Skookumchuck Notebook

Legislative Union Busting

The auto industry goes and the recession turns into a depression. Right? The auto industry goes and some of the the major labor unions, the one institution powerful enough to *somewhat* balance multinational corporate power, lose their one last major source of revenue. That is, unions effectively disappear. Oh, they'll be a few left, but they will be even more in retreat. Senate republicans would like, and I will not soon forget this because they were the first words I heard this morning when the alarm went off, "auto workers in America to take a pay cut to make their wages proportional to foreign auto workers." The claim is that this will make us more competitive. I have for many years feared the rhetoric of "competitive labor markets" because it means that in order to be competitive the American worker must accept the wages of workers in Indonesia or Bangladesh or China. Why, I wonder, do these dyed in the wool patriots think Americans should accept the labor standards of some country? Here's a bumper sticker for you: Globalizing Labor Is Globalizing Poverty. Let's say it again: Globalizing Labor Is Globalizing Poverty. Though I have to say I applaud the sophistry that makes labor markets in places like Laos seem like a goal to achieve rather than a horror to avoid. That it happens to be Japan's labor standards in this particular case does not matter, once labor is unregulated and our entire yearly tax revenues are owed to other countries because of enormous debt, what's the point of even having a government? Oh, right, many of us don't want a government, I keep forgetting. Look, libertarians, your about to get played. This is not a plan that will in any sense make you more free. We'll be governed anyway, it just won't be a democratic form of government. I think I'm beginning to get the picture though: Once auto manufacturers fail, unions may be brought down, and if you add an economic depression, voila, the perfect storm. It's elegant, really. I'm not certain of much but I am absolutely sure the prospect of starvation will make the American worker very competitive. We should think of it as a form of training, it will make us as competitive as all the other starving, desperate people in the world. Charming. And lastly, look, I don't especially like labor unions, they can be corrupt and awful. If they got too much power they would be as evil as corporations. We shouldn't probably even have them. But we shouldn't have corporations in their current form that allows them to accrue so much power, either. So I'll quit supporting unions when the government revokes the corporate charter of corporate enterprises that commit crimes like Exxon, Bechtel, Halliburton.

On Not Dying

Regarding the Hospital Visit of 12-2-08 This may not seem an entirely reasonable place to start, but I’m pretty sure my brain has re-entered a fairly normal (what ever that is) range of function, so please just stay with me here, it’ll all make sense shortly. Question: Does Fresca (the soft drink) taste like Grapefruit? I really would like to hear responses on this one. To me Fresca just tastes like Fresca in the same way, TAB, the other diet drink so many of our mothers drank, only tastes like TAB. Fresca is citrus fruitish, sure, but in a red dye #2 New Jersey chemical plant sort of way, or so I assumed. By now I’m assuming you are wondering, and quite reasonably, what the hell grapefruit has to do with it. Well, if you were to google the words “medication” and “grapefruit” you will find a large body of research on a chemical called furanocoumarin which interacts with a specific enzyme in the intestines to cause trouble, (it’s always an enzyme isn’t it?) I’ll let the Harvard Family Health Guide give you the short version of the technical specifics for all my neuro-chemically savvy friends like Jeni. “Grapefruit’s culprit chemical does not interact directly with your pills. Instead, it binds to an enzyme in your intestinal tract known as CYP3A4, which reduces the absorption of certain medications. When grapefruit juice blocks the enzyme, it’s easier for the medication to pass from your gut to your bloodstream. Blood levels will rise faster and higher than normal, and in some cases the abnormally high levels can be dangerous.” And, in the case of my particular medication, dilantin, make you crazy, blind, lame, panicky and shit scared and that’s before it goes for the lethal stuff like you heart and breathing. My particular adventure began at some point fairly recently when, for whatever reason, I started drinking Fresca, which I discovered yesterday has a good deal of real grapefruit juice in it. It’s worth noting that I take an unusually large dose of dilantin because I happen to metabolize the stuff quickly and it takes a lot to get me to a therapeutic dose which is somewhere between 16 and 21 somethings (unit of measure for blood level.) So this explains the suddenness and intensity of the symptoms I’ve been experiencing, culminating in yeasterday’s whopper. I’ve felt pretty weird at times over the last few weeks, but when you already have some spooky neurological shit going on it makes it difficult to know when to sound the alarm. There are many things that happen in one’s mind when this sort of thing happens to you. Past a certain point, of course, I thought maybe I should talk to my neurologist. I didn’t have an appointment until January and I called and requested an earlier appointment if one opened up, though it took me awhile to do this. I think this is because, in the back of one's mind there is resistance to this because, well, you already know something is very wrong and you just don’t want the bad news legitimated. (Incidentally Dr. Greg Lipschutz, is a wonderful doc, and I have had some real shit-bird neurologists. And his nurse Ellie, is great too and plays a vital role in my not deadness, which I will explain shortly.) I feel like a bit of an ass for allowing this feeling of dread to influence my decisions: friends please, if you can’t keep your balance and are seeing double a good deal of the time, find a buddy and have them drive you to the Emergency room now, not in two weeks when you are staggering and careening off parking meters on Bay State Rd. and basically taking leave of your senses. I know Deb knew something was up and I told her a bit about it, but went to fairly great lengths to hide it. This too: she trusts me not to be a fucking idiot. However, on the other hand, you don’t want the person you love to have to worry about mysterious symptoms that keep inexplicably disappearing and seeming to have gone away altogether. The long and the short of it is I thought I was toast. Then I thought I was just being paranoid. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Every second Tuesday Deb and I drive in to town. Fortunately, yesterday was a second Tuesday. When I got out of the truck I was having incredible difficulty keeping my feet and my visual field was pitching enough to cause fairly significant sea sickness. It was an order of magnitude worse than anything previous, I could not have walked without Deb’s assistance (she’s strong, it’s hot) When we got to Deb’s office, I called Dr. Greg and he wasn’t in, but the receptionist got ahold of him and he called me back fairly quickly. The possibility of medication toxicity hadn’t even occurred to me, I just thought I was dying or had MS or something. Toxicity was his first guess and he had me come to Cambridge Hospital to have my blood taken. Now at this point I’m doing a bit better and I can walk without assistance so I feel a little less nervous. So Deb takes me in and I get the blood drawn and we are ready to go, but Deb has he presence of mind to wonder aloud, "is there anything we should do?” Though I was operating on impulse power it occurred to me that Dr. Greg’s assistant Ellie might be able to help, and the office is in the building a few floors up. Now, Ellie, is one of those people I like more or less immediately and we get on fairly well. She’s efficient but not overly nurse like, and pays attention to the human details. I thought she would probably take the time to give us a bit more to go on while we waited for the test results. She took a look at me and instantly registered that the situation might be a bit more extreme than anyone thought. It turns out the Deb’s intuition that we ought to get more information and Ellie’s intuition that something was serious made a very large difference. Ellie couldn’t do much but she put a stat on my blood work, it had been priority but she bumped it up. Deb and I got lunch and we went back to campus. She dropped me at the office and went to park the car, but before she could even get back I got the call from Dr. Greg. “Um, hi George, yeah we got your blood work and your dilantin level is at 48. So we’d like to get you in for an EKG.” You know it’s funny, there is that tone a doctor uses when he does not want to alarm you because alarming you could kill you, but he does want to get you hooked up to an EKG machine before your heart more or less explodes. Ok, 48 is so toxic it isn’t even on the chart and there was reason to believe it could still be climbing because I’d had my morning dose only a little while earlier. I had wondered why my heart was pounding, I thought it was just the overall intensity and stress of the day. I started taking very deep breaths and called Deb. She drove back to the office where her trusty second in command Becca had escorted me to Comm. Ave. so I could hop in and go. We got to the hospital, I was treated, I was able to lower my own heart rate and blood pressure myself so I didn’t have to take any unpleasant purgation drugs (shout out to Patanjali for passing that yoga practice my way.) I was observed for some time and sent home, Deb and I both fulla Joy. I’m not going to die. I’m not even damaged. Once again I’m grateful for the luck, and the family (chosen family and regular) in my life, you have no idea how I love you.

er, um, I will die eventually, of course, it just looks like my life expectancy has returned to normal.