Not that I’ve become morbid lately — I feel lucky that I got a potential problem taken care of before it became a crisis — but this story by Mike Celizic is inspiring and terrifying at the same time. He’s a journalist who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, knows his life expectancy is now measured in weeks, and has gone public with a cancer journal to describe his last days. It’s brave stuff, and the kind of courageous end we should all aspire to.

Note, of course, that the Christian cowards have infested the comments with come-to-Jesus declarations. Let’s be better than that: a person should be able to face his end in his own way, without mobs of evangelizers trying to push fear and unwarranted promises and irrelevant philosophies on the fellow.

(via UBC Botanical Garden)

My day began well enough. I’d gotten up early, got some writing done, and was headed into the office to do some prep work for classes, which start this week. My phone rang just as I had my key in the office door — which was cutting it close. My office is an AT&T dead zone, and a few more seconds and I would have been in blissful obliviousness for the rest of the day. It was my doctor’s assistant. I will paraphrase her words slightly.

“We just got the results of your tests from last week. Your heart is a shriveled black lump starved of charity, decency, charm, and kindness,” she said, “a gristly godless clot of marginally functional fibers. You need to go back to Abbott for more tests, and the doctors want to crack your chest and marvel at you.”

“So what else is new? My students are used to that and expect me to be lashing them with fear and pain starting Wednesday…and my black heart is an asset to this job,” I said. “Maybe I can pop in for these tests this weekend. Any chest-cracking can wait for the end of the term and Christmas break, when I wouldn’t be using my heart anyway.”

“No,” she said, “now.”

And I waffled and weaseled and tried to argue with her that this could not be, I had a great deal of work to do right now, and I couldn’t possibly just drop out at the start of the term, and besides, I felt fine. And I bickered, and she exasperatedly told me no way, and I bargained, and then she said, “Here. I’m putting the doctor on.” And the doctor spoke with the voice of Doom and the terrifying tone of I-hold-your-life-in-my-hands-you-dope and she quoth (paraphrased somewhat): 

“YOU ARE GOING TO DIE SUDDENLY, ABRUPTLY, WITHOUT WARNING UNLESS WE FIX YOU RIGHT NOW. GO. NOW. DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME.”

“Yes’m,” I said.

And so I now find myself on the road to Minneapolis under the care of the TrophyWife™, who will have to be renamed AmbulanceDriver™ or perhaps MistressOfMercy™, for an appointment with knives and pain. This was not the day I woke up for. This was not my plan for the Fall of 2010, but then, reality does have a way of dicking up our comfortable expectations.

There may be an interruption in the blogging for a wee bit.

If I’m supposed to be traveling your way in the next month or so, there will probably be a change of plans. I’ll be in touch with people next week when I know more about my course of suffering for the next little while.

Meanwhile, relax, chill, don’t panic, and most importantly, don’t waste your time with prayers. Ever.

I’ll be back while convalescing, and will be even more heartfully cranky than ever.

Take a break from the amorphous thread for something pretty.

(Current totals: 10,849 entries with 1,092,105 comments.)

Excitement in Morris—big thunderstorm just blew through, taking out trees up & down the street, including one that came within inches of annihilating my car. The power is out, & it may be a while before it comes back.

No tornadoes, at least, but the worst part is that it hit while my wife is driving home, and now she’s very late…and of course her cell phone is off, and probably buried in that mess in her bag. Grrrr.

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She’s made it home! And the power just came back, 20 minutes before Futurama! See, Jesus really does love me.

…then Jeffrey Goldberg and the staff of The Atlantic have a personal message for you.

Oh, my. The tone!

A site called Progressive Nation is pleasantly surprised by the results of a Fox News poll.

Is it possible that even the center-right tilting viewing audience of Fox news programs is also open to significant upgrades of gay civil rights? That is what a surprising new, unscientific survey of a Fox web audience seems to be showing.

With pleasure, I direct you to this interesting Fox News online poll in which at the time of this posting 300,499 votes had been cast.

I hate to break the news to them, but that poll was pharyngulated and also hit hard by bots. Sorry. That’s the thing about online polls — people want to believe them when the results go their way, but they’re entirely untrustworthy either way.

Well, Auburn, actually. I’m visiting family this week and mainly holing up in my mother’s house to type. She doesn’t have an Internet connection, and no nearby wireless. It’s like moving into the backwoods, so I’m going to be a bit throttled for a while. But I shall get much done!

I’m entering this brief note on my iPad 3G, which I’ve found to be bit flaky with MovableType. This may manifest itself as a blank entry, in which case I’ll be very frustrated and you won’t even know it.

At least the sun is shining and there are mountains and trees and oceans around here, even if this Internet thingie is glitchy.

If you’re going to Dragon*Con this year, you might want to look into this other event: a Star Party at the Emory University observatory. You’ll get to hang out with cool people and learn stuff about the sky, and proceeds will also benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

At least when it comes to quackery, it is. An informal analysis of relevant stories on homeopathy reveals some sad results:

• Fox news returned a total of 20 news stories; 5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 45% were neutral.

• NPR returned a total of 8 news stories; 12.5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 37.5% were neutral.

• The Huffington Post returned a total of 77 news stories; 68.83% were favorable toward homeopathy, 14.28% were unfavorable, and 16.88% were neutral.

Fox and NPR don’t really have a horse in this race, so their percentages (based on some small numbers) probably just reflect a casual bias in the popular culture, unfortunate as it is. HuffPo looks like they’re flogging quackery pretty hard, and almost certainly intentionally.