Vestibular Residence

My doctor took a moment to consider his examination and then, as he confidently popped the sterilized veneer from the top of the otoscope thing-a-ma-bobber, he disclosed his diagnosis, “you have a virus in your ear.”

Now, I was immediately inclined to ask that he might repeat himself because I must have somehow muddled and/or misinterpreted this diagnosis due to what he would later refer to as “a significant amount of congestion and inflammation” in my right ear or what I began to acutely refer to as: why does the room keep spinning? (insert nausea here)

So I asked him, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I have what?”
So he repeated himself, only this time slightly louder, “I say, you have a virus… in your ear.”

Consider the two distinct responses that popped into my head:

1. Defensive indignation in that I could embrace my inner 8-year old child and respond with the exceedingly infantile show stopper known as the “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I” Freudian projection, as clearly my lexicon of “your mama’s so fat” one-liners would never suffice in such a clinical setting.

“Oh yeah doctor? Well….well you have a virus in your ear! So there!” wherein any unflappable physician should promptly respond with “that may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have a virus in your ear.”


2. Thoughts of extrication, extraction and removal of the virus in that one might consider that when it is revealed that one has a virus in one’s ear, an opportunity to remove said virus from one’s ear would soon contrarily present itself as it could be argued that what goes in, must come out.

A few examples of what goes in, must come out:

-When one has a fly in one’s soup one can beckon the server to fish it out and then promptly storm out in a disgruntled huff—that is, storm out the door from which they came in.

-One can put tropical fish into one’s 30-gallon tank in an effort to promote personal tranquility; however much to their dismay the fish can then be taken out of the tank and quickly left to squander about in a desiccated state of decomposition.

-An individual can put 10W-40 into the engine of their 1980 black Chevy Monza 4x4, however I assure you, it will systematically leak out if you’re driving the one I used to own.

-An individual can jam an index finger into their nose, but they’re bound to pull it out sooner or later; how else would they be able to flick the coagulated bugger at their sibling thereby inciting a fratricidal fury for custodial Sunday.

I suppose there are a couple of exceptions to my what goes in, must come out rationale.

For example, if you’re at a wake and you overhear some insensitive yenta babbling on about how “Teddy wouldn’t quit smoking right up until the end and so it was the congestive heart failure that finally did Teddy in,” well then the odds are that once the vessel formerly known as Teddy is peacefully placed into his Sarcophagus, he will in all probability not be coming out for cig by the dumpster anytime soon.

Yes, but jenji you have a virus in your ear. Precisely, and I’m thankful to have an answer as to what was/is causing my symptoms, however I still found/find myself perplexed by the phraseology of said diagnosis.

What I really wanted to say to the doctor was, “What do you mean I have a virus in my ear? Surely you mean to say that I have caught a virus or that a virus is causing these symptoms and my condition.”

Or how about he went ahead, took a gamble and allowed for a clinical diagnosis, wherein he could have informed me that I had vestibular neuritis: a condition caused by a viral infection of the vestibular nerve, which can in turn cause the excessive vertigo and nausea that I had/have been experiencing, as well as the spontaneous nystagmus associated with lying down on my right side in bed. At least I could have Googled that explanation.

But no, he chose to embrace the perilous, enigmatic virus in your ear and all of its incendiary implications in lieu of the vestibular neuritis.

…you have a virus in your ear.

I don’t believe it would be too farfetched for me to maintain that I have a significantly bent mind, and when you inform a bent mind that they have a virus in their ear, that bent mind will undoubtedly conjure up one image: of a strapping Ricardo Montalbán jamming a gigantic Ceti eel larvae into Commander Chekov’s ear in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Good God man, don’t inform someone they have something in a particular orifice of their body if there isn’t some possibility that you can coax whatever it is that’s in there out in the very near future.







Wrath of Khan

jenji, enough with the semantics.
You know what, you're right.

….
…….
……….

But I’m just sayin’, when my mother had a seizure a few years ago the distracted emergency physician didn’t say to me, “your mother had a seizure in her brain.” No sir, in fact he said, “your mother had a seizure, I’ll explain more later, it’s mac n cheese Friday downstairs,” wherein I assume he headed downstairs in to the cafeteria to pack his insensitive face with what is apparently phenomenal mac n cheese and then afterward, came on out to finally explain more later. You see, he was going to head in to the cafeteria and further, implied that at some point he would be coming back out to speak with me, so that makes perfect get in, get out sense.

When I saw a contemporary of mine at an opening wearing a cast on his leg I asked, “what happened to your leg?” he responded, “I broke my ankle.” What he didn’t say was “I have a broken a bone in my leg,” for that might imply that he could take the break out in some fashion.

Nor did he say, “similar to the injury that the incomparable Frida Kahlo suffered in her right leg, I have an oblique fracture of the fibula in my right leg, however my particular injury is much more minimalistic in nature in that mine didn’t shatter along the entire column of the leg” for if he had said that, which would have been entirely plausible given my past experience with artistic and/or intellectual symposiums, well then I probably would have told him that he was a tiresome, smug pedantic who doesn’t deserve neither my sympathy, nor my attention because I’m not looking to get covertly dragged into a pretentious debate about whether or not I consider Frida Kahlo’s work to be anti-conformist in nature; in fact, I had been previously fixated on the sophisticated cheese tray behind him; that was until he gimped his way across my sightline and so now I had no other choice but to ask him what the fuck was wrong with his leg.

What I should have said to the doctor was “I have a virus in my ear? Okay, then how can we get it out?” wherein he more than likely would have responded, “we can’t get it out, your insurance won’t cover the procedure.” Now that would have made perfect get in, get out sense, however that wasn’t what transpired.

In fact it’s simple: I have a virus in my ear that’s intermittently wreaking havoc, and luckily it doesn’t require extraction or invasive attention, however given my doctor’s predilection for ominous diagnoses, he has graciously afforded me with a far more indeterminate prognosis for said diagnosis: “the virus will go away on its own,” wherein he threw a prescription at me for anti-emetic, anti-vertigo pills.

I'm going to go ahead and interpret “the virus will go away on its own,” as it'll go ahead and come out on its own in an effort to thwart my bent mind, as the thought of a virulent intruder riding along a one-way vestibular concourse and taking up residence within my noggin overwhelms me with an imperative need to go out and buy wire hangers and rubbing alcohol.

jenji

Matt. she IS what she IS...

Okay, I must say that I find Ann Coulter to be an alarmist: a bickering fundamentalist in a perpetual state of political and social malcontent and humanistic denial. And yes, I find corporeal irony in the fact that she is arguably an anoretic ectomorph whose caustic, corybantic disposition literally transforms her into a most misanthropic, manipulative endomorph whose gauche social commentary, theatrical hair flipping and disaffected chuckling strives to exploit, promote and peddle division, derision, hatred, intolerance and fear into the guts of those of a more shall we say, bilious temperament; and sure she criticizes the underdog with a less than egalitarian view, in fact I find her utterly repulsive as a human being, but dammit I also find her incredibly entertaining.

Whenever I hear that she’s going to be interviewed and/or featured on a program I cannot help but find myself delighted to be setting the DVR to record whatever uncomfortable, foot-in-mouth encounter she is about to provide. Rush Limbaugh wishes he were this controversial, as he fails to proffer his version of hate and propaganda in an educated (albeit misdirected) fashion.

Here's the thing: Ann's insults are creative.

Rush’s arguments are entirely transpicuous and vapid, in that his cholesterol gargling falsetto screams of tyrannical desperation, in that he needs you—implores you—to buy his big bag of bullshit, for further proliferation of the white Anglo-Saxon elite literally depends upon it and further, he must maintain subliminal control over what Rush’s team surely calls the subservient riff-raff; that is, the white Anglo-Saxon middle/lower class who are too foolish to know when they are being indirectly insulted by their great leader.

Rush in fact feeds upon such compliance and conformity to his opinions, in that his ego requires that you kneel before the megalomaniacal, $33 million per year General Zod, if you know what I’m saying, as it will validate, fulfill and justify his sense of righteousness and power in the world. However, there is a pathetic urgency in his broadcasts; a sense of -I’m not right unless you believe I’m right- in his voice, wherein Ann Coulter doesn’t give a polemic shit whether you believe she’s right or not; she knows she right and that's all that matters. She doesn’t need your loyalty, submission, validation and/or ratings; she already has legions of conservatives from puberty to propecia jerking off to her 8x10 glossy head shot. I mean honestly, what more could she need?

Here is a clip of Ann’s latest appearance on The Today Show with Matt Lauer, although if you're going to take the time to watch a video clip, I would highly suggest that you hold out until the end of this entry, which was added as an update, wherein Coulter goes blonde head, to blonde head, to blonde head, to redhead, to wig, to dreads with the ladies on The View.

Anyway, I always look forward to Ann and Matt in an NBC, righteous indignation cage match. I usually find Matt’s moral outrage to be a bit exaggerated, wherein it seems as though the majority of his frustration lies in the fact that he just can’t seem to get her to see how morally reprehensible and insulting she is as a human being. Ann in turn ruffles Matt’s journalistic style in that he soon resorts to focusing upon absolutes and trivialities, a tactic which usually comes back to bite him in the ass, wherein she’ll whip out words like extemporaneously and refer to him as Matt Lauer et al.; somehow Matt manages to look like the lunatic in that he’s pleading with her to see that for which she has no interest in seeing: that she is a nasty human being: that she is caustic, controversial and morally repugnant.

Yes, that's true. But how is it relevant to the interview?

I say, let her bark, that’s who she is and always has been. I’ve never seen a journalist so ardently challenge Rush Limbaugh to his face as to why he’s such an egotistical bigot. Why does Ann Coulter have to play nice? Lauer is consistently condescending in his interviews with her in that he is dead set on challenging her as to why she’s so divisive, as opposed to why it is she thinks that way. He rarely lets her finish an answer, as he is obsessed with getting her to admit that the malicious content of her books are simply fabricated and included to garner attention and sensationalism.

Um, Matt? She’s written six wing-nut books, I’m quite certain that she believes what she’s saying and is in fact a nasty, malicious human being; let her ramble, the ratings will write themselves.

He needs to let go of the fact that a—what some may consider--attractive, leggy blond woman is sitting before him spewing hate and intolerance because there’s something very -Daddy’s-little-girl, very -pretty can’t be ugly- in his voice and inferences that just make me want to vomit and again, while I’m in no a way supporter of Ann Coulter’s hateful rhetoric, I take absolute offense to his patronizing -pretty can't be ugly- style.

MATT:
-Why won’t you just be nice, Ann? Why? Why can’t you just play nice?

ANN:
Well, because I’m a hateful, repugnant, right-wing ‘round the bend, conservative bigot, Daddy. I don’t want to play nice.

MATT:
-But you're too pretty to be ugly, you don’t really feel that way, Ann.

ANN:
Yes, I do.

MATT:
-But how do you know Ann? How do you know that liberals should all be burned at the stake? How do you know that Jews are imperfect and that 9/11 widows are greedy Jersey Girls? You don’t make $33 million/year on a radio show; you don’t have people kneeling before you, validating your cause, so how do you know that you’re right? How can you be certain and truly know that you’re a hateful, repugnant, right-wing, ‘round the bend, conservative bigot?

And like The Keymaker in The Matrix it’s simple:
Ann knows because she was meant to know.

Let it go Lauer. This is who she is.

jenji
UPDATE:
Ann appeared on The View this past Tuesday: need I say more?
Experience the hysterical contagion: the petulant, wing-nut, trichototillomanical hissy fit to the 6th power here.
It.Is.A.Freakin.Mess. And so very worth it.

Re: The Passive-Aggressive Ressentiment

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
Friedrich Nietzsche


I concur.

jenji