs, King Solomon stated that the Lord specifically regards “six things the Lord hateth, and the seventh His soul detesteth.” Namely: (click on the colored text for an internet example)
A proud look
A lying tongue
Hands that shed innocent blood
A heart that devises wicked plots
Feet that are swift to run into mischief
A deceitful witness that uttereth lies
Him that soweth discord among brethren 

There you have it, kids. And this piece of work is coming to Steamboat on February 17th to spread her hypocrisy and use someone's God to attempt to rally the conservative forces of our fair valley. And though I would love to be able to go witness her comedy in person, I know that is just not in my cards. I will have to be happy just reading whatever pitiful story comes from our local fish wrapper after she is long gone, drugged up and sleeping on a plane towards her next public appearance.  

I hope she takes Henry Rollins up on his offer to give her a respectable job. Enjoy this video. 

And here’s a link to a Slayer song that reminds me of an Ann Coulter column.

 

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    Paulie Anderson

    Yes, it's time I continue what began way back in 2001 when Scott Glackman and I started Steamboat Springs' alternative paper, The Local. I miss writing my fortnightly column after selling the paper, so I'll continue to write it and print it right here.

    These are my opinions, rants, raves and ideas. If you don't like them, read them anyway and get pissed off. That's why I read Ann Coulter. Did I really just admit that?

    Want more? Find me on Facebook.

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