Hey, folks. I'm back.

It looks as though things might finally be quieting down around here again. We may actually have a candidate soon. Once that happens, I'm assuming the majority of us will get to work undermining the Republicans again and stop fighting amongst ourselves. I'm looking forward to it.

For those of you aware of my medical condition, it appears that I may have to have a consult with a surgeon for my neck. The steroid shots in my neck haven't done anything to relieve the pain and, assuming that the next set doesn't do any more, I may have to go for broke.

I'm back to work at my day job and even after a month off I'm starting to realize how burned out I am. A lot of it's the constant pain, I know. And the not knowing.

While I was off work, I wrote another novel. It's a record for me. Five weeks from start to finish. My wife is doing the first read-through and editing for it. Then I'm going to find myself an agent and try to get it published by one of the big houses. I've already passed it to a reviewer I know and she loved it.

I've also done some updating on my website. Quite a bit of new material on nearly every page, from a reorganization of information on the front page to new links for writers and readers to a whole new short story based in my Infinity: Prime setting. Also available is a synopsis of the new novel. My seventh novel is also being released shortly in e-book format as well. I'm still waiting for the first reviews to come back on it. I think it'll do well.

Here's my website address, if any of you want to check out what I've been up to.

http://www.sajewilliams.com

I've missed DU, but I really couldn't handle being here when all I found was anger, bitterness, and divisive bullshit being spread like jam on toast by people who damn well should have known better. When Nance has to post several spankings to get everyone's attention, it goes to show that it's all gone too far.

My wife also introduced me to some site called "Stumble" which allows you to randomly visit various sites on the web. Some of it's pretty cool. It even brought me HERE once. Someone commented that a person had to be some kind of idiot to regularly read DU. On just about every liberal or progressive site's comment page there are at least a few conservative morons talking shit. As if they know anything about anything.

I mean, seriously? What precisely about the whole conservative movement do they still have faith in these days? It's economic ideology? Hasn't that been thoroughly disgraced by now? Take from everybody else and give to the rich? How's that working out for everyone else these days? Deregulation? Yeah, now THAT was a good idea. :sarcasm: "Family values?" Seriously--what have they EVER done that shows that they value families? They talk and talk and turn around and do the opposite of what they promise to do.

Oh, but yeah. The Republicans are the "party of ideas." I've actually seen that on some of these sites. Huh. The party of really stupid ideas, maybe. The party of "ideas that will really fuck everthing up."

My wife and I had dinner at a friend's house last weekend--just a bunch of pagan folks who get together for a potluck meal once a month. Talk turned to politics, as it usually does, and I was just getting warmed up when our hostess announced that she didn't want to talk about politics. So we didn't. There were new people there and I wanted to get a feel from where they were coming from. I'm just bummed that I never got to find out.

Well, maybe next time.

The one thing I know is that we shouldn't fear the Republicans or what they might say any longer. They're morally, intellectually, and creatively bankrupt. They have been trying to build a bridge into a past that never existed. A time machine for morons.

We're going to have to work hard to keep John McCain out of the White House. If only because the corporate media's going to give him a free ride and entirely too many Americans still have their heads buried up an American Idol's ass.

I've been saying all along that we couldn't make all this about Bush and company, that we needed to do everything we could to make it clear that ALL the Republicans were responsible for this mess we're in. Until the people truly grasp this fact, they're going to keep falling for their lies over and over again. Let's face it--they're REALLY good at lying. And the American people's bullshit detector is on the fritz. Again.

So what else is new?

Although I agree with you that a Democratic President is the only good choice this year, it´s not the Republicans who are responsible for the mess we are in.

But frankly it's been their ideology that's crafted the message they've been selling to the American people for the last twenty-five years or so.

They don't think for themselves, or take any time to research to look up the facts. And some people still believe that crap.

Hey, Welcome back!

They know the facts, they are earning more with weapons than with health care or education.

Of course they think for themselves, for their own personal greed, not the good and welfare of others.

I was referring to people who would rather listen to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh rather than realize that what they hear is just propaganda. Why is it difficult for some people to sort thru truth from fiction? What happened to critical thinking skills?

goes to the infinity project screen with no other links.

There should be a whole lot of stuff on that page.

There's something that isn't new and you may have availed yourself of it before you left. If you didn't, I highly recommend doing so for the remainder of the Primary Wars (tm). You can set you options to ignore General Discussion:Primaries or GDP, as it's come to unaffectionately be known. I did it and my life is so much better. It works on both the Latest and Greatest pages. It doesn't work on the Front Page, so some caution is warranted when perusing that area. Since I did away with GDP, the rancor level for me has gone back to pre-primary days. It has been well worth it and since I admit that the Greatest Page has, in the last year or so, become my favorite gateway to this magnificent place, I was within a day or two of stepping out myself when our wonderful mods added the ignore thread feature to the Greatest Page. Given that I don't watch any form of mainstream news and rarely a newspaper, I likely wouldn't have found out about the March 18th speech of Barack Obama's that changed so much of the way I view him. And, I think it was as historic a speech as the JFK, Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You, and MLK's, I Have a Dream. So, not ditching this place became, on that day, an incredible win for me.

As an aside, last year I had two OJI's, with the first causing my C5 disk to bulge and the second one to aggravate the existing injury. Workman's Comp or L&I as they call it here in WA, is quite the dehumanizing experience. On the one hand, I hope yours was an OJI, because you can access care so much better but OTOH, those required Medical Exams by "independent evaluators" were such amazing wastes of my time and I hated the continual necessity of proving that I wasn't faking my injury. What a crock! I do hope that something is found that helps you. I was so lucky in that physical therapy and continued stretching has kept my injury mostly under control. I did have to move into a different field of nursing, something I didn't think I ever wanted to do but it turns out that I'm loving it. I never would have considered Neonatal Intensive Care on my own, so my injury actually gave me something there, but of course, that's easy for me to say because the terrible pain and even the constant numbness in my thumb and first finger of my left hand has mostly abated. When I was in pain, I saw nothing good about what happened.

I wish for you healing from your injury and I hope it doesn't require surgery but if it does, I wish for you a speedy and full recovery, without the pain dogging you afterward. And I hope you can ignore the fuckwits who decide that you are "drug seeking". I promise you they've never had chronic pain and don't have one single fucking clue about what it's like. I had one "caregiver" imply that and I took the bull by the horns and said, "I'm not drug seeking, I'm seeking a normal life in which this pain isn't the dominant theme. Help me out here, ok?" I actually got a positive response to that. I was surprised. I'm sure they would be surprised to know that I don't take anything stronger than Ibuprofen now. Funny thing, eh, the pain goes away and I stop asking for pain medicine. :eyes: (I guess it's pretty obvious that I didn't find my L&I experience all that pleasant)

I have spinal arthritis... have gone down the epidural route periodically. It works although I am not too happy about a needle in the spine on a yearly basis. So I am trying to manage it on a more natural basis with massage, neck exercises, OPC-3, cherries and 500 mg Naproxin (occasionally). Endured a bit more pain but no needle this year. I am working to try and get my routine together so that there is less downtime from pain next year. Don't want to do opiates ... I just don't tolerate them well. I felt like I was going to flip out on Flexeril ... only took it for a week before the epidural. I almost started crying for joy when I got on the table for the procedure.

but from what I was seeing the hostility seemed to be spreading everywhere here.

"...divisive bullshit being spread like jam on toast..."

Then I politely suggest that you not quit your "day-job". :)

Oh, and welcome back. We knew each other in another life.

:hi:

in that people LIKE toast and jam, and eat the bullshit up like it's something tasty.

What other life was that? :)

:hi:

sounds like a promising book...good luck with it.

;)

quite as quietly. People on TV with the pretense of doing actual journalism know that the truth is out there this time, and it's a lot easier to find than it was before the invasion of Iraq.