Haunted Switchboard

Here's today's 5-minute meditation tip. Next time you listen to a popular song, listen to the drums. Seriously. Just concentrate on what the drummer is doing.  Unless you are or were a drummer yourself, you have probably never heard what the drums are doing before. (In which case, listen to the bass player.) You will hear amazing stuff. You will notice that the drums often play the melody, in a way. That they offer cues for when it's time for the other musicians to come in. You will hear the song in a whole nother way. It's a nice 3 or 4 minute mental break.

So just to revisit the Office Ghost, something happened a couple days ago that I have not been able to get out of my head. I was at home in the evening when somebody called my cell phone from the office switchboard. It was like 9:30 pm. I was of course thinking there was some kind of emergency. I rushed to answer the phone but they had already hung up and did not leave a message. I called back immediately, but what I got was the switchboard, which had gone over to the answering service.

Then I got to thinking, "Wait a minute. If there was some kind of emergency, they wouldn't have called me from the switchboard. They would have called me from their cell phone." I mean, the switchboard doesn't have my phone number on it and won't dial me if you click on the link. A cell phone will. Plus, whoever was having the emergency would probably be in his/her office freaking out at his/her computer, not anywhere near the switchboard which is in the lobby.

The next day I asked the receptionist who had called me. She looked, and someone had indeed called me at the time I mentioned, from the switchboard. But there was no way to know who, of course. So she looked at the feed from the security cameras. Reader, no one was there. Or anywhere else in the office for that matter. The last person left at like 7:10 and the janitor had already come and gone by then.

(🎵"Twilight Zone Theme"🎶)

So we maybe have an Office Ghost who can not only impersonate living people but also use the switchboard. Which is digital, so I guess that makes sense (they say ghosts are whizzes at electronics). Whatever, but 😬😬😬. And just in time for the spooky season to roll in, too.

Speaking of spooky season, we have these neighbors who just go all out for Halloween. They have probably 20 figures on their lawn and the roof of their house, all life size or larger, many of them animatronic. People literally come for miles around, and bring their little kids, to see their display. On Halloween night it's hard to get to my house because there's so much traffic. This year they have groups of skeletons drinking coffee at a Starbucks, partying at a bar (one of them has on a tutu) and playing in a band (fife, drum and guitar). And yeah, there's the obligatory flying witches, a werewolf and a giant spider, but, you know, it's Halloween.

Anyway, this has inspired me to do my own yard display. I have three (count them, three) yard signs for Harris/Walz and my pick for Senator on my lawn. I'm gonna order a life size skeleton to hold a vinyl sign that says, "The Alternative Is Scary." I'll post a pic when I have it set up. By the way, all the signs are right close to the wheelchair ramp so anyone who messes with them will show up on the Ring doorbell cam. Oh, and this is interesting: Right after I put up my yard signs, three more yards on my street suddenly had signs. This goes to my theory of volunteering, which is, some people won't volunteer until someone else has already volunteered. Anyway, it's cool to see yard signs. I haven't seen a single one for the Orange Shitgibbon anywhere around here.

(Apologies to actual gibbons.)

My gang of Buddhists is reading Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, by Thich Nhat Hanh. This is one of those annoying books that is very easy to read, only after a page you say "Wait a minute, what was that?" and go back and read it again. It's full of simple concepts that, despite being simple, are really hard to wrap your brain around. Foremost is this idea that before you can work on saving the planet, you have to get a grip on yourself. It's kind of like the idea that if there's a sudden pressure loss on an airplane, you have to get your own mask on before you assist your child, or anyone acting like a child, or maybe the person next to you. Reason: You have about 30 seconds before you lose consciousness. Obviously, if you don't get the mask on in 30 seconds, you won't be able to assist anybody. And it's not like the flight attendants can walk down the aisle checking everybody because they'd have to take their own masks off. Anyway, similar concept here. If you're still full of rage about the oil companies, the idiotic administrations that got us to this point, and general cluelessness on behalf of lots of other people, all you're gonna do is more harm. So you have to, get this, work on living in the present moment first. I mean the guy says this over and over again, in lots of ways and in many different books, and it has yet to sink in. I keep finding myself arguing with him in my head. Then losing those arguments. Anyway, it is a good book.

Also, it's time for lots of health care things that happen this time of year. One of them is a mammogram. The last time I had a mammogram, about a year ago, I literally got hurt. I told the technician specifically not to do a certain thing and the second time she had to reposition me, she did that very thing. Plus I yelled and she didn't stop. She's lucky I didn't hit her. (They say battery by patients is endemic in medical settings. Gee, I wonder why. Evidently I bit a dentist when I was five, too. He probably said, "This won't hurt a bit" and then it did. Of course, five year olds can't be prosecuted in most states.) Also, this was not a minor injury. I needed treatment, I couldn't wear a bra for a week, and as a consequence, I didn't go to work or pretty much leave the house. For me that was not a big deal, I still got paid. But for some people it would be a Very Big Deal. Yes, I complained at the time, and they were very nice about it. But I'm very hesitant to schedule another one, at least at that establishment.

Someone very wise to whom I happened to be married commented that if they were a clinic and a patient was considering not scheduling with them ever again, they would want to know that. So this week I sent a letter to four of their chief executives, copying my Regular Doc. It was kinda long but it outlined exactly what happened, why it happened, and more importantly, why it should NEVER HAPPEN EVER. Real quick, name me a routine medical screening that people sometimes leave with a fresh injury. Go ahead, I'll wait. Plus that they were seriously shortchanging fat people and people with large breasts and giving them substandard medical care, and the things they need to do to fix that.

Did you know that about 25-33% of women who are supposed to be having regular mammograms are already not doing so, and of those that are, 18% of those are injured during a mammogram, because "sometimes this happens", either delay their next mammogram for years or never go back for another one? So by letting this happen, the clinic is eroding its own customer base.

Anyway, I hope they read it for what it is: A demand letter. (That's what I based it on, one of my office's demand letters.) A demand letter, incidentally, is the last thing you send another party before you sue them, telling them how they can settle this thing with you before it goes to court. I didn't ask them for money. I asked them to better train their staff and order a medical supply item that completely prevents this kind of injury. I think that's a reasonable demand and it won't even cost them much. I also told them I would not be back without a support person, ie, my wife, and that she will be in the room with me witnessing the procedure. If I don't get a response, I will of course not ever return there for anything. I will also go to every single medical review site on the Internet that I can find, like Yelp and Healthgrades and Google Reviews and so on, and leave a lengthy review of exactly what happened. It's not libel if it's true, just incidentally, unless it's also intentionally defamatory. Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, 501 U.S. 496, 516 (1991).

I mean, I guess the alternative is to just stop getting mammograms. I've already called a halt to Pap smears, and a colonoscopy is not ever happening. I've had plenty of invasive exams in my life, thank you, and I'm Done. Oh, and before you start sending me horror stories about people you know who died agonizing deaths from various unspeakable cancers because they didn't get their screenings, just don't. You have control over exactly one person's medical choices and that person is you. Anyway, statistically the odds of breast cancer are considerably higher than colon or cervical cancer. And a mammogram is not, in itself, invasive. But we'll see what they say, and what they say about a support person. I'd hate to drag us both all the way there and then have to call the whole thing off because they don't want any witnesses.

So that's what's going on. Next week I'm at a nifty conference for a couple of days and then I'll probably sleep all weekend. Cheers!