I’m terribly out of date on the blog. I guess it doesn’t really matter, considering I write here more for myself than anything else.

I’ve come to realize something. When one has a chronic illness, there is a major part of the brain dedicated to dealing with it’s management. Except you don’t think about it so much; you just do it. It becomes a part of your daily ‘routine’.

I never put any thought to that until recently…because I’ve started feeling better.

I throw the word ‘better’ around in relative terms; ‘better’ for me might be ‘borderline intolerable’ for you. However what I do know is this; over the past almost two months since I’ve started a new medical routine with a new doctor and, more recently, started eating better…I’ve felt the best I have in almost 2 years.

I’ve explained it to a couple of other people through a computer processor metaphor. When you are running Windows or OSX, you’re dedicating system resources…RAM, processor power, hard drive space, etc. to keeping that running. Same with your body; you breathe, your blood flows, your eyes focus…all of those subconscious actions happen whether you want them to or not.

Then there are the things you are actively doing…working, riding your bike, having a conversation, shooting heroin. Same with a computer. There are things you want it to do beyond just running Windows/OSX. You want to use Word, play solitaire or surf the Web for porn. Those are all processes that require extra resources. The more processes you run, the more resources you use…and your computer starts to degrade in performance.

Now…what happens when you get sick? You don’t WANT to get sick; you just do, and so your brain and your body start to combat that with resources, thereby taking away performance from everything else. What happens when you’re chronically ill? It’s like a computer virus that your virus software can’t get rid of, and so the virus keeps plugging away at what it’s doing, soaking up resources and making your computer difficult…sometimes impossible…to use.

Sometimes you can reboot the computer and things are set right for awhile.

When you’re chronically ill, rebooting is sleeping. You’re shutting down all of your other processes in order for your system to concentrate on healing and helping to repair the problem.

The final thing I’ll ask you to imagine is waking up one day to use your computer and you realize that, after using it for a bit, it’s running more smoothly and able to do things quicker. You look and realizethe virus seems to be be going dormant.

That’s kind of what’s happening to me now. Before, I’d say I was at about 65-70% every day. That depletion becomes worse because I generally can’t sleep. I wake up 2-3 times a night in pain and rushing to the restroom. I also have a hard time eating. Naturally, because I can’t hold onto anything, my nutrition levels are pretty poor. And it HURTS to eat sometimes, so I’ll skip meals to avoid feeling worse. And this is FURTHER compounded by the fact that, at work, I have to be organized, thinking and mindful of what I say and do pretty much all day long.

Now, I feel like I have at least 15-20% MORE power freed up, and it’s CRAZY. My brain is going haywire. I don’t feel like I can sit idle because I have so much going through my head. I also feel like I can do things much more deliberately and with more patience. I’ve noticed that my tolerance for traffic is higher, that I can do things more deliberately without anxiety and rushing (walking the dogs, for example), and that I can be around crowds without feeling like I want to explode.

That doesn’t mean I’m not wary. I still don’t trust my body. Actually, that’s a little worse. Before, I could generally predict with some fairly routine accuracy if I needed to go running to the restroom. There’s some comfort in that kind of inconvenience, believe it or not. Now that feeling is gone, and without those expectations, I’m left wondering if my body will all of a sudden decide to sabotage me when I don’t expect it. I’m hoping, though, that if this keeps up, that I can start to relax even more.

Note how I said “if this keeps up”. That’s the other part I struggle with.

On one hand, I know that I should just relax and take advantage of this time without worrying about “if” it’s going to stick around. I need to convince myself, make my brain believe, that it WILL and that I shouldn’t worry about it. If I just keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll be fine.

On the other hand, there’s that bittersweet voice that says, “This can’t last.”  I hate that. It reminds me of what I’ve become, which is a little bit cynical. That same voice also urges me to prepare for when it all goes downhill again.

As always, there’s the search to find the balance between those two points, and oddly enough, I feel like I’m working towards it by doing some of the things I’ve been doing. For example, I’ve found some strange pleasure and meditative qualities in organizing the areas of our house that have been unorganized since moving in. I’ve organized our closets and created a place for everything. I spend my day at my job attempting to predict what’s going to happen and putting enough organization in place to where if something happens, I can handle it quickly and easily. The tools and resources I need are in places where I can find them immediately. I figured I’d apply that same mentality to everything around the house. I’ve been keeping everything pretty tidy.

Part of this is because I’m also bored. Christy is out of town so I have a lot of extra time on my hands.

So here I am writing because I’ve organized the crap out of everything. I feel like I have a lot of different things I could do, which is an awesome feeling and something I’m not used to. I struggle to do some of the most mundane things by the end of the day because it’s everything I can do to just function all day through the chronic pain. Now that this pain isn’t there, I’m finding that there are so many things I not only CAN do…but I WANT to do.

Here’s to hoping this lasts for a while. Guess I’ll go build something now.

I’m very thankful that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet good quality people with sense, values, good nature and at least half a brain. Thank you for being my friends and acquaintainces.

That said, I am left wondering…but unfortunately not surprised…how it is that for every person I’ve met who fits the above description, there must be at least 100 complete muppets.

Case in point…

Yesterday, Christy tells me that at school one of her fellow teachers was walking around and heard some wailing that sounded like a cat. After some closer inspection, the teacher came upon a bucket where the noise was coming from. The bucket had two heavy logs on top of it. Removing the logs and lifting the bucket revealed a small, emaciated, bleeding, upset 6 week old pitbull puppy.

I mean, I guess the previous owner had the pup’s best interest in mind. They left it with a small food and water bowl (empty) and a little piece of carpet for it to lay on. That was sure thoughtful and nice. Of course, the pup was wallowing around in it’s own bodily functions.

Hey, but…you know…no big deal. It’s just a stupid animal.

But then there’s the bleeding thing. Beyond being left in the cold…under a bucket…with no food and water…lounging around on a urine/feces soaked piece of carpet…lo and behold, the little guy looks like he’s sans a couple of ears.

The fine individual who owned this baby animal previously decided they wanted to perform the surgical procedure of having the puppy’s ears clipped. And when said individual finished with his/her handiwork and saw that he/she screwed it up, they decided that they didn’t want Mr. Scrappy McPuppy anymore. And so we have the situation described above.

What is ear clipping, you ask? For the sake of someone happening to stumble on this who is wondering if they should/should not have their puppy’s ears clipped, I’ll describe it in some detail. If you’re faint of heart, you probably don’t want to read the following description.

THE ART OF EAR CLIPPING - A Fairy Tale by Andrew Geonetta

Let’s cut to the chase; clipping the ears invovles cutting about 1/3 to 2/3rds of it off. Imagine, if you will, what it feels like to have someone flick the upper part of your ear when it’s really cold out. Now imagine someone taking a sharpened object to them. While anesthesia is (obviously) involved in the procedure, it’s still a painful, traumatic thing for a puppy to experience. They generally wail and cry for a couple of days after. And the younger the better; after 10 weeks, the chances of things going well lessen considerably.

Then there’s the healing part. It takes anywhere from two to three weeks for that to happen. During that time, you have the pleasant experiecne of removing the scabs from the ear. Once that is done, you put an antibacterial gel on the wounds. This happens several times a day.

Did I mention that this is a small puppy we’re talking about?

But at the end of the two weeks, the ears don’t just magically stand up; you have to make them do it.  There are a couple of different ways to make this happen, but normally, you take the ears and place wooden posts next to them (you ‘rack’ them). You then take surgical tape and wrap it around the ear and the post. I’ve seen it where some will actually run a stitch between the two ears to keep them ‘even’. During this time, you’re basically manipulating the ear cartilage to harden in a different way than it was meant to. This whole process can take anywhere from a month to almost an entire year. And if it doesn’t harden correctly, after all of that pain and suffering, the ears sometimes won’t even stand.

THE END

Why is this done? Well, when certain breeds were (and still are) used as guards or for fighting, it helped them to hear a little better and left them one less thing for an attacker/invader to latch onto and potentially injure. Same with tail docking. For guard dogs or true ‘working dogs’, fine. I get it. Otherwise, it’s just a stupid “cosmetic practice” that has been banned in many European countries.

For some pitbull owners (and we both know who those types are), the reasoning behind having the ears clipped is to ‘make ‘em look tough’. Great idea. Let’s take an already stigmatized breed and give the common non-canine educated public even more of a reason to hate it.

I don’t understand how you can look at an animal and not be able to see that it is a living breathing thing that is ALIVE and has FEELINGS. While those feelings are certainly not as developed or realized as a human’s, that doesn’t mean a damn thing. A dog might not be able to explain the concept of love and loyalty to you in any way (and really, can a human truly do that either?), but they feel them and their instinct naturally drives them to the ‘idea’. Humans think that just because they can put words to these ‘ideas’ that it somehow makes it more relevant and meaninful to them. That just isn’t true.

One of my favorite things in the world is to listen to my dog Macy breathe. If you have a dog (or any animal for that matter) I encourage you to take 5 minutes, lay next to them and just listen to them be alive. It makes you realize how awesome life is, how simple it should be and how much you should appreciate a living being that has the capacity to love and care about you more than itself.

You can learn an incredible amount about yourself from an animal. Stripping away arrogance, judgement, self-focus, and any number of other distractions results in realizing the pleasure that simplicity brings. It allows you to love without bias and appreciate the concept of being in the moment.

Love your animals and treat them with the respect they deserve.

This is not a review just yet. It’s just me waiting for this game to load onto the PS3. What a pain in the ass. If I had one complaint about the PS3, it’s the having to wait for a game to load onto the hard drive. It’s a little annoying…

Anyway, so I’m finally getting around to playing this…and as you’re waiting for it to load the data it needs to on the hard drive, it’s showing this looping movie of Snake smoking. And smoking. And smoking. And when he’s done smoking and puts it in his little environmentally conscious portable cigarette butt disposal, he lights up another one. Again and again.

Now, it’s kind of absurd because, really, it’s obnoxious to watch someone chain smoke. The other problem here is that, it’s not only showing this, but next to it, it’s popping up these little stupid messages. They talk about how you shouldn’t leave the disc in high heat…or that if you play the game and experience pain you should stop. But my favorite one is something like, “You shouldn’t litter!  It’s wrong!  Dispose your cigarette butts in ashtrays!”

But absolutely nothing about how smoking is hazardous to your health…

Japanese game manufacturers are AWESOME.

In the continued battle for the recapture of my large intestine from the evil clutches of ulcerative colitis, I’ve decided to try acupuncture. Why all of a sudden? A couple of reasons…

First, about 3 months ago, I got booted from the gastrointerologist I was seeing. While one might think this is a bad thing, I was actually working on getting out of there to begin with. The reasons why are contained in this review I wrote on yelp.com. And that review is the main reason why I got booted. A while after I wrote it, the doctor (Chia-Wen Hsu - or, as he says, Kevin Shoe), found it and basically told me that I should see someone else. I asked to see another doctor there, but he apparently ‘denied me’. Draw your own conclusions. Note that it doesn’t bother me much and I don’t harbour any ill-feelings towards Dr. Hsu or the other doctor. Really, the crux of the problem was with the staff…but again, you can read about that in the review if you like.

I found another doctor pretty quickly, and while I’ve only seen him once, it seems like this will be better experience. I’ll say that I’m not impressed with the office when compared to the offices of Austin Gastrointerology. Austin Gastro is an awfully nice place to go, but I’d much rather get an overall higher level of treatment than feel like I’m an inconvenience or a bother to the staff.

The second reason is because, for the amount of drugs I’m taking and the cost of them, I don’t really feel a whole heck of a lot improved. I don’t fault them, as this stupid disease is different for everyone. Mine just happens to be particularly annoying and non-responsive to all of the conventional treatments I’ve had so far.

And so that’s where the decision for acupuncture came into play. For the longest time, I’ve contemplated trying it. I’ve only been apprehensive because I’ve had a hard time justifying doing something that ‘hasn’t been medically proven’. I changed my attitude when I came to the harsh realization that the ‘medically proven’ stuff wasn’t (and still isn’t) working as well as it should…so what the heck wold I have to lose if I went down the non-medically proven path?

I had my first visit on Friday, January 16th, at a place called The Austin Acupuncture Clinic. It also happens to be a school of acupuncture. I felt pretty good about my decision when the doctor who treated me was A) 100% certifiable Chinese and B) I could hardly understand a word he was saying. Not that that him being Chinese makes a difference, as I’m positive there are tons and tons of super-competent [insert nationality here] acupuncturists as well. I guess it’s a mental thing. You know…if you’re going to go get some ancient treatment that originated in an Asian country, then there MUST be something to it when the doctor from said Asian country is giving you the treatment, right? Right…

After asking me a bunch of questions and nodding critically, he explained that he didn’t think acupuncture would be enough, that I would have to take herbal supplements as well. I nodded and said, “Fine.” He then proceeded to tell me exactly where he’d insert the needles. There would be one in my forehead, four in my stomach, several in each hand, several in each leg and several in each foot. After explaining this, he then proceeded with sticking me full of surgical steel. He’d take a needle, place it where it needed to go and then ‘flick’ it. He’d then turn it a little, pull it and ask if I felt it. It didn’t hurt at all. It wasn’t even uncomfortable. One second there were no needles jutting from my skin, and the next there were. No big deal at all…

After that was finished, he turned a couple of heat lamps on over my midsection and my feet, turned the lights off and left the room. He came back after about 15 minutes, made a few adjustments to the needles and then left again. Overall, it was pretty damn releaxing.

Once everything was done and he removed the needles, he gave me a sack full of herbal tea, instructing me to boil it in water, split it into two parts and then drink one in the morning and one in the evening, both after having eaten something.

If I could change one thing, that’s what I’d change. I would rather be pincushioned full of needles than make a conscious decision to drink this fabulously horrific tea. It looks innocent enough before you brew it. There are 13 invididual little packets in 6 separate plastic baggies, each packet being some different dried herb or root. I feel like some kind of ancient alchemist conconcting a curative brew whenever I make it, cutting open each packing and dumping in the stuff contained within. I keep expecting a small bright explosion or a colorful djinn to come roiling up from the liquid in my teapot everytime I dump a little packet into the mix.

But that’s probably just my overactive imagination.

I haven’t explained why having to drink this stuff is what I’d change. If you haven’t guessed, it tastes like absolute dung…like freshly served bitter, wet, rotting garbage and socks worn for 5 days without being washed. Ironically, it smells kind of good. It has an ‘earthy’ scent to it, kind of like if you were to combine the scents of gingerbread, a little bit of chocolate and something spicy. It even looks like it’s just going to be a very strong rich black tea. But the taste…Jesus, I can feel my gag reflex working ust thinking about it. I choked down about half a cup of it the first time and had to lay down because I started feeling nauseated. The second time I managed to drink a little more because I added some sugar.  The past couple of times I’ve been able to drink an entire cup, but that’s because I’ve doctored with a packet of Chai tea and some honey. I’ll boil the concoction up like you’d boil regular old water for tea and then I pour it over the Chai bag and honey. The Chai, being pretty strong, lessens the bitterness and the honey makes it almost pleasant. But there’s still that nasty undertone, kind of like after you’ve swallowed a pill and you burp. You don’t quite taste the pill because you wash it down with water, but burping brings some of the dissolved contents back up. I’m hoping that the doctor will not tell me that what I’m doing will ruin the efficacy of the straight brew. However, if he does, I guess I’m prepared to just take it like a man. If anyone else can do it, so can I. And, at this point, I’m willing to try just about anything short of severely injuring myself in order to make things better.

So far, things feel a little improved. I’ve managed two nights of sleeping through the entire night without waking up. The mornings have still remained a little rough, but hopefully that will subside with time and continued treatment.

system: Xbox 360

one sentence description: 1st person parkour goodness with style.

graphics: 8.5 | sound: 9| playability: 7 | challenge: 10 | value: 9 | bias: 8.5

total: 8.6

the low-down

Let’s start with the fact that I like this game more than the number I’ve rated it might indicate.  Let me also state that this is absolutely not a game for everyone, which I think is why, despite the far-ab0ve-average reviews it has received, it has not sold as well as EA expected.

Step into the world of Faith, a ‘messenger’ who leaps across the expanses of large buildings in leaps, rolls and bounds. She is trained in the art of parkour, which, if you haven’t heard of it, is kind of like an an exercise in urban gymnastics and agility training.

The setting is a dystopian one. The city in which Faith lives is clean and seemingly innocent enough on the surface. Digging deeper reveals a society based on government control. The story is woven inside that world, with Faith becoming embroiled partially through her role, but also because of her sister. Her sister, one of the societal police, is framed for the murder to a well-known politician who appears to have wanted to change things away from this controlled environment.

With that, the plot is set and you’re off. To say the least, it’s a pretty breathtaking experience. Mirror’s Edge does one things absolutely  unlike any other game before it, and that is capturing the feeling of true motion and momentum. Unlike a lot of FPSs, Mirror’s Edge makes you ’self-aware’. In other words, you’re not just some nebulous presence floating around with a couple of hands sticking out to carry items. Rather, if you look down, you will see your legs moving as they should. Your arms move and sway along with the motion of the rest of your body.When you run, you feel like you’re running. It’s like there’s a camera glued directly into the middle of your forehead. It’s a pretty amazing effect. But for those with uneasy stomachs or anyone prone to any kind of motion sickness, this can be disconcerting…even vomit inducing…especially when you’re running full speed towards the edge of a building and decide to attempt to jump across a huge expanse of air…

The graphic style is distinct with a lot of hard clean lines. It’s very beautiful and harsh at the same time. There’s a perilous sense about it for certain, and that is the intended effect. There are many other examples of this subtle dichotomy throughout the game. There’s the calming sound of the wind with the undertones of sirens or announcements for you to ‘not run’ when being chased. There’s calming electronica music playing in the background (when you’re not being chased, of course) while jumping insane, mind-blowing distances through the air. Your vision blurs at the edges as you gain speed, and you can hear Faith breathe as she continues her forward momentum. It creates mood and environment in a far less heavy-handed way than I’ve experienced in other games.

The only ‘bad’ thing graphically is some of the character animation. For a game that touts fluidity and flow, some of the other characters don’t feel like they fit. Celeste, one of Faith’s partners-in-crime, looks a little robotic. There’s an in-game cutscene between Faith and her sister that feels awkward. These strange moments are only amplified by the fact that most of the rest of the cutscenes are handled by very cool hyper-stylized animations.

For all that the game does well, it must be said that it’s extremely challenging, and not in a way that makes it easy for someone to just step right in and feel satisfied. This isn’t bad; it’s just different, and if you go into the experience knowing that, you will be much better off.

The controls are the first large learning curve, as they break your typical FPS convention. Normal FPS control schemes are based around the XYAB buttons, which control jumping or switching weapons or performing some kind of action. Triggers and shoulder buttons would normally be assigned using weapons (primary and secondary actions) or switching them out. Mirror’s Edge has the majority of your controls in the L/R tiggers and the L/R shoulder buttons. If you want to jump or perform an ‘up’ action, you press the left shoulder button.  A ‘down’ action is assigned the left trigger. These are combined with the right shoulder/trigger buttons. So if you want to perform a sliding attack, you would run towards your intended victim, press and hold the left trigger to slide, and then hit the right trigger at the right moment to kick out. If you want to scramble up a wall and hold on, you’d run at the wall and press and hold the left shoulder button. Even opening doors requires you hit the right trigger. The XYAB buttons are hardly used for anything save for disarming an opponent or hitting an elevator button.

The other ‘different’ expectation you should set for yourself is that this is not a run-and-gun FPS. The only way to get weapons is by either disarming an enemy or by finding the occasional handgun on the ground or on a desk. And when you pick them up, you don’t keep them. Once they are out of ammo, you simply drop it.

The primary intent is not to blow as many of your enemies away as possible. It is not to your advantage to charge at 4-5 of your antagonists because they will finish you very quickly. Even if you should happen to gain a weapon, you’ll find that it’s not at all easy to aim and hit an enemy…which, frankly, is more accurate to ‘real life’ than any other FPS game. Your goal is to move, run and generally do anything you can to survive. The second you stop moving is when everything goes downhill. This alone can make things incredibly frustrating, especially given the fact so many games allow a breadth of choice in  your approach to a challenge. This allows the same, but it’s more focused around how you choose to move from place-to-place. In other words, do I run up the ramp, jump over the barbed-wire fence and roll under the large vent shaft for cover or do I vault over a place in the fence where there isn’t barbed wire, run up the side of a wall to the top of a roof and jump over to the next building? It’s all about efficiency of movement through your environment, the same principle used in parkour.

To help you move through your environment, the game uses a simple effect called ‘Runner Vision’. Runner Vision simply highlights the areas which can/should be used for actions/moving in red. Of course, higher difficulty settings result in Runner Vision being turned off, but once you start to recognize where opportunities for movement are, it’s not that big of a deal.

Once you’ve completed the story and feel like you’ve mastered the controls, you can move on to ‘Race’ mode, which is a timetrial-like mode. EA has downloadable content coming out for it which will add some new maps to make runs through.

There really is a lot to like with Mirror’s Edge if you set your expectations correctly. The unique art style, the environment and the rush of consistent movement and making death-defying leaps is what makes the game memorable and worth playing.

pros

• Visually distinct
• Captures the feeling of movement unseen in other FPSs
• Intense, desperate chase scenes
• Very well-crafted level design
• Use of music to induce a mood is excellent
• Race mode provides extra value
• Interesting story conveyed by good voice acting

cons

• Learning curve for the controls is a little intimidating
• Combat is not-at-all easy
• Failing a sequence over and over can be frustrating
• Some of the in-game character animation is not good
• There isn’t much mid-ground in gameplay; you either get it and like it or don’t and hate it