Tony Baloney, White Shirt: The Uniformed Assailant

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

-- H. D. Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Oh, Tony Baloney.

I've not been able to watch much video since the onset of these bleeping headaches.  I more heard than saw Lawrence O'Donnell identify Anthony Bologna as the white-shirted Deputy Inspector who maced several young women at the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City back in September.  Yes, right around the time my brain exploded.

Mostly, I giggled along with Jon Stewart over his silly name, and thought that maybe it was a joke.  It's embarrassing, but I did.

Finally cogent, I watched the clips of what happened, even if I could not make out exactly what Bologna was doing.  I kept looking for some sort of inciting cause, some sort of aftermath, maybe even the marks the actors were supposed to hit on this urban stage.  So, of course, with those types of expectations, I didn't see a darned thing.  


My vision was so blurry I even swore off PTZ videos of pus explosions and hyper-wipers.


Still, every couple of days, it seemed, something would make me think "Tony Baloney!" and I would laugh to myself.


Despite my apparent trivializing, I take Occupy Wall Street seriously and my guffaws over this incident died away as I listened to the Zuccotti Park protestors articulating their frustration, anger, and considered insights in ways that ought to make us all proud. As "authority," they don't cite what I expect (a growing tendency that I greatly respect!):

We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

"Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?"


These well-spoken, thoughtful, peaceful people are our children, brothers, sisters, colleagues, parents, friends, students, teachers.


My head doesn't hurt this morning, the coffee is strong and good, and I read that Inspector Bologna is no stranger to trouble when it comes to quelling demonstrators of peaceful ilk -- the most dangerous kind.  Sometime next year, he and fellow officer Tulio Camejo will stand trial over accusations of "false arrest and civil rights violations in a claim brought by a protester involved in the 2004 demonstrations at the Republican national convention."


The eyes aren't crossing of their own volition (my body is a separatist's temple) and the purple blobs at the end of what purport to be my legs are more flaccid than spastic.  It's a good day. 


I just put in an order to sell a chunk of my GOOG holdings at the limit price of $618 per share. It's doubtful whether GOOG will even cross over into the 600s, but a girl can dream.


I remember, back in high school, even, how badly I wanted the old myth of Emerson visiting Thoreau in jail to be true.  Thoreau had refused to pay a poll tax based on his opposition to the Mexican-American War, which many saw as an attempt to strengthen and expand the institution of slavery.  We'd like, however, to reduce the overnight jail stay to one saucy repartee between Thoreau and his landlord -- some slick easy surface wit.

"Henry, how is it that you are in jail?"

"How is it, Waldo, that you are not?"

But, of course, it is not true.  Time is better spent figuring the need that drives the myth and what truths are being so creatively avoided.  What recompense for being on the wrong side of the law? Does right action seek company, need the help of rumor?  Do you imagine the jail cell as cool and fragrant with bars that peep out onto a carpet of clover?  I do.  I see Thoreau in clean, comfortable clothing, wrapped in a lightweight wool blanket. He tells us that he and his cellmate each have a window at which to sit, and that when he arrived at "the walls of solid stone," "[t]he prisoners in their shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the doorway..."


To corral targeted individuals, enclosing them in, for example, stiff, orange netting, is called "to kettle." 


One helpful first aid solution, when treating eyes that are burning, tearing, and perhaps temporarily blinded due to an application of mace, is liquid antacid.  Jeanne Mansfield received an unintentional eye-full of Deputy Inspector Bologna's odd and disjointed attack on the kettled women.  She described the experience in the Boston Review and I am taken by her description of the "medic" who comes to her assistance:

My eye is killing me and I’m crying, partially from the pain and partially from the shock of the violence displayed by these police. A shirtless young “medic” with ripped cargo shorts, matted brown hair, and two plastic bottles slung around his neck runs up to me and says, “Did you get pepper sprayed? Okay here, tilt your head to the side, this isn’t going to feel great,” at which point he squirts one of the plastic bottles of white liquid into my left eye, then tilts my head the other way and does the other eye, then repeats with water. Then he unties the white bandanna from his wrist and wipes my eyes with it saying, “You’ll be okay, this is my grandfather’s bandanna, he got through Korea with it, and if he got through that, then you’re going to get through this. Just keep blinking.” Thanks to the treatment—liquid antacid, pepper-spray antidote—the burning behind my eyes subsides.

In pre-market activity, GOOG is down .61%, to $588.07.  

Uploaded by WideAwakeNation on Sep 27, 2011:

Subscribe for updates at http://uslaw.com/occupywallstreet. Slow motion video analysis of NYPD mace deployment near Union Square on September 24, 2011. Alternate angle analysis seems to indicate retaliation for a just prior interaction between officer and some individual(s) on sidewalk. More information about this and other incidents related to Occupy Wall Street protests will be updated at http://www.uslaw.com/occupywallstreet.Original video "PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!": http://youtu.be/moD2JnGTToA

Interestingly enough, Anthony Bologna apparently strode away from his fish-in-a-barrel mace attack with his ire intact, for just a few seconds later, he deployed his weapon again.  [I am so thankful he did not have a gun in his hand.]  In a sea of people trying to do non-violence, he is like a pillar of antimatter... he is violence.  The result of antimatter meeting matter is an explosion.

Uploaded by cjgrapski on Sep 27, 2011

DI Anthony Bologna actually engages in a second indiscriminate pepper spray assault moments after he attacked the four women.

As I sit back and try to give this thing a global think, one disparate thought dominates this morning.  Even though I know it to be a strategy, and despite its many historical strategic successes, I am sad that non-violence remains the only "diametrical" choice and option, not to the extreme opposite of violence, per se, but to self-defense.

That's right, I'd never make it.  I want too, too much to fight back.

The Occupy Wall Street folks are moving into a deadening space, the time of "demands." Those afflicted with know-how and not so much blessed with ancient Arab patience will start with the "but whaddawe want, whaddawe want?" until all anyone really wants is to bitch slap 'em.  Frustration is going to grow, and in-fighting.  Is it inevitable, dictated by the discord inherent in moving from individuals together to a notion of mass action?

I don't know.  What I look forward to, always, however, as systems close?  The reliable power and wonkiness of thermodynamic degradation.  Entropy.  Weird, strange, hot things happen, as energy degrades.  As much as one doesn't want to credit the Tony Balonies of this world with any socially relevant achievement, macing kettled women at a peaceful protest is precisely the push toward steamy, wasted heat that the system demands.

Post-script at the end of the trading day:  GOOG closed at $582.41.

My Day

It's been a long, hard day.  CRPS, as I experience it most of the time now, comes to me in its Blue Phases -- not *quite* as mesmerizing a thing as Picasso's blues and roses, but remarkable nonetheless.

My Blue Phases are cold, cold, cold -- to touch my legs is to touch ice.  My arms are a pale violet, cool, like evening.

The pain is burning, shooting, stabbing, throbbing -- quite a counterpoint to the cold, cold, cold at the innermost core.

Today, I woke to find both legs involved in a major shift, the left up to the knee, the right about 8 inches above the knee, to mid-thigh.   Red, bright bright, blood red.  Holding your hand inches above the skin, you feel the heat radiate out. 

Lobster red.

Swollen as if pregnant, and not in a fluid-y kind of way.  Solid swollen.  I tried to walk alone to the bathroom and broke down, broke down like a car breaks down, broke down like an insane woman pushed too far breaks down.  Lobster pregnant swollen red red get your red hot here, Edema!

photo courtesy of Practical Neurology

At 9 am, I was already over 100, could feel -- behind the eyes, in the smallsmall joints -- the temperature rising. 

I was fasting before some testing, so I couldn't even indulge in a calming coffee.  Coffee does calm me, and when I am AttackingFever, it gives an extra kick to the Tylenol and ibuprofen.  Or -- I just like coffee, okay?

Today was a first -- I complained about my wait at my MDVIP doc's office.  I was there to donate lots and lots of blood, so that when I go in next week we have an idea of where I am at with these infections, with the systemic inflammation, how my kidneys are holding up, and whether my liver is still unhappy.  I came very close to not going because things were just very very very bad.  Then I remembered that phenomenon common to us all -- the toothache that disappears on the way to the dentist, the sore throat that disappears after you argue your way into an open appointment slot, the car that purrs with perfection after you've lamented its clanking to that very impressive and stern mechanic with the great moustache... Oops.

So I said to myself I said, "Self?"

"Hmmmm?"

"We have to go.  How many times have we wished someone could get a sample of our blood when this Weirdo Weirdo Production goes haywire at 4 am?  Here we are, actually scheduled to go in, with insurance, too -- and we feel like grainy, tasteless applesauce that has been liberally sprinkled with Olde Blackened Wash Water, allowed to cool, and then warmed to lukewarm over a Sterno flame.  Served over a half-cooked shitake mushroom cap that has been oversalted."

So Fred stepped into that Regrettable Role of Loving CareTaker, helped me navigate the Grand Canyon gaping between my wheelchair, curbside, and the bleeping passenger-side seat of Our Ruby, the Honda CRV.  I moaned and cried, I embarrassed myself.

He regaled me with stories about His Girls, the Militant Existential Feminist Lesbians, and their latest shenanigans -- and Fred made the bouncing Ruby fly, as only Ruby can, so that we got there right on time. 

Eighty minutes later, I was writhing.  I writhed.  (Now that's a sentence one never plans on writing!)  And suddenly I decided I was tired of always being the Understanding Patient.  I often get passed over in the wait order -- "because we wanted to clear a special block of time for you";  "because we know you understand how backed up we get";  because, because, because. 

I said to Fred, I said:  "Fred?  Don't they get that it hurts me to have to sit here like this?  I am in effing pain, effing pain," I say!

And Fred, damn him, looks up, coolly, from his second rate novel, and says:  "Apparently not."

So I put the speed on my machine on UberHigh and Zoom over to the receptionist.  I use the Ancient Plain Speech of My People:  "I am having a hard time waiting due to pain.  When can I get back there for a blood draw?"

Unfortunately, she speaks one of the Minor Languages of a Now Extinct Species.  "She said she'd be with you pretty soon, I know I heard her say that.  I think she is waiting to get you into a really good room where you will be most comfortable."

Some things don't translate, as any Foreign Language Teacher will confess to you, if drunk.

Like:  I am here for a blood draw -- you can do it in the hall for all I care.
Like:  I. am. in. pain. So. do. it. Do. it. now.

Alright, yes, there should be kudos for my doc's nurse -- because she is deft and brilliant and the only person who can get my blood without aggravating youknowwhat.   And she is, without doubt, a person of only good intentions. 

Still.  I think I need to dispel this myth that because I am disabled, contorted, and crammed in a chair, sick, that I have no problem spending the day hanging out in a doctor's office.  I am not a piece of furniture.  It happens, to be honest, more at the orthopedic surgeon's office than anywhere else.  They do things like put me in the cast room, "because we know you don't mind waiting..."  Just because I was practically living there, having 7 surgeries in under 18 months, doing either pre-op crap or post-op crap, or what-the-fuck crap... does NOT mean that I do not mind waiting.  Being a frequent flyer by no personal fault shouldn't condemn you to lower standards of hospitality (it's the only word I can think of, but it is not right).

By the time we got home, down the drive, over the moat and beyond the drawbridge... I was almost delirious with fever.

I think I still might be though I have an Annoying Sweat going, that I hope heralds a break in the heat.

Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. 

This will all have been worth it when we get some illuminating information back from the lab.

Oh. Yeah.  I am way febrile!  When I grabbed the laptop, it was with the intention of directing you, once again, over to Margaret and Helen, that wonderful blog.  Helen Philpot is ranting about the Beck/Palin Revival last week in a post titled 100 Grand Bore.

Allow me to tempt you with its beginning:

Margaret please tell Howard that 100,000 people will show up to a tractor pull if the entry fee is cheap enough. Big deal. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ignore them and have some pie.

As I see it dear, if more than a hundred thousand dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan can be dismissed, so can slightly less than a hundred thousand peckerwoods at a Beck rally.

If the civil rights of millions of gay and lesbian Americans are not important, then neither are the pathetic rants of almost a hundred thousand Palin addicts.

Now, go read the rest!

In other news, there's been yet another meltdown over at Pop That Zit!  This time, it involves a couple of veterans, with one of The New Breed mixed in, for confusion's sake. 

It's funny, and yet not, how a good subset of those who post vids over there decide to confound their own worth with the "value" of their postings.  It's puerile, and says a lot about our messed up notions of "authorship," and... as I have stated a few times, totally BizarroWorld assertions of "ownership."

Well, I am gonna try and convince My Shadow and Near Appendage, Miss Marmy Fluffy Butt, to detach herself momentarily from my dripping side and fetch me some lowfat plain yogurt, mixed with a hint of vanilla, some fine cocoa, a kiss of cinnamon, and 5 packets of fake sugar -- all nicely wisked together.

Then I am gonna imagine myself a balmy lake, and read the rest of this John Irving novel (now I am on A Widow For One Year).

I hope you had a nice day.  If you did not, let's both of us look to tomorrow, with hope.

More Specialty Wars!

Okay, so Happy Hospitalist took on ER physicians in a recent Xtranormal text-to-video creation a few days ago and ERP answered pretty quickly on behalf of ER docs worldwide.  See their directorial débuts here.

I did not know, though, that the Medical Specialty "Movie" Wars have been going on for a good while.  (Eventually, these vids will achieve the same sub-genre cult status as zit-popping masterpieces.  Okay, so that was a shameless, gratuitous plug for Emilbus20...)  Now that I am no longer an unappreciated, oft-maligned scout for PTZ (I specialized in misspelled foreign word searches), I am enjoying my YouTube excursions much more!  And HS now has a snowball's chance to catch a new vid as the first viewer ever, the stuff of her dreams... {{waving at my PTZ friends!}}

En tout cas -- I've put together a sampling of these medical tantrums, in order of publication.  In the course of rediscovering the world of medical bloggers, one thought keeps recurring -- how much easier it is to understand and empathize the many challenges these folk face when they choose to couch their frustrations in humor instead of snarky venom.

GI vs Anesthesia

Uploaded to YouTube by addormitus on July 20, 2010: "Case Discussion"


Anesthesia vs Neurosurgery

Uploaded to YouTube by hautegirll on July 21, 2010:
"An animated discussion in the OR. Inspired Orthopaedics vs Anaesthesia."


OB/GYN & Anesthesia

Uploaded to YouTube by ETHERBUNNY2010 on July 25, 2010: "She would like an epidural..."


ER officer Vs Surgeon

Uploaded to YouTube by tubelessbra on July 26, 2010:
"An almost everyday slightly over exaggerated referral"

Orthopedia vs Anesthesia (There are several of these specialists battling one another; I chose this one because of the Anthropology Consult!)

Uploaded to YouTube by tedparksmd on July 27, 2010: "As an orthopod, I had to respond to this!"

Orthopaedics Consult (There are some HILARIOUS ones by orthos dealing with ER docs... One has the call for a consult justified by the fact that "the patient has bones.")

Uploaded to YouTube by randomta22 on July 29, 2010: "Orthopaedic hillarity"


ER vs. Surgery

Uploaded to YouTube by phatman23 on July 31, 2010:
"Life as a surgical resident."


COLORECTAL SURGEON VS HOSPITALIST

Uploaded to YouTuby by troymartin13 on August 02, 2010.


HOSPITALIST VERSUS CARDIOLOGIST (Happy strikes again!)

Uploaded to YouTube by dequervains on August 18, 2010: "Hospitalist battles the cardiologist as the Xtranormal medical specialty battle continues."



In addition to Specialty vs Specialty, there are a good number of "Typical ER Patient" creations that you should check out, most dealing with drug-seekers. Clearly, these good health care professionals need access to some serious means of decompression... I hope these vids are therapeutic for them.

Short Shrift: Breakout at PTZ

It was fun while it lasted.

Well, that's not true, entirely.

It's fun as long as you protect yourself with some fluid-absorbent pad of an absurd persona.

I made the huge error of going as myself [profderien], and not taking la bonne et belle Bianca Castafiore along for the ride!

Unfortunately, The Castafiore is busy with rehersals for the upcoming operatic season. We've pitched in, as well, and are selling tickets to the 2010-11 repertory as part of the Marlinspike Hall ManorFest -- proud to be the only venue with tickets available before they flood the Tête de Hergé TicketTron on the first of August.

We chose not to make much noise about it, but there has been a huge infusion of energy into our Summer Comestibles Project, which forms the heart of ManorFest (excuse me for belaboring the obvious!).

A relish here, a chutney there, here a candle, there a bramble, ohhhhhhh! (To the liberalized tune of Alouette)

Of course, this means of making pocket change is hardly unique to our humble estate, as the Cistercian monks down the unpaved country road peddle all sorts of "benevolent" crap, er, crafts and products, from Benevolent Biscuits to Ink and Toner supplies. It's the height of collusion, but my Marlinspike Pickles owe a good bit of their Pucker Power to the Monastery Mustard Glorious Garlic Blend.

Anyway, between broken hips, infected shoulders, rehersals for Gounod's Faust, batches of cucumbers, and intensive Moat Upkeep (yes, the algae is back!)? There's no time for the stress of social networking over at Poke That Pus Plug, Perforate That Sinus, and Pop That Pointy Zit dot com! [I don't know if owner Chris Azzari still has the site up for sale, but back in 2007 he was ready to ditch it for a mere $10,000 starting bid. At the time, he said he received an offer of $22,000, as well as many partnership offers. Three years later, much more media savvy, I bet he's hoping for much more! I don't think it can still be called a website flip at this point -- it's more like a senior citizen tumbling pass. As I try to support the things that I enjoy in this world,I recently enriched Chris with a donation of Ten Whole Bucks... The "DONATE" button disappeared later that same day, prompting some of the warm, fuzzy feelings I have for Azzari's site at the present time.]

Honestly, personality disorders (in multiples) are breaking out at PTZ faster than any pimple ever could, and I finally came face-to-face with the fétide, puant, malodorant, croupissant, infect, et immonde underbelly of the zit-site beastie. Who knew that the Phone Sex Operator -- who sent me a video of a cat dissection on the occasion of Sam-I-Am's death -- would end up looking like the healthier end of the mental spectrum for the website?

Oops, I forgot: LOL, ROFLMAO, etc. You see, it is often suggested that emoticons might temper my speech for the better, with the usual reasoning that my interlocuteurs can't discern when there's a little smile playing upon my lush red lips -- or a merry crinkling of the tiny laugh lines that frame my shining hazel eyes!

Short of that, I could always claim to "love" the other pimple fetishists and admire their dastardly acumen at finding YouTube videos of weeping abscesses and bubbling boils -- not just in English, mind you, but in Japanese, U.S. Southern, and Belarusian, as well. The competition is fierce and the accolades steady -- how else to keep the supply of masturbatory material coming at a generous pace?

It's a sharp mind that can plomb the depths of the zit-ified and conduct searches not just for "abscesses," say, but for its misspelled and foreign variants, as well.

Absess! Abses! Abcess! Absceso! Abcès! And so on!
(Staying abreast of popular misspellings can be a challenge to the searching poppologist.  My most recent favorite? "Purlunet")

Ah, I am going to miss that rush of adrenaline that comes from scooping the cyst, exposing the repost, and being all witty about it, too. Not as easy as it sounds, my friend, not as easy as it sounds.

Unfortunately, I tend to think emoticons the refuge of the inarticulate, and my resultant reliance on words -- put in certain order and modified at will, mind you --made some of the pseudo-writerly members nervous to the point of requiring sedation.



PTZ is a site that attracts people much like myself, I think -- people in physical pain, disabled people, insomniacs, perhaps fighting an excess of invasive medical procedures in actual, real life, on actual, real bodies. We so want to understand life's various putrefactions.
(Ewww. No, we don't!)

We just think blood and guts are cool, in the same manner that little boys and men "like to blow stuff up."

Like any fetish site, it has more than its share of unstable people, so it's easy to spend too much time catering to the psychically funked instead of just having a good time. Trust me, I have met each and every Neurological Misfire, and been subjected to the folksy stylings of each and every Ingrown PTZ Heir.
Fetish site demographics, a hot new area of statistical study, reveal frustrated doctors, frustrated lawyers, people passing themselves off as all kind of things... but above all, passing on burgeoning needs for importance. The blog-writer becomes An Author -- the risk management specialist, An Incomparable Neurosurgeon -- the Obese Hausfrau, An Intrepid First-Responder.

Given my congenital weakness and my "condition" (Walterus Mittyitis) -- you would think I'd be in the thick of all that pretense. Well, of course I was! Yes, I passed myself off as A Retired French Professor. The truth? They can't handle the truth! Already subject to severe bouts of Clinical Unworthiness, how might these fragile psyches react to the presence of someone who is lodged in a place like Marlinspike Hall, nestled in the heart of such perfection as is found deep, deep in The Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs)? And if they knew I was a dear friend of Captain Haddock? Imagine the whirling dervish of jealousy!
I have given short shrift to the counter-balance of wonderfully normal people over at PTZ, so allow me to lengthen that shrift (more on shrift below * ). From owner and steward Emilbus to the charming but testy Cyst Face, there are dozens of fun, knowledgable, and decent folk from all walks of life, in all sorts of circumstances. Those two, for instance, are new fathers -- I imagine that the births of their sons put a zit-popping website into proper perspective. Innaffitoften enlivens the place with a pure love of fun; Twisted Cyster joyously keeps the home bot fly fires burning; Anna Nonymous and her brother-in-law Evil Felon have even gone so far as to star in and produce what will soon be video cult classics -- So no... PTZ is not overrun with delusional depressives!
Still, and even so, I cannot help but wish I'd never stopped to scope out the less wholesome side of things.

Folks get terminally ingrown and pustulently petulant for a reason -- I forgot that. Don't push, don't call anyone on it, don't do the Dr. Phil 8-minute cure. Fear of exposure can make the barely stable personality spin out of control, or at least melt into a mess of childish tantrums.
Stress is hell on the complexion.

La bonne et belle Bianca Castafiore has further opined that there's a hell of a lot of prescribed painkillers sliding down gullets and a real heft of untreated clinical depression among PTZ denizens. Fortunately, I know *nothing* about the snarky, contrarian behavior that can ensue, given those variables! I just have to take the fat diva's word for it.

The weirdest thing, and it shouldn't be a perpetual surprise to me, as I encounter this in most insular online communities, is the way too many people decide that every word uttered by profderien somehow has to do with them. The level of paranoia astounds, and like the sebaceous cyst invaded by green-pus-producing bacteria -- it's gonna blow!
Sobering. And, ultimately, off-putting to a degree that drives "people like me" away.

Excuse me for a moment. The Cabana Boy is outside on the drawbridge screaming about an infestation of Hair and Bubble algae [Bryopsis plumosa and Dictosphaeria cavernosa, respectively], and demanding emerald crabs and Mexican turbos to stave it off, "or I am outta here!" (He's cute, the way he stomps his little feet!)
I need to go talk water parameters with him, and to do it before he forms a blood blister that no self-respecting zitmeister would deign to pierce.
You see, we maintain a high nutrient content in Our Moat, a necessity because of the Koi, as well as the Lagoon Sharks that we shelter in the winter for @Yoclutso, Beloved Twitter Twin, when she is busy with her castle and the Ark is out of commission. What do you do when your moat is overrich in phosphates, silicates, and nitrate? A flat out better sort of person, @Yoclutso sometimes mentors The Cabana Boy, whereas I state clearly to his vapid little face that he is a blatantly inefficient skimmer!
Maybe a few mangrove plants will suck up enough phosphorus that we won't need to go the macroalgae route (sort of the Activia Challenge for Moats)...
Ah, well, as far as PTZ goes, I am, of course, responsible for all of my actions, and many of them were clearly wrong.
I will mea my culpa, but I will not mea my maxima, ultima culpa. I mean, be real! I have a freaking estate to run!

I will examine my behavior... I always do. Any improvements, though, made on the current Model of Moi shall remain unheralded by the Occasional Crazies and Purported Popologists over at PTZ. I'll just have to waste my stunning renovations on you, Gentle Readers, and the lovelies of The Manor!

So, good luck, Emilbus. Many happy poppin' returns!

****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ****** ******

* My regular readers know my love of word/expression origins. Today, let's visit The Mavens' Word of the Day, where Maven Georgia just happens to be addressing the saying short shrift:

Do you remember the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Romeo says to the Nurse: "Bid her devise / Some means to come to shrift this afternoon; / And there she shall at Friar Laurence' cell / Be shrived and married."?

The English words shrift and shrive derive from an Old English verb scrifan which comes in turn from Latin scribere 'to write'. The Old English word had several meanings: 'to decree a person's lot', to 'pass sentence', and, in the ecclesiastical sense, 'to hear confession and then impose penance and grant absolution'. When Juliet goes to shrift, she is going to confession, and when she is shrived (or Modern English shriven), she has been given penance and granted absolution.

The original sense of shrive seems to have been that of 'writing or prescribing a penalty'. It never meant simply 'to write' in English, but German schreiben and Dutch schrijven, both meaning 'to write', come from the same Proto-Germanic root. The Scandinavian languages also have the 'penance' sense, which does not exist in the West Germanic languages.

Scrifan first appeared in English around 776, and scrift around 900. Both, in assorted spellings, were in common use for centuries. The meanings got a bit tangled up so that shrift at various times meant 'penance', 'absolution', and 'confession'. Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, is the day when people are "shriven"--they go to confession and receive absolution before making merry on the last day before Lent begins. The three days before Ash Wednesday are sometimes known as "Shrovetide."

The earliest citation for the expression short shrift in the OED is from Shakespeare's Richard III: "Make a short Shrift, he longs to see your Head." The man being addressed is Lord Hastings, whom Richard has just condemned to death with the sentence to be carried out immediately. Time is short--and Hastings' shrift must be similarly brief. This is apparently the original meaning of the phrase: a criminal condemned to death was given only a brief time to make his confession before being executed. He was given short shrift.

There seems to be unanimous agreement among scholars on this derivation, but I wasn't able to find any solid evidence, and there are no citations. One source tantalizingly said the phrase appeared "late in the fourteenth century" but didn't give a citation. There is also a great gap in citations between Shakespeare and the first quarter of the nineteenth century when Sir Walter Scott used the phrase in several of his novels and popularized it. Did he pick it up from Shakespeare? In A Legend of Montrose (1819), a man asks what a traitor deserves, and someone replies "A high gallows and a short shrift." Joseph Conrad wrote in Arrow of Gold (1919) of "a man condemned to a short shrift by his doctor."

To give something or someone "short shrift" now means 'to give little consideration'. This sense developed late in the nineteenth century. Here is an 1887 quotation from the Times of London: "Every argument...tells with still greater force against the present measure, and it is to be hoped that the House of Commons will give it short shrift to-night."

A Web search produced thousands of current examples: A recent article in the Economist contains the sentence: "Jordan's foreign minister...predictably got short shrift from Mr. Sharon" (April 2001). And Newsweek noted that "...[risk is] often given short shrift when investors peer into the future in an area like technology" (April 2001).

All of this sounds quite benign when we think of the phrase's origin.

The one where reality lives up to expectations...

A short post, and an odd one, but I need to do it.

(Is it terrible to be terrible?)

(Yes.)

Following Sammy's death, an internet troll decided to separate me from the herd, decided to be lioness to my nervous, flighty, incompetent gazelle.

We both visit a certain website dedicated to... well, a fetish. Not a fetish that would cause you to gasp or make milk go up your nose, no... more of a common fixation turned art project, if you will.

A minor, not major, fetish.

And that's minor as in "inferior in importance," not "underage child."

Why, look! I am sweating bullets.

As always happens on sites dedicated to x, y, or a minor fetish, an actual community has evolved midst the serious virtual business of reviewing videos and talking shop. It's not a warm and fuzzy nuclear family; No, it's more of a dysfunctional and fuzzy one.

Holiday gatherings are just a scream.

The gentleman who runs the site established the usual area in the back (behind the stacks of cardboard boxes and piles of mostly empty paint cans and ancient twined-together newspapers), where regulars and irregulars, alike, can vent about almost anything. And so we do.

And so I did. I began a thread about Sam-I-Am and as time passed and he became so ill, I revived the thread to share the sad news of his final illness. It helped, in a small way, because as diverse a crowd as it is over there, people are dependable. Folks love their pets, and such simple commonalities transcend politics and all our other contrived differences.

(Are you still with me?)

The pointy-nosed skank of a troll just couldn't stand it.

She suggested that I donate Sam-I-Am's body to a vet school, ridiculed my grief for a pet, and asserted her image of me as a dried up old lady prune presiding over dreary afternoon salons.

To her friendly comments, she attached, for my viewing pleasure, a video of a feline necropsy.

Truth be told, my only response was a fairly clean-burning anger and a clarified vision of what she must be like. I have managed to hold that anger in check while "in public." In private, I have longed for a few minutes alone with her, a meeting that she would not leave unscathed. (Okay, so maybe she could beat me to a pulp with just the tip of her long, forked, wicked tongue... On the other hand, I have no compunction about running over her flabby ass with my wheelchair.)

In high school, I dissected a cat, and while I wish there had been a fetal pig option, at least I cannot be shocked by the sight.

I said something terminally witty, something along the lines of how she needed psychiatric help. So original! So scathing! (And yet, so true...)

Then I decided the SheTroll could serve as helpful antidote to the poison of our loss. When my sorrow reaches the Point of Emotional Silliness, I only have to imagine her fetid breath, her previously-referenced flabby ass, and her sociopathy to bring me back to Sufficiently Grounded Reality.

Then, too, I thought to employ some of the maturity and smarts people keep insisting I have on hand, and try to let it go. (No, not "let go and let God..." -- just "let it the hell go...")

It turns out, of course, that people, especially fetishists, are just lovely. Yes, you are right -- I've been tackled by that punchline before and doubtless will again.

When I checked my box at the hoodoo voodoo site yesterday, I was heartened and touched by the expressions of juju sympathy over Sammy's death from the gathered brethren and sistren.

There was universal disdain for the necropsy-nattering troll, and I felt much better about things.
Not about Sammy, about *things*. Fred and I both burst into unexpected tears, mostly as we witness the grief of the remaining cats -- and no, it is not our anthropomorphism in play. All three are greatly altered in their behavior and are clearly bringing forth their curiosity, sadness, and confusion.

Anyway, as to the reason I am writing, and you are reading... THIS? I just opened another bit of mail over at this site, from a member I don't know well, but who has always been very nice, and often funny. She enclosed a link to a 2008 news article published in the UK's Independent, saying that she just wanted to share in the great gulping laughter she experienced when she initially discovered the article -- which features none other than our own beloved troll.

Troll extols herself as an academic, perhaps a researcher, touts having "worked with" Margaret Mead and other tossable names -- most recently, while analyzing moi-même, she pronounced herself a therapist. She's a swirling dervish of an expert in everything.

(Funny, in what proved to be a not-far-off impulse, it went through my mind that she was more likely a Dominatrix for Droopy-Diapered Adult Babies... that seemed both more her speed, and definitely more her crowd.)

It turns out she's a Phone-Sex Operator*, recasting herself as Scheherazade.

Oh, my heart is light, my laugh is gay, and Sammy, somewhere, is chirping himself into a good, long purr.

THE TROLL, PICTURED ABOVE, DESCRIBES HERSELF:
I'm 60 years old, have a BA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University, and I've been married for 25 years. I have a son in his last year of college who lives at home. He's a double major in English Literature and Religion. Men call me for an infinity of reasons – but mostly for what I call 'Executive Stress Relief'. It's not sex; it's a cocktail of testosterone, fuelled by addiction to pornography, loneliness, and the need to hear a woman's voice. I make twice the money I made in the corporate world. I work from home, the money transfers into my bank account daily. I'm Scheherazade: if I don't tell stories that fascinate the Pasha, he will kill me in the morning.

From the news article's introduction by Catherine Townsend:
When I see the late-night ads for premium-rate phone sex lines featuring nubile, tanned young women, I get curious about who is actually on the other end of the phone. Like many people, I sometimes imagine that she's a bored housewife, moaning and calling herself a "naughty girl" while smoking a fag and doing the ironing.

But whether they are working in a packed call centre wearing headsets or from home wearing lingerie, phone-sex operators (or PSOs) are as diverse as the callers. I can definitely see the appeal of wanting to make money from talking dirty, like the Americans pictured here in Phillip Toledano's compelling portraits. But these women (and men, some very successful PSOs have been boys with high-pitched voices!) have to do so much more: they have to morph into a role that is part therapist, part sexual surrogate. They also have to improvise and create multiple personae in order to play the submissive secretary, the naughty nurse, the adult baby, the porn star or the barely legal teen girl.

Our Vaunted Troll was also noticed by some of her fellow Columbia alums, over at the Columbia Bwog (the 24/7 blog incarnation of The Blue and White, Columbia University’s monthly undergraduate magazine). In the comment section after the blog entry entitled, "You, too, could be a phone sex operator," a few salient points were raised, as in: Is there even a major available at Columbia in cultural anthropology? Given the Vaunted Troll's age, might not her Columbia have been GS or Barnard? (I'm sure Barnard collegians everywhere are delighted by the suggestion.)

The most repeated comment, though, was a request for "eye bleach, stat!"


* Some of my best friends are Phone Sex Operators.
** Unfortunately, just a few weeks after this post was written, I had to leave PTZ for good... driven off, not by a skanky PSO, but by something even worse, a skanky moralist -- a woman prone to fits of pique and fixated on "hating" me (her verb choice -- and we honor her verbal decisions because she is a... writer. Mwa ha ha! Snort!). 

The photography that accompanies the article is exceptional, and was published in book form by the artist, Phillip Toledano, in 2009.

A Haft Made of Dudgeon

Just when I was calming down!

In large part, the deescalation in my gastric acid production is attributable to not reading or listening to the rhetoric of the extreme right, the crazed element of the conservative movement. I think they're well represented as assorted PacMan Blinkies, chowing down on whatever gets in the way.

I plan on using this long PacMan video as a point de repère for mindful meditation -- now that my Palm has died a good, but lingering, death and I no longer have recourse to Crazy Daisy. You see, it wasn't under warranty; It had no recourse, no place to go. I was awesome at Crazy Daisy and on endless mode, it kept me calm and distracted (but way zen-focused) even when in intense pain.




So, uncentered and bereft of handheld technology, I decided to follow some demented Twitter feed... and ran smack dab into this:

Nobody likes a racist…
Nobody likes a race hustler either.

On Saturday March 20th the leftist media reported what they described as a horrible story from their sources at the anti-military Jew-hating conservative-hating Huffington Post. The media claimed that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were called n*ggers and spat on by tea party protesters as they walked from the Longworth office building to the Rayburn office building. At least one report said that it was “a chorus” of racist hatred. Another report said the Congressional members heard the n-word at least 15 times. Reporters from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, (including Bill O’Reilly), MSNBC, and so on, repeated this horrible story.

Unfortunately, it was a fake. The media had no evidence… Nothing. As the story was a complete fabrication. It was totally made up.
[....]
Last Wednesday, video was released that confirmed the spitting incident was bogus, too.

Dan Riehl reported:

There’s some higher resolution video... I hadn’t seen before. Unlike what was claimed during recent Tea Party protests in Washington, DC, it would appear Cleaver was simply walking close by in front of a protester. The protester’s hands were cupped as he was shouting. While it appears Cleaver may have experienced a spraying of sorts as a result of the yelling, it does not support a conclusion that he was intentionally spat upon, as claimed.
[....]

Again. Another liberal lie.

On Thursday of last week Andrew Breitbart* at Big Government offered $10,000 to any of the reported victims for proof of a racial attack. No one will! And, in this economy you know someone would if they could. No one came forward. Nothing happened.

It was all a lie.

It’s time for these race hustlers to apologize to the tea party movement and the American people for this horrible racist lie.

We demand that these Black Caucus members apologize for their fabricated hate story.

It is tough to know what tags to apply to such virulent, yellow pus -- particularly as the tag situation chez this blog is abominable -- but it seemed right to pair political rhetoric with noise pollution, as well as with a PopThatZit video.

How would you tag this?


*Andrew Breitbart:
As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country.

On Saturday, during the peaceful and patriotic tea party protest at the Capitol, the Democrats staged a series of symbolic acts meant to manipulate the media to do its bidding. The Congressional Black Caucus pulled the Selma card and chose to walk through the crowd in the hopes of creating a YouTube incident.
[....]
It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.

And surely if those cameras did not capture such abhorrence, then someone from the mainstream media — those who printed and broadcast his assertions without any reasonable questioning or investigation — must themselves surely have it on camera. Of course we already know they don’t. If they did, you’d have seen it by now.

THOUSANDS OF TIMES.

Rep. Lewis, if you can’t do that, I’ll give him a backup plan: a lie detector test. If you provide verifiable video evidence showing that a single racist epithet was hurled as you walked among the tea partiers, or you pass a simple lie detector test, I will provide a $10K check to the United Negro College Fund.

They used to make me laugh. Then they made me mad. Now? Now, they have succeeded in planting fear in my heart. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. Mostly, they provoke tears of angry laughter.

The tactic of planting the lie, then repeating the lie in feigned high dudgeon, manufacturing "unbiased" support, and putting the attacked on the defensive? It's low brow propaganda.

Some people comfort themselves with salty, fried things, others with sweets. I turn to etymology, my private puff pastry. Okay, and low fat plain yogurt hit with a good measure of excellent vanilla extract.

dudgeon: Middle English dogeon, from Anglo-French digeon, dogeon
Date: 15th century
1 obsolete : a wood used especially for dagger hilts
2 archaic : a dagger with a handle of dudgeon; obsolete : a haft made of dudgeon

Repost: Lessons in Existentialism, Wedgies, and Trolls

originally posted 9/14/2009

It may well be that Retired Educator is going to go to ground and allow La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore free reign of this blog. It could happen.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Aw, shucks, who am I kidding? I monitor everything That Chica does, and love y'all just a little too much to allow her indiscriminate and total control of what gets written here.

It's not just Sisyphe that you must imagine happy. When the "boulder" is an audio clip of L'air des bijoux, more specifically a single line from the aria, sung over and over -- à haute voix, à voix haute, et très, très fort -- you'll more than likely want to give Camus a wedgie.

Yes, there is a French word for "wedgie." I just spent a few moments in wild laughter at the discussion over at the WordReference Forums. I do appreciate polite people, even in an incongruous moment:

Bonjour,

Qu'est-ce qu'on dit quand les culottes deviennent coincés entre les fesses?

Merci

I even flashed on Allen Ludden, the long-ago host of the gameshow Password. I can hear the announcer make his loud whisper: "The password is... wedgie."

Anyway, the first responders on the scene at WordReference provide faithful word-by-word translation, not helping matters one whit. Finally, someone arrives with the helpful suggestion of: "j'ai les rideaux coincés dans la fenêtre." I like that one; That would definitely soar over my head were I not in the loop, in the know, hip, and happening. Chouette...

Three months after the initial post, Benoit arrives to clarify things, and announces that the wedgie phenomenon is "faire un Luigi," at least in the north of France and in Belgium.** This, of course, begs the question: Who was the original Luigi, hmm?

Since only the good die young, and bad things often happen to good people, Walkyrie is next to come along. Evil, evil Walkyrie!

Vous le savez peut-être, mais l'anglais a aussi un mot pour désigner une culotte (ou un pantalon) coincée non pas derrière, mais devant, chez une femme. Je laisserai à un natif le soin de vous le divulguer, au cas où vous ne le connaîtriez pas. Ça a rapport avec le pied d'un animal, et là encore, je ne pense pas qu'il y ait d'équivalent en français, à part une traduction directe.

And my taxed brain flashes on the great CamelToe SNL skit!

The last hilarity? Two years after the deep thinking began, a Senior Member of the Forum suggests "un string" as a good translation for "wedgie," and that would surely work -- if it did not mean "thong"!

Even among the faithful, commentary often strays, and this is true of the Wedgie Work being done by these dedicated linguists. In the middle of it all, Quake3 demands to know how to translate the following pith: "My fondest desire? To give you a wedgie with your own lungs."

Hmm. It takes all kinds. That's what makes the world go 'round. And it's a small world, after all. People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world. Right-o.

No one really questions the impulse to want to commit a wedgie on someone's lungs. No, they go straight to work. Junior Member Kwaw submits the following:

wedgie = something (usually underwear) pulled up through the cleft of the buttocks

= to pull your guts / innards / lungs out through your arse?

Mon plus grand souhait / désir ?:

Tirez-vous les viscères (par l'intermédiaire de votre anus)?

Se retirer vos poumons sortir (par l'intermédiaire de votre cul)?

De prendre vos viscères par le biais de votre cul?

De faire une lanière de vos poumons?

À faire pour vous une lanière de vos poumons?

de faire un string (entre vos fesses) de vos poumons?

Se retirer votre poumons entre vos fesses?

kwaw

Kwaw later opines, after the suggestion that his French is not up to par: "The one that manages to sound violent while making least sense is probably the most accurate..." I know that's the rule by which I try to live.

"Why, Retired Educator, friend to animals, children, and several adults from around the world, whatever is so wrong with you today? Goodness, gracious, girl! You are frothing at the mouth, caught up in a tirade about... wedgies! Surely something is amiss in Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé!"

Thanks for asking, Sweet, Darling Reader. {snarl} I would eventually have made my point, limpide comme l'eau, le diamant, le crystal. Since you're rushing me, though, I'll segue to the issue -- bring matters to a head, as it were.

"Certain troubling aspects of a too rich situation..." wrote Simone de B, about "consoling ethics"

-- those entities, often mammoth and institutional, that cannot live with or within the "ethics of ambiguity." The ethics of ambiguity? Believe it or not, but Simone de B has, as central reference for the concept of Bad Faith -- Our Beloved Flaubert's Emma Bovary. [see the remarkable
How I introduced a NYT editorial by comparing President Obama to Gustave Flaubert for more Flaubert antics.]

Emma, Emma, Emma -- how I have always loved Emma! She grates on the nerves, though, and I could use a break from the Emmas that seem to be surrounding me.

Actually, the institutional mammoths of which I'm thinking are more within the order of internet trolls than Emmas. Specifically, internet trolls who skulk in the pus-filled corridors of PopThatZit.com.

Yes, I am enamoured of zit videos. The neat thing? I am so not alone!

En tout cas, mes amis... read here, here, and lastly, here to get a vague sense of my unrest when in the profderien incarnation. Such retardation is -- thank God -- rare. In my better moments, I imagine the harping phenomenon as the work of one small, pin-headed individual that happens to go by four or five different names. Of course, the whole situation is rendered manageable by the capable management of one Emilbus, the site owner and all around good egg.

And it must be said that it's a question of a very vocal minority suffering from a narcissistic sense of entitlement. For the most part, everyone is quite nice, very sharp, and not interested in the dramas -- dramas that can, as you know, turn me into a rubber-necker, gaping at all the accidents on the side of the road.

Studied detachment remains the ideal virtual comportment -- and, normally, I can achieve it. These days, though? Daily fevers are now over 101 -- CRPS has kicked into high gear -- and infection continues to reek havok. [C-RP is 86, WBC over
15,000, sed rate of over 70-something]. When I spike over 100, it's not that I give up free will in order to make little girly whining noises, for I am overwhelmed with physical lassitude -- no, I fall into a strangely frenetic state of just-not-caring, just-not-giving-a-royal-shit.

A hell of a formula! My rude febrile inertia + all the rude PTZ Emmas = absurd, rude goings-on! Thank goodness for the overwhelming majority of stable people (who just happen to share one slightly fetishistic interest in zits).

I know that when a crowd arrays against me, my own conduct must be examined.

I have done this and conclude that I am perfect in every way! Ar ar ar! No, seriously. I know my faults, and they are legion.

However, I'll not be maligned as a pedophile and murderer.

We all have our limits, those tired lines in sand, and mine appear to be pedophilia and murder. I'm strange that way.

Oh, the humanity!

It's a little known fact that Sartre's eye deformity was the result of constant and unrelenting hazing by de Beauvoir, most often in the form of the wedgie. Yes, she kept putting a Luigi on him, until his eyes went haywire. Pity I don't have the supporting evidence -- as soon as I make some up, I'll post it.

L'oeil de Sartre. A rich source to punsters. We giggle to speak of his "trompe-l'oeil," throw the elbow, say, "Get it? Get it?" Much as kids will call out, "Mom! The television just said 'heinous'!"

Fred still snickers during the tedious introduction to the ubiquitous television show Law and Order.

"We can guess at the efforts he must have made to plaster a smile onto that hideous face, to forget and make sure others forgot the image of the marsh, to control that one eye that said shit to the other, the excess of the flesh, the erratic proliferation of the features." Bernard Henri Lévy -- what a card.

The words of a true friend.

Those of you in the know may take my mention of letting La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore have Head Author status at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle as a threat. Of course, those of you in the know are not the stupid, provincial, assinine, dirty-minded, acephalic -- and just plain *rude* -- denizens of whom I speak.

Marx and Engels might rethink their whole concept if they knew some of The Workers I've met in the last 72 hours or so.

But then, I might be guilty of perpetrating noise pollution on your lent ears -- a crime that carries quite the penalty:

It is an offence under the EP Act to emit objectionable noise. A maximum penalty of over $250,000 may apply, while for a continuing offence a daily penalty of over $125,000 may be imposed.

You may also be liable under health legislation for noise emissions which are considered dangerous to health or offensive.

Qu'est ce qu'un troll ?
Uploaded by prodnouillesque.

**In Québec: avoir la strap prise dans la poulie

The Zit Poppers' Manifesto by Emilbus of PTZ

Let your Freak Flag fly!

Zit Poppers Unite:

There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings about people who
• Have zits
• Pop zits
• Obsess over zits
• Stare at other peoples zits

First and foremost-EVERYONE has an opinion on zits. Some people think they are gross (these are usually secret zit poppers), those who think they are fun and those who think they are fascinating. Zit poppers do not discriminate; they come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and walks of life. Not all zit poppers are the same, however. The fascination with zits and zit popping can take many different forms.

Enthusiastic zit poppers: These people are not only anxious to pop their own zits but always secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) want to pop any zit they see. These people are the ones who run to the restroom if you tell them they have a zit. They do not go there to try to hide the zit but instead to estimate EPPT (Estimated Prime Popping Time).

Patient zit poppers: These incredibly patient people are content to just let nature take its course and wait until just the right time to let that baby explode. They are in no rush. The building excitement is what motivates these zit poppers.

Obsessive zit poppers: Normally, the obsessive zit poppers will check their face (and frequently the rest of their body) for zits quite frequently throughout the day. Any zit, any size or shape and it must be popped immediately for satisfaction to be obtained.

OPZP: These fascinating people do have some interest in their own zits but the real excitement comes when they observe and (hold onto your hats) even get the chance to pop other peoples zits. OPZP stands for “Other people’s zit poppers”. They fantasize about popping the zits of other people. When they are talking to someone who has a juicy zit, they are not really listening. They are imagining themselves reaching out and setting that compilation of pus loose.

Casual zit poppers: These zit poppers have no particularly strong feelings about zits but they will, on occasion, take pleasure in aiding a zit explosion. Casual zit poppers often develop into another more intense type of zit popper, but not always.

No one is immune from zits and there is no one who has absolutely never taken an interest in at least one zit in their life. Even people who find zits completely gross often find themselves fascinated (albeit sickened) when they do pop a zit. For some unexplained reason, it is human nature. Perhaps it is something like primates who pick lice off of themselves and other primates-it’s just what they do.

Every zit popper also has their favorite type of zit as no two zits are created equal. There are some who prefer the meekness of a little whitehead. Some are trying to pop a zit that has barely surfaced and is still just a red bump. The pus factor varies from person to person. Some like just a little pus and others wait until just the right time when the pressure built up by the pus is just right, then they pop it. Ahhhh, satisfaction at last.

People from all walks of life are zit poppers, some just keep it a secret. These people are often found late at night on the web looking for videos of popping zits. They would never admit to their addiction to these sights but they are there none-the-less. Some are just the opposite and are downright enthusiastic about their zit popping adventures. Of course, they realize they have to be careful with whom they share their love of zits but they never really try to hide it. They invite people over to watch videos of popping zits. They are known in the zit popping circles as “zit fanatics”.

There really is nothing one can do if they just happen to love popping zits, or popping other peoples zits, or watching people pop zits. There are more people who have this love of zits than you may ever know. Some lucky zit poppers make the acquaintance of others that share their hobby. There should be no shame in zit popping, especially if you do it in the privacy of your own home. It is not recommended you obsessively try to pop zits and attract attention to it in public places. This often leads to getting banned from those places! Never let anyone shame you for being a zit popper. Everyone has their quirks and the person who is berating you for being a zit popper is probably a nose picker.

Zit poppers can take comfort that they are not alone. The person standing next to you could quite possibly be a zit fanatic. You just never know, do you? Gardeners are known for taking great pride in a sprouting plant that they have planted and tended. On the other hand, there are zit poppers who will pop no zit before it is time. They know precisely when that zit is ready to explode and they find great satisfaction in that. Gardener-Zit popper; same thing really.

Almost everyone gets zits. Even the most obsessively hygienic person can have zits because they are just a fact of life. Zit poppers are often stereotyped and treated badly when they are just like every other member of society. Everyone has their kinks so don’t let anyone tell you that yours is wrong. Often, the harshest judges of zit poppers have habits much worse than simply releasing a pus-filled skin imperfection. There are eye pickers, nose pickers, ear diggers and all sorts of people with bizarre little habits. Zit poppers unite! Stand proud whether you admit your quirk to the world or not, you should never let anyone generalize about you. So, you’re a zit popper. It could be worse. You could be a serial killer. Hold your head up high and keep on blasting those zits. It is said that 3 out of every 4 people is a zit popper. Of course, it is also said that 75% of statistics are made up on the spot.