Dr. Feelbad part 3

But here folks, HERE, is what really irks me. You see, hypno-therapy is the best I can do. That's it. That's what the fucking medical profession and all those goddamned doctors have come up with.

"You shouldn't smoke."
"Cool, how do I quit."
"I'm sorry son, nobody has done a lick of research on the subject of actually quitting smoking."

There's some anti-depressant stuff that turns out to accidentally have the side effect of controlling nicotine cravings, but no one is taking my $700 taxes a year (me alone), and plugging it into the "let's help these addicts kick" fund, and I don't want to start playing with my brain chemistry. No instead, I've got to sit with a therapist and explain to her my multiple dealings with my alcoholic brother, so that she can feel comfortable performing what is essentially a parlor trick.

God, I hate doctors!

Dr. Feelbad part 2

Q: How would you describe your relationship with your family?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Is there any history of mental illness in your family?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Have you ever done hallucinogenic drugs?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Do you ever have nightmares?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Would you say that you have frequent nightmares?
A: How frequent is frequent?

Q: How frequent do you think frequent is?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Any phobias?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Do you think that you've undergone any personal childhood trauma?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Could you describe the trauma in detail?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Of all the colors of the rainbow, which do you think most looks like murder?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: If you were a butterfly, would you be John Wayne Gace, Jack the Ripper, or Charlie Manson?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Do you ever have black outs or lost time?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

Q: Do you feel like you are singled out by any spiritual or political groups for persecution?
A: I just want hypno-therapy to help me quit smoking.

And my favorite question of all. Honest to God...
Q: Are you addicted to any drugs.
A: No, I'm in here for the sheer pleasure of describing myself masturbating in the mirror with me dressed up as my mother. That's a trick answer because I don't really own a mirror.

Anyways, in just under a months time, a hyno-therapist will be ready to help me kick my copraphelia and my smoking habit. Thank you all for reading, except for you Simon. Even though you're just a fly, I know that you're really the devil.

Dr. Feelbad part 1

So, I'm quitting smoking.

Step 1. Back in June when I returned from my trip with the Drivler (since listening to his Taoist B.S. made quitting nigh impossible), I went from 20 cigarettes a day to 10.

Step 2. On July 1st, I went from 10 to five.

Step 3. On August 1st, quit altogether.

Step 4. Don't look at any calendars.

Step 5. Slowly creep back up to 7 cigarettes a day.

Step 6. Get pissed and only smoke five cigarettes.

Step 7. Finally look at calendar and realize that I should have already quit.

Step 8. Seek professional help in terms of hypno-therapy.

Step 9. Preliminary visit with hypno-therapist. Call her Janine so as to establish a personal feel. Questions that follow entirely destroy all levels of comfort. Janine, in her study of human psychology, has evidently never heard the phrase, "none of your fucking business!"

Step 10. Wait for official hypno-therapist to return from vacation.

I am at step 10.

Well, what do I have to say about this process? Much. I will try to condense it so as to offer a blog of normal length.

First of all, I hate doctors. I really really really hate doctors. I don't think they really know much of anything, and now with computers, I'm fairly sure that they can get all this information off the internet.

When I was at Sacramento State, I memorized every bone in the human body. I can't remember any of them anymore except for the Atlas, the mental foramen, and the sacro illiac. I got 108% in the class and then proceeded to forget everything. That's what I believe that doctors do. Actually, I believe they do worse because I never accepted the kind of paycheck a doctor gets for his "knowledge" and moreover I rarely acted all smug.

I don't think that doctors know anything because when I was a kid, I played sick all the time and doctors always corroborated my story. So much so, that in some file, somewhere, I have an ulcer.

Surgeons I can respect, but doctors? Come on. They look up in a little book your symptoms and "poof" they have a diagnosis which is generally exactly what you thought was wrong. They then prescribe some medication that you would have gotten for yourself except that it requires a prescription, and your done, except that the whole thing took up a better part of the day to complete.

Seriously, I don't like 'em. From the idiot who thought I was diabetic because I'd eaten one two many red hots to the moron who wanted to jab a needle in my eye to deaden the pain that was going to be caused by jabbing a needle in my eye.

What I think really did it for me was when I learned to do everything a doctor had ever done for me that was worthwhile in my Boy Scout first aid class, and I wasn't really paying attention.

I digress. Because as much as I hate doctors. I can't stand psychologists and my hypno-therapist is most definitely a psychologist.

Meet me in St. Louis

Well, the Drivler is now posting on his blog about the trip that he and I took to Archer City Texas to visit the bookstore of Larry McMurtry (asshole). He has his story; I'm willing to tell mine. What was perhaps the most entertaining about the trip were the minor details of travelling with another human being who "likes to drive" and who at the same time "can't." But I will get more into this later as the greatest feat of our trip was in fact the Drivler's and it was in fact this selling point that got me to go on the trip at all.

Drivler began his pitch by telling me about Marie Lavioux (whose name I am no doubt misspelling). Evidentally, Madam Lavioux was, at one time, the voodoo priestess of New Orleans, and now that she is dead, she still is willing to answer prayers from beyond the grave.

The Drivler's idea was that we should call on the powers of Marie Lavioux to bring back the A Team. It was a great idea. It was one of those ideas that really only comes up once in a life time, and to be honest, you don't take because now that you have the resources to see its realization, you are also to much of an adult to bring the plan to fruition. Or at least we should have been too much adult. We weren't.

And so, while the quest was ostensibly a trip to see the famous (undeserved) book store of Larry McMurtury, its real quest was the grave of Marie Lavioux.

New Orleans is a town that has been owned by the French, the Spanish, and the French again before becoming American. It was purchased by Thomas Jefferson in a scandalous (at the time) assumption of power by the president not granted by the constituion. While in our day and age, we have grown accustomed to presidents doing things, "just cuz," the purchase of New Orleans (the purchase of any land for that manner) was not necessarilly within the president's power--the rules were a bit shady.

Anyway, Thomas Jefferson purchased the land of New Orleans in a rather shady deal with Napolean Boneparte, and such has been the case since as New Orleans chief industry has since that time been the shady deal. Oh, don't get me wrong. New Orleans is fun and all, but seriously, the town is designed to take your money away.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the St. Louis cemetary. We told our hotel clerk of our plan to enter the cemetary, to deposit our note (we did not mention the cut up chicken that I was sure would be needed to seal the deal) and we were told:

"Oh no! You want to take a tour. It's just not safe to enter the cemetary all by yourself. Too many places to hide. You'll get lost. You'll be mugged. The place is radioactive."

So, we decided to book a tour for the next day for $20 a person. Whee!!!

Here is a map of St. Louis #1. It's about a block wide. You couldn't get lost if you tried. Also, what the map doesn't show you is the police station next door. While we were touring this necropolis, we were there with three other tour groups. The leaders yelled shit at each other. It was here that we learned from our tour leader that, "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH." Evidentally, that group got a free lunch with their tour. Note, you can enter the cemetary for free. The twenty dollars is just so that you can get the real info on all the famous tombs like...who's in them (in case you can't read). Now our tour guide, like all tour guides, was part of the restoration of tombs committee, so she had information that very few of us could have received about...stone I guess.

Anyways, whenever a tour group was at one of the two tombs with people you've ever heard of before, and she'd kind of have to wait her turn, she'd fill us in on some of the details that her expertise allowed her to share with us....

"This tomb is made of stone. Now as most of you may realize, this is New Orleans, and New Orleans doesn't have stones. It's a swamp. So they had to go somewhere else to get the stone...and bring it back here." All this she would say while nodding and smiling. "That's something that some of these other so called tours won't tell you."

Drivler: "Where did they get the stone?"
Tour guide: "That's a really good question. I'm going to have to find that out for next time. Really good question though."

Thank God we had a tour guide who was only moonlighting from her great love of preserving tombs, otherwise, we'd have had to walk around St. Louis reading names and guessing that those winged statues represented Angels. Of course, being on tour did keep us moving so as to not get run over by the other sixty people who were in the one block by one block cemetary where we were in danger of being mugged. I'm so glad the hotel concierge tipped us off to the danger of St. Louis 1, or else we might have been able to spend our $20 on food instead of listening to our tour guide explain that the stone structure that we were looking at was made of red brick. I mean, yeah, it looked like red brick, but until you really hear it from an expert, how can you say you know for sure.

Marie had better bring back the A-Team. That's all I have to say on the subject.