Running track that year was rough. I would take hits of my inhaler before and after every race (it didn’t really do much good). I went to the high school’s summer soccer camp before my junior year. However, I was a midfielder and my biggest strength was to constantly hustle up and down the field, trip up their offense and advance the ball to our forwards. I didn’t bother trying out that year because I felt my presence wouldn’t be of any use in my state of health.

My parents took steps to ease my symptoms, such as replacing the old carpet in my room with linoleum (for which I’m still grateful for) and purchased a dehumidifier and air purifier. These were good safeguards for symptoms popping up at home… but the conditions of the world are slightly harder to control. I’d traveled to Scotland in ’06. It was absolutely lovely there, however it was much colder than anticipated and our accommodations were in a very old hotel. My labored breathing at night kept my brother awake. “Just breathe normally,” he’d tell me. “I can’t,” I replied.

One night lying in bed in the hotel I had particular trouble getting any air into or out of my lungs. My chest was concave and collapsed. I was in the middle of a severe asthma attack which set me off into a panic which could only have made things worse. My mom & brother moved me from my bed to a sofa and my brother ran for help. In those moments it would appear I was in pain and discomfort but I couldn’t really describe what it felt like. My mind had removed itself of my body’s situation and I simply watched it all unfold. “So this is really happening,” I thought to myself. Thankfully there was a doctor staying down the hall who was able to calm me and get me to control my breathing.

When I went away to college, I took matters into my own hands and practiced breathing exercises and ran at the school gym at every opportunity. That year I trained for and finished a 5K poker run on a chilly October morning. Just a couple weeks back I biked 5 miles to work, rode to a 5:00 ultimate Frisbee game which I played for two hours and pedaled the rest of the way home. I was able to do all of this without a rescue inhaler or a thought of my “disease”.

It should be the job of doctors to “educate, empower, and motivate patients to take responsibility for their own health” as is the mantra of so-called “quack medicine”.  It makes perfectly good business sense in the eyes of the western medical establishment to keep me exactly the way I was. I would be hooked for life into buying “medicine” and I would pay for another doctor’s visit every time I needed a refill. No doctor ever told me there were measures I could take to heal myself. This is a cycle that is perpetuated in far worse circumstances than mine. Every day people walk into a doctor’s office and look to some of the most highly trained professionals in our country for healing and advice. They are instead handed a thin slip of paper with an illegible signature and an empty promise that it will help ease their pain.

I keep my last prescription bottle that expired in ‘08 on the mantle in my room to remind me that I can overcome anything… if I’m willing to fight through the pain. On that little orange bottle there is an inscription that I find to be very meaningful and a summation of all my thoughts on the subject.

It reads, “THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT KMART”.

Almost every school playground is completely surrounded by fencing. (All that’s missing is the barbed wire and guard towers.) So there’s nary a chance you’ll see a child in the street during school hours. And kids that walk to school are few and far between.

Every morning I drive by a middle school and see two children, a boy & a girl, waiting for the bus. I’d estimate they are in 3rd and 1st grade respectively. They wait outside for over 15 minutes, a bus comes and picks them up and they ride it for 30 seconds to the school. They live three houses from the school on the same side of the street and there’s a sidewalk that leads straight to the school. There’s the school, two houses, and then their house. Their next door neighbors have the “End School Zone” sign in their yard.

Every morning I try to fathom why they aren’t just walking to school? Their parents will occasionally wait outside with them. Wouldn’t it be faster to walk them there? Or would it be so dangerous for the kids to walk half a block? They do have to cross the street to get on the bus. I would think that poses a slightly greater danger than the chances of someone kidnapping the kids in the 2 minutes it takes to get to the door of the school (this is in no way a bad part of town).

Anyway, this has been bothering me all year and I had to get it off my chest. Also to prove I’m not a total hypocrite, I biked over 5 miles to work today.

I came to realize that these comments were full of hollow praise. The attaboy comments had turned me bitter. I now resent these unwarranted compliments. I know I deserve them. I know I’ve earned them. I know I’m generally awesome. I’m just slightly tired of being reminded of these facts. Here is some of the praise I have garnered.
*On a side note* Arrrrghhh! Windows XP and your stupid Automatic Updates! [Restart Later]

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(It seems to get far less praise now that I have Askimet activated. I don’t know why that would have any effect on anything.)

Dear Mister Obama,

Thank you for shoving healthcare reform down the throats of an unwilling populace! Because you know what’s best for the country and I respect you for making everyone realize that they are idiots. (Americans are a fickle bunch of sheep who don’t really know what they want.) I was really really glad to hear that this massive spending bill will decrease the national deficit. That puts me at ease, because like you, I’m concerned about the sustainability of our nation.

I’ve been praising your efforts… but I’m going to have to get a bit critical here. I really don’t think 16,000 new IRS agents is quite enough. I mean there are ALOT of Americans and how can we be expected to take care of our well being unless YOU MAKE SURE we are taking care of our well being!?!? I think we need a whole army of volunteer IRS agents and we can all monitor each other’s bank accounts to make sure we are buying health insurance. It could be sort of an accountability buddy system. Everyone would know everyone’s private information and there would be no monkey business going on. And I think it would go over better because for some reason a lot of people don’t trust the government with sensitive information. But you already know every last detail about each of us anyway… shhh don’t tell anyone.

By the way, do you like eating oranges? I sure do, they are a very tasty fruit. And I like the color orange… but we can discuss that later.

Yours completely willingly,

Luke

P.S. Say hi to Nancy for me!

Here’s a playlist of chill music I made up.

La La Sign up

I went up to Macomb  two weekends and I mountainbiked with my friend Andrew(and am going again this weekend). It was really friggin awesome. The course is just over a foot wide and full of challenging obstacles. I didn’t think to bring a helmet… a decision I regretted as I was flying over my handlebars and my chest slammed into a nearby tree. I had a wicked headache for the rest of the ride but it felt good (in a weird way) to get my first big wipeout out of the way.

Last I camped Friday through Sunday at Meramec River with eight people for my friend Kim’s b-day. Last time I camped was probably circa 2002, but I think something about alcohol makes the whole situation more tolerable. Kayaking there was an absolute blast! I jumped from trees, cliffs, did “kayak surf fighting”, got applauded when I did a perfect backflip from the ropeswing, and did front flips from the raft slip-n-slide (you run from the shore, slide on the underside of the raft, and four guys jerk the end of the raft upward when you get to the end).

Also, I did something I hadn’t done this whole millenia. I went fishing. I had ALOT of trouble with my pole (which came with no instructions) and I somehow had line unraveling from three spots. But I worked out the kinks and caught a bluegill. Awesome.

Oh, and a useless fact. I was born on a Friday. http://scphillips.com/units/dayform.html

My hamster’s name is Pipsqueak. My hamster is free. It has a cage but I leave its cage on the ground with the cage door open. It can come and go as it pleases. It runs freely about the house all night and in the morning I see its sleeping back in its cozy little bed with its store of food nearby. It knows where home is and it loves its home. I’ve seen it run up its ramp to the cage, only to start running on the wheel. It has the whole house to explore… but sometimes not going anywhere is a good thing.

Most people live in cages, some have cages forced upon them and some step into the cage lock the door and chuck the key out of reach. I’ve lived in a medium sized town in Illinois for 22 of my 23 years (I lived in another medium sized town in Illinois for one year in college). Point is… I feel like I still have a choice, I could stay in my safe little cage in my own private cozy little world with my little wheel and a nice store of food, water, and comforts. But I have the option to run around the house. It’s a pretty big house and I’d much like to see all the different rooms.

All metaphors aside I’ve been thinking about where I’d like to head in life. I’ve always just assumed I’d graduate college (which I did), get a nice steady job and move up the ranks, afford a nice car, a nice house, get a nice wife, and have wonderful intelligent kids. (Actually, scratch the car, I think I’ll still be driving ugly cars that run well if I’m a millionaire.) But why lock myself up so soon? I’ll have plenty of time to putter around confined to a single town when I’m old and my knees are shot. Here’s what I’d rather do.

I’d like to have a job where I would be able to work from anywhere. Just me, my RV and my wifee (and a laptop with satellite internet). Out on the road, hopping from town to town. Maybe staying a month… or however long it takes to get a taste of living there… and deciding it would suck to be stuck there. I’d just do my web work whenever I got a chance and my wife could do the same… or something like art or photography. Maybe even play some music, do some stand-up when I got a chance. Oh, and the RV will run mostly on solar energy. Gas isn’t going to get any cheaper. (Whether by actual scarcity, commodities investors, or the government forcing us to be a certain color.) All this is tentatively planned for 5 years from now, assuming I’ll have enough saved up to afford an RV. Or I’ll just ride my bike around Europe.

From all this musing, I take this. The babies and mortgage can wait. Why run on the wheel? The house won’t always be mine to explore.

On a final note: Billy Corgan, you will always be my #1 Billy. RIP Billy Mays and may Billy Zane honor your position as my new 2^nd favorite Billy.

Sigh… those were the days. Well, no I don’t mean it like THAT. All I’m saying is that in the last 10 years the amount of sexuality and ultraviolence projected into our heads (and the children think of the children people lol) has increased substantially. Mortal Kombat (whose success can only be attributed to the use of a ‘K’ in the word ‘combat’… Limp Bizkit anyone?) looks absolutely tame compared to the blood sprayed about in modern games (check out Manhunt). Honestly most of today’s M-rated games would have been banned if they came out in 1993 and maybe some T-rated ones.

I don’t watch CSI or any of those other gory TV shows. However, I like horror movies and I’ve seen 4 of 5 saw movies. I go to the movie theater and watch TV for much different purposes. If I’m going to see a movie like “Drag Me to Hell” I’m going in for the purpose of seeing some spooky specters and am mentally prepared for this. But I am more of a casual TV viewer and like to watch TV to relax. I want to watch mindless syndicated sitcoms and laugh at their recycled jokes. So it just kills my whole vibe when I’m flipping channels and come across some pale dead woman lying on a table, mouth agape, with cuts and strangulation marks (probably raped at some point). I want to see good clean fun like The Andy Griffith Show and Leave it to Beaver come back to primetime. Well, LITB probably needs a name change (on account of the slang these days) and the whole “subservient wife” in this nuclear family is no longer politically correct… which is sure to provide some laughs (this is evidenced by Mad TV’s “Leave it to Blink-182” sketch).

Back to my favorite M&M named celebrity(besides Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, and anyone else with an M&M name). Marilyn Manson has a new song called “Pretty Like a Swastika”… ok this guy is just trying too hard now. I assume he’s talking about the symbol the Nazi’s adopted from the Aryan’s and not any of the similar symbols used throughout the world prior to receiving the “red band treatment”. See? That’s why as parents you should hug your little boys & girls more. Because if you don’t, when they grow up… they are going to wear creepy contact lenses.

Well, this concludes another unfocused blog. Thanks for sticking with me person who is reading this sentence.