Crazy exciting!

A competent and accomplished blogger probably doesn't employ sarcasm when titling posts.

I feel kind of bad that so many of my posts lately have been repetitive.  I feel like I'm a bit of a slacker, just flinging up a daily recap of my boring ranch labors. What's more boring than pseudo-assessing pocket gopher damage in December?



I do recognize that you kind readers enjoy the opportunity to peer into the goings on aboard a Naval Cattle Station. Hmmm. NCS Evertson, part of the Naval Agricultural Base KIMBNE.

Now I'm just being silly. But there's a place for silly, at least from time to time. Like trying to harvest dryland corn when the stalks are soaking wet and frozen. Sometimes reality slaps me right in the kisser with the blessing I enjoy of not being a farmer!



Which brings me back around to the question about boring repetition. Where is the line? When does this blog go from enough cows and fences and stock tanks to way too much of that stuff? The line may well be behind me if you kind readers find my dog-talk to be over the top. Didn't know I could hit those high notes. Pretty disgusting, really.



The babble-blather sounds to my ear just a bit, I don't know, Babbly? Blathery?



So line location. It's a good question, I don't know the answer, I fear I'm skating perilously close to the edge. And from the audio-visual side of the blog, I'm afraid it's more of the same. As always, I'm faced with a veritable smorgasbord of delightful ways to be lazy.



So how about a bit of a rant today? A good way to start with a fresh, clean sheet of lighty-uppity electrons and stuff, particularly since I failed to post yesterday.

So Saturday as I was laboring along -- mostly cleaning up after the controlled burn and throwing scrap metal into the ROF (which is scheduled to be collected today, Monday December 9) --

Good gravy and kippers, who wrote that abomination of a sentence?

Anyway, Saturday I slipped on the ice. Now what I should have done was just embrace the fall and PLF myself to the ground and victory. But the stubborn monster me decided it was going to do the cow on ice dance. This surprised reasonable monster me only a tiny bit, and that stubborn monster me pulled it off was hardly more surprising. We me-monsters do have some interesting skills. So I did not fall, and Nona attested to the nature of my dancing ability with a huge double take. I mean a HUGE double take. She nearly mislocated her neck!

Not long after the initial demonstration, however, I noticed a significant increase in nerve pain. Rats. It being Saturday noontime, my choices were to fight a losing battle with the pain or take an hour to visit the local sawbones and collect a prescription for oral steroids before the 3 p.m. closing time of the pharmacia. I took the second course.

And let me just say this about that. Here in Kimball we may not have a lot of the modern conveniences. I can't just trip on down to the mega mall and pick up a gallon of scented tofu and a new set of high-viz blaze orange studded winter flip-flops. I can't get clean and luscious bananas without making a 120-mile round trip excursion. On most days I can't even find a decent chow line to stand in.

But I can walk unannounced into the local hospital's physician clinic at noon on a Saturday and be seen and on my way in 20 minutes. That's pretty remarkable, I think, and I don't imagine a lot of my fellow Americans can routinely share a similar medical experience. So I'm pretty happy with the local balance of available stuff and services. Blaze orange clashes with my mustache anyway.

However, comma, on with the rant.

Having got my meds and gotten myself back to work, there came a time when I had the opportunity to share the story of my dancing experience and subsequent medicinal excursion.

"What did you go to town for?", axed two separate people who have a right to be curious and have also had my nerve pain condition explained in extremely competent fashion on more than a number of occasions.

"I slipped on the ice and started having nerve pain so I ran to town and got some roids. They're really helping, though I wish they didn't have the 'jangly' side effect."

"Oh! You hurt your back! You shouldn't be working! You need to take some time off! What a horrible tragedy! Never in the course of human existence has there been such a horrific tragedy!"

Arrrggghhh!!!

Several things bother me about this oft-repeated game. Firstly, my fellow conversationalists can't even be bothered to listen to what I actually say. They just decide what my words actually have to really mean. How could I possibly know anything about it anyway? And they've often watched doobie howitzer  and ncis on the universal teaching device, so they're obviously world class physicians in addition to being career government bureaucrats.

Another thing about this situation which I find vexing and jaw tightening is this. The perpetrators, I believe, feel somewhat guilty for not pitching in and working as hard or harder than I. That guilty feeling is bullshit. Why would a reasonable person who has their own life and responsibilities feel like they should be living my life and doing my stuff? How does that make sense? Unless of course it's a form of that sick and manipulative control game. Which I believe it is.

Concern for and reasoned, principled empathy for the discomfort of another human is a sterling quality of character.

However, when a person or persons can't be assed to listen to the words they demanded in the first place, and instead offer guidance and counseling based on a misapprehension of the fundamentals of the situation -- a misapprehension they just pulled out of their ass because it's too hard to even pay attention to the forty-leventh recapitulation of the actual reality of the thing -- it becomes abundantly clear that they do not in fact see the person they're attempting to guide as a human being like themselves. No, that so-called person is in actuality just a thing to be manipulated. A means to an end.

Now people just do people stuff. Humans are all equally human. My responsibility and duty as a human is to be ever cognizant of this fact and to do my very best to treat them as I would myself be treated were our roles reversed.

Therefore, at a certain point along the stupid walk I identify a need to take off the gloves and get caustic. Sailor talk was invented for a reason. "So tell me, o master, how is it that my treating you as a thing to be manipulated would be a crime, yet you treating me that way is okay? You want me to answer your question, which is perfectly fair and proper, then maybe shut your fucking pie hole and listen to the fucking answer, eh? You want to tell me what I must do and how I must do it, maybe you should take a run at understanding what I'm actually fucking doing, eh? And if you understand that, then perhaps you could actually come up with a valid fucking suggestion, eh? For the moment I'm gonna get on with my job. Let's do this again sometime, shall we?"

Yeah, I'm a dick. When I deploy an appropriate degree of dickishness I usually feel better. I think it's quite nice of me to offer up a learning opportunity,

And now that I'm about to post this up for all posterity, I feel even better.

Hopefully I haven't made a dreadful miscalculation.

Be well and enjoy the blessings of liberty.