I broke a solemn promise I made myself twelve years ago:  I moved back to Mississippi.  I had escaped after spending my impressionable youth there, and was lured back by the dream of being a small business owner.
Which brings me to my next confession: I opened a small business.  If you are contemplating this, for the love of all that is holy, DON’T DO IT!  It sucks!  Payroll, inventory, maintenance, and the teenage employees, they all monumentally suck balls.  Especially the teenage employees, I have worked since I was 12, and I don’t recall being a smarmy little shit, but I might be glossing over that part of my past.
I opened a SECOND small business:  If one small business is driving you crazy, and not making enough money to quit your full time job, what is the most logical conclusion?  If you said open a second small business, you are as poorly informed as I was.  There were other small factors around this time that made the decision to do this even stupider, but I have started blocking out these details from my subconscious, sort of like a rape victim.
I closed the Second small business due to lack of actual business:  Can you believe that if your business fails, the greedy ass bank wants it’s loan money back.  If you don’t pay it back they want you to claim bankruptcy.  Being a real Libertarian, not one of those ones you see on TV, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t pay for my own mistakes.  If the business was a success, I would frolic naked in all the money, so why shirk the responsibility of failure. 
This brings me to:  I left Mississippi again. I left to do what I do best, wander the countryside as a mercenary nurse who works ridiculous hours every week.  Instead of saving the money to travel aimlessly around the globe however, all the money is sent to those greedy bank bastards.  I think of it as a new student loan.  I learned a whole damn lot for that money.  I learned that business sucks, and I want to be able to clock out and go home at the end of the day. 
My final, and possibly most irresponsible, sin:  I quit writing and blogging and doing something creative. It doesn’t seem like much, but I need to be able to get all this crazy shit out of my head. 

I hope to be able to absolve my sins in your eyes.  I will try posting more, and vow to even get the elder statesman of Killer Rants, Liz, back into the world of blogging.  She also has had some major shake ups in her world that will undoubtedly need to be aired out in this public forum.  I am going to attempt to avoid revealing my present location, which will most likely change frequently, because working in the ER, can offer some hilarious stories. 

A very special thanks to our tech guru and web designer, Jester, who fixed all tech difficulties in order to get us up and running again.  In all fairness he also shared with me, his distasteful experience with a small business, but I ignored it.  I promise to be more open to guidance. 

The above mentioned link, though unfortunate, made me smile.  I like the guys take-charge, problem solving attitude.  I also can only tolerate a traffic jam so often.

I am just going to cut and paste the article as well, in case you are too lazy to follow the above link.

Mon May 25, 11:56 am ET

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese man was pushed off a bridge by an angry passer-by after his threat to commit suicide held up traffic for five hours, Chinese media reported on Saturday.

Retired soldier Lian Jiansheng, 66, broke through a police cordon and reached out to shake the hand of would-be jumper Chen Fuchao before shoving him off the bridge.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interests,” Lai was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper.

“They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Chen, 2 million yuan ($293,200) in debt because of a failed building project, fell 8 metres (yards) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion and was hospitalized with wrist and back injuries. Lai was detained by police.

Chen was at least the twelfth person since early April to threaten suicide at the same spot, the Haizhu bridge in Guangzhou. But none jumped and—until Lian gave Chen a helping hand—none was pushed.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

Could you imagine trying to drive home from work, and for the TWELFTH time, traffic is stopped at the same bridge for a jumper.  Especially on a bridge that only has a 8 meter (26 feet or about 2 stories) drop.  Lian Jiansheng is my new hero.  I wonder if he has any tshirts for sale?

I will NOT use the term “baby’s got back"- because I am above such cliches.... but… young lady has rear! And her NAME is Lil Rounds. That’s the most ironic name she could have. Her name should be Hugh G. Rounds, or Loveme Rounds, or Biggie Rounds. Pretty much anything but “Lil” would work.

I am not shamed by this new obsession. How can this not make you stare?

And I wonder why it’s mostly women with huge, round butts. I have a friend whose sister once said that when he gains weight he gets “hippy”. Those words, in that order, make my ears perk up. “What?” HE gets hippy? How unfortunate.

When doing my Goggle Image search for this post, I found another picture of a butt you might regret looking at. I can’t help it. This is nasty, but I love when people think they are being hot, but they’re just being assholes. Huh. Assholes. What a choice word to use.

Here you can see a second trick he has mastered, BEING SMALL

And the third and final trick for today, FLIPPING OFF LEON

As you might guess, I am smitten with this kitten! The not so great news? I think he’s a Himalayan which means MUCH hair and shedding. Himalayans also have leaky eyes (WHAT??) that have to be wiped daily and they have to be brushed 5 to 7 times a week. Uhh… Not cool. But it’s too late now. I adore him.

Leon is not taking this well. After five days, he is finally able to be near Otto without running under the bed. I can tell this adjustment won’t be easy, but come on! How can you not love THIS?

Man Causing Real Stink in Motel Room Gets Stabbed
AP
Thu Apr 9, 9:00 pm ET

WACO, Texas – A man was stabbed after causing a stink — literally — in a motel room while eating with a friend, police said. Five men from the Houston area were sharing a Waco motel room Tuesday night, and two were inside the room eating when one had a flatulence problem, Waco police Officer Steve Anderson said. One man was so upset about the gas that he threw a large knife at him, cutting his leg, and then stabbed him in the chest, Anderson said.

The 35-year-old man was transported to a Waco hospital, where he was treated for what appeared to be non-life threatening injuries, Anderson said.

Jose Braule Ramirez, 33, of Houston, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said. He was arraigned Wednesday and was being held in the McLennan County Jail on $15,000 bond and placed on an immigration hold, according to jail records . He cannot be released, even if he posts bond, until authorities verify he is in the country legally.

A jail spokeswoman who declined to give her name said she was not allowed to release information on whether Ramirez had an attorney.

I don’t want to be inappropriate and speak of such things as flatulence in a public forum, but on rare occasions, I have been known to have some uncontrollable, and regrettable, gaseous issues at Liz’s lovely home.  No accusations are intended, but I have seen her reaching for sharp objects and giving me threatening glances.  I personally feel that I have NEVER flatulated in her home without remorse and only when completely necessary to avoid bodily discomfort. 

I certainly have never done it maliciously and upon her complaints, I have ALWAYS ceased to do so.

I for one am outraged by this lone man’s reaction to flatulence and am praying this does not become a pandemic, or mass hysterical reaction that our often too-fast-to-react society embraces.

I am going to try to get some air time on the O’Reilly Factor to try and address my concerns

While in line to pay for the blood test that proved to be his death sentence, a woman walked in with a TWO WEEK OLD kitten. I have never seen a cat so small. It was so tiny it almost wasn’t even cute. That’s the way I feel about children. When they are brand new, they are freakishly unable to contribute anything. I have a friend who’s wife recently had a baby. I went over to see the new one and held it. She was sweet and interesting looking. Her eyes stayed closed and she made weird faces in which every muscle would scrunch up simultaneously. While I was there she cried little and pooped once. She didn’t tell any jokes, she didn’t make us any snacks, she didn’t read us a story. She just laid there- making me nervous about her soft spot.

This kitten was so helpless but in it, I see great potential for him to be adorable. I of course held it the moment the woman walked in with him. He snuggled.

I think I’ll name him Niles. Or Otto. Or Jeeves. Or Peeve.

IF I decide to take him.

I know it sounds like a forgone conclusion, but it’s not. I was able to get rid of Sneaker’s litter box, which is fantastic. And kittens can be demanding. The scratch on furniture and the have these hilarious bursts of energy. I love those bursts, but not at 2 A.M. I know one day I will get a kitten, but I don’t know if I’m ready yet. My heart is ready but it’s the rest of me I’m worried about. Little man will be ready in about a week and a half. Leon seems lonely and is getting on my nerves with his constant chatter and new found insatiable passion for swirling around my ankles. What do you think? New kitten in two weeks or will I deny it this go around?

Last night I had a dream that Ashton Krutcher was staying at my house because his roommate had kicked him out. Apparently I was forcing him to have sex with me while he was staying with me. My boss (who isn’t really my boss but rather I woman I’ve never met) got on to me at work about it and I WENT OFF. She was telling me how wrong it was of me to force this young man to sleep with me against his will. I gave a long speech about being almost 40 and him being fine and how if I were Carrie Bradshaw we wouldn’t be having this argument. I had my finger in her face, yelling articulately. In the end, I won the argument but later learned that Ashton had ASKED HER to confront me.

When did my dreams turn against me like this? This was an NBC version of the events named above, aside from extreme profanity on my end. In this dream I was humiliated and angry. I thought in dreams you got to be whatever you wanted. Do I really want to be the matriarch of the sex-slave industry? Jeez. 

I take him back to a room and ask the usual, “So, what brings you to the hospital tonight?” (At three in the morning no less.) He begins to regale me with a tale of an out of control hemorrhoid, and how this evil hemorrhoid is causing him great discomfort and making pooping a chore.  I was about to slap him around and explain Preparation H to this guy when the story took an even weirder turn.  “It was bothering me so much...I finally put a rubber band around it.”

My mind started going into overdrive trying to put those words together in a sentence that seemed reasonable.  I began trying to picture the logistics of putting a rubber band around a hemorrhoid, and then I started picturing this guy doubled over trying to look at his own rectum, then going through that weird, rubber-band technique of twisting it around a few times to get it tighter.  I think he realized my silent contemplation extending into the uncomfortable, because he suddenly blurted, “I read about hemorrhoid ligation on Web-MD.” Ohhhhhhh!  Good ol’ Web-MD.  Nothing ever goes wrong with the random information found on the internet. 

On a side rant, we get a lot of people who have massive issues following some home remedy, or self diagnosis, found on Web-MD.  I want to start a website called Web-Bank.  People will mail/wire/paypal me money and I will keep it for them, at an impressive rate of return, and when they are ready, I will send it back.  You can rest assured it is 100% reliable, because it says Bank in the title.

Back to our patient at hand, The gentleman was stating how great it was working.  Almost instant resolve of all symptoms, no itching or burning, a return to normal, satisfying poops, it was as if the heavens had parted and shined a ray of hope on to his beleaguered rectum.  Then a few days into this unorthodox home remedy, he realized, the rubber band fell off.  He said he was suddenly besieged by a flooding of blood back into the hemorrhoid, and although non-painful, it was double in size and he was afraid it would continue to grow and eventually explode, “possibly causing him to bleed to death.” Now that would be a death worthy of the Darwin Awards.

SPOILER ALERT
as in spoiling your dinner, not the story
So, I go tell the doctor on duty, and after an exceedingly inappropriate number of, “What!?!  How?!?” He finally agreed to come and see for himself.  I was relegated to holding the flashlight during this part of the exam. 
It looked like he was growing a large purple grape next to his asshole.
He was told: 

A.  Not to do that again
B.  Ligation of hemorrhoids is for internal, not external hemorrhoids, and NOT something done at home.
C.  Go sit in a hot bath this weekend as long as you can and go see your primary doctor on Monday

Proudly, he was in and out in about fifteen minutes.  Another life saved in the ER.  And, as oddly convenient as it is to this story, someone did really come up to me shortly afterward and offer me some grapes.  Luckily they were green, if they had been purple I might have puked.

A friend of mine was in New Orleans this past week. She called me on the way home to tell me about THE WHEEL. The usual Crime Stoppers fee on these criminals is $1,000… not bad. But if you snitch on the thug during the week that he’s on the wheel, you get an EXTRA grand! The program has been hugely successful. To prevent friends from claiming the extra money, criminals are turning themselves in when the spin lands on them. To rob an old lady at gun point is bad enough but to deny your bro 2,000 cash? That’s just harsh.

Mississippi has casinos about an hour from my house. Last weekend a friend of mine went and checked out a new place that’s opened. 10 years ago the casinos were exciting. People got semi-dressed up to go and all the tables were full. Now when I go I see a lot of oxygen tanks being wheeled around and bloodshot eyes. I think they do shuttles from trailer parks, shot gun shacks, and nursing homes because the number of middle class people has definitely gotten smaller while the number of poor gamers is on the rise. And that myth about old people going to bed early? Not at the boats! We left at 2 AM and half the people in there at that time were over 65.

This new place has an automated roulette wheel. At first I liked it but I soon noticed that the automated wheel lacked the character of human spinner. When you get a gregarious casino worker, it can be a lot of fun. This experience, however, was a only one step above playing on your computer at home. We left the table and roamed around, played other games, and returned for a final round of roulette before going home. The SAME people were still there in the SAME spots. At least 3 hours had passed!! I enjoyed listening to these roulette pros share ‘tips’ such as, “Well, it’s after midnight, so zeros should be hittin’ a streak any minute now,” and “You’re gonna wanna play 17 right now because 25 just hit and 17 always hits right after 25.” Neither of these tips proved true, but that didn’t shake their resolve that their miss was more a freak of nature than a stupid ‘method’ to something as random as roulette.

I did notice that I’m outlived the board. I’ve always played my age as one of the numbers I place a bet on. This go around, I couldn’t do that. The board ends at 36.

Sigh.... How high does the craps table go?

If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting an ER, you know that there is often associated with such a visit a long and agonizing wait.  People have actually died while sitting in uncomfortable, hard plastic chairs waiting for their name to be called and their life to be saved.  Why would this happen?  Because 80% of the traffic in the ER does, by no stretch of the imagination, meet the E part of the ER name.

You can not possibly imagine how many times a person has come into the ER for “flu like symptoms”.  I absolutely LOVE the often self labeled, “flu like symptoms”, because almost always it is caused by the flu.  A completely un-curable condition that will go away on it’s own.  Take some tylenol, a cough drop, and drink a lot of fluids.  Do not come to the EMERGENCY room and demand to see a doctor.  Don’t get angry when you have to wait two hours to get in, and don’t get pissed off when it takes another hour to get your lab results back.  Even if it is some rare disease that is masking itself as “flu like symptoms” the fact that you had these symptoms for the last week, and did nothing about it, tells me you could actually wait until your regular doctor will see you. 

That also brings up the infamous ankle sprain that happened yesterday, around noon, but finally needed an ER visit at 3am.  How about the “chest pain I have had for a month, only after I eat Mexican food.” Most people don’t realize that mentioning the magic words, “Chest and Pain” will get you into the ER immediately, but it will also be followed by a whirlwind of needle filled activity, that will eventually end with a maalox and a $2000 bill.  Many times you get the frequent fliers who cry chest pain, but once in a bed state, “My chest feels much better, but my big toe is killing me.”

Inspite of my rant, I really feel sorry for the poor saps who man the ambulance.  For every nitwit that walks into the ER for a non-emergent reason, there are two that call 911.  They are usually required to transport a person to the hospital regardless of the reason for the call.  My favorite story of such comes from my travel pal and business partner Bam, who is a Fireman.  He was leading a rescue truck that was called to a residence for an emergency, when they arrived they knocked on the door and heard a man yelling to come in.  They found an elderly gentleman sitting on his toilet.  He told them that he is not in good health and he is unable to wipe himself. 
He wanted the fire department to wipe his ass.  He didn’t want to go to the hospital.  He denied any pain or distress.  He just couldn’t reach back there and get to the needed area. 
Bam told him that they would NOT wipe his ass, but they would take him to the hospital, because if he can’t wipe his ass, he isn’t fit to be home alone.  The man became angry and insisted it is the fire departments duty to help out the citizens, and he needed an ass wiping.  Bam disagreed and told the man he was going to the hospital so he could be evaluated for a care facility. 
The man suddenly managed to find the strength to wipe his own ass, and refused to go to the hospital. 
I appreciate Bam’s approach to this.  That guy would have sat in one of the ER beds probably for 12 hours while they decided what to do with him.

I am currently working in an emergency room.  I have never done ER before, but it is not like the popular TV show.  Like the currently popular “Grey’s Anatomy”, sex and adventure are happening at break neck speeds on hospital based TV dramas.  That is not happening for me, and I for one, think this is going to lead a large portion of mislead youngsters into the medical profession who will be deeply disappointed with the cold, hard truth.

It is my goal, ney, my responsibility, to inform future ass-wipers that it is all a lie.  A clever ruse to entice a future generation of bright eyed professionals to forgo that dream of entering the fast paced world of accounts receivable, or diving into the soul satisfying career of insurance sales, and steer them towards the fecal-matter smattered health care industry. 

Despite my diligence in wearing tight, form fitting scrubs, cleverly coiffing my hair with fancy gels so that it appears like I just rolled out of bed and did NOT take the time to coif it, and giving come-hither glances to the few female doctors present, not once has it resulted in a passionate love-making session in a doctor’s lounge.  Not even a quick and dirty hand job in the broom closet.  Even when I was willing to slum it within my own ranks, my fellow nurses are not hot and horny.  Most are elderly, bitter and totally hardened by a life of manual labor.  They don’t even seem to notice when I “accidentally” let my scrub top hang open as I bend over, allowing my hairy chest and almost well formed pectoral muscles offer a fleeting glance. 

It is hard to turn on a group of women who have had to sponge bathe so many men; which is an event that the porn industry has mislead me to believe is an erotic encounter.  Believe me, people lying in bed for a few days become inexplicably more malodorous and dirty than a fat guy who just ran a marathon.  These women have also been traumatized by repeatedly coming into contact with the elusive “inny penis”.  Those of you who are comfortably ignorant might live under the assumption that only the belly button can be found in the inny or outy state, but you would be mistaken.  The more a female encounters the random “inny penis”, the more likely she is to believe they all eventually become as such, and decide not to bother with the whole endeavor. 

Heed my warning people.  The love triangles and crazy sexcapades displayed on TV hospital dramas, are not as plentiful as they portray.  I personally feel I might be in too deep to just give up now.  I will continue to flaunt my junk and walk seductively amongst the dead eyed, soulless co-workers of mine.  And when and if my time comes, and I get suddenly pulled into an empty room by two young, sexy nurses who for some unthinkable reason are wearing impossibly short nurse dresses made of latex rubber, I will know that I have been initiated into the secret under world of the health care industry. 

Three minutes after that, as I am putting my scrubs back on, I will begin the first manuscript for my new TV show.