Last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was called “Start Me Up.” And it sure got me started. Pardon me for a bit while I crawl up on my soapbox. Because, you see, I think that “Start Me Up” included the biggest gaffe ever made by Grey’s.

And yes, we’re talking about a show where I’ve not missed an episode since it debuted as a mid-season replacement in 2005. That’s more than a little bit sad, if you think about it, but loyalty is so embedded in my makeup that it may be as much vice as virtue. In all of these years, I’ve not seen the GA writers get it as wrong as they did last night – in one particular scene.

I’m talking about the scene where Teddy’s hubby-for-insurance-only, Henry, was under the knife. Thanks to the quickie marriage and the brand new insurance, Henry can now have surgery for a recurring condition he’s suffered from for years that causes repeated tumors. So newly-insured Henry, now Mr. Teddy,  is on the OR table while the Chief and Bailey are operating. Right in the middle of the surgery, a medical student, who’s observing, makes a comment and it causes the docs to examine Henry’s interior a little closer. And what do they find?

There’s a big ole cyst on Henry’s pancreas. Not just any cyst, this one is a big cancerous cyst that is about to burst and kill Henry. So what do the good docs do? They call in Teddy, Henry’s wife, a cardiac surgeon herself, to find out how Teddy wants them to handle the monstrous cyst.  Does she want it removed?  CAKE OR DEATH?

Teddy and Henry, as noted above, are basically strangers.  She did a good deed by marrying him to get him insured.  Like the cliche says, no good deed goes unpunished and the Chief wants Teddy to crawl.  When the Chief demands her decision, Teddy sort of haltingly says they should remove the cyst.  Then it’s time for a half-shell buffet featuring Teddy, common sense, and the Grey’s writers good judgment and excellent reputations.  Because the Chief tells Teddy – not so fast, girlfrog.  You better think about this.

Chief tells Teddy that if the pancreas is removed or mostly removed, it’ll likely make Henry a Type I diabetic.  Can Henry handle such a serious, such a volatile disease?  Does he have a good family support system?  Teddy doesn’t know.  Then again, she doesn’t know much about her new hubby.  That, of course, was the Chief’s point.  Ultimately, she tells them to remove the cyst and Henry survives the surgery.

But let’s back up for a minute.  Grey’s writers crafted a scene where they asked if it’s better to be a living Type I diabetic or a dead man with an intact pancreas.  WTF???  The Chief, while grilling Teddy, notes that Type I diabetes is a difficult disease to manage, so she should carefully consider whether they should operate or not.  Apparently, the Chief thinks that death is easier to manage than Type I diabetes.

Death never seemed like a manageable condition to me.

You see, I’m a Type I diabetic.  Millions of  living, breathing Americans are Type I diabetics.  I’m betting that, like me, every one of them considers Type I preferable to death.  Type I diabetes is a condition that can be managed.  Outside of some rocking paranormal romance novels, death is pretty much a condition that ends all management.

What makes this even worse is that this scene comes from a show that tries to be oh-so-conscientious about how it portrays G/L/B/TG issues, women’s rights issues and even death penalty issues.  Coming from this show this scene looks like a big, obvious, flat-out insult to millions of American diabetics.

Type I diabetes may not look like cake – unless the other choice is death.

There’s not much I’d carry a picket sign for, but if the American Diabetes Association wants to stage a protest over this one, I just might carry a sign.

Mine would read – No, I’m Not Better Off Dead.

It’s the male again, pinch-hitting for Mary Anne who is in emotional turmoil after seeing our oldest son off to Orlando once again.

Thinking about our sons and our relationships with them made me appreciate a recent news story and its ties with universal and timeless themes woven throughout humanity’s broad narrative tapestry much more.

No matter what else you think about the Bible, it can’t be denied that it has been the most influentual piece of literature in mankind’s short history. Its myriad stories collectively cover most (if not all) of Polti’s 36 plots, and Jesus’s teaching via parables allows even those of us who are mentally dense (read: me!) to access deep philosophical concepts.

The parable that is most applicable to Ted Williams, who was the “homeless man with the golden voice“, is the parable of the prodigal son.

Initially, Mr. Williams’ story didn’t intrigue me that much, though it warmed my heart a little. All I had seen was this video (also embedded below), which went viral a few days after its debut.

From the news coverage afterwards, I knew Mr. Williams had given himself over to alcohol, drugs, and crime in the past, and had been sober for awhile but had been reduced to begging on the road, and had some job offers after being (re)discovered. It was good to hear, especially in this economy, that someone so down on his luck and trying to scramble back up from a difficult position in his life was able to get back on his feet again.

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Hello kiddies, the irritated corpulent male here.

I decided to “geek out” on you fools. You see, I’ve had the Linux itch for a few years now, ever since I assembled a desktop computer out of spare parts for my parents and wanted to avoid paying for another copy of Windows XP. I had heard about Ubuntu being the easiest variant of Linux to install, and that it also resembled Windows the most.

So I tried to bust into the world of open source operating systems. Ubuntu installed easily enough, recognized most of the hardware with one exception – the modem.

My parents had (and still have) dial-up Internet access. They live so far out in the woods that the Deliverance Banjo Boy keeps telling them that they need to move closer to town. And if there’s nothing else to know about Ubuntu, there’s the fact that it requires a broadband Internet connection to accomplish anything with it, and that IT’S A HELL OF LOT MORE COMPLICATED THAN WINDOWS!

So it was a no-go for my parents, but I vowed that I would have my vengeance on little Billy Gates, oh yes. Vengeance. Raging, fist-shaking, snorting and drooling nerd vengeance.

At last, today, I have my fat geek vengeance. I have resurrected a laptop from that great computer graveyard – our garage – and now its undead carcass is stumbling around on the Internet with a dark, unholy free operating system powering its formerly lifeless appendages.

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My oldest son is 19 and threatening to turn 20, but I’m not sure I’ll allow that.  I’d like to send both my kids backwards towards infancy if I could. Anyway, he thinks he’ll be 20 in March, but I’m rooting for him to turn 18 again… then 17 then 16, then 15 then…  Anyway, Zack was the poster child for someone who’d be the ideal ereader owner. 

Zack is a sophomore at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando.  However, his home is in Myrtle Beach, SC.  During the school year he travels a lot – sometimes by Amtrak and sometimes by plane.  By plane he’ll have layovers between connecting flights and by train he’s riding the rails for about 9 hours.  And he’s a reader from way back.  So on those long trips, books are how he passes the time.

Like I said, he’s a reader, so books are also one of the ways (besides his computer generally, World of Warcraft, specifically and hopefully studying – at least occasionally) that he passes his time at home and in his dorm.  He has 3 full bookcases in his room at home and boxes more in his apartment/dorm at UCF.  Amongst the most important book to him are the bulkiest - the Twilight series, all of ‘em.  Those are 4 of the biggest, bulkiest books on the planet – and Zack adores them.  He wants them with him at home, at his dorm, and traveling between the two.

Like I said, he was the poster child for someone who needed an ereader. That would’ve been true even if his Mom wasn’t an indie author who likes her ereader - although it’s only a beginner’s model.  I wanted better for my son.  The ebook revolution has advanced and my son, the National Merit Scholar studying engineering on a full scholarship, well, he should have the best – or at least, the best for him out of the variety of full-fledged “real” ereaders.  Which one would that be?

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This elf is dangerous. Do not approach. Call appropriate authorities.

WANTED

This elf is wanted in connection to several incidents of the following:

• Aggravated holiday shopping
• Silliness in the first degree
• Random acts of smiling and Christmas cheer

This elf has been most recently observed in Wal-Mart, though he has been spotted in other retail establishments around Myrtle Beach as well. He is armed. He has two of them in fact, and has been seen carrying presents in both of them.  He has recently begun to victimize small children by grinning at them with malicious happiness and terrorizing store clerks with loud proclamations of “Merry Christmas”.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND HIM YOURSELF! ALERT THE PROPER AUTHORITIES!

Burgermeister Meisterburger

The Grinch

Ebenezer Scrooge

Hi folks, AOFM pinch-hitting for the crazy duck lady. She’s busy on the laptop looking for Black Friday-Saturday-Sunday deals. Me? I just wait until Christmas Eve and buy jewelry. Or at least I used to when we had disposable income. Now I buy cheap plastic trinkets from China and hand those out with drunken ass-whippings, like all good daddies do.

It’s not all bad this year, though. We were told the first Christmas after Oprah showed off the Kindle that it was THE YEAR OF THE E-READER-R-R-R. That was 2009 or so. At “under” $400 (did you ever notice that when retailers say something is “under” a certain price, that’s the actual price?), it was AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE!

Until we get to $400 for a gallon of gas, (which is an entirely separate blog post) something at that price is not really available to everyone. Something has to pretty much be a household necessity to be priced at $400 or more, especially after the economic downturn of early 2009. And an e-reader is not a household necessity (unless you happen to be married to an insane duck lady with sharp metal implements within her easy reach).

So when Amazon et al tried to talk up 2009 as THE YEAR OF THE E-READER-R-R-R, they were full of it.

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Angry Old Fat Man, being more angry than usual. Probably more fat too, but to hell with it, like that makes a damn anymore.

I’m a computer guy, just trying to make heads or tails of the world as I plod along. I’m trying to build a business, so I worked practically the entire evening for free on a computer running Microsoft Vista.

If you don’t know because you’re an Apple sycophant, a Linux basement-dweller, Amish, or been living under a rock for the past 5 years, the Microsoft Vista operating system (like every second or third version of their software) sucks ass. It took entirely too long for Microsoft to realize they had a huge stinker on their hands, and after working on getting it somewhat stable they ended up having to rename it (Windows 7) for users to even look at it.

This machine I’ve been working on has an infamous Black Screen of Death, where you only see a black screen and a tantalizing mouse pointer that moves OK but has nothing to point at or click on. I’ve tried every free remedy under the sun and it still sits there, its dark face mocking me.

Did they even test this son of a bitch before they shipped it out the door? This is what Microsoft gets for hiring potheads and cheap overseas programmers. This is also why they’re getting their lunch eaten by smartphones.

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Unless you serve in our heroic armed forces, being an American is generally more about privilege than price. Today is different. Today is the day we do our job as citizens of the best country in the history of the world.

Today we decide our country’s direction by choosing to re-hire the politicians who’ve been working for us or by letting them go and hiring someone new.

Today is NOT ABOUT your political persuasion. Today is about being an American. GET OUT AND VOTE!!!

I haven’t joined the Borg.  I have not been assimilated.  Heck, I’m not even a Star Trek fan – though I live with three (3) men who are.  That’s why I know about the Borg. Their bloody phrase seeps into dialogue at the Casa de Graham.   I know the phrase.  I know the meaning, but it doesn’t fit.  I have NOT been assimilated.  What I’ve been is the victim of a marketing plan crafted by Mr. Quack, my resident diabolical genius.    

Quacking Alone Romances has had a Facebook page for a few weeks.  It existed and I left it alone.  I operated under the theory that if it didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother it then we’d both be okay.  Then I started trying to keep this blog refreshed with daily new content – which I thought would be a good thing – by going in each morning and posting a thought for the day.  

Mr. Quack sat me down and told me that I was getting it wrong.  I didn’t want to update the blog content everyday, I wanted to put the new stuff on the Facebook page.  He said short thoughts don’t belong on the blog, to put that stuff on Facebook.  So, I moved the thought for the day over to the QA Facebook page.  And, I’ve been trying to keep the page updated with new content by going in and posting my thoughts about books, TV shows, the universe and everything. 

Then Mr. Quack sat me down and said I’d gotten it wrong again.  He said that the Facebook page for QA Romances should stay static and only get updated by blog posts.  He said I needed to work on the Facebook page he’d started for me by reaching out to “friend” folks in my network of family and friends and by posting my thoughts there.  He says that social marketing is a necessary evil. 

Well, I’ve gone out to FB and put in some of my favorites there and I’ve started reaching out to “friend” old friends, college and law school buddies and family members. It’ll be nice to have a way to stay in touch with them, I suppose.  But I wonder if my youngest son isn’t right about Facebook.  Sam says that the number of friends you have on FB isn’t about friendship or connecting.  He says it’s just a modern day status symbol. 

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