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Eh, What’s Up, Doc?

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I Yearn for the America That Had Bugs Bunny as Its Hero

I love watching old cartoons from Warner Brothers and the Fleischer Brothers. They spoke of a wisecracking America that doesn’t exist any more. It was good to be represented by such originals as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Alas, now we are more represented by a fearful Elmer Fudd. Oh, he has guns galore, but he always loses in the end.

Bugs is like one of the trickster gods of many cultures around the world, including those of some North American Indian peoples. Take the Norse trickster god Loki, for example:

In Norse mythology, Loki is known as a trickster. He is described in the Prose Edda as a “contriver of fraud.” Although he doesn’t appear often in the Eddas, he is generally described as a member of the family of Odin. His job was mostly to make trouble for other gods, men, and the rest of the world. Loki was constantly meddling in the affairs of others, mostly for his own amusement.

Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd

I find my early cartoon heroes such as Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Betty Boop, and even Speedy Gonzales are representative of a country that is comfortable in its own skin. Unlike Elmer Fudd, who always takes the trouble to dress like a bold hunter, but who, in the end, is chicken-hearted.

And I’ll best anything that Elmer has a red MAGA hat in his closet!

The Book Collector

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My apartment is home to my collection of books, five to six thousand volumes in all. In addition to my library, which is dedicated to my collection, I have crowded book-cases in every room of my apartment, including the kitchen and bathroom.

There was a time when I could not visit a bookstore without buying several new or used books. In addition, I purchased books from EBay, Abebooks.Com, and a fair number of other Internet book dealers.

Right now, I am reading with great enjoyment Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer (1815), the second of his Waverley Novels. Forty or fifty years ago, I would think nothing of trying to find the complete works of any author I liked. In fact, at one time I owned a complete hardbound set of the Waverley Novels. Now I only have some twenty selected titles—but in nice editions. In this, I resemble Dominie Sampson in Guy Mannering:

The lawyer afterwards compared his mind to the magazine of a pawnbroker, stowed with goods of every description, but so cumbrously piled together, and in such total disorganisation, that the owner can never lay his hands upon any one article at the moment he has occasion for it.

Guilty as charged! But now that I am approaching my eightieth year, I would like to find a good home for most of my books. It helps—sad to say—that bookstores, in disappearing from the landscape, furnish less of a temptation.

Tomorrow, I will travel downtown to return some library books (and get some new ones). I will be strongly tempted to visit the (appropriately named) Last Bookstore at 5th and Spring Streets and check out their more obscure Sir Walter Scott titles, such as Peveril of the Peak, Count Robert of Paris, Anne of Geierstein, and The Fortunes of Nigel.

But, really, who am I kidding? Will I really read all of Scott’s novels? If I live long enough, I sure would like to try. But why buy the books when I can check them out of the Central Library or download them on my Amazon Kindle. Old habits die v-e-r-y hard.

A Double-Edged Sword

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Dr. Michio Kaku, famous American physicist and futurologist, probably said it best:

We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness.

This double-edged quality affects us on an everyday level as well. Take computers, for example. Technology seems to promise us so much, but delivers so much frustration. For example, under no circumstances would I purchase an automobile whose electronics are so complicated that even experienced computer users are frustrated getting them to work properly without expending undue effort.

The average home computer user is presented with an infinite number of options as to which application software to use. But is he or she able to make wise decisions in this area? The temptation to go cheap or free is overwhelming.

I have one friend who loaded his computer with open-source word processing and portable data file (PDF) systems, only to spend untold hours trying to make it work with the operating system and with all the other software on the computer. He has recently uninstalled most of these cheapster programs.

A year ago, I bought a data tablet that actually had no user manual available on the Internet, or anywhere else. I got it to work … sometimes. I have since laid it aside with some regret.

At the same time, I have benefited from sturdy software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat. I manage to get a lot done on my computer, but dread having to face operating system upgrades.

Neither Wrong Nor Right

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I have always loved this poem by Robert Frost:

Acquainted With the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

How to Survive the ICU

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UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center

My recent stay at the Intensive care Unit (ICU) of UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center taught me some home truths about medical care in America today. If you are there because you show symptoms of one of the major diseases which could lead to death, you will likely be well cared for. I am talking about heart disease, cancer, Covid-19, preventable injury, stroke, respiratory disease, and so on.

But if your problem is of a more unusual nature, requiring a specialist to be on call that is not in the top ten leading causes of death, things can get a little dicey. The first time I showed up in an emergency room for an Addisonian Crisis was eighteen years ago in San Diego. I was admitted to the Tenet Hospital in that city and was assigned to a physician who insisted on testing me on bodily functions I no longer had. He repeatedly refused to talk to my endocrinologist in Los Angeles, Dr. Julia Sladek. Thereupon, Dr. Sladek urged me to check out of the hospital against the advice of Dr. X, who was not only incompetent, but willfully stubborn.

Even in Los Angeles, the first time I checked into the UCLA Medical Center with an Addisonian Crisis, I was kept there for several days being tested every which way by a team of cardiologists, oncologists, etc. until someone finally listened to me and called in an endocrinologist, who hailed from India. She knew at once what was happening, saw that I was over the crisis, and had me discharged from the hospital in record time.

Fortunately, that visit is now a matter of record and is consulted every time I am admitted to any UCLA hospital (there is also one in Santa Monica). I am no longer poked and prodded beyond my endurance for days while a series of well-meaning doctors who know little to nothing about panhypopituitarism (which is to say, complete lack of a pituitary gland).

In fact, I didn’t see an endocrinologist my last two visits. Thank God for those computer records!

I Dodge a Bullet

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Wednesday, November 1, 6:00 AM

Life is strange when you don’t have a pituitary gland. Mine was removed by surgery in September 1966. On Wednesday I woke up early to go to the bathroom. After I did by business, I got up and … and … and …

B L A C K O U T

When consciousness returned, I was bleeding from a large bump on the left of my forehead and I felt as if one of my ribs was broken. Imagine Martine’s surprise when she woke up to go to the john about an hour later! There I lay, covered in blood and unable to raise myself due to (1) pain from my broken rib and (2) general weakness due to adrenal insufficiency.

Without a functioning pituitary, one has no thyroid function, no sex hormones, and—oh, yes—no adrenaline. All those have to be supplied from outside the body. Those early morning hours can be killers. Ingmar Bergman had a good reason to call it “The Hour of the Wolf.” At my request, Martine got me a glass of water and five 10mg tabs of Hydrocortisone.

Eventually Martine has to call 9-1-1 to get an ambulance. I couldn’t just lie on the bathroom floor forever. The emergency medical technicians took one look at me, hoisted me up, and trundled me of to the UCLA Medical Center, where I spent a couple of days in the intensive care unit and an observation ward.

I strongly suspect that this is how I will leave this world. At some point, the adrenal debt will be too high; and there will be a general system shutdown. Not a particularly painful exit.

For the time being, I’ll still be here. I hope.

About Those Eyebrows

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Hazleton “Terry” Mirkil III, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth

In the Winter Trimester of my freshman year at Dartmouth College, I took the second of my two math courses, which were required of part of the college’s “distributive requirements.” The term refers to courses in fields that don’t interest you so that you could become a well-rounded person. The course was called something like “Introduction to Probability and Statistics,” though it was mostly the former.

There are only two things I remember about the course. The first is that in any random group of thirteen people, there is an even chance that two of the party share the same birthday. (That was more than I can recall about my previous math course on Calculus.)

The other thing I remember were Professor Hazleton Mirkil’s wild eyebrows. In profile, they stood out like wild antennae reaching up to an inch from his brow. His eyebrows come to mind because I seem to have developed the same antenna-like eyebrows. When I get a haircut, my barber trims them for me, though they always grow back thrusting in all directions.

Thinking about Professor Mirkil’s eyebrows, I decided to see what I could find out about him on the Internet. What I found was not much, inasmuch as he had committed suicide in 1967, the year after I graduated from Dartmouth. According to the West Lebanon Valley News:

Hazelton Mirkil III, 44, associate professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College, was found dead Wednesday afternoon in the woods back of Chase Field. Dr. I. A. Dinerman of Canaan Grafton County medical referee attributed death to suicide by shooting. He said that Prof. Mirkil, was “dead at least a month or two,” was shot through the head and found with a revolver in his hand.

Prof. Mirkil was on leave from Dartmouth for the current academic year and had been at the Veterans Hospital at Northampton, Mass. Having obtained leave from the hospital and not having returned,
he was reported missing March 17.

Very likely, my Math prof received a bad diagnosis from the VA Hospital. The above photo was the only one I could find except for a tiny picture in uniform during WW2. That’s typical for people whose lives have ended well before the advent of the Internet.

I never was much good in math. I received a C+ in both Calculus and Probability. I am certainly not a graduate that the Math Department at Dartmouth would be proud of. (Nor the English Department, as I ended that last sentence with a preposition.)

If you fear that I, too, would blow my brains out because of my unruly eyebrows, don’t worry. I am too funny-looking on a number of counts to worry solely about my eyebrows.

Welcome to HallowThanksMas

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Display at the Grier Musser Museum (2015)

It didn’t used to be this way, but now Halloween is now a portal to a ten week holiday season that includes Halloween, the Day of the Dead (All Souls Day), Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Day, Martine’s birthday, and my birthday. Fortunately, I don’t take it as seriously as most people do; and I even try to enjoy bits and pieces of it.

In past years, I spent much of October reading horror stories and watching horror films. This year, I’ve not been feeling well, thanks to a hideous attack of bronchitis and asthma. Fortunately, I am feeling better now. And the only horror stories I’ve read were in a collection by Robert Aickman entitled The Wine Dark Sea. I particularly recommend the short story of the same name that opens the collection.

Tomorrow I get my Covid and flu shots, to be followed in two weeks by a vaccination for RSV. I know that the whole issue of vaccinations has become politicized, but I just don’t feel like dying of negligence.

Anyhow, I wish you well during he upcoming HallowThanksMas season. Just don’t let it weigh you down.

The Road Not Taken

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When you get to a certain age, you may well decide (like me) to pick and choose from new technologies, new music, and new trends. For instance, I do not own a Smart Phone and especially distrust the notion of using one for economic transactions. I didn’t work at an accounting office for more than twenty years without closely reconciling accounts so that I had a good idea of what I was spending.

As far as new music is concerned, I consider rap to be little better than noise. In fact, the same goes for much current pop music. I like current jazz and even current classical and folk music.

But what I particularly want to talk about are touch screens. There’s something about the imprecision of selecting options that drives me up the wall. That particularly goes for small screens. You hit an option, and it as often as not doesn’t take at first, requiring multiple attempts. Even on my Amazon Kindle, various screens pop up that I did not select.

Perhaps the very worst touch screen activity is using a touch screen keyboard, especially where there is not enough space between characters on the keyboard.

No Way, José!

Fortunately, larger touch screen displays are not quite so objectionable. For instance, the screens one must fill out for an airline boarding pass or upon returning from a foreign country are okay.

I think that, past a certain age, one gets to the point that newer technologies are trickier to manipulate. Younger people who live all day with their small screens develop the proper tiny sharp finger data entry skills. As for myself, I’ll stick to my caveman existence.

Hiding from the Gazpacho Police

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The Infamous Mug Shot of a Notorious Felon

Donald J. Trump is not the only problem we face. Its not even the biggest problem we face. The voters who support the ex-president are the major problem. Over the last several decades, the American people have grown progressively more stupid, aided and abetted by the lies of social media content providers. It’s gotten to the point that voters take a position (without thinking it through) and prepare to defend it against all comers, even if it’s as stupid as Jewish space lasers and the “gazpacho police.”

At present, the Republican Party controls the House of Representatives. I have no idea what is going to happen in 2024 with Congress. Will an increasing number of voters wake up after their drunken decades-long reactionary orgy and vote for representatives whose minds are not in the Asteroid Belt? Who knows?

I just know what I’m going to do. As always, I will vote for candidates whom I think will continue the American tradition of democracy. I have nothing in common with people who like to wave the flag at the same time they are ripping the guts out of what it stands for.