The End of Days and other Miscellany

I was at a doctors' office today - a physicians' clinic, they call it. Their name sounds more impressive.

I work in a sports department. I mean, a sports authors' consortium.

The trip to the doc was for the usual. A flu shot, a hip-replacement, and some Botox. One-stop wintertime shopping.

I'm kidding, obviously. I've already had my flu shot for the year. And my hips are awesome.

It was to see an ear, nose and throat specialist. Why has never been a successful rock band called "Ear, Nose and Throat?" I guess nobody wanted to be thought of as "Nose."

So they took me into a little room with a big chair in the middle and two smaller ones on the side for spouses or parents or kids or coats. Then they had me wait.

Well, I wasn't going to sit in the big chair with nobody there. I mean, how vain would that be? It's like those people who fly in first-class who you can't help but hate unless you're one of them, which I never am. If someone out there has hundreds of thousands of airline mileage points they aren't using, how about forwarding me enough for a couple of first-class upgrades? You'd make a dream come true, you really would.

But that's got nothing do with this story. So I sat in a smaller chair. And waited. For quite a while.

That's no complaint, and I mean that. I hate waiting as much as anyone else. I don't like to wait in line at a dopey discount department store, or at a stop light, or for the cable guy to show up. But doctors? They're trying to help people feel better. If that falls outside a scheduled time-frame, so be it. I'm quite an open-minded person that way, siding with  good health and all.

(I watched Piers Morgan on CNN the other night. I miss Larry King. He was funny. When I want a funny man from the U.K., I'll call Ricky Gervais. Just the name "Piers" is a warning sign that the guy is definitely not funny. I know this stuff.)

Anyway, I didn't have the foresight to bring a book with me to the doctors' office, and the juice on my Android Mesmerize phone (how pompous is something called the "Mesmerize?") got too low to do any Web-browsing without risking losing the battery altogether and missing the important call that I never get, anyway. I never get them because cell phone numbers aren't published. Right?

So I sat there. And tried to act like a normal person, because you never know where hidden cameras might be. The whole world's becoming a casino floor with eyes in the sky and the walls. I feel sorry for you young people out there, because most of your entire lives will be on YouTube. That might sound good now. But flossing, or laughing out loud like a chimp at something on TV that really isn't very funny, or cawing back at crows to try to weird them out -- those aren't things you want to live in perpetuity on the World Wide Web.

Crows, by the way, are the most arrogant of all animals, even humans. Some humans are enormously arrogant, but they lack stamina. Crows are relentlessly arrogant. They think they're so smart, and they always have that attitude. I used to think they were funny, but I was wrong. They aren't.

About 100 crows fell from the sky and died in Sweden earlier this month. Predictably, some latched on to that as a warning the end is near. That was the obligatory link to another site.

I''m not buying that End of Days nonsense. The earth is estimated by scientists to be 4.5 billion years old. You think you're going to be here when it blows up or flames out? Your less-than-110 years out of 4.5 billion includes the year the whole deal goes poof? Compare the odds on that to those of winning Powerball or the Cubs winning the World Series. Then get over yourself.

Anyway, I sat there in the little room in that doctors' clinic. And kind of drifted off to that place between awake and asleep, where your dream mechanism starts to take over.

I don't know about you, but I dream a lot more imaginatively than I think when I'm fully conscious. In fact, it's pretty wild, entertaining, thought-provoking stuff. Which ticks me off. I'd never say "ticks me off" in real life, of course, unless I was trying to be wry. You know, like saying "Golly!" to be charming and remind people of a time from the past instead of saying something, well, foul-mouthed.

Honestly, I get instant headaches when I swear. I think it's a repressed reaction, possibly puritanical. Or else it means I need to see a different specialist.

About dreaming: I get ticked off every time I dream stuff that would make a great movie or novel or video game if I had the ability to flesh it out after I came back to consciousness. Why is it the brain takes off and soars when you're asleep after you spend 16 or 17 hours struggling to make one and one add up to two? One time, brain, give me all you've got while I'm awake. One time!

It never will.

Nothing serious at the doctor, by the way. The surgery's in a couple weeks, and it's very minor. Don't start a panic, people. I'll designate someone to be in command here at the Hlog for the 23 minutes (I swear, the doctor told me 23 minutes) while I'm under the influence of a general anesthetic. I expect all kinds of brilliant, thrilling moments of clarity to rumble around my head while I'm out. Then I'll slowly come to, and it will all be forgotten. Man, that ticks me off.

I'd use a different word than "ticks," but I don't own this site. If I did, I'd just ramble on and on and on and on.