A BIT OF EVERYTHING HERE: We are having scattered showers and thunderstorms here in our happy little burg today, which makes me wonder whether or not the lexicographical skills of the meteorological staff at radio station WTF [CLASSIC ROCK N’ROLL FOR THE VALLEY AND OUR HAPPY LITTLE BURG, ALL DAY ALL NIGHT ROCK WITH WTF!!!] are entirely up to snuff. As I understand the concept, scattered showers are patches of light to moderate rain that may occur here and there in a more or less random pattern throughout a certain geographic region. My understanding of this concept comes from the meaning of the word scattered, which meant, the last time I looked in a dictionary, to occur at usually random intervals rather than all together, and that of the word showers, meaning a light fall of rain, sleet, or other precipitation. So it was this understanding of the term that I went forward with my plans today, only to find that my understanding of the term and the meteorologists’ understanding of the term were not the same. First, the scattered showers involved seemed to be damn near everywhere, which would seem to contradict the meaning of scattered, and second, the showers themselves, while not of Noachic intensity, came down with enough alacrity to wash the pigeon crap off my car in no time flat. While I appreciate the free car wash; getting a free anything in today’s economy is a good thing, no two ways about it; I could have skipped the drenching I took getting into the egregious mold pit wherein I labor for my daily bread. I wore light colored trousers today, so by the time I got into the building they looked like I’d spent the day peeing on my leg and telling me it was raining, as opposed to the other way around, which is what happened.

My apologies, but since I wrote the above about two weeks ago the weather has improved tremendously in this neck of the woods; it is sunny and warm outside, with very little humidity; but as the weather has gotten better over the past two weeks the state of my health, an always dubious proposition to begin with, has gotten worse. At the moment, I am waiting for my doctor to come back from vacation in whatever Third World hellhole he originally came from so as to find out whether my current state of more or less permanent discomfort is the result of rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, gout, or Lyme disease. The last of these is the current favorite here in our happy little burg, especially with me, as it is a disease treatable with antibiotics. After Lyme comes gout, which is a disease one can treat with changes in diet and some medication, albeit said treatment will no doubt come with a visit from my grandmother from heaven, her dwelling place. My grandmother was an intensely devout Roman Catholic, but her social views were a product of her time and upbringing as the daughter of a stevedore in Liverpool, and could verge on the positively Red in certain matters. One of these matters was the gout, a disease she held to be a rich man’s disease and one no child [or grandchild] of hers could ever contract. I learned all of this one summer when my father came down with the gout while Grandma was vacationing with us. That the news upset her would be one of the greater understatements of the family’s history; I am still trying to figure out how my father managed to survive those two months [or was it three? I forget now] without Grandma killing him or him killing her.

The two least desired alternatives, of course, are the ones that friends and neighbors insist on telling me are controllable these days. Permit me to say that as a diabetic I’ve already had my fill of incurable but controllable diseases and that I would prefer to have a disease that I can get rid of entirely in one fell intravenous swoop. The clap comes immediately to mind, the clap being a disease you can enjoy contracting and then enjoy getting rid of, although the morning after you acquire the problem can be a bit of a drip. Since my life does not work in this manner, the most desirable of the bad options is probably not going to happen and I will be stuck with the least desirable of these none too desirable options, rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that not only runs in the family, it has its own racetrack. In any case, please forgive the dearth of posts hereabout; it has not been for lack of ideas, laziness, writer’s block, or all the other usual excuses for not buckling down and getting on with the work that I usually inflict on the readership. This time around it’s because I have had other things on my mind recently. As soon as the dust settles down around here, I will continue onwards and upwards, and I thank you all for your patience.

UPDATE: The tests are back, boys and girls, and it's definitely rheumatoid arthritis...shit.