Author: mrghort

On the way to work this morning I saw a truck painted bright orange with lots of hoses and pipes coming out the back and sides. On the side, the words “Big Pfister”.

If the NSA is really tapping every phone call ever, maybe the thing to do is just make sure you always say “Oh yeah, I’m going to bomb the Dairy Queen next week. Yay Communism + Jihad + Canada!” or something in every call. If enough people participate, the government wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Well the World Cup action is heating up, and with France’s surprising victory over Brazil, it looks like we’re going to have another throwdown in the Fatherland, WWII-style. Plus, uh, Portugal will be there.

I’m pretty sure that tomorrow it will be revealed that there was a wacky SOUL MIXUP, and it was actually Brazil playing in France’s bodies and vice-versa, so Brazil will be advancing anyway. I mean, this is the team that was only scored upon once so far in the tournament, right? This is the team whose entire roster can be processed by unix shells everywhere using the regexp ‘ronald.*o’? Is this not the team whose flag looks INTERSTELLER??!*

But that’s not the only thing that’s hot these days; Marcel Dettwiler is getting on with the business over at Facing the Noise on a weekly basis.

And don’t get me started on all the pregnant ladies. Whoah!

Of course, to beat the heat in Zurich, you tram on down to the Limmat and go for a dip in TEEN-INFESTED WATERS. Meanwhile, keep it locked here ya’ll. You don’t want to be the last one on your block to find out what business an elf, a man and a dwarf have in the Riddermark, do ye?

*I don’t actually care about soccer.

Sweet, a 19MB iTunes update. There must be some great new features & functionality!
“iTunes 6.0.5 allows you to sync your Nike + iPod workout data to nikeplus.com, where you can easily track your progress, set training goals, challenge others, and much more. Visit the Nike Sport Music area on the iTunes Music Store to download workout mixes, Athlete Inspiration playlists, Nike podcasts, and more.”
iTunes, I am so ditching you when Songbird is ready.

I finally thought of a good name for my band: Zorak’s Thorax

So ever since I moved to Zurich I’ve been seeing these Freitag bags — about 1 in 5 people on the tram have them.
http://www.freitag.ch/index_frames.php
I always thought they were kinda tacky looking, especially since they are glossy and trendy looking and look like they get dirty really easily. They have a unique & simplistic look and I can see how people would like them, especially after they became popular.
Then I was in a store and saw a big display for them. They’re dirty *before* you buy them. Some of them look like they’ve been dipped in sewage. Now I’m outraged. WTF is wrong with people — buying new bags that look trashed. How stupid is that?
Then I found out that they’re made from completely discarded stuff — old lorry tarps, seat belts, and popped bicycle tire tubes. So the dirty is at least
somewhat legit & justified. So now I still think they’re kind of ugly, but I want one anyway because they look like nice bags and I dig the fact that they are made from other stuff.
Then this morning I find out that they cost 200 Swiss francs each. That’s 153 US dollars. For a fucking recycled plastic bag that I could probably make. Screw you Freitag, you played with my emotions.

It snowed for pretty much 24 hours straight; everything in covered in the kind of snow that’s fun to play in.
I have a huge bay window that looks up the side of a hill. There are houses, trees, sheep, etc.
Now that the sun is out and the snow is melting, globs of it are falling off of the various items, especially trees. When looking out the window at nothing in particular, this gives the effect that the world is crumbling to dust.

I just got released after three days in the hospital cuz I got something called optic neuritis. Started off with eye pain/headache a couple weeks ago, the my left eye went blurry. Both my normal eye doctors couldn’t find anything wrong so they sent me to the hospital. They couldn’t find anything eye-wise either so they took six vials of blood for god-knows-what-tests and sent me for an MRI immediately. That was monday.

Wednesday I came back to the hospital for results. They told me the MRI looked good except for an enflamed optic nerve. (They were worried that I would have other brain problems. This optic neuritis can be a symptom of MS.) Also, I learned that I do not have syphilis or lyme disease, which is always a plus. 🙂 So after it was determined that I was generally clean they said that my eye would get better by itself, but would take weeks or *months* for it to return to normal.

The other option was to say in the hospital for 3.5 days and take high doses of cortical steroids via iv every six hours. They said this would give me back my vision in a much shorter time, so I went for it. Good choice; the hospital food was great. I got to pick off a menu and had rabbit one night. I was treated very well and my eye is back to a semi-usable state and the pain is gone. I have to take smaller doses of the roids for another 3 weeks. Hopefully I’ll get ripped in the process.

It took four nurses and 5 pokes to get the iv in. That was fun. Everywhere I went in the hospital I have to haul around this hat rack on wheels to hold up the two bags of goo for my iv. I am wearing a hospital gown and what looks to be a 70’s Starfleet-issue gold & brown bathrobe. I was fucking styling.

Side effects of the steroids include me being *really really* thirsty all the time and apparently no longer needing much sleep. I had few dreams, except for the one where each of my fingers was a finger puppet of the various doctors and nurses I encountered. So far have not experienced any fatigue from lack of sleep; I expect that to kick in today. I am probably immune to all sorts of pain; I should walk around hitting things and starting fights with the other inmates. Yeah bitch I’ll whack your ankles with my rolling hat rack and, encumbered though I am, still kick your ass in a dance battle in the hallway.

My lack of command of german was all that prevented me from asking the night nurse for a sponge bath. Anne also researched schnitzel-serving strippergrams–which would have really hit the spot–but to no avail.

They did all kinds of wacko tests on me; they tracked my blood sugar three times a day, they took more blood to test for other oddities. It’s seriously crazy the amount of tests they did. Yesterday I had to watch this red dot on a black & white checkered background that shifted back and forth for 100 seconds at a time. For each eye. Six times. With electrodes glued to my head. That was apparently to measure the response time from when info reaches my eye to actually getting into my brain. There is a 35 millisecond delay on the left side. I get the impression that they don’t get cases like me very often so they snuck lots of weird research tests in.

The other day I saw a neurologist who looks like Steven King and wants me to come back in 4 months and do a fucking *spinal tap* just to make sure about he MS cuz that’s the only real way to find it. I’ve always heard that those were dangerous, but apparently it’s outpatient and safe but rather painful.

Note: there’s no way I would have received this kind of care in the American system. This is the kind of healthcare that everyone on the planet should have. I don’t know how Switzerland manages to do it; every person here is required to have private insurance, but it’s cheap, doesn’t have weird loopholes about what is covered and what is not, and so far has just been virtually hassle free.

Long story, but the deal is that my eye should go go back to normal, it just might take a couple more weeks. Thank goodness I don’t seem to have anything permanently debilitating.

I knew I would only be in there for less than four days so I didn’t tell too many people. Thanks to everyone who visited & called.

Dear IKEA,

Thank you for your sincere–if misguided and futile–attempts to lure me back into your lair. I really want to believe it when you say that I am a valued customer. However, I am still suffering the effects of the hallucinogenic neurotoxins that you pump into the air at your store.

Despite your continued efforts to retain my business, I would rather shove a kilogram of Swedish meatballs up my ass and then go for a horse and buggy ride around the parking lot of speed bump factory before entering any of your stores again.

Therefore, please find enclosed a gift voucher for 59 Swiss Francs. It is my ultimate wish that you use it to purchase 6 cheaply made, brightly coloured, wall mountable 18-CD storage totes and send them to the victims of hurricane Katrina.

Burn in hell you fuckers.

Sincerely,
Mike Packard

I just got new glasses. They are freaking thick, weigh about 17 pounds, and create an amusing ghort-within-a-ghort effect: