Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
User Journal

Journal mcgrew's Journal: Unhealthy Pursuits 7

Previously: Seven of Nine, or Dors Venabili?

Linda had said that her boyfriend was getting paid Friday, and she would have at least part of the rent. She's two weeks behind.

She wasn't home that night, so I called her. "Did you get that rent money?"

"No, I'm up at the hospital right now. They're going to run some tests."

She's been complaining of stomach pains for quite some time, and I and everyone else has been trying to talk her into seeing a doctor, to no avail. Apparently the pain got so bad she couldn't stand it, or her boyfriend, who works at the hospital, talked her into going to the emergency room.

I forgot all about the rent she owed. "That's good!" I said. "Finally! I'll call you tomorrow to find out how things went."

I'm wondering, do you know anyone with a famous name? Because I know several. There's a guy with my name who's been on Comedy Central and on stage with Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable guy; I remember about fifteen years ago when I saw "my" name in the TV Guide.

I know Robert Blake, but Robert has an artificial leg, having lost his real one in a motorcycle accident, and he didn't murder anyone. I worked with Debbie Gibson, who as far as I know doesn't sing. And Mike Myers and his wife Debbie and their daughter Rachel own Felber's.

I went up to there and asked Mike if I could run a tab, as the God damned mortgage company and Wal Mart together got almost my whole paycheck. I'm glad they built the new super Wal mart on south sixth; the other one on Dirkson is so far away that the price of gas (especially before the economy collapsed and halved the price of gasoline; two months ago it was over four dollars, and it was less than two yesterday) made it uneconomical to go there; any money I'd save over the outrageously priced County Market went to transporting the damned food. Mike said I could run a tab; smart man, more money for him.

I sat down next to Connie (who everyone calls "mom") and Brenda and Donnie, and bought them shots. They have shots called "apple pie" that actually taste like apple pie, for only a dollar. Later they asked for a ride home, and gave me a few bucks for gasoline. I went back up there, and the guy who threatened to beat my ass because his kids' mother proposed marriage to me was there. I sat down next to him and bought him a beer.

I gave him a ride home, too. So now I have a new friend, Mark. The guy whose woman asked me to marry her!

I went home myself and went to bed.

The next morning I did some mundane stuff like washing dishes and clothes and watched an episode of STNG, which I pirated with a VCR fifteen years ago (IINM I have all the episodes of that and DS9). I'm probably breaking copyright law right now just mentioning the shows.

I'm reading a pirate copy of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, which is available on the internet under a Creative Commons license. I was pissed at Lessig for a long time over losing the "Eldred" case; that's the one where the Supreme Court said that "limited" means whatever Congress says it means and therefore the Bono Act was Constitutional. Chapter thirteen fittingly talks about the case.

I've finally forgiven him for Eldred. Hell, I'm sure he did his best. Is it a crime to ask you kind folks to shoot the Supreme Court Justices? Well ok, I won't. Shooting people isn't nice, please don't shoot them. Even if they do deserve it. Because Violence is, as Mayor Hardin says, the last refuge of the incompetent. And a blaster points both ways. Or as Hober Mallow said, "It's a poor blaster that doesn't point both ways". The fictional Mallow could have been talking about copyright law.

Lessig says in Creative Culture:

Wars of prohibition are nothing new in America. This one is just something more extreme than anything we've seen before. We experimented with alcohol prohibition, at a time when the per capita consumption of alcohol was 1.5 gallons per capita per year. The war against drinking initially reduced that consumption to just 30 percent of its preprohibition levels, but by the end of prohibition, consumption was up to 70 percent of the preprohibition level. Americans were drinking just about as much, but now, a vast number were criminals. We have launched a war on drugs aimed at reducing the consumption of regulated narcotics that 7 percent (or 16 million) Americans now use. That is a drop from the high (so to speak) in 1979 of 14 percent of the population. We regulate automobiles to the point where the vast majority of Americans violate the law every day. We run such a complex tax system that a majority of cash businesses regularly cheat. We pride ourselves on our "free society," but an endless array of ordinary behavior is regulated within our society. And as a result, a huge proportion of Americans regularly violate at least some law.

This state of affairs is not without consequence. It is a particularly salient issue for teachers like me, whose job it is to teach law students about the importance of "ethics." As my colleague Charlie Nesson told a class at Stanford, each year law schools admit thousands of students who have illegally downloaded music, illegally consumed alcohol and sometimes drugs, illegally worked without paying taxes, illegally driven cars. These are kids for whom behaving illegally is increasingly the norm. And then we, as law professors, are supposed to teach them how to behave ethically--how to say no to bribes, or keep client funds separate, or honor a demand to disclose a document that will mean that your case is over. Generations of Americans--more significantly in some parts of America than in others, but still, everywhere in America today--can't live their lives both normally and legally, since "normally" entails a certain degree of illegality.

It's an excellent book. It succinctly summarizes a lot of stuff I argue here at slashdot, and does a lot better job of it than I do. I don't agree with him about regulation, though - outlawing an activity is not regulation. Liquor production is regulated, marijuana production is not. I read recently that they've found Viagra in marijuana, but regulations prohibit putting Viagra in beer.

You can't regulate an illegal activity.

When I finished watching the pirated STNG episode and re-reading a few chapters of my forty year old dogeared copy of Foundation with its brown pages (why don't they make paperback books with acid-free paper?) I drove up to Felber's; it was about two by then.

Halfway threough my first beer, Felber's phone rang. It was for me. "They know to find me at my second home" I muttered, and took the reciever. It was Tami, calling from outside my house. She'd have called my phone, but it's out of minutes so she had Todd drive her by my house. She didn't come by Felber's because she's not welcome there anymore.

"They admitted Linda, You have to get up to the hospital right away!" She told me the room number, I finished the beer and went up there.

Linda's boyfriend was there as I went in, but was just leaving - he was working, and on his break.

Linda has cancer. She has a growth on her gall bladder bigger than the gall bladder, and three more growths on her intestine. It's inoperable. "The prognosis is poor", which is medical talk for "There's nothing we can do. She's gonna die, Jim".

I just lost one friend, Ralph, and I'm going to lose another. Ralph was elderly, but Linda's ten years younger than I am. I shed more than a few tears with her. It makes me feel old, outliving friends, especially friends who are younger than me.

I called Charlie, who'd moved in with Stuart when Linda and Tami had moved in with me; they had been friends until Linda and especially Tami had gotten her thrown out of Ralph's when Ralph was in the hospital dying, and couldn't stand having them there. Things changed, of course, at least with respect to Linda; Charlie asked me to give her a ride to the hospital. Linda wanted me to bring some underwear from the house, and I wanted to eat, so I told her I'd call when I was ready to go back up to the hospital. I went home and cooked a steak and potato and made a salad, and went back up to Felber's for a shot of the cheap rotgut whiskey my late former father in law, who I drank with often even after I divorced his daughter, used to drink.

I was talking with Debbie, Mike's wife, and asked her how well she knew Kathy, the tall attractive blonde who looks like a librarian who I'd asked out to dinner.

Debbie knew her well - Kathy had grown up with Mike, Debbie's husband. I asked if she was a good person.

"Yes, she's a real good person. She's had some tragedy in her life, but she's a good person."

"She's not on drugs or anything?"

"Oh no," Debbie said. "But she has AIDS."

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Unhealthy Pursuits

Comments Filter:
  • Aids is a manageable disease nowadays, and people who thought they'd die within a few years are enjoying a relatively normal life with it.

    • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      Yes, which bodes well for Kathy - except she's going to have even a harder time finding a life partner than I do, and I've about given up.

      I can't risk a disease that costs a fortune to combat, that you have to fight every single day for the rest of your life. I don't mind another friend, I need all the friends I can get (don't we all). But I saw the possibility of a lover, a partner, but it now seems impossible.

      Maddeningly, there was a slashdot item I saw after posting this journal about a cure for AIDS tha

  • Seriously, there are times when I wonder what you did to piss off something nasty on the other side. In all seriousness though, I feel for your situation, and I do hope that it gets better.
  • but damn! I'm sorry to hear about Linda again.

    Concerning AIDS, from my understanding they've found some people are immune, but they're still not completely sure why. The best guess is the presence of several proteins which protect T-cells from the virus. I suppose you could always get tested for the presence of these?
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2283351.stm [bbc.co.uk]
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/120766.php [medicalnewstoday.com]

    I'm not sure what I would do if I met a great girl who turned out to have a serious disease. I co

    • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      I have to agree; friends is fine but romance is completely out of the question. Unless of course I found that I was immune.

      As she's only two years younger than me chances are I'd outlive her even if she didn't have AIDS.

      Death and more death - a Felber's regular died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack yesterday. He was only 43.

"Free markets select for winning solutions." -- Eric S. Raymond

Working...