Spammers welcome me home

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Kirk M

Once upon a time there was the Internet. Then came the World Wide Web (WWW). And later there were blogs and with the blogs came the comment spam. And at first the comment spam was written by human spam generators usually writing in some sort of faked broken English that made you think the comment spam was actually written by someone named Abeen Mazoud Bizaar or some other such foreign type name. These human spam generators were paid plenty of ~~Rubles~~ dough to do this.

Then came the spambots. Little software type robots that wrote the same type of broken English comment spam only worse. It replaced the human spam generators that had been writing comment spam thus saving the owners of said spam operation lot’s of ~~Rubles~~ dough. This type of comment spam made you think that Abeen Mazoud Bizaar was living in a place called ‘Merry Meadows’.

Then came Aksimet and other such plugins that could be installed into blogs. These plugins went out and killed all the little spambots and things were quiet for awhile. But then came the human spam generators again only this was a whole new generation of them. They weren’t like the old models. And these new upgraded human spam generators have gone out of their way to welcome me home from the hospital.

All sorts of warm and wonderful comments have come my way from real estate agents in Ireland, time share folks in England, housing developers in Death Valley and someone selling vacation homes in India named Abeen Mazoud Bizaar.

Wonderful, nicely worded (time share) comments wishing me a fast and painless recovery, others from those kind (real estate) folks that are keeping me in their prayers, (products for dogs) people who tell me about having their own surgery and not to worry, things will mend—all sorts of delightful comments with caring and compassion just oozing out the sides of my comment boxes that just made me feel all warm inside.

I really hated to delete them.

So to all those real estate. time share, vacation homes and dog products type folks out there who took the time to actually read my “I’m back” post and write such kind and thoughtful words, I am truly sorry that I had to trash your comments. Spam is spam I’m afraid and no matter how nice it sounds or how relevant it may be…it’s ultimate destination is the cyber-toilet. Thank you for not writing more than a dozen of them.

Have a nice day though.

Devils among the children

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Kirk M

I was considering writing up a post on how quickly things in the world can change if you’re not there to observe them. Not that your presence would have any effect at all as to how these events came about or turned out but it’s the lack of being there that makes the difference. From a personal point of view I mean.

And so I was considering writing up a post about all these things that had changed during my 11 days spent at the VA hospital in Boston however I found myself up against an occurrence that simply would not give way and unfortunately, until now, I haven’t quite been able to grasp the significance and utter appall at what has been finally brought kicking and screaming into the light of day for everyone to see. And I still can’t grasp the enormity of it.

The torture of Ireland’s children.

Children now grown. Children who were put under the so-called care of organizations under the Catholic Church such as the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy among many others where no mercy or care was ever shown and severe beatings (torture?) and sexual abuse occurred on a daily basis. I simply don’t have the words to describe what I’ve read in the May 20th, 2009 report by The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse which was established on 23 May 2000 in order to do the following:

To hear evidence of abuse from persons who allege they suffered abuse in childhood, in institutions, during the period from 1940 or earlier, to the present day;
to conduct an inquiry into abuse of children in institutions during that period and, where satisfied that abuse occurred, to determine the causes, nature, circumstances and extent of such abuse; and
to prepare and publish reports on the results of the inquiry and on its recommendations in relation to dealing with the effects of such abuse.

The report covers the following periods:

The period covered by the Investigation Committee Inquiry, ‘the relevant period’, is from 1936 to the present. However, the complaints come mostly from a period during which large scale institutionalization was the norm, which was, in effect, the period between the Cussen Report (1936) and the Kennedy report (1970).

The report is a long and in depth study but it’s readable for the most part. I strongly suggest that you at least read the following pages in order to get a further understanding of the kind of utter horror and terror these children lived with while under the “care” of these Catholic institutions in Ireland. Care that was supposed to be provided by the brothers and sisters of the institutions named in the report.

Everyday life experiences (male witnesses)

Record of abuse (male witnesses)

Everyday life experiences (female witnesses)

Record of abuse (female witnesses)

At this point I have to stop. There was quite a bit more to this post but in the end I wiped it all out—it was inadequate. I’m quite surprised that I’ve just run out of words on this subject. It’s not that I don’t have extremely strong feelings on the subject of abused children, I most certainly do but perhaps that’s the reason for having to stop here.

All I know right now is that The Irish government is now working hard at not doing anything about this at all with the one exception of doing their utmost best to protect these habit wearing demons from hell from being named. And, of course, official denials from representatives of some of the organizations mentioned in the report of any wrong doing, blah. blah, blah.

And the above commission was only established in 2000? Little late on the scene isn’t it?

Unbelievable, but sadly predictable. And even sadder is the fact that these kind of institutional abuses were not just isolated to the Emerald Island. Not by a long shot.

I’ve provided the links, read them and the rest of the report (if you wish) for yourselves and come to your own conclusions. My heart goes out to all of those who suffered at the hands of these sadistic creatures. May you find closure someday.

Back from surgery alive—I think

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Kirk M

I’m Back! After 11 total days in Boston, 9 days in post-op and 4 days recovery at home before I felt able to sit at my computer for any length of time, I’m back. Now just ask me if I’m glad to be home. Go ahead…ask me.

There is. of course, quite a lot to write about as far as my adventures in post operative care are concerned but as this would make for one very long post I believe that I’ll divide things up a bit. With the way I’m currently feeling I really don’t believe I could tolerate sitting in this desk chair for the next 18 hours it would probably take to type it all out.

Grandad contacted me shortly after I arrived home and asked if they (the surgeons) had perhaps left anything metal within me that I might have noticed. He was worried about future border crossings in sensitive countries and airport security and the like. It would definitely be a problem to our “business” if they had. I let him know that there was no need to worry in that I seem to have come back 20 pounds lighter than when I left. I mean to talk to my surgeon about that come the beginning of June. How on earth could they actually find 20 pounds of anything to remove from a 147 lb, 5’10” man? I want it back!

In the meantime this surgery that I had has left me with the most peculiar sensation in my center regions. It feels like everything below mid-chest to just above the top of my legs now belongs to someone else. Especially when I’m eating or drinking something. Everything that goes down my gullet appears to be taking a detour of sorts to my stomach. And a shorter one at that. There’s also a lump in my throat where my surgeon had to use brute force to in order to shove an NG tube through my nose, down my throat and into my stomach. I asked her not to describe what “brute force” meant since I figured I had enough to deal with without having that mental image on my mind. Just glad I wasn’t around for the experience.

She also tells me that my mid-regions should return from wherever they went in a couple more weeks and I should begin feeling more like I own my entire body rather than just parts of it. The lump in my throat should heal up by then too so things should go down a bit more smoothly. It’s nice to have something to look forward to isn’t it?

Oh hell, my newly rearranged body is calling for a change in position (get moving or else!) so I’ll leave you here with some basic statistics:

# of days in Boston: 11
# of days post-op: 9
# of IV’s (total) stuck into my arms: 7
# of days without food: 7
# of incisions: 5 (small ones)
# of holes in my fingers (sugar checks): Lost count after 27
# of belly sticks (insulin and heparin): Way too many.
# of hours stuck in a Honda Pilot being assaulted by satellite radio mostly consisting of a Yankees game at massively high volume (ride home): 5
# of times I thank the “powers that be” for allowing me to survive the above trip with my sanity intact: I’m still thanking ‘em—let you know.

Okay, that’s it for now as I must find some lunch (small meals, several times daily—I feel like a Hobbit) and then attempt a walk.

Damn! It’s good to home!

Surgery | The Game’s Afoot

Posted on May 2, 2009 by Kirk M

The word has been given. Surgery will take place on Wednesday, May 6th. Yes, that’s this coming Wednesday and no other. My lovely lady will be hauling my sure to be comatose self to my “local” VA at the wee hour of 4:30 Monday morning so I can catch the 7:00 AM VA shuttle to the Boston out of my “local” VA down in White River Jct, VT.

Now then, I was going to write a much longer post about all this and all the calls that I received from Boston that changed my plans 3 times in just one day however, I decided against it. The first paragraph sums it up nicely and I plan to post a short note before Sunday comes to a close so why repeat myself?

One thing though. I don’t like the fact that I now have to pack for a two day stay at the Huntington House (the VA lodging facility on the Boston VA campus) where I didn’t initially but what the heck, might as well go with the flow rather than try to swim upstream when the current’s too strong. I see massive boredom ensuing though.

Ever watch basic cable? I mean really. You can only watch Hell’s Kitchen so many times you know.

Perhaps the VA Canteen sells netbooks? Nah, probably not. And if they did they would most likely charge too much.

Edit: Looks like I won’t have time to write up another post as it’s getting late and there’s still some of the packing to finish amongst other things like printing out copies of the med schedule, checking food items, medications, this, that and the “other thing”. And making double sure that one of the cats didn’t decide to hide out in my carry all in hopes of coming with me. Can’t ever trust those guys not to pull a fast one.

So wish me luck all. I won’t be able to post any updates to the blog while I’m there since I’m not “mobile” in any way shape or form but Laurie will be posting updates to Facebook for those of you that have accounts and have us as friends (Sorry–no Twitter). I’ll ask her to update my account as well. I’m afraid there’s no current way to publish these updates to the blog or no way I could find anyway, Sorry about that.

Until then…